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 -
By your reasoning, he should also predict that Biden will put on a vest full of explosives and suicide bomb Donald Trump.
Nobody will choose to harm the outgroup "as much as possible" if that means literally as much as possible regardless of the harm to themselves in the process. What they will do is harm the outgroup as much as they can without too much harm to themselves. That isn't the same thing. They did in fact tried to keep lockdowns going and they did support "abolish the police"; it's just that the political cost of continuing to do so was too great.
You've also thrown a few things in there that don't even harm the outgroup; a January 6 style protest against Trump winning the election wouldn't harm anyone in the outgroup (and the actual January 6 didn't harm anyone either, it was just an excuse for a left-wing crackdown).
Okay; explain to me why left-wing protesters can't simply have George Floyd level riots and burn DC, NYC and every other major US city to the ground in response to Trump's election? You believe that sympathetic AGs in all of those very blue districts will fail to prosecute them, correct? What harm will come to stochastic terrorists, when I've been assured that it's very easy to do this kind of damage to infrastructure and hard to track the perpetrators? As far as I'm aware, no public health official has suffered legal other major professional consequences, so what harms did they personally suffer to make them stop pushing lockdowns and vaccines?
Perhaps I'll add, why didn't democrats rig the 2024 election given that nobody suffered consequences for rigging the election in 2020?
When you say 'without too much harm to themselves,' you've essentially watered your argument down to democracy/populism, given that most of your proposed consequences come from the ballot box. Or at least given yourself enough of a loophole to drive a George Floyd-style riot through. At which point, if my model of the world is that elected officials largely try to do things that are popular with the electorate (at least when those actions are legible to the public), and that a majority of Americans aren't particularly motivated by harming the outgroup, please give me concrete examples where our predictions about the world would differ?
Imagine you put a puppet in as president, knowing that he was controllable due to ill health and that your control of mass media could hide and lie about any visible instances of his declining health, which doctors assured you was bad, but currently easy to hide. Imagine that due to circumstances outside your control his condition deteriorates faster than you expect and can manage, such that after a disastrous debate performance (perhaps sabotaged by an alternative faction in your party) power players in your organisation begin publicly demanding he step down. If he steps down however, you will have to return a bunch of money you've already spent and start a brand new presidential campaign 100 days out from the election. Due to your financial situation and because all of the highly ambitious possible alternatives refuse, you have to run a person nobody thinks can win.
Wouldn't you cede that election and put your effort in preparing for the next one? You still have to campaign as hard as possible for the people downticket, but you aren't going to pull out all the tricks to win the presidency. Especially not when your opponents are watching like hawks.
Note in this hypothetical you are the party leaders, I don't mean to imply anything about the average democrat supporter, who I believe aren't especially motivated by harming the outgroup.
More options
Context Copy link
Because the people who were organizing them stopped when the post riot life started harming democratic candidates! In other words they were getting into too much trouble so they stopped that particular harm effort.
What is the evidence of this? People here and elsewhere argued that Floyd was a boon for democrats in 2020, and they won fairly convincingly four months later.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Because Floyd-level riots hurt Democratic-run and Democratic-voting areas (you yourself mention NYC--not a Republican stronghold!) and discredit the Democrats. They have some propaganda value against the right, especially when the media is sympathetic, but they probably hurt the left more than the right. This doesn't depend on prosecutions.
Because their ability to rig elections is not unlimited and they couldn't rig it by enough to push the election to the Democrats.
"They'll allow as many Floyd-style protests as they can get away with, but they will eventually stop" is very different than preventing Floyd-style protests as much as they can. You would predict the latter. Certainly you wouldn't predict prosecutors going easy on protestors.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link