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 -
[removed, overly emotional]
I think Trump has a point, that arguing the specifics seems irrelevant to me, when the larger issue is unfair treatment. Unfortunately, it's probably impossible to persuade anyone of this to people who consider Trump to be a singular threat.
God, I am so fucking tired of this argument. This isn't a sports game, you don't get a free throw because the other guy fouled you. Yeah, Clinton should be behind bars but the fact that she's walking free doesn't make Trump immune to prosecution. The fact that otherwise intelligent people are acting like it should is baffling to me.
If the referees only ever target one side and the game is rigged, the crimes don't exist, they're just pretexts. You can argue for prosecuting both sides, the government will take your approval, say, "thank you for legitimizing what I was doing anyways," and then keep not presecuting their own guys. They'll make up process crimes to lawfare whoever they want, and you've already argued yourself into accepting their frame.
More options
Context Copy link
It isn’t just Clinton. It is that the deep state was against Trump and opened baseless investigations into him time and time again. That isn’t justice; not in the western style at least.
More options
Context Copy link
This is basic game theory. In any iterated model, fairness matters, whether it's sports, trade negotiations, or political hardball.
One of the most relevant parts of that game theory, though, is how to re-establish trust and fairness given a history of defection. Given a historically bipartisan-ly corrupt system, how do you begin enforcing the rules without appearing to play favorites?
Honestly it's a hard problem of soft skills: if there were an easy answer, any number of longstanding grudges (Israel/Palestine, etc) could be settled. There are a few successful examples: Northern Ireland seems pretty peaceful these days.
For the record, I'd much prefer a non-corrupt system, but I think a partisanly corrupt system is probably even worse.
Easy - you do so in a way that disadvantages yourself voluntarily. If your counterparty continues to defect anyway, you take an L, but that's really the only way to break the cycle. I actually thought the Trump administration coming to power and then legally completely laying off both Hillary and everyone else in the previous administration was a significant de-escalation, given this represented a substantial political climbdown from the election. For better or worse, it wasn't reciprocated.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Consider, why is there an expectation in sports that if my opponents gets free throws for a foul that I should get the same call on the other end? Why does the discrepancy in the whistle between ends cause much more anger than a blown call isolation? It seems to me that this is not a product of something idiosyncratic to sports, but that the sports rules and expectations derive from a generalized human dislike for such blatant unfairness. I might dislike that James Harden engages in endless foul-baiting nonsense, but I can deal with it if I'm getting the same whistle when I use that stupid rip-through to draw a foul. If the call only goes one way, it becomes obvious that the system is rigged.
More options
Context Copy link
So argue your point. Why should the rules be different for different politicians?
Oh for fuck's sake. I'm not saying the rule should be different. I am fully fucking aware Clinton broke the law and I'm not okay with her getting away with it either. Just because one thief walked does mean we should just let all thieves walk.
Edited for clarity and charity.
If you ask two people to change their behavior but you know in advance that one of them won't, that is equivalent to asking only one of them to change. If you think Clinton getting away with it was a one-off fluke, say that. If you think that it wasn't but now we're going to start getting prosecutions of prominent members in the current administration, say that. If you think the investigation into the server should be re-opened after 7 years have passed, say that. Otherwise, you're asking for rules which are going to be applied only to some politicians, which is equivalent to rules which are different for different politicians.
Sure. Re-open the investigation into Clinton. Go after Pence and Biden while you're at it.
That enough throat-clearing for everyone?
No, it's not enough, because you and I both know that these cases will never be reopened so it costs you absolutely nothing to take that stance. Very principled and also very convenient.
As someone above posted, the only way to deescalate this sort of partisan spiral is for your side to willingly take an L. If the Dems showed that they had Trump dead to rights but then loudly proclaimed that they refused to stoop to politically motivated prosecution, I would be impressed. Or, if they prosecuted Trump and then also began looking into Hunter Biden, I would be impressed. But until then, if it looks/walks/smells like political partisanship then it probably is, and all the self-righteous throat clearing in the world isn't going to change anyone's mind.
