site banner
ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35356 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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.

26
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The trial of Darrell Brooks is set to start this coming Monday, October 3. Brooks is accused of running over 77 people at the Waukesha Christmas Parade.

Brooks will be representing himself. His motion to do so was granted today. There have been a few entertaining / exasperating videos of Brooks and the Judge going back and forth on this matter.

Brooks believes himself to be a sovereign citizen. In one of the videos he's crossed out the words "I understand" and replaced them with "I have been informed of." These were on a form he had to sign that warned him of the perils of self-representation. It turns out this is a sovereign citizen thing. They believe that to say "I understand" means that they "stand under" the court and are subject to its authority. In the video granting his motion the judge finds that "I have been informed of" is functionally equivalent to "I understand" and Brooks objects, saying he never said those words.

Culture war angle: this was a big culture war story last year as people perceived the attack as both under-covered and when it was covered, downplayed. The Rittenhouse case got many orders of magnitude more coverage and had an order of magnitude fewer victims.

Additionally, on the videos I discovered that YouTube tacks on a link to the sovereign citizen movement page on Wikipedia, giving it the same treatment as COVID-19 misinformation.

77 counts, in addition to 6 murders. Fuck this guy. If he tries sovereign citizen loopholes, I expect he will receive a object lesson in the source of state power.

The suspense is terrible, I hope it lasts.

Hot take:

The partisan games of the two parties are particularly harsh on those with mental illness or some weakness. While I think a lot of American politics today is a heavy dose of Larping the mentally I’ll can’t differentiate.

Either that or Biden is serious and not Larping that half the countries an extremists KKK nazi fascists Hitler in the flesh. Scared that I’m not positive he’s just Larping.

I can't claim to know what Biden believes, as I don't have access to his thoughts. However, his willingness to accuse Republicans of outrageous evil is not a recent development--see his remarks ten years ago to a black audience that Mitt Romney (!) wanted to "put y'all back in chains." This, from the man who said that his own state of Delaware was a "slave state that fought beside the North. That's only because we couldn't figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way."

Oh, I was wondering where this quote originated from.

Jen Psaki recently made a comment that if the mid terms are a referendum on Biden then there getting smoked. So I think there is some evidence it’s a strategy for the election. Of course it ruins everyone’s trust of both sides because now the GOP legitimately thinks deep state is real and if the Dems are in charge they will be disenfranchised. So hurts long term trust but I do think some of this is a mid term game to make the mid terms a Trump referendum instead of a Biden referendum.

The Rittenhouse case got many orders of magnitude more coverage and had an order of magnitude fewer victims.

Indeed--there was only one victim, and he didn't even die!

One fascinating aspect of the sovereign citizen "movement" is that, while it is certainly fringe, it's wildly all over place in terms of "nearest point of more mainstream thought." You get people that would otherwise be considered extreme libertarians, extreme leftists, extreme traditionalists, whatever, that have all decided to pick up this particular collection of unusual beliefs. One example is the Moorish sovereign citizens, if you prefer the black-separatist flavor.

It seems to me that the fundamental issue that leads people to believing in the sovereign citizen stuff is fairly orthogonal to political alignment, being instead some sort of general belief in a metaphysical/magical quality of "the law". Perhaps in the eyes of the people who subscribe, the validity of legal jargon is an intrinsic property of the universe they inhabit, rather than a whim of the people who happened to hold the gun or (better) an implicit consensus between those pointing the guns and those being pointed at to form a system where the former's ability to fire at will is circumscribed in return for the latter not engaging in negative-sum attempts to seize the guns for themselves. Accordingly, when people write laws, the principles are not so much "invented" as "discovered", and while bad or incompetent people may discover and codify a wrong law, the moral force of the universe will see them punished in due time just as the laws of physics punish those who build their rocket on wrong principles.

A lighter form of what I think is fundamentally the same delusion is frequently seen in your typical /r/worldnews thread on some or another loathed geopolitical enemy, whose exploits, as people will assure you with palpable indignation, are in violation of "international law". The suggested consequences of these statements are not usually made clear but seem to occupy the spectrum from "and therefore the enemy is morally bad" to the "and therefore the exploits are surely doomed to fail", with the latter having the same sort of "the law will magically enforce itself" flavour except unlike in the sovereign citizen case, where the only would-be enforcer does not agree with the law-invoker's interpretation of the law, here there is no clear enforcer at all.

I do wonder if this way of looking at things is just a pathological version of a group adaptation that has otherwise served Western societies well; after all, the opposite extreme, of considering at all times who made the rules for what reason and how/whether they would actually be able to enforce them on you, seems like plain sociopathy, a recipe for a society where every report is faked and everything of value is embezzled the moment the man with the gun looks away.

I do wonder if this way of looking at things is just a pathological version of a group adaptation that has otherwise served Western societies well;

Now I'm wondering what a society would look like where this view of the law was the default. I expect the failure-modes would look as distinctly different from the fates that befall individual sovereign-citizens in the real world as a high-corruption society looks from the outcomes of a highly-corrupt person in a low-corruption one does.

Well, whatever it would look like, I suspect it would make for a fun setting for a story.

Am I misremembering or are you speaking figuratively? Didn't Rittenhouse kill 2 and wound one?

Kyle Rittenhouse was the victim of repeated attempts to murder him. Two of the people who tried to kill him died as a result of his exemplary self-defense (and a third was wounded). Referring to his attackers as "victims" is a wee bit obscene, which is why I didn't assume that's what the OP meant. I may have tried for some cleverness in my phrasing, but I meant precisely what I said, exactly not figuratively.

Yes, if I had read closely I maybe would have figured it out.

Discussing "the case" though, I had already read victim descriptively, meaning simply "those the court decided were victims" because that's how the word is used. (You allude to this when you note a different, objective-morals sense of victim).

Thanks for the clarification

meaning simply "those the court decided were victims"

The court did not decide that any of that. This was a jury trial, so the court was not making determination here. Instead, it was the prosecution who claimed that those killed by Rittenhouse were victims. The jury unanimously rejected that.

You're right, my brain was thinking "those the state decided were victims" and I ignored the shades of nuance within the state.

I am occasionally guilty of attempted cleverness, but if asked to explain myself, I am also often willing to do so at great length. So...uh...fair warning, I guess? Though if you are here, walls of text are probably acceptable.

I would venture that he's denying victim status to the two people Rittenhouse killed and the third he wounded - Rittenhouse being the victim. From the conservative perspective, they were aggressors who happened to aggress someone holding a loaded weapon.

From the conservative perspective, they were aggressors who happened to aggress someone holding a loaded weapon.

I find this a strange statement. What about this is particular to the conservative perspective? I wasn't under the impression that someone's perception of the physics of an altercation was all that defined by someone's political perspective. E.g. I'm not a conservative, and having watched a video of the encounter, from my perspective, they were aggressors who happened to aggress (upon) someone holding a loaded weapon.

In theory, it shouldn't be. But self-defense law contains some statements that are open-ended (really all laws contain such statements, because natural languages are ambiguous). And one's political view could influence how you read and interpret these phrases. Now, some people seem to go much further and just don't know what the law says at all, and seem to think that you can (and should) only use a gun in self-defense against someone who doesn't also have a gun if you already have been stabbed or beaten and are imminently going to die. AFAIK this is not the law in any US state. However, the actual principles behind self-defense will include phrases like "reasonable belief." What is reasonable? Different people could disagree. One person might say that if you are a minor, and an adult is running after you, yelling at you, and throwing things at you, that you reasonably believe they are trying to (and able to) harm you, while another might say that isn't a reasonable belief. Or the law will contain terms like "reasonable means to escape." Again, what is reasonable?

However, the actual principles behind self-defense will include phrases like "reasonable belief." What is reasonable? Different people could disagree. One person might say that if you are a minor, and an adult is running after you, yelling at you, and throwing things at you, that you reasonably believe they are trying to (and able to) harm you, while another might say that isn't a reasonable belief. Or the law will contain terms like "reasonable means to escape." Again, what is reasonable?

Indeed, but none of this seems conservative to me. Just knowing basic scientific facts about biology and physics, my conclusion is that the video I saw of Rittenhouse shooting and killing someone was an example of self-defense in the face of aggressors aggressing upon someone who was holding a loaded weapon. What about this is specifically conservative?

What about this is specifically conservative?

In my opinion, nothing (and it's not limited to conservatives either--I'm libertarian and it looks to me like Rittenhouse was fairly clearly acting in self-defense). Self-defense is a basic human right. But even basic human rights are politically charged these days. While I don't think I can steel-man the case that Rittenhouse was definitely guilty of murder, let me offer a few observations:

  1. From the liberal point of view, carrying a gun is itself an aggressive act. There was a lot of this at the time, people desperately trying to make legal (or debatably technically illegal, but not in a way that is relevant to self defense) open carry into a provocation. This is one of those things that is just invented and has no basis in law.

  2. 2 of the people Rittenhouse shot were not carrying guns. If you are not familiar with guns except from movies and think of a gun as a magical death machine that mows down all opposition no matter what, and don't realize the damage that a blow to the head with a skateboard (or being jumped on while on the ground) can do, then using a firearm in such a situation is a substantial escalation. I think this is mostly a factual mistake, supplemented by tribally targeted sympathy. Relatedly...

  3. There was probably a lot of tribalism. AFAIK, no one who thought Rittenhouse was guilty also thought that the McMichaels engaged in reasonable self-defense against Ahmaud Arbery, even though in my opinion Arbery and Rittenhouse were in fairly similar circumstances. Again, much was made of Rittenhouses's alleged connections to "militia groups" and his alleged political opinions were supposed to be evidence that he went looking for protesters to shoot. So they assumed, based on those things, that he was more likely to be the aggressor.

From the conservative perspective

Well, also from the jury's own unanimous perspective, and therefore from the perspective of the criminal justice system.

Let's not overstate what a jury verdict means. The jury was instructed that "The burden is on the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act lawfully in self defense. And, you must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt from all the evidence in the case that the circumstances of the defendant's conduct showed utter disregard for human life."

It is standard that the state has the burden of proving that a defendant did NOT act in self-defense. So, any acquittal on self-defense grounds says little about what the jury thought of the defendant, and certainly is not an indication that they decided that he was the "real victim" nor that the decedent was the "real bad guy." And, it is certainly possible for both sides to be acting in reasonable self-defense; had Rittenhouse been killed by one of those whom he shot, his killer probably also would have been acquitted. But that would not mean that the jury decided that that killer was the "real victim" and that Rittenhouse was in the wrong.

We're splitting hairs at this point, but the fact remains that the US criminal justice system has an established process and standard to decide when people are victims, and the system concluded in this case that Rittenhouse was the victim and these other individuals were not, because that conclusion (to within the standard burden of proof) was required for the outcome that obtained.

No, the fact remains that the a finding that Rittenhouse was the victim and the others were not was NOT required for the outcome. That is literally what it means to say that the state had the burden of proving that he was not acting in self-defense.

Edit: That is why an acquittal on self-defense grounds does not prevent a subsequent civil case against the defendant:

When the first suit is a criminal prosecution resulting in an acquittal, the courts almost unanimously hold that there should be no preclusive effect given the acquittal in a subsequent civil action. A recent case, which arose in Maryland, will serve to illustrate the application of this rule. In United States v. Burns, the government brought an interpleader action to determine the distribution of the proceeds of a National Service Life Insurance policy. The widow of the insured had been acquitted of the murder of her husband on the theory of self-defense. In the interpleader action it was held that the acquittal was not preclusive, and the theory of self-defense which was accepted in the first suit was rejected. Despite the acquittal, the court found that the wife murdered her husband and was not entitled to the insurance proceeds. [¶] Although this result seems unduly harsh and illogical at first glance, there is a valid explanation which justifies it. In criminal actions the burden of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt," while in civil actions the burden is proof by "a preponderance of the evidence." Therefore, an acquittal in the former action serves to show only that the government did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime. This does not mean that the more lenient civil burden of preponderance of the evidence could not have been satisfied. Therefore, a party in a subsequent civil action should not be precluded from attempting to prove an issue by a preponderance of evidence merely because the government did not support the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

