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 -
You know, I’m quite open to the possibility that the FBI is planting such material in order to get at politically disfavored people whom they cannot otherwise touch. It’s definitely doable, it would only require a few bad actors, and it would be almost impossible for the victim to defend against. But the case you linked doesn’t seem at all relevant. The defendant’s complaint is that the evidence was accidentally found during an unrelated search, not that the evidence was planted. He also doesn’t seem to be a particular ringleader, so it seems unlikely that the FBI would single him out (there haven’t been a slew of similar cases to my knowledge). Plus, there were some 1,500 January 6 defendants who were pardoned by Trump. It doesn’t seem statistically unlikely that one of those 1,500 would be into CP, especially given that some sources estimate that 1–5% of the male population are pedophiles.
So Americans will send a man to jail for 10 years because their government wrongly searched him and alleges to have found obscene photos on a private hard drive. Sounds like some uncivilized Russian monkey business to me. This is despite the initial cause for search being illegitimate enough that they could not hold him on the actual charges they were investigating. This boils down to blindly trusting a government that has already demonstrated openly, through the initial search, that they are just engaging in mere political persecution, and not the „justice” they they so hubristically don themselves in through their self-namings such as Department of „Justice,” „justice” system, supreme court „justice.” What does the United States know of justice? Is it the state that Plato envisioned when he thought of justice, or is it a democratic tyranny? Anyway, as for your statistics, maybe the special agent in charge of this specific persecution was a corrupt Democrat pedophile who was well positioned and motivated to frame this specific person for this specific crime. In the whole FBI you would expect at least one such person when it comes to a persecution as big as the J6 round-up, even if the FBI generally was not very corrupt. But we don't know because it is illegal in the United States to investigate federal agents or to question their trustworthiness at trial. I have read that judges gag the defense from presenting arguments that „place the government on trial” by alleging that evidence is forged, agents are corrupt, the prosecution is motivated, etc. Which does not seem like it is keeping up a real right to defense to me.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link