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 -
A better response to any misgivings about the FBI is to have R politicians probe the organization and gradually escalate if it's found to be breaking the law to assist Dems. On the other hand, saying "the enemy's misdeeds justify our own lies" is pure toxoplasma.
Sure, but, it is not illegal to slow walk an investigation or selectively enforce laws. They could be egregiously partisan and also not breaking the law.
More options
Context Copy link
Did the FBI break any laws here? I don’t think so. But they (and ex CIA people) heavily tilted informational warfare in favor of the Dems and against truth.
Are there serious ethical and spirit of Democracy things at play - yes. Illegal probably not. FBI doesn’t seem to have been neutral as they are suppose to be but that isn’t illegal.
I don't know if they broke laws specifically, but if they did then that's an easy target to nail them for. If they didn't, then it's just another battle of "why are almost all institutions left-leaning?"
The latter is why a bunch of us advocate for raising the temperature and just playing the same games. Lie. Because there’s no other choice besides acceleration. Or a bit of a Russian tactic of offensive for peace.
That logical endpoint of that sort of escalation is a violent right-wing insurgency like the Troubles in Ireland, but with every major institution aligned against them the conservatives will almost certainly lose.
The US' track record with insurgencies hasn't been that great. It will be an even bigger shitstorm when the insurgency is coming from inside the house instead of being on some one else's hell blasted sand box.
Conservatives won't engage in any insurgency. They'll just keep ceding territory until they're left with the afterlife and nothing more.
It remains to be seen what Conservatives will do. But haven't you already stated that even if we did, you wouldn't want us to?
Not sure. If I did I don't remember. I think I've said that if you did, it wouldn't help me (because I am not a conservative and not Red Tribe and would not be accepted there), but that's not the same thing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, the IRA did get significant concessions.
The IRA wasn't universally loathed by every institution within Ireland though.
I think if we look into the specifics you'd have a hard time making the case that conservatives have less power in American institutions than nationalists had in Northern Ireland at the outbreak of the Troubles.
Even in the Republic it's not as simple as it seems, the Irish government was sympathetic to nationalists but not to the IRA. Ireland still has a secret juryless court which was set up specifically to jail paramilitaries.
The fact that the IRA had sympathetic supporters in Ireland was big. The Irish government might have officially disagreed with their violent methods, but not with the idea of Irish unification.
Compare that to a hypothetical scenario today where Conservatives are trying to go up against a left-leaning FBI that's clearly willing to bend laws, and a left-leaning media that'd love to manufacture consent to legitimize doing so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is just the “left will always win rhetoric”. But it wouldn’t need to devolve to Troubles. You can ruin the political culture to force reform hopefully.
Hardly. I'm saying this particular strategy seems like it will fail. A better strat would be to fight for control of institutions, undercut woke methods of power, and vote for R candidates who actually give a damn about culture war stuff instead of Romneycrats who "compromise" on it to get tax cuts for the rich. Hanania writes a lot on this sort of stuff.
What? How would that work? This sounds like
Fair. Personally I loved the election lie. Just because I found it entertaining that it drove my enemies crazy who I basically believe lie to me all the time. Maybe it’s a bad strategy but I’m also unsure it’s a bad strategy. But I can 100% confirm I find it very entertaining.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, because Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell are exactly who I trust to investigate things, and to tell me if they uncover damning information about the FBI and the intelligence apparatus.
It has to be an outsider. There is a uniparty, and Trump isn't in it. That is the true reason for this indictment: he won in 2016 and wouldn't play ball. He keeps going off-script and he's impossible to control. If he had played along, if he had been controllable, then he'd be treated better.
And then there's JFK, who wanted to destroy the CIA, and then the CIA murdered him and got his VP to cover it up. Fortunately, our deep state is loathe to murder politicians these days like they were willing to in the 60s and 70s, or Trump wouldn't live to see the trial. Hell, we still don't have any guarantees.
I don’t think an inquest led by Trump would be any more credible. Who else do you think is a valid outsider?
As for JFK—I want to know what you think is wrong with the normie explanation. It looks like you’re just spouting a generic conspiracy theory.
There have been a number of people I would consider outsiders. Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Donald Trump. I'll throw Bernie in there, too, although I'm less than pleased with his conduct since 2017.
It's only generic since it's been sixty years, and was itself the foundational "conspiracy theory" (a term I reject as a psychological operation to discredit anyone questioning the official story).
If you want to know what's wrong with the normie explanation, I suggest reading Noel Twyman's Bloody Treason. That was the book that convinced me that there was a cover-up perpetrated by the federal government, specifically Johnson, Hoover, and Dulles. It convinced me that the Zapruder film was doctored. It convinced me that the "normie" explanation simply could not hold, and another explanation was necessary.
As to what that explanation is, well, you heard what I think. Maybe I'm wrong about the specifics, but I don't think I'm wrong about the cover-up, and it's the cover-up that recasts the whole affair as a palace coup by the MIC.
What exactly are we referring to as "the normie explanation" because where I'm from the notion that JFK was assassinated by the Mob, Communists, and/or Deep State is pretty uncontroversial. It's just taken as a given that Lee Harvey Oswald's death at the hands of Jack Ruby was somebody "tying up loose ends." As such I'm curious, are you talking about Warren Commission's "findings" or one of the wackier second gunman on the grassy knoll stories?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What makes you think that JFK wanted to destroy the CIA?
