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 -
Another week, another Tucker interview, another transcription of a juicy part by yours truly. I promise, this is unusual, I haven't listened to two in a row, at all, ever.
This week is Jeffrey Sachs. The part below is just after 1:44.
That was the first mention of Israel, that I could recall, but the whole conversation is about Ukraine, Russia, Putin, and NATO. It's not exactly new to me, but it's refreshing to hear someone so clearly say that this is a war of choice, and the choice is being made by the USA, and their puppet states involved in NATO.
And that was all before any discussion of COVID. tl;dl, it's obviously from a lab, we (USA) pretty clearly funded it, and Fauci has been running the germ warfare branch of the DoD for decades. Which lab, and how is unknown, but, in his own words:
Great interview, and I'm glad that Tucker has twitter dot com to host his stuff, rather than be consigned to the fringes of the internet.
I agree with Sachs general sentiment that the US government has deceived the people far too much with disastrous consequences.
I'm not sure I buy Sach's argument that if we "told the truth" about Ukraine or Israel there would be no war. Maybe less US intervention or involvement. Based on my limited knowledge and understanding maybe Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine to try to create proxy barrier, but Israel I doubt there could ever be a peaceful 2 state solution. Pretty sure Israel has tried multiple times throughout it's history to do exactly that and each time it was rejected by the Palestinians.
There is a question to be considered about if a government should actually tell the citizens 100% of the truth. It's easy to say we should always be truthful as a matter of principle, but there is a good reason lying exists. Most people lie, or at least only tell the partial truth, to people close to them all the time, and sometimes that lying is done with good intentions. But you know what they say about good intentions.
Government deception of recent times have done a tremendous net negative to the population, but is that because they didn't tell the truth or because they didn't tell the truth about the wrong things? Could there exist information where lying about it or not releasing it would be to the benefit of the people of the country? One example could be that a nation is engaging in conflict with another nation and lies to its own citizens to prevent crucial information from being passed on to its adversaries. Is lying to the population acceptable in times of war or conflict? And the follow-up question, is a nation as powerful as the US ever not in conflict with a nation like China which holds radically different political and cultural views? Should the US allow China to grow even stronger and bigger, or should it engage in economic and political battles to check its growth?
Edit: Edited to replace "lying" with "deception" when appropriate.
When has the US government lied about foreign policy in the last decade or so? The last major incident I can think of was the runup to the Iraq war, but that was an exception that proves the rule.
Are you just using "lying" here as a stand-in for "position I disagree with" or "unrealistically rosy assessment"?
I'm going to use the definition from John Mearsheimer's 'Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics'
There are actual technical lies, where a person makes a statement they know is false while hoping others believe it to be true. But there are also situations where you disingenuously arrange facts to tell a fictitious story to imply something is true when you know the implied conclusion is not true. He also points out spinning, where "a person telling a story emphasizes certain facts and links them together in ways that play to his advantage, while, at the same time, downplaying or ignoring inconvenient facts" and concealment, "which involves withholding information that might undermine or weaken one’s position."
What's related about all three is that the goal is deception - essentially the goal is to prevent the other party from knowing the full truth. Spinning and concealment are far more common, but the end of goal of deception is the same.
Historically speaking, the US government has used lies in matters of foreign policy. Well-known historical examples:
In more recent times, you can find no shortage of critics arguing the presidents have lied about matters of foreign policy:
The more recent the event in question, the less likely we are to know if there was a lie or not. Whether these specific examples are actually lies or fabrications from critics I'm not really going to dive into. But it's easy to find critics arguing there have been lies.
Mearsheimer also points out that he had difficulty finding examples of international lying between states compared to governments lying to their own people. He argues that governments are more likely to lie to their own citizens than to other states on matters of foreign policy. It is difficult for countries to lie to one another because there is not a lot of trust between them, especially when it is in regard to security. It's far easier to lie to your own citizens because there is more trust between governments and their citizens than between governments that are enemies of each other.
