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 -
It’s still hard to believe, even despite intellectually knowing why, how many Americans and even Mottizens display an astonishing capacity to rationalize bad foreign actors. China wants Taiwan primarily out of essentially hurt feelings; the fact that this is a batshit insane reason to start a war over a territory that has self governed with no major problems for over 30 years is so outrageous many are tempted to look for deeper meaning when there is none. Even if the US literally sent 10x the arms to Taiwan, do you know the impact that would have on Chinese national security? Almost literally zero. Zero. Nothing. Nil. Zilch. Nada.
Hell, Taiwan doesn’t even present a regional influence threat. They don’t and couldn’t project power into the South China Sea for example. The only vague threat is as a refuge for Hong Kongers and other dissidents, and even that is far overblown.
Well, maybe some of it has to do with America’s short memory when it comes to the potency of war fever. A lot of Americans try to pretend they didn’t support the Iraq war, but the opinion polls at the time don’t lie. I’ll grant there was some government deception of course but that doesn’t fully explain it.
I am curious how you feel about the
War of Northern ImperialismCivil War: the American founding documents talk a lot about "just consent of the governed" but when some of the (state governments as proxies for) regions decided they no longer consented, Lincoln sent in troops. My own thoughts are complicated: I think the US is, for a variety of reasons (ending slavery, combined economic power) better off for the Union winning, but it does seem against the general principle of self-governance. It's not even hard to find takes today justifying curtailing the rights of the region on the basis of the actions of their forefathers.This matters - in no Confederate state did the pro-secession majority of whites represent a majority of the whole population. The Confederate states were (in most cases explicitly) seceding in order to prevent self-governance by numerical majorities of their multiracial populations.
You can argue that secession was legal based on respect for actual existing sovereignty, but that gets you into the obscure historico-legal argument about the de jure division of sovereignty between the Feds and the States and whether the 1789 Constitution was intended to be irrevocable.
To justify Southern slavery at all, you need to start with a position of "No Good, only Law" which means you are arguing about what rights the South did have under the Constitution, not what rights they should have had. The only rights the southern slavers should have had under the general principles we believe in in 2025 were the right to a fair trial and the right to execution by long-drop hanging or some other civilised method.
But the slaves weren't citizens. Non-citizens don't get to be part of a ruling majority.
You might have a point if the Confederacy had suddenly deprived the slaves of citizenship after secession in order to gain a majority of voting citizens, but that's not what had happened--it was already accepted, even by the north and even before secession, that slaves weren't and didn't need to be citizens. When the south seceded, the secessionists were a majority by this preexisting, accepted, standard. The north can't just change their mind and decide that slaves have to count as citizens in order to deprive the south of legitimacy.
And women couldn't vote either. That doesn't mean they are not part of the whole population, or the voting minorities were not preventing self-governance by numerical majorities.
You are arguing by a different standard. I can appreciate why, but it is a different standard. The political legitimacy of the Confederacy derived from claiming to represent the legitimate will of 'the people' is certainly up for dispute when 'the people' is retroactively gerrymandered to exclude people who might disagree after making a claim to represent them.
But it wasn't "retroactively gerrymandered", that's my point! It was accepted at the time, and by the north, before secession, that slaves weren't citizens and couldn't vote. Nothing changed retroactively.
Ah, so the north's government wasn't legitimate either?
Is the current US government illegitimate because illegal aliens can't vote, and if they could we probably wouldn't have elected Trump?
And the point that people who were denied representation don't get to have the legitimacy of their implicit support invoked remains. As does the point that they are, in fact, part of regional population majorities.
Franchisement and representation of non-voters was a significant aspect of the foundational american political disputes. The 3/5ths compromise resulted from the slavers wanting slaves to count as much as a citizen for legitimate representation in the political system.
Sure, why not? It's not like Union (il)legitimacy affects whether the Confederacy was or was not legitimate. Independent variables.
We could question whether legitimacy is a binary state (legitimate or not legitimate), or a status of degrees (more or less legitimate), but if you don't want to stake a position I won't force you.
If you define the scope of legitimacy to include illegal aliens, certainly. Hence why various pro-migration coalitions support things like giving Congressional representation based on non-citizen (and thus including illegal) residents, and why other parts of their coalitions are very uninterested in proof-of-citizenship requirements in elections that are routinely popular with the electorate that opponents claim to be defending against disenfranchisement.
Sure, why not?
They wanted slaves to count in giving the states a vote, but they didn't want the slaves themselves to vote.
But then you just have one illegitimate government invading another illegitimate government. Probably every war at that time was like that. If every government is illegitimate, how is it even meaningful to say that some particular side is a valid target because they're illegitimate?
(How do you feel about the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor? Hawaii was part of the US because it had a coup by people favorable to American interests. You can make a reasonable argument that the US's rule over Hawaii is illegitimate. So was it okay for the Japanese to attack it?)
Well, I didn't expect you to bite this bullet. Not even the Democrats say that Trump is an illegitimate president because the illegal aliens weren't allowed to vote against him. And in the end, this standard just turns into "every government is illegitimate", in which case being illegitimate says nothing useful about the two sides.
By treating legitimacy as a matter of degrees, rather than as a binary state. Same as with most justification categories.
It is very rare for any party to be purely in the right or wrong by any given judgement criteria. That does not mean judgement is impossible. Nor does it mean moral equivalence is necessary.
If it makes your expectations feel better, I didn't. I did say 'If you define...'
I don't restrict myself to your definition. I am just nodding and agreeing that, yes, if you set a condition in which IF X THEN Y, then when X then Y.
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