site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

You still haven't mentioned a single specific thing which the bill does to force a reduction in immigration; are you just not interested in talking about specifics of the actual bill?

no, my comment does not claim the bill makes things easier for a friendly administration

the bill makes it easier for a hostile executive to legally release migrants into the US and formalizes/codifies the regulatory scheme and legal interpretations of the Biden administration who have repeatedly been losing in court because the current laws make what they're doing illegal for whatever that's worth

it gives tools to a friendly administration which will not meaningfully reduces immigration beyond what is available under current law and in addition actually hamstrings a friendly administration in what they can do with immigration in some ways

(edit: for example, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, a laughably biased and corrupt court, is given sole and original jurisdiction for all judicial challenges from the validity of the law, to the policies written under it, to any decision made under the law; it will be this court which reviews any friendly administration's policies or invocations of these new alleged powers and good luck with that

this is a thing which is regularly overlooked, but it is just so painfully stupid to agree to this sort of thing and it's really telling the GOP couldn't even manage to avoid this)

the bill is worse than the status quo

the fundamental problem is the GOP are clowns, the Democrats realized under the Obama administration that their threats are empty, and this is why they've pushed the accelerator to the floor as soon as they got back into explicit power and the GOP can't even manage to stop expanding programs which explicitly fund Democrats to do it