So my denouncement of Clinton is just further evidence of my anti-Trump partisanship? Yeah, I know a Kafka trap when I see it. Run along.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"My rules enforced > your rules enforced fairly > your rules enforced unfairly"
More options
Context Copy link
So what is to be done?
I don't believe the system is fair. Therefore, I don't believe the system should be respected, maintained, or cooperated with. Allowing Trump to break the law does not make the system worse, because selective rules enforcement is not better than no rules enforcement. If one thief walks, that doesn't mean all thieves should walk, but if you conclude that thieves walk or not based on their relationship to the cops, that can in fact be a deal-breaker.
In any case, I've said since the election in 2015 that I'm entirely happy to see Trump go to jail. Establishing the exact contours of the regime is a useful exercise! That doesn't mean there's the slightest reason to cooperate with the efforts to put him there, though; If they want to get rid of him, make them work for it, publicly and on the record. Make them commit.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Clinton famously destroyed evidence and lied about it. Any of her aides who could have been charged were turned into witnesses and given immunity for their participation. Besides: she wasn't just taking some documents home, she was running a private email server totally outside od normal process.
Yeah, I really have to second this. Even presuming Clinton's lawyers and strategy was better then Trump -- not exactly a given! -- that's still damning with incredibly faint praise. It's the sort of thing where a Trump defender could claim 'hey, he wasn't caught literally stuffing them into his pants'.
There's a pathway where everyone decides that, contra 2016's handwringing, "lock X up" is now acceptable discourse and the current President's arguments in favor of rolling back to normalcy don't cover this. But it's not like jeopardy attached for Clinton, or has attached yet for Biden or Bush or countless other oopsies.
I'm not really make the moral argument, here; I'm open to the possibility that Clinton's behavior was less morally bad, though I'm not convinced of it.
My objection is that a lot of the behavior in Clinton's case absolutely was the sort of thing that looked like an absolute clownshow. Not having the number of boxes of documents that they originally claimed is one of the more overt, but it wasn't exactly a one-off. Clinton had asked people to strip classification markings off messages and then send them on unsecured networks, responded to requests to turn over all her e-mails by giving tiny subsections and deleting others.
Some of that's not Clinton confessing to all the elements of a criminal offense on tape -- the Platte River Networks employee who told the FBI that he or she knew of a preservation order from the Benghazi Committee, and knew that it applied to materials he or she was deleting, at the time he or she actually did the deleting; Cheryl Mills testified to all the elements for an obstruction of justice charge if anyone no one considered that as relevant then -- but they weren't prosecuted, either.
That's not exactly unique, either. I've given my rants about absolute abominations of behavior across the political aisles that's been overlooked out of misplaced les majestie, but it's actually pretty common for them to be embarrassingly tedious in addition to also often being grotesque.
There's perhaps a fair argument that Trump is more clownshow, perhaps more clownshow than anyone else ever has been. I'm actually pretty willing to support that, with my only remaining reservations because I'm familiar with some very stupid political scandals. And this argument continues that either Clinton was above some arbitrary threshold of embarrassingly bad cover, or hit the magic level of distribution of clownshoery that no one person could be proven guilty or even indicted, even by standards that allow prosecutors to suborn perjury or indict a ham sandwich.
But then this argument further needs some reason to respect that particular distinction. And it's a pretty narrow band to dial in on.
More options
Context Copy link
IIRC, she directly ordered her staff to set up an illegal server and piped large amounts of classified material through it, and then ordered her staff to destroy evidence of this when called on it. No charges were pinned on her because the FBI refused to attempt to pin any, not because of her legal operations or that of her lawyers. The FBI offered her staffers full immunity, not for incriminating evidence of their superiors, but simply for their statements. What part of that involves any particular skill on the part of Hillary or her lawyers?
You are presuming that she's more effective because she got away with it, and then retroactively identifying things she did as the critical maneuvers. But in fact, it does not seem to me that such maneuvers would have been effective if the FBI had wanted to actually make a case, and if it didn't want to make a case then failing to perform these maneuvers would not have changed the outcome either.
The basic situation here is that we can see what she did, and we can see what the FBI did, and what the FBI did was going to prevent an investigation no matter which action she took.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Classified info was found on Anthony Weiner's laptop while he was sexting minors, Comey didn't indict. I don't get your point exactly, is it that Trump's handling was worse than Clinton's because he was more antagonistic to an investigation antagonistic to him? It's not hard to put a case together against Clinton, we all know the details, and they could have always made it up. (Like they did when they wanted to investigate Trump's 2016 campaign, indict his officials, open a special council on Russian collusion that didnt exist, jail his supporters, and on and on.)
More options
Context Copy link
So Clinton shouldn’t have been indicted/gone to jail because her lawyers were better and/or she trusted them more? These sorts of arguments, especially coming from one of our resident lawyers, do nothing to make the right’s opinions of our legal system any better.
They are bad arguments as a matter of law. Huadpe is saying that if you commit additional crimes, then you are more likely to walk. In theory that is true if the government doesn’t find out you destroyed evidence. If they do, then you are more likely to go to jail and for longer.
More options
Context Copy link
Comey did not want to charge her, only reopened the case when operatives not under his control found additional evidence, and only gave an address about after whistleblowers had already informed Chuck Grassley and Senate Republicans about what had happened. If Comey had wanted to prosecute, he wouldn't have given immunity plea deals to all of Clinton's aides.
More options
Context Copy link
Or no claims were brought because she was a friend of the regime and later it would be impolitic. You are assuming the conclusion.
More options
Context Copy link
Well, that and no DC jury would ever convict her on those charges no matter what the evidence.
And Comey wanting to charge seems...speculative at best. If so, why not put it to a jury, even if the odds were low? Why not invent a novel legal theory that could be tried out? No, I think he thought it wouldn't be prudent, would make too many powerful enemies, would hurt the Agency. I don't believe the law had much, if anything, to do with it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, Re: Hillary, destruction of evidence is a pretty automatic charge. Can you imagine Trump not being charged with it? Not to mention the 1001 charges (also apparently seen here, according to reporting), and the OIG report quoted FBI agents who were dumbstruck as to why such charges weren't brought against folks, because they were dead-to-rights. But nope; that stuff is reserved for the likes of Flynn and Trump... the folks who need to be removed.
Possibly more interesting for actual culture war analysis is just observing the public narrative shift. Back in the days before it was fashionable to prosecute Trump and anyone related to Trump, when the possible charges were against Hillary, it was a grave and serious thing to prosecute politicians, especially when they had possible elections in front of them. "That's the stuff of banana republics!" they said. "That's, like, what Putin does!" they said. It was "deeply dangerous for democracy". Whether or not our democracy was legitimate was supposedly hanging in the balance, depending upon whether their preferred candidate was charged with a crime. You don't hear that anymore. For good or for bad, fair and just or unfair and unjust, it's a change in the narrative. Whether this change can be easily flip-flopped on in another 5-10 years... or whether it will be persistent, possibly leading to endless tit-for-tat, I don't know.
Do you have any theories for why this changed? Were there any chants at political rallies or something agitating for this shift in norms?
Why the assumption it was driven bottom up? The most obvious explanation seems to be that the establishment wanted to protect Clinton and now wants to go after Trump.
I'm not assuming anything, I'm asking about where this apparent shift came from.
But why suggest chants at rallies as the mechanism for change, or that the change in messaging implies a shift in values rather being an expression of current objectives?
That was one theory but I'm open to others, hence the question. Just because I don't mention other explanations doesn't mean I've already dismissed them as possibilities.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ah yes, the gotcha. It's the right's fault, so your observation is invalid. Sorry, but I can acknowledge that the right certainly played a significant part in chipping away at the norm... while also acknowledging that the observation remains true. In the before days, one could at least sit back and say, "There are some crazy righties chanting 'lock her up', but we're a serious democracy which doesn't prosecute politicians on questionable charges, and there are serious people who will ensure that we stay that way." I am on record as one of those people, prior to Trump's election, prior to the reality become clear to everyone that he didn't try to force through some charges. (As an aside, has there ever been a single piece of reporting along the lines of, "We're giving an exclusive account of the breathtaking meetings in which Donald Trump applied consistent pressure to produce a prosecution, but was rebuffed by so-and-so"?)
At the same time, one can also sit back and say, "It turns out that many people who said they were serious people who would ensure that we're a serious democracy which doesn't prosecute politicians on questionable charges... are now cheering on efforts to prosecute politicians on questionable charges, so long as they're the politicians they don't like."
I agree that the public statements are a problem, even in the absence of substantial actions. One possible world we could have ended up in is a world where dems chant "lock him up" at rallies, but then dem politicians still refrain from pushing questionable charges once in office. It might have been a weird state of affairs; maybe the chants would continue to be tit-for-tat, but serious people would ensure that reality stays serious alongside it. In that world, do the chants eventually go away? Do they persist, like how in many other domains, the public chants and pushes both sides' politicians for things that those politicians continually reject actually doing? Man, I don't know. I wouldn't like it, but I don't know how it would go. Regardless, we are no longer in that possible timeline. We're in a different one.
I'm not denying your observation, I actually think it's probably true though there are too many variables to control for conclusively. I also agree with you that at least some of the current charges against Trump are questionable (Stormy Daniels hush-money payment is the prime example).
Regardless, I was curious about the progeny of this apparent shift that you describe. Would it be fair to characterize the "lock her up" and "because you'd be in jail" comments as just bloviating on Trump's part? The fact that there's no evidence that Trump tried to push for any prosecution against Clinton while he was in office supports this. Even so, the fact this bloviating was such irresistible ambrosia for his base indicates it was tapping on some deep-seated desire among at least some Americans to prosecute and jail politicians from the other side. Would you agree?
At that point it's an interesting question how much we can blame this on a sort of "lab leak", a meme that went unintentionally viral.
I already said that the right started the chanting. Please speak plainly.
Sorry, I don't know which part is confusing. You described a shift in norms about how seriously the prospect of prosecuting politicians used to be treated. I was asking about what you thought contributed to this shift, including asking what you thought the popularity of the "lock her up" chant indicated (e.g. did it contribute towards causing the shift or is it the symptom of something else? etc). Let me know if that makes sense.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Obviously. Also it's fun to say "Lock Her Up!" It's a good chant. But Trump did nothing to actually lock her up, so none of that justifies actual legal moves against Trump by Democrats in power.
Sure, I never said otherwise. Assuming the shift @ControlsFreak describes is real, I was curious about how it came about. Would you agree that the frequency of the chant contributed something to moving the overton window?
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
I mean, it would lead to endless tit-for-tat only as long as supplies of crimes last. I mean, you could make it last a long time by changing laws, but you'd have to put a bunch of additional work in. Absent a new wave of ex-post-facto laws or blatant procedure prosecutions, honestly my first reaction is "yes, good." Let justice reign, etc.
Nah, we've got plenty of laws. Especially when people are pushing ideas like, "Campaign finance laws make it illegal to talk to foreigners," trying to resurrect the Logan Act, etc.
Can I introduce you to an indictment from New York County?
Through the last eight years or so, with the left-leaning friends I have in the real world, I've had discussions about this possible politician crime or that possible politician crime. There have been many such times where they were wound up about how you could totally plausibly read the law in a way that totally plausibly gets at so-and-so. Often, I just poke at the implications of their broad reading, especially given the reality of political life. When they start to see just how broadly this shit could be construed if we walk down that path, then I drop, "Is this something that you really value enough to 'let justice reign' equally on both sides' politicians?" And some issues might actually be. Most of them have not been. Most of the time, they realize, "Actually, that would probably have some pretty bad effects and barely bring any real benefit to society."
More options
Context Copy link
The supply of crimes will never run out; there's enough laws you can find a crime for anyone who does anything significant if you're willing to stretch them enough. The idea is there won't be endless tit-for-tat because the current people doing the prosecution expect to remain in power permanently partially as a result of doing so. Full banana republic style.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link