site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Is there anything the government could feasibly do to nudge Republicans towards accepting the results of the election in the event that Trump loses? Trump himself has a big personal incentive to say the election is "rigged" if he loses no matter what. It redirects the conversation from analyzing the defeat ("how could we do better"), which will inevitably shine a light on Trump's shortfalls, to one where the basic facts of reality are debated instead. The obvious example is the 2020 election. Lesser known was that Trump did the same thing in 2016 when he lost the Iowa primary to Ted Cruz. Now it seems he's preparing to do the same in 2024.

Many Republicans are more than willing to go along with this, mostly due to either negative partisanship or living in a bubble ("everyone I knew was voting for Trump, then the other guy won? Something doesn't smell right!"). If the pain of defeat stings, why not just be a sore loser instead? I've debated many people who thought the 2020 election was rigged, and inevitably it goes down one of three rabbitholes:

  • Vibes-based arguments that are short on substance, but long on vague nihilism that "something was off". Nearly 70% of Republicans think 2020 was stolen in some way, yet most are normies who don't spend a lot of time trying to form a set of coherent opinions, so the fallback of "something was off" serves as a way to affirm their tribal loyalty without expending much effort.

  • Motte-and-bailey to Trump's claims by ignoring everything Trump himself says, and instead going after some vague institutional flaw without providing any evidence to how it actually impacted 2020. For instance, while mail-in ballots are a nice convenience for many, there are valid concerns to a lack of oversight in how people fill out their ballots. People can be subjected to peer pressure, either from their family or even from their landlord or another authority figure to fill out their ballot a certain way. However, no election is going to 100% perfect, and just because someone can point out a flaw doesn't mean the entire thing should be thrown out. In a similar vein, Democrats have (rightly) pointed out that gerrymandering can cause skewed results in House elections, yet I doubt many Republicans would say that means results would need to be nullified especially if Democrats had just lost. These things are something to discuss and reform for future elections.

  • People who do buy at least some of the object-level claims that Trump or Giuliani has advanced about 2020 being stolen. There's certainly a gish-gallop to choose from. The clearest meta-evidence that these are nonsense is that nearly everyone I've debated with has chosen a different set of claims to really dig deep into. For most political issues, parties tend to organically rally around a few specific examples that have the best evidence or emotional valence. The fact that this hasn't happened for Trump's claims is indicative that none of them are really that good, and they rely more on the reader being unfamiliar with them to try to spin a biased story. One example occurred a few weeks ago on this site, one user claimed the clearest examples were Forex markets (which were subsequently ignored), Ruby Freeman, and the Cyber Ninja's Audit. I was only vaguely aware of these, so I did a quick Google search and found a barrage of stories eviscerating the Ruby Freeman and Cyber Ninja narratives. I then asked for the response, preferably with whatever relatively neutral sources he could find, since I was sure he'd claim the sources I had Googled were all hopelessly biased. But this proved too high a bar to clear for him, and so the conversation went nowhere. Maybe there's a chance that some really compelling evidence exists out there that would easily prove at least some of the major allegations correct, but at this point I doubt it.

At this point it seems like the idea that elections are rigged is functionally unfalsifiable. The big question on the Republican side now would be whether to claim the elections were rigged even if Trump DOES win. The stock explanation would be that the Dems are rigging it so they have +20% more votes than they normally would, so a relatively close election means Trump actually won by a huge margin. On the other hand, saying the election was rigged at all could diminish Trump's win no matter what, and it's not hard to imagine Trump claiming "this was the most legitimate election in the history of our country" if he manages to come out on top.

Nearly 70% of Republicans think 2020 was stolen

IIRC a pretty similar number of Democrats said the same thing about the 2016 election, at least as of a few years ago. See that entire looking spectre of Russian Collusion and the probably-wrong dossier. And I expect a similar fraction of whichever side loses this year to think similarly, even though I think it's pretty stupid generally.

IIRC a pretty similar number of Democrats said the same thing about the 2016 election

I'd be very interested if you have a source on this.

  • -11

Thanks, that'll be a useful bit of info in the future. Saved.

