site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"We can hypothetically launch more drones at you and actually do harm" after launching a few is not a victory in itself. It looks like they won very public assassinations of their allies and vassal leaders on their home turf. What else did they win?

The problem with launching 3000 drones is that is usually called a war and they don't want that kind of war. Whereas Israel appears to be asking for one or certain they won't get one. Israel did say they'd kill all Hamas leadership, so maybe there's an understanding. That's what proxies are for. Dying so you don't have to.

Israel can't defend its own citizens on its own soil, they're hardly doing better than Iran. Rockets are constantly getting through their missile defences because missile defence (at least the missile defence Israel is trying to do) fundamentally is not cost-efficient. Northern Israel has basically been abandoned because of this. Every so often drones hit Tel Aviv, the Houthis snuck one through just a few days ago.

One year in, Israel has failed to destroy Hamas. They've blown up a lot of Gaza, yes, but they don't control the territory and they haven't beaten the weakest of their three primary enemies. As soon as the IDF gets sick of being ambushed and pull out of any one part of Gaza, Hamas moves right back in. I can tell you that Israel didn't recently decide to start bombing Hamas leaders, they've been doing this for years. That was their mowing the lawn strategy. They do this all the time and it clearly doesn't work because just after the last exchange of rockets and bombs we had October 7th:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/mow-lawn-israel%E2%80%99s-strategy-perpetual-war-palestinians-185775

So many people here are posting as if this is another crushing Israeli victory like the Six Day War. It's not!

Israel can't defend its own citizens on its own soil

That's true. I would call a new neighboring government in Gaza that only required minimal military action to maintain on a path to a formal state recognition would be a victory, but many Israelis would not. Politics has them in a perpetually compromised position. They punch above their weight imo.

As soon as the IDF gets sick of being ambushed and pull out of any one part of Gaza, Hamas moves right back in.

Yeah they've done the 'mowing the grass' strategy for a long time. It's management, not solution, which is probably the best they can ask for with the parameters set. It's one of a few options they can do when there's no desire to officially rule a territory or go all the way via violence.

Israel is not impervious to rockets landing in the country. I'm not too interested in talking about how important or effective Iron Dome is. All I said was that if Iran's great show of force doesn't deter actions such as this strike on a target supposedly nearby Iranian officials, then what great success is that show of force? Just because Israel has targeted Hamas and Hezbollah leaders before, and will again, does not make the strike insignificant.

I also don't see many people calling the current state this conflict a victory for Israel. Shills are very optimistic as ever. Resistance types still insist it is a fake and gay country filled with Jews. The current state of the conflict seems about right. Maybe better than they could hope for considering what they were prepared for when it came to entering Gaza. Having an actionable plan for governing the territory, or transitioning power there, seems like it would've been a pretty good idea to get going 9 months ago. Perhaps that's impossible too, but I suspect that's mostly political as well.

There's a lot of brain worms when it comes to Israel. Oh well that's cyber for ya.