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 -
I'm reminded of two things here. First is the discussions about the supposed "democratic backsliding" into "electoral authoritarianism" in Hungary. When I've asked people just what's so "authoritarian" about Orbán, beyond him just winning massive electoral majorities as an unacceptably right-wing candidate, and I get vague handwaving about the media and him having an "unfair" advantage. Whereupon I make comparison's to the Time magazine "election fortification" article and ask what the difference is, beyond that Orbán's actions aren't even so much that sort of "fortifying" as they are preventing left-leaning media from doing so in Hungary. Mostly, the answer ends up in angry sputtering that reduces to "it's different when we do it." The more coherent defenses end up being about how 2020 "fortification" was different because it was the media putting their thumbs on the metaphorical scale to influence election outcomes of their own accord, which is perfectly democratic, and thus it's interfering with their ability to do so that is "authoritarian." Because it's long been the media's job to determine a candidate's "electability" — to enforce the limits of which candidates and positions are "acceptable," and which are too far to the right. Because we've long ago accepted that "democracy" does not mean unfettered majority rule, therefore we can limit the voters' choices as much as we want, let an unelected bureaucracy decide the vast majority of political issues, put as many popular positions "off limits" as we want, so long as you have two candidates who aren't literal clones (a la Futurama), and you can vote between a corporate tax rate of 25% and 30%, it's still fully democratic. And we're a representative democracy… which means our politicians are supposed to "represent" us the way a parent or guardian represents a small child, or a person with power of attorney represents a demented elder or a schizophrenic mental patient: by doing what the expert consensus says is in the people's best interest, whether the people like it or not.
Second, there's what someone on Tumblr pointed out about recent media articles, about how the USAID freeze is threatening various "independent media" organizations, because they "rely on" said funding to remain viable. As the Tumblrite noted, quite early in the thesaurus entry for synonyms to "rely" is "depend." And if you depend on USAID funding to keep operating, how are you "independent"? Which, of course, undermines the whole bit above about how 'it's different when the "independent media" does it,' and makes it very much more 'it's "democracy" when the left does it and "authoritarianism" when the right does it.' While I wouldn't go as far as Neema Parvini does in declaring he was "90% right" and Yarvin "100% wrong" on their respective models of the system, recent events do make the media institutions look less like they're purely ideologically captured, and more like they're downstream from various deep pockets. (Much like how I've seen academics argue that much of academia's political slant is driven by pursuit of grant money.) That this is less the leaderless, incentive-driven emergent behavior "prospiracy" that some would have it, and more a matter of old-fashioned top-down political coordination via patronage networks; which is a lot harder to defend, except by "we're the good guys, it's good when we do it" tribalist appeals.
More options
Context Copy link