I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.
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
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Jacobin: Instead of Taking Trump Off the Ballot, Democrats Should Run a Better Candidate
If anyone's been following the leftier side of American Twitter recently, there's been a lot of squabbling and sniping between liberals and lefties lately, with main topics being "Is the Biden economy actually good?" (which, of course, also serves as a proxy for whether Biden is good or not) and "Is Trump such a threat that the left just has to grin and swallow everything Biden admin has to offer, including lockstep support for Israel, compromises of immigration etc". Both can be clearly seen in this article, even if it has also received a lot of pushback, mainly from those saying that the Dems should, in fact, push for both, ie. Trump off the ballot and a better candidate than Biden.
This stuff is genuinely infuriating. Say what I will about the J6 rioters, they weren't driven by "authoritarianism", they literally just thought they won and were being cheated. Likewise, say whatever anyone else will about telling people to bring their ID when they go to the polls, it's not "authoritarian".
In Britain, voter ID backfired on the conservatives because all young people had ID but old people (who are always more conservative) didn’t always. I don’t think it’s a good move for the US right to push, penniless Guatemalan illegals aren’t voting in any numbers, why would they?
In at least some circumstances it can probably long-term engineer the electorate in a more conservative direction; adults with no drivers license probably do skew liberal because they're urban, and it does serve to prevent voting by out of state students(although what level of concern that is I don't know).
People in the hood have a drivers license, though, so do hispanic migrants in Queens. The kind of affluent Manhattan libs who don’t have licenses have passports anyway. So do almost all naturalized immigrants since they usually travel abroad to see family at least occasionally.
Plenty of the underclass gets their license yanked because they can't stay sober or won't pay their tickets IMO; to the extent these people vote they're not partisan republicans. One of these days I'm going to write a lengthy post on my time among the underclass, but my recollections include an absolutely huge number of underclass males whose dui's and unwillingness to pay traffic fines lost them their licenses and who hated the Texas GOP but were inconsistent voters and didn't necessarily trust the democrats either. Suppressing these people from voting is probably a positive for the Texas GOP. So is preventing out of state students from declaring themselves Texas residents to vote in Texas elections.
Of course I don't support the franchise for students or the underclass anyways, but I'd imagine the median Texan adult who doesn't have a license doesn't have one because they lost it, not because they don't want one. This is a population with voting patterns that lean blue but are easy to suppress.
Does the median adult with a revoked license really vote? The things that correlate with a revoked license like being young, male and underclass also mean a very low voting propensity.
And AFAIK most voter ID rules would accept a license that was revoked as a still-valid document for identification purposes, even if not for driving ones.
Median is less important than marginal if you're trying to nudge elections. If there are 100k low propensity voters that theoretically would support my opponent, shifting the number who actually vote from 25k to 12.5k is still a win even though the median group member was staying home either way.
Whether or not this is decisive or who it actually favors in practice: v0v
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