site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   29546 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Today in minor CW news: Naomi Biden’s Secret Service detail takes shots at carjackers thieves breaking in to a USSS vehicle. The vehicle in question was not occupied, so it wasn’t literal self-defense, but I am willing to assume it’s within protocol.

I’m bringing this up here to take predictions on the level and type of attention this will receive. My prediction is that the most vocal coverage will be conservative Twitter/substack trying to make this about Democrat hypocrisy with regards to crime. There’s just not enough material to make it personal about the Biden family. While I don’t doubt that spicy takes will exist, I’m wondering if they’ll make it to cable news.

Edit: immediately after posting, I see the next Twitter link is some guy with triple parentheses talking about how crime is so normal in DC. I swear I hadn’t seen that when I made my prediction.

My prediction is that the most vocal coverage will be conservative Twitter/substack trying to make this about Democrat hypocrisy with regards to crime.

Yes, I agree with this prediction. The most common take will be something along the lines of, "see Democrats believe that shooting people that steal from people that matter is good, they just think you don't matter". For my part, I agree that shooting thieves is good, but I expect that most of the soft-on-crime left will maintain ideological consistency and say that it's bad that the Secret Service would shoot at someone that wasn't even a threat to anyone.

Speaks to the leveling instinct even among the right. "They get to do things you can't!"

On the other hand it's the American right, which contains a lot of Jeffersonian liberalism built-in.

Speaks to the leveling instinct even among the right. "They get to do things you can't!"

The law and order side of the equation does have extra interest in the law being applied fairly, that is core part of the "order".

The law and order side of the equation does have extra interest in the law being applied fairly, that is core part of the "order".

The current idea of "order," perhaps, but there have been plenty of historical orders without any such fairness — over two millennia of Chinese history come to mind.

Huh, I'd never heard of that instinct before, but now that you mention it it does seem to describe leftist rhetoric pretty well. Where is this terminology from, and what other instincts have we discovered that majorly drive political course?

I think there’s a legitimate national security issue around people breaking into property used by the president’s family and so I’m fine with them shooting at the thieves even though I would oppose it if it was a regular person’s car.

I expect there will be enough people reading headlines that just say 'attackers trying to break into Biden's daughter's car' without getting to the third paragraph where it says 'unoccupied' that you'll see a lot of lefty social media users saying it was justified and was probably MAGA extremists and generally being confused.

I'll go one further and predict that most left-leaning outlets will be deliberately cagey about the fact that Naomi wasn't inside at the time, while the New York Post and Washington Examiner will put that in the headline.

Yeah. It is a matter of routine for politicians or rich people who are strong advocates for gun control to have private armed security and even concealed carry licenses. Famously Dianne Feinstein had a CCW issued in San Francisco, which is about as common as unicorns when it comes to exclusive gun rights.

They don't want to disarm all of society. They want unimportant people like you and me to be disarmed. Important people such as them and their important possessions will still be defended with privately owned guns.

This is such a lame charge of hypocrisy. It's as stupid as saying that it's hypocrisy for gun control advocates to want the military to have access to weaponry; of course there will be exceptions but the point is that those should be tightly controlled by the state - an asymmetry of force in which those guarding politicians have more at their disposal than their would be attackers is a good thing.

I don't think that's it:

In 1995 a hearing on terrorism after the Oklahoma City bombing, Feinstein recounted how, in the 1970s, she was the target of the New World Liberation Front which first attempted to blow up her home. After the bomb failed to detonate, Feinstein explained, she decided to arm herself.

That's still kinda the point, isn't it? Feinstein wanted to be armed to protect herself, while at the same time working to prevent others from being able to be armed to protect themselves. Granted, she had a reasonable basis to anticipate that she might need that protection, but it's not as if other normal citizens who also want protection are being unreasonable.

I'm all for gun control, but it seems entirely fair to point to the hypocrisy here.

OP claimed that she was allowed to carry a gun because she was "important", but in fact it is because she faced an unusual threat.

  • -12

She felt she faced an unusual threat. In reality, some dork like Kyle Rittenhouse has had more credible threats against him in the last two years than she has faced in a career.

And if so, I am perfectly fine with Kyle Rittenhouse getting a concealed weapon permit.

The quote you provided does not appear to establish that. It says she decided to arm herself in response to the bomb threat, not that she was allowed to arm herself because of it.

