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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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Campy is at least trying to be humorous which I appreciate. The mods post was just sneering. They literally can't think of a single reason beyond contrarianism that people aren't supportive of Ukraine?

You don't have to call me a "they," I'm not non-binary.

The question wasn't "Why aren't you supportive of Ukraine?" It's "Why are you pro-Russia?" Those aren't the same thing.

You don't have to call me a "they," I'm not non-binary.

Well, you've narrowed it down to a 50/50 choice, but IMO "they" is the appropriate pronoun to use when facing that unknown.

What happened to he/she?

We dropped it in favor of the more concise "they" because the singular/plural distinction wasn't important enough to maintain for many people compared to the convenience of having a single word. It also nicely dodges the complaints some people had about prioritizing one gender over another in language due to the ordering of "he or she", which was a rather obnoxious part of the gender war a few decades back.

Try using that in a conversation with a friend, and pay attention to how he/she responds. I have a feeling they would find it unnatural.

In speech it would take the or as in "Whatever he or she would like to do." I've used this phrase as long as I've been speaking in such contexts, but admittedly I'm probably older than you, my ways are likely not your ways, etc. I've never had any pushback. They I'd of course use if there were more than one person, and that's a legitimate strategy.

"If one member of your group wants a single room, he or she should reserve ahead."

" If people want individual rooms, they should reserve ahead."

I just made that scenario up; I am not in hospitality.

Well, it's the Motte, so a simple Bayesian prediction would have a much greater than 50/50 chance of being right...

I've been around for years now. I guess someone who doesn't read my posts might be unsure. But someone who's been hate-reading me enough to complain about me regularly probably is not.

Unmodded post, he can say whatever as a citizen.

And in every discussion you will see the same comments about how they're against Ukraine because globalism or trans people or something. It just feels wildly incongruous every time, like trolling.

I was comparing it to campys post, campys post has no mod flair and is just a standard citizen so... try again?

I generally see the explanations about globalism go into the history of nato expansion and western expansion, aggression and regime change in pretty depth. I see the other sides explanations seem to have no knowledge of history that predates the Russian invasion and they are full of incongruity, Russia being both a paper tiger that can be stopped with surplus western military gear while also being a threat that will soon be sailing across the Atlantic with western Europe in ashes behind it. Or the nonsense about wanting Ukraine in NATO, even though we are not willing to send western people to go die for them now, apparently their strategic importance will change somehow if the war ends.

It's nonsense which is why people tend to resort to reddit post level dismissiveness. If I were to speculate about their motives as they do about mine I'd say they are either brainwashed leftwing people that got caught up in the bad orangeman loves Russia propaganda that the MIC pushed to keep their wars going, or maybe some kind of boomercon with early stage dementia that can't see the difference between today and 1980 and somehow thinks this is a western chauvinism thing when the people pushing for this war would like nothing more than to toss western values into the trash bin.

That post would be modded if anyone else said it.