site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   15158 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is my prediction for how the war ends: Trump threatens Zelenskyy, Zelenskyy eventually gives in and negotiates, Russia gets some of the land, and Ukraine gets security guarantees backed by the US. The devil will be in the details, of course

Ukraine has security guarantees backed by the US right now. If the US is not willing to bleed for a healthy country with strong patriotic movement in 2022 whose security they have guaranteed in the 90s, chances that they will be willing for battered, divided, torn, lost half of the population and probably even bigger chunk of people with ability and fight in them, and in need of reconstruction are close to nil.

The historic norm so far is that when the US abandons artificially propped up ally - the other sides takes 100%.

Any deal that Putin will be willing to accept (while he is winning) will leave Ukraine completely demilitarized as a buffer between Russia and Poland. Which is non starter for Ukraine.

The Ukraine, on the other hand, also guaranteed its neutrality. It's supposedly an article in the treaty that established the Ukraine as an independent nation in 1991. Don't quote me on that though, I've only heard it from an acquaintance who claims to have read it.

Calling "Ukraine", the self-chosen English language name of a sovereign state "the Ukraine", an obsolete toponym for an ill-defined region of Tsarist Russia, is a tell. In this case it is also a factual error - "the Ukraine" has never been an independent state, and didn't become one in 1991. If you want to spread Kremlin talking points on a forum where the average IQ is north of 115 then you should, as they say round here, git gud.

It is also, of course, relevant that Ukraine had not actually violated its purported obligations of neutrality at the time Putin invaded.

There's something hilarious about simultaneously praising yourself by proxy, while simultaneously engaging in the intellectually laziest, literally an online meme style argument; "everyone I don't like is Putler!"

No, calling it "the Ukraine" isn't a fucking "tell," it's a mistake millions make, up to and including Presidents, and will likely continue to make. Hell, in all likelihood, if a week from now someone holds a gun to my head and demands to know if it's "Ukraine" or "the Ukraine," there's a 50/50 chance I'll have forgotten this thread and get it wrong.

Watching people bristle at the word "the" is amusing enough that I sometimes do it out of contrarianism. I have no opinion whatsoever.

As far as I'm concerned, leaving your own country to retain the name 'borderland/periphery' is dumb as fuck, especially if you claim to be a staunch patriot. It literally means that you're defining your country according to its position from the perspective of neighbors whom you happen to mostly hate. (For centuries, the Poles and the Russians called the same region the Ukraine, because it was the borderland/periphery of both.) So I can understand the political motivation of Ukrainian nationalists to evict the name 'the Ukraine' from the vocabulary of international relations. Still, insisting that it's actually the 'the' that makes the difference is moronic. If you want to define your homeland as a proud nation unto itself and not as the appendage of the Russian imperial state, you might as well simply rename it.

All calling that state "the Ukraine" means, for most, is that the speaker is old.

Right, even the drunken guy on Anderson Cooper's New Years show (which was terrible by the way), called it the Ukraine while very definitely being on their side. And back in the 90's we certainly called it the Ukraine as well. Even nowadays I'll go back and forth without (as far as I can tell) being impacted by Russian propaganda.

Do you call the Netherlands the Netherlands or “Netherlands”?

Do you call a country “neutral” after its legislature specifically amended the national constitution for it to declare that national membership in NATO in the future is inexorable?

My favorite name for it is the French one; literally, "low country".

it's also worth noting that the language spoken there calls itself 'Nederlands'. It's kind of like how the Franks speak Frankish, and very much how the Deutsch speak Deutsch.

I call it ‘the Netherland’ a literal translation of my grandfather’s ‘de Nederland’, for what it’s worth- most people call it holland.

But I imagine most Dutch don't call their country 'Holland' as it's not completely synonymous with the Netherlands in terms of geography and history, do they?

No, most Americans call it holland, I see no point in getting upset with them.

The formal self-chosen English name of the sovereign state commonly known as "The Netherlands" is "Kingdom of the Netherlands" - in other words "the" is part of the name. TIL that the Dutch authorities use "Netherlands" without "the" to refer specifically to the core part of the Kingdom excluding partially self-governing overseas territories (which nevertheless includes the non-self-governing overseas territories, such that "Dutch Mainland" refers to yet another thing that is not "Netherlands" or "Kingdom of the Netherlands", also commonly known as "the Netherlands" by foreigners). But most foreigners talking about the Netherlands are not trying to make that kind of fine-grained distinction. I wouldn't complain about a foreigner not knowing the legal difference between "Great Britain" and "Britain" or "The British Isles" and "The British Islands".

On the other hand, calling the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland "England", calling the Kingdom of the Netherlands "Holland", or calling Ukraine "The Ukraine" is either culpably ignorant or malicious.

