site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So how to break that ? Change legislation ?

Arizona's voucher system. Any public school aged kid in the state can instead get a yearly check for $7,000 that they can take to a private school or use for homeschooling. You can't reform the public school system but you can let people opt out entirely.

Now, bear with me here, my public school experience was overall good. But if you're talking about preventing the abuse of children, I think you're going to run into the problem of Child Abduction Is Not Funny. As much ideological weirdness happens in schools, and as infuriating as these incidents are, they're infuriating because it's public officials that are supposed to be accountable being unaccountable. Like being killed by a seatbelt or airbag or police officer.

But, most child abuse happens at home. It's mostly the parents and close family doing it, and at school there's people who will notice bruises, and so long as the parent isn't too Intersectional, they will investigate. I'm just not a fan of widespread homeschooling; the more of it there is, the harder it becomes to audit, and I don't trust un-audited homeschooling

The natural state of children is to be with other children doing children stuff. It's unfortunate that school is the main place where other children are.

Uh, isn’t the vast majority of child abuse in the home stepdads or stepbrothers, a group that is very underrepresented in homeschooling?

It's a coup complete problem.

There is no breaking it. You need parallel institutions from the ground up. Parallel school, parallel training, parallel gatekeeping, which is the most important part. You can't just start a new school, and connect it to the pipeline of ideological enemies being churned out of the institutions you fled from. You need to actively keep them the fuck out.

Unfortunately, keeping them out is likely to be "discriminatory", so you are just fucked. If you even try you'll get sued into oblivion. We simply are not permitted to have institutions which serve our needs.

But you can't use legislative change to starve these institutions so they wither?

We tried. Youngkin specifically rolled back a lot of these policies. People are no longer allowed to use whatever bathroom they please and schools are no longer allowed to secretly transition people's children. This is something he is allowed to do with executive power.

The schools just said "We don't care, we do what we want." It's probably going to be tied up in court until they can get a (D) in the office who will make it all go away. Northern VA is chocked full of branch covidians who still drive alone in their cars wearing masks, and believe Republican's are literally murdering people, on purpose, with their pro family, pro liberty policies. Recently my district was gerrymandered to take a 95% Republican county, and attach just enough of Fairfax County to it so that it will reliably seat a far left Democrat. I've been effectively completely denied representation. There is zero overlap between the interest of the county I live in, and the county that got to choose my representative. I'm fucked.

Northern VA is chocked full of branch covidians

You know better. If you don't want people calling you a Rethuglican or a Magtard, you don't get to do this.

If the shoe fits...

Listen, if I were advocating for Republicans to rise up violently, Rethuglican wouldn't be a bad fit. If I were advocating that Trump was still a genius, and this was all part of his 43d chess, Magtard wouldn't be a bad fit. And if you commute 90 minutes to work, alone, in your car, with a mask on, branch covidian fits.

Am I on some fucking short list of people you feel compelled fucking annoy whenever they use slightly creative language? Do you know what the no-no words are ahead of time, or do you just see myself enjoying writing too much and decide to be a killjoy?

I didn't call a user here a branch covidian, I didn't make sweeping generalization. I described a specific set of behaviors and beliefs, and used an appropriate descriptor for it. If you don't drive 90 minutes to work alone wearing a mask, be not offended, be not inflamed.

Am I on some fucking short list of people you feel compelled fucking annoy whenever they use slightly creative language? Do you know what the no-no words are ahead of time, or do you just see myself enjoying writing too much and decide to be a killjoy?

Dude, if I had a dogecoin for every problem child who whines "Why are you picking on me?" every time they get modded.

You are far from a newbie, I know who you were back on old reddit, so you've seen me mod ever so many people besides yourself in very similar contexts, and I am not the only one who's modded you for this kind of thing. Take the rap and chill.

While I share your views here, I'd also ask that we don't call people names, since that's liable to contribute to driving off those who might actually argue against our views, which in turn is the entire purpose of the Motte. Few people will join for productive disagreement when they see their side being insulted from the get-go.

Well we have to call them something. I would like to call them something they would self identify with. But the problem is they think of themelves as good people and not part of a group.

I'm not the creative type, so how about something descriptive? "Maskers" for simplicity? "Hardcore maskwearers"? "The forever-masked"? IMO it should be possible to find a moniker that's accurate without being outright offensive - and religios or cultish connotations will offend that particular group, I imagine.

More comments

I get where you’re coming from, but pejorative names go against the spirit of this forum. We’re here for smart, civil discussion, and your posts fit the smart part. I get that you’re in a fucked up spot for fucked up reasons, but try to respect the rules that keep us from degenerating into endless, unproductive rants.