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 -
Oh, like that thing that happened in 2020, perpetrated by the exact same people trying to disrupt law enforcement now (who functionally had absolute immunity for those actions especially given how the people who defended themselves from that were treated)?
If you don't see that, then you don't see this.
Bad shoot? Maybe. So was Babbit. Maybe try not to charge at law enforcement and obey simple verbal commands, then you won't die, seems simple enough to me. "Duty to account for local hysteria about federal law enforcement going to disappear random citizens to some black site" is simply not a thing a working system can tolerate- since you appear to feel the opposite, perhaps you can expand on the reasons why it's only OK for only one side to be protected when it claims this is a thing?
An excess of empathy for human traffickers (and the trafficked) is the reason the US is even in this situation in the first place. MN could have enforced the immigration law but decided it didn't want to, so now the Feds are doing it for them, just like what happened in the '50s in the South- if you want to deny the legitimacy of this action, you must in turn also deny the legitimacy of that. And yes, enforcing laws on people who don't want them is always going to lead to this to some degree.
Sure it is. This is a whatever-wing attempt to disrupt the logical consequences of an election they lost, and the fact they're failing is good from a conservative-as-in-stability-of-system point of view. The system failing would be federal law enforcement not being able to operate in the area at all, which was actually more true in the BLM days than it is now.
Oh no! Too much empathy! Too much due process! What horrific threats to the stability of the country! How pesky.
I suppose an excess of empathy can be a thing. At risk of getting too philosophical though, I'm pretty sure most schools of thought consider an excess of apathy (or worse, contempt) to be more dangerous in virtually every sense, yes? If we must err, let us do so on the side of empathy. And due process, for crying out loud.
Yes! That's mostly what I'm asking for. My thesis was, if you recall:
Let's not whitewash the administration's position to be something more reasonable. The official position is that Good was a domestic terrorist, that leftists are "being trained and told how to use their vehicles to impede law." The official position is that ICE officers are immune from everything. That's baseless and insane.
Even now, a few days later, the narrative is further doubled down on and even supplemented:
I'm going to be on the lookout for more information, but based on a video released today or yesterday of the minutes leading up to the shooting (conveniently clipped with a fade to black right before the actual shooting), this is also false. There are no agents around the vehicle until very shortly before the confrontation.
Knock off the sarcasm, its not conducive to discussion.
More options
Context Copy link
If we must err on the side of empathy, then let us do so universally rather than selectively. Those decrying ICE are rarely acting out of universal empathy. For instance, did you know that MN has the largest number of indefinitely detained citizens in the country? Ie, it locks people up indefinitely with civil commitment to work around the due process that would be necessary for criminal detention in a process routinely defended by Democrats including progressives like Keith Ellison. They curiously don't get protesters out like ICE, despite being subject to consequences far worse than deportation.
Yeah, and in fact I hate that. I would never in a million years consider moving to Minnesota. It's definitely a violation of due process. My feelings are quite strong on the lack of sufficient public defenders and judges too, don't even get me started about speedy trials, though that's more universal (albeit no less serious!)
However if you had to choose between selective empathy and zero empathy the choice seems pretty... obvious?
Does it? Zero empathy seems better to me--inequality tends to build the kind of resentment that burns bridges rather than building them, while shared hardship tends to do the opposite.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Perhaps. But an excess of empathy and an excess of apathy are two sides of the same coin, especially when the empathetic stand to gain financially, and the costs will not fall on the empathetic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not really, as I understand it, thanks to Arizona v. US (2012).
Conservatives were locked out of a state-by-state approach to immigration (which even then would have been derivative of federal law) and had to seize control of the federal government in order to enforce it.
More options
Context Copy link
smugglers
The traffickers have often claimed migrations are involuntary, yes.
like a citizen holding that trafficked status over that person; "piss me off, and I'll report you to ICE".
Even the traffickers would agree that this would constitute unfair exploitation, though of course they have a sociofinancial incentive to say that anyway.
The reason human trafficking occurs in the first place is because men want a supply of cheap women to use and throw away.
This is the same thing, except it's women wanting cheap men to use and throw away. And those women call it trafficking when men benefit from it; so it doesn't make rhetorical sense to isolate a demand for rigor and only exempt one from the harsher language.
I am with @ToaKraka here. You just threw in "sympathy for traffickers" as a Boo-light.
Nobody (so far) seriously claims that the reason MN is soft on migrants is that they are feeling sorry for pimps who are importing sex slaves. You know fully well that the left is primarily sympathetic to the illegals, probably indifferent towards smugglers and probably hostile towards people trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Even if I grant you for the moment that everyone who supports turning a blind eye towards illegal migration is motivated by using the male illegal immigrants as fuckbois (which seems a very far-fetched claim in itself), that is not trafficking. Consider: if I supported letting in a million hot single Latinas, in the hope that they will enter the dating market and make that market more favorable for men, that is not trafficking. I would have to add "... and then these Latinas will have no choice but to find a sugar daddy or starve" to even come close. Even then, this is not the central case of a trafficker, which is someone who gets paid for providing victims of exploitation.
Of course not- mere encouragement of lawless action is not a crime. If instead you formed organizations to buy them all plane tickets and encouraged them to overstay their visas, and ran a campaign to suppress immigration enforcement, then I think you'd agree that would be trafficking.
But they are getting paid through that massive economic benefit they claim exists. Sure, we can dispute what that comes out to in practice, but the important thing is that they justify it because they believe it exists, so I judge them as if it does.
Trafficked humans are not citizens, thus not entitled to any social services/welfare, so this condition holds. Indeed, you can find the male equivalent on the street corner- the only difference is that they're there in the morning, crowded around Home Depot.
You misunderstand: a foreigner X is "trafficked" when the reason for them being imported is that the fundamental reason to value a domestic X should go down, and a law was broken [or intended to be broken] to do that.
Men and women (and Red and Blue/"right" and "left" pursue the respective gender politics) are different, thus the way they bring value to society is different. Which is why the assertion that women would want to import men for sex is nonsense- that's not the value men provide to women. By contrast, sex is the value women provide to men, and when men see fit to devalue it we call that a sex crime. But the qualifier of "sex" is only there, and only important, as a statement that the crime attacked the fundamental value of a citizen with those characteristics.
So yes, I treat women seeking cheap labor outside the country as the same crime, with the same motivation, as men seeking cheaper sex is. If men and women are to be equal, then the former is just as serious a crime, with just as wicked an intent, as the latter is commonly held to be.
Hence, "human trafficking".
More options
Context Copy link
I wouldn't grant that. The common attitude among the left towards sexual exploitation perpetrated by "oppressed peoples" is awkward doublethink. Regarding illegal immigration in particular, they actively encouraged illegal immigrants to show up with children, were quite indifferent about whose child it actually was, and then deliberately hampered oversight while losing track of tens of thousands of children.
I'm not sure that I've ever seen people on the left take human trafficking / sex trafficking seriously as a concern. They generally seem to treat any discussion of the topic as a bad faith attempt to restrict immigration or be racist at brown people.
I've seen them cite the risk of an increase in sex trafficking as a reason to oppose the legalization of prostitution (example, found here).
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