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 -
What is the steel man for the Trump fake elector scheme being no big deal? To be clear, I'm not talking about a steel man of Trump's behavior as it relates to J6 itself (the tweets, the speech, the reaction to the crowd, etc.), I'm talking exclusively about the scheme where, according to the Democrat/J6 report/Jack Smith narrative, Trump conspired to overturn the election by trying to convince various states, and later Pence, to use a different slate of electors. Here is the basic narrative (largely rephrased from this comment along with the Jack Smith indictment):
There was no outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election (in the event someone replies with evidence there was, you would also need to prove that Trump knew it at the time to justify his actions)
Trump's advisers, advisers that were appointed by himself, repeatedly told him there was no outcome-determinative fraud after looking into it. Despite this, Trump still insisted there was outcome-determinative fraud. Trump still insisted even after he started losing court cases left and right about there being outcome-determinative fraud. Assuming 1 is true this means that Trump is either knowingly lying or willfully ignoring people he himself picked
Trump, despite knowing there wasn't outcome-determinative fraud (assuming 2), still tried to change the outcome of the election. First, he tried the courts where he knowingly lied about there being outcome-determinative fraud in court filings. When that failed he tried contacting various state legislatures and other state officials to ask them to certify his slate of electors. When that failed, his final option was to try to convince Pence to either use his slate of electors to win (a slate of electors not officially certified despite claiming to be certified), or to invalidate enough state's electors to make it so no one gets 270 electors, throwing the election to the house where Trump would then hopefully win given it becomes 1 state 1 vote there.
With that narrative, here are the Trump critiques that I want a steel man defense of:
Trump knowingly lied about there being outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election. This is wrong.
Trump tried to use this lie to change the results of the election. This is wrong.
Trump used this lie to get slates of electors to falsely certify they were the chosen electors of that state. This is wrong
Trump tried to convince various state legislatures that these were the lawfully chosen slate of electors and to decertify the Biden slate and certify his slate. This is wrong.
Trump tried to convince Pence to step outside of his constitutional authority to make him president. This is wrong
The strongest steel man that I can come up with involved the case of Hawaii in 1960
The New York Times summarizes the situation,
While this is the closest prior case of something similar, and thus no big deal, what Trump did is still different enough that it can be meaningfully distinguished:
Both Nixon and Kennedy had good reason to believe they won. Trump didn't.
Kennedy's first slate of electors, the ones that weren't certified, weren't the ones eventually counted. Only the ones certified by the state were counted. Trump's false electors were never certified, so asking Pence to certify them was completely unprecedented.
Nixon accepted that Hawaii had final say over what was and wasn't their slate of electors. Trump didn't and continually insisted his slate was correct.
Another argument that I don't think is strong, but nonetheless might be the strongest steel man:
This is not a strong argument because then it would've just been a constitutional coup and those are still wrong. The way many Latin American countries have constitutional coups is that they stack the court that allows them to reinterpret their constitution to give them more power or that allows them to violate term limits. This is still wrong despite technically being legal. The problem is the norm breaking, not the technical legality.
You keep saying "outcome determinative fraud" as though the first part matters -- how's anyone to know whether the fraud was 'outcome determinative' or not without serious investigative authority; maybe even at all, given the way the ballots get separated from the PII early on in American elections.
Actually you lead me to something I've thought for quite a while in the 2020 aftermath -- the way that courts require proof of fraud that turned the election directly led to the low quality of some of the Trump campaign's lawsuits. If you are expected to prove not only that there was fraud against you, but also that the fraud amounted to at least some specific number of votes, unless you have significant cooperation from the folks counting the ballots (hint: Trump did not) your only play is to throw everything you have at the wall and hope that enough votes are found to stick.
This didn't work ofc, but I'm not sure that anything else would have worked better -- why don't you try a steelman: put yourself in the shoes of a Trump who was absolutely positive that there was significant fraud in PA, GA and NV, but can't prove exactly how much. What is your best move?
It is hard to put myself in these shoes without knowing why I am so positive there was significant fraud in the first place. This is obviously because the moves I make depend on why I am so sure. Am I sure because I had someone admit they committed fraud? Okay, I'd pursue that and hope they rat more people out. Am I sure because of statistical anomalies? Well, if I am positive there was fraud based off of statistical anomalies then I'd use that to target my investigation to look for harder, specific evidence. And if the statistical anomaly is strong enough by itself, I'd do a fireside chat that is amounts to a powerpoint presentation on "here is statistical evidence of fraud", and if it really is strong enough, then the MSM will either be forced to report on its strength, or their contortions trying to debunk it will be obvious to everyone, winning the public to your side. If the reason I am so sure is that I have video evidence of fraud, I would post that to the world as well with the same MSM reaction. Either way, now you have the public on your side (assuming the evidence really is that strong), so now, when you go to court, even if it isn't technically within the law, courts are to bend over backwards to find a legal interpretation to give the election to Trump if there is huge public pressure to do so (public pressure acquired from posting very strong public evidence). And if the courts still don't work, with enough public pressure, even Democrat politicians would be forced to admit there was fraud and they'd join the Republicans in not certifying Biden. I hope that makes sense since it's hard to be concrete without knowing why I am so certain.
What actually happened is that Trump followed a million different leads, but none really went anywhere. This is much more consistent with a person doing motivated reasoning. If Trump did have rock solid evidence, then that would be the evidence would be repeated everywhere from people defending Trump's actions. But it's not that way. It's a hodgepodge of different things more akin to a gish gallop.
There’s unfortunately no real investigation and really nobody neutral to do it. And it’s unfortunate because without that, trusting the results just doesn’t work. We know now that it’s never going to be taken seriously, and it’s probably going to mean a lot more people decide that any results they don’t like is fraud. And this is kind of a Democratic own-goal. If there’s not fraud then investigation into the election proves it — anyone can look at the evidence and see what’s there and not there. As it stands, the response of “lol trust me bro” just makes future claims more likely whilst undermining the legitimacy of the government in power. 70% of Republicans don’t think the results are legitimate, and so there’s always going to be a shadow over the results of the election.
I agree, there 100% should have been a 2020 election commission with equal D's and R's to investigate any and all alleged voter fraud. It would've healed the country. Let the R's and D's call whoever the hell they want to testify, including the cranks, let it all out in the open.
There was an audit carried out in Arizona, by the Republicans' preferred auditors. It found a lot of sloppiness (some on the part of the election administration, some on the part of the auditors), but not the pattern of favouring one side or the other that you would see if this was fraud rather than incompetence. This didn't stop Kari Lake winning a Republican primary in which her key argument was that she recognised the fraud and other Republicans did not. And the Gateway Pundit photoshopped the auditor's report to say they had found fraud on a scale large enough to affect the result.
@The_Nybbler says further down the thread that he would not accept the result of such a commission. I don't think anyone who was plugged into the right-wing alt-media ecosystem would.
More options
Context Copy link
Only works if Trump gets to appoint some people. And what if they found there was in fact fraud? Then how does that heal the nation? Presumably Harris would need to resign, Biden appoint Trump as VP, and then Biden resign? But that would never happen.
Yep. All the "solutions" are predicated on the idea that nothing can be done about any fraud, therefore the thing to be done to preserve the integrity of the system is to discredit anyone claiming there was any fraud.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, that sounds fine to me since that's what the people that thinks there was fraud would want.
Yeah, sounds find to me as well. And if they don't, just impeach. And if that doesn't happen, public outcry next election would elect enough people that would impeach and then appoint Trump. Yeah, it's unrealistic, but Dems have nothing to worry about if there wasn't fraud.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Such a commission would certainly be a whitewash, with all the Ds and all the never-Trumpers working to make sure nothing was exposed whether it was there or not.
Well, yeah, but I'm assuming an actually equal commission, not whatever the hell the J6 Committee was. An actually equally commission where the R's that believe in fraud get to call all the people they want to call and force them to testify. Where they get to question all the witnesses the D's and never Trumpers call.
It's meaningless. The majority puts out their report saying "nothing to see here", there's a minority report saying "TOTAL FRAUD!!!!11111", and nothing changes except the "nothing to see here" people have another authority backing up their claims.
Also the fraudsters have another authority to back up their claims.
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