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 -
"Someone somewhere said it" is an interesting way to describe something being reported on by a journalist from an established centrist (and often Trump friendly) media organization.
Bari Weiss is in charge of it, and what goes on would have been approved by either her or people she put in charge of approvals. As for if they lied, I invite you to this ACX post. It's possible it's fabricated from whole cloth, but that would be odd. And for what purpose?
Trump has already openly threatened both Canada and Denmark, certainly no one would think "Ah, an undersecretary vaguely threatening the Vatican behind closed doors will hurt him significantly" right? That behavior is less unhinged and damaging than what Trump has already done on multiple occasions to what might be even stronger and important allies (our regional neighbors and NATO).
Ok so you also didn't read a single thing said then, because the free press does not cite Letters from Leo. TFP was first. You got the basic timeline wrong, you do not even understand even the simplest elements of this story and yet try to dismiss everything about it. That doesn't suggest you're participating in good faith, if anything it makes me doubt if you even tried to read the Letters from Leo piece to begin with cause even in the pre paywall section he makes it clear that TFP was first.
I don't want to accuse you of lying here, but it is questionable when the fourth line is "That scene, broken this week by Mattia Ferraresi in an extraordinary piece of journalism for The Free Press, may be the most remarkable moment in the long and knotted history of the American republic’s relationship with the Catholic Church." and the literal subheading is "The Free Press has documented a closed-door Pentagon meeting in which a senior Trump official lectured Pope Leo XIV’s ambassador on American military supremacy.". If you aren't lying and actually tried to read it, how did you not see either of those?
Because they're the ones who first reported on it! You also don't seem to understand the basics of journalism here either.
If the point of the place is "don't read a single thing, don't even understand the most basic timeline of what order things were published in, and just cast doubt on anything that could make the government look bad" then yeah, I didn't understand it. But I thought it was for intelligent and meaningful discussion, so if anything my bar of "at least know the most basic details and actually read the words" is incredibly low.
Having gotten off work and gotten the kids to bed, I read this and was gearing up to snipe back, but decided to double check first. And you are entirely correct, the TFP article did come first, the LFL article mentions this in several places, all of which I was too busy looking for names of actual sources to actually take in. Likewise, the LFL article is claiming corroboration from its own sources; and for an additional bonus, I see now that I have not even now read all the LFL article, since an unknown portion of it is also behind a pseudo-paywall.
There's much more I'd like to say, but it seems to me that the best move would be to note that my own priors have shifted significantly toward the report being basically accurate, and apologize for polluting the discussion with basic factual errors. I will attempt to be more careful when posting in the future.
Hey it's no problem, most people would double down on such basic factual errors and insist that actually they were totally right all along. I get skimming too much or getting frustrated and not reading it or whatever caused you to miss the timeline.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link