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 -
NYT has a primer on all the corruption that Trump has been engaging in:
Beyond this article, you could probably add a bunch more, like how White House aides are buying and selling stocks suspiciously timed around tariff announcements to make big profits.
The response to all of this from MAGA has been next to nonexistent. A handful of people have implied that maaaaaaaybe Trump shouldn't be doing this, but none of them remotely push the issue. When the left try to criticize this, most of MAGA either retorts with the broken record of Shellenberger arguments, or otherwise claims something Biden did was somehow worse, and Trump's corruption is implied to be good, actually. Isn't it wonderful living in an era when negative partisanship is the only political force that matters? Scandals and corruption used to be a thing that allowed the other party to come in and try to do better, but now they're used as a justification for the other side becoming even worse.
We've been living in a banana republic for 30 years high time we got a banana republic style president.
I don't agree with this at all. Populists have hallucinated that there's massive amounts of corruption already going on, but in reality Trump is taking it to a new level of magnitude and blatantness.
"Corruption" is itself a motte/bailey issue, because on the one hand there is the general (and nonspecific idea) of "dishonest gain/graft/abuse of power" and on the other is the very specific criteria of "that's illegal." And when you're defending, the question is "is this legal" and when it's the other side doing it the question is "does this seem at least a little bit sketchy to the reporter with a deadline."
So everything alleged in the NYT article [AFAIK, sans insider trading] is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt, just as a major defense contractor making a practice of hiring former Pentagon procurement officials who selected for them in contract awards is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt.
Now - I actually think "there are massive amounts of corruption going on" is a defensible position. Just look at the acknowledged and prosecuted cases in the defense industry, which publicly produces major malfeasance with gigantic price tags roughly once a decade.
But whether the Fat Leonard scandal or similar incidents pegs as "massive" to you depends a lot on if you are outraged at a few tens of millions of dollars here or there or consider that the cost of doing business. And when discussing "corruption" people alleging it often go beyond cases that result in a successful prosecution. Look at the problems with falsification of data, plagiarism, and non-replication in the academic community. Is this "corruption"? I would say yes, at least with the fraudulent data cases - abusing your position to accept money and then producing a fraudulent product should count as corruption, no? Yet the issue becomes fuzzier in the less blatant cases (is accepting money to make a shoddy study corruption? Is intentional plagiarism? Inadvertent plagiarism?) What about setting up a nonprofit as your own personal piggy bank (examples can be trotted forth on both sides) - the man on the street likely answers "yes" even though the behavior is (or can be) quite legal.
In short,
Corruption in the military is particularly hard to deal with since much of it is secret, and it's not like a society can just totally disband its military if things go too wrong. Perun has a good video on this, with his bit at the end being particularly pertinent. Even though corruption will always exist to some degree, it's much better to live in a society where it's at least not blatant and generally seen as a bad thing that should be dealt with, as opposed to a country like Russia where it broadly runs rampant.
Exploding or minimizing the definition of "corruption" largely seem like post-hoc justifications for bad behavior rather than genuine attempts to understand the issue. If the valences were reversed, e.g. if Hunter Biden received a $200M jet and gave it to Joe, do you think Republicans would make a stink about it? I certainly do.
It depends. In the UK, I would vastly prefer the blatant corruption of money under the table to get construction contracts done over the stealth corruption of planning permission restrictions in favour of incumbent property-owning rentseekers.
What you mean is that you prefer the implementation of a very bad policy (the build-nothing UK planning framework) to be undermined by corruption. The current policy is not "stealth corrupt" - it is working as advertised for the NIMBY voters who voted for it.
This is a special case of "competent and evil is more dangerous than incompetent and evil", with corruption being an effective competence-reducer.
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