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 -
Remember that the post-2020 US election Time article "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election"? Somewhere between a victory lap and credit-claiming at a time it was generally thought Trump's political prospects were dead, it was a rare look behind the scenes of retroactively-admitted coordinated political obstruction and shaping efforts.
It was also the article with the memorable distinction of-
Well, the New York Times on Sunday published a more pre-emptive form of democratic fortification: The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started.
The article in short is a look at different wings of the Democratic Party apparatus, and steps they are taking in anticipation of a Trump victory to foil the predicted efforts of the 2025 Project. Some of these fears seem a good deal less grounded than others- Trump has been an abortion moderate such that it's hard to see why a Democratic governor would need to stock years of abortion supplies in a state warehouse beyond political theater- but then the article is quite likely a form of political theater. As far as election-year advertising goes, it's both a 'here are all the horrible things that could happen' fear campaign-
-with the ACLU specifically focusing on four areas of potential lawfare-
-but all with a back-edge 'but we thwarted him before and can do it again' of tribal-protection promise.
Not necessarily optimistic, but a 'we will fight for you' solidarity / call for support framing.
While there is the occasional (potentially deliberate) amusing word choice in ways that anyone who has used the term the Cathedral might appreciate-
The core strategies include the following, none of which are particularly surprising but which are good to see identified clearly in advance:
-Passing executive actions in the Biden administration before certain timelines so that Trump can't immediately revert them
-Litigation waves to tie things in court, with recruitment of sympathetic plaintiffs with likely standing already occuring
-Implicitly by virtue of the acknowledged past strategies and current participants, more protests
-More explicitly legal preparations to prevent/limit federal intervention in protests
-A national-scale counter-ICE network to disrupt immigration raids
-Pre-emptively doing self-auditing of activist group finances in preparation of politically motivated IRS scrutiny
-Various state-based nullification theory application (such as 'inter-state commerce doesn't apply to FDA if I already have the goods in-state')
-Use of Never-Trump 'ex-Republicans' groups as part of the Democratic network, especially the Principles First organization.
(Principles First was a Never Trump wing of the Republican Party associated with Liz Cheney that started in 2022 during the anti-Trump former Republican establishment's efforts to reassert control / torpedo Trump's post-presidential prospects by cooperating with the Democrat-led impeachment trial. Since then, and her fall from the Republican Party, it's been casting itself as an alternative to CPAC. Interestingly it also works in concert with Ranked Choice voting lobbying. (In the US, ranked choice voting is often, but not always, associated with the Democratic Party, at least in the sense of pushing for it in Red / Purple, but not Blue, states.)
Wait so judging by the tone I thought this was some sort of accusation that the government was being weaponized in an unethical way but it's actually... think-tanks, advocacy groups, and Democratic party organs variously coming up with counter-arguments to Trump actions pre-emptively? That doesn't sound so strange or bad or unusual. The only actual officials cited in this piece are like, elected state AGs, where grandstanding partisan lawsuits are basically half the job, and who have electoral accountability, and a governor doing regular governor things. All presidents from both parties tend to do last-second executive actions that they try to make at least a little hard to undo. Everything else in the article is just action by non-governmental orgs.
So partisan people are doing partisan things on their own free time. Is that supposed to worry a regular citizen somehow? By contrast, some of these rumored Trump actions are far, far worse in that they use and abuse actual government vehicles in arguably unethical and dangerous ways. In other words, to use your words, "political obstruction and shaping efforts" are in my view, and the view of many others, only extra bad/super concerning if they are done by the government in a way that betrays principles of democracy, fairness, ethics, etc. Done by others, on their own time, it's just politics.
Let's examine the original claim, helpfully via the quote (bolded for ease of identification) in full context:
The key phrase here in my opinion is actually: to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. Outside groups, individuals, and parties seeking to steer and influence media coverage is a normal election-time activity. Controlling information flow sounds more sinister, but in practice having re-read the original article on 2020, this was basically just being extra annoying to social media companies. Anyone can do this. It's not like, great, but it's fine in the sense that it's an equalish playing field. That's part of what makes it not so bad, even if not ideal. And a lot of the claims were overstated anyways. The article for example credited a "public information campaign" for setting up Fox to call Arizona for Biden earlier than others. This is actually a bizarre claim. The fact is that Fox's analytics setup was far more advanced than other news orgs, and were indeed correct about their call, and it didn't have much to do with a pressure campaign for or against, though certainly the call was controversial for some afterword. And this claim doesn't match up with any of the facts I'm aware of, based on reporting about the call itself as well as Fox's subsequent tone in reporting about election results and certification. Later, when it came to pressuring election boards, the manner of pressure also matters. Bribes, quid-pro-quo offers by other government officials, things like that are super bad. Some of these things were actually alleged to have been done by Trump and people around him, which is again, super bad. Contrast this: the article gave an example of a "successful" pressure tactic, which was a bunch of people showing up in chat to a streamed election board decision, and spamming hashtags. That's totally within-bounds.
I'm far more worried about the government putting their finger on the scale and abusing their power than the corporate media landscape. Because ultimately it is indeed the government that makes the rules and NOT the media. I think it's really critical to draw a distinction.
Edit: added a pair of examples from the article
The MAGA brigade is likely to try to perform outright election interference and (accidental) information warfare, employing tricks more on the incompetence end of the scale. That level of election security needs little additional reinforcement, though keeping it in mind certainly will be valuable just to enforce existing laws. Trump was stupid enough to try and intimidate Raffensperger, and there will certainly be other stupid stunts like false electors or disputes gumming up the tally. Nevertheless, something smells off about the calculated impact these activists had in 'protecting the election' against evil MAGA. The creaking machine of elections is slow to act and therefore slow to change, and the attempts by Trumps minions/cultists to effect change have been met by lazy people unwilling to jump through hoops more than by dedicated activists influencing the real world. This is where the difference between 'protecting the 2020 election' and 'resisting trump 2: the trumpening' comes about: the deliberate stated attempt in the NYtimes article is to set up a concerted effort to not just lawfare existing structures against Trump, but create new laws and resistances in advance to stop even downballot initiatives. A split ticket could leave Trump out of the Oval yet leave state senators or governors in Democratic hands or vice versa, and the net effect will be a tangled mess too convoluted to easily untangle and too easy to activate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link