This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Reason: "Neither Harris nor Trump Is a Friend of Free Speech"
Can't speak to the flag burning, but the airwaves are publicly owned and granted by the government. If they are being flagrantly misused to spread proven lies and undermine the public which owns them, why shouldn't the license get pulled?
Likewise, libel and slander laws exist. Why shouldn't Trump avail himself of them same as people have against him?
Because "public" does not exist - it's just an imaginary entity to make our conversations easier, but there's no actual thing as "public" that owns anything. What actually happens is that the government functionaries are controlling the speech over the airwaves, and as we have found out multiple times, they can not be trusted not to abuse this function, even if they have best intentions at the start. And being human, they rarely even have the best intentions. That's why the best method to prevent the abuse is to deny them the power of control.
More options
Context Copy link
Completely agree. Anyone broadcasting vaccine misinformation or transphobia contradicting consensus public health science on public airwaves should be shut down.
More options
Context Copy link
He doesn't just want to use existing laws, he said he wants to 'open up' libel laws. It's also just pretty pathetic - did Obama ever threaten to sue Birtherists for libel, much less threaten to 'open up' the laws to get at them?
Obama had a media environment an order of magnitude more friendly to him and his goals, there is simply no comparison between the simpering star struck media under Obama and the vast open collusion between the great majority of the media & academic landscape to take every opportunity to blatantly attack, lie and mislead about Trump.
This is a pretty revealing answer, since it indicates that the real grievance isn't actual libel, it's the overall hostile media landscape, and it's pretty chilling for a President to suggest that laws be changed in order that he can lash out against media outlets that don't like him. If he's that sensitive to partisan or negative coverage, he shouldn't be in politics.
Not quite as revealing as you might think; laws are made for man, not men for the law.
If a law or set of laws are not working as intended or being enforced unevenly, you change the law. The point of a law is what it does. The point of Libel / slander / defamation laws is to prevent large public actors from egregiously publicly lying on purpose in order to damage or destroy someone.
There’s nothing inconsistent in thinking that those laws exist for a reason, and seeing the Trump case as a good example of why those laws exist, noting that they clearly aren’t having the desired deterrent effect, and then saying we need to do something about that.
We’ve completely sacralized massive media companies, to their benefit. But they can be shamelessly bad actors too in the same way that companies that make chemicals, arms, cars, etc are.
I’m not necessarily agreeing that “opening up” libel laws in the right move, but there’s nothing inherently incoherent or pernicious about it.
This problem still existed under Obama it was just camouflaged by a sycophantic relationship between big media and power.
Fine, that's a legitimate point (which I completely disagree with but let's leave that for one second), but it's still probably a bad idea to have a sitting President be the one to make that case. If there is one person with reference to whom we probably ought to err on the side of freedom of speech as regards libel, it is the President. If libel laws really should be broader, it should be very easy to make that case without having to centre it around a politician who dislikes what his media opponents say.
What accusations/lies against Trump from mainstream media figures do you think Trump is currently prevented from taking libel actions against that he ought to be able to if and when an 'opened' libel regime took effect (and that represents some higher/more sinister plane of lying that any previous President did not have to deal with)?
So here’s the departure for me; while I don’t find the idea around reforming libel laws necessarily objectionable, I don’t actually agree that this is the best strategy.
Trump tends to take the most extreme opening love as a bargaining chip, which is a common business tactic and something he outlined as part of his preferred strategy in “The Art of the Deal”.
I think legacy media alternatives like long form podcasts, Twitter/X and Substack are completely eating the legacy media’s lunch, and the worst actors are suffering the necessary consequences of tanking their reputation after so many years of blatant lies and manipulation.
I’m personally quite optimistic that the necessary change is already well on its way through pure consumer choice and the breaking of the hard wall of censorship & collusion. The preference cascade is already here, political capital is better spent elsewhere.
I don’t know enough specifics about current libel law to spell out which particular things are actionable, but I do hope that the trump organization litigates to the maximum extent possible through current law without trying to force a square peg through a round hole.
As for the uniquely dishonest treatment of Trump by the media, that’s eight plus years in the making with too many example to name.
The Russia Hoax is the obvious big one, but I distinctly remember the first small example I saw myself that made my radar go off just a tad; it was his during his first trip to Japan, the whole fish food row with Shinzo Abe. This footage starts exactly a few seconds after Abe overturns his box of fish food over, but is cut where it was to make Trump maximally look like an oaf when he was just following Abe’s lead.
That stupid footage was like a whole news cycle, super early in his presidency. And it just got progressively worse after that. After the tenth incident like that I simply started to assume I was being lied to when someone said something negative about him, and I tended to be right much more often than not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Because of the 1A. Fox News and OAN should be allowed to broadcast their opinions. The regime shouldn't be in the business of telling them what they can and cannot say. Trump is arguably a public figure, although some people are saying he is a Marxist born in Kenya. Big if true.
I don’t think the first amendment requires giving person A, B, and C a subsidy that isn’t given to anyone else. In fact, one could flip this on its head and say providing the subsidy is harming the freedom of speech rights of others (since relatively speaking their speech is more expensive)
My response is silent on the subsidy. I'm asking who decides what is "fake news", or whether speech "undermines the public?". Trump says his regime should determine that, in accordance wit his whims. The Reason article points out why this might be a bad idea as far as the 1A is concerned.
But this is my problem with Reason types—they never account for context. Yes, it would be bad if government routinely goes around punishing people for speech the government doesn’t like. But it would also be bad if the government routinely went around rewarding folks for speech the government likes.