Still, there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side. The likely counter would be the Mueller investigation, but it was very different from J6. It's not an ongoing idea that all elections are fake. Harris isn't implying "wait until I win or lose to see if the election is legitimate" like Trump is.

  • -26

Saying J6 was unique ignores the important reason it was: Incompetence by the security forces. Giving a political speech to a large crowd in the capitol city of the polity is basically the MOST LEGITIMATE thing a politician can do. That the security forces were unprepared was also an intentional choice made primarily by the mayor of DC and the speaker of the House. Both were opponents of the speech-giver, and politically benefited from their own incompetence.

That is actually the most terrifying take away from J6: That Democrats can weaponize their own incompetence to humongous political benefit.

I agree and this is one of the more under-reported issues.

The GAO report on the Capitol Police is pretty damning

The Capitol Police's process for assessing and mitigating physical security risks to the Capitol complex is not comprehensive or documented. Also, how the Capitol Police Board considers and decides which physical security recommendations made by the Capitol Police should be implemented is unclear. Federal guidance is available to help agencies develop comprehensive processes for assessing physical security risks to facilities. Capitol Police officials stated that they have been informally applying this guidance for the past 5 to 7 years. While the Capitol Police's process incorporates parts of the guidance, its process is not as comprehensive or well documented as the guidance outlines. For example, the Capitol Police conducts regular security assessments of the Capitol complex and buildings, but it does so without a documented procedure to ensure completeness and consistency. In addition, while the Capitol Police makes security recommendations, it does not have the authority to implement them.

TLDR: Capitol Police:

  • Didn't have a physical security risk assessment process written down
  • Randomly applied bits and pieces of other Federal guidance for risk assessment
  • Doesn't write down or document what they do to assess physical risk
  • Doesn't have the authority to implement their own security recommendations

The Capitol routinely offers tours to members of the public with very little scrutiny on their identification. We all go through far more at the airport to fly than you would going on a tour at the Capitol. I believe the limiting factor is that tickets for these tours are hard to come by and may require some sort of connection in a Congressional office. The Capitol is, in effect, about as well guarded as a mall (not The mall as in The National Mall, but a shopping mall).

You can fight over the degree to which J6 was a coordinated coup attempt, a mob action, a protest, or whatever. That's beside the point that if Capitol Police had been basically competent it wouldn't have happened. It's interesting the parallels to the thread on U.S. Secret Service -- When people tell the story of Omar Gonzales getting inside the White House the central theme is always "Holy fuck, how can the Secret Service be this bad?" That's the right response! And I think that should be a lot more central to the J6 story instead of "iT wAs aN AsSauLT on DEMocracY!"

This Johns Hopkins report looks at the demographics of the J6'ers who went to court after the fact. They have a high propensity for financial hardship and some level of criminal background. To be blunt about it - we weren't dealing with the top brass. For all of the press's laughable over-reporting on "Ranger Stacks" (not even the right term) and the omnipresent tactical gear, most of these people were LARPers who went to D.C. to because they didn't have much in the way of missing back home. They then overwhelmed a tiny, mostly absentee, and totally incompetent Capitol Police force.

"buT iT wAs aN AsSauLT on DEMocracY!"

Still, there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side.

You are demonstrably mistaken.

There was literally a riot to prevent Trump's inauguration called "DisruptJ20." Even wikipedia has an article about it.

We are planning to shut down the inauguration, that's the short of it ... We're pretty literal about that, we are trying to create citywide paralysis on a level that I don't think has been seen in D.C. before. We're trying to shut down pretty much every ingress into the city as well as every checkpoint around the actual inauguration parade route.

The feds dropped all charges, including of the black-clad leftist terrorist arsonists. Just like they did in 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/government-drops-charges-against-all-inauguration-protesters-n889531

You should ask yourself why you forgot these events happened just because the TV stopped talking about them.

Maybe you should also read the Wikipedia article?

In late November 2017, six people charged with rioting went on trial. Prosecutors alleged that these six people were taking part in DisruptJ20 protests and vandalism. A jury trial found the six defendants not guilty on all counts in December 2017. On January 18, 2018, the U.S. Justice Department dropped charges against 129 people, leaving 59 defendants to face charges related to the DisruptJ20 protest. By early July 2018, federal prosecutors had dropped all charges against all defendants in the case.

