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 -
Yes, Democrats Really Do Want You Dead
Some people have already put the Charlie Kirk assassination into the memory box. For others it still feel terrifyingly relavent. The initial shock at the cheers and jubulant celebration at his gruesome public execution has faded slightly. The public square dominated by Democratic figures and Never Trumpers invoking some fraudulent both sidesism has, like it or not, dulled some of the public backlash. And honestly, the compulsive conspiracy theorist on the right hasn't helped maintain moral clarity in the wake of his murder either.
You may remember, I've talked before about the casual genocidal bloodlust the average Northern VA Democrat has based on the time I lived there. And while Democrats, for now, seem to have enough message discipline to not get on CNN and openly say "Yes, Republicans deserve to be murdered", their line is just shy of that incredibly low bar. Enter Jay Jones.
He's been caught essentially laying out the case that Republicans should be shot and killed, and their children murdered in front of them, so that they change their politics. A DM conversation "leaked" where in he has this conversation with a Republican colleage in the Virginia House I believe. So this wasn't even exactly an "in house" conversation. Just straight up telling the opposition, "Hey, I think you deserve to die" like it would never or could never come back to haunt him.
As of now, no Democrat has pulled their endorsement of him, I saw one single local Democrat say he would stop campaigning with him, several groups have actively reaffirmed his endorsement still saying he's somehow better than your generic Republican. His brazen assertion that you should kill even the children too, because "they are breeding little fascist" is probably a huge hit in Northern VA. Finally someone who openly talks and thinks like they do. I've seen those exact words on the NOVA subreddit every day. He's very likely to have top legal authority over me and my children, whom he believes deserve to die.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this. This is how Pogroms work. In the famed Jewish Pogroms of 1881, 40 Jews were killed leading to a mass emigration from Russia. I wonder if we'll hit that number in Virginia the next 4 years. I fully expect my deep red rural county that's been electorally attached through gerrymandering to Fairfax will be aggressively "enriched" as punishment for voting wrong.
Whether we like it or not, the both sidesism deployed by the left is an effective rhetorical tactic that needs to be contended with. It'd be best to accept that popular people on the right have in fact made veiled calls for violence, or at least has given passive endorsements.
Marjorie Taylor Greene liked a facebook post in reference to Nancy Pelosi that said "a bullet to the head would be quicker” in order to remove her.
Charlie Kirk said "Joe Biden is a bumbling, dementia-filled Alzheimer's, corrupt, tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America."
The primary difference between left and right calls for violence right now seem to be state sanctioned capital punishment versus revolutionary type assassinations or terrorist acts. At scale, this becomes relevant because the left still largely controls the moral landscape of this country, and it is more likely to give the common man the moral license to kill than the right wing is. It's optically a "grassroots" thing and it appeals to young empathetic people or indoctrinated college grads. They're seen as acts of justified destabilization, and they give the impression that it's just the common man fighting against an immoral oppressor. It's why the left can riot for months at a time (2020 and now), or kill a CEO or conservative commentator and left-leaning mainstream outlets and Democrats can make generalized statements about toning down the violence without ever really having to take any accountability.
I'd like to put together a bigger effort post on this but I have to work.
I don't think saying, "This person is guilty of a capital crime, in my opinion," is the same thing as calling for political violence. It's calling for the rule of law, and if the law says, "Sorry, this person isn't actually guilty of a capital crime," then there you go. Violence stops there.
MTG though, she's something else. I have no qualms with wishing she were out of office and disavowing most of what she says. Marjorie Taylor Greene had an average 24% Approval Rating among Republicans. Most Republicans didn't recognize her name in the poll:
Greene is more important to Democrats to show how crazy Republicans are, than she is to Republicans who largely don't think about her at all and when they do agree she is pretty crazy.
With regard to the Kirk quote, this seems splitting hairs. When Kirk or the MAGA base are fantasizing about locking Clinton up or executing Biden, I do not believe that they are thinking of a totally impartial judge and jury coming to the conclusion that their opponent has indeed committed the crime they are accusing them of beyond any reasonable doubt.
The presidential action which came closest to treason in recent memory was J6 (Trump inciting his mob to impede the certification of the election), and his pet SCOTUS decided that he had actually immunity for that. Last time I checked, Biden had not order Seal Team Six to kill Trump, if he had, that would excuse Kirk's statement.
