site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29601 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 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.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I mean. Rarely. Whenever Republicans have control of a branch they typically pass financing regular order bills piecemeal, as is supposed to happen, for the majority of departments months in advance. And then the other branches either don't vote on them or promise to veto them until an omnibus/cr is passed. This is why the "shutdown" and "debt ceiling" canards are as such, the Democrats have, over the last 12-15 years, never passed regular spending bills for the subsections of the government. Like, the Republicans could pass a bill for DOD the Dems would vote for (as is supposed to happen), but they just wouldn't put it to a vote, because then they lose the leverage of soldiers not getting paid (which the media would unfairly pin on Republicans) because republicans wouldn't fund 300 billion in solar panels in Toronto.

Whenever Republicans have control of a branch they typically pass financing regular order bills piecemeal, as is supposed to happen, for the majority of departments months in advance.

The focus is on Republicans here because they specifically didn't do that, and the hold up was opposition by the right flank.

party leaders served notice that in order to fulfill the mission of taking up individual bills, a scheduled recess the week of Oct. 2 was likely to be scrapped for floor consideration of the Interior-Environment and Energy-Water spending bills. That in itself is an admission that the chamber doesn’t have time to pass all the individual bills before the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

McCarthy pointed out that the House hasn’t been able to pass more than one bill largely due to conservative holdouts who have objected to floor consideration since the initial bills were ready to go in July.

This even though ironically the Appropriations Committee passed all 12 bills with full markups and on a bipartisan basis for the first time in forever.

Indeed, but this also indicates a total lack of bipartisanship from Democrats. If there are all 12 passed, and 8 Republican holdouts, a good faith few Dems would go with it. Just like this motion to vacate. McCarthy has shown to be a good faith partner, even if he holds to principles. His reward was the Dems giving him zero good faith in return on the motion to vacate.

I think you might have the OOO mixed up, most of the bills were never taken to the floor for the Democrats to vote for or against either way. First the majority party agrees on a "rule" which is where the hold up was. To my knowledge it's unheard of for the Speaker of the House to ask the opposition party for help getting bills to floor, and McCarthy certainly didn't do that.

McCarthy has shown to be a good faith partner

?

He pushed spending bills that were significantly lower that what he committed to in the debt ceiling negotiations and then even after the Democrats saved him, he did a public press conference blaming them for the hold up, even though he's admitted countless times it was the Freedom Caucus. This is most certainly not good faith.

Agree. Two additions.

  1. This is kind of what's going on with Tuberville's hold. He's holding DoD senior officer promotions until the Dems give him a floor vote on the DoD abortion policy. He's stated he'll abide whatever the result of that vote is and lift the hold. The goal, for Tuberville, is to either get the DoD abortion policy changed or, at least, get a bunch of Dems to vote explicitly in favor of keeping it. The one wrinkle is that, to my knowledge, he hasn't offered anything to vote on and has asked the Dems to bring their own policy package, which is kind of weird. The headlines always stop short at, "Republican Senator holds all DoD promotions because he doesn't like abortion." He just want's a vote.

  2. I'd eagerly wager that 99% of Americans cannot accurately describe regular order in either chamber of Congress. Fewer still can give a good outline of the bill-to-law pathway through committee, amendment processes, markups, etc. The procedural realities of Congress make time the precious commodity. There just isn't enough time to do everything. Worse, when you have goofy distractions all of the time, there's frequently not enough remaining to do even the important things correctly (like passing a budget on time). So, you end up with omnibuses,CRs, and generally slipshod work for literally the last 27 years.

But reporting on the complexity of Congressional process doesn't get viewership, and "political reporters" can be technically true in writing headlines like "X opposed Y resulting in Z." I can't begin to enumerate the ways the media has failed since about the 1970s onward, but especially after the internet became ubiquitous. One of the chief failings, however, is in the media's ongoing failure to simply report on the mechanics of government (or, for that matter, economics and business cycles). The default is such overly simplified narratives that they cease to be functionally useful or even complete. What's a narrative structure without functional use? It's a story. It evokes emotion, it pastes a concise arc over a complex situation. Satisfying, but useless and incomplete. If you repeat that for years and years, eventually the audience can only conceive of "information" and "news" within the structure of emotional narrative arcs. Anything outside of that format may serve some other niche purpose, but isn't "news." Reporters have ceased to know what they're talking about, focusing, instead, on knowing what has already been said (knowledge v. narrative). It's a self reinforcing feedback cycle. Today's "news" is an expansion and commentary on yesterday's "news" and an easy to follow narrative line is important.

I like to imagine a headline on NYT/WaPO the reads "Here is a guide to how committee markups work" and then imagine the first comment being "What does this have to do with Congress?"

He's holding DoD senior officer promotions until the Dems give him a floor vote on the DoD abortion policy.

Imo it's kind of reasonable not to set the precedent that we can hold up the functioning of the government so one guy gets to have a vote on a very tenuously related issue he's into. The Senate has passed a ton of bills the House is never going to look at either, that's just how a divided Congress goes.

Otherwise 100% agreed the boring, procedural stuff and general gov mechanics are super important and I wish they were reported on more.

I mean, it doesn't hurt that all these DOD appointments are pretty bad as well, if they were not there would be pressure from his own side to release some of the holds. He's both doing his own hobbyhorse thing, and improving national security (in the view of most Republicans).

All, like, 300 of them? They're mostly pretty ordinary career military folks, same as happens every time under every administration. The idea that not having administrators is better than having Democrat-favored administrators (as has happened under every administration) is better for national security is a stretch.

This is certainly not the view of most Republicans. The leader of the Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell, has indeed pressured him to let through and publicly condemned the holdup. Even among Tuberville's own constituents, where a majority oppose the DoD policy, still:

58 percent of Alabama voters think Tuberville has “made his point” with his hold and that he should “now allow senior military promotions to move forward.”..

55 percent of voters said the blocking is hurting “national security,"

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