site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is what Trump and his people (Colby in particular) are worried about. While the liberals have been starting and losing stupid wars in the Middle East, China has been building industry. While the liberals were bitching about Russian spying or taking towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass, China has been building ships, missiles and planes. They produce more manufactured goods than the next ten countries combined. Now they're getting ready to go in on places that matter (chip producers, high-tech economies, sea lanes that dominate world trade) and the liberals want to prioritize helping Ukraine keep the maximum number of towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass? Over the fate of the entire world, the decisive final battle for dominance?

Those things are not mutually exclusive. Aid to Ukraine has been a drop in the bucket as far as US military spending and budget is concerned. There is nothing in that spending that has stopped US from preparing for your so called vision of a decisive final battle for dominance with China. The reason why you have a big hole in the budget is not because of military spending, it is because of Social Security and Medicare. However, to be frank, if US was actually interested in mobilizing the will for standing up to China, you would actually fix all of that by raising taxes.

Dislodging Russian and Chinese co-operation on current terms is frankly delusional. As a Russian or Chinese leader, you would have to be frankly stupid to allow US to create a wedge between the two only because seemingly US has now warmed up to Russia.

What current situation has created is that for Europeans it is indeed better to be much more autonomous (and I have always agreed with that as an European), but furthermore, it is now better to build pragmatic ties with China rather than just follow whatever US dictates. Don't see how that benefits US if US is actually interested in taking on China.