For Trump, the DoJ is a political instrument to wield against his enemies, he is rather open about that. In that context, saying "no, I am not advocating for political violence, I am advocating for harsh penalties imposed by a kangaroo court for political crimes" does not seem very convincing.
And the stochastic terrorism is present in that just the same. Kirk's statement would strongly suggest to his most deranged 10% of listeners that morally speaking, Biden should be killed or imprisoned for his crimes. Add more context, like the justice system being characterized as corrupt and woke, and it sounds like an incitement to do outside the law that which the law would do if it was enforced fairly, in the minds of the deranged.
--
Relatedly, there is a reason why MAGA is more leaning towards violence which is state-sanctioned and the left is more leaning towards extrajudicial violence. The MAGA motivation for violence is basically "DC is a swamp which opposes the will of the people, and should be punished for its corruption".
With the left, Trump might be seen as a Tiberius Gracchus figure: a populist breaker of norms who has ambitions of tyranny. So it is less "Trump must be punished for his past misdeeds" and more "Trump must be stopped before he dismantles the republic".
I happen to know better - that even if he could be taken to trial, which already might not be possible, Joe would not be convicted under current jurisprudence and laws of the land. But on the other hand, I do believe that Joe earnestly tried to subvert and destroy the country. An act that under the colloquial definition of treason, as well as the historical definition of treason accepted by many societies, would clearly qualify. Undoubtedly countless fair and just executions have been carried out throughout history for offenses far less than what Joe has done.
I'm assuming the average boomer has no idea how the legal system works, or how treason is defined under United States law, or how current jurisprudence interprets that law. I'm sure the average boomer sees Joe's actions as treasonous and assumes that the law would agree.
Interestingly, trying to overthrow or destroy the United States doesn't actually count as treason under the law.
There are some interesting parallels here to the run-up to the election, when the common talking point was that the Democrats using the legal system to go after Trump, or removing Trump from the ballot for treason were massive norm violations.
If we were talking jail maybe, but personally I don't see how adding "...by the government, after a trial (in which my desired outcome is the just one)" to "I hope my political opponent is executed" makes it not support of violence.
Do you oppose capital punishment in all cases?
If not, where do you draw the line?
Generally yes, more so because in today's day and age we can indefinitely keep someone in jail for the off chance that they are later exonerated (and given the amount of red tape to go for the death penalty I think life in prison is cheaper).
But I said this more because of the motivation of the situation. If the context is along the lines of wishing a politician that is not even on trial gets a trial with the specific outcome of the death penalty, I think you've cast your thinking far enough ahead that you want to see the person dead.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The same thing we do every night, Kamala: trying to destroy America.
I think it highly implausible that Biden was trying to destroy the USA. If his goal was to turn the US into a failed state, he did a rather terrible job. And why would he want that?
Different people have different visions for their country. Some want a capitalist heaven, or a commie utopia. Some want to support Israel, some want to support Israel a lot. Some want universal healthcare, some want Roe overturned. Some want do get rid of background checks, some want the 2A reinterpreted so it does not apply to any firearm innovations made after it came into force. Some want to turn a blind eye to illegal migration, some want to deport every last illegal (except for the ones which keep the economy running). Some want to bomb country A, others want to bomb country B.
From where I stand, the general course of US politics has been pretty consistent from Clinton to Biden. There were always big donors whose interests got special consideration beyond the interests of the American people, mud-slinging during campaign season, use of office to get a political advantage over the opposition, from photo ops to politically motivated investigations, bombing of random places. Both Trump 1 and Biden were particularly uninspired, but for the most part it was just business as usual.
He did a great job at intentionally letting in tens of millions of people from the worst parts of the world. If left unchecked it would certainly result in the replacement and subversion of the previous people of the country.
Fact: Joe deliberately and successfully caused the largest wave of migration into the United States in history, and possibly even the largest wave of migration in all of human history.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wasn't long ago that conservatives were lambasting the notion of stochastic terrorism. Do they buy it now?