The equally malicious, ignorant, insensitive etc. naming would be 'Little Russia', 'Greater Novorossiya' or something similar.

Also, I'm sure that the reason foreigners use the name 'the Netherlands' is not that it's the shortening of the official name of the state by dropping the 'KIngdom' part, but to differentiate it from 'netherlands' as a geographic category.

Eh, let's not go that far. We called the Netherlands Holland back in my day in the UK , so I sometimes use it even nowadays, same with the Ukraine. The Netherlands themselves only officially dropped support for using Holland in 2019.

There is no way that qualifies as being culpably ignorant. Likewise I have lost track of the number of people in the US who equate British with England (and indeed Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland). As Wikipedia itself says:

"Holland" is informally used in English and other languages, including sometimes the Dutch language itself, to mean the whole of the modern country of the Netherlands.[5] This example of pars pro toto or synecdoche is similar to the tendency to refer to the United Kingdom as "England",[9][10] and developed due to Holland's becoming the dominant province and thus having the majority of political and economic interactions with other countries.[11]

If the Dutch themselves sometimes still use Holland and only officially stopped using it with in the last 5 years, then I struggle to imagine that anyone outside of the country can be called culpably ignorant or malicious, for not keeping updated on that.

It's technically incorrect but it is entirely understandable in all of your examples. Especially for anyone over 30. And I am a Northern Irish Brit who quite often gets called either English or Irish depending. For most people outside of the UK, there just isn't any need to learn that that is technically incorrect. It has no impact on their lives at all.

With such a strong patriotic movement, why does Ukraine have so many deserters and draft dodgers?

I don't think there's ever been a war without deserters and draft dodgers. A better question continues to be: if the idea of an Ukrainian nation is as fake as Russians and pro-Russians claim, why have there still been so many willing to fight for it? You can only get so far with "they are all forced to do so", you don't survive 2,5 years against a stronger enemy with just or even mainly a gun-in-your-backs army.

They had quite a surge in volunteers in 2022. But when the war turned into meatgrinder, it is only sane to not go to the front. Taking a serious risk for my country is one thing, going to sure death with no chance of victory is different.

If you want to see what a country without a strong patriotic movement looks like during an invasion, look at Afghanistan.

Afghanistan arguably had a pretty strong patriotic movement, it’s just that it was on the side opposing the ANA. Granted that side wanted to revert back to tribal/religious rule rather than have a strictly 20th century nation state, but it was very unified in its opposition to foreign involvement.

Correct. The Taliban were actually something like radical modernizers (compared to the status quo in Afghanistan) who wanted to replace old tribal customs with sharia law.

Because it’s a shithole in Eastern Europe.

Ukraine is no shithole! UKRAINE IS STRONG

flips over risk board

Any deal that Putin will be willing to accept (while he is winning) will leave Ukraine completely demilitarized as a buffer between Russia and Poland. Which is non starter for Ukraine.

We have no way of knowing what Putin will or won't accept until we at least try.

This is what @sulla was talking about as the destructive "Putin = Hitler" myth. If we refuse to negotiate with Russia because they are maximally evil, the war can only end with the total capitulation of either Russia or Ukraine. That will mean the destruction of the Ukrainian state and hundreds of thousands more dead men.

Putin has agency of his own. He's had plenty of opportunity to offer actual peace terms (that aren't "give up all your weapons and we promise we won't invade you while you're in the perfect position to be invaded") and hasn't tried to this day.

But they are going to try.

whose security they have guaranteed in the 90s

I assume you are referring to the Budapest Memorandum, by which Ukraine surrendered all of its nuclear weapons. That Memorandum famously did not use the term “security guarantee”, but rather the utterly toothless “security assurance”.

The political reality on the ground after the USSR's dissolution was that as long as nuclear warheads and launchers remained on Ukrainian (and, for the record, Byelorussian and Kazakh) soil, there was a high chance of corrupt local officials (that is, pretty much all of them) selling at least some of them to the first North Korean / Libyan / Iranian / Iraqi / Jihadist / Pakistani / Algerian etc. agent that secretly lands in a private jet with bags of gold and cash.

The prevention of this was the most and probably only important consideration on the minds of those who came up with the idea of the Budapest Memorandum in the first place in Washington DC. Everything else about it is just irrelevant gibberish in comparison, and frankly anyone who brings up the Budapest Memorandum and yet keeps silent about this is a liar with an agenda.

On a sidenote, it were basically the same considerations that drove the construction of the ISS, which was in effect nothing but a make-work project designed to employ those post-Soviet scientists who'd otherwise have been recruited by Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan etc. in about 5 minutes to design missiles, rocket engines, nuclear weapons etc.

