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 -
No they shouldn't. I have no obligation towards Jews. I may help people because I like them. If they don't clear my likeability bar they should raise complaint with the Gestapo.
And no one in Europe aside from Ukrainians and Russians is real asylum seeker.
A phrase I’ve always detested whenever I would hear it goes something like, “First they came for me for I X, then they came for him because I Y, lastly they came for me and there was no one else to defend me,” or some idiotic diatribe like that. There are far too many examples in society of pathologically altruistic people who spend way too much time advocating for the interests of groups who in turn, quickly turn right around and dispose of them at a moment’s notice and never saw them for anything more than a useful idiot to be discarded after all the value had been extracted out of them. I’ve seen it with every group out there including my own family. People who will come to you with a sob story so you’ll take them in and then they proceed eat you out of house and home and after you’ve been consumed and spent, they say to themselves “The well’s all dried up here,” and then they move onto the next victim. They’ll quickly forget you ever existed and stop taking your phone calls when you need them. I had this discussion with a peer a long time ago who did a prison stint for activity he was part of when he was still in a gang. Got out and found he was PNG’d. He said to me, “All that work put in and this is how they’ll treat you. Damn. The hood forgets you really fast.”
I’m an enjoyer of parodies of that poem. One example that has been making the rounds:
First they came for the gypsies—I said nothing for I was not a gypsy.Then they came for the Somalis—and I said “good, make sure you get all the Somalis.”
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's rather my point (I mean, I'd say there are a few others e.g. Uyghurs, but same difference). As someone who does believe in the moral duty to aid genuine asylum seekers, I dislike the fact that the "asylum seeker" category has been turned into "immigrant 2.0" and massively overstrained. I would like it to get its old meaning back. Therefore, I approve of official documents which acknowledge that coexisting with asylum seekers is not necessarily comfortable; that when and if we choose to grant that status, we do it out of ethical duty, not because we are mistaking the asylum seekers for swell, prosocial immigrants whom we'd love to see put down roots once the crisis is over. Asking if asylum-seekers are a good fit for Western values is a category error, and pretending that they must be before we can let them in is precisely the overreach that lets asylum-seekers trade on public goodwill to turn into permanent residents.
Just to add a little on this point. The other day I briefly caught the first half of a Piers Morgan episode while at work that was pretty hilarious. Shmuley is a guy who has zero self-awareness of how bad of a job he does for his own cause (he’s a 100 on the neurotic scale) and never once in his life learned to simply shut his damn mouth (along with Dershowitz incidentally).
Anyway, at about the 49th red herring he pulls out of his ass, he accused a fellow Nordic of being an immoral guy for refusing to take in Palestinian refugees or advocating for them to seek asylum in Iceland. Shmuley would’ve had a valid point to make, only to the extent that Iceland played an active role in the ongoing destruction in Gaza. The US is responsible solely for its contribution to the problem, of which it’s a co-belligerent and one of the primary enablers if not an outright instigator itself. I will also acknowledge a moral requirement to make good for the harm you’ve caused or participated in and wouldn’t object on those moral grounds that one should be obligated to take in select asylum seekers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link