Covington Scissor: Opinion Piece

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In a short story published last October, “Sort by Controversial,” Scott Alexander imagines a Silicon Valley company that accidentally comes up with an algorithm to generate what it calls a “Scissor.” The scissor is a statement, an idea or a scenario that’s somehow perfectly calibrated to tear people apart — not just by generating disagreement, but by generating total incredulity that somebody could possibly disagree with your interpretation of the controversy, followed by escalating fury and paranoia and polarization, until the debate seems like a completely existential, win-or-perish fight.
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Of the Scissor’s predicted top hundred most controversial statements, Kavanaugh was No. 58 and Kaepernick was No. 42. No. 86 was the ground zero mosque. No. 89 was that baker who wouldn’t make a cake for a gay wedding.”
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And now we have — well, let’s call it No. 40 on the Scissor list (meaning there’s worse, oh so much worse, to come), in the form of the videos of Catholic high school boys from Kentucky, in Washington to attend the March for Life, some of them wearing Make America Great Again hats, in some sort of confrontation with a chanting, drumming Native American activist who was intervening in another confrontation between the teenagers and a group of black nationalists.
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The ‘scissor’ argument is fascinating, and makes a lot of sense.
 
Ross Douthat is one of the best writers in American politics today. If you haven’t read his “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics,” you should give it a go. Great book.
 
This scissor is only number 40, imagine those yet to come! It has racial tension, religious tension, partisan tension, generational tension.

If an algorithm made scissors specifically for CAF what would it come up with?
 
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Literally just 100 different wordings of the “faith vs works” question.
 
EF v OF, SSPX, marital sexual questions, ‘is this a sin’ …
 
But it would need to be a polarizing event, right? Like SSPX Baker refuses to bake birthday cake for the pope and will only vote in local primaries if the ballot is in Latin.

Or veil wearing woman plays electric guitar during communion hymn at a mass for Immigrants.
 
Can’t read it without a subscription and I refuse to subscribe to the NYT…
 
According to Fr. Zibnik O.F.M., such votes would not be licit , but would constitute valid votes that should be counted in the result of a close election, but only in the event of a contested election.
 
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You must have read a few recently. I think there is a limit on how many you can read for free. I don’t have a subscription.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Are you sure you want to go there? 😱
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2 weeks ago, yes. Today, certainly not, but for kicks

Maybe this: My cohabitating pet hamsters want to get married in the church but they are both male and their engagement rings contain blood diamonds.
 
OR…CAF scissors exist, there are tons of them, but we have a drawer we keep them in, so it’s ok. We call it World News.
 
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