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 -
I don't think there is an intended recourse. I think the court was uncomfortable with the idea that some judge in Kansas City whom nobody has ever heard of could issue a national injunction preventing the president from exercising power anywhere, and they just ran with it. There was some suggestion that class actions should be used instead, but class actions are notoriously difficult due to class certification problems, and it seemed like the court was recommending class actions precisely because of these problems.
If I were litigating these matters, I'd take a "flood the zone" approach that would call into relief the practical problems of prohibiting national injunctions. It's just as easy for me to file a suit with 100 plaintiffs as it is one with 1 plaintiff, so I'd file suits with hundreds of named plaintiffs in friendly jurisdictions. I'd amend these suits regularly, as more plaintiffs came forward. Do this in enough districts and the multidistrict litigation panel will get involved and consolidate all the pending suits to one district for pretrial matters. If this happens, I then start filing suits in the unfriendly districts, which will immediately get stayed for enforcement under the standing order from the MDL judge.
If the cases aren't referred to MDL, which is a possibility if I'm only filing one case per district, it isn't necessarily a loss, because now I have 94 cases running in parallel. If more than one attorney takes this strategy, then it complicates things further. You could end up with hundreds of suits running in parallel, with hundreds of plaintiffs each, creating one massive headache for the government that will take forever to sort out and make the administration expend resources that it wouldn't have to if it were just one case in one district.
More options
Context Copy link