site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If you like to defend this theory I would be eager to talk about it with you. You can email me your sources at ymeskhout[a]gmail.com

No, I don't have that inclination at this time.

I don't know if there any definitive evidence of conclusive fraud that would definitely convince an open-minded person out there.

I find 'vibes' are sufficient enough for me. After all, conspiracy theorists have proven themselves to be much more trustworthy than Western government officials in the past 3 years.

Here are a few observable coincidences:

  • the people who are currently claiming that there were little to no fraud in the 2020 elections won by their side spent several years litigating the 2016 elections claiming among other things that foreign governments intervened, using the power of intelligence agencies to investigate these claims, create evidence and prosecute people over it

  • one of the least exciting candidate of all time beat one of the most exciting candidates of all times by 10 million votes. Idk what the population growth was in between, but that's still significant.

  • he did that by losing most bellweather counties

  • the people in charge of providing accurate election results in the areas that delivered the critical votes for Biden (big cities of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia...) made a bunch of changes in the election rules right before the elections, most of these changes to make it easier to have non-secret ballots (mail-in-ballots)

  • these same people went on to brag in the media about their great effort to 'fortify' the elections

I don't think it's necessary to have either definitive proof or definitive claims. If you ever change your mind about wanting to sketch out your overall vibes theory or the coincidences you cite as relevant, I would be very eager to talk to you.