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 -
/begin speculation
I'm noticing that a lot of 'moderate' lefties (including my own father, sadly enough) are internally struggling with the fact that yeah, they didn't like Kirk, and would prefer he shut up, and yet having him killed this way makes it clear that they're not the good, peaceful, intellectually superior side in the conflict by default.
So they're casting around for some way to resolve this by either tearing down the victim, or criticizing the hyperbolic praise being heaped on him (as a way to indirectly tear him down), or pointing out lefty victims that didn't get this much attention, or trying desperately to make it about guns, or about righty hypocrisy, or, recently, to imply that the shooter was actually righty.
That so many of them are wedging their shoe firmly in the back of their throat, thus making the point stronger is kind of a natural outcome of their mindsets.
/speculation
Is this supposed to be speculation of why I made this post? Even if it's just talking about various unnamed leftists more broadly, it's still ridiculously "boo outgroup".
"People I disagree with are having terrible fits of cognitive dissonance, but instead of resolving it by admitting I'm correct, they desperately throw out red herrings and non-sequiturs, thereby making my point even stronger!"
Uh huh.
More options
Context Copy link
This so so boo outgroup I'm shocked it doesn't run afoul of the rules. Have some charity especially when you are going around demanding it from others.
The steelman answer is the right has spent the last half-decade claiming they are the party of "Truth" telling, that these lefties want to lie to you and silence you when you try to speak up. Now the right is committed to glazing Kirk and any concept of the "Truth" is out the window, and the right wants to silence you when you speak up. The "moderate" lefties are probably doing the same exact thing the "moderate" righties were doing.
I'm curious, what did you think /speculation meant at the end of my comment there?
By the way, here's a twitter post with over 100k likes claiming Charlie called someone a "Chink." The community note speaks for itself. The post is still up, of course, the right hasn't 'silenced' them.
The left isn't very committed to being the party of 'truth' right now, and seems damn happy with constructing an alternate reality for themselves.
I genuinely believe they can't help themselves. Maybe I'm wrong, but it fits my observations.
No offense but following this:
with "/speculation" is pretty much the rhetorical equivalent of being an asshole to someone and then saying "JK!!" I think the subtext(is it even subtext??) is really clear that you don't think much of your political opponents and you can't come up with a compelling reason that they don't feel Kirk is worthy of the lionization he is receiving.
Sounds like the right has the perfect moment to position themselves as the party of 'truth'. Yet here they are proving that it was only ever superficial and the rest of us are stuck with two dominant tribes that have no virtue.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's not, for the sme reason your post isn't.
This makes no sense as a steelman. Kirk does not represent a a detraction from the truth so great, any concept ofbit goes out the window. Anyone who claims so would have to be even more diaguated by academia, the mainstream media, not to mention the heaps upon heaps of influencers they follow themselves.
They can't be disturbed by the silencing in principle, because that would require them to have a long track record of complaints against the much worse silencing done by the left.
What outgroup am I booing? I'm booing Faceh specifically for his lack of charity and the fact that he probably can put the shoes on the other foot but is choosing to just be a partisan.
This entire thread is filled was counter points, Kirk was not some virtuous truth-seeker. He was to quote Dase: "a cynical propagandist in the job of training unprincipled partisans, ever changing his tune precisely in alignment with the party line and President's whimsy". Glazing him as a truthseeker such is sufficiently large enough departure to be called out. It would be like calling Beria, "just an investigative journalist trying to bring to light all the evildoers" Calling out that calling out as some sort of lefty bootlicking fanfiction is very uncharitable. The steelman absolutely is that that anyone calling into question Kirk's virtue are doing the mirror behavior of people on the right who called out the leftist propaganda.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If martyrdom doesn't make one a hero, nothing can.
Kirk was a man. Not a symbol. Now the opposite is true.
Calling that state of affairs a lie is just raw unfettered denial of the human experience.
You can say neither side cares about the truth, you might even be right. But the one guy who did so enough to talk publicly to the other side in places that are meant for a debate that never happens isn't here anymore.
Who's really so afraid of what he had to say?
None of it matters now. The debate is over. We all lose.
I think martyrdom generally requires you to willingly be killed for your beliefs. Staring in the face of death for your beliefs and choosing to accept it, is an honorable and noble decision. That creates a powerful symbol. A political agitator being killed by someone who disagrees with them is frankly human politics as usual (in the grand sense). We are a nasty species with a penchant for killing other humans for being outside our tribe.
I think the calling into question whether Kirk was a Cynical Propagandist/Political Agitator vs a Noble Truth-seeker is fair game. Doing so is not denying any human experience. And if the truth laid bare is still enough to rouse a tribe to hero-ify than that is fair game too and better for it.
You see talk, I see preach and mock. I see a young priest going among the disbelievers not to understand and find common ground but to convert, mock, and vilify and derive popularity and monetary compensation for his efforts. I don't think such base motivations are worthy of calling it martyrdom and it makes a mockery of that very human experience.
Yes we do.
The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
This question is indeed fair, but the second Kirk died of his wounds it became an academic issue for historians that is completely politically irrelevant.
I see what looks the most like dialectic that has happened on an American campus since the 1970s. It sure was preaching. But at least heretics were involved somehow.
It doesn't matter now. Discourse is dead.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, this is starting to feel like an elaborate version of the mental gymnastics meme. I can get the "just because a lefty did it, that doesnt say anything about the broader left" reaction, but we're cycling through them and they're getting increasingly frantic.
And again I can understand that from a hard-leftist, but it's quite a bit more disturbing coming from the moderate ones.
I saw this one and I think my brain seized up a little.
https://x.com/alluring_nyc/status/1965893003924668506
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link