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 -
Yes. I think such sentiments are ugly in anyone's mouth, but I also don't think they merit firing. In general, I would prefer a social norm that people only get fired for their public political opinions (even ugly ones), if being a mass media face of the company is part of their job, and it would violate the company's fiduciary duty to their shareholders to keep the person onboard.
Saying, "I wish the assassin hadn't missed" is not the kind of thing that should prevent you from working a low stakes retail job. The right would have forgotten about her in a week, and Home Depot acted as cowardly as any firm during an internet firestorm.
Well Im glad that youre so principled, but... calling for literal, legal-definition murder is not the same as saying that e.g. men and women are different. At the point when that was what you had to do to get fired as a rightwinger, they didnt complain about cancel culture, they didnt even form that concept. If this is where you lost hope, you might as well never have hope - and I have my suspicions if you actually apply/ied that standard to the left in practice.
I think there's a big difference between wishing someone's death, and calling for someone's murder. Don't get me wrong, both are ugly, but saying "I wish the assassin hadn't missed" isn't that different from saying, "I wish the private jet his plane came in on crashed" or "I wish someone had strangled him as a baby in his crib."
There's plenty of colorful ways to say, "Boo X", and wishing their death is one of them. I do think after an assassination attempt we should ideally show more decorum, and hold off on such rhetoric, but again, I don't think it is worthy of firing if someone fails to show such decorum. And I definitely think it is a stretch to say that it is literally calling for murder.
The woke left was the culturally ascendant group at the time. It was natural for me to look towards the anti-woke people on all sides of the aisle for the hope of a different set of cultural norms that encouraged engagement with ideas. In some ways the Motte really does model a lot of the discursive norms I wish existed in normie spaces, though I get that it is far too rarified and self-selected to truly serve as a model for society at large. Even so, I did have hopes of a more open society that embodied the virtues of frankness of speech on the one hand, and curiosity and charity on the other.
If you mean that it doesnt meet the legally actionable threshold, then sure. But if it had somehow happend before, e.g. reporting on the presence of an assassin before hes neutralised, she tweets then - that is getting into danger territory, and I dont think your arguments about booing psychology are much stronger if its after. You definitely can call for murder in the illegal way thoughtlessly if you just run condemnationbabble.exe, and I dont think thats an excuse. The point of this is not if its "worth" firing for, but to establish that were talking about very different levels here without having to assume my ideology-in-general.
And at what level of cancel culture did you start to look away from the left? Was it already at the level where only incidents like this one were punished, or a lot later?
There are some naturally-blue people who felt that it was worth supporting the right to some extent because cancel culture had gotten that bad, and then at various levels of right-ascendancy no long felt that way. Thats fine, but its not fine to present your personal all-things-considered switchback point as if it were parity on this one issue. We are still far from parity, and I doubt itll ever get there.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Of course, back in the days when the U.S. was a real democracy, they merited tarring and feathering, or having the offending printer's press thrown into the local river. But I agree, burning is a bit much.
The United States was never a "real democracy," and that was by design. The United States is a republic with democratic elements.
There were founders like Thomas Jefferson who advocated for the democratic element to be more expansive, and amendments like the 13th, 17th and 19th have pushed the United States in a more democratic direction, but in theory we still retain most of our republican institutions, at least formally.
Personally, I would tend to be against destroying printing presses. Seems like it would have a chilling effect on free speech.
And yet that was at the height of print culture, when every town and village worthy of the name had at least one circular paper and most cities had four. I notice that your explanation isn't accurately predicting the historical results.
I don't think what you said connects. The following two statements can both be true:
Put another way, do you think that when Elijah Lovejoy's printing press was destroyed multiple times and he was eventually murdered over his abolitionist position, that this was good for free speech culture or bad for free speech culture? Do you think, on the margins, that people were more likely to want to speak out in support of abolition or less likely? Of course, there's no accounting for the martyr effect, but I assume the goals of Elijah's killers should be obvious and repudiated.
I think "free speech culture" in the context of the 1850's - a far more legitimately democratic (in the sense that actual political and physical power was exercised directly by the demos upon and against itself rather than via an elected/appointed expert/governing class) is something of a category error. The people who mailed Preston Brooks canes in encouragement of his beating of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor were exercising speech just as much as Lovejoy was. So was Cassius Clay in his antislavery advocacy. So was Thomas Wentworth Higginson and the other Secret Six fundraising for John Brown. People clearly were not deterred from expressing their political views.
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
But a person saying “they are sorry the guy missed” is not giving a political opinion. It’s a threat. You can’t cheer on death and hide behind it being a political statement.
Not it's not. You are being disingenuous. It's a statements of words. Words do not hurt or harm. And a statement of belief.
Why can't you? You literally can, and it can very much be a political statement. People cheer death all the time. I remember people cheering Saddam Hussein dying. Was that not political statement, belief, and speech? And I literally can't count and catalog the amount of political invective I've heard against the Clintons on the Internet, over the years.
More options
Context Copy link
That is by definition not a threat. A threat must communicate the intent to do something to somebody. Saying "I'm sorry the guy missed" is wishing death on someone and that's bad, but it isn't a threat either.
More options
Context Copy link
Sure you can. One can wish certain events would occur, or have an emotional reaction to certain events, without threatening to take illegal action to cause those events to occur.
Surely there is at least one person somewhere whom you wish would die, such that you would feel happy if you heard the news that they had passed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link