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 -
Robert Mueller dies at 81
If you're like me and you barely paid attention to the Mueller Report while it was happening and don't remember anything, the article is a decent summary. I was under the impression that Russia did stuff, Trump didn't actively participate but didn't put up a protest either, and some of his team got busted for lying to investigators (Trump's lawyers were worried about him also getting involved in perjury but successfully managed to get him to "not recall" everything).
Anyways I still don't see what the big deal was, other than lying to investigators. They didn't do any hacking themselves or ask anyone to do it. Knowing about it in advance, or using it as part of campaign strategy, isn't a crime either.
I don't think there would be much direct collusion between the Trump campaign (at least, not multiple high level staffers) to begin with just because there's not too much need for it. It's simple to just stay working in parallel with the same goal in mind than risk communicating too much. That being said, I take it by default that there was Russian influence in the 2016 election, but I also assume there was foreign influence of basically any kind. Point to any modern middle income or above country and they're most likely engaged in a bunch of spycraft, cyber warfare, bot networks, etc. The US does it to other countries too!
The Mueller report is mostly meaningful to me in just how much obstruction there was from the Trump 1 admin. That's the suspicious part to me, trying to hide Russian operations suggests there might have been something deeper that was left undiscovered. Similar to how the continued attempts to slow walk and hide the Epstein files continues to suggest something deeper. I'm a big fan of privacy from government and don't buy the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" argument for mass surveillance, but that's on individual rights and personal privacy. It is in fact suspicious when done with the government itself.
But realistically it doesn't even change anything. We already know that Trump is extremely friendly towards Putin and Russia! We don't need any proof of campaign coordination to know how much they get along, he's pretty blatant in this!
Speaking of Trump's reaction btw, incredible how much material This You is getting from it. also boy there is an old Kirk tweet for everything at this point.
The problem with this entire take is that Trump actually has colluded with a foreign power and he was extremely open about it, creating an undeniable trail of evidence accompanied by corrupt outcomes which simply do not exist for Russia and Putin. The Russian connection relies on incredibly dodgy IP address connections and other bullshit, along with one of 2016 Candidate Trump's policies (get the US out of foreign wars) coinciding with one of Putin's priorities (end the Ukraine war, which was rendered substantially harder by US assistance). There's mysterious backchannels, blackmail material with sources exactly as strong as someone on 4chan saying they made it up (not joking) etc - and to top it all off, there's no real evidence that Trump acted in a corrupt fashion and helped out Russia.
But if we switch focus for a second and look at Israeli compromise, there are mountains of evidence - we can see Trump talking about how Miriam Adelson purchased his foreign policy decisions for money, we can see the pipeline from donations to pardons, we can see foreign policy decisions completely outsourced to Israel no matter how much the US suffers. This is what corruption actually looks like, and it isn't hidden at all - there IS direct collusion, there IS evidence of quid pro quo, there IS evidence of bribery. What's the point of talking about the anemic and insubstantial accusations of pro-Russian collusion when Trump openly confesses in public to being purchased by Israeli money?
Why did Israel decide that Trump should make a separate peace with the Houthis?
My apologies for being ambiguous - I did not mean that Israel were in charge of all foreign policy decisions, but that certain decisions were made by them with zero regard for America's interests.
Ah, I see. Thank you for clarifying!
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