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 -
It's actually stupid how easy it is to find inflation of savings by DOGE. You can do it yourself! This thread walks through an example showing that a claimed savings of $120M at DHS is actually $0. And I was able to find another example of this myself!
There is unfortunately not a way I can find to link directly to a row in the stupid DOGE table of savings so I have to be more rounbdabout. If you go to the main DOGE savings page here and click on the "see more" row at the end of the Contracts page you get a much longer list of contracts cancelled. Pop down to the Department of Commerce section and you'll see a few contracts for $20M to various firms with the description "BLANKET PURCHASE AGREEMENT TO CREATE HIGH-QUALITY EDUCATIONAL AGENCY VIDEO(S)". From either the screenshots or FPDS link copy the "Procurement Identifier" field. Then head over to the contract search on usaspending.gov. Scroll down to the "Award ID" filter and put in the Procurement Identifier from above. Hit "Submit" and you should see 1 result for your ID. Here is one such contract, I see three on the DOGE site.
If you look at these contracts above you can see that all three were awarded Jan 22 2024. That they all have the same potential award amount ($20M) and that no money has actually been spent (Combined Outlayed/Obligated Amounts are 0). The contracts are also still listed as "Open", meaning they have not even been cancelled! $60M dollars in purported savings at the Department of Commerce are for awards that are not actually cancelled and for which no money has been spent in the first ~year. Is it really correct to say all this money was "saved"? It took minutes to find this. Just look for any suspiciously large/round number and you're going to uncover something like this.
More options
Context Copy link