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 -
Are there still Advisory Opinions listeners around here? Overall I enjoy the podcast, despite David French being... David French. If I never hear "Brahimi" again it will be too soon. Just say the two cases instead of wasting 10x as long talking about the other David coining the portmanteau! Moving on-
Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services has come up on the pod, and will be heard in the upcoming SCOTUS term. This concerns a circuit split on the matter of proving discrimination, in this case in employment, where a "member of the majority" is held to a (considerably, IMO) higher standard to display discrimination. I continue to be baffled by the judge who wrote the opinion. It has gotten a little airtime, especially since the Sixth Circuit was French's stomping grounds, and one assumes it will get a lot more after oral argument and the decision next year. Interesting case, Motte-fodder, looking forward to the decision. I will be pleasantly surprised if it's 7-2, unsurprised 6-3, 5-4 irritating but also not too surprising; unless it gets wiggled out or mooted on a technicality instead of a substantive decision in which case just irritated.
In the most recent episode they spent a few minutes, much less than they've spent about engagement ring law, on B. W. versus Austin Independent School District. If you're having a good day, do not read this case. If you are easily outraged, do not read this case (that was my mistake). If you are a court nerd who wants to see how the Fifth Circuit decides what constitutes harassment, want to look at 9 judges for each side who are likely to be on shortlists for the Supes (Ho and Oldham already are for the right, they're in the dissent here, and Ho makes a showing with his own flashy dissent, even citing Ames), and can read absurdity without sparking an aneurism, go ahead. I am tempted to suggest skipping the standing decision entirely and starting on page 6 for the dissent, but that is an incomplete picture even if the standing decision says so little.
The TL;DR is- a student was bullied over the course of years, and the case basically asks two questions. One, does racial animus as an expression of political animus become, more or less, acceptable because political affiliation is not a protected class? Two, as the only prong of Title VI harassment contested by the AISD, does this meet the standard of harassment pervasive enough to "deprive the victim of access to education opportunities or benefits provided by the school"? The answer to the first seems to be yes and the second no, though I confess my charity burned to a crisp about three sentences into the standing decision so it may be a less than perfect summary.
David and Sarah believe SCOTUS will not take up this case, because of the question of political animus overlapping with racial. How unfortunate, as that is the interesting part to me. This generates quite a loophole in harassment law, even more so than the Ames differing standards of evidence. If you can smuggle protected-class-harassment in under another excuse, what's the point of the distinction?
They also bring up the two gender tshirt case and predict that when one of these cases does make it to SCOTUS, the result will be a lot more school uniforms and stricter dress codes. Like Hamtramck, I consider this superior to the alternative though worse than ideal: uniforms are a nice solution to "your rules applied fairly" where applicable.
It should be. The appropriate response to opinions with which you dis-agree is to argue against them, not bully their advocates into silence or recantation.
Bullying your advocates into silence is so much easier and clearly more effective, that there would be no way to enact this at this point. As wise as the founders were, they didn't take Adams' concerns about the religious populace seriously enough, nor did they include protections and predictions for what would happen if traditional religion went on hiatus.
Bizarrely, political affiliation is protected in California, though I assume there's umpteen loopholes for why this has no effect on reality.
It had an effect; Damore used it to sue Google after his firing, but he settled so we don’t know how much he got.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It was a fine argument. We have overwhelming evidence that it can't be maintained in an environment of values-diversity. The same author went on to write Be Nice At Least Until You Can Coordinate Meanness, and then a year later wrote Kolmogorov Complicity And the Parable of Lightning. Now, I'm given to understand, he declines to write about these matters at all. Taken in sequence, it seems to me that the trajectory isn't hard to plot.
You know who hasn't had to engage in a grinding rhetorical retreat year after year? Zunger. He got it right the first time. Ditto for Ozy.
I think the idea of political ideology being at least somewhat protected (in my view, muc( like religion) simply because it’s easy and therefore tempting to use the threat of unemployment as a cudgel to prevent public expressions of non-mainstream politics. The temptation to use this, and thus use social media “job-swatting” (gee wouldn’t it be terrible if this crime-thinker’s name and photo and screenshots went to the HR office of his company X) to either threaten or punish public expressions of political opinions. And depending on where you happen to live, even relatively sane and even centrist opinions might well offend someone who can get you fired and thus potentially unemployable depending on industry. This creates a situation where people learn to self censor and be very careful about what they say in public. It would be highly irresponsible if you live in a blue city and work in a blue coded industry to openly express support for Israel, or to openly express opposition to abortion. And so it’s creating “the closet” for politics and somewhat religion if the religion is too strongly coded for a political outlook. People have talked about it here before, they don’t tell anyone they work with that they’re conservative, often trying to figure out how they can quietly signal opposition to things like pronouns in their email taglines without attracting the attention of HR.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I expect that if the T-shirt case makes it to SCOTUS, SCOTUS will simply overrule Tinker v. Des Moines and grant schools wide latitude to censor.
I don't necessarily disagree, but pretty much every decision with a through-line to Tinker has eroded Tinker in some way without bothering to overrule it; why would they overrule it now?
(There is actually a discernible pattern in student speech cases post-Tinker and it's not "substantial disruption." Rather, in most cases, juvenile delinquents tend to get slapped down, while "model students" doing activism or whatever mostly win.)
Sure, but what makes someone a "model student" doing activism? That one is doing that which is approved by the Cathedral, yes? Left-wing speech is activism, right-wing speech is delinquency.
Well, it's been a while since I was really on the bleeding edge of these cases, but my experience is that it's rarely overtly political, except to the extent that "good student" sometimes codes "left"--which is less often the case in high school than it is in college. Kids who get detention and bully others don't get free speech. Kids who get good grades or excel in athletics do. Leftists may be more inclined toward activism? But at the high school level it tends to be silly stuff rather than serious culture war issues. Though perhaps in the last few years that has changed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"a math class aide repeatedly called B.W. 'Whitey'... A teacher asked him if he 'enjoyed his white gospel music', a teacher told B.W. 'i will not have a white man talk to me about gender issues!'"
But these were of course not based on race in any way, says the court. Fuck this clown country, it needs to burn, because there's nothing left to salvage. How many billion dollars would the payout be if a teacher asked a black kid "hey darkie, where'd you steal that bike?"
Fun part 1:
There's some !!fun!! questions about how accurate the claims were, but because this was at the motion to dismiss phase, the court is supposed to accept even remotely plausible claims from the non-moving party.
Fun part 2: This wasn't 2020. That example was February 2019, aka pre-Floyd.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link