site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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.

15
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The arguments do get a bit circular and confusing, and I think it's useful to take time to reclarify what exactly your argument(s) are.

For me, the facts are:

  1. Israeli, Palestinian, and American leadership should be pursuing policies that first make their own citizens better off, and have a secondary but lesser priority of making people in other countries better off

  2. It is in the interests of Israelis to enforce the current de facto borders and not allow for right of return to displaced Palestinians

  3. It is in the interests of Americans to have a military alliance with Israel

  4. Palestine is never going to militarily defeat Israel, especially not as long as America backs them and probably not even if America stopped backing them

Now, going off those facts, the Palestinian leadership needs to choose a policy that improves life for their citizens. The current strategy of "launch missiles at Israel" and "whine at the international community that Israel is violating international law" does absolutely nothing to improve life for their citizens. Therefore, Palestinian leadership should choose a different strategy. I guess you as an individual might not actually care about Palestinian citizens and you might think it's in your personal interests to have a stronger norm against invasion, so that's why you condemn invasion. Or maybe you just don't like hypocrisy, and consider Israel's taking of land to have happened recent enough that is should be condemned where as other land that's been stolen happened 150+ years ago so it's fine enough now.

Because Israel has been occupying Palestine territory for more than 60 years!

This part goes in circles a lot too. Israel steals Palestinian land 80 years ago, so Palestine attacks Israel in vengeance, so Israel attacks Palestine in counter-vengeance, so Palestine attacks in counter-counter-vengeance. My point is looking at how Palestine loses in every cycle of vengeance and counter-vengeance, it's stupid of Palestine to keep playing the game, they should just fold and salvage what they can. And that as a first step, they should lay out some concrete demands that they would consider acceptable reparations, so at the very least negotiations can begin. I think what Israel's done is wrong in the sense they should pay a large amount of reparations. I don't think reverting to 1948 borders would be utilitarian, I think it'd cause a lot more damage than it'd help, on top of being something Israel would not actually agree to.

If Russia was in a vastly better military position, I think I would be calling for Ukraine to stop fighting and cede regions to Russia in exchange for reparations. But that is not the reality, Ukraine is perfectly able to get a better deal than what Russia's currently offering by fighting more, and I don't think Russia is unable to accept changing the de facto borders because of how many Russians it would displace.

I agree that this is getting a bit dull and there's not too much more point in replying.