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 -
It's makes way more sense to me to compare the budget of one museum to another museum. Not to compare one museum to a system of 16 other museums. The fact that the Holocaust Museum, which focuses almost exclusively on Jews, gets twice as much federal funding as the museum for all of the rest of American history combined looks unfair to me. It's not like we just really care about genocides in the abstract, there's no Armenian genocide museum or one for the Tutsi or the Kurds or any of the other thousands of ethnicities that have been mass murdered at some point in history.
The point is that if you look at one museum among seventeen and note that it receives more funding than some and less than others, it looks a lot less outrageous than SS's cherry-picked comparison of the USHH with one of those other seventeen museums. He chose the National Museum of American History specifically because he wanted to imply "We elevate Jews above American history." When you consider the National Museum of American History is just 1/16 of the Smithsonian, individual museum budgets look a lot less like the Elders of Zion deciding what gets priority and more like Congress parceling out money according to standard funding requests and budget wrangling.
You can of course make an argument that USHH should not exist, or should not receive federal funding, if you wish, but "the USHH receiving slightly more money than the National Museum of American History is evidence of Jewish cultural domination" is a dumb argument that makes no sense in context. The relative funding of all museums getting federal grants is not racked and stacked according to how "important" we think each museum is compared to one another.
As I've said, it received $244 million from public and private sources. That is not "more than some and less than others", that is vastly more than all others. I have also said that this fact indicates a prioritization of the subject matter we consider sacred.
If the museum to the Victims of Communism had a $244 million dollar budget in combined public and private support, and the USHMM had a $1 million budget in combined public and private support, I would not say, like you do, "Oh well, that's just due to the way the government processes budget requests." I would also attribute that to a meaningful difference in the cultural narratives we consider sacred compared to the present reality.
In this alternate universe where the Victims of Communism museum had $244 million in support and the USHMM had $1 million support, how could you see that happening without a major cultural change in this alternate world?
Even assuming this is true (I haven't actually looked at the balance sheet for every Smithsonian, let alone every museum in the country), you are intentionally conflating public and private funding.
If you want to make an argument that Jews and Israel (I assume those are the main sources of private contributions) contribute a lot of money to the Holocaust Museum, make that argument, but it's hardly surprising, and would not be surprising or nefarious but completely understandable if you allow, for the sake of argument, that the Holocaust actually happened. Therefore it is not good evidence that the Holocaust didn't happen and is only being propped up as a "sacred symbol" pushed upon us by Jews.
I see that little switcheroo you did again. If we talk about how the government processes budget requests, we are talking specifically about what we (the American taxpayers) are paying for.
If you want to compare every single private institution in the country and how much money they receive from various private sources, we can do that, but it doesn't quite fit the narrative you are trying to construct here, does it?
I would assume victims of communism would be more likely to contribute money to a museum to the Victims of Communism, and victims of the Holocaust would be more likely to contribute money to a museum to victims of the Holocaust. You have to make several leaps of logic that you are studiously trying to keep us from scrutinizing too closely to go from "The Holocaust Museum gets a lot of money" to "Jews control the narrative and our priorities."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link