site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Mike Lindell has been ordered to pay up for his challenge to disprove some election interference evidence.

It’s a remarkable situation. Evidence of election interference should be investigated by law enforcement agencies, with no need for a bounty to disprove the validity.

The great thing is that the man who met the challenge voted for Trump twice. (I wonder if he will a third time.)

If Lindell didn’t trust government authorities to properly investigate election interference claims, he should have also known not to trust the courts to fairly (from his perspective) enforce an arbitration issue about it.

Had Lindell set the bounty to prove the veracity of the evidence (beyond a reasonable doubt), he’d still have his money.

This is like the inverse of the Balaji Srinivasan bet on inflation and Bitcoin. I think it’s great when the wealthy put their money where their mouth is. We need more bets taxing bullshit.

I don't understand how this is possibly the court's fault. I haven't heard of this challenge before, so maybe the article you linked about it is misleading somehow, but it sounds like the sequence of events was:

  1. Lindell proposes a challenge claiming he has evidence related to cheating on the 2020 election, offers a $5 million prize to the first person to prove him wrong to the satisfaction of him or an arbitrator he chose.
  2. Someone in fact convinces the arbitrator they have fulfilled the requirements of the prize; Lindell doesn't pay out.
  3. Just now, a court confirmed that, yes, the arbitrator really was convinced and that means Lindell has to pay out.

The court very explicitly did not look at the election claims; they only said "this was the terms of the bet; they were fulfilled, so you have to pay out".


It’s a remarkable situation. Evidence of election interference should be investigated by law enforcement agencies, with no need for a bounty to disprove the validity.

I'm really not sure why you think evidence of election interference isn't investigated by government authorities (reworded because I'm not sure if law enforcement or the secretary of state's office / election board is the appropriate authority, probably depends on the exact case). It sounds like Lindell didn't have any evidence and just threw together some unrelated obfuscated numbers and didn't expect anyone to call him out on it.

Assuming you didn’t accidentally respond to me vs. another commenter, I’ll take this as a compliment that I presented the facts in a way that someone could think I actually think Lindell has been wronged.

On a technical point, the court had to agree that the terms of the challenge were fulfilled, which means they believe the evidence provided by Lindell was in fact demonstrably false. So fans of Deep State theory can stay believers if they want to. “The rot runs even deeper than we thought.” (No one ever seems to explain how the Deep State tried so hard to defeat Trump in 2016 but failed so narrowly.)

If you look at my comment history, you’ll find we violently agree about Lindell and general claims of election fraud.

The most charitable I can be about someone like Lindell or Sidney Powell (or Trump) is that they are mentally ill, and not just straight out con(wo)men. I can’t use that for say a Giuliani or a Michael Flynn, given their past careers, and Dinesh D'Souza is a longstanding grifter.