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 -
I probably do.
Maybe they did, but that should not translate into bombing civilians with strong ties to your much bigger and stronger next door neighbor.
Wars still need to be fought. It's very impressive that the comedy actor Zelensky was able to parlay billions of dollars from the EU and US, but all it takes is for the general sentiment to turn in either or both for 'his' country to go down the drain.
Furthermore, if the average Ukrainian man is a strong nationalist willing to die for Ukraine (whatever that is), that he considered very very different than the next door Russian neighbor his ancestors shared hundreds of years of destiny with, he's in for a big surprise when he finds out what kind of people the EU and NATO have been importing on their side.
Nationalism is not really a strong value for the NATO camp, and aside from the Reddit brigade, there aren't that many people that care enough about the personal, individual fate of any Ukrainian to put their life on the line for them.
Any other year, they would have assumed the man to be some kind of patriarchal racist/xenophobe, and to an extent probably correctly.
Russia is much bigger, but not much stronger, as demonstrated by their offensive culmination in the first three months, before major land combat systems began being shipped to Ukraine in earnest.
The Soviet Union was much stronger- hence the access to Soviet economic stockpiles fueling the contemporary Russian military- but this outside-actor advantage has been countered by the Western economic stockpiles fueling the contemporary Ukrainian military. Given that the Soviet stockpiles are increasingly finite, while the western economic production is forecasted to remain overwhelming even with the economic difficulties forecasted,
Fortunately for Ukraine, the Russians have been very effective at fortifying general sentiment of the western alliance network to maintain support, which has in turn allowed western supporters to develop the internal political-interest coalitions to continue support for reasons beyond sentiment.
It turns out, when the patrons of influential interest groups becomes a pariah, domestic political actors will take the opportunity to tear said groups down and apart as part of the churn of internal politics.
Citation needed for existence of 'years of destiny', but also irrelevant- if he's in a position to be surprised, he will have already beat the Russians decisively enough to have the time and space to turn attention to western europe and care about something like that.
That's the neat point- there don't need to be. The Ukrainians don't need foreign manpower on the front line.
Fortunately, Russia has a way of helping other people come together in a more inclusive way.
If democracy is still a thing, I expect some (limited) turnover in Western Europe to the tune of 'why should we keep paying for Ukraine', and in the US, 'what happened to BLM, it's all about Ukraine'.
Most people don't really care about preventing far away countries from encroaching into other far away countries' borders.
It's hard to simultaneously say that Russia is weak and cannot sustain the war and that we need to give billions to defend against Russia, or else Russia will keep fighting these wars that they are too weak to fight.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link