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 -
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.
I would claim that at minimum the Democrats are tilting the playing field through illegal or quasi-illegal mechanisms. For example, letting illegals vote illegally tilts the playing field in their favor, but there are still a finite number of illegals, they might not all vote for Harris, etc. Same with ballot harvesting. Therefore, Trump can still win, he just needs a larger margin.
I also share the same basic sentiment as many of the other posters. If you don’t want people to make unfalsifiable voter fraud claims, don’t make them illegal to falsify them. They can only be falsified by election integrity laws like voter ID, strict chain-of-custody, etc. If you outlaw election integrity, then all elections are by-default suspect.
The question isn’t whether you can prove that the ballots are illegitimate or not. The question is why can’t you? Any answer you can come up with is uncomfortable.
Because nothing will ever be enough to someone who's engaging in motivated reasoning. I support requiring an ID to vote, fixing gerrymandering, fixing incumbents' free mail privilege, etc. But if all these issues are remedied, I'm sure there will still be others. Yet US elections have been fairly secure so far -- that's why Trump's 2020 crusade kept turning up nothingburgers. The public perception only started diverging from reality (seeing huge issues everywhere, most of which didn't matter) when Trump started being a sore loser.
I have personally come to the conclusion that all geographic representation maps are gerrymandering. There doesn't seem to be a consistent enough definition of "fix" here that could satisfy everyone. And some of the seemingly-absolutely-fair mechanisms for doing so (assign voters to districts by valid dice roll) are in fact the worst. It's never a fight against gerrymandering, just whose map is better, and of course everyone likes their own map.
Although I'm taking suggestions for what an un-gerrymandered districting algorithm could look like, even if I don't think it exists.
I mean, other countries manage to pull it off. Like, I'm sure people in the UK have some issues, but there's not the widespread open complaining that happens in the US and nowhere the amount of obviously gerrymandered districts. I'll even say, if the GOP gets 49.5% of the vote and get 52.5% of the seats, that's not something as a partisan Democrat I think is the end of the world.
The issue is places like the recent Wisconsin state legislature, where the Republicans won 44% of the vote and got 66% of the seats. By the same measure, in 2022 in the Nevada legislature, the Democrat's won 41% of the vote but have a 2/3 majority as well.
I don't think there's a "perfect" fix, but there's ways to do it better than we do.
Generally when I see "other countries" brought into a discussion of gerrymandering, it's comparing to a proportional representation scheme, which I think would be interesting to try for the House. The only other country I can think of with geographic districting is the UK and there is plenty of complaining about district maps there too.
I think PR is preferable, but people are weird about having their own congressperson, so it'd be a tough sell.
From what I've seen, there's complaining in the UK and Canada, but nothing to the level of the wacky districts on both sides here.
The UK is particularly notable because it's famous for rotten and pocket boroughs, where entire MPs were dedicated to districts with a handful of voters. Granted, those were largely resolved by reforms more than a century ago, but it seems to me the allocation of roughly equal population districts in the US was a reaction to that. And people still complain about the FPTP system in the UK, because the presence of more third parties changes the representation dynamics.
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