So NBC, ABC, and CBS get billions of dollars free subsidies from the government. They were rewarded with this because it was thought broadcasting things like the news was in the public interest. But it has become obviously clear that those three organizations aren’t broadcasting the news but acting as an appendage of the DNC. Why should the government subsidize the speech of the DNC?
Take away the subsidy and let ABC, NBC, or CBS bid on the broadband. Use the money to pay down debt.
Thats an entirely different argument. If thats where the goalposts are, then Reason types would be on board, as it isn't about one man labeling something "fake news". The context is very different from what is being proposed team Trump which sneaks in viewpoint discrimination under the guise of free speech.
If he is actually consistent of free speech, then there wont be objections by reason types.
Ehh we shall see. And those are proposals being put out by people close to Trump (eg Sacks).
These are the same reason types who got upset about mask bans when ignoring the giant thumb government had put on masking.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Fox News is cable though.
I think a lot of people have forgotten what Broadcast means and why there's a legal distinction.
In short, there is a limited spectrum of channels we can have on broadcast TV and radio. There are strict rules that the government has implemented to ensure that this limited resource is allocated "fairly." It's not like the Internet where everyone can talk at once.
I don’t see any good reason the current broadcast arrangement can’t be torn up, it no longer serves the same public purpose it had back before cable news and the internet.
It’s basically just a structural subsidy to a cartel at this point.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’m sure if Trump actually had a legally compelling case he would have already filed, but he hasn’t. That implies to me that he wants to reduce libel protections. (I don’t think he wants that for idealogical reasons, or even has strong convictions about it. I think he’s just personally upset.)
Plus, ‘undermining the public’ goes both ways. Should news organizations reporting on ‘Haitians are eating the cats’ be shut down?
He actually did file two lawsuits recently.
More options
Context Copy link
Listen, he lost a libel case for denying he raped a woman. Because now if you deny you committed a crime, that's calling the person accusing you a liar, and that's libel.
A lot of people have lied about him. "Compelling case"? I hardly see how that matters.
Only in the most tortured interpretation of events. He actually lost the case for calling Carroll a liar, saying she was only accusing him to get publicity for herself and sell books, implying that she was working for the Democrats and/or that she was paid and suggesting she should 'pay dearly' for her accusations. It wasn't some legal trickery by which his denial was construed as implying she was a liar, he literally said she had made it up to sell books.
Didn't she?
Let's say I accuse you of raping me. You know that you have never raped me. You can honestly say you're innocent! You can also say, with 100% certainty that I am making it up. It shouldn't be libel for you to say that I'm making it up, because you are in a position where you can say that with certainty. Maybe I made it up because I am mentally unstable. But if I was also publicizing a book at the time, then you could reasonably infer that I made up to sell the book.
And this seems like the inference that everyone makes. Most liberals take this libel suit as evidence that Trump has been proven of rape in court.
I suppose this depends on the semantics of 'proven'. But the jury did in fact find that Trump had sexually abused Carroll (though not raped her), so in that sense he has been proven of sexual abuse (and of actual malice in his statements) in (a) court.
https://www.scribd.com/document/644110955/gov-uscourts-nysd-590045-174-0-1
If you want to make the case that Trump was reasonable to accuse her of lying, fine, but that's not the argument @WhiningCoil was making, who said that Trump had merely denied the accusations and that counter-accusation of lying was merely something people had read into his initial denial, not something he had explicitly done himself. However that would be merely a critique of the factual findings of the jury, not of their logic or of that of the trial/libel laws/judicial system themselves.
The jury's findings are about as ridiculous to me as Cardinal Pell's conviction in Australia. The story as portrayed has no basis in reality. It is really telling that Carroll's story was that Trump raped her and the jury didn't agree. Carroll's story is that Trump met the legal definition of rape - penetration with a penis - but the jury disagreed. The jury collectively said, "No, your story breaks the laws of physics and anatomy, but we will just change your testimony to 'fingers' instead of 'penis' and then pretend that doesn't have implications on the reliability on the rest of what you said."
It's not semantic to say that there is a crucial standard of evidence lacking that would have been required in a criminal conviction.
It is natural, when denying an allegation, to provide an alternative explanation for the facts. It is part and parcel of denying an allegation. If you ask a kid if she ate a cookie, she will deny it by saying, "No, the dog ate it." The explanation is part of the denial. It shouldn't be libel to provide an alternative explanation when someone is accusing you of something.
I don't know about New York, but in several states any penetration is legally rape if not consensual. Dildo in mouth could be rape. Finger in bellybutton could be rape. Finger in vagina could definitely be rape.
More options
Context Copy link
Not sure what you mean by this.
In the first place she did testify that Trump penetrated her digitally - yes, as you say she also testified as to penetration by his penis, but there was other evidence presented in the trial such that the jury might have been able to be confident of the former but not the latter. I can't see into their mind nor know what was presented and how, but it isn't ipso facto an absurd conclusion. Plus, I don't think their judgement means they don't think he did rape her, just that the evidence there presented was insufficient to prove it, so it needn't hurt her overall credibility.
True enough, the semantic point is how you use the word 'proven', and whether it applies to the standard of proof here (a preponderance of the evidence) or only to the criminal standard. I'm agnostic on the matter but in common parlance I can definitely see that one might use the word 'proven' to describe the former standard.
Sure but this is totally irrelevant to the logic of the jury, because they found that his denial was false in the first place, so his 'alternative explanation' was by extension wrong and, further, defamatory and malicious. If they had found that he had not sexually abused Carroll, they presumably would have not awarded any damages
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link