Direct advocacy of violence goes well beyond what "stochastic terrorism" was supposed to be. The idea of stochastic terrorism is basically that saying bad things about people -- not advocacy of violence, just that the people were terrible in some way -- might make crazies kill them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I have never considered it to be taken any other way? The truth is, the MAGA masses honestly, earnestly believe that these people have committed high crimes and treason, which a fair and unbiased trial would reveal the full details of, resulting in an inevitable and just execution that even the Blue Tribe would agree is just. Are they right? Likely not. But I have never doubted that this is what they earnestly believe.
Some among them, surely. The Qanon true believers who think he is fighting a secret war against the adrenochrome-addicted establishment.
Still, my model of the median Trump voter is that they know that Trump is bullshitting all day long and corrupt AF. But the establishment hating him so much makes it all worth it.
In particular, I would argue that outside your odd lizardman, none of the smarter MAGA people believe the narrative. I think it highly unlikely that Charlie Kirk thought, in his heart of hearts, that Biden was committing treason for which his countrymen would sent him to the gallows if they knew about it. But the narrative played really well with the idiots, so he spread it.
As much as I’d personally like to believe that, but I doubt it. I’m on record several times advocating for people to actually assume that the “other side” probably believes what they say they do, and I think that’s the case here as well- while, as an admitted partisan, I think right-wing influencers are full of shit, I’m sure they genuinely believe that shit; after all, after decades of the conservative media ecosystem being increasingly divorced from reality (at an alarmingly accelerated rate in the last few years), it’s probably never been easier to buy into ‘your side’s’ narrative than it’s ever been before.
The ‘smart’ people on the right don’t necessarily have to be any better-informed than ‘the idiots’ that make up the rank-and-file. Possibly even the opposite; greater reasoning can easily turn into greater capacity for rationalization.
More options
Context Copy link
What's "the narrative"? I certainly think that Biden had been absolutely horrible. I don't have legal education enough to see if he could be plausible charged with treason (probably not successfully), but I think he certainly did not have mine or The People's interests in mind even in those rare moments he was able to keep anything in mind. And certainly whoever was running the autopen in his stead - which must be some kind of serious crime, though I again don't know how to properly call it - did not. Do I want Biden on the gallows? Shit no, what would it give me? I don't even really want him in jail, he probably wouldn't be able to even understand what's going on. But I wouldn't mind seeing in jail some of the people who were running the clown show. But much more important is to do everything possible to undo at least some of the harm that they inflicted on the country and the society. If believing all that makes me an "idiot" in your eyes, so be it, it's not my problem.
More options
Context Copy link
...How closely have you been following the revelations about Russiagate/Crossfire Hurricane/Hillary's email server/Biden's Corruption/Hunter's Laptop over the last year? My working understanding of that mess (and it seems to me there's a fair amount of evidence that it is a coherent, single mess) is that we now have solid evidence that Obama, Hillary and Biden worked together to suborn the national security apparatus and turn it into both a partisan weapon against their political enemies, as well as a shield to their own serious malfeasance. As with, say, Watergate, but amusingly never ever with any Democrat scandal, the initial crimes seem vastly overshadowed by the institutional corruption used to cover them, which at this point appear to have run so deep and for so long that they put the viability of our political system itself into question.
More generally, there's this amusing pattern I see, where people are very willing to discuss things under a frame where Trump and MAGA are fascistic white supremacists who must be stopped by any means necessary, as we did here for years, and are also willing to discuss things under a frame where actually there's no difference between the parties, everyone's corrupt so none of the details really matter, but certainly are not willing to discuss under the frame where, no, actually it's the democrats who are uniquely, intolerably bad. Maybe it's just bias speaking, but it seems to me that this excluded third option is going to get harder and harder to exclude the more evidence accumulates. And while within the context of debate and one's own mind denial might be an invincible shield, it's less effective in the real world if sufficient numbers of the public simply stop being willing to cooperate with your tribe in any way ever again.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, it isn't. There's a reason that it's the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and not the Unfair Trial and Biased Jury and Execution of Charlie Kirk. Assassination is something that members of the public are physically capable of doing, and supporting assassination supports things that can and at some point will actually be done by vigilantes. Nobody's going to vigilante put-on-trial and execute Biden, unless you think that's really a demand that Biden be lynched, which 1) I find unlikely to have been intended and 2) isn't possible anyway.
