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 -
Obviously, the nation-building objective failed completely. But during the occupation, at least cities like Kabul were pretty much under US control. Sure, there were IED attacks, but it was not like any insurgents would claim a neighborhood, keep the US out of it and enforce their ideas of Sharia law in it.
Of course, the countryside looked much different, but I would argue that Kabul is a better model of US conditions than overall Afghanistan with regards to accessibility.
My point is that the US is stable because the US military really buys into the US constitution. A general imprisoning a democratically elected president and declaring himself supreme leader would be considered awfully un-American.
I think this vastly overstates the dangers of J6.
If the SCOTUS had ruled that Trump was the election winner and the rest of Washington had decided to ignore that ruling and certify Biden as the president, that would have been a constitutional crisis, and the question with whom the federal bureaucracy and the military would sided would have been debatable.
With just a lone Trump crying election fraud, the outcome was never in doubt. Even if his followers had managed to take over the Capitol, do you think that that would have changed anything? There is no kill-switch for the US internet controlled from the White House, no easy way to take control of the media narrative.
Even if the powers that be had decided to let the insurgents fester for a month in DC, the outcome would not have been a collapse of the US government. It would have lead to more dead insurgents, and a few DC buildings being worse for wear, but in the end the US military would have prevailed.
It would never be that. It would be the lawfully elected president heroically preventing an illegal, fraudulent coup/stolen election in defence of freedom, democracy and American values. You'd just have two such figures battling it out, possibly followed by more as the economy implodes and militancy skyrockets.
More options
Context Copy link
The point of gorilla warfare isn't to defeat the enemy on the conventional battlefield, but to win through attrition and demoralization. The Afghans won the war in the end.
Now I'm imagining armies of trained tactical ape commandos.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I would argue otherwise at least in red tribe areas. Most red states are pretty rural often with few roads, and substantial wilderness in between small towns. The ideal strategy in that area would look a lot like what happened in Iraq or Afghanistan. You strike with a small group and slink off into the wilds. Or you plant bombs along the roadside. Or you take out the power grid. And so on. Tanks and drones don’t work well without defined targets. Air strikes can’t be called on people who aren’t there.
And big cities have a huge problem with supply chains— almost everything that a city needs comes from or through rural areas. If the trucks don’t come to DC for long enough, there’s not much that can be done from the government end.
Urban areas have supply routes running through rural areas, but those supply routes need to route through urban areas to function properly(eg highway interchanges). The overall picture still benefits the reds but it’s much more complicated than you make it seem.
Of course nothing in a conflict of this type is simple, but what I’m pointing out is that there are a lot of thing that go in favor of the rural areas and make the kind of fighting that the military would do a bit more complicated. Yes you could field a very large army in rural areas, but if you don’t know who’s fighting and who’s not, or where the IED is or drone strike or attack on infrastructure will come from. And trying to be everywhere isn’t easy, even the biggest military in the world is still finite and can’t control everything.
In a war that’s more a guerrilla conflict with unexpected attacks by small groups who blend in with the locals and have lots of wilderness areas to hide in, it’s going to be really hard for a conventional military to gain and maintain control over the territory and to protect the supply lines to several large cities at the same time. The Blues would have the major disadvantage of having to protect itself and its political leadership in the theater of war. We haven’t had to do so since 1865. And even then, the South was too genteel to try things like starving a city (Maryland surrounds DC and thus cutting off DC would have been possible even back then had they tried to invade). The problem for the military will be fighting an insurgent conflict with most of its tools prevented by the fact that the people doing it are Americans and thus you can’t do things like bomb the strongholds of the insurgents or go house to house collecting weapons.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link