It also notably was not binding on either the US or Russia (in the case of the US, such treaties have to be ratified by Congress). The concern at the time was that Ukraine didn't have the funds to even pay soldier wages let alone secure or maintain the Soviet weapons stockpiles, so this was a more of a "pat on the back, don't worry, here's some cash for your nukes" agreement.

It's also worth noting that both the US and Russia trot out this Budapest Memorandum line when convenient. Russian propaganda mentioned it several times back during the Maidan crisis in 2014 and it was just as silly then.

Russian propaganda mentioned it several times back during the Maidan crisis in 2014 and it was just as silly then.

Sillier, actually; I don't recall any noise among the Western nations about biting off any territory from Ukraine.

Nope. But there was western discussion of who would be the leader of Ukraine

With which Russia had also previously interfered (2004, Viktor Yushchenko).

by which Ukraine surrendered all of its nuclear weapons.

Ukraine never had any nuclear weapons. They were all Moscow ones. It's like saying that Turkey will surrender its nuclear arsenal if/when the US brings them back home from Incirlik

I think this makes some questionable assumptions about the "rightful" structure of the Soviet empire. As far as I know, those were Soviet weapons, paid for and made by Soviet citizens, some of whom were Ukrainian, and the other SSRs. That permanent control would belong to the (former!) capital unreasonably privileges it over the other fragmenting client states.

I don't think it would be reasonable, for example, for the British to have demanded back all their military assets from newly-independent nations as their empire fragmented. "But those ships and guns belong to London!" seems an odd rallying cry for things in many cases the colonies themselves funded.

But in realpolitik terms, I suppose it did make sense at the time to limit the number of resulting nuclear states for proliferation reasons.

They have permissive action links though, nukes are unlike other weapons in that they don't 'just work'. Only decisionmakers in Moscow could fire them (otherwise any rogue commander could go and write Dr Strangelove fanfiction in the history books).

I think that's a valid concern in the short term, but I wouldn't expect access control features like permissive action links to prevent a nuclear-capable nation (Ukraine has nuclear plants and engineers) from repurposing weapons it its possession for an extended duration. I assume it's more like a password on a locked computer, but maybe it's more intrinsic than that (I doubt the details are public enough to know).

The better analogy would be, suppose the US broke up and, say, Texas and California became independent states (in the international relations sense), with California internationally recognized as the “successor state” of the US.

Would formerly-US nuclear weapons, located in Texas for the purpose of deterring an invasion through Texas’s flat and quickly-traversible terrain, manufactured by personnel from all over the former-US (including California), but maintained and operated primarily by Texans, become rightfully Californian overnight? What about all other formerly-US military hardware/personnel in the former-US?

Anyway, back in the real world, the point remains that no signatory to the Budapest Memorandum ever provided Ukraine with any kind of “security guarantee”. Indeed, the Americans were well aware of the military obligations such wording would entail, and thus specifically insisted on the weaker “security assurance”.

In this hypothetical scenario, Texas would control the vast majority of the US nuclear arsenal due to the Pantex plant.

'Which states would have nuclear weapons if the US hypothetically balkanized' is an answered question.

The California and Texas Republics had better not cross the Kingdom of North Dakota. It has the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal.

Yes, in this scenario it’s behind only Russia and Texas, while California has an extremely small arsenal.

The US NATO nuclear umbrella is maintained by US troops stationed in those countries.

In contrast both the warheads and thier fuzing elements were in the custody of the UAF making them Moscow's in name only.

As per Wikipedia, Russia maintained control over the weapons in Ukraine. The situation was probably analogous, from what I can tell without having gotten into the weeds.

The hard-to-replace components (the fissile material and the polonium initiators) were physically in Ukraine and under Ukrainian control. The Russians controlled the codes needed to arm the nukes, and if the PALs worked as advertised this means that the Ukrainians couldn't arm or detonate the nukes.

Disassembling the nukes for components and building a Ukrainian bomb was probably beyond the capabilities of 1990's Ukraine, but would be well within the capabilities of a functioning middle-income country. The N-th country experiment suggested that building a working nuke with access to the required materials and 1960's technology was a "two smart guys in a garage" level project.

They definitely were in Ukraine, but I think, from my limited poking around, that it might be an overstatement to say they were under Ukrainian control. From what I understand, parts of the Russian and Ukrainian military didn't disaggregate until at least 1997 (when the Black Sea Fleet was split), and Ukraine agreed in 1991 that the nuclear weapons would be controlled from Moscow under the auspices of the CIS. Furthermore, the troops that physically controlled the Ukrainian nuclear weapons were...not necessarily loyal to Ukraine:

In Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, the rocket armies, missile divisions and bomber commands were led by Russian generals, operated and maintained by Russian officers and men. They were controlled from higher headquarters in the Russian capital for their personnel, funding, communications, nuclear safety standards, security systems, even their operational targets. Their professional loyalty was to Russia, but their armies and commands were located in another nation’s territory. Consequently, the commanders of the air divisions and rocket armies stationed in Kazakhstan and Belarus faced conflicting pressures, just like Colonel General Mikhtyuk and general officers in the 43rd Rocket Army in Ukraine.

