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 -
Even accepting that premise, it doesn't really matter what percentage of arrests would lead to actual convictions for obstruction. The process is the punishment. Even making suspects spend a night or two in jail before letting them off with a warning would have significant deterrent value for dilettante protestors, never mind the prospect of a court-case-shaped millstone around their neck for the next two years. If they want to obstruct lawful operations through childish inconveniences like blocking roads with their cars or shouting "SHAME!" very loud, then inconveniencing them back, only harder, seems like the proper response.
Mrs Good may not have been some innocent bystander who wound up at the protest by mistake 'on the way' to picking her children up from school - but it is AIUI seemingly absolutely true that she casually thought she could maintain a schedule that went "3 p.m. - obstruct ICE raid, 3.15 p.m. - pick the kids up from school". This is the kind of attitude that you are up against. The prospect of handcuffs and a night in the slammer would be enough to cool down many tempers.
Even if you want to be meaner - even if you absolutely insist that extrajudicial violence is needed to get the point across - things like deploying tear gas into a rioting crowd still seem like a good bet that's far more ethically justifiable, and far less likely to result in a loss of perceived legitimacy for the regime, than jumping straight to murder.
A night or two in jail isn’t a punishment for them. They probably get a promotion at work for this behavior.
"If we do it your way, Kingslayer, you'd win. We're not doing it your way“
The Right unlocked a new technology here. You can just shoot lesbian woke agitators and nobody cares whose not in the 30% whose in their tribe.
Well, not quite. Good (and Babbit) crossed a line.
That line, established through human instinct, is that a woman only has the "protection from male violence" privileges until that woman poses a legitimate existential threat to a man. Once that happens, her Wonderfulness is forfeit, and she is as expendable as any man.
This is why the stereotype of most women having a tantrum is throwing breakable objects. It's play-fighting. If she grabbed a knife or gun to assault the man (unarmed strikes are play-fighting as men are more powerful than women), was actively in the process of hitting him with the car, or is punching through a window at the head of an angry mob... then all bets are off.
This is why, I believe, that a good chunk of the way this was treated (and you can see it on this forum once the "was she a threat?" question was firmly established to be "yes") became "well, did she think she was play-fighting?", and the answer being a plausible "yes, because she was constantly told by her favorite media apparatus these people weren't serious" seems to engender (heh) the most sympathy.
In other words, the resulting violence (from the biological male defending against the hostile woman) is, from a sociobiological perspective, functionally man-on-man (which is Part of the Plan so nobody cares). The only people who don't understand that are either paid a salary not to, or are weirdos who actually think men and women are equal (perhaps they lack the above instinct altogether).
I don’t think him shooting improved his odds of surviving the shooting. So the shooting did nothing in this situation to improve ICE safety but it does improve future safety by making agitators aware they will shoot.
That's immaterial to the point on which I was critiquing/elaborating, which was your "you can just shoot lesbian woke agitators and nobody cares".
Yes, I agree that an event that makes women acutely aware that running from/over the cops does not qualify as play-fighting in the eyes of society at large will discourage women from trying this in the future.
(It's not going to discourage men, but they have an instinctual awareness they aren't Privileged, and as such are more likely to know when they're caught. Not that this would still be a story was Good a man, but anyway.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
First of all, I'd say you're definitely counting your eggs before they hatch here. It is plausible that Good's death will have the chilling effect you hope for, and anti-ICE obstructionists will vanish overnight, but we're rather far off from that being a certainty, and it could certainly go a lot of different ways.
Nor would I call murder a "new technology". People have been bashing their brothers' skulls in with jawbones since before humans developed language, often to secure the chieftain's authority. Some of us had rather hoped that we were in the process of outgrowing that sort of thing.
And I would never be so insulting to my political opponents as to say that "nobody cares" who wasn't a political ally of Good's. I do in fact believe that an overwhelming majority of human beings are generally against killing people, and especially against arbitrarily killing people to create a state of terror. This is, I repeat, an evil thing to do. Wicked. Wrong. Sinful. There may be millions of people who will buy the idea that Good actually had it coming, or that Ross's actions were otherwise justified in context; but, thankfully, I think there are very few people in America who would endorse your view that making an example of her would have been fine and dandy regardless of how much of a threat she actually posed to Ross.
I don’t agree it’s evil.
I think the average person at this point just wants the train to run on time. Which some of that includes deporting as many Somalis as possible.
I didn't ask what the average person wanted, I asked what they would consider evil. It is perfectly routine to want things which could (only?) be achieved by means which you know would be immoral. Whether or the average person wants the train to run on time, I don't think that they would consider murdering random women in order to terrify people to be an acceptable price for that.
What are some things you would consider "evil", if not this? Is there any foul deed which you think would be too far, if it could magically remove all Somalis from Minnesota and restore train schedules to their platonic ideal?
Evil only applies to people thinking in religious terms. It doesn’t exists in nature.
I just think of what’s good for civilization.
Specifically, White civilization. After all, I'm sure that you'd prefer to avoid total Chinese conquest, even if it would advance civilization in the abstract.
Really, the "enlightened spreaders of civilization" framing for global white dominance strikes me as thin cover for the standard ethnocentric motivations, or at least it's trivially reducible to them. Indeed, would it not be better for "civilization" if Somalia were to belong to the white man, so he may remake it in his image? What, then, should a Somali who recognizes this pattern do, to prevent his people going the way of the Amerindian?
Sure. Somalians aren’t capable of civilization unless they undergo extremely strong evolutionary pressures for a few centuries.
If civilization collapses now and we go back to being hunter and gatherers we probably don’t get another shot at civilization for a few million years. An Industrial Revolution likely requires access to surface level fossil fuels which would take a while to naturally occur again. Maybe we could get to a Roman level civilization without access?
I will not say whether industrial civilization is a good or bad thing. It’s good for my interests.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I doubt pressing this point will get us anywhere, but "civilization" and indeed "good" don't "exist in nature" either. Why do you "think of what's good for civilization"? What is it to you whether civilization lives or dies, if you are a cold nihilistic Darwinian machine? And anyway, can't "I just think of what's good for civilization" easily be rephrased as "I just consider things which hinder the flourishing of civilization to be evil"? Either you have 'arbitrary' preferences about world-states that don't entirely depend on your own survival and genetic fitness, or you do not. If you are going to plant your flag in a concept as woolly as "civilization" then you have already accepted the idea of a value system not rooted in nature; we're simply haggling over price.
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