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 -
The three stools of Trump's original 2016 campaign were: illegal immigration, tariffs, and ending wars.
Tariffs were so successful that Biden continued many of them.
Ending wars was so popular that Biden also basically didn't start any new wars.
Illegal immigration: when Trump took this up in 2016 he was the only GOP politician talking about it, now it's mainstream. The wall went from being violently opposed to routine funding in Kamala's budget.
Trump is the most popular politician in America.
I don't think that Trump surrendering the the Taliban was that popular - it is just that the Republicans managed to pin the blame on Biden (who was in office when the final US pullout from Kabul was due under the surrender agreement Trump signed in Doha in Feb 2020.
FWIW, I think that Trump was right to surrender to the Taliban (there was no pro-US government in Afghanistan worth defending) and Biden was right to implement the surrender agreement rather than ratting on it the way the Deep State wanted him to. But I notice that "Biden pulled out of Kabul and bad things happened as a result" is an attack the Trump campaign are running on, notably at the Arlington press stunt, so I assume the people making the decisions think that this is a good line of attack.
When the Biden administration came in they tore up Trump's agreement with the Taliban in their desire to avoid ever giving Trump credit. Then followed the debacle. Trump deserves the "blame" for starting this chain of events, but hes right to note that Biden could have handled events better -- for example, not leaving all our weapons for the Taliban to pick up off the ground.
Criticizing America's poor leadership is one of the great themes of Trump's tenure in politics.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To be fair to the poor old man, Biden himself was notably part of the "peace wing" in the Obama administration - he opposed getting involved in Libya
Talk is cheap, and he didn’t have a son or an election on the line for the Lybian misadventure.
He did for Ukraine, hence the war.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Only technically true, in that he didn't start the war in Ukraine. However it has enormously escalated under his administration, and we're basically bankrupting our nation and ignoring every other priority to keep escalating it.
Less than 60 billion in total is hardly a rounding error...
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure whether I'm more amused by the conflation of correlation and causation in an inversion, or the unironic use of budgetary PR in a budget year that was nearly half continuing resolution.
Edit for elaboration, since it may come-
I find the claim that the Ukraine War escalated enormously under the Biden Administration laughable in a 'that is actually amusing' way, given the evolution of many dynamics since 2022.
In 2022, the Ukraine War was a war of national elimination by a Russia waged on three different fronts that threatened to collapse the Ukrainian state, multiple major population centers changed hands with a routine use of artillery against population centers, European countries were to supposedly facing mass freezing death in the winter and total economic deindustrialization for lack of gas, and Very Serious People and Motte Posters were warning that the specter of nuclear escalation was right around the corner if Ukraine received military supplies or tried to retake cities that the Russians had not only conquered but formally annexed. 'Plausible' peace terms included a unilateral disarmament to a scale where Ukraine would have fewer tanks to begin the next war with than it has lost since this war began, a great risk factor for a fourth continuation war. Western discussions on Ukraine included whether there would be an armed intervention, ranging from a No Fly zone to special forces advisors or 'volunteer' military formations.
In 2024, the Ukraine War has largely narrowed to one front, the scale of territory changes and civilian deaths has dropped precipitously to a degree that zoomed-in maps are required to assess relative changes that are hard to recognize from a country-wide scale, the Europeans are far from freezing and no longer operating under the previous economic sword of damoclese, and nuclear threats are so passe that the Russians themselves are downplaying the first invasion and occupation of Russian territory since WW2. 'Plausible' peace terms now adays no longer pretend to rest on Ukrainian disarmament, but hinge on how many years it will take the Russians to re-build themselves out of a Soviet-era military and whether they would really try another attempt at Ukraine and thus does Ukraine have a reasonable need for western security alliances. Western discussions on Ukraine now includes routine criticisms that the lack of Western presence on the ground to die is an immoral policy of treating the Ukrainians as canon fodder.
The stakes, the risks, and even the rate of loss of the Ukraine War have decreased considerably since 2022. It is strategic de-escalation in nearly every sense of the word.
As for bankrupting the nation in the support of the Ukraine War, that would be somewhere between factually inaccurate and glossing over many other more relevant contexts that prevent one's preferred policies from being funded.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link