I believe this is a slight simplification. After all, claiming self-defense is relatively rare. Given an altercation without video or additional witnesses, how could you ever convict someone who just claimed self-defense? I think that there is some (relatively minor, but still existent) hurdle the defendant has to pass before being allowed to claim self-defense, and only then does "reasonable doubt" apply.

Yes, there has to be some evidence of self-defense in order to get the issue before the jury. That can be the defendant's own testimony, but the jury of course can decline to believe the defendant. If they don't believe him, then that is enough to convict. The People have proven their case by convincing the jury that the defendant is lying.

So, any acquittal on self-defense grounds says little about what the jury thought of the defendant, and certainly is not an indication that they decided that he was the "real victim" nor that the decedent was the "real bad guy."

The post to which you're replying was quoting a part that was referring to:

they were aggressors who happened to aggress someone holding a loaded weapon.

Which is different from any statement about who's a "real victim" or the "real bad guy." Given that the jury decided that the prosecutors were unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse did not act in self defense, it seems reasonable to conclude that all the evidence they saw led them to conclude that, beyond a reasonable doubt, Rittenhouse's actions were a response against aggressors by someone holding a loaded weapon.

seems reasonable to conclude that all the evidence they saw led them to conclude that, beyond a reasonable doubt, Rittenhouse's actions were a response against aggressors by someone holding a loaded weapon

No, it is not reasonable to infer that, because that turns the burden of proof around and places it on the defendant. If, for the sake of argument, "beyond a reasonable doubt" means 95% sure, you are saying that the verdict implies that the jury was 95 pct sure that Rittenhouse's actions were a reasonable response to aggressors, when in fact all it means is that they were more than 6 pct sure.

That's a fair point, and I was erroneous when I wrote "beyond a reasonable doubt" there. Rather, what I should have written was that the evidence led the jury to conclude that, by the criminal justice system's standards, Rittenhouse's actions were a response against aggressors by someone holding a loaded weapon.

More comments

; had Rittenhouse been killed by one of those whom he shot, his killer probably also would have been acquitted.

Why? All those that were injured or killed by Mr. Rittenhouse started the altercation. Seems like a loophole to be allowed to legally kill people, if they decide to fight back.

Because 1) The exact roles of everyone involved was in dispute; and 2) the situation was chaotic in general; and 3) here is the instruction given to the jury on the issue of self defense by an initial aggressor:

You should also consider whether the defendant provoked the attack. A person who engages in unlawful conduct of a type likely to provoke others to attack, and who does provoke an attack, is not allowed to use or threaten force in self-defense against that attack. However, if the attack which follows causes the person reasonably to believe that he is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, he may lawfully act in self-defense. But the person may not use or threaten force intended or likely to cause death unless he reasonably believes he has exhausted every other reasonable means to escape from or otherwise avoid death or great bodily harm.

Notice that "starting the altercation" is not enough; the person must have been engaged in "unlawful conduct," and even if he does, if the other person uses what the initiator reasonably believes to a threat of imminent death or great bodily harm, all that means is that the initiator loses the right to "stand his ground."

Given all that, and given that the burden is on the government to prove,** beyond a reasonable doubt**, that the defendant was NOT acting in self-defense, the govt would have a hard time getting a conviction of anyone involved. Not impossible, certainly, but definitely an uphill battle, in this particular case. Again, I am not saying that they SHOULD be acquitted, but rather only that the probably WOULD be acquitted.

Wouldn't Rosenbaum's verbal threats, eg "if I catch any of you f**kers alone, I’ll f**king kill you," combined with his "starting the altercation" when he encountered Rittenhouse alone later in the night make it much easier in at least Rosenbaum's case? If not, that seems like a gaping hole in the law that desperately needs to be fixed.

More comments

Incidentally, there is a defense attorney on YouTube who goes by natalielawyerchick who takes an interest in sovereign citizen cases and will react to videos of SovCits arguing in court, and explaining what they're arguing vs. what the law actually is. It's a fascinating little rabbit hole to go down.

The sovereign citizen movement has always given me weird vibes. It feels like a parody of my libertarian side crossed with the flat earth ability to just disregard the obvious evidence that the world doesn't work the way they want it to. Are there mirror world web boards populated by flat earthers with videos of sovereign citizens one weird tricking themselves out of legal disputes?

It’s spread through books, chain emails, green ink websites, etc among the usual conspiracy demographics(far right wingers and minorities).

There is a learned behavior in people that if they deny obvious things then the other person will eventually give up and give them a partial win. It can be rather common in kids and they usually grow out of it, often becoming compulsive liars if they do not.

My theory of mind is that there is something going on in the SovCit's head where he thinks "if I just hold out long enough they will give up, but if I waver in my statements even once then everything I have fought for ever will be immediately lost." I am not sure this model is accurate but is sure is useful.

Maybe they're changelings who are used to courts working like Faerie courts do - with the proper phrasing being more vital than who's holding the guns.

It really does feel like it's going too far compared to more common pieces of advice about how to not suffer under the law (such as "do not talk to the police").

I like it. It's like chaos engineering / fuzz testing our legal system. Laws and the system that enforces them should be robust to adversarial attack, and by doing their best to gunk up legal proceedings SovCit shenanigans force these systems to stay honest.

The cost of this is that many people are injured, and one likely imprisoned, possibly because their misunderstanding of the law has led them to underestimate the consequences of violating it. To the extent that this is a contributing factor to the original harm, it would overcome the systemic health benefits. But I don't think "because I think I'll get away with it" is typically part of the decision making process while planning to drive into a parade.

I don't think this is true at all, the people who are adversarially attacking the legal system are usually ... lawyers, it's their job, many mediocre arguments are made that judges have to understand and discard, and maybe some of the lawyers are committing sophisticated fraud, collusion, etc. Meanwhile, sovcits come in and talk like schizophrenics. Maybe the first sovereign citizen forced the system to stay honest in some way, like, make sure they have the proper procedure for handling nonsensical babble, but the next ten thousand aren't proving anything. If you're testing a program for vulnerabilities, sure, just feeding it random strings a few times (or more, computers are fast) to see if it crashes is useful! But when it does and you've fixed that, feeding it more random strings isn't going to catch anything. You need more subtle guided fuzzing or actually reading the code, understanding the mechanics and low level details, or prodding specific features for vulnerabilities in the course of use. Which sounds a lot like being a lawyer and not at all like sovcits.

The kind of attack I'm thinking of is, SovCit arguments are meaningfully distinct from nonsensical babble and incompetent/adversarial lawyers.

Nonsensical babble: you show up in court, get found incompetent, assigned a lawyer and removed from the courtroom or otherwise made to shut up. Easy to handle.

The differences between sovcits and very bad lawyers are less clear. Maybe you could treat them as an extreme case. I think Brooks is more likely than even the worst lawyer to invoke the fifth amendment when asked procedural questions, to refuse to follow judge instructions, and to "understand" anything. If Brooks has literally thousands of bad arguments to make, what will the judge do? If he starts repeating them, is someone keeping track? Brooks is representing himself pro se, he can't be disbarred.

The sane, boring, probably correct answer is to force him to accept the public defender after a few days of frustration. But they need a process for that, which is only in place because these people have made it necessary.

Yeah, if anything, the legal system is being extra nice to SovCits. They could easily be destroyed instantly for not filing the right form in the right way, get rekt. It is kind of a DoS based on the ability of the system to give people slack.

I prefer to think of it as a ballsy attempt at creating a hyperstition.

To be fair, the etymology of "understand" is fascinating, complicated and unresolved.

reminds me of the "you do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to them'" tweet

(please note, I do not have a personal position on whether we gotta hand it to sovereign citizens)

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