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 -
The person's claims, to the extent they're coherent at all, are a combination of: "the left wants to do medical research on fetuses" - nobody on 'the left' cares - "planned parenthood is incentivized to cause more abortions because they get monetary compensation for selling fetuses" - when you combine the frequency of said tissue donation and the compensation, it is not relevant to their bottom line.
Yes, from a steelman perspective, murderous ghouls like Kermit Gosnell who actively seek to kill children are few and far between. Most abortionists, along with the institutions and politicians who enable them and the mothers-not-to-be who avail themselves of their services, honestly don’t think they’re killing people. They’re simply being consistent when they legally categorize the tiny bodies as “medical waste” instead of “corpses” and threat them as a commodity.
Obviously, anyone who does believe fetuses are people look at Big Abortion with some mix of shock, horror, disgust, and righteous anger. The 65-year-old GOP supporter who OP met is fighting a cultural monolith on multiple fronts and she feels overwhelmed, and she probably has no experience fighting The Man.
More options
Context Copy link
The left as a coalition contains the constituency of academics whose perennial interest is that the budget to study anything and everything is always increased. Moral considerations only enter into this insofar as they conflict with other members of the coalition, and as it turns out, the people with any fealty to the sanctity of fetuses are all on the right.
And here we see one of the most common tactical patterns of the culture war. People see ill consequence for them, and infer intent from their ennemies, and their ennemies assure them that they are imagining the intent, paint the implication as delusional and use this to shutdown any discussion of the original consequence.
The Great Replacement is probably the canonical example of this, with the same exact people boasting about something they are actively saying isn't real, but you can see it throughout so many memetic conflicts between humans that it should probably get a name.
I suppose Coulter's got a nice formulation in "the law of merited impossibility" but this seems to double down on intent being actualized, which I don't believe to be necessary for the pattern to exist or be effective.
FYI, the Law of Merited Impossibility is Rod Dreher’s, not Ann Coulter’s. Coulter’s Law is the principle that when you’re reading a news article about some sort of crime or malfeasance, if the race of the perpetrator is not mentioned, that’s a clear indication that he or she is a racial minority. If the criminal were white, the author would have mentioned it without hesitation.
Oh yes, I got my conservative editor wires crossed somehow.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link