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 -
I am what you might call a disillusioned voter. Over the past year I have become passionately convinced that elected officials, in all levels of government, and irrespective of the major party they affiliate with, are not working with Americans' best interests in mind. They are more concerned with taking personal jabs at each other than they are working together to solve problems affecting us at the local, state and federal level. They only take into account the needs of the most vocal, influential, wealthy or powerful individuals. They only care about staying in office as long as possible, at any cost, instead of taking the time to listen and truly understand their constituents needs. They all regurgitate the same talking points, how the other party is evil and you can't trust them, instead of being bridge-builders and leaders. I could go on.
I've become so convicted in this, that I believe the best way to vote is to cast a completely black ballot.
Reasons:
-Your ballot is still counted, and will contribute to voter turnout statistics.
-You have the right to cast a vote for no one.
-You don't have to worry about picking the lesser of two evils, since you're not making a selection at all.
-Your vote for no one affirms that you believe democratic processes are important, and your lack of selection communicates dissatisfaction with the major parties. A sizable voter turnout with no candidates selected may cause them to change their platform to appeal to dissatisfied voters.
Arguments against this that I am not persuaded by:
"But that means the [party/candidate I oppose] will win." Yes, that will likely happen. No, it does not bother me, nor does it pursuade me. And that will be the case unless and until we are able to get more effective leaders on the ballot. It may very well take a darker period in our country's history to wake enough people up to the issues with the two-party system.
"But aren't there things that [major party] supports that you also support?" Yes, but I do not wish to involve myself in partisan politics, anymore. I believe that candidate selection should be based on their character, their ability to be charitable, kind, compassionate, driven, and most importantly, a leader who is willing to actively listen. I want nothing to do with the whole, "the other party is bad so you must vote for me" BS. I could care less about political parties at this point. Get more decent human beings up for election and then I'll consider voting for them.
"But you should vote to support [social issues]." I'm not voting to support a cause. I'm voting to find the most qualified candidate.
"It's anti-democratic not to pick a candidate." It's anti-democratic to not show up at the polls. It is completely democratic to cast a blank ballot. You're freely communicating that no candidates are fit to hold office.
"Then vote for an independent or minor party candidate." Independant candidates are not always on the ballot and with the stranglehold the major parties have on our election processes, minor parties will never gain a meaningful foothold in public offices. Ranked choice voting and citizen-funded elections would help, but no major party candidate would support it because it means the major parties would have less influence.
"But you need to vote this way or with this perspective, because reasons." No I don't. I have the right to cast my vote how I see fit, just as you do. I'm really not a fan of collective ideologies surrounding voting.
Other than the above, I am willing to hear any other arguments.
Generally, very low voter turnout is considered a signal that people become disillusioned and that a change of course is needed.
Marking you ballot in any way except the accepted one on the other hand is usually considered a simple mistake and counted as such. So currently the message you are sending the politicians, as seen from their pov, is that you're happy with the system as-is, but you just failed to follow very simple and easy to understand instructions.
I think it’s the opposite. Very low turnout means voters are largely happy with the government and don’t think it’s worth spending a few hours voting.
High turnout means you have two groups with broad disagreement that you care deeply about. It gets me to vote. In my view the left is completely insane and the right has some (not all) good policy. If I were in Europe it would be even more important as I think those countries are dying thru immigration.
I'm reporting on how it's perceived by the establishment politicians, and they're usually pretty clear that high turnout = good. Likewise, the establishment media will usually report negatively about record low turnouts and positively vice versa (unless the wrong parties are being voted for, but OP takes care not to do that).
Do the politicians who won actually care about low turnout? The losing candidates and liberal media in my neck of the woods always complain about low voter turnout after every election, but I’ve never gotten the impression that the winners mind in the slightest.
In the short term, no, but in the longer term a low turnout means increased risk in the next election, which drives prioritization and strategy.
The nature of low turnout is that the lower it is, the less stable it is for the incumbent, because ever-smaller groups of interested voters can be decisive in upturning it if they either switch or even just re-enter the voting ranks next election. As voter participation can be volatile, this means that it's relatively easy for sudden surges of voter engagement to turn against an incumbent. As a result, politicians would rather win with low engagement than lose, but what they really want is higher voter turnout of their base, to be more resilient, and a failure of turnout on their end means- even if victorious this time- that things need to change.
Personally, I'd consider this an advantage of voluntary over mandatory voting systems. In mandatory voting systems, there's considerably less volatility as there's a lot less sway in overriding existing factionalism / voter commitment to past votes. (People are less likely to vote against something / someone they've already voted for, and such.) While whether volatility is itself good or bad is questionable, in my view it's an important part of being able to actually challenge incumbents, and incumbents have enough built-in advantages that challenges to them on irregular voter sentiment sways is a good thing.
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
More options
Context Copy link