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 -
As we have seen in Vietnam, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan the people who are on your side when the issue is purely theoretical, and when the risk is immediate and material, are not always the same people.
The people who take material action to assist outsiders are usually corrupt. They do not care about the outsiders, or their community. They care about the money. This pattern repeated itself in Vietnam, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan. Our allies took every dollar they could get and then did as little as possible (on average, there were of course exceptions). They exerted minimal effort and took as few risks as possible.
In all three cases the leadership of the boots on the ground trended toward telling their superiors what they believed their superiors wanted to hear. Those superiors then told Washington, and the public, that the situation was trending in a positive direction.
It was not. The Afghan security forces were not improving by the month. Our Iraqi partners in democracy were not developing robust systems of administration and government. The Vietnamese military was not rooting out corruption.
We have lost the same type of war three times in a row. Our performance in Afghanistan showed no meaningful improvement in outcomes relative to our performance in Vietnam. In fact, it was even worse.
I have no doubt red tribe areas would have some elements who side against their red tribe fellows. But all arguments I have observed as to why the US military would be successful this time are "cope", as the kids say. Lessons have not been learned. Material conditions on the ground are less favorable. The dynamics between recruitment, battlefield performance, and population demographics are a nightmare for a blue tribe domestic counter insurgency force. Surface area exposed to domestic enemy action is orders of magnitude greater. The force-to-space ratio for an occupying force is nightmarish. And this does not begin to cover the potential threat of geopolitical considerations.
I've read your comments for many years. You're one of the smartest people on the motte. But you are smoothing over the nuance of an incredibly complex dynamic with many externalities and permutations of neigh impossible to predict events interacting across interconnected domains.
You are arriving at a conclusion and stitching together facts to create a narrative that supports it. I am sorry to be so blunt. I have a lot of respect for your powers of intellect. But neither you, nor anyone else, can say what would happen in a large scale domestic insurgency without investing FAR more work.
More options
Context Copy link