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 -
Sure there is. If you want to make a process more burdensome, then there should be a benefit to outweigh the burden. The proclaimed benefit is reducing fraud. If in reality it does not reduce fraud - because the amount of fraud committed that it could stop is effectively zero - then it's just a burden. If it stops 1 fraudulent vote and 10 citizens, it's still pointless. The right pivots the conversation that the burden is very tiny and easy to circumvent, but it doesn't change that their preferred policy didn't actually do anything.
Would you buy and carry around with you a tiger repelling charm, even if said charm did repel tigers?
It's "not about the object of voter ID" because the object of voter ID is stopping something from happening that isn't happening. If you kept trying to further criminalize cannibalism I'd look at you like you were stupid or playing some game with me.
You're doing that thing where you take a reasonable argument but try to discredit it by making it about the emotional salience of the word racism. Yes, disenfranchising qualified voters is bad and I'm tired of pretending it's not. It's even bad if we ignored any discussion of race.
"The real goal" is a perfectly valid talking point when dealing with someone who categorically does things different from what they say they will. In 2013, a day after provisions of the Voting Rights Act got gutted by the Supreme Court, Republicans got to work making an election security law. Note that when making this law, they had already completed a survey of how people register and vote, broken down by race. They changed:
ID requirements - they already required some forms of ID, but accepted even expired photo IDs. They restricted the kind of IDs that would work, but kept some alternate IDs that whites use. Because apparently the vote fraudsters could also somehow get a hold of a bunch of expired IDs?
Same day registration - Notably not photo ID, which is the part always focused on. Sounds more like a way to stop people voting than increasing security. "The district court found that legislators similarly requested data as to the racial makeup of same-day registrants."
Out of precinct voting - Notably not photo ID, and not discussed. "Legislators additionally requested a racial breakdown of provisional voting, including out-of-precinct voting." If you vote provisionally, they check whether you've already voted before counting it.
Preregistration permitted 16- and 17-year-olds, when obtaining driver’s licenses or attending mandatory high school registration drives, to identify themselves and indicate their intent to vote. - You guessed it, done without ever suggesting we needed to do this. What does this have to do with security?
Reduction in early voting - also not photo ID, and also known that it was used primarily by black people.
Mail-in voting - This is commonly cited as a weak point in election security. But white people use this more than black people, so this wasn't touched at all!
Just such a strange response. I make an admittedly slightly uncharitable "boo outgroup" argument that literally gets a nasty gram comment from the mods (appropriate, however).
And then you swoop in and become a living breathing caricature of my outgroup.
I don't really know what to do here except sincerely thank you for your contribution.
Perhaps recalibrate what counts as a caricature?
Your post above was not actually arguing any point. It was just saying "Why would anyone oppose common sense
gun controlvoter ID?" And follow a similar tactic where one simply sidesteps any discussion about the fact that mass shooters are incredibly rare to begin with and a smaller mag size doesn't really stop them by making the conversation about the supposed unreasonableness of opposing it. The correct response to this tactic is to ask, "You tell me - why then are you so insistent on this if it doesn't actually do anything?"I don't actually care about 'THE RACISMS" except for the fact that if black people reliably voted Republican then the GOP would be all over expanding the vote.
You play this game of "Dems only oppose it because it's a tribal signifier." I'm saying that yes, "disenfranchising qualified voters" fucking is the real goal of those pesky rightists. And we know this because we've literally seen them do it, in ways that cannot be written off as election security, in recent memory.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link