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 -
What? This is completely implausible. I genuinely don't understand how one could believe this on any level other than 'someone on twitter said it'. So much money and energy is put into political ads, political entertainment, and such that what USAID is doing domestically is not relevant. It's absolutely true that USAID does a lot of media in foreign countries, and it's not necessarily untrue to describe it as propaganda aimed at foreign countries. But not the united states!
It could be reasonable to describe this as 'giving agencies too much power. It's just not a lack of checks and balances though. Courts still often blocked agency actions, and agencies still couldn't do most of the things they wanted to. Like, I think you're making a good argument for 'agencies had too much power', but that's literally a different thing from 'functionally no checks. No balances'. They have, like, 50% too little checks and balances.
Re the first point it wasn’t just USAID but the amount of money the Biden admin shoveled towards US media was not insignificant. For example I think Politico received about 5% of its revenue from the US government. Are you telling me that can’t buy positive coverage or at least limit negative coverage?
Re Chevron the amount of cases where the court found the statute unambiguous or the agency interpretation unreasonable was tiny. In effect, there was no check.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link