site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Sweden and Finland would join because they already were effectively joined as establishment American (to be distinguished from America as a whole) proxies and joining merely formalized that. The problem remains that the whole alliance is entirely dependent on America because the rest of them are sclerotic, and the alliance, unfortunately, comprises countries that encourage the US to follow us down that path.

Money can't guarantee victory

This is antithetical to the theory of being a NATO proxy as Ukraine is. The theory of the NATO hegemony is that American establishment types can just bully the world with their wallet and win. If you actually need AMERICA (aka our 18-40 year old men and the engineers and tradesmen supporting them) to control and win a regional skirmish like Ukraine, the theory is dead.

If I offer to give any student at my local high school free SAT tutoring and a student I tutor gets a very low score does that completely discredit me and prove my tutoring was worthless?

A fairly good analogy. Tutoring for standardized tests has little value (although it has increased recently as the tests have had their predictive qualities intentionally lowered).

If I offer to give any student at my local high school free SAT tutoring and a student I tutor gets a very low score does that completely discredit me and prove my tutoring was worthless?

The problem in the analogy is this + the "free" part. Because its clearly not free. You make regional enemies by agreeing to be a NATO proxy.