site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

After all that is how they aligned Germany, and Japan.

These were defeated by military means, and still there are American armies in both of these countries. Would just economic investment work without boots on ground? (more data points: Iraq, Afghanistan)

There aren't any such bases in France (anymore) and it was still thoroughly aligned through solely economic means. I'll easily grant you that it's much easier to reconstruct a country you already occupy.

I'm convinced you could totally have introduced the US military to Russia though, or at least slowly made it part of the Western network of alliances.

Yelstin himself willed this, and he warned Bill Clinton in his 1993 letter specifically against organizing the defense of Europe solely through an against-Russia version of NATO.

Not only the opposition, but moderate circles as well [in Russia], would no doubt perceive this as a sort of neo-isolation of our country in diametric opposition to its natural admission into Euro-Atlantic space.

Eventually he got the door of detente slammed shut in his face and then started bemoaning "subordinating, if not abandoning, integration [of Russia] to NATO expansion" which eventually would lead to our current events.

Wasn't France already in good relations with USA for alliances in WW1, WW2? also, regarding events of 2022-2023, many French brands did not pull out of Russia. I did not investigate it in detail but seems that France is less aligned with USA than either Germany or Japan.