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 -
Let's talk shitty policing!
The story starts back in August, when police (specifically, Adams County Sherriff's Department of Ohio) raided the home of Joseph "Afroman" Foreman on a warrant for narcotics and kidnapping. Perhaps they thought that the author of "Because I got high" would be a slam dunk, but they walked out with a couple roaches and a few grand in cash.
https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/adams-county/rapper-afromans-ohio-home-raided-by-adams-county-sheriffs-office
When they discovered a grand total of jack and shit, they were forced to return most of the money, except the stuff they stole.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/adams-county-sheriff-comes-up-400-short-returning-cash-to-afroman-after-home-raid/ar-AA14IJPa
Reason covered the case here:
https://reason.com/2022/12/05/cops-return-cash-seized-from-afroman-in-bogus-drug-raid-with-400-missing/
And the man himself has weighed in with a music video that is all security footage of the raid titled "Will you help me repair my door?"
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y
Down with qualified immunity, the legalized piracy known as civil asset forfeiture, and the self-funding militarized security state.
This is a pretty shitty thing to be able to do, and this would absolutely be a cause worth fighting for...
...the problem is that the whole concept of police reform is now inextricably linked in the minds of at least half the populace with total police abolition, lighter sentences, less bail, decriminalising hard drugs, violent criminals out on the streets by lunchtime, rioting, arson, looting, violent takeover of city streets and public areas and anti-white ideology. The whole subject is fucking radioactive now. I wouldn't lend my name to any such cause, for fear that it would, like nearly all causes, massively expand its mandate beyond the very specific issue I want to correct. I don't want to empower any of the other garbage.
In the UK, we have different problems, in that our police don't spend any time investigating actual crimes like burglaries, but will happily waste days and weeks chasing down speech crimes on twitter or illegal football stream watchers, but there's the same obstacle to overcoming them. To even breach the subject would require, at least to me, some kind of cast-iron guarantee that whoever was overseeing the reform was 120% free of any sort of wokery whatsoever, and that's something I can say about almost nobody in our political class. Myself and a lot of other right-wing people I talk to sense the formalisation of the two-tier quasi-racialised justice system that we already suspect exists is pretty imminent.
The trust is completely gone, and there's very little I can think of that would bring it back.
Are/Were there even any politicians and activists out there who are/were a) anti-woke b) proponents of police reform?
Truss made noises about "streets, not tweets" but of course nothing actually happened with that, as per the usual Tory party MO of talking big about issues and then doing nothing, or even the opposite.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In the UK, I'd gladly take defunding the police, even if it's woke that wants to defund them. Functioning police > No police > woke lockdown-enforcing thug squad.
More options
Context Copy link
Good news: Most of these positions have effectively zero public support, with the possible exception of bail reform.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-share-of-americans-say-they-want-more-spending-on-police-in-their-area/
This poll was done at the height of the Floyd riots.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/reuters-ipsos-civil-unrest-george-floyd-2020-06-02
A similar number of Americans (79%) say that the property damage caused by some demonstrators undermines the original intent of the protest’s call for justice in George Floyd’s death.
Republicans (83%) and Democrats (77%) agree that property damage ultimately undermines the cause of the demonstrators.
And yet it all happened anyway, with the media cheerleading it on while running cover, and authorities tripping over themselves to declare racism a pandemic to enable people to break coof rules to go out and continue doing it.
More options
Context Copy link
When you're talking about "effectively zero public support", effectively supporting is very different from explicitly supporting. People can say "I don't want violence", but have standards which, in effect, enable violence.
No, I mean that these positions are as likely to ascent to power as the Mises wing Libertarian party. Sure, some people probably want their neighborhoods looted and burned to the ground. I'm not especially worried about them gaining a consensus.
My understanding is that, while plenty of the rioters were tourists, it was mostly poor majority-minority neighborhoods that took the brunt of the damage, with the rest hitting downtown areas and almost none in affluent suburbs.
My takeaway was 'guns remain an amazing deterrent against mob violence, at least as long ss you're the local majority'
More options
Context Copy link
And when the next round of race riots erupts will the police and national guard be allowed to put them down or not?
Floyd was after the original Fergusson riots. There were the LA riots in the 90's and of course the 70s race riots. It seems like the consensus is to let them happen. Any electoral victories the Republicans get will be temporary if even that. Even after The Floyd riots; Biden won the election, and the Republicans couldn't even take the Senate in the mid-terms.
Biden is one of the architects of civil asset forfeiture in the first place. There are many reasons why any one person may have voted for him, but criminal justice reform is not going to be at the top of their list.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The point is that people may not want their neighborhoods burned down, but they may support policies whose effect is to make it easier to burn down their neigborhoods.
(And it's not as clearcut as that anyway, or you'd never get even 20%. 20% isn't big, but it's far more than the lizardman constant.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What does polling matter when the policy we got are the things you say poll poorly.
Part of it is we did have a George Soros coup of DA offices. Where relatively modest money could win those offices when no one was paying attention.
And places like San Fran have legalized hard drugs.
I mean it’s cool people say they don’t like the stuff but it’s become the policy of the land.
What did Soros or his foundation do?
More options
Context Copy link
This conflates national and federal polities. And at the Federal level, you have the Koch and Federalist cartels to undermine the public for conservatives, balancing things out. The US is a divided nation, but its between 60/40 and 50/50. Nevertheless, what flies in California won't pass muster in Alabama.
What have the Koch and federalist cartels done that balances out the progressive sweep of da offices? Or the capture of academia - hell, all of education?
Also what do you mean by this?
Yeah. Something like 90+% are liberals, which is super unhealthy. I imagine its not that different in Hollywood.
I think echo chambers like themotte have a skewed perception of reality ie lots of doomerism over the intellectually bankrupt ideology that can broadly be described as "wokeism". It's a problem, but polling suggests its near the fringes.
The nation is approximately 50% Democrat; 50% Republican. The commenter I was responding to was hesitant to endorse legislation he agrees with because it is too ideologically aligned with people who want to see more arson, looting, and violent crime. This strikes me as insane, and, at the very least, is contradicted by whatever data we have. Unsurprisingly, only a small minority of people want their neighborhoods burned to the ground while they are hunted by violent criminals.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
These things don’t poll well anywhere but yet they happened. Black communities wanted more policing but less and more murder.
Also everyone is going to say they don’t want anti-white ideology. But many support affirmative action or picking a Supreme Court justice because she’s black and female. Promoting blacks ahead of whites is just anti white ideology yet no one is going to come out and say they are anti-white.
The goalposts were
The data indicate that, for most of these things, public support falls a far south 50%. ~85% of Americans want police funding to remain the same or increase. More people want it to increase substantially than to decrease substantially.
Ok so what’s your point? I agree public support is lower. But we got those policies anyway.
Imagine describing to an alien that the official policy of the US is to abolish the police, decrimnalize hard drugs, endorse looting, arson, rioting, the release of violent criminals, and the violent take over of streets. Do you think they would have a accurate picture of policy in the USA?
More options
Context Copy link
~15% tracks pretty well to the places that got such policies. The ones where people would rather not, largely didn't.
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
When the French government abolished the death penalty in 1981, the majority of the French people opposed this move. Yet it still happened. A democracy steamroling popular opinion, to be lenient towards criminals isn't unprecedented.
Mentioning for our American readers just because it's a fun fact... The guillotine continued to be the French method of execution until the end of capital punishment. The last person to be guillotined in France was in 1977.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm sure exceptions to the rule exist, but we should deal in probabilities and stive for accurate piors. The president ran on being against the death penalty, and was elected. In my examples, I'm talking about sub 20% popular support. I don't know what it was in France.
More options
Context Copy link
They still do by the way, a 2020 survey put it at 55% support.
When some claim the death penalty to be "Sensible Centrism" they're not kidding.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm only tenuously familiar with policing in England but i think America has a pretty uniquely dysfunctional policing system. While it's probably true that police reform is a nonstarter for some conservatives for the reasons you mentioned, it also doesn't matter. When localized police reforms get passed the cops can straight up decide they don't wanna do things differently and there's nobody to tell them to do otherwise. Presumably there is some systematic machinery in place to wrangle openly rogue police chiefs but i don't know that i've ever seen it in action. I know a sheriff can be voted out but that's a pretty limited and late type of solution. Governors can try to cut their funding, but that's exactly the point we are at right now, and i think having a pressure valve that comes before "public struggle over funding for necessary utility" would be extremely useful.
Police and their unions are also extremely averse to being burdened with additional accountability and responsibility. Take bodycam legislation for instance, what stance should the union argue for? It's not always in the best interests of the officers to be required to have body cams on, but cameras provide valuable evidence that is hard to surreptitiously tamper with. The union is now at a crossroads between defending clearer justice or arguing for the benefit of its members. I don't fault cops for acting in their own interest, they are human after all, but when we're talking about Civil Forfeiture it's hard for me to separate "i should be able to take this as evidence and then keep it" with "i should be allowed to steal shit".
To your point about the wokeness of the justice system, it frustrates me that progressives have provided such an idiotic target to fight against. Wanting to perform restorative justice by underpolicing ethnic communities is such a bad idea that i have a hard time understanding how its supposed to work even in an intersectional feminist worldview. Luckily we are unlikely to find out because hardcore progressive police reform ideas get almost no traction in the voting booth.
With that out of the way
There never was trust between conservatives and police reform- the police have been in near perfect alignment with conservative political goals for as long as i can remember. Thinking some recent breach of trust is causing the tension between conservative voters and police reform seems extremely misguided to me.
In many cases the problem isn't chiefs (who can usually be fired and are often under political pressure) but union leaders (who can't and are incentivized to stand up for their members, even if that means defending questionable behavior or outright malfeasance).
As with many circumstances, moralizing about the people involve is not particularly useful. Whether or not all cops are bastards is less relevant than the kind of behavior is incentivized. A system needs to be able to stand up to some degree of bad faith participation and anti-social behavior; both in the sense that it can't crumble if people behave less than ideally, but also in that it needs to be able to prevent bad behaviors from entrenching themselves. Self-policing has a poor record for accountability for a reason - bad actors don't like whistleblowers, and if you don't have a culture of accountability on top of a decent system of accountability it's easy for whistleblowers to get tarred as traitors while bad behavior gets glossed over or rewarded. I would not be surprised if effective police reform in the US requires de facto purging of of problematic departments concurrently with creating separate oversight bodies. Not because everyone involved is particularly evil but because resistance to accountability has become entrenched.
Re: bodycams in particular, IIRC there is evidence that bodycams don't do much to reduce police misconduct, indicating that either perpetrators aren't concerned about being disciplined or that they're not the kind of person to take it into account.
Or the third option, where the police have succesfully gotten all their benefits of bodycams(exonerating them if they do wrong) without any of the costs(catching their abuses). This has been ongoing for a while.
That's what I meant with my first point: if the disciplinary process is dysfunctional (misconduct gets excused or soft pedaled, prosecutors don't want to bring charges against officers, "my camera malfunctioned", etc...) the supposed incentive to behave better is lost, even if you have video of the incident.
More options
Context Copy link
what abuses? They're wearing a camera, so unless it's turned off, you get any abuse they engage on tape to charge them with.
Maybe they aren't actually abusing people that much?
They get to turn them off or cover them up just fine, is the issue. A cop who wants exonerated will leave his on and have the evidence released. A cop who's shady will turn his off/cover his up and cheerily proceed as normal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Body cams can also really help cops accused of untoward behavior. In fact, some anti cop organizations have pushed eliminating body cams purportedly in the name of privacy but one wonders if it is because the footage can contradict the narrative (eg body cam in Ohio where girl was shot right before she stabbed another girl).
absolutely, and some anti police organizations are super insane. In a vacuum i can understand privacy concerns with some slice of police bodycam recordings (we can call these PBR's and make jokes about cracking open a cold one). Say you get a noise complaint, the cops show up and end up recording the inside of your home, this seems like a bit of a violation of your right to privacy, but not something that i think sours the whole idea of bodycams.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Here is a good punting off point for this video. It's Robby Soave and Briahna Joy Gray at The Hill arguing over a 13 year old carjacker that was shot and killed. Frankly, they get off in the weeds super quick with their speculation. The key exchange happens around 2:39 when Robby says nobody is obligated to stand by and allow themselves to be victimized, and Brie emphatically insists yes you do.
I see Brianha's perspective echoed endlessly from progressive sectors. They think the slow, plodding, overburdened criminal justice system should be the sole arbiter of criminal consequences. Criminals shouldn't even suffer the immediate physical consequences of their own criminal acts.
And it gets even worse when they argue about the severity of the crime, with Brie taking a perspective that carjacking isn't so bad around 5:15. It happens all the time. You shouldn't get killed over it. Robby of course retorts horrified that carjacking has become so normalized, that people need their cars. A world were you never know if your car will be where you left it is a worse world.
But it's not the Robby's of the world that will determine what the police reform will be. It's the Brie's. We see that amply in every American city post BLM. It's not even a question. The policies are already being experimented with, or just rolled out unilaterally, to disastrous results for normal people. So yeah, I can't be for "police reform", and I no longer trust anyone promoting it.
I wonder if she'd be so quick to agree that women have an obligation to stand by and allow themselves to be victimized, eg was Cyntoia Brown in the wrong in her worldview?
More options
Context Copy link
At 3:00, Joy Gray repeatedly asks whether a car is worth more than someone's life. I'm more than happy to bite that bullet and say, "yes, my car is much more valuable than the life of a robber, the robber's life has negative moral value and ending their life is a net good". I don't really know where to proceed from there in any conversation with someone that doesn't share that moral intuition because it seems entirely clear and obvious to me.
"If you choose to try and rob me knowing there's a chance I will shoot and kill you, you have already decided that my stuff is worth more than your own life. By shooting you, I am simply agreeing with you."
More options
Context Copy link
The correct rhetorical move here is to say "give me 100$ right now or I'll kill myself. What? Is my life not worth it?" On the off-chance they give it to you, immediately ask for another 100.
That should drive home the point of this idiotic emotional blackmail.
More options
Context Copy link
It's worse than that, because aside from that being shitty rhetorical dark arts, even if you take it at face value and buy into the premise, it's not the car owner making that valuation, it's the criminal. It's the criminal seeing a car they plan to joyride for an evening and wreck on the side of the road who is making (poorly) the cost benefit analysis of "I guess this is worth maybe dying for." After that, it's the natural consequences of their actions.
What makes this exchange between Robby and Brie all the more shameless on Brie's part is that teenage carjackers murdered a man not even that long ago in DC! One of them was even also 13! But these are the immutable priorities of progressive "police reformers". The criminal is always more important than their victims. If you got punched in the face, and punched the person back, they'd be on your case that "the punishment for assault shouldn't be having your nose broken!" or "They are supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty!"
There really ought to be a distinction between trying to break into a car with nobody in it (the OP) and jacking a car with a weapon while someone is driving it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And it’s worth noting lots of people would agree with you, even if it may not be a within-Overton view. One of these days the motte should have a discussion about widely popular but outside the Overton window views, and what they generally reflect about society. But today is probably not that day.
deleted
Those are some interesting polls. 64% think the death penalty can be morally justified, 60% say they favor it, so only 4% are balking on practical grounds ... despite 78% saying they don't think there are adequate safeguards to ensure that no innocent person will be put to death. I guess that means a minimum of 75% of Americans think there aren't adequate safeguards to ensure that no innocent person will be put to death but also that the safeguards are adequate to ensure that not too many innocent people will be put to death? I guess that might still be self-consistent, but only if we ascribe a level of non-binary thinking and consideration-of-tradeoffs that I don't usually associate with polling of the general population.
Where are you getting 75% from? The minimum overlap of 64% and 78% is 42%
From a pair of embarrassing mistakes. 73% would be the minimum (counting "64% was really 64.5% rounded down and 60% really 59.5% rounded up" cases) number of people who think there aren't adequate safeguards against a single innocent death but who didn't let that make a difference to their practical vs their theoretical opinions ... but of course I shouldn't have counted people who already think the death penalty is morally wrong in that number, plus I thought about rounding in the wrong direction.
It would be even more interesting if every person who thinks the death penalty isn't morally justified also thinks that its safeguards are perfect, but you're right, there's no inherent incompatibiilty there.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’m totally willing to believe that the red tribe elite thinks this way but doesn’t have the vocabulary to express it. An actual conversation I overheard between regional red tribe elites- lower gentry or upper kulaks and their family members here- was almost literally that, it just happened to use a different set of words.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
IIRC France and the anglosphere all have majority popular support for bringing back the death penalty without it being particularly close, too, so elite-populist splits on this issue appear reasonably international. And I don’t believe the death penalty loses at the ballot box very often, if at all.
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