And personally it's the decision to arm herself that I see as hypocritical, regardless of the licensing regime. If she didn't believe the government could provide adequate protection to a goddamn Senator, it's a bit rich for her to insist that normal people rely on it.

One can believe that Protection(Senator) < Threat(Senator) && Protection(Random_Citizen) > Threat(Random_Citizen) and not be hypocritical.

I have absolutely no idea what this means and wish you would just use normal language.

More comments

She of course was not a Senator at the time. And, normal people are not personally targeted by terrorist organizations.

If the law at the time required good cause for a concealed carry permit, it is not hypocritical to get a permit if you personally have good cause therefor. Is it hypocritical to think that higher income taxes rates would be sound policy, yet to take advantage of a tax deduction to which you are entitled under current law? I don’t see how it is.

Is it hypocritical to think that higher income taxes rates would be sound policy, yet to take advantage of a tax deduction to which you are entitled under current law?

Yes it is. That is one of the few areas in the law where you can unilaterally impose your preferred policy on yourself. This is very unlike the "Libertarian Meeting at the Public Library" meme. Those libertarians can't not pay library taxes by not using the room, you can pay higher taxes whenever you want!

"But anti_dan," you say, "I don't want higher taxes just for me, we need it on everyone to do XXX." But that's just a self-checkmate you are admitting paying taxes sucks and makes people poorer.

Apologies re the Senator thing - I had heard at some point that she was "first elected in the 70s" and assumed this meant to the Senate. My bad on that point.

But on this point:

If the law at the time required good cause for a concealed carry permit,

Did it? I haven't heard of any such provision in the law and I haven't been able to find one with a bit of googling. It seems like currently it's a matter of discretion for the county sheriff, and I haven't been able to find anything saying that this has changed since the 70s. Pre-Mulford Act was clearly different, but that was 1967.

And while I'll grant you that normal people are not (usually) personally targeted by terrorists with the exception of e.g. Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and so forth, they do get personally targeted by violence! California has something like 200,000 assaults per year and I expect most of those are personally targeted. I never heard Feinstein saying it was important for e.g. women with violent ex-partners to be able to get guns, nor did I see her proposing legislation to that effect. So yes, I do think she was hypocritical.

Again, I agree with her on the merits. Bad guys get guns off good guys with guns - there's no realistic way to ensure that all the safe and none of the dangerous people are armed, so effectively everyone should be disarmed. But I have no respect for anyone who refuses to live by the rules they set for others.

More comments

Can't it be both? She faced an unusual threat but she was allowed to carry a weapon due to her prominence? If she was a business owner who faced a similar threat would she have been granted the permit? Were other people facing similar threats granted permits? It'd be interesting to review the permit applications to make an assessment but I don't think they're PAI. Feinstein says she voluntarily gave up her permit after she decided NWLF wasn't a threat to her (along with her cute little story about melting it into the cross for the Pope) but it rings a little hollow considering she had a tax-payer funded armed detail for her protection at that point.

IIRC she’s literally the only CHL permit that her county ever granted, so this isn’t a situation similar to, say, Italy where people who legitimately have a heightened need for security can get a license to carry concealed weapons but it requires a legitimate heightened need for security(and my understanding is that this is how European ‘may-issue’ CHL regimes actually work in practice, as opposed to US may issue regimes. There is probably a lesson there in why the red tribe doesn’t trust gun control).

Of course it can be both. But where is the actual evidence for the claim that "importance" is a causal factor, especially in general? Because that was the claim: that "it is a matter of routine" for advocates for gun control to have concealed carry licenses.

Your reply to TIRM on down was about Feinstein, so that's what I addressed in my comment.

As far as evidence, we'd need to be able to take a look at who's getting permits in CA but that data isn't FOIA-able due to privacy issues. There was a leak a while back but it looks like that dashboard is now offline.

More comments

Po-tae-to, Po-tah-to.

Normal people have to deal with threats too. I don't see why the threat Feinstein faced, and her moral right to defend herself, is contingent on the type of threat. All I see is an important person having the sorts of threats they face being classified as "special", while the threats normal people deal with aren't.

No, normal people are not individually targeted by terrorist groups, especially not groups that send several bombs to her and other SF supervisors and are affiliated with organizations which assassinate school superintendents in nearby cities

I'm pretty close to a gun rights absolutist, but it's worth mentioning that being armed isn't actually a very good defense against assassination. As you point out in the first link, bombing is a common means of assassination; shooting bombs sounds cool, but probably won't do much to prevent a car-bomb from taking out a target. In the event that an assassin does engage with a firearm, a competent one is likely to choose the Oswald approach of firing an accurate, high-powered rifle. Carrying a pistol isn't going to do much against someone with a 6.5 Creedmoor sighted in at 200 yards, and the accuracy at that distance is pinpoint.

To the extent that firearms are useful as a self-defense tool, I would guess that they have at least as much utility for a convenient store worker as a politician.

More comments

Completely and totally irrelevant to my point. You just further buy into the notion that special people face special threats and deserve special treatment, which I reject in it's totality.

More comments

hypocrisy with regards to crime.

Hypocrisy in using deadly force for a pure property crime?

The government ought not be able to do things any other citizen can do. If it's good to shoot people breaking into cars, anyone should be empowered to do it, and we should reward them when they do that. If it's bad then no one should be able to do it (from the President to the lowest peon).

This is absurd. Should any citizen take upon himself to become their own policemen and start 'arresting' under threat of force everyone they suspect of committing a crime?

Yes chad.jpg.

In my ideal world victims would apply enough force to end crimes as they occur.

In my ideal world victims would apply enough force to end crimes as they occur.

Not what I said. The state/police doesn't just attempt to stop crimes in progress, they arrest suspects after the fact, obviously, mostly when no agent of the state was present at the time of the crime. Should private citizens go round trying to do that as well?

Yes.

No and neither should police, so the point still stands

I just had a horrible “everyone loses” vision of the future where everyone is permitted to conceal carry and kill criminals but they’re required to wear body cameras while in public.

but they’re required to wear body cameras while in public.

Not only is everyone already wearing a body camera in public, but one of the reasons they upgrade to new models is for the better and better cameras installed thereon.

The government is already known to seize any footage taken with such a camera without a warrant, too.

There is a big difference between a smart phone (video on <1% of the time and at your complete discretion) and a legally mandated, always-on body cam.

eh, police bodycameras aren't always on.

I don't know about you, but if any of my footage is ever seized, they'll mostly get a great view of the inside of my pocket, or rarely my feet and the ground immediately in front of me. Maybe my face with the ceiling in the background. That is assuming secret 24/7 camera feed.

"No, yer Honor, I wasn't trying to cause trouble. I just really thought it was important for my doctor to have 24/7 live-feed to the inside of my colon. Honest."

Dashcams have been normalized—why not bodycams? As long as the government can't seize the footage without a warrant, I see no downside.

Remember Glassholes? People have an expectation of "privacy in public" in the way that normal humans aren't perfect memorization machines who could produce exact images of your face complete with biometric identification on command. So when you're recording random dudes it's always very SUS. If we had body cam always with you but only ON when shit goes down, then maybe people would be ok with that.

But this body cam would need a bright hardware led that can't be disabled while the cam is actively recording.

I…don’t remember glassholes, and my experience with Internet shock videos makes me reluctant to search for it.

What was it?

A pejorative term for Google Glass users, particularly those who wore them to public and shared private spaces.

Ha. I remember seeing this comic at the time, but forgot the name.

My first thought was a device like a PiHole, but for ruining video instead of preempting advertising.

I can see many benefits to willingly wearing body cams. Much less confusion around facts of any legal cases, no more false accusations of any kind, and protection against lies from police or witnesses. There are plenty of studies that support the idea that people behave better when they know they are being watched.

But a society where everything you do or say is recorded isn't one I'd like to live in. In the US, there are many state that require two party consent for something to be recorded, I'm sure one could find plenty of strong arguments for why that is the case.

You could argue we already reached this point, certainly nearly anything you do online is recorded, and in public there is no shortage of cameras and recording devices, but I think even just having it be something we can pretend to ignore allows a level of social ease. Once we reach the point of consciously wearing body cams, the cats out of the bag. Now everything you say and do is recorded. Maybe you personally wouldn't be impacted, but I think we're trading off security in exchange for social cohesion. Do you feel more safe in an area that has a million cameras and security forces, or in an suburban town/city that has no cameras because they don't need it. I think there's a reason why there are gated communities, where once you get past the gate you don't see any signs of security, because people don't want to feel like they live in an area they are constantly supervised.

Let's not forget, governments can change, just because the government now might be benevolent and not forcefully seize footages without warrants doesn't that they won't change the process for getting a warrant, or even ignore protocols all together.

Then there's the matter of security on these devices, cameras get hacked all the time and there are people that willingly look for people in embarrassing or sexual situations to share to the greater world.

A dashcam is mostly restricted to the realm of driving and I can accept that. A bodycam is on you always.

I actually agree. It's illegitimate for a group to do something that is not legitimate for an individual but as AshLael notes, that's a rare take.

Wild take. So a random dude should be able to declare war? Imprison con artists? Print money?

Yep, a nation of true sovereigns.

That sounds like an oxymoron.

This is kind of how policing was meant to be historically in the UK as I understand it. Police were meant to be just citizens that were being paid to do a job but having no special powers. Even now I think citizens can bring private criminal prosecutions to court. The Peelian principles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles) article on Wikipedia has some of the background on this. Also, due to historical fears UK police are generally unarmed except for special units. However, I guess as time has gone on the UK has drifted from policing from consent to a more policing by the state model.

In doing so while the general state of DC law is much less permissive. A private citizen is definitely not allowed to do this.

I don’t think it’s actually a gotcha, since there is always a gulf between private and state violence. But I suspect it’s got the right optics, the right “gosh look how bad things have gotten,” to make the rounds.

I'd... not want to place bets on the state of the law, here. @Gdanning is probably more familiar with the matter than I am, but at least in gunnie circles the reference for law enforcement is Tennessee v Garner, and while it's a muddled mess of Totality of The Circumstances, the federal DoJ rules are not very permissive.

Even Tennessee v Garner merely establishes the boundaries for a Fourth Amendment violation; the limits for criminal liability, or for ordinary civil liability for assault/battery or wrongful death, can be very different. As of course can department regs, as you mention.

Oh. I’m not batting terribly well today, am I?

Knowing nothing else about this particular incident, my first thought was car bombs. I’d expect defense of (unoccupied) property to be important for security.

The DHS guidelines look very similar to those. Though the USSS is apparently unique in being authorized to disable vehicles! Not that it matters here.

But yes, given that provision against shooting fleeting suspects…well, this could be messy.

Nobody got shot, and no one's going to come forward with a civil lawsuit so they can get slapped with a bunch of criminal charges, so I don't think it's going to go anywhere far enough to be messy. It's just really embarrassing.

To echo a sentiment from the pink site, I am surprised the would-be thieves did not notice it was a government vehicle. Even if unmarked, it's hard to miss a lightbar under a windshield if you're within car theft distance of the vehicle.

So they were on a lot of drugs. My understanding is that this is pretty common for the sorts of people who try to steal things out of vehicles.

What is the pink site?

RDrama, I guess?

Isn't a hallmark of low level criminals that they're rocking room temperature IQ?

That depends. Have you ever made a rolling stop at a stop sign for an empty intersection?

Accursed Americans, even your metaphors don't work in metric!

Now I'm imagining a comic-book world where carjackers have an IQ of 293.15.

In fairness, upper 20's IQ would be pretty dumb.

Upper 20s is also pretty bloody hot for "room temperature". Try 20-21. Of course the basic point still stands.

"Room temperature" is generally taken to mean 25 Celsius here in Australia.

This is probably a good Friday Fun topic at some point. As an American that keeps my home between 68-71 Freedomtemp (20-21.5 for People of Celsius), I was absolutely baffled to discover that most spaces in Tokyo are about the temperature you're describing, at least during summer when I was there. I don't recall a similar problem in Australia, but Melbourne and Sydney weren't very hot when we were in town anyway. Port Douglas and Cairns seemed hot, but I was also dressed very lightly, so it seemed fine.

I'm curious what other countries are like and what people's reactions are.

Too dumb for crime, at the very least.

I remember a while ago people were using a paper measuring the iq of mussels or some kind of shellfish to dunk on Trump, because they decided they had an iq of 2 somehow. So a metric room temperature iq is somewhere between too retarded to function and a bubble blowing lump of flesh.

takes shots at carjackers

If the car was unoccupied, it was not a carjacking, which requires the threat or use of force against a person. It was merely an attempted theft or auto burglary.

My mistake!

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats