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 -
Can you give examples?
You'll forgive me if I don't take this seriously - "shenanigans are happening, I just know it" is not credible. Not only is this sort of belief more often an expression of fatuous cynicism than actual knowledge, it's also just a frequent loser's cope. "Those establishment politicians with their organizations and social networks and actual funding are doing something shifty, I'm certain of it." (To be fair, they often are, but it's far more likely to be in the category of ethically dubious transactional politics with interests groups than buying ballots from bums).
How do you know this? Your skepticism about election fraud being without proof seems to rest on your intuition here.
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. If your theory predicts a phenomenon and the phenomenon is not observed, that strongly suggests the theory is wrong. In this case, there's a lot of incentive for election security enthusiasts to find voter fraud and they've made considerable effort to do so. The fact that have failed to do strongly suggests their theory doesn't hold water*. In this case, concealing the shenanigans requires counting on the discretion of numerous homeless drug addicts.
By contrast, there are tons and tons of instances of politicians being caught in awkward financial arrangements or grifting off their supporters. In many cases they don't have to bother hiding them because it isn't even illegal.
What are you talking about? The provenance of mail-in-ballots is basically unverifiable, and chain of custody was long-since destroyed, in some cases while ballots were being counted. You cannot prove a negative, and the unverfiability of election results is what has been concluded by everyone who has actually studied the problem.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link