site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The charges he’s making are too vague to be interpretable (as currently stated), but you’re also not giving a substantive answer. What’s are the concrete benefits we derive from their clientage that justifies the consumption of money and influence on their behalf? I don’t have any relevant background and don’t actually have an opinion on whether they’re worthwhile clients. If there are solid realpolitik reasons to support them, I’d respect that more than the moral arguments.

  1. The Saudis now view them as extremely important strategic partners in a post oil world. Their tech expertise seems to be important to a lot of our Arab allies who are now significantly thinking about what comes after oil.

  2. They’ve always provided an ability to do some dirty work for us.

  3. They have nukes. And it’s fairly clear they have a doctrine of just nuking everyone if their existence is questioned

  4. Science. Jews 35-40% of Nobel prizes atleast to me just means their lives matter more to civilization. They are a people who push humanity forward.

Thank you for 1-2, those are the sorts of reasons I’d be looking for. 3 seems like a reason for us to neuter them, dominate them, or nuke them ourselves before they can do it. As for 4, if they were somehow driven out of Israel, most of them would probably come here. Unless someone simultaneously nukes Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem, we should have plenty of time to evacuate the more useful Ashkenazim during any semi-realistic genocide scenario (obviously if it somehow came to that, I’d support evacuating all of them on moral rather than practical grounds).