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 -
Breaking news. It looks like the jury convicted Donald Trump in the "hush money" case.
This verdict will likely galvanize voters come November – leading to record turnout among Republicans. I might even vote for the old rascal myself as I view this lawfare as both morally wrong and deeply destabilizing.
To make a prediction closer to home, we're now certain to cross 1000 posts on the weekly thread.
As I said downthread, as someone in deep red country the conversations I hear have an underlying apprehension of violence that rises by the day including today. I don't believe in their hearts these people want violence, but as the right is the political alignment predicted by having superior-to-average faculties at assessing danger, I think even if only intuitively they understand and greatly fear how swiftly we approach violence as the only way out. Blessed are the meek, blessed are those who know when to draw the sword. If and when it happens, it will be the right and only time.
The thought of this as being what stops Trump is many things, all of them wrong. There's not one person in this country who has decided this is the moment to hop off the fence, "Okay, now I won't vote for the man." Farcical. There will be topical complaining from RINOs, the establishment-GOP will continue searching, as they surely have since 2016, at finding a way to keep him out, and in November Trump will be on the ballot and receive 100 million votes. This conviction completes the ascendance of the man as the idea of the total rejection of the establishment. The establishment understands this, and is thus why they attack him with a wholly unparalleled ferocity; it is exactly the same reason those who land on the turbo-normie-left-side-of-bell-curve-meme support him. They don't have to think and wordswordswords, they viscerally understand power against power.
People try to contextualize what's happening in so many irrelevant details, ignore the minutiae. It has never been about vice, it has never been about ambiguous business dealings, it has never been about brashness, candor and honesty. Politicians as a category are the least ethical humans in this country, why would they care about any of this? It is about a man who refused to kneel when demanded by seated power and has risen to threaten their entire existence. This conviction heralds the imminent arrival of the pivotal figure of American history. It doesn't have to be Trump, but where we are in the reverberations of history is no earlier than the election of Buchanan.
Elections are won and lost by a percentage point or two. I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that possibly one to two in a hundred American voters doesn't like Biden but won't vote for Trump after enough messaging about him now being a convicted felon. It also may not have any such effect, or have a reverse effect. Time will tell. But you're overconfident.
Out of the hundreds of posters on the fora I inhabit, not one has plausibly made the claim that they would have voted Trump if not for this -- at least one or two have said that they didn't want to vote for him (and would have gone for a third party), but now feel that they have to in order to send a message. Some of them do have a post history of criticizing the guy, so I think I believe them?
As @VelveteenAmbush points out, it's the people NOT on forums who are going to stop voting for him. The law-n-order conservatives who have never seen a prosecution they don't like.
And those people are going to vote for who exactly? Certainly not Joe 'Mostly Peaceful' Biden -- even among throwaway votes RFK doesn't really appeal to this crowd, and I can't see them getting too excited about putting the 'Libertarian' in LGBTQ.
The cohort you are talking about are also the 'you don't vote, you can't complain' guys -- so I can't even see it hurting on turnout much here.
ETA: I'm not really talking about quirky geek forums here either -- if you wanna put your finger on that particular pulse I'd reccomend ar15.com -- those guys are the most law abiding, letter-of-the-law dudes you will find, and maybe even more right wing than here. I haven't had cause to be down that rabbithole lately, but I guarantee they will have something to say about this.
They'll just stay home and let the Democrats take the purple areas.
The ar15.com guys are familiar with blatant abuse of the law because BATFE does it all the time.
Sure, but they take all the dumb rules to heart -- go on there and ask about cutting an inch off a shotgun barrel or something sometime. And they won't stay home -- voting is a civic duty, remember? And these guys are all about the civic duty.
Yeah, the ar15 guys are serious about the dumb rules because they know if you're not, you risk having your wife shot in the head in front of you. But they're not the guys who will be turning away from Trump. It will be the guys who (at the time Ruby Ridge was in the news) were of the opinion that if Weaver didn't want to get his wife shot, he shouldn't have cut that shotgun too short. Or should have showed up to court (despite getting wrong and conflicting information about the date). There were distressingly many of such people at the time, and they still exist.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Posters on the fora you inhabit are not a representative sample of the electorate, no matter how many fora you inhabit nor how much you post.
True enough -- but I've heard literally zero people on fora or IRL who were plausible Trump voters and say that now they won't vote for him -- 'some' is more than 'none', and I'm pretty comfortable extending this to the electorate. All this lawfare is a big mistake -- it won't succeed in keeping him off the ballot, and Americans love an underdog. Trump will lean into it.
You shouldn't be. It's just not reasonable to extrapolate your personal social experience to the electorate, no matter how badly you want to.
Whatever man -- apparently he raised $52M over it yesterday, and right next to that in the feed is a sheriff from Cali (who seems kind of law & order oriented) saying "it's time for a felon in the White House": https://x.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1796750332359262368
That's top of Twitter from typing "trump" into the search box -- tell you what, why don't you see if you can actually find some people that were ever likely to vote for Trump but won't now? The people saying that this matters are saying so because they hate Trump already, simple as.
All very interesting but none of them is a poll
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Give it a week and we'll have new polling that shows if this event moved opinions at all. Hopefully they ask specifically about whether the verdict changed their opinion and in what direction so we don't miss one direction of movement being netted out by another.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Convicting former presidents for paperwork related felonies (in a court and a state that hate him no less) is such a bad precedent to set I don't even know where to start. There is a reason Nixon was pardoned. Who will want to give up power if they know they will be possibly thrown in jail if they do? Even if that never happens the knock on consequences of this down the road are hard to overstate. Like all bad law, it might make sense morally and emotionally at the time, but it creates a monstrosity that will have to be dealt with later.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sure. The idea that 0 people weren't convinced to cancel their trump vote because of this trial cannot statistically true at the scale of an American election.
But do you really see a meaningful overall shift that way instead of the opposite? Trump has been impeached, sued, and disparaged with screeching histrionic screeds from every single major media platform in the world for almost 8 years at this point.
And yet a sham conviction like this is supposed to be more progress towards crushing him instead of the reverse??
That's even more of a stretch than what you're casting doubt on. Overconfident? Yes. But this was a counter productive move on the establishment's part. I'll be voting for R over L for president this year because of it. Maybe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link