site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

More on Sam Brinton:

  • He has been caught stealing luggage at another airport:

An energy department official is accused of stealing luggage from Harry Reid International Airport, the 8 News Now Investigators learned Thursday.

  • His conversion therapy torture stories may be a complete or partial fabrication:

Was Brinton’s story contrived or embellished to manipulate high-profile leaders and elevate themself into the upper echelons of LGBTQ+ activism?

Looks like this upstanding citizen has serious issues with the concept of truth and personal property. Which probably could be identified when he was vetted for the top Federal administration position, if anybody dared to vet "the first non-binary, gay drag queen to hold a federal government leadership position". At least he wasn't dealing with something important, like radioactive materials...

"The red flags regarding Brinton were overwhelming and obvious to all who cared to see them" is such an incredible line. Just the sheer audacity of instantly flipping from defense and deflection to tossing him under the bus without even blinking.

The interesting part is that there are still zero other articles about this entire incident outside of the right wing press, to the point that wikipedia was trying to delete all mention of it as "no reliable sources verify." So there's a system for absorbing and synthesizing a response to "enemy news" without officially acknowledging it exists.

I"m very interested in this. I have a sense that the extent to which WP's "Reliable sources" document is used throughout media and government is deep and unprecedented. I noted that Matt Taibbi saw 'reliable sources' cited numerous times in his Twitter investigation and because we know that many of the major tech platforms interface with WP directly (Ex. Google, Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa--a service I believe they pay for) it seems like there are dots that need to be investigated for connection. The specific document at Wikipedia is a nightmare of liberal bias (I'd consider myself a liberal, fwiw) and directly impacting the truthiness of any article related to modern personalities and events.

I think it's very likely this same document is acting as a source for everyone...why? Because people wouldn't do the same work twice if they didn't have to, particularly if it promoted the agenda they already wanted to purport. Anyway, I think there's a huge story about Wikipedia just waiting to be broken. I'd really like to know how WP doubled it's annual income since 2016, but don't have a pro statista account. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311370/wikimedia-foundation-annual-funding/