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 -
CNN: "Accused shooter in Kansas City shooting of Black teen who went to the wrong house is White man in his 80s" Archive: https://archive.is/NcFb5
Edit: Andrew Lester is the 84 year old white man and is facing charges of assault in the first degree and armed criminal action. Clay County attorney Zachary Thompson states there was a racial element but hate crimes is a lower charge so will not be brought. "There is no evidence that the teen entered the home and preliminary evidence shows Lester opened fire on the teen through a glass door with a .32 caliber revolver"
Ralph Yarl is the black teen that was shot outside of Kansas City, Missouri. Early it was reported that he was shot twice in the head but now his family's attorneys are saying that Yarl "shot twice and struck in the head and arm" and Yarl has now been released from the hospital and is recovering at home.
The white man in his 80's "was taken into custody on April 13 just before midnight and was released less than two hours later at 1:24 a.m. on April 14."
By all accounts I am seeing Ralph Yarl is a band geek which places my heuristic chances of aggression on his part as low. If I found the correct streets the subdivision is one of the last developments before hitting mostly farms and the street names are really confusing with the developer using the same number twice and then alternating between "Street" and "Terrace."
Of course, still waiting on details but in my opinion this could likely be what some people consider to be the quintessential example of a "racist" shooting. If that's the case and the only quibble between Red Tribe and Blue Tribe is if it would have made a difference if the kid was white or black does this story gain a much traction with that little toxoplasma or does it more go the way of the Eric Garner and Philando Castile killings?
Crime, and especially murder, is incredibly concentrated in specific areas of American cities. Unless there's another 115th North East Street right next to a 115th Terrace in Kansas City, the shootings appear to have occurred in the Nashua neighborhood south of Cunningham near the I435/Highway 169 Interchange. Nashua is ranked in the top ten safest neighborhoods in Kansas City, the 4th best to buy a home in and has a murder rate per 100,000 residents of 4.6 according to Niche.com, though they lump Nashua together with Gashland which is slightly further south.
Now that's a website designed to help people
buy housespick schools not represent crime statistics, maybe things have changed since whenever they got their data. Well here's a local news affiliate's map of homicides for each year. Notice how murders are overwhelmingly concentrated in the southern part of Kansas City. In 2023 they don't show any north of the Missouri River and Nashua is ten miles north of that. On the 2022 map I count seven murders north of the Missouri River within the I-435 loop, with most of them close to the river. The closest shooting to Nashua was two miles away and sounds like a domestic dispute (woman shot in her home after neighbors called cops due to disturbance, suspect immediately arrested). In the area bounded by I-435, 169 & 152 containing the Nashua neighborhood the KSHB homicide map shows a total of six murders since 2015. The Gas Station shooting you brought up was at East 35th & Prospect 20 miles south of where this shooting occurred.Society was not collapsing around this guy, he lived in a safer than average neighborhood with good property values. Opinions can differ on whether or not it's reasonable for an octogenarian to arm himself before talking to a strange teenager at 10pm, but the old man's perception of threat should not reasonably have been based on the crime spike south of him.
Yes, because the only way people ever get a sense of what the "good" and "bad" parts of town are is from GIS data and not by opening their window and noticing that they live in a beautiful neighborhood of detached single-family homes with carefully maintained lawns and not a graffiti-covered ghetto. Yes, he probably watched TV and local news with its inordinate focus on 'if it bleeds it leads" crime coverage. This horribly biased mainstream media may have misled him into thinking he was likely to be a victim of violent crime, and so he gunned down a black band geek (edit: in what would have been) the first murder in KC in 2023 to take place north of the Missouri River. Or he may have just been an addled old man who didn't consume much news and made a mistake.
Either way, the issue was not, as you asserted originally, that this guy watched society collapse around him. He may have watched society collapse on TV and become confused.
If it's anything like the area I left, you can tell which way the wind is blowing.
You show up to the area, fresh faced and optimistic. You quickly notice there is a street below which... well... you don't want to be there after night. You notice every time you drive by there, maybe to take a shortcut, somewhere along your route you notice someone being arrested. But it's fine! You don't live there!
But it's only like, 10 miles from you.
Three years in, the shopping center with the pizza place you used to love becomes... well... uncomfortable. More and more people are getting robbed in the parking lot. Sometimes a body shows up in the woods behind it.
But it's fine, that's still like, 5 miles from you.
4 more years go by. The corner gas station you fill up at starts getting hit every few months. People just walking into the street to stop your car and yell at you for money. Break ins are increasing. It's no longer safe to leave you car parked on the street. You complain about it, and people treat you like you should have known better than to live there. Often people who are like you were 10 years ago. Confident if they just live 5-10 miles north of where you are now, they'll be fine for the foreseeable future.
I put about 50 miles between myself and the problem this time around. It would be nice if that lasted until I'm 85. But I know I can't count on it. Every now and again some felons decide to take a felon vacation. It's like a normal vacation, only instead of going to the beach, they drive a county or two over and rob some house in the middle of nowhere for kicks. I guess even felons get bored and need to spice things up.
Yeah that's definitely a thing that can happen, but was that happening in Nashua? It doesn't look like murders we're spreading there, maybe you have some data about other crimes?
A lot starts happening before bodies begin appearing. Including people getting shot near you who don't die of their wounds. Because at the cusp of the tide is a zone that still has largely functional civil services. Like a hospital with an ER that's not crushingly overcapacity with trauma victims most nights.
One of the last straws in my old area was a guy who got shot in the parking lot next to mine, with the gunman on the loose. Came home to cops completely swarming the area. Technically not a murder though!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Oh yeah, I guess I spent too much time looking up crime data and missed Lester making a recovery. Glad to hear the kid survived and that the collapsed society this old man lives in hasn't had a murder this year!
I'll let you get back to inventing insults and not addressing my central argument.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link