site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32258 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The Hasids do an excellent job, actually a perfect job of maintaining an insular community. Their strategies can be studied and copied. Their victories are stunning, they literally take hundreds of millions of the gentiles’ money and use it to indoctrinate their children into the Hasidic culture. There’s no reason why sufficiently motivated conservatives cannot begin to organize according to an Hasidic template.

In the early days of this site, there was an extremely interesting comment regarding one user's investigation into their ways to evade taxes in NYC, appropriate much more or the city budget money than commonly reported (by orders of magnitude, to the extent NYT investigation would be more of a coverup in comparison) and generally run things like a powerful mafia. He deleted it, unfortunately, and in private communication stated that on further reflection he'd rather support people abusing the system for valid darwinian ends than disgusting deracinated liberal NPC drones who believe they're fundamentally on its side and it only needs a little tuning (to wit, us).

I think he just got cold feet, perhaps because it dawned on him (or someone politely made him aware) he left traces of his sleuthing all over. It's honestly hard to never leave identifying traces.

Groups without the ability to inspire such mind-numbing fear are fucked. And I don't think anyone would fear a bunch of conservatives.

Groups without the ability to inspire such mind-numbing fear are fucked. And I don't think anyone would fear a bunch of conservatives.

What group? Hasids?

If so, they have indeed an advantage that other mafias, gangs and cartels cannot even dream about.

Italian Americans once tried to learn from the best and emulate their success. Unfortunately, too little and about a century too late.

I remember that. He worked in a federal department that handed out grants, I think by phone line. He looked into the businesses and they weren’t really eligible for them and many didn’t exist. Did you happen to screen shot that comment?

No, missed by like an hour. This reminded me, painfully, that one should never trust things on the Internet to not just disappear on you.

There are tools for continuous browser grabbing, implemented in different ways from caching to actual recording.

This reminded me, painfully, that one should never trust things on the Internet to not just disappear on you.

Everything lasts forever on the internet unless you actually need it - then it never existed in the first place.

I once had this weird theory that, whenever I embedded a video on Tumblr, it would bring more attention to YouTube's invisible police bots, eventually ensuring its takedown.

But the welfare office staff they're conning don't hate them or sit around the office all day talking about driving them into the sea. That makes a big difference.

Gentile conservatives who tried to do what they do would be instantly slapped with investigations from the state prosecutor and probably have their kids taken from them.

The Amish don’t. The broader fundamentalist Christian landscape in America is threatened with losing their children more often than average, but they don’t actually lose them that often(in part because they will just take their children and disappear when CPS is probably going to take them away, and social workers don’t get paid enough to attract the best and brightest). And of course, actually working for a living instead of living off of welfare fraud also helps a lot.

St. Mary’s, Kansas, is a majority traditionalist catholic town in the USA. By all accounts it’s a near theocracy and they get away with it. Heck even the FLDS(which violates significantly more laws) still runs their own towns and gets their kids back.

St. Mary’s, Kansas, is a majority traditionalist catholic town in the USA. By all accounts it’s a near theocracy and they get away with it.

What's this? That town doesn't sound familiar to me.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/retreat-christian-soldiers/603043/

Cheers, that was an interesting read.

Change takes time. No one would be making such propaganda if advertisers were seriously boycotted and funders had legal protestors outside their businesses and activist-journalists phoned up all of their past classmates and partners fishing for reputational damage.

The Hasids also had their fare-share of rock-slinging a la David & the Goliath: https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/03/archives/70-are-hurt-including-62-officers-as-hasidim-storm-a-police-station.html

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats