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 -
Some guy in China killed 35 people by driving a car around a running track.
Not that I'm complaining, but why doesn't this happen more often?
Much is made of the fact that US has more guns and many more mass shooting incidents than other wealthy nations, and this is commonly attributed to the fact that guns make it easy to kill a lot of people. But so do cars, and those are widely available in most wealthy nations.
So why is it that the US has a lot of mass shootings (yes, I know that they're a tiny percentage of total homicides), but running cars into crowds is fairly rare in countries that don't have such easy access to guns? Are Americans just especially prone to running amok? Are mass shootings a meme? Is killing a lot of people with a gun just that much more satisfying than running them over with a car?
I don't have any good theories; I'm just noticing my confusion.
I think there was a case of this in 2020, guy got a delivery truck and drove it into a crowd at a parade. There was also the Unite the right rally in Charlottesville where a guy drove his car into a crowd. So it does happen sometimes.
Maybe people who go on these killing rampages often want to make it a murder suicide event. Guns make the suicide part easier at the end, whereas the car murderers tend to get caught.
Mass car murder also seems like a crime of opportunity, you need the right circumstances to actually pull it off. Most sidewalks are full of hard things that will wreck a car, including up to concrete barriers that are specifically designed to stop a car. Larger vehicles are necessary. And crowds of people in a flat non barrier area that are not so dense that the vehicle will be immediately stopped, and not so sparse that they can easily see what is happening and move out of the way.
It's a messed up person in the first place that wants to commit mass murder. But I think they usually want more choice in their targets, they want to be dead afterwards, and while cars and trucks are ubiquitous they are actually more expensive than guns and ammo. There are ways to get large vehicles, like theft or working a job site with them. But those are still a little harder to pull off than just buying guns.
I think there is a steady supply of crazy and crazy mixed with the wrong meds that if we magically banned all guns in the US you'd probably see more car based killing rampages. But guns have a specific purpose and they are good at that purpose, so I think they will remain in use.
You might be thinking of Darrell Edward Brooks Jr -- you will note that there is not a picture of him in the Wikipedia article, and For Some Reason nobody has heard nearly as much about him deliberately driving his own SUV into a Christmas parade and killing several as they have about the Charlottesville guy. (who killed one person in a hostile crowd of counterprotestors, arguably semi-accidentally)
Edit history suggests that it's a licensing issue. If you can find a photo with an appropriate license you should add it.
This is the go-to excuse wikipedians use when they want to memoryhole something. They also used it to attempt to delete the Trump Raised Fist photo. Of course, this is just a pretext, as the solution is widely used on wikipedia: reduce the resolution of the photo.
This photo continues to exist, so it seems that in this particular example the tactic is not working.
They still tried it and it appears to be working for Brooks...
There has been pretty well documented examples of the politicization of wikipedia. Why would it be different, in this case?
It's not "working" because the trump photo deletion attempt is for "invalid fair use" rather than a lack of a license. That's a totally different argument, and sure, I can believe that it's not always applied in good faith. A license being totally absent is pretty black and white.
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