According to the DTRA report, Mikhytuk and most of his men refused to take an oath of loyalty to Ukraine in 1992.

The above is from a 2014 Defense Threat Reduction Agency report ("With Courage and Persistence") about US disarmament programs. It's also something I found by reading the Wikipedia page on the Budapest Memorandum – so this isn't something I know a lot about, and I'm certainly open to counter-points on the matter. This is all somewhat new to me – I had kinda thought the weapons were stranded in Ukraine with Russia holding onto the PAL codes until I noticed that Wikipedia insisted the weapons were never under Ukrainian operational control.

Agree on the ease of building atomic weapons.

Ukraine has security guarantees backed by the US right now.

My understanding is that the US position is that the Budapest memorandum is not legally binding.

Foreigners and Americans alike always seem to forget that if it isn't ratified by the Senate then it isn't legally binding. By it I mean any treaties and international agreements.

Frankly I’m not sure Putin is willing to accept any offer right now. The problem is geography. The Russians have spent three years attriting the Ukrainian army and slowly breaking through the massive network of fortifications, trench lines, and bunker complexes that were built up over ten years along the LPR/DPR border. Also most of Ukraine’s few hilly areas are in the east. Everything after Pokrovsk and Kramantorsk will likely be significantly easier. Russia has put in a large percentage of the effort, blood and money needed to conquer half or all of Ukraine, and they are being asked to walk away and leave that on the table. The time to make a deal would have been about six months into the war when the Russian army only had 180,000 men in theater and were being routed out of Kharkiv.

If he doesn't want a deal, because, as usual, since day one, total russian victory is just around the corner, that's fine. Ukraine, for its part, can accept trump's offer, gets increased aid, and continue the war. Westerners aren't exactly under pressure to end the war.

I much prefer to make the same deal (whatever it is) now rather than earlier (assuming it was even on the table). If you're going to make a deal with a mafioso, it's much better morally to have him pay for it in blood, rather than just handing it over. Losses on your side that result from this preference are par for the course & acceptable. This only seems heartless from a naively pacifistic view. The mafioso is of course far more heartless.

The mafioso isn’t the only one paying in blood thoughbeit. Even in a best case scenario Ukraine’s economy and demographics have been permanently ruined. A harsh sacrifice perhaps, but one that Reddit and the US State Department are more than willing to make.

yeah, I already said this, losses are acceptable.

I don't take the pro-russian right seriously when they say they care about ukraine, its economy and demography. For one thing, because they say they don't care about ukraine on the next argument (it's far away, strategically unimportant, we need the money for the people here, etc). For another thing, because it's an argument putin makes, a mafia-extortion argument ('pay the black hand and nothing will happen to your nice flower shop'). Like zelensky says: We never pay any-one Dane-geld, no matter how trifling the cost; for the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost!

Yet Kipling is unfamiliar with his own country’s history. King Alfred literally paid the Danegeld. He used the time to establish his defenses and actually grew the Saxon power.

Yet Kipling is unfamiliar with his own country’s history. King Alfred literally paid the Danegeld. He used the time to establish his defenses and actually grew the Saxon power.

Part of the deal that people think is on the table is rump-Ukraine dismantling its defences and promising not to seek western help rebuilding them. So the opposite of the situation with King Alfred.

Yet that wasn’t the deal a month or so in. That is, sometimes paying the mafia can make sense.

Also most of Ukraine’s few hilly areas are in the east. Everything after Pokrovsk and Kramantorsk will likely be significantly easier.

The Russian's limiting factor for breakthrough isn't terrain, but logistics. If the Russians wanted less rough terrain, there are and always have been significantly flatter areas in the northern and southern fronts they could have taken before they cracked their mechanized forces and downgraded to cold war kit even less capable of breakthroughs.

The time to make a deal would have been about six months into the war when the Russian army only had 180,000 men in theater and were being routed out of Kharkiv.

The Russian terms before and after the Kharkiv have included conditions like the Ukrainians disarming their tankforce to fewer tanks than the Ukrainians captured in the Kharkiv offensive.

Which is to say, the Russians weren't really interested in a credible deal that didn't leave the Russians in a superior position to invade after the deal than before the invasion.

If this sounds like a bad deal-making strategy on Putin's part... yes. Putin is not a good strategist, and regularly sabotages his own strategic goals while depending on westerners to sanewash Kremlin positions into rationalizations for compromise.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats