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 -
I want to start a discussion here on a historical subject I've never been able to get a decent answer on anywhere else. The question is:
What is going on with how colonialism worked in its heyday versus how difficult it seems to be to conquer and control other countries nowadays?
Back in the heyday, tiny little England controlled something like a quarter of the world, off and on during various periods, including such areas as all of India, most of the Middle East, the original American 13 colonies, Canada, Australia, sometimes hunks of China, various large hunks of Africa, etc. The somewhat larger France controlled other hunks of North America, a bunch of Caribbean islands, large chunks of Africa, and the Middle East, etc. Even tinier Belgium, with a modern-day population of only 11 million, had some pretty big colonies in Africa that they controlled. At the time, they (mostly) seemed to have little trouble controlling these colonies for centuries, sometimes with mostly peaceful means and sometimes with quite brutal violence.
Meanwhile nowadays, mighty continent-striding America can barely keep Iraq and Afghanistan under control for a decade or two. Russia had little better luck in Afghanistan and mostly hasn't done too well in controlling areas other than tiny regions on their borders already at least partially populated with Russians. China doesn't seem to be doing much better. All of the former colonial superpowers can now barely dream of controlling a single hostile city overseas. The British stretched themselves to the limit trying to take the Falklands back, and managed to hold I think it was a city or a small region in Iraq with a lot of help from America. I think France intervened briefly in Mali a decade or so ago, with only limited success.
So ahem, what the hell happened? How did it go from super-easy to super-hard to control a foreign country on the other side of an ocean? Questions about this in Reddit history subs seem to generate mostly uhhs and grunts and vague excuses. I wonder if anyone in here, with mostly more open discussion on tougher topics has any interesting thoughts on the subject?
Scott's old "Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell" post summarises the Reactionary viewpoint on this: try being an actual coloniser rather than a chickenshit one, and you might get somewhere. If you respond to rebellion by going home, that's an incentive to rebel. If you leave institutions in place, let alone allowing the conquered to elect them, that makes rebellion easier. If you admit to being there temporarily, that disincentivises people from helping you since they might be shot as collaborators when you leave.
This sound like too much work and/or morally wrong? Well, then, I guess you're not cut out for occupations. Try some other means of affecting world politics.
The occupations of Germany and Japan went well despite being admittedly temporary and leaving some institutions in place (particularly in Japan), but there was definitely no hope of getting the West to go home via hostility and also the existence of the Soviet Union and China made even a successful rebellion obvious suicide.
By what metrics?
Certain people are always lecturing me that "the only reason the west is rich is because of all that silver that Spain expropriated from Bolivia"; if we accept that profitable resource extraction / trade windfalls was both the objective and a successful objective of colonial occupations, where's my silver dollars made out of Axis bullion?
By the metric of "created enduring friendly sphereling", and by the metric of "didn't crater military morale", at the least. Whether you want bullion more than the first is a matter of taste (getting both trades off against each other to some extent), but I don't think there's anyone who'd claim the Vietnam/Afghanistan occupations went better than Germany/Japan (Iraq didn't fail nearly as hard as Afghanistan and Vietnam - no more strong, hostile Iraq - although I still think you'd have a hard time finding someone who thought it went better than Germany/Japan).
I ask this in all seriousness, don't think I'm being facetious: what good does that actually do (a) the West/USA as a whole, and (b) me, some pleb in the West, personally.
Because I don't feel like I am deriving much advantage from the "privilege" of these "friendly spherelings" allowing my leaders to spend my tax money on giant boondoggle bases on their land while Germany doesn't pay it's NATO contributions.
I really would rather that Russian citizens were paying their taxes for Russian bases in Germany and Japan, and I am very happy that I don't have to fund Afghani bases any more. Happier than I was when my taxes were paying for Afghan tribal leader's boy sex slaves.
After you've already won the Cold War? I'm not sure, maybe it's no longer useful.
Didn't do me any good during the Cold War either. The reason we work a 40 hour week instead of an 80 hour one is because Soviet tanks scared Western capitalists into making concessions to labor. If those bases hadn't been in Germany the Western capitalists would have been more scared and we'd be working a 20 hour week now instead.
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
More options
Context Copy link