Kirk was going on record that Biden might deserve death for his actions. He made that statement knowing that the general narrative of MAGA is that the justice system is corrupt and protects the DC swamp. To a base to which Trump had already (jokingly?) implied in 2016 that the '2nd amendment people' might want to interfere with the appointment of SC justices through assassination. A base which has plenty of people with the firearms training to pull of assassinations.
Of course, if he had connected the dots, a la "Biden deserves death, but our corrupt justice system will never convict him. Someone should just shoot him", that would have been 10x worse.
I don't think that Kirk was intentionally trying to incite stochastic terrorism, he was simply spinning his MAGA lies (e.g. about Biden being especially treasonous) for political gain, and not giving a damn if that would increase the relative risk of Biden getting gunned down or not.
You are making a six degrees of Kevin Bacon argument. Saying that Biden should be tried and executed is technically violence, but it's not the kind of violence that someone could listen to him and then do. When you connect that to something Trump said, you're connecting it to something he said seven years apart, and not even about Biden. You're also trying to frame a single statement from Trump as a gotcha. It isn't a single statement that does it, it's a lot of statements from a lot of people.
Obviously the statement means "if we get in charge of the government, then we...." He was under no illusion that Biden could be tried and executed under the justice system as it existed in 2023. That still isn't encouraging vigilante justice, unles you think people are going to do a vigilante takeover of the justice system first.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This argument cuts both ways; if that discussion is tantamount to advocating for political violence, then anyone else who's "advocated for harsh penalties imposed by a kangaroo court for political crimes" is just "splitting hairs" about the gap between that and just outright saying "x gets the bullet". And it's not like we have a shortage of people who said -- and in many cases did, and did often, and did to far less prominent people -- those same scope of things.
And no one treated them the same as someone talking about how he'd shoot a motherfucker.
For what it is worth, I can not recall any prominent Democrat calling for Trump to be executed for his role in J6.
Were the sentences for the J6 crowd harsh, especially compared to the sentences for the BLM riots? Sure, they totally threw the book at them for clear political reasons.
But unlike a Biden treason trial ending in a death verdict which Kirk was fantasizing about, they were still recognizable as a legal system working, somehow. Not well (the US legal system generally does not work well), and not as impartial as one might hope, perhaps, but not a kangaroo court.
Is life in prison due to a kangaroo court much better? As that is something Dem actually attempted to do to Trump. And certainly I don't remember if any Dems were vocally against it.
The bolded is your subjective assessment, and rather the pivotal element which changes the situation from fair to unfair. If the Democrats don't think it was a kangaroo court, would you still expect them to be against it?
More options
Context Copy link
The peaceful transfer of power is one of the greatest selling points of democracy. Trump trying to mess with that was by far the worst thing he did in his first term.
Crucially, he did not get convicted because the court system (the SC in particular) stopped it, despite the wishes of the Biden administration. Trump getting convicted would in my mind not conclusively prove a kangaroo court, but him getting immunity proves reasonably well that the courts (or at least the SC) are independent of the political Zeitgeist.
He did get convicted (I'm talking about the NY trial here.) He just got lightly sentenced after winning the election instead of the possible 100+ years he could have gotten. The main point is that "kangaroo court" is mostly subjective, but only one side did actually bring a ridiculous case in front of an incredibly partisan area and get a favorable judgement against their partisan enemy. So while we can muse on what Kirk might have meant in his heart of hearts (and I wouldn't even say I really disagree with you there), Dems are actually putting it into practice.
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
I don't think it is either. There is a clear distinction. My problem with it is that we could probably comb through a lot of powerful American politicians' pasts or political decisions and establish a norm of executing them. That is a terrible precedent to establish in my opinion. I hate what Kamala Harris represents, but I would prefer even she not be executed after a shit presidency. I think something should probably be done about the Ilhan Omars of the Democrat party, but even martyring someone like her is bad long term strategy.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Candace Owens, Laura Loomer, etc. are all net negatives, but Republican strategists probably see them as tumors that have grown around an artery. You can't extract them without massive blood loss and death. I'm sure there's a similar sentiment for some Democrats about members of The Squad.
After this Trump presidency, I wonder what would happen if top leaders from both parties secretly met and agreed to expel some of their own members. I don't think the average American would cry themselves to sleep if The Squad was axed from the Democrat party and MTG, Lauren Boebert, Anna Paulina Luna, and Mary Miller were axed from the Republican party.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link