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 -
In the first place, while neither is admirable, it should be recognized that hatred is not fear. Neither justice nor revenge derive their appeal from terror of the wrongdoer.
In the second place, you don't appear to have actually absorbed the context, details, nature or conclusion of the argument in question.
It was a response to endemic arguments justifying rioting, despite multiple innocent fatalities and untold economic and social damage, both in the Motte and in society at large.
It carefully copied the exact form of the arguments it opposed, and showed that by the standards of the prevailing mob, the bombing was more acceptable than the riots. The bombing avenged worse killings by the authorities on a proportionally-smaller number of victims, did less economic damage, actually made an effort to target the entity responsible for the initial killings rather than attacking random innocents, thereby inflicted a smaller proportion of collateral damage, was carried out after many more attempts to secure justice had been exhausted rather than being carried out despite justice being actively executed, and was capable of actually being punished by the state in turn, thus limiting the incentive for runaway escalation.
Nonetheless, it concluded that such justifying arguments were a very, very bad idea, because the taboo on lawless violence is very valuable.
...Unfortunately, none of these points seem to have actually registered with you, a result regrettably common among Blues. You skip straight to "these aren't comparable", claiming an arbitrary category difference and simply ignoring all arguments to the contrary, and then act surprised and offended that others would deign to disagree. By no means do I claim that the above argument is actually decisive, but I think it's reasonable, here at least, to expect people to recognize that an argument is being made and to at least acknowledge its general contours.
Quoting myself, from the thread in question:
Elsewhere in the thread:
That a very large number of extra murders would be committed per year for the indefinite future was obvious to myself and many others from the moment the scale of the riots and the permissive response of the authorities became evident, and that fact had considerable impact on the arguments we made at the time. In any case, I continue to disagree that the two are a different "tier of political violence". The riots were vastly destructive, and almost certainly resulted in more direct fatalities than the bombing during their active duration; the numbers I recall were 30 killed by the rioting itself, and an unknown but very large number killed in areas the riots forced the police to completely abandon. The exploding murder rate was immediately evident, not some surprise discovered years later.
In any case, "They're totally different" isn't a terribly persuasive answer to an inventory of similarities, but the larger point was that opening the door to such calculation was and remains a very, very bad idea.
It would have been nice to see that argument fail at least a little less completely, but life contains many sorrows.
More options
Context Copy link