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 -
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/worried-meta-decision-allowing-2020-election-denial-ads/story?id=104985165
So Meta the parent company of Facebook and instagram is now allowing users and advertisers to post claims about election fraud in the last election but not the soon to be held 2024 elections. I’ll lay my cards out here and say I’m personally a skeptic of the claims that the 2020 elections were stolen. I don’t see why that should prevent other people from making such arguments.
But my question for you guys is whether these claims are going to really erode trust in future elections. To me the issue that erodes that trust is that the official government structures never bothered to look into the claims that such fraud might have happened and instead opted for the COVID style full court press of “nobody should bother to take it seriously, and if you do it’s clear that you’re falling for misinformation.” To me nothing erodes trust faster than an official response of “nothing to see here.”
There’s a kind of incoherence to ‘stolen election’ claims that I dislike, in that they’re almost always made by people who assume that the permanent bureaucracy / deep state / powers that be / white supremacist patriarchy / Russia / etc means that Our Guy can win but still lose anyway.
If the deep state can have its way even when /ourguy/ wins, then why does it also need to rig elections? Either elections don’t matter because the President has no power, or they do matter because the President actually has a lot of power, but Trump just failed to do anything with it.
I’m convinced the stolen election narrative was profoundly damaging to the Trumpist right and GOP more generally in the US. What is more demoralizing than suggesting that ‘they’ will win even if you come out to vote? Or even, if you take the theory further, that they ‘allowed’ Trump to win in 2016 knowing, presumably, that they could control him or prevent him from doing anything they didn’t want him to?
The stolen election narrative was strategically moronic. It exists solely to assuage Trump-the-man’s ego, and spread because the modern US right is in large part a Trump personality cult, so various operatives, media figures etc wanted to do their best to remain on his good side. A single shout out or mockery from the oracle of Mar a Lago can make or break a career, so playing to his ego was so important they forgot strategy to claim that Donald actually did win for real.
(I think all US elections involve some low-level corruption, rigging and machine politics, but that broadly the most popular candidate in the majority of the country - pursuant to minor discrepancies in popular vote subject to the unique dynamics of the EC system obviously - wins).
If the deep state is really as powerful and good at working in shadows as some people think, why is Trump even still alive? Couldn't such a powerful organization manage to kill him in some way that looks like a plausible sudden health failure of some kind? More kinetic means such as arranging a car accident would be too likely to draw outrage from his supporters, but what if he just suddenly had a heart attack or something? I don't know how possible this is to achieve medically, though.
Absolutely possible. The 1975 Church Committee hearings revealed the CIA made a heart attack gun that worked by silently firing a small frozen needle of concentrated shellfish toxins at the victim. It would melt upon piercing the skin, leaving no trace, and cause an immediate heart attack.
The KGB had a similar heart attack triggering weapon that worked by spraying a puff of cyanide gas into the victim's face.
Didn’t they test this on mythbusters?
The gun is definitely real, the director of the CIA brought one of the guns into the congressional hearing.
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/17/archives/colby-describes-cia-poison-work-he-tells-senate-panel-of-secret.html
At the four minute mark in the video below they pull it out and start examining it. It's built along the lines of a 1911 handgun and has an electric powered mechanism instead of using gunpowder, with what looks like a some kind of pneumatic system chamber where the hammer would go and a compact scope, according to the director firing almost silently and hitting targets with a variety of dart types at 100 yards or meters. They had both shellfish toxin and cobra venom derived compounds.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4703553/user-clip-cia-director-william-colby-church-committee-shellfish-toxin-dartgun
This story doesn't pass the sniff test- hitting targets at 100 yd with a handgun? Come on.
From what I can find, tranq pistols can have an effective range up to 40 meters. That's firing an entire syringe. I wouldn't be surprised at being able to achieve 100 meters with a much, much smaller dart.
Also worth considering that range would likely be an engineering goal for a CIA heart attack gun. They aren't really focused on achieving range in typical dart pistols, because that would never be needed.
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
More options
Context Copy link