site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

NATO forms a bright line that Russia knows it must never cross. Here is a map of NATO. Russia is encircled and powerless

I do not believe "encircled" means what you think it means. Without attacking NATO, Russia can move south through Georgia ("seeking" is not membership), Armenia, and Azerbaijan and keep going if it feels like getting into a conflict with Iran. And then there's that huge area of Russia not shown, which borders on other non-NATO countries. They could plow through the -stans to India, or go after Mongolia and China. No NATO there.

Azerbaijan is a Turkish client state, and NATO didn't exactly complain about Turkey helping Azerbaijan invade Artsakh in violation of a ceasefire nominally enforced by Russian peacekeepers and ethnically cleanse the territory.

If I am a paranoid Russian, I consider Azerbaijan part of NATO's encirclement of Russia.

If I am a paranoid Russian, I consider Azerbaijan part of NATO's encirclement of Russia.

As the story goes, you can consider a tail a leg but that don't make it so. Russia invading Azerbaijan does not trigger Article 5.

Where does this model of Russia even come from? The Ukrainian conflict has not exactly been a stunning success for Russia.

Now they're attacking India and China?

The whole Ukraine War rests on the faulty premise that Russia is so strong they'll invade Poland India if we don't stop them, but so weak that one more round of funding to Ukraine will win the war.

Personally, I don't really care as long as I'm not forced to participate. I'd especially appreciate it if more pro-war people actually volunteered for the Ukrainian military, or least the US one.

I believe the point is that it seems strange to call Russia "encircled" by NATO once you zoom the map out a bit.

With enough flexibility on a spherical planet, every region arguably encircles its inverse!

To be fair there's a pretty good pincer thing going on when you take the Arctic into consideration!

I'd agree that this style of map is probably the best balance, though I'm struggling somewhat to find a map in this style that is up-to-date.