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 -
If they were actually removed. And I'd argue that we could do it faster by actually having cops go after criminals, rather than sifting through traffic stops to find them.
Completely agree. So let's shift police work towards finding and investigating criminals, rather than ignoring burglaries and property crime in favour of traffic stops and such.
I'm not saying we shouldn't arrest low-level criminals. I'm saying that we shouldn't use minor crimes and traffic violations as a pretext to finding them.
The IRS investigates tax crimes, not local police. The USPS has officers that investigate mail crime. Many cities have traffic cops that don't carry weapons, who don't arrest (many) people, who simply issue tickets for parking violations and such. Why not have the average officer focused on 'real' crime, and get parking enforcers to also deal with traffic stops, littering, fare evasion, and quality-of-life crimes?
But if some criminal scum decides to use violence against some lowly, 'underpaid', unarmed citation officer, then we use the force of the state to crush the violent individual.
Sure, but it extends to traffic stops and basically any pretext cops can use to investigate you because they have some 'gut' feeling. There's a not so insignificant amount of cops (and people in general) who think they are smarter than they are. They think they are Will Smith in MIB, shooting the 10 year old girl with an advanced physics textbook. Some cop thinks they see something suspicious in you, and they start looking for a reason to stop you. And many of those reasons are things regular people do multiple times a day.
More options
Context Copy link