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 -
Cool. So to recap, @atelier 's explicit claim is that it's impossible to know how much voting fraud happens in this country because the RNC was subject to a 30 year consent decree about the conduct of their polling observers. Somehow (unsure how) this on its own hobbled their institutional capacity to such a devastating degree that they were left helpless from effectively engaging on the issue of voter fraud, even years after the decree was lifted and despite significant motivation and resources on their side. Somehow (again, unsure how) the consent decree about polling observer behavior had ramifications that extended well beyond to other arenas, and crippled the RNC's ability to litigate, investigate, or otherwise advocate against voter fraud. Simultaneously, institutions that would also have a strong interest in investigating voter fraud (such as law enforcement, or other republican organizations) abdicated their responsibility for some unknown reason. Of course, I'm setting aside the underlying assumption that only democrats engage in voter fraud.
I anticipate I'll be accused of a misleading summary. If so, it would be useful to know which step exactly is erroneous. For now I'll just refer you back to atelier's comment that kickstarted this thread.
Just to be clear, you mean “years” as in two years, because (as I already noted) the decree was lifted in 2018 and the only national election since then was in 2020.
If you were in the business of genuine persuasion, I suppose that this is where you would reveal your extensive experience with poll-monitoring and ballot challenges. Then you could explain in detail how it’s actually really easy to get tens of thousands of volunteers mobilized and adequately trained in two years or less to coordinate doing that across thousands of decentralized voting precincts. To really put a bow on it, you’d be sure to take into account the fact that a substantial plurality or even outright majority of these precincts underwent dramatic administrative changes immediately before that election due to (read: on the pretext of) the Covid pandemic, many of which served to make those very activities far more difficult, if not practically impossible.
You will be accused of a misleading summary because you gave a misleading summary. I hope that the above helps to show why.
You haven't contradicted my summary, but instead just doubled-down on the assertion that it was impossible to investigate voter fraud because the RNC was really left helpless (setting aside other people with an interest in investigating voter fraud, like law enforcement and whatnot). You can chalk it up to a deficient theory of mind on my part, but I don't understand who finds these excuses persuasive. It comes across as calcified helplessness.
I have given reasons why you’d expect the RNC to lack the relevant capacities at the time(s) in question, none of which you’ve given arguments against. You simply double down on the assertion that the RNC or others really must have been efficacious, without evidence, ipse dixit.
"We don't know if bigfoot exists because my cryptozoologist uncle has been in prison for the last 30 years."
"Aren't there other people that can look for bigfoot? Maybe park rangers or something?"
"My uncle really is in prison. He can't look for bigfoot from behind bars."
"Ok fine but you haven't explained why your uncle is pivotal in the hunt for bigfoot! What stopped other people from looking for bigfoot? Assuming he exists of course."
"By now I've clearly established that my uncle has not been in a position to conduct any scouting trips for bigfoot, none of which you've even tried to dispute. Good day sir!"
Your problem was both that I was supposedly saying the RNC was helpless and not accounting for other interested parties. You said exactly that in your last reply. Now you’re acting as if you never said anything about the RNC and it was always exclusively about the third parties. That’s dishonest.
Nah, I did talk about the cryptozoologist uncle but I think he's being used by you in this argument as a distraction. @atelier claims we can't know if bigfoot exists because the uncle hasn't been allowed to work. That assumes the uncle is somehow foundational to the mission of finding bigfoot. If you reject the assumption (I do) then talking about the uncle is irrelevant. But if you do accept the assumption (do you?) the obvious follow-up is how did the world end up relying on just one man to find bigfoot? Why aren't the park rangers doing their job?
Gee, what could possibly be the relevant disanalogies between a random cryptozoologist, Bigfoot, and park rangers vs. the RNC, election fraud, and law enforcement? (Here’s a start: we definitely know election fraud exists.)
Sure, let's assume bigfoot definitely exists. Justifying away the lack of photos of bigfoot by citing the cryptozoologist' prison time (as atelier did) doesn't begin to explain why he would be the only person capable of supplying them. It remains a distraction tactic.
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