The reason the DOJ dropped the charges is because they lost every one they brought to trial.

  • -14

Jury trials based out of DC?

I don't wonder why.

Yes, as a general matter people have to be tried in the jurisdiction where the alleged crime they committed occurred. What should the DOJ have done? Wasted a bunch of money prosecuting another 200 cases it wasn't going to win?

  • -14
More comments

there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side

No, they only storm and disrupt political buildings between elections

I agree. It wasn’t even close. Because the democrat effort was longer, more impactful, and more insidious.

Still, there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side.

I agree! Democrats caused way more property damage and loss of life, and terrorized a much broader swath of the population. Their political protest were nowhere near as orderly, civil, and pointed at exactly the people who were the problem as J6.

I also didn't like the BLM protests, but their major aim wasn't to undo a presidential election. They were a separate issue entirely.

  • -15

Still, there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/11/11/anti-trump-protesters-pepper-sprayed-demonstrations-erupt-across-us/93633154/

For the third night in a row, anti-Donald Trump demonstrators took to the streets in several big cities and on college campuses across the United States, including an outburst of smashed windows and a dumpster fire in Portland that police countered with pepper spray and flash-bang devices.

About 4,000 protesters assembled downtown late Thursday chanting “we reject the president-elect!” the Associated Press reported. Some among the crowd vandalized 19 cars at a dealership in Northeast Portland, according to a sales manager, Oregonlive.com reports. Protesters then headed west, over the Broadway Bridge and into the Pearl District, where the windows of several businesses were smashed.

The protest was mostly peaceful until demonstrators met with an anarchist group, after which demonstrators vandalized buildings, kicked cars and knocked out power, KGW-TV reported.

Imagine if J6 had been J6-J9!

And Republicans protested in 2012 when Obama won re-election. But in that case and the one you cited, neither were trying to undo the results of the election other than expressing general disapproval that their side lost. Neither went to the federal capital, and neither were egged on by a sitting president.

  • -14

IMO the most amusing comparable incident was (VP candidate) Tim Kaine's son getting arrested for trespassing in the Minnesota Capitol with smoke bombs and fireworks.

But the sheer scale of lawfare against the Trump administration was also pretty darn disruptive even if "legal" -- in quotes because SCOTUS on a few occasions had to step in to resolve mutually-incompatible injunctions. Or how we had IIRC an agency head that refused to leave the position when replaced until a court ruled they had to leave. Not that all of it was misplaced, but it definitely reflected a desire to subvert the lawful powers of the executive purely on the basis of the character wielding them.

Still, there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side.

First impeachment, #NotMyPresident, #Resistance, inauguration riots, post-election riots.

None of these seriously challenged the idea that Trump won in 2016.

  • -23

Sure they did, you just don't accept 'seriously.'

At the time, however, and for several years after, these were routinely associated with the Democratic party conspiracy theory- colloquially remembered as Russiagate- that Trump had conspired to corruptly win the 2016 election.

#Resistance and its associated elements routinely propagated conspiracy theories to that effect, to the point that even after the Mueller Investigation found no substantiating evidence of Russian collusion most Democrats believed it anyway.

The first impeachment is the equivalent, no?

No, it didn't challenge the idea that Trump won in 2016.

  • -14

there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side

because they are different groups so radicalism looks different between the groups? Repubs are populists, their reaction to disbelief with elections was to riot and generally distrust institutions even further.

Dems are statist bureaucrats and their response involved having all of the government machinery they control rebel against Trump, endless lawfare in the lower courts and district courts they control, government agencies continually leaking things to state aligned media. Laundering fake intelligence through "foreign" (really just parts of the state beyond Trumps jurisdiction) intelligence agencies back to the US so they could endlessly keep the Trump admin under surveillance. etc. Selectively enforcing laws and managing media coverage to encourage and legitimize their npc's riots while cracking down harshly on any opponent's riots (blm riots vs covid protests). Cracking down on access to positions in state institutions, things like diversity and inclusion statements being required in college's. Honestly the republican response to 2020 was pretty mild compared to the state's response to Trump in 2016.