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.
I don't think so, no, but... if it bothers you (does it bother you?), why engage in it?
Trump cannot seem to do anything at all without the corporate news media screaming that it is a sign of "scandals and corruption" and most of the time it turns out to be nothing. As a direct consequence, when it does look like something, I feel like the best response available to me is to wait and see. The news media has repeatedly turned out to be a bunch of shrill partisans who spread misinformation without hesitation and then run a retraction three months later at the bottom of page B17.
Particularly the New York Times--it's awfully hard to overlook their reluctance to write clearly about it when a (D) is involved. Book and film deals happen all the time, including with sitting members of SCOTUS. I still haven't seen any really convincing evidence, either way, that the Qatari plane deal is out of the ordinary (and apparently it may have been discussed with the previous administration). I'm more concerned about the cryptocurrency and influence peddling, but the only people crying wolf about it have been crying wolf for so long, that I don't feel any urgency at their alarm.
That, really, is why an era of "negative partisanship only" bothers me--because at this point, if we really did have a deeply corrupt politician in office, how would I know? I can't trust the corporate news media. I can't trust its openly partisan competitors. I can't trust the government itself, clearly. The moment journalists and FBI agents and every lawyer and judge to the left of Neil Gorsuch took it upon themselves--often, explicitly--to defeat Trump no matter what, every story, every press release, every speech and investigation and judicial declaration, became just another piece of culture war ammunition. Trump's first term was routinely prophesied to end with concentration camps for Muslims, war with North Korea, and the total economic collapse of the United States. Those prophesies were clearly idiotic at the time (at least to me), but at least they were happening in the absence of fixed priors on what a Trump presidency would tend to look like. People today lack that excuse.
I don't like Trump, I've never been a Trump supporter, I think he is perhaps the worst thing to happen to the Republican Party in living memory. But that doesn't justify the New York Times functioning as the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. If you want to live in an era where negative partisanship isn't the only political force that matters, you're not going to get there by writing posts in the Motte consisting entirely of negative partisanship.
Correct. Of the things listed, the Sun story looks the worst -- except if you know that the Biden administration (in which Sun's investigation was started) was heavily into crushing crypto by regulatory means and the Trump administration is openly the opposite, so there's no definite quid-pro-quo here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link