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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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One side of the court is applying legal reasoning to the facts to reach their decision. The other side is picking a winner and tailoring their legal reasoning to reach it. You decide which side is which.

I mean, are they wrong?

There point seems pretty obvious and we've recently seen a lot of talk about activist judges, etc.

Perhaps you don't like uncomfortable things being pointed out?

I'm sorry to report: it's not this place, it's the world.

We had a conversation about steelmanning here recently, and our resident Russian pointed out profoundly "I can steelman Russian nationalism, but I cannot redeem it". Aside from the fact that the kind of people who lament the lack of charity here never seem to lament the lack of charity towards ideas that are unpopular in the mainstream, I have to ask: is the point to show charity to the point we have to invent things that don't exist in the world we actually inhabit?

How much of the same pattern do we have to see repeated over and over, before we can say that it is, in fact, a pattern?

As you can tell, we've evolved away from the original rules over the years. Following them to the letter doesn't make much sense anymore (but I suppose the mods will disagree).

When this place first got started there were two major factors that were different from what they are now. 1) is that the culture war itself (in its modern form) was still relatively new and the battle lines were still being drawn, positions were still being crafted. 2) is that there were a lot more leftists and the idea was to facilitate a left-right dialogue. There was a stronger sense that every post should start "from zero" essentially: every claim should be justified from the ground up as though you were exploring virgin territory. (That's how I remember it anyway)

As time has gone on and the culture war has gotten more entrenched I don't think it makes sense to start every discussion "from zero" anymore. People are familiar with all the arguments now. If you think someone hasn't sufficiently supported their position then you can ask them to elaborate, but I don't think it makes sense to tut tut people over not following the black letter rules. Taking certain things for granted doesn't equate to hostility.

Again that's just my personal take, and I imagine it's not shared by everyone.