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 -
The Proud Boy sentences being quite severe is on my mind today. 22 years for Tarrio who was not there on Jan 6. He does have text saying it was them who did it. A few others got in the high teens sentences who were there.
I will admit I respect the Proud Boys and agree with a lot of their statements. I do believe the 2020 election was stolen. The lack of a secret ballot thru mass mail-in voting violates every principle of Democracy. Without violating the secret ballot Trump would have easily won in my opinion. The Proud Boys official position from memory was a desire for a new election following Democratic principles. Seems fair to me. So I feel they are directionally correct even if they took things too far.
The right won’t get equal treatment in the court. It seems like the key courts are in cities that are going to have unsympathetic juries and judges. If you flip these courts to rural areas then my guess antifa types are getting 20 years and Proud Boys 2 years. In rural areas they would have judges very sympathetic that the election wasn’t proper and their anger was justified in the same way BLM protestors get courts sympathetic that America is a racists nation.
I think the left is making a mistake with these massive sentences. If they gave them a couple years I would feel it was fair as they went too far. But now I want them pardoned. If Trump pardons them as he should then it’s a slap in the face of the court decision. Delegitimizes the court to have the court decide these are really bad people deserving long sentences for overturning Democracy but then have the next guy release them. It feels very third worldish to me. With other lawfare attempts it seems as though any future POTUS should do mass pardons. I’m not sure how balance of powers can survive this.
The punishment for Proud Boys seems to have some connection to the debates and Biden declaring them “white supremacists” and Trump telling them to “stand by and stand down” (which felt coded). It made it important these guys got long sentences to confirm that they are the bad guys because then a court confirmed what they told you. Same thing with Floyd officers and long sentences which confirmed that they were bad murderous cops. A jury convicted therefore we know it’s true.
It’s another example of punishment for exercising your right to a jury trial.
I agree with Garrett Jones books “10% Less Democracy” and America would be better with less activision and less voting. But America looks more and more like a third word spoils system. Win you get the spoils, lose you go to jail. Which makes elections far more important.
Links aren’t important just sometimes people asks for articles.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1172530436/proud-boys-jan-6-sedition-trial-verdict
https://apnews.com/article/enrique-tarrio-capitol-riot-seditious-conspiracy-sentencing-da60222b3e1e54902db2bbbb219dc3fb#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20—%20Former%20Proud,for%20the%20U.S.%20Capitol%20attack.
https://www.amazon.com/10-Less-Democracy-Should-Elites/dp/1503603571
https://reason.com/2023/09/06/with-22-year-sentence-ex-proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-pays-hefty-trial-penalty/
Edit: Focus on the punishments and any results from the severity. I used a certain frame to put it in their view. We don’t need to discuss election legitimacy again.
The argument that the election was inherently flawed because mail-in voting somehow violated the principle of a secret ballot doesn't hold water and is made in bad faith by those who didn't like the outcome in 2020. Mail-in voting has existed in various states for somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years, absentee voting has existed for longer, and no one I'm aware of made the argument that it was inherently flawed prior to 2020. Indeed, as late as the fall of 2019 PA's mail-in voting bill sailed through the state legislature with unanimous Republican support.
Claiming that mail-ins are suddenly unconstitutional to the point that we need a redo is a convenient argument to make if your guy loses the election and you're grasping at straws for some excuse undo the result, but let's not pretend that this is an argument based on principle. Would you be making this argument if Trump won?
It's also telling that 2020 is apparently the only election they care about. No one was protesting the 2021 off year elections for local judges and clerks, no one was protesting the midterms, no one was protesting the various special elections that have been held over the past few years, and I doubt anyone will protest this year's elections. Hell, there doesn't even seem to be much of a legislative push in red states to completely do away with mail voting, or any serious court challenges raising the secret ballot issue. It all comes back to Trump—shit only matters when he's involved. The entire system is rigged against him and him alone. I've always thought he was a narcissist but at this point I can't really blame him giving the number of people who do act like the world revolves around him.
What is 'bad faith'? Maybe, when someone uses poor arguments or selectively chooses facts to further a personal goal that isn't 'truth-seeking'. But does that require them to intentionally do so, or does it merely require them to fall into a pattern of doing so? The ... "election denier" ... operate in functional bad faith, not conscious bad faith. And they share that with most participants in political discussions. When someone reads an accusation of bad faith, they imagine they're accused of conscious bad faith, and then get upset that their genuine attempts to discuss aren't taken seriously.
Say you're arguing with a Christian about whether God exists. They make the usual arguments, that 'something caused the universe, so that thing must be God', 'humans are simply too complicated for evolution to create', 'the historical case for Jesus's miracles is undeniable', 'all logic needs axioms and thus has no grounding, so it must be grounded in something, which is God'. Yeah, these are all fallacious, some trivially so - 'thing that caused the universe' doesn't have to be spiritual or sentient, fossil and DNA evidence for evolution is overwhelming, history is replete with other strongly attested miracles that didn't happen. And, if you're approaching the question from a position of genuine intellectual inquiry, how is it possible to - not to make so many mistakes, everyone is mistaken about everything - but to make so many mistakes in the same direction? But if they're saying things that are superficially convincing and support their claim, whether or not they're accurate, it all makes sense.
Okay, but ... some of us have been fundamentalist christians or progressives in the past, and that's not what it feels like. You genuinely believe in what you're saying. You, initially, see your interlocutor as someone who's misguided but could be persuaded. Your mistakes come from lack of knowledge and cleverness, bad sources of information, a lack of discipline and carefulness in thinking, and all sorts of social and moral constraints. But if that's "bad faith", then most discussions people have are bad faith.
Okay, to you it's obvious that most vote fraud arguments are terrible, obvious enough to dismiss those making it as bad faith. I agree that the arguments are terrible, seemingly obviously so. But it's also obvious that the spirits of our ancestors don't inhabit their graves, that praying doesn't help people with medical problems, that freudian psychoanalysis is bunk, and that neither democrats nor republicans are evil moral mutants. Yet man, very intelligent people of the past or present whole-heartedly believed all of those, and made all sorts of tortured arguments for them. The fact is, understanding the complicated world and society we live in is just hard. Even in areas with better-than-average truth-seeking institutions and incentives, like corporations or universities, people end up with a lot of false beliefs. Take away the institutions and incentives, like in casual news/politics discussion, and people end up blabbing nonsense even in areas with no partisan divides. Then add Trump, who many Rs saw as the only guy on their side in Washington, losing an election, and they saw the usual weird events that happen in any large-scale social system as proof of election subversion.
Most of them would not be. But they don't know that, in the same way that a preindustrial Muslim doesn't know they'd be Christian if they were born in Europe instead of the Middle East. And some of them still would, because mistakes don't go away if there's no tribal motive, they're just not amplified as much.
I'm not arguing that most of the fraud arguments are made in bad faith, regardless of how terrible I think they are; I'm arguing that this particular argument is made in bad faith. Republicans had no particular opposition to mail voting until Trump decided he could get some kind of advantage by making a big deal about it. This isn't some long-held Republican principle, it's a convenient argument to a self-serving end. That's where your Christianity analogy fails; I'm Catholic myself, and if a sincere Protestant wanted to have a conversation about faith with me I'd be happy to discuss it with them, even if their aim was obviously evangelical. But I'd be less happy if I found out they had recently converted because there was some personal advantage to them doing so that was wholly unrelated to their spiritual needs. I think people like Joel Osteen get a little too much flac from irreligious types because he seems like an obvious huckster. But I'm reluctant to join in on the dogpile because, despite his wealth, there's nothing in his past that suggests he isn't sincere. That, and I've actually listened to his sermons and it's obvious that his critics haven't because nothing he says is remotely objectionable. But I'd probably feel different if he were a twice-divorced advertising executive with a conviction for writing bad checks who became a self-ordained minister at the age of 40 after realizing that a combination of Billy Graham and Tony Robbins was a license to print money. And who also was a frequent visitor to tit bars and had been kicked out of every country club in the Houston area because he was too much of an asshole for the members to want to deal with.
And yeah, structurally and functionally, "republicans" acts in bad faith. But "republicans" aren't a single entity that acts. For almost all individuals involved, what it feels like is: In 2016, mail-in voting is something you just haven't thought about much. Maybe you've done it, maybe you haven't, but you don't have a strong opinion on 'is it secure or not'. It's reasonable to not oppose something you don't know much about. Then, post election, you start noticing that the Deep State and Mainstream Media really have it out for trump, they'll say anything so long as it makes him look bad, and they'll even break procedure and law to go after him. In 2020, you notice democratic organizations are trying to help orchestrate and "fortify" elections, a lot of laws are changing, and suddenly there's 10x more mail-in voting than there was last year - so you interpret that as action against trump. Now post-election, and there are so many reports of dead people voting, ballot harvesting ... And when you google 'mail-in voting concerns', there are all sorts of pre-2020 articles from mainstream media that are suspicious of mail-ins! And when you compare that to today's rhetoric, the "same people" are suddenly claiming that mail-in voting is safe and secure. The most secure election ever! It just adds up. How is it my fault I didn't oppose mail-ins before when they just weren't as important?
All that exposition is to emphasize that it doesn't take conscious bad faith to get into a position that reasons in an obviously motivated way. It just takes careless and motivated reasoning, something all sides have in spades. When there are bad-faith actors involved, they're mostly people like Trump or media figures who'll advance an argument that gets views even if they know it's bullshit - all of the individuals who consume news and debate it online believe it. But I think those people aren't necessary ingredients, and what happens is more like - someone who's a bit manic and mad that the dems lost trump does some bad statistics with voting numbers, a twitter user reads a bunch of old news articles and posts screenshots of their headlines, leading to rumble videos and substack post about the awful thing the democrats did this time. And then credulous intermediaries excitedly consume those, believe them, and repost them to their followers. You could argue the intermediaries are being dishonest by not checking what they repost for accuracy ... but a more parsimonious explanation is they believe it as much as their followers do.
So the convenient changes in position come more from poor reasoning distributed across social networks than it does intentional bad faith.
I could buy that argument if it actually comported with the facts on the ground, but it doesn't. I live in Pennsylvania. In October 2019 the state passed a law authorizing mail-in voting. How many Republicans voted against it? Not a single one. Not Doug Mastriano, not all the other MAGA wannabes of whom there was no shortage of at that time. And the law was fairly big news at the time, and it was controversial. But the controversy came from a few urban Democrats who didn't like that it did away with straight ticket voting. Even in 2020, when the pandemic first hit and states were changing their laws, there was no clear partisan angle. The idea that the 2020 election was somehow affected by last-minute changes is one of the most pervasive pieces of misinformation out there, because it has enough of a grain of truth in it to make people accept it uncritically without considering the full implications. Yes, some states made last-minute changes to their laws. But the states that were at issue in the presidential election had already passed mail-in voting laws prior to the pandemic, and, other than Pennsylvania, had already conducted elections by mail. Some states changed the rules in 2020, but several of them did so through legislative action, which is no different than how laws are ordinarily passed. That leaves the states where mail voting was expanded by executive action, whether by the governor or the state board of elections. What states were these? Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and West Virginia. The only one of those that is close to being a swing state is New Hampshire, and it has a Republican governor. Kentucky has a Democratic governor, but no one is confusing it for a blue state. The rest are all as deep red as you can get. The point is that, as late as the spring of 2020, a lot of Republicans though expanding mail voting on short notice was a good idea. Then as soon as Trump starts running his mouth in the summer, every Republican who matters falls in line and talks about how this is suddenly a great security risk, as though The Donald was the only one wise enough to notice these problems. Sorry if I don't buy it.
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