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 -
A large number of parties making coalitions more difficult in Weimar was at least the excuse the Grundgesetz used to impose a 5% limit on votes. And I think that argument has a bit of a point. I mean, in the 1928 elections in Germany.
Percentage of Reichstag seats:
Here, the five parties under the heading democratic formed a coalition with had a whopping 61.2% majority. I am not sure why they did it that way. They obviously needed SPD and Zentrum. Perhaps a coalition with the DVP only would have resulted in the them being more vulnerable to threats of the DVP to walk out. Instead with the five party coalition, none of the three junior partners could threaten to break the government by walking out. Or they wanted to share power among the democratic parties to ensure that none of them would profit more by defecting to the anti-democrats. From a modern German perspective, this seems weird. Top politicians generally want to become ministers. Anyone suggesting that a coalition should give up 19% of the minister posts to parties which they don't require to form a majority to be more inclusive towards fellow democratic-minded parties would be laughed out of the room.
Did I have a point to make? Hm... if the Reichstag had a 5% barrier to entry, then 21.2% of the seats would not have gone to smaller parties. But 8.5% of them would just have been shuffled around among the coalition (BVP going to Zentrum, DDP perhaps forming a general liberal party with DVP). At the the ~10% of seats of the Others might have bolstered the ranks of the bigger democratic parties.
For democracy to thrive, you need both a viable coalition of democratic parties and a credible opposition of democratic parties offering another option. If 11% of the seats are taken by people who want to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and some 17% are by people who want to restore the monarchy or establish a Fuehrerstaat, then you are in trouble perhaps not immediately but in the next elections, as people disillusioned with the previous government end decide to vote them out, and will likely turn to the extremist parties.
It is a bit of a catch-22: if the democrats don't form coalitions with the toxic extremist parties, the extremist parties won't get blamed for bad outcomes while the democrats will, and if they form coalitions with them they might just enable a Machtergreifung.
Having ten or percent of the seats occupied by sub-5% small parties which can not form stable coalitions due to scaling issues is making the problem a bit worse, but the main problem is the extremist parties.
More options
Context Copy link