In his own words:
So when it comes to evaluating recent US actions on matters of foreign, we really have to ask ourselves and analyze what the intention was. Were they in the interest of the American people, or was it something else, like drumming up support for an election, or selfish monetary interests, or appeasing just a specific lobby group? I don't see governments ever giving up the option to lie to their citizens especially on matters of foreign policy, because of its strategic utility. It seems public reaction to these lies depends on the end result. If the outcome of telling the lie is good, the leader gets a free pass with little to no consequence. That's why Vietnam is heavily criticized while WWII is seen in a positive light. My current perception is that the outcome of recent foreign policy actions of the US government has largely been negative with little benefit for the American people, and those have largely been justified via lies and deception.
This is a pretty long, thought out comment. Thank you for engaging.
I'm familiar with Mearsheimer's work. I've argued against the man's perception of "Russia invading Ukraine is entirely the USA's fault" and was exposed by proxy to his stuff on lying.
Conflating "lying" with "spinning" is a big old motte and bailey. When you accuse someone (or an institution) of lying, that's a quite aggressive claim of something that's clearly wrong. Like 1984's "we've always been at war with Eastasia" sort of thing. Bush and Powell lying about Iraqi WMD's was a good example here, as it became clear after the fact that they were pulling stuff out of their asses, and it served as a major part of plunging us into a pointless war. Spinning, by contrast, is something that everyone does all the time. You can accuse the government of spinning facts all you want, and you'd be 100% correct, but you didn't do that, likely because you knew it lacked the same punch as an accusation of "lying".
Your examples given in the last two decades amount to very little. The link on Biden came in the runup to the Ukraine war, when a lot of people thought the US was needlessly saber-rattling by saying Russia would invade. Of course, Russia did invade a few weeks after that article was published. Other than that, it gives an example of a US strike in Afghanistan which it claimed was legitimate until the NYT wrote some articles, and then it said "oh, maybe not". The examples on Trump are likewise lacking. Yeah, he presented himself as a peace president while actively throwing a bit of gasoline on some international fires, but again that's pretty mild. The stuff on Obama is just some spinning of the benefits of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Again, calling it "spin" is fine, but I wouldn't call any of those "lies".
Mearsheimer's work came out in 2011 and he sticks mostly to examples that took decades to find the truth of the matter because it's a bad look for a government to be caught lying in the technical definition of a lie. Iraq is his most recent prominent example in his book and that's because that was such a tremendous fuck up. Do you think the government is going to release information that sheds light on recent events anytime soon unless it helps them push an agenda or policy and is so far removed from the party in power to resolve them of any legitimate criticism that would follow?
And furthermore, governments are now more sophisticated in how they propagate information to the population. Proving someone told a lie is extremely difficult because the defendant in question can always claim they thought they were telling the truth and just had the wrong facts. You'd need to be a certain level of incompetence to have a documented recording of you admitting you know something was a lie.
No, I didn't. After reading your comment I'll acknowledge I just had poor logic and was not using the word "lying" in a strict, legal-lawyer-like definition. In my head I went the opposite of truth is lies. The government is not telling the truth, therefore they are lying. I'll concede this is a technical got-ya that I'm not ready to defend because I'm mixing a lot of sentiments in that statement I made. In recent years I think the government lied about Covid, they're lying about the state of the economy to the people by saying it's better than it is with tactics such as redefining how inflation is measured, they perpetuate lies such as commemorating George Floyd and playing defense for the BLM movement, they lied about the Trump Russia collusion. You asked specifically for foreign policy examples and I don't consider myself particularly knowledgeable on matters of foreign policy.
That was me literally searching on Google and just copy-pasting the 1st example I got for each president. You asked for examples of lies in regard to policy, I did provide and then you dismiss some of them as just saying those are "mild". Are you looking specifically for a fully exhaustive list of other examples that was as disastrous as Iraq? The government is never going to fuck up on a level of Iraq ever again if they have half a brain. As much as people like to fling shit about our politicians as being incompetent idiots they're not actual literal idiots and most of them have higher IQ than the average population. They're also skilled with words and framing which is why many people find politicians to be slimy weasels.
Look, I appreciate you helping me better refine my position with more accurate words, but at this point we are just talking about technical definitions and I'm not really interested in having that conversation any further, especially since you reframed it specifically in the context of foreign policy and then dismiss some examples of actual lies as "mild". I'll edit my comment to say "deception" instead of lies. Happy? I don't think it substantially changes the core of my argument one way or the other. I'm still going to choose to believe the government is lying to the people and that we won't know the truth on many of these topics until decades later.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link