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 -
I have mixed feelings. I want a border that is fully hardened against incursions and to turn away every single person with a bogus asylum claim from south of the border, which in my view is every single person with an asylum claim from south of the border. Nonetheless, framing it as being about the spread of Covid has always seemed like a dirty trick, a way to get around the preference for open borders that many in the bureaucracy seem to hold. On one hand, this trick is fine because it's in response to the trick of using "asylum" to create de facto open borders, on the other hand, I just don't like lying.
I completely agree with this. There is unfortunately a ton of this in the federal government.
For instance: the commerce clause, which seems to be used to justify just about anything that the government wants to do.
Or the fact that Congress seems completely unwilling to pass bills that have a single subject. Gotta tie everything together so that you can't block bad legislation without having unpopular knock-on effects! Bonus points if you make it so that the artificial consequence of your legislation is "the federal bureaucracy and the military shuts down", because there's basically no law so bad that a president will ever accept those consequences to veto it.
If it were just about that, this would be less of an issue if legislation were not fundamentally driven by alarmism and impulse. What you are describing seems to boil down to a bundle of legislation comprising A and B(ad) being passed because rejecting it would mean that A can't be passed either; but assuming there isn't a sense of A being urgent/every day that we don't have A being a terrible loss, surely the common-sense response would be to reject the bill and wait until the proponents of A are willing to introduce it on its own.
Instead, though, my understanding always was that the bill-bundling in the US legislative is a consequence of the erosion of trust between different interest groups. Many legislative proposals are strongly championed by a minority and weakly opposed by a majority; and since nobody actually can trust a promise from anyone else in congress to support another bill they actually weakly oppose in the future in return for some favour now, the only way complex trades (where everyone gets something they strongly want in return for a bunch of things they are weakly against) can be executed is by making the entire transaction atomic (that is, bundling all components of the trade into an all-or-nothing legislative package).
Only being able to pass a limited number of bills through the reconciliation process in the senate and avoid the filibuster probably adds to the incentive to compile everything into one or two laws.
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