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 -
As I already pointed out responding to a parallel comment in the same vein, the parent poster specifically said "celebrating the deaths of people they don’t like" with no mention of fellow countrymen (and there would have been examples for that case as well). Maybe, if you agree with his general view, you wish he made a different post, but I don't think you can blame me for responding to the post he actually made.
I do not think you are being ingenuous.
Here's why:
You would have us believe that what you thought he meant was "Leftists (specifically) began celebrating the deaths of any people they don't like-even criminals, pedophiles, war criminals, enemy militants, etc." And that he was arguing that this was different from non-leftists, who don't do that.
In other words, it was a new and specifically leftist thing to, say, cheer for the death of a Hitler or a Saddam or a Ted Bundy, or an Ayatollah.
He didn't mean that. You know he didn't mean that. You are pretending to believe he meant that. You do not believe he meant that.
What he meant, whether or not he expressed it inelegantly, and whether or not you agree with him, is that leftists begin celebrating the deaths of political opponents.
In other words, you are pretending to believe he meant "people they don't like" in its most literal and absolute sense.
I do not believe you actually believed that or were misunderstanding his point, which was talking about cases like celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk or attempted assassinations of Republican politicians.
There is probably a name for this specific rhetorical gambit, where someone says something imprecisely and their interlocutor interprets it in the most dumbass literal fashion possible and pretends to believe that is how they meant it and play gotcha, but it's very tiresome.
It’s a version of the “straw man” fallacy. The “straw man” here is that he’s pretending I said “it’s a problem when people start killing people under any circumstance”, even after I clarified to him I didn’t mean that, and even after multiple other posters told this poster his interpretation of my words is incorrect.
He has finally admitted he feels the left-wingers “think of the opposition party the same way that right-wingers think of a hostile foreign nation that has been calling for Death to America for 50 years”.
So using a fallacious rhetorical gotcha appears to be him trying to dunk on someone he sees as a political opponent. Or maybe he’s just really stubborn and unwilling to admit he thought he read something that wasn’t actually there.
The point I am making is this: Once we condone political violence, whether it’s the assassination of Brian Thompson, Charlie Kirk, or the multiple attempts to assassinate Trump, we are going down a very dark road which, if we continue down, will result in a lot of innocent people being killed and the possible dismantling of our political systems which have been working very well for well over two centuries.
More options
Context Copy link
No, I genuinely believed that he meant that, or at least was somewhat deliberate (perhaps not the sense of a premeditated plan, but in the sense that he wrote it out and then it sounded like good polemic that it was satisfying to send) in allowing for that interpretation. Every single time some divisive political figure dies, I see comments celebrating it from one tribe, and comments denouncing the aforementioned ones as an unprecedented breach of norms (which is taken to justify retaliatory escalation) from the other. Having restrictive and universalisable norms, such as "don't celebrate the deaths of people you don't like", is higher status than having contrived norms that are suspect of being designed to favour your ingroup, such as "don't celebrate the deaths of politicians unless they are leaders of nations that my ingroup detests and asserts to be evil", so I have a choice here:
(1) either I assume he really meant exactly what he literally said, or
(2) I assume he meant the latter thing, which would not be as profitable for his team but is more defensible, but said the first thing, which is more profitable. This is a textbook motte-and-bailey argument.
Apart from the question of whether accusing other people of motte-and-baileying on the Motte even meets our charity standards, I did actually give him the benefit of doubt and believed it was (1); and here, you are essentially telling me I should instead have helped him in creating the M&B setup and let him retreat to the bailey.
I'm sorry, but I don't believe that you sincerely believed the OP was literally claiming that it's bad to celebrate any deaths ever and was being hypocritical because "his side" celebrated killing the Ayatollah, nor that you believed he was motte-and-baileying from "Don't celebrate the deaths of anyone ever" to "Don't celebrate political assassinations (of my side)."
I meant for (1) and (2) to be an exhaustive list of things that I could reasonably believe here: either I believe that he believes his literal claim X (which I argue is wrong), or I believe that he does not believe X and instead believes some claim Y that is not as neat but correct. The first one is (1); the second one is (2) or a close variant, and counts as Motte-and-Bailey. If you don't believe that I sincerely believed either of those things, could you please explain to me what exactly you do believe I believed?
I guess to logically partition the entire space of possibilities, I would have to also consider (3) he does not believe X and instead believes some correct claim Y that is at least as high-status as X and (4) he does not believe X and instead believes in some other wrong claim Y. If it's (3), then I don't understand what is stopping him from retracting X and saying the Y he meant instead, which would solve this whole frustrating discussion at little cost beyond that of an apology for imprecision (surely a good thing for the discussion culture). If it's (4), his case is hardly helped (and either way I would like to know Y).
You are still pretending. Claiming you don't understand is a filibuster, not an honest statement.
This is the sort of troll response, half a step away from the 4chan practice of dismissing arguments with "YWNBAW", that in a better world would land you a ban (but you and I both know that nothing is going to happen when it's a talking point you basically just copied from a mod). I may have a history of arguments with the rightoid set here where they conclude that I am stupid and evil, and I am fully aware of many cases where I have made dumb arguments and dug myself in too deep, but I don't think I have previously been accused of being dishonest. If I wanted to give up on that streak, it would not be over some poster I barely interacted with before making an overwrought claim about crass Redditors.
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
It’s clear looking at the context of that posting that I meant “Trump”. As I said elsewhere in this thread, Trump was democratically elected in 2024 by the majority of the voters. This is a far cry from the leaders of the authoritarian regime in Iran, who have killed thousands of peaceful protesters in Iran. In other words, it’s a false equivalence.
See my response to your parallel response.
It's already a lot of unnecessary work to respond to different people making the same objection in minimally different ways in this subthread. I'd be grateful if you could avoid making it worse by being one person making the same objection in minimally different ways multiple times!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link