site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   25100 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 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.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

lots of hype over the true non-woke military, and it's regularly getting shredded by missiles that are largely being guided by a they/them army

  1. The Ukrainian military is by no means woke, there are/were a lot of nationalists, sexists, homophobes in it, as you'd expect from Eastern Europe. They are doing the fighting and dying.
  2. They're losing. National Affairs is starting to admit this. The TLDR of the article is that the US sent a lot of weapons to Ukraine, they failed to take any ground and that Ukraine ought to start negotiating as quickly as they can. If you're being urged to the negotiating table, it follows that you're losing the war since your negotiating position is getting worse as time passes.

Even the New York Times is busting out the high-grade copium: 'Ukraine doesn't need all its territory to beat Putin'. The tone is that of a rear-guard action, trying to salvage credibility for the next phase of this disaster. Full text here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/18sb5l0/ua_pov_ukraine_doesnt_need_all_its_territory_to/

a corrupt Chinese procurement process that makes the US process look clean and normal

Whatever issues China has with procurement, they're light-years ahead of the US. China's navy is growing while the US fleet shrinks. They also have 232x times more shipbuilding capacity than the US, per US estimates. I'd be wary before fighting a naval war (as an industrial dwarf) against the world's leading shipbuilder.

we've probably got stuff we're working on that we don't have to hype up

I'll take failures out in the open over a secret, unknown, hypothetical success. If the US fleet is so powerful, why can't US allies get their shipping through Suez? If it's so easy to shoot down these missiles, hypersonic or otherwise, why are Ukrainian cities constantly being bombed? Patriots were provided after all.

Can you imagine how insane the current situation would have seemed in February 2022 in Ukraine? “Oh, Ukraine is losing an ongoing war of attrition in December 2023 while still controlling the vast majority of the country, while Russia has thrown 300,000 lives and unfathomable amounts of its best hardware at the conflict, what?”. The official intelligence assessment on the eve of the war by the West was so dire that they evacuated every major embassy in Kiev (likely after the usual kind of warning from Russia) to avoid any risky diplomatic incidents during the Russian invasion, which they presumed would certainly be successful at capturing Kiev.

The US won in Ukraine by the first week of the war. Everything since then is bleeding Russia for free without risking a single American serviceman’s life. The cost is minuscule - food stamps cost vastly more, as do countless other bullshit federal programs - and much of Russia’s most elite fighting capacity has been slaughtered and replaced with 80 IQ Central Asian peasant conscripts using WW1 trench tactics. Sure, Ukraine is destroyed, but they wanted to fight and, to paraphrase the immortal words of Lord Farquad, that’s a price we’re willing to pay.

The reason the US is reluctant to attack the Houthis on land is that a big goal of US foreign policy under Biden was to support the Saudi peace deal with the Houthis. Biden personally promised that the US would cut support for Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war, essentially pressuring them into peace. It would be an embarrassing move for the Democrats to reverse course now and to fight the Saudis’ war against the Houthis for them. If the neocons had been listened to (Trump listened to them, which is why he vetoed a plan to stop US support for anti-Houthi forces) the Houthis might well no longer be an issue.

  1. A very large proportion of Western munitions has been deployed and expended in Ukraine. Stingers, Javelins, HIMARS, Patriot interceptors, artillery shells. It will take many years to rebuild these reserves, which are needed for deterrence and potential war in Asia.
  2. The Russian military is larger and more capable now than it was at the start of the war, they're much more experienced. They actually increased their military production significantly (and we didn't). This is why the European NATO members are scrambling around like headless chickens, sending a German brigade to Lithuania, trying to rapidly arm themselves.
  3. If the Ukrainians aren't winning, then what we were told about these incredible Russian casualties and materiel losses must have been wrong. If they'd killed 300,000 Russians like you seem to think, there'd be at least a million wounded or dead and Russia wouldn't have an army anymore let alone be capable of offensives. Since the Russians have more materiel it stands to reason that they suffer fewer casualties than Ukraine. Likewise, we see all these videos of Ukrainian men being dragged into vans by draft officers - it seems that their need for manpower is very high.

80 IQ Central Asian peasant conscripts using WW1 trench tactics

Coincidentally, just today I saw a video of Ukrainian soldiers mocking a mentally retarded conscript sent to their trench. https://twitter.com/Alex_Oloyede2/status/1740797508400632195#m

  1. The same media and military 'experts' that assured us that victory was just around the corner in Iraq and Afghanistan (send in another Surge, oohrah!) aren't reliable sources on the War in Ukraine, especially when they say things are going well. Either it's incompetence, since we lost those wars. Or they're just there to lie, prop up support for these wars. The Pentagon says the Russians have lost twice as much as Ukraine or more... So what?

The West is not bleeding Russia for 'free'. It's expensive in terms of munitions, wealth and prestige. Europe is suffering considerable energy costs (in the trillions) as a result of their sanctions program, part of the economic war against Russia. Much of our media went around saying 'oh Ukraine must win to preserve the rules-based order and deter Xi in Taiwan', yet Ukraine is losing. This sets an unhelpful precedent for Xi in China - if there are setbacks at the start of the war, just double down and power on through to ultimate victory.

Once Ukraine is beaten, we'll face a powerful, angry Russia in Europe, closely aligned with China. China is the real winner, they get cheaper gas, a useful ally and a weaker West distracted from Asia.

The much vaunted gas crisis never materialized; European gas prices largely returned to pre-2019 levels in 2023; I said 300,000 casualties, including WIA - KIA is likely in the 70-120k bracket; I don’t think fever dreams of Ed Krassenstein Twitter types mean that the Pentagon “expected” Ukraine to win (if anything quite the opposite).

The Russian military is larger and more capable now than it was at the start of the war, they're much more experienced. They actually increased their military production significantly (and we didn't). This is why the European NATO members are scrambling around like headless chickens, sending a German brigade to Lithuania, trying to rapidly arm themselves.

This means exactly the opposite of what you think it does. If even an interminably corrupt, poor, kleptocratic, bureaucratic shithole like Russia can get its act together this much in a crisis, it means the US and other Western could likely jump to serious war footing much faster than naysayers predict. They merely do not yet care, because bleeding Russia in Ukraine for as long as possible is so minor in terms of both blood and treasure for the United States.

Can you imagine how insane the current situation would have seemed in February 2022 in Ukraine?

No? It seems like this is exactly what you'd expect through mere triangulation of extreme takes being made at the time.

The US won in Ukraine by the first week of the war. Everything since then is bleeding Russia for free without risking a single American serviceman’s life.

Man, Ukrainians must love reading stuff like this...

Sure, Ukraine is destroyed, but they wanted to fight

Didn't they want to negotiate, and got pressured out of it by the UK?

No? It seems like this is exactly what you'd expect through mere triangulation of extreme takes being made at the time.

People disagreed about whether the invasion would happen and how ambitious Russian objectives would be, there was some disagreement about whether there would be much guerilla/resistance fighting, but I don't recall anyone here suggesting Ukraine would largely successfully repel a full-scale invasion in a matter of weeks.

I remember prediction of the entire Russian economy collapsing within weeks, part of the disagreement over whether Russian will invade stemming from the prediction that Ukrainians will be able to defend itself, and I definitely do not recall the pro-Ukraine side predicting an immediate collapse of the defense (that was the pro-Russia side).

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats