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 -
So exactly as he said.
There is no other form political power comes in. Even negative freedoms are specifically rules that deny some people what they want.
Asking for politics that are not coercitive is a ridiculous standard that not even anarchists abide by.
Yes, but the form of the justification is important in maintaining a functional liberty-minded society, in which the social contract is something like "You and I probably have different ideas and values as to how we should live our lives, so let's just agree on a minimal set of coercive laws so that we can be peaceful neighbors."
Now functionally, in practice, there can be severe disagreements as to what should be part of the minimum set of laws; there's non-ridiculous arguments to be made that allowing people to stockpile a military arsenal can make their neighbor fearful and not able to coexist peacefully, or that someone removing "just a clump of cells" is depriving a being of life. But they're couched as arguments over what is the minimum set of laws to allow diverse viewpoints and lifestyles. Even if in practice they can be the same, they are not presented as a naked "Ok, now that I have the backing of a majority you better adopt the lifestyle I want you to have or else..." I guess in a spirited debate it's possible to accuse the other side of doing it. But to resort to unironically, unashamedly doing it is crossing some serious lines.
Because at that point, the polite covenent of let's just be neighbors and leave one another alone is irreparably broken.
You are perhaps more correct than you realize.
[...]
No, I do realise all of that. But the forms and niceties are important, even if they are just pretending. If you pretend to tolerate the other for long enough, you start believing you do. And when enough people believe it, something magical happens (or rather, something terrible doesn't happen); your society becomes more stable and its constituents don't jump to civil war anytime they lose an election.
Let us suppose I rigorously observe the forms and niceties. The other side flouts them. This is regrettable, but mistakes and friction are inevitable.
I continue to observe the forms and niceties. The other side continues to flout them. This happens repeatably, to the point that I can predict in advance with excellent accuracy where and when the flouting will occur, the specific mechanisms used to organize, implement, and protect it. This flouting constantly costs me value, and the value it costs me is increasing rapidly over time.
Your claim seems to be that the correct response is to grin and bear it, to accept that justice will never be done and that this is okay because mumble mumble.
There are contexts in which this is an answer I, personally, am willing to accept: "Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother when he sins against me?"
This is not an answer that you should rely on to maintain our current, observably-shaky condition of peace and plenty in the long term. Such reliance is extremely foolish and extremely dangerous. I invite you to contemplate the political history of the phrase "no justice, no peace", and to examine its prominence in the political landscape. Examine the position of John Brown within our society and political mythos.
What if the other side bends the niceties, but is still constrained by them to a point? You're better off with a devil who's compelled to keep up a facade of lawfulness than a devil who's acting completely unconstrained. Sure, it sucks to be stuck in this kind of asymmetrical equilibrium where you have to completely refrain from rule-breaking just because it compels your opponent to do less rule-breaking than he otherwise would. But you might still want to keep that equilibrium in place, if you have reason to believe the opponent has a sufficient advantage that a completely unconstrained version of them could squash you.
To put it another way, taking the blows is usually a better strategy than declaring all-out war. The fact that the other guy is feeling free to pummel you is a pretty good sign that they're confident in their ability to win (or at least ensure MAD) if you did, foolishly, fight back with lethal force.
Of course. Then the discussion advances to where we draw the line between "we can live with this" and "we cannot live with this", and it becomes very important to have a clear understanding of exactly what you're being asked to tolerate. Hence why @gattsuru and I have spent considerable effort over a long period of time tracking the facts on the ground, and why, more and more over time, the conversations here are predictable in advance. At some point in the relatively near future, the Supreme Court is going to hand another win to Blue Tribe, and then our elites will turn to Red Tribe and expect them to accept this win as decisive, and then will be shocked and horrified when Red Tribe fails to comply. How dare they! Don't they understand that we have norms? Well, no, "We" don't, because those norms died here, even if realization of their death doesn't actually dawn until Blue Tribe attempts to draw on them and so renders their absence legible via New York Times headlines.
The other guy is deluded, and their delusion has been sustained by ironclad control of the knowledge-production apparatus that, it turns out, has just about rusted through. If we play by the rules Blue Tribe plays by, Blue Tribe has essentially no chance of surviving the ensuing conflict, while our chances of surviving are excellent; thrive vs survive, no?
Blue Tribe's inability to understand this fact and thus leaning heavily on their supposed strength is one of the great risk factors dominating the present crisis.
This is what I dispute. If we're talking about gun control - sure, the 2nd Am has been bent pretty badly to allow Blue states to effectively ban at least some arms that should clearly be protected. But no Blue government actually passed a federal ban on firearms. I guarantee you that in a world where everybody ignored the Constitution without a second thought, they would have tried at some point. The way I see it, your choice is between selective application of the second amendment, and it simply being torn down.
I don't actually believe that. The Blue Tribe has better liars, better loophole-finders, and above all else a much better social shaming apparatus. It has a nonzero ability to affect Red-aligned normies' worldview, while Red think-tanks are pretty useless at shifting Blue-aligned normies' Overton window. If everyone fights maximally dirty, then, all my personal opinions aside, I'm betting Blue.
(Of course, perhaps we're operating at different levels of metaphor, and you meant the Blues would lose a literal bullets-flying civil war? That's a very different conversation, and frankly one I'm not sure has very much to do with the issue at hand.)
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