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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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I’m going to echo the chorus of ‘but the OP started it’- yes, this was a bad comment, but we should be evenhanded- the post was also bad.

@hydroacetylene @IGI-111 @winedark

The OP's post is bad (11 reports so far, 1 AAQC) but I'm leaving it to the other mods to decide whether it breaks the rules. I don't think it does, because clearly stating "Our historical problems are for this reason" - even if "this reason" is "Da Joos" or "importing Africans to America" or "White Southerners" and why you think that - is allowed. You are allowed to criticize your outgroup, but it requires laying out a thesis, which can be debated (as is happening here).

"Black people are the worst" is just booing without offering much to debate.

OP's post is similar in quality to other top level posts here, save for whose sacred cows it brings to the slaughter.

And top level posts get modded for antagonism and boo outgroup regularly.

This post is of the same caliber as OP. Neither are particularly unusual in terms of quality, but "why are progressives stupid and terrible?" gets a round of applause while "why are southern conservatives so stupid and terrible?" makes a lot of users feel personally attacked.

I agree that they're both bad, but there's a bit of a difference between "It's actually insane to me that much of the the <X> in America thinks <Y>" and "Every degenerate tendency in US Con. politics has originated directly from <X>". And I say that as someone who thinks the Reconstruction got backstabbed, even if the real version of that is more complicated than the colloquial one.