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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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The point isn't that anyone is assuming the story(ies) are made up. The point is that bullet point at the top that people love to ignore:

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 this case, there weren't even links. But if you cite a story about an insane black man setting a random passenger on fire on public transit, and your point is "Leftists have made it legal for insane black men to set people on fire," then yes, at the very least you need to post a link to the story so people can at least see if you might be leaving something out, and more importantly, "Here is a bad thing that happened and it's proof that my outgroup is very very bad, they literally made it legal to set people on fire!" is a crappy argument meant only to flash a boo light.

We all know (I am comfortable saying that despite it being "consensus building" because I do not believe anyone does not know) that people who want setting people on fire to literally be legal is a lizardman constant. "People want crime to be legal in Minnesota as long as it's for a leftist cause" is not how anyone, even on the left, would describe their position. ("They're lying!" you say, or "Their position is disingenuous and does not deserve charity." Too bad, that's not how things work here, you don't get to just assert that your enemies are all evil liars acting out of pure malice, whose stated motives do not even need to be considered.)

A more contextualized and steel-manned argument would be something like "Because of soft-on-crime policies and an unwillingness to deal with mentally ill homeless people, and racial sensitivity, it is now common for black criminals to get away with repeat offenses, even violent murders." Or "Leftists have institutional control and have repeatedly shown that they will apply the law in an unprincipled biased manner." That's at least a start at describing what you think is happening in a manner that sounds sane and would require your opponents to make a counter-argument that is more substantial than "No, I am not a crazy evil person who wants it to be legal for black men to set people on fire."

If you can't even be bothered to put in the minimal effort to assume that a non-batshit-insane counterargument exists (as the OP did not), then your post is bad and it's just outrage porn.

Hmm I think you're right, but in this case posting links certainly won't help OP's case in making the post better.

Because from what you're saying it seems like the lack of links is the least of OP's problems