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 -
A Democracy is dependent on certain institutions/people broadly acting fairly and honestly so that the voters can essentially be like a baseball umpire and call balls and strikes with a reasonable set of trusted information.
That being said we also accept that certain actors get to be partisan and try to shape public opinion. Politicians and PACs get to run attack ads which do not need to be nice to the opposing side and can give colorful takes on current events. We would probably assume more groups than these get to be partisans but the exact line of who gets to be partisan is not clearly defined.
And this is where 2020 gets really confusing because there are actors who are not allowed to be partisan using professional credentials to be partisan. The withholding of the vaccine data feels like it was for partisan and probably actually killed a lot of people. Fauci feels like he had other motives (in his case his own ego). The CIA is not suppose to be propagandizing the American people and acting in a partisan way in US elections. So when 50 revolving door CIA agents write an op-ed citing their CIA spy credentials to declare Hunters laptop a Russian Op I feel like that crossed some lines.
The environment stacking felt to me like it crossed a lot of lines on how institutions are required to play in a Democracy that go far beyond the dirty politics that happen in a Democracy.
That being said the Dems probably win the election in a landslide if they didn’t go down the path of fortifying an election. The riots really did costs them a lot of votes. If they had done that then Trump probably just goes down as a one term POTUS who did Republican stuff like cut taxes and appoint conservative judges.
More options
Context Copy link