From the Bay of Pigs Invasion article. Never mind the next sentence…
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you're convinced establishment Republicans won't help you, then vote them out and get people in office who will. And if those new people don't do a good enough job, vote them out as well and get new people in. A big part of the problem for conservatives is that they kept voting in Romneycrats prior to 2016 who did almost nothing to help win the culture wars. Instead of fixing the problem, they developed learned helplessness like "Cthulhu always swims left".
Trump was a step in the right direction, but had clear flaws. Instead of trying to get a more reliable candidate though, most Republicans seem content to turn the party into Trump's cult of personality.
I am not able to vote out any Republican politicians because none represent me.
Trump is completely reliable. I can rely on him to fight.
If you consider tweeting and grandstanding followed by policy reversals when things are criticized on cable news, then sure, Trump is your guy.
That doesn't seem like a very good strategy to win though. Hence why most of Trump's limited accomplishments while in office came from McConell appointing conservative SCOTUS justices, i.e. stuff any Republican president with a heartbeat could have done.
He didn't appoint any squishes to the supreme court which is better than virtually all Republican presidents before him in recent memory.
deleted
Josh Blackman recently had a series of "Conservatives should not be surprised by [disappointing features of Trump's SCOTUS appointments]". He has takes on Gorsuch/Kavanaugh, too, but if you're interested in considering disappointing features of ACB, here is a possibility.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How much of that is the federalist society created a pipeline?
They certainly help quite a bit, but they had a lot of influence in both Bushes who each nominated a squishy justice and Bush the Lesser tried to nominate Harriet Miers, a complete wildcard.
Perhaps luck or perhaps weakness (in that he had to precommit to a list) but I think it's possibly his own effort, too.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
TBH there’s some smaller scale stuff he did like reviving the federal death penalty which may not have happened under President Jeb!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mostly buy Nixon-related conspiracy theories with regard to deep state subversion. Nixon was paranoid about people being out to get him because people really were out to get him. If that's correct, the spooks had already gotten cleverer about how to rid themselves of meddlesome politicians by the 70s.
I do not think that the Deep State would have succeeded in removing Nixon if he had run his re-election campaign honestly, rather than hiring the former Plumbers to ratfuck McGovern. It is entirely possible that the Deep State would have failed to remove Nixon if he had used fewer bad words while on tape plotting the Watergate cover-up.
Apart from Spiro Agnew's conviction for tax evasion, essentially all the big Nixon-era political scandals relate to the activities of Liddy and Hunt. He didn't need them, and would have done better without them. A lot of the smaller scandals relate to the over-enthusiasm of John Dean in pursuing petty feuds. Given that Dean eventually ratted Nixon out over Watergate, he would have done much, much, better without Dean.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Escalate to... what, exactly? Just getting rid of the whole organization due to its history of misdeeds ranging from MLK to Whitey Bulger to modern political interference? When I look at something like the Strzok text messages and his role in the Russia-baiting, I arrive at the conclusion that this organization cannot be salvaged.
As long as you have federal crimes you need someone to investigate them. And if it's not the FBI it's going to be someone even more political, like the local US attorney, or even more disliked by the right (any votes for giving the ATF more power?). It's like the calls to eliminate the IRS that don't realize that unless they want government spending limited to customs revenue, any other tax collector is going to be just as bad.
If someone discovers that the local police force is astonishingly corrupt and has just been taking money from the mafia in order to allow them to run their protection rackets and deal drugs with impunity, "But who will investigate crimes?" is not a meaningful response to the argument that the current police force needs to be replaced.
It's an argument in favor of firing corrupt people, not of disbanding the department entirely.
If the corruption is deep enough, the difference is probably negligible. Especially if the corrupt people are running the show.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Big parts of the right consider declining federal state capacity to be a good thing- either because they want to live in Montana collecting machine guns in peace, or because they live in places that would strongly benefit from capital flight.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Killing the FBI entirely is certainly a nuclear option, but yes it should be on the table if things get that bad. R's want to abolish large parts of the federal government including entire agencies, so I don't see why the FBI would be considered off limits.
Trump should campaign on dismantling the FBI and the ATF. Can't imagine a more redmeat sort of deal for his base.
Trump doesn't need to offer red meat to his base. His base already love him so much that they are still supporting him even after he has been indicted twice for serious crimes of which he is obviously guilty (and once for some bullshit process crime in NY). His problem is that his base are not close to a majority of the electorate - they are barely a majority in a Republican primary.
Trump either needs to convince more NeverTrump Republicans to hold their noses and vote for the crook, not the Democrat, or to convince more Reagan Democrat types that trannies are more of a threat to their kids than Russians.
...These are a thing?
Per Wikipedia, the term referred to non-Southern white working-class voters who switched from D to R for culture-war issues, particularly (in the 1980's) crime. Obviously that group has continued to drift right since Reagan to the point where most of them voted for Trump, but it isn't really part of the Republican base the way rural voters, small business owners, or the white South are.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link