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 current state of online politics discourse seems pretty dire to me. Here are forums I'm aware of:
TheMotte - often a bit too "assume that social conservatism is correct" and wordily show-offy for my taste, but it's a good forum, you can speak your mind without being banned.
X.com - engagement bait grifters, engagement bait grifters, engagement bait grifters... and the occasional rare actual worthwhile discussion.
/r/moderatepolitics - good, very surprisingly good for average Reddit censorship norms, but a bit slow.
/r/politicaldiscussion - used to be decent like 5 years ago but now has been overrun by typical Reddit TDS ("Drumpf will end all elections", etc...)
4chan /pol/ - basically useless, 95% literally mentally ill people, trolls, and maybe bots. Might as well engage with flat Earthers about astrophysics as engage with these people about politics.
Astral Codex Ten comments - can be interesting sometimes, but isn't mainly politics focused and the politics discussion seems to be be dominated by the same few people.
rDrama.net - is usually directionally right about politics, in my view, by the simple expedient of assuming that anyone who is very demonstratively committed to a given political ideology is likely worthy of ridicule, but of course not a forum for discussing policy in any depth, most of the time, and also unsurprisingly given the origin of the site, is as focused on trolling as on political analysis, lol.
/r/politics - TDS central, orange man bad 24/7.
/r/centrist - seems ok, but pretty TDS leaning.
/r/stupidpol, /r/redscarepod, etc... Dirtbag left, good for criticizing the establishment but also they tend to be Hamas apologists etc... basically mostly people who are still at the I hate America so anyone who fights America must be awesome stage.
debatepolitics.com - people yelling at each other, very slight step up from 4chan /pol/.
Like, there have to be some good forums I've missed, right? Billions of people are online, including hundreds of millions of Anglophones (I largely have no idea what the state of non-Anglophone political discussion is like). Is it really possible that only like 0.00001% of them are capable of having relatively moderate and rational (not that I've always been) political discussion?
I've been searching for good politics discussion forums for years. You'd think there would be more. What the fuck is going on?
The Motte is more balanced than you think. There are people who are a little bit more liberal here at least in some ways, such as myself and /u/Hoffmeister. That being said I'm not woke by any means, but I have a lot of sympathy with postmodernism, and have little patience for the trad LARPing that some of the less well-thought-out posters here seem to embody, although I generally find this is one of the highest quality places on the internet to actually find good arguments from both sides.
I am… perplexed as to why I was chosen as your representative of liberalism. I’m on record saying that the obsessive focus on the inalienable rights of the individual is the cancer at the heart of American society. You’re absolutely correct that I’m not a “social conservative”, but I also favor a more authoritarian approach to government/policing than I think almost anyone else on this forum does. (I’m also one of this forum’s leading proponents of “racism is good, actually”.)
Challenge accepted.
How authoritarian dare you dream?
I mean look, I’m not interested in approaching this as a challenge. I want to avoid the temptation toward “vice signaling” so common on the right, so I’m not going to try and show off how “based” I am. If it turns out that you’re more authoritarian than I am, I have zero problem with that.
I wish to enshrine the principle that our justice/carceral system is, first and foremost, about punishment and about making an example of criminals. Rehabilitation is a pipe dream for the vast majority of felons in this country; there are bad people in this world, and they weren’t made bad by society. The death penalty has always been a salutary means not only of removing such people permanently from society, but also of making a public spectacle to impress upon potential future criminals the humiliating death that awaits them. We should expand the death penalty to be applicable to a far broader spectrum of crimes (including property crimes) than those for which it’s currently on offer. The method of execution should be public — I favor hangings, although I’m open to other methods which are similarly visually evocative without being overly torturous. The condemned should experience terror and humiliation — ideally visually obvious to onlookers — during the lead-up to the execution, but not too much actual prolonged physical suffering during the execution itself.
We should also stress the extremely low probability of a false conviction in the age of ubiquitous video surveillance, DNA, and advanced forensics. The entire “presumption of innocence” upon which our current system of jurisprudence rests is, in many ways, a relic of a bygone era. What does it mean to “presume the innocence” of a man caught on camera committing a criminal act, using a gun on which we can find his (scientifically verifiable) fingerprints and unique DNA? The massive amount of appeals, legal loopholes, and protections afforded to criminals in this country is a travesty. I would instead favor an inquisitorial model of criminal justice, with little or no room for the “jury trial” as a method of ascertaining guilt.
If I thought we could actually administer it in America, I would also favor the reintroduction of public corporal punishment (caning, etc.) as an alternative to incarceration and fines for certain crimes. The problem, of course, is that the optics of (mostly) young black men being publicly whipped would be intolerable to a plurality of white Americans. The ghost of slavery still haunts the American consciousness to a great degree, preventing us from being able to embrace a healthy punitive approach to crime. We can do prisons because they lock these men away from the view of squeamish right-thinking white people, but if they were to be corporally punished right out in the open it would be psychologically unbearable for too great a portion of the populace to bear.
I would also love it if we could reach a point where we could carry out an easing-out and eventual abolishment of nearly all personal firearm ownership. This is impossible and intolerable under current conditions in this country, due to the continued existence of a massive criminal underclass. If we could get that problem under control, though, the only ideological dragon left to slay would be the vestigial delusion of an armed populace “as a check against tyranny”, and frankly I think that paper tiger would be easy for a future government to slay. The simple example set by the obviously-not-tyrannical societies which are thriving in our world without widespread individual firearm ownership are simply too visible to most people. Japan is not a tyranny, nor are its citizens suffering under the yoke of oppression because they can’t own guns. Clownish sputtering about “COVID tyranny” aside, nobody can make any credible argument that the citizens of Australia live in a dystopian state of oppression.
I also favor a full redemption of eugenics as a means of improving the human capital of this country, although I’m ambivalent about the extent to which this could, or should, be achieved via coercive measures. I have no special attachment to “bodily autonomy” or “sexual freedom” as important philosophical considerations, but I’m cognizant of the limits of feasibility when it comes to applying those sorts of measures to a modern populace marinated so throughly in feminism, egalitarianism, and dystopian media like GATTACA and Brave New World. Eugenics is still fiercely opposed on both the mainstream right and left, and I don’t want to get over my skis in terms of over-committing to a wildly unpopular proposal.
It's a running joke with my wife and I.
Is eugenics is still fiercely opposed on both the mainstream right and left? What's with the embryo screening then?
I won't claim to be more authoritarian, and am pleased to know there are others at least as authoritarian.
If only MHGA, was more pronaunceable. Would you expand the death penalty to public corruption? I'd would have rather seen Judge Michael Conahan hanged than pardoned.
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