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 -
I'm skeptical about most of that list, but I don't really trust any polling at this point in a cycle. Most of the polling from before suggested that a straight majority of Americans wanted every illegal gone (and a supersupermajority for illegal + criminal history), but yes you can probably show some women pictures of a crying Guatemalan and they'll report not liking that. I'm not sure there's any takeaway beyond "Dems still have a hell of a propaganda machine".
From the people I talk to, it isn't so much women being sympathetic for crying Guatemalans as it is concern about what the objective is. When you sell a policy based on the idea that these people are all parasites and criminals, it's a tough sell when you're rounding up hardworking people just trying to make a buck.
I too am skeptical of polls, but you ignore them at your own risk. Especially after elections are sending a clear signal. You don't want to be in a position where you get your doors blown off because you decided that inconvenient information was simply incorrect, based on nothing but gut feeling.
No one is seeing this. Functionally no one has ever seen anyone get rounded up by ICE at all. If you think that's a reasonable description of reality, then you're in a propaganda bubble. What they're seeing is context-free clips on Facebook and TikTok elaborated with straight up lies, posted by activist Karens who assault and harass federal law enforcement with near impunity due to their overwhelming privilege. OTOH, DHS and ICE don't ever shut up about the prior criminal convictions of the people they're deporting, but that doesn't go viral by abusing weaponized empathy.
Maybe some conservative billionaire needs to start shelling out a grand for every woman who posts a crying fictional sob story video about how she was raped by an illegal immigrant.
Not wrong, but I'm also super skeptical of this "Better stop doing that stuff you were just elected by promising to do because we've suddenly gotten better at narrative control!" line.
Like, yeah Sherril just won, but she did so while disavowing everything she'd ever said as a progressive, dumping a fortune into painting Citarelli as a tax-and-spend liberal and swearing to fight against her own Democrat economic policies.
Maybe ignore that at your own risk?
To be fair, everyone is in some sort of bubble, and as such you ignore the bubble at your own risk. Most people are getting their view of the world through some sort of media, and unfortunately social media, so you can’t just throw your hands up and say “it’s just a social media propaganda bubble.” The bubble has caused three assassination attempts. It swings elections.
If I wanted to steel-man the administration's choices, it seems that the very public ICE actions are intended to broadcast a message of unwelcomeness to would-be illegal immigrants. Uncontrolled traffic at the border is down, I think, in a large part due to changing perceptions here, and while many of the individual actions seem cruel, it's demonstrably effective at piercing perceptual bubbles ("Uncle Joe will let us in") more than having the VP say "do not come."
I don't have the time to write this up at length right now, but I feel like this aligns with a much deeper pattern. Basically, I think there's an older kind of wisdom that says it can be socially optimal for authority to make credible, even hard, threats that different groups take seriously, because if people take those threats seriously, they'll often behave in socially desired ways and then the threats don't even have to be exercised for the most part. BUT doing that does require authority figures to look, publicly, like mean assholes, and it might require implementing nasty punishments a couple of times in especially public ways. You could say this goes all the back, at the level of theory, to at least Machiavelli, with his observation that, if a ruler has to choose between being feared or loved, it's generally more stable to be feared.
Internalizing this requires understanding second order effects on some deep level, and understanding that authority might need to be dickish in the correct ways for the greater good. And it absolutely seems like an understanding of the world that is apparently abhorrent to a lot of well-educated progressives I know. Interestingly, those same progressives seem to have exactly the same difficultly when it comes to parenting and holding the line on their own kids, a difficulty that often produces nasty consequences, so I don't think this is about hypocrisy. I think it's just an actual deep moral revulsion at "being mean", even if it's trivially necessary and for the greater good.
When I hear of "migrants dying on rickety boats trying to cross to Europe" I keep wondering if the tally would be positive or negative and by how much if Europeans countries had been sinking the unidentified vessels with unlawful intentions approaching their coasts right from the start. Sometimes, real mercy is harshly disincentivizing bad and dangerous behavior.
It's trivially true, even obvious. Sink a couple of boats and far fewer people die in the long run, nevermind the preventing other problems.
Plausibly true, but not trivially.
Depends on how many potential migrants actually learn about the policy, evaluate their odds correctly, and decide they aren’t that desperate.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link