site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The point is that if your Country's founding document, deriving it's authority from consent of the governed (or whatever you're going with), vests the portion of that authority regarding military command in a particular person who holds a particular office, you expect that person to have the broadest, highest possible control over the military chain of command. His authority isn't total, but is pretty much total within the world of lawful orders he could theoretically issue.

The grounds for disobeying the President's order, then, will have to come from a justification outside of that authority, since there's literally nobody higher up the chain of command to countermand the order.

So the point would be that undermining the authority of the Commander in Chief is evidence that the authority is not in fact vested where it 'ought' to be.

As I stated very clearly:

The claim is that a coup is unneeded because the power isn't actually there in the first place

If military officers feel safe disobeying presidential orders that would, under most reasonable interpretations, be lawful and authorized, then this simply demonstrates that the "Commander in Chief" role is not in fact resting with the office of the President.

Which is to say that if electing a President doesn't actually vest that person with all the rights, duties, and authority that the office is supposed to have, we should begin to question where all that authority has gone.

And in this case, there were rumblings of needing to simply disregard Trump's orders BEFORE HE WAS EVEN ELECTED:

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/constitution-check-could-the-military-disobey-orders-issued-by-a-president-

and here is the conclusion regarding Constitutionality of disobedience, which I largely endorse:

Though the general added that he was not talking about a coup by the military, his remarks had the rather scary sound of just such a maneuver. It was chilling precisely for constitutional reasons: it is not the function of the military to make a decision that the policy choices of civilian government leaders are outrageous, or even that they violate norms of international law. That is not a military function. It is simply well outside of any norm of constitutional understanding to pretend either that the military is capable of making legal judgments, or that it has been set up to be a player in checks-and-balances.

So the 'Deep State', in this context, is the parts of our governmental structure that surreptitiously override the civilian control of the military whenever it runs counter to those interests they deem more important.