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 don't think anyone makes the Gacy association, though I wonder to what extent this is because Gacy was a gay Democratic organizer, and thus has too many counter-signals in his identity. But we are told, every single day, by the dominant institutions of power and culture, that we are responsible for the actions of Derek Chauvin. We're told every single day that everything from microaggressions at work to the bullets from a policeman's gun are products of the swirling cauldron of whiteness, and that we all contribute to it from the day we are born, and that we must drain our lives and resources in silent deference and atonement. Comments like these only highlight that some groups get the privilege of nuance, while others must simply endure being treated as an amorphous mass of social toxins.
And that's setting aside that no one had the ability to stop Gacy from being in the country, since he was born an American. Mexican migrants, particularly illegal ones, are here as the result of deliberate policy decisions to do nothing about them. If a father who has just lost his daughter cannot even question the wisdom of those policy decisions, he deserves contempt. But my sympathy is limited, as I'm sure his daughter would have never questioned those policies either, even as the knife went in. Some people just bare their necks to the world.
I actually considered using Chauvin as an example instead of Gacy. I opted for Gacy because his actions are much more unambiguously evil and indefensible. Given this site's bent, there was a possibility that some might believe Chauvin's actions were justified, in which case the example wouldn't work.
Anyway, White Americans are not responsible for Chauvin's actions either.
No one decided to deliberately let in murderers. Yes, if you let in millions of people, some of them are probably going to commit murder. But unless they commit murder at a higher rate, you are not actually increasing the natives' probability of being murdered. In that case, highlighting individual murders committed by immigrants is dishonest fearmongering.
The question then is whether immigrants do commit violent crimes at a higher rate. Apparently this is not the case and illegal immigrants actually commit less violent crime than natives.
I doubt these crime statistics about immigrants. I've lived around these communities in the past, and the immigrants and their communities simply don't report a lot of the crimes which happen in them and near them.
And sometimes, even when a crime is reported, nothing is done about it. An elderly relative of mine was the victim of a huge theft from an immigrant caregiver, and despite overwhelming documentation from accountants, the police in the overwhelmingly liberal jurisdiction refused to do anything.
And honestly, I get it. Why would the police bother, if they were being rational? The thief could have easily fled the country if they needed to, because they still had roots back in their old country. The money never would have been recovered, and the thief would have never gone to jail.
Illegal immigrants would naturally be hesitant to report a crime where they were the victim, since they generally want to avoid any interaction with the police. But natives have no such qualms, so we can assume that they would report crimes at the same rate regardless of the perpetrator's immigration status. And crimes against natives are the ones we care about.
This is not exclusive to immigrants. There are plenty of cases of natural-born American citizens with no ties to other countries committing a crime and then fleeing to countries without extradition treaties to avoid prosecution.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Illegal immigrants by definition have a 100% criminality rate.
I knew someone would bring this up, which is why I specified violent crime.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's nice that you believe so, just as long as you know that in the eyes of people with actual power and influence, they very much are responsible.
No one decided to let in any of these people - they simply walked in and decided to stay.
Dishonest fearmongering is the order of the day, and as I alluded to previously, it is the prevailing philosophy of those with power and influence in America. Are you actually opposed to dishonest fearmongering, or do you simply object to the outgroup enjoying its benefits?
If you're killed by someone that the government had the power and even the obligation to remove from the country, but decided not to, then the government has played a role in your murder. That's an element that simply doesn't exist for the Gacys.
Most groups in the world have lower violent crime rates than American natives, because the American native crime rate includes the absurdly large black crime rate. Disaggregation by race would tell a different story, albeit not one that people prefer to hear, since in the popular imagining an American "native" is just some cornfed Southern good-old-boy, and there's a great audience waiting to eagerly believe such people are more violent than one's cherished client groups.
This website exists specifically to enable intellectually honest discussion. The fact that the rest of the world is full of dishonesty is irrelevant. It's not acceptable here.
This is irrelevant if your actual probability of getting murdered didn't increase.
The breakdown of the native crime rate is irrelevant. Letting in immigrants with a lower crime rate still makes the country safer overall.
It's not intellectually honest to pretend the world doesn't exist. It's just a dodge. The reality is that your views, if they are honestly held, are completely irrelevant, and nobody who matters subscribes to them. There's no value to engaging in a hermetically sealed cocoon that bears no reflection to the social dynamics outside of it.
It's irrelevant to the extent that you want it to be irrelevant. It matters a great deal where these immigrants are and who exactly they're victimizing - it is small consolation to a murder victim in Boise, Idaho if the inhabitants of St. Louis, Missouri are more violent than the illegal immigrant population.
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