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 -
What the hell are you talking about? Like, I literally cannot make sense of what you're trying to say. You said that it wasn't an escalation (i.e., larger than) compared to "losing a Supreme Court Justice". You said that it would take 500 states removing Trump from the ballot to count as being larger. That is simply what you said. I don't see where you're failing to understand.
Is it literally just that there's a difference between "for you" and "convince anyone"? Like, sure, the background assumption is that when you're arguing for your perspective, you're implicitly trying to convince others of your perspective. I don't see how that's a goalpost shift at all. That's the way literally all discussions happen in places like this. You say the things how you see it, so that you can convince others to see things how you see it. That's what literally everyone here is doing.
Lager and escalation are not the same thing. And what it would take for me to feel a way is not the same as what it would take to 'convince anyone' of a thing.
I think that losing a Supreme Court seat is consequentially larger, has a bigger impact on the world in terms of things I care about, than whether the first- or -second ranked presidential candidate from the same party wins a single election.
That doesn't say much about what is or isn't an escalation in political brinkmanship, or whatever we're talking about here; escalations on that metric have more to do with how unusual, unjustified, and blatantly rules-breaking or self-serving something is. I don't think that type of escalation can meaningfully be measured by 'number of SC justices lost' or 'Number of ballots removed from' in the first place, because it's hugely dependent on the context and justifications.
I think that removing Trump from this primary ballot is less escalatory than Garland because there's a more convincing legal justification for it, and a more plausible non-partisan motive (especially considering the suit was brought to the court by Republicans. If 5 other states removed him using similar reasoning, that would still be only a bit more escalatory; if they did it for different reasons that make less sense, that might be much more escalatory, but that won't specified in your hypothetical.
I agree that most of our discussions here are about convincing other people, but you asked me for my personal opinion and to personally stake a goalpost about it. I interpreted that as you asking me to essentially make a reputational stake ahead of time about what would personally change my perspective about which of these events was a larger injustice, which I interpreted to mean larger consequentially (either because that's what you were implying by 'larger', or because that's the metric I personally use to guide my feelings and you were asking how I felt).
If you actually meant all those words to mean something different, or something less well-defined than what I interpreted, then we've had an unfortunate miscommuncation. It really felt on my end like you were asking me about my personal feelings about a specific metric at step one, then misinterpreting my answer into a different context and metric to make me look unreasonable at step two. Most likely we just didn't understand each other.
Not feeding the darwin troll now that I know who it is.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link