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 -
The benefit to justice outweighs the small injustice here. This is a signal for future courts and agencies that if you over-punish a thousand people, we will under-punish the batch in full. The government and courts now have an incentive try and punish everyone fairly, or else even those who deserve their punishment go free. A similar mechanism is already at work in our law: if you violate rights in obtaining evidence, that evidence will be thrown out, as otherwise it incentivizes the police to continue violating rights.
If you truly believe that will happen, I can only say I don't think you've been paying enough attention to politics the past decade. Nobody has ever changed their behavior for the better when their opponents smash the "defect" button, it simply galvanizes them to do the same thing in return. The last 10-20 years of US politics has just been a cycle of parties playing dirty with each other every chance they can, and it has only spiraled into worse and worse offenses. There's zero reason to believe that this time it'll have a positive impact because it'll send a message about incentives.
Trump did not lock up Hillary. There were no show trials with extreme penalties for Floyd rioters. The both-sidesism is wrong; the Democrats have been dishing it out a lot more than they've been taking it.
This is a total myth that was fabricated by the Right to excuse the absolutely inexcusable behavior of Trump supporters. If you spent the summer of 2020 watching Fox News point to a few high-profile incidences of police cowardice or listening to NPR's defund the police nonsense then it's understandable how you would get that impression. But if you watched local news or actually paid attention to what was happening you'd have seen that there was no shortage of people who were arrested and charged. Hell, here in Pittsburgh there were news reports on an almost weekly basis that consisted of a grainy photograph of people the police were looking for in connection to spray painting buildings, or throwing rocks at police, or some other minor crime that wouldn't even merit a mention in the newspaper let alone a media-assisted manhunt. I can't speak to this happening in every city, but I know the same was true for Los Angeles and Atlanta, and the Feds were looking for a ton of people as well, which is interesting considering that they only had jurisdiction over a small percentage of the total rioters.
The reason you didn't see many high-profile convictions is because the BLM protestors were at least smart enough to commit their crimes at night and make some attempt at concealing their identities. For all the effort police put into tracking these people down, if there's no evidence there's no evidence. To the contrary, the Capitol rioters decided to commit their crimes during the day, in one large group, in an area surrounded by video cameras. Then they posed for pictures and videos and posted it on social media. Were these people trying to get caught? Which brings me to the dismissals. Yes, a lot of the George Floyd riot cases were dismissed, and conservatives like to point to this as evidence of them being treated with kid gloves. But the prosecutors often had no choice. The tactics of the Pittsburgh Police (under the administration of Bill Peduto, no one's idea of a conservative) were to simply arrest everyone in the immediate vicinity the moment a demonstration started to get out of hand. Never mind that they didn't have any evidence that most of these people committed a crime. If a crowd throws water bottles at the police and they arrest everyone they can get their hands on, good like proving that a particular person threw something. Unless you have video or a cop who is able to testify, you're entirely out of luck. So they'd arrest a bunch of people and ten the DA "(Steven Zappala, no one's idea of a progressive) would drop the charges against the 90% against which they had no evidence. In any event, I didn't hear about Biden or any liberal governor offering to pardon any of these people.
Seriously. The Capitol rioters were morons operating under the assumption that their sugar daddy Trump would bail them out because he agreed with their politics. If he wanted to give clemency to people who got swept up in the crowd and trespasses where they shouldn't have, I could understand that. But by pardoning people who assaulted police officers, broke windows, and the like, he shows a complete disrespect for law enforcement and the rule of law. And all of it coming from a guy who is supposedly about law and order. It's absolutely disgraceful.
It's a myth that Trump didn't lock up Hillary? It's a myth that there were no show trials with extreme penalties for Floyd rioters? No, neither of those are myths. Not even rioters in Washington D.C. ended up facing long times in prison based on novel legal theories. Not even the Kavanaugh protestors who buttonholed Jeff Flake got charged with disrupting an official proceeding.
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