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As a (former) poker player, I feel obliged to point out that these "If you really believed it, you'd bet money on it" gotchas miss the point of betting the odds.
A single bet at 10% odds with a 50x payoff is not a good bet, because there is a 90% chance you'll lose. Twenty bets at 10% odds with a 50x payoff is (probably) a winning strategy. A single bet is not. That's why professional poker players measure success over the long term, not whether a single bet paid off (and they also understand that variance is a bitch). If you're doing polymarkets or something, maybe it's rational to make a lot of bets like this. It's not a rational challenge to a single claim.
Of course there is also the fact that if someone wins betting on "Will the US become a fascist state?" then their payoff is going to be small comfort…
(And yes, while "literally Hitler" is absurd, I think 10% is a reasonable estimate of how likely we are to see something like a descent into fascism. But I'm not going to put money on it because I can't bet on 10 different alternate timelines.)
Aside from that coming across like a reason to never bet on anything that sounds like it might matter, I did explicitly caveat lump value risks. And MadMonzer isn't putting all his chickens in one bet, for better or worse.
((and to bite on the obvious bait: that hasn't stopped you from offering that style of wager unsolicited.))
I dunno!
Half of the time, Monzer's definition of and pathway to fascism is absolutely trivial, or even stuff the Democratic party had done for years or even decades. Oh, the Republican party might bring politically-driven lawsuits to shut down disliked opposition media sources in the scuzziest ways possible (successfully)? They might crack down minutia of contracts when enemies are around, and find myriad exceptions when given political donations? Fire a bunch of federal officials based on nakedly political criteria, and damn the disruption? Defy SCOTUS by just lying to everyone?
Not great stuff, but it's also not exactly the end of the world.
And those are the things that actually seem remotely plausible. MadMonzer loves to ponder deeper hypotheticals, but either they require trivializing the matter to such a point as to set it wholly within the first category ("arrest political opponents" is technically hit by arresting Don Lemon; "concentration camps" by holding people in jail after they've gotten an order of removal before deportation, and I'm not going to insult MadMonzer by implying that it's what he's talking about)...
... or hilariously implausible.
Are you even pretending to believe that there's a 10% chance of Trump suspending the Constitution? Pulling off his suit jacket, falling back on his WWE bonafides, and punching the shit out of Mamdani? Invoke the Insurrection Act "on some spurious pretext" (when several cities have already had politicians and staff directly coordinating groups trying to block enforcement of federal law)? "[W]aging a war against political opponents" with the actual military?
It's just a word, and it just means 'something you don't like'.
Dayum, you managed to find a reason to use that one again! That's some dedicated hatin'! Okay, I'll give you that one, though I will point out that I didn't actually demand money stakes to "prove he really believed what he was saying."
No, that I'd put closer to 1%.
(I'd pay to see him get in the ring with Mamdani, though.)
No, as someone who has complained about overuse of fascism myself, no, I do not use fascism to mean "something I don't like" and you should know better. I do not think Trump is literally a fascist, nor the Republican Party, nor ICE. I think the US government, including the past several administrations (not limited to Republican ones!) have shown an increasing tendency to appeal to identify politics, cults of personality, and disregard for previous Constitutional limits, and that there is a ~10% chance this will lead us towards an actual fascist state (for some value of "fascist" - we can argue over exactly what the definition is if you really want to, but I am talking about something we would both broadly agree looks and smells like fascism, not "something I don't like"). In other words, the actual end of the Republic as we know it, at least in all but name.
I do happen to think Trump has fanned the flames worse than Biden or Mamdani or Nancy Pelosi or whomever you'd prefer to blame, but he's not the sole or first cause. (Note also that this is an admission that I have updated my priors somewhat since that argument I had with @FCfromSCC way back when - I still mostly believe the things I said then, but with weaker confidence. On the other hand, the fact that Trump was reelected should have made him update his.)
It's almost like you drew a line in the sand, shrugged and said you weren't impressed when I pointed out the line had been trampled already, and specifically said I "should be able to point this out in a few years" when you were wrong. And now it turns out that of course this isn't the sort of prediction that anyone actually commits to, on the basis of your long-extant experience?
Yes, that's the sort of thing that's pretty memorable.
No, I don't know better. That's a good bit of the frustration, here.
You keep talking about how you push back against unreasonable claims of fascism, and that happens, sure. But in this conversation you KoolAid manned in to nitpick about poker tactics while the other poster is saying 10% Literally Hitler (and making up autogople meetings with generals, and yada yada noonecares).
You dive into conversations about students yelling at professors with discussions of concentration camps, throw calling homosexuality a sin into conversations with the Day Of The Rope, put "don't have free speech (as you fedpost on reddit)" alongside with literal "gulags" out of your own volition.
((and, of course, when it turned out that we didn't have free speech to fedpost on reddit, or to fedpost here, because of course there's wildly hypocritical and politically biased sanction and investigation of Red-leaning fedposting even under a Republican administration, it doesn't even seem like it matters. But, hey, you'll invite me to talk about how I can violate the rules of this website, in case I'm dumb enough to think that anything I could offer would be anywhere near as persuasive as the sword of damocles that a federal subpoena would.))
Fine, there's a range here. Where's the dividing line? Because the Blue Tribe sure as hell hasn't provided an example beyond "things we don't like", you haven't provided an.
And all of that would be fine: you're allowed to have your wrong opinions. But it's never a matter of actually defending these positions, or even defining their borders out to say what they are. It's throw out a cloud of ipse dixit, say whatever can be proven doesn't count, and jam.
Spell it the fuck out, and actually commit to a bit for long enough to risk being proven wrong.
For someone who doesn’t care who’s the wrongest person in Wronglandia, you sure do love to insist that this guy is The Worst One ever.
(while coincidentally glossing over the obvious competition for past examples that could compete on "appeal to identify politics, cults of personality, and disregard for previous Constitutional limits"? The last couple Dem presidents that didn't have brain damage only had scandals about a tan suit and a luxurious cigar, right?)
Is this something that you're actually willing to discuss and provide concrete examples around, or should we just be taking it as gospel that, hey, there's a ton of protesters that you can see, it must be a new level of escalation.
Can we engage with the bit where supposedly sober and serious actors, the best and brightest available from the ratsphere community, are just repeating made-up hundred-kilodeaths numbers because they don't like a policy this time around, when last time they were crying themselves to sleep every night over a photo that -- whoops! -- turned out to be from the Obama admin?
Thank you for at least occasionally updating on evidence.
This punchline would be funnier if a) FCfromSSC, rather than Nybbler, had predicted Trump could never ever ever ever be reelected or b) a bullet hadn't come within inches of making very sure he didn't, or c) that judges didn't order already-cast (primary) ballots for him to not be counted.
I think the only thing we agree on is that we are both frustrated. And I'm answering here because when I throw up my hands and let it go, I later get accused of refusing to answer. But as wrong as you think I am (that's about the only thing I can discern for certain here), I am not being glib or sarcastic or dismissive here when I tell you that there is something about your j'accuse posts that are, besides being annoying, really hard for me to follow.
I don't know if it's the way you write, and I can even entertain the possibility that I'm just not smart enough to get you (I doubt this, but I'm humble enough to own that I am no longer as smart as I once thought I was). But I go through your laundry lists of accusations and feel like sincerity requires me to try to answer them point by point, and I get bogged down in a mixture of "That's completely not what I meant," "That is not what I said and I think you're straw manning me," and "What does he even mean?"
So, really and truly, I'm not sure what you want from me. I mean, besides a wholesale admission that I'm on the bad side and everything I've said for the last five years is wrong. I'm afraid I am not willing to oblige you there. I dunno, some people attack me and at least I know what they are accusing me of, even if it's wrong. Some people attack me and they're just crazy, so I can roll my eyes and move on. You attack me in a very effortful way and I don't even know where to begin rebutting because it's all "You said this and here's a long paragraph about what other people did and isn't this funny and here's something you said four years ago."
I realize this leaves us back where we started.
You don't have to respond to every single point. You don't have to respond to a majority of my points.
But if you genuinely believe that I've gish galloped you or straw-manned you, you should be able to pick two or three meaningfully false claims or clear misquotes or obviously unfair rephrasings, using actual quotes of words I've actually used, and then provide grounds for disagreement based on facts that exist in the world that can be discussed. And then, if I'm able to support my claims in response, either engage with my counterexamples, or justify how your position survives those counterexamples.
I'm not demanding that you admit you're wrong. I'd like you to be right! But it's hard to come away from conversations like this thinking we're debating what the actual state of reality is, rather than trying to discuss what we're even talking about.
((I'm sorry that I'm being both circumspect and prone to digressions, but from my perspective it feels like I can't have a conversation with you unless I nail down every possible aside. Best case, we end up spending ten posts relitigating the bare existence of a topic that we already discussed at length; worst case, I get lumped in with Soros conspiracy theorists and KulakCatgirl fanboys.))
Well, yeah, that's the problem. I mean, I already told you I literally have trouble figuring out exactly what you are accusing me of, and here you are returning almost two weeks later to go at it again! (I'm not saying you have a time limit on responding, but come on, I thought we'd both walked away from this one, and now I have to reread the whole thread to remember where we even were.)
I think I already apologized for accusing you of being a Kulak fan, and I honestly don't remember calling you a Soros conspiracy theorist. I suppose you have a link where I implied it or something. You're not a Soros conspiracy theorist. Are you happy?
Look, as I once said to you in private: what do you want? Is it really that specific post you have been hounding me about for years, that argument I had with @FCfromSSC? I have said repeatedly that I regret that exchange and have reconsidered how I expressed myself, even if don't repudiate the core thesis. So if "Admit you're wrong" is not what you're after, what are you after? You really just want to replay that particular argument again? After five goddamn years? Really?
Apologies. Work and STEM outreach have been busy, and I've been limiting politics-writing when in those environments even where I have idle time for the obvious reasons that are kinda my point. And then I'll realize half-way through a response that I'm relitigating stuff you clearly didn't want to litigate the first time, and have to start again.
I don't think a neutral observer would have read that as an apology, but I'll take it under the intent you meant if that's what you meant.
"I'll use a common public figure or trope and you object "I never mentioned George Soros." No, you didn't, but Soros-like social manipulation seems to be the sort of thing you are alleging."
And I'll spell out specifically that my claim was "I get lumped in with Soros conspiracy theorists".
Happy would be overstating things, since that wasn't the claim I made, but I'll take it in the spirit it was intended.
My problem has never been your tone, as I've said at length. I care about your core thesis. I think it's wrong, I think it's been wrong for years, and I've shouted in every way short of going full-caps at you about it. Literally, to quote my PM to you, "I would like to know which of us is right, and which is wrong. From you, I'd take a serious argument why you believe I'm wrong."
((Yes, I'm going to keep referencing the five-year-old post that, in its closest to a followup, specifically spelled out "gattsuru's list does not impress, but if I was wrong, he should be able to point this out in a few years", when I still think you're wrong and you've done less than nothing to even attempt to actually confront that list, or the specific claims you made then.))
I'd love to think otherwise! Whether it's that the lists of things I offer aren't actually happening or are gish gallops or are purely hypothetical, or that they don't seriously impact my freedom of speech or civil rights, or that if they do it's just social conformity not partly the state actions I've already linked, or that it's really going to just ebb and flow in way that actually leaves me whole or my enemies feeling genuine mirrors of my problems. But we don't do that discussion. I can't even get agreement on what level your thesis actually holds on long enough to debate the facts, and when I've attempted to draw out a literal branching graph of options, the closest we got was a thesis of "I still think the evidence does not say we are as far along down the slippery slope as you think we are".
What evidence? What point on the slippery slope? What could possibly change your mind, before it was too late?
But if we can't have that discussion, hell, I'd just take a serious engagement with the thing that brought you into this thread. You popped in to insist that it's a bad idea to make single bets, even at steeply favorable odds, and that no one's saying literally Hitler. Well, MadMonzer's willing to bet often, claimed the odds are wildly favorable, Arjin didn't demand anyone go all-in or even beat pizza money. Oh, and MadMonzer said specifically "10% chance that Trump is Hitler". Does this say anything? Do you have some other reason to believe that MadMonzer actually believes that number, when you yourself are saying that it's clearly absurd?
Here's something to help you set your expectations:
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