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PaperclipPerfector  13hr ago (text post)   1665 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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This is just boo outgroup stuff. We just banned someone in the last thread for doing this.

Three day ban for you as well.

Do you think perhaps you are overindexing on someone just being banned? Like you're expecting mkc to have seen that ban and to adjust their posts accordingly, but there's a good chance they have no idea that this other ban was recorded.

Bad ban.

And there was no one left
To speak out for me

For what it's worth I think you're a bastard but I'll still raise a stink if the mods ban you for silliness like they just did.

First they came for the gypsies, and I said nothing for I was not a gypsy

Then they came for the Somalians and I said "Make sure you get all the Somalis".

We just banned someone in the last thread for doing this.

That ban also seems overzealous to me, although I can kind of squint and see a point. But I don't even really see it in this case, is the idea that /u/magicalkittycat isn't allowed to advance his own point of view?

I get that the rules of the Motte are aiming at something higher than courteous discussion, but sometimes I feel that they're choking out courteous discussion. Aren't we all adults?

The point is that this is not a culture war battleground that needs to be fought over by deploying arguments as soldiers. We fall short of the ideal of a neutral discussion area, but I see no reason not to whack down obvious "battleground" type posts where the whole point of the post could be summed up as "my out group sucks". That's boring and it happens literally everywhere else on the internet.

The point is not to be a courteous battleground. It's to be not a battleground at all.

I dislike about 99% of /u/magicalkittycat 's posts and I found this particular post considerably less obnoxious than most. Now if they had dodged any challenges to the suggestion/assertion at the end of their post, as I've often seen happen, then I'd probably support a temp ban.

Ban is a bit strong, and there could be a discussion about the topic at hand here, but come on, that sentence at the end hiding behind Hanania to claim Republicans are held to lower moral standards is just waging the culture war.

Should we update the Rules As Written to match the Rules As Intended, if we're going to start enforcing them in this way?

At least in the comment you linked there was clearly an overgeneralizing crack at the whole outgroup in the last sentence. Here the framing seems to be "Boo Not-Just-My-Ingroup", with the very first clause reminding us that that Ingroup has some boo-worthy members too..

In RAW it still says "concrete criminal or impeachable offenses are also fair game". The example there is ""Congressman Jones is under suspicion of taking bribes" is fine", a criminal+impeachable offense which is clearly more discussion-worthy by being directly linked to the office, but is that necessary? The initial Platner scandals weren't even criminal; a discussion of how mere "slimy or gross" might not even be disqualifying, during our weeks of Platner discussion, even made the AAQC lists.

the very first clause reminding us that that Ingroup has some boo-worthy members too..

One sentence doesn't undo the entire point of the post. And we don't want some magic set of words to allow someone out of an otherwise rule breaking post.

And the entire point of the post is to point out that someone in the out group is doing something bad.

Someone is always doing something bad and I don't want this place to turn into a battleground where we all just publish the worst things that members of the out group are doing.

Parts of the Platner discussion struck me as much more nuanced than this. In the sense that they weren't about the veracity of the allegations but how others were choosing to respond to those allegations. Some of the Platner discussion was the boring "oh look an out group member turned out to be terrible" and that discussion should have probably been shut down.

Some comments I've been seeing however suggest that Republican candidates are simply held to lower moral standards nowadays by their respective sides and it won't impact him too much despite the severity. I guess time will tell.

That pretty much reads to me as just "Let's not forget that even if my ingroup might sometimes do bad, my outgroup are always worse (or so I've heard some guy whose opinion here is irrelevant say, see? I'm not the one waging the culture war, I'm just reporting on what is being said!)"

It's a weaker and more qualified attack, but yeah, that's also pushing the boundaries in the same direction.

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