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 -
Jury selections are essentially random, the loud people and gerrymandering and etc don't really matter as much to them.
It can but ok let's go off that, 75:25 blue ball vs red ball is still 8 blue balls vs 4 red balls who could find not guilty. And again remember the non voting/independent crowd so it's probably more likely 6 blue, 3 red, 3 normies even in the worst case.
Also remember this happened twice in both state and federal court, so let's say 6 reds and 6 normies total who all looked at it and said "yep he seems guilty beyond a reasonable doubt".
Yeah public opinion polling isn't the best, especially since most people are just being tribal instead of looking at the facts.
Good thing we have juries instead where we take a diverse mix of randomly selected citizens with various beliefs and biases and views, lay out the evidence in high detail for them, give them the best arguments from the prosecution and defense, and have them all come to an agreement.
Between the two cases, that's 24 ordinary citizens, randomly selected, with extremely specific knowledge of the case who listened for days hearing the best arguments the defense legal team could make who all said he was guilty. (Editing now, turns out he pled guilty in the federal case before it even went to trial, I knew he had federal charges but I assumed it went to court as well. Well there we go, 12 found him guilty + own admission in plea).
Maybe society needs to be even lighter on punishing crime in favor of protecting potential innocence. Maybe a single jury size should be 15, or 20, or 30 instead of 12 and 30 people have to all agree on guilt. Or maybe there needs to be even more avenues for convicted criminals to get out. Maybe beyond reasonable doubt of 95% or something should be beyond reasonable doubt of 97% or whatever. That's a fair opinion you can have. I just hope you have it consistently.
FWIW. Still other views on Floyd in the right-wing. Funny I believe that guys an Israeli, but everyone everywhere knows American culture war.
https://x.com/aryehazan/status/2057393196619948353?s=46
The coroners report is in the thread.
I don’t necessarily think it’s fair for me to bring up Floyd to you initial comment on the person probably just being guilty, but it’s high profile so far more familiar with that case. The more partisan/culture war a case is the less likely it is going to fit into your the system works on mundane cases.
Why should I privilege the views of a non American specifically selected on idealogically grounds over the 12 randomly selected ordinary American citizens who apparently spent like two weeks listening to just the testimonies alone who all decided he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, plus the other 12 randomly selected ordinary American citizens who also did a similar thing and also all decided he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? And don't forget all the appeals courts (including the US supreme court!) who all turned him down.
This comment is especially revealing. The question of Chauvin's innocence in court is not a culture war one, it is a legal one.
His views are representative of the right. Which is why I say in Texas that even if say a leftist Austin jury found him guilty that he would be pardoned in a right controlled state like Texas.
“Chauvin’s innocent in court is a legal one not a culture one”
Sure I agree. I am just pointing out in different legal jurisdiction with different cultures he would be innocent.
Also not an unbiased jury. Jurors have biases based on their culture. In this case hang whitey was their culture.
Bias: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/photo-of-chauvin-juror-wearing-blm-t-shirt-at-march-raises-questions-of-impartiality-experts-say/
The conservative majority Supreme Court had the option to take the appeal and turn his conviction! We already have high up conservative officials who didn't do this exact thing that you're saying they would definitely do.
Why do you think a jury is made up of 12 people who have to all agree and not 1 then?
Adamiak was convicted of a crime he clearly did not commit, partly under an interpretation of the law not even yet finalized at the time of the 'offense', by a jury. The Conservative Supreme Court didn't care.
I've never heard of this specific case but in general almost all of those types of claims like "they got convicted for something they clearly didn't do!" or "they got in jail just for hanging out with friends!" or other such statements, they're typically wrong. Either on accident by people who don't know the specific details of the case, or by liars like "im just on the sex offender list for peeing outdoors" when they actually jerked off in front of a kid or whatever.
google exists, as does the search engine on this site.
If your counterargument is just that typically people claiming to be falsely convicted of crimes are liars, that's... probably true, and also probably useless. If your counterargument is that this specific claim must not be a person falsely convicted because most claims of false conviction are false, congratulations for making an even worse riddle of induction. If your counterargument is that this specific claim must not be a person falsely convicted because he hasn't specifically been found innocent later, congratulations on your new rule as the king of tautology club.
Thing is that there's not really much point into looking any specific circumstance because it's one of those heuristics that is 99% right.
But even more so
Yes obviously, but do you actually understand at all how long pouring over a bunch of court documents and the like would take? Maybe if you're happy with "here's what the defense's lawyer said after judgement" or "here's what a politically motivated person says" as your basis for why it's unfair, but tons of defense lawyers and politically motivated people say that after (it's their job!) and they're almost always wrong about it.
And all of that for what, to convince a guy on social media who thinks "just Google it" is the extent of figuring out specific complex legal questions when no one changes their mind on social media to begin with, no matter how deeply you actually bother to explain it to them? I could spend some time looking over court documents, seeing what this random guy was charged with, the evidence for it, and the legal opinions of everyone involved, but there's no gain for that amount of effort.
If he's truly clearly innocent (or the law he was charged under is unconstitutional) he can keep appealing upwards. At the very top of it we have a 6-3 conservative majority SC, if they think it's biased against the 2nd amendment they can always take it if they want. It's very rare a supreme court does that (because again, basically every one of these claims are bullshit and the ones that aren't bullshit get resolved before even reaching "let's appeal to SC" level) but he has tons of options left.
Now I'm sure there are some rare specific examples where a person, despite all available evidence at the time showing that they shouldn't be found guilty, was anyway and the appeals court also fucked up and the process up did. Complete perfection is not a goal that is expected or achievable, unless we dismantle the justice system completely there's always that risk. Blackstones ratio as a concept is entirely about acknowledging some innocents will inevitably end up punished unfairly, and arguing for us being sided towards finding people not guilty. That's why we have multiple layers of protection for the accused to begin with.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link