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.)
None of this is unique, unusual, or dangerous. Leftist NGOs and Democratic governors/AGs preparing for a potential second term of Trump. Sinister-sounding quotes like "controlling the flow of information" and "democracy-proofing our institutions" but nothing actually out of the ordinary in terms of real actions. I'll remind you that the vast majority of the actual escalation has come from Republicans. Remember J6? Remember "the election was stolen!!!" 70% of Republicans still believe that crap.
Trump will try some hamfisted executive orders, which will get massacred in the courts like much of his EO's did in his first term. He'll declare victory anyways, and the base will love him because they desire the appearance of "owning the libs" more than any actual substantive policy changes.
Where are the republicans inventing new legal theories to prosecute their political opponents? Where are the republicans forcing businesses to boycott their opponents organizations? Where are the republicans using partisan organizations assessments of their ideological opposites as a justification to enact a domestic spying program?
Lawyers arguing in new ways to new situations is just standard legal practice, e.g. when Trump's lawyers argued the presidency is not "an officeholder of the United States".
The origin of the Trump-Russia investigation is shrouded in bias, just like the investigation into Biden's son was. But in both cases it was clear that there were actual problems there. Not problems that reached up to the highest level, but problems nonetheless.
I'm not a fan of plenty of the things Dems have done in regards to their woke crusade, but in terms of concrete escalation, storming the capital and trying to overturn a legitimate election due to being sore losers was far worse and more blatant.
Sorry, that one goes back to the debates around the adoption of the 14th amendment. It is not new at all.
It's a novel argument because whether the president is an "officer" hadn't come up in this context. If you disagree with this, feel free to cite the court case that specifically argues this point in an identical context.
You're effectively arguing that lawyers should never be allowed to make new arguments even if the situation is different.
It came up in exactly that context in the debates on the 14th amendment.
I dug up some facts and brought the receipts. In the Colorado court that heard this play out, their decision you can see starting at the bottom of page 95.
It indicates that exactly once when the Amendment was first debated in Congress (not yet law) the issue was briefly mentioned. Mentioned as in we have literally only this one tiny and brief exchange. From the section summarizing the key points made in the Colorado case:
So the brief worry was that Davis, as an insurrectionist, was obviously barred from running for most offices, but maybe he could run for President only? Morrill thought no, he was barred from basically everything including President.
No other court cases, legal opinions, or even history is cited. Meaning they couldn't find anything else. There's other arguments too both for and against listed in the decision, but overall the decision says there is "scant evidence" and most of the other arguments have to do with the text of the Constitution in other places.
So yeah. In my opinion, if a legal theory is mentioned exactly once, and back in 1866, it is for most practical purposes "novel". It's not novel in the sense that literally not a single person ever had ever thought about the concept (clearly at least two people had, if extremely briefly), but certainly was novel in the sense that we had gone 150 years and no one had ever brought it up again as such.
It might also bear noting, when it comes to novelty, that this conversation formed a legal theory (if you can even call it a theory, it's not like they went into big detail) claiming the President WAS in fact an officer. Trump's team did not advance this theory! They advanced the opposite! It wasn't even the same claim! So it wasn't so much a "legal theory" as "one person worried about it once 150+ years ago and then decided it wasn't a big worry". And then over a century later someone came out and claimed the opposite thing. Sounds pretty novel to me!
Edits: last paragraph.
Senator Johnson: But this amendment does not go far enough. I suppose the framers of the amendment thought it was necessary to provide for such an exigency. I do not see but that any one of these gentlemen may be elected President or Vice President of the United States, and why did you omit to exclude them? I do not understand them to be excluded from the privilege of holding the two highest offices in the gift of the nation. No man is to be a Senator or Representative or an elector for President or Vice President
Senator Morrill: Let me call the Senator's attention to the words "or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States."
Senator Johnson: Perhaps I am wrong as to the exclusion from the Presidency; no doubt I am; but I was misled by noticing the specific exclusion in the case of Senators and Representatives.
So Johnson brought up the theory, Morrill denied it, and Johnson chose not to argue further. But I didn't say the theory was accepted then; I said it wasn't novel. It's not novel.
Jefferson Davis was not involved. Jefferson Davis was disqualified by the fact that he was a Senator before he joined the confederacy; it is true that if the Presidency was not an "office" he would not have been disqualified from running for President, but nobody was worried about that; they were worried about him re-entering the Senate. Nor was anyone worried about some rebel President or Vice President running for office, for the simple reason that there weren't any.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Please link the court case.
I don't have to dance to your tune. The debates on the 14th amendment were (obviously) prior to any court case involving it.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link