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 -
Believing this requires significant sane-washing of the last 8 years of media. I mean, to pick a random example off the top of my head that Youtube reminded me, Joe Biden's mental decline. The behavior of those in the media is completely unhinged and totally detached from reality, not to mention nakedly self serving. They've gaslit all of the country on an industrial scale about innumerable topics, or instituted a bizarre form of cognitive mutilation where you are only permitted to think of fact in ways they have told you that you are permitted to think of them. Impossible tangles of double-think abound for sex, gender, crime, equality, equity, you name it.
I would hope Elon has better sources of information than I have. But, to pick at Zelensky's 4% approval rating Hanania leads with, is it even possible to know what the real number might be? Also, I'm supposed to be assessing these "debunks" in a media environment where all the election polling around our own election was purposeful lying. Trump's internal polls showed him winning. Biden and then Kamala's internal polls showed him winning. At no time during the entire election cycle did anyone's internal polls show anyone but Trump winning. Public polls on the other hand, with the exception "low quality" pollsters like Rasmussen, all showed Harris winning. The Harris campaign even went so far as to gaslight the nation claiming Trump was lying about his internal polls as a pretext for election denial.
So why should anyone believe anything these people say about Zelensky's poll numbers? How can they possibly claim to be more credible than just making shit up? If Trump and Elon want to parade around some fake numbers the IC gave them that serve their agenda, they are in good company. Well, maybe not good company, but you know what I mean. Don't pretend this is a deviation.
I mean, this is just naked revisionist history and sane washing right here.
What past is he talking about? "Misgendering" was a ban on sight offense on every social media platform. Books about it were banned, at least temporarily. Liberals didn't calmly argue with conservatives about where to get news from, they banned it. It's pure imagination that anyone, anywhere, was calmly debating what sources of information were preferable to seek the truth. It was a boot stomping on a human face thinking the roles would never be reversed.
Furthermore, I keep going through Hanania's supporting evidence, like "Editor-in-chief of The Federalist joins others in repeating repeating the completely made up lie about Zelensky meeting with Democrats beforehand." except, oh wait, here is a Democrat tweeting about meeting Zelensky before the Trump meeting. Just finished a meeting with President Zelensky here in Washington. He confirmed that the Ukrainian people will not support a fake peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants and there are no security arrangements for Ukraine. . Did the original rumor name the wrong Democrats? Yes. Is it a made up lie that Zelensky met with Democrats beforehand? Absolutely not.
Frankly it's barely worth the effort to continue to pick apart these sour grapes that Hanania isn't making the living on Twitter that he used to or expected to. Though I am especially tickled he cites Elon being on the wrong side of an argument with Sam Harris about how bad COVID was going to be. The same Sam Harris who has horribly beclowned himself with extremely motivated reasoning about the measures that he still believes were justified to deal with it. Elon might have been wrong about the numbers, but he was directionally correct about how serious to take it. Especially in retrospect, and especially compared to Sam Harris.
Polls spent the summer and fall showing Harris ahead because they were attempting to shape the conversation and manipulate people into believing it was true and then in the final poll they all miraculously converged to showing what the better polls had been showing for months.
This isn't a defense of the polling industry, it's a condemnation of it. The vast majority of polling, and especially the "most reputable pollsters" according to the media, didn't just happen to randomly get ridiculous Harris numbers (or Biden numbers or the alleged Biden cliffhanger after his debate) for most of the polling season and then just happened to get ties in their final poll. After years of bad misses, the pollsters converged on "okay, it's basically a tie" as a face-saving measure when the result wasn't a tie. Trump handily won.
The media and polling companies work hand-in-hand with one bullhorning what they believe people should think and then the polling industry confirming people think (or at least a decent number of people think) what the media has been bullhorning at them. These aren't people just doing their best to measure public opinion, they're part of the opinion manufacturing and manipulation process and it's high time everyone treated them like it.
But by all means, if you disagree, I encourage everyone to bet the margins of their favorite "gold standard" pollsters in the next election. And when you lose, I hope it changes not only your opinion about these pollsters' predictive capacity but also undermines your belief pollsters are accurate measuring opinions with less objective results like "support for gun control" or whatever else.
I struggle to understand what their motives are here. Are you implying the pollsters are trying to help the democrats based on the theory that people turn out for a winner? I don't know what the basis for that theory is. It seems equally or more likely that over-estimating a candidate's popularity will lull them and their voters into a false sense of security. Based on this theory of polls, it would seem more likely the pollsters over-estimating Harris's polling were trying to favour the republicans.
I don't really see evidence to think either of these is the case though. Maybe they are just incompetent or too afraid of being outliers.
Oh come on. Trying to act like the "Kamelanomicon" narrative never happened isn't going to work.
Do you want me to link 50 articles about how recent polling surges show that America has rediscovered its favorite brat VP?
The "I don't get it, what do you even mean" tactic is incredibly obnoxious. It's just a way of insinuating that someone is an incoherent schizo conspiracy theorist without openly breaking the rules. And it doesn't even work to bully people without a supporting crew of redditors jeering and snapping their fingers.
Now you're talking about articles about polling, not polling. That is a different thing and I don't dispute at all that it is seeking to 'shape the conversation'.
I am not trying to insinuate you're a schizo conspiracy theorist (though now I am wondering if your anger is causing you to lump multiple things together as your enemy, when not all of them are the same).
Ironically I am not the same person as Bleep.
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