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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is my take too. Every time that the ruling class is sufficiently cruel, they win. If the tanks rolled into Tallinn like they did in Prague and Budapest, then any resistance movements would have been crushed.
Venezuela today is a mess compared to the USSR in 1990, but Maduro is still in power. So are the Kims in North Korea for that matter.
Contrary to the idea of "the harder you squeeze, the more of us will slip through your fingers", ruling with an iron fist is a sure way to a long reign, provided that you can't be toppled by an outside power.
But if you get soft, and can be shamed, then a million revolts will grow.
You can still be crushed by your own iron fist if it mutinies. This normally looks like a military coup (see Roman Emperors passim ad nauseam) but the Russian Revolution (February and October) is also an example.
Maintaining political control of the military is a hard problem. The reason why democracy overperformed in the 19th century and dramatically won the 20th century is that maintaining political control of the type of military needed for industrial age warfare without neutering it turns out to be easier under democracy that other forms of government. This is also the tl;dr of Why Arabs Lose Wars - Arab armies are designed to be incapable of staging military coups, not to be capable of defeating Israel.
More options
Context Copy link
Bangladesh just now is a good example, the military didn’t want to fight a civil war and so told the Prime Minister they’d be switching sides, then she fled. They were of the opinion (likely accurate) that the new regime could be made amenable enough to them. You need the military to be scared to really put up a fight, and often civilian leaders can’t manage that.
For the Soviet example, it’s questionable whether the red army was willing to roll back through to Berlin in 1989 to put down the whole thing, country by country. Honecker wanted them to, but that doesn’t mean it would have been easy, even if a hardliner had been in charge. In addition, at least some of the KGB elite did well out of the collapse, so the incentives were muddled there too.
You can be assured that there was not one higher-level officer anywhere in the Soviet armed forces willing to start shooting in order to keep the Warsaw Pact / COMECON together in 1989.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link