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 -
Your theory strikes me as plausible.
It doesn’t reflect the current disposition, which suggests a pretty diluted effect. If it didn’t happen in the last 15 years as the post-Gulf War cadre wrapped up, would it now? Not sure how many career officers there really are. But they could be much more concentrated outside of our engineering-heavy division.
My intent was to make analogies to woke capital. Veteran dominance in the defense sector emerges from real or perceived synergy, plus a healthy dose of network effects. It’s not an attempt to coopt power structures for the wider culture war. We hire a lot of veterans and run some charity, but we’re not taking on a role of convincing everyone else to do the same.
Likewise, I think DEI initiatives in most corporations are driven by the usual signaling and profit motives, rather than by ideological weaponization. The presence of DEI in a company is a weak proxy for that company actually waging the culture war, much as the favoring of veterans only weakly predicts what a company will do outside of its business.
Other commenters have given me a lot of reasons why a weak level of capture/normalization of DEI should be considered threatening. The fact that decades of military-industrial feedback have failed to hollow out the industry into an evangelist shell—that suggests woke capital has a ceiling.
More options
Context Copy link