site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   24681 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Still, on the national level, outright election denial was very rare before Trump.

Are we including the hanging Chad conspiracies in this comparison or no? If not, what makes them substantivel different?

What conspiracies are you talking about?

It's been 25 years, but I remember Democrats being quite certain that the governor of Florida pulled a fast one during the recount, and that the supreme court "handed" Bush the presidency. Usually all of this was expressed in conjunction with a belief that the Iraq war was repayment for that gift.

There was a major discussion about this on askreddit within the past few days. They're still on it with the same rhetoric and claims.

The 2000 election process was a disaster, but the Supreme Court did hand Bush the Presidency, although in some senses it was already in Bush's hand.

To recap: the result was razor thin, and an automatic machine recount made it even thinner, with Bush in the lead by 300 or so votes. Florida law provides for manual recounts, but with differing legal standards across counties. Gore's team asked for a narrow recount across four counties that it believed would get them to a win (though, not known at the time, it would have given Bush the win); the Florida Supreme Court ordered a broader statewide recount of all undervotes (that, not known at the time, would have given Gore the win, by a couple dozen votes). To my mind, the fairest recount would have been a statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes, which would have given Bush the win. But the process, such as it was, was headed toward something that would have given Gore the win, though that wasn't known at the time.

A critical issue, though, was the differing standards between different counties. The SCOTUS came in, stayed the recount decision, and then ruled 5-4 that there wasn't enough time to create a fair, uniform standard, and because of that the recount had to be halted entirely, giving the election to Bush.

Didn't Jeb recuse himself from being involved in the recount? And I don't actually understand how the Iraq War would benefit Jeb or the Supreme Court; the conspiracies there were all about Cheney and Halliburton.

The election conspiracy theories I remember all revolved around either "recounting punch cards sucks" (which makes a little sense: you have votes that can be changed by a fingernail, and you're going to get as many grubby hands on them as possible?) or "recounting electronic voting machine records is pointless, and also they suck" (which makes a lot of sense).

Those were all mainstream narratives.

The tinfoil conspiracies involved Bush invading Iraq to steal priceless (and sometimes alien) artifacts on behalf of various shadowy cabals.

Blues generally did not consider the 2000 election victory of George W Bush to be legitimate. Problems with the ballots and voting machines resulted in a protracted and highly contentious recount, ultimately ending with a lawsuit which the Supreme Court decided in favor of George W. Bush. Many, many blues from all strata of Blue culture believed that Gore had won the election, only to have his victory stolen by the Republican machine. This objection was inescapable in popular culture from 2000 to 2008, and I'd imagine that for most people who lived through the era as politically-engaged adults, the event is indelible in the hippocampus.

No less than HRC herself claimed that W Bush was "selected, not elected".

A developer for one of those voting machines testified on record that he was asked to put in a backdoor into one of those machines.

How much stock should we put in that? Plenty of whistleblowers in other contexts have turned out to be shady self-promoters, and I've honestly come to mostly disregard them without further evidence: Rebekah Jones seems to have pretty thoroughly shown herself as untrustworthy. On the other hand, I can think of examples that brought evidence and have demonstrably paid for their choices -- Manning and Snowden come to mind first.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats