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 -
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.
You are telling me that Hillary acted more competently than Trump. I believe you. Why do you believe that their relative competence is the determining factor in these two situations?
I am prepared to believe everything you say is true. The fact remains that the FBI trashed evidence against Clinton, and broke the law to try to frame Trump. I do not see why anything you are saying should matter more to me than that fact. I do not care about the minutia of the rules, because I don't believe the rules actually matter in a meaningful way. I see no reason to believe that a more competent Trump would do significantly better, because there is no possible way I can see for competence in the details of the rules to overcome an opponent who simply ignores the rules when it suits them. If the rules are not being followed, they cannot help you.
And sure, it's never as clear-cut as that. There's perception and plausible deniability and a thousand other tweaks and nudges. But what we actually know with reasonable certainty outweighs any plausible net effect of those thousand tweaks and nudges that I can see, and I refuse to be drawn into a reframing around what I perceive to be irrelevancies. I do not concede that the law is consistantly followed or applied, and so I reject that its application here is appropriate.
Obviously, I don't actually get a vote, and the courts will do as they will, likewise the bureaucracy and its various organs. What will be, will be. What I can do is stand firm in what seems to me to be the truth: the existing system is illegitimate, unlawful, and tyrannical, and aiding its destruction is the responsibility of all persons of good will. They will probably get Trump, but my hopes do not rest in Trump. My hope is that their efforts to destroy him will be another incremental contribution to their own tomb, another heap of resentments and grudges that will, one day, be given a vent they cannot survive.
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