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 -
As far as anyone can tell, the US government is currently considering military action against Iran. Surely a factor in whether that occurs is the population of Iran. There are many direct and indirect differences between bombing a country with a population of 90 million and 5 million. The population has ramifications for the number of deaths, the economic impact on the country and region, potential refugees, potential enemy combatants, and many other variables.
As a basic conceptual matter, I can't take someone's commentary on a country seriously unless they at the very least have a rough sense of the country's population, GDP, GDP per capita, major religious groups, major ethnic groups, and basic government structure.
I continue not to see why their population matters to our bombing campaigns. At no point does Iran have too many people such that we shrug and accept them going nuclear.
I'm finding this response - which is echoed by a few others on this thread - really strange and hard to wrap my head around.
Even if the population of Iran has little-to-no bearing on whether military intervention is wise, it still has major implications on a million other relevant variables that accompany military intervention, like the death toll, the economic impact, the refugees, the counter attack, etc. Ceteris Paribus, using strategic bombing to stop a country with the population of Slovakia (5 million) from getting a nuke has very different ramifications than using strategic bombing from stopping a country the size of Indonesia (population 280 million) from getting a nuke. If Jakarta is wiped off the map and the government of Indonesia collapses overnight, it could tank the economy of southeast Asia and lead to millions of refugees flooding borders and tens of thousands of deaths in chaos and mass civil war, etc.
Even if you shrug and respond, "I don't care, I just don't want Indonesia to get nukes at all costs," it's still worth understanding the ramifications of that policy. You should have a sense of what carrying out this policy entails, what its costs will be, and what sort of secondary effects it will have, and all of these factors will in-part depend on the country's population. And it's not like national population figures are esoteric statistical knowledge or something; it's really basic info about a country.
I feel like I'm talking to someone who confidently declares that he doesn't care about prices when selecting a restaurant, and then I point out that prices will impact the cost of going to the restaurant and prices are strong indicators of food quality and decorum and may indicate how you should dress when going to the restaurant, etc., but the guy just keep saying, "I don't care, I have a lot of money, so no matter how expensive a restaurant is, I can afford it."
These are logistics, and it is not the place of US Senators to do the logistics work of the US military. The actual strategic planners and number-crunchers can figure out how many faceless Iranians need to die -- but no number will justify letting Iran go nuclear.
Yes, this is accurate. None of the things you think matter I think matter. I can go to the restaurant dressed however I please, and I don't care if the meal is especially tasty or not. I just want to get some food.
Or, rather, not get the food. In this case, I don't want to extract anything from Iran.
Doing another Ceteris Paribus, I would much rather my elected officials understood the scope/scale of the military conflict they are pre-commiting the military people to executing on.
For a more tangible point, every missile fired at Iran, and every defensive interceptor used to protect American assets against Iran, cannot be used for a war against China. The bigger Iran is, the more of those you will need. T
here is a serious opportunity cost to committing to a war, especially when you are in a cold war with a country that is expanding its military faster than you.
Maybe you think it's more important to smash Iran than be maximally prepared against China, in which case fair enough.
But to confidently say "I don't care if the people in charge of deciding to start a war don't understand basic facts about the scope and scale of the war they're committing us to" I think you should have much higher standards for your elected officials.
All fair concerns for you to have, just not ones I share. I genuinely don't think it matters at all if Ted Cruz knows the population of Iran, because its population isn't one of the relevant metrics for our decisions.
I guess what I'm trying to understand about your view is why knowing the scale doesn't matter.
Bigger country = need more bombs = less bombs to deter China. Why isn't that important to understand?
I guess you can respond by saying "well we should simply make more bombs", which is correct, but the political party who is more willing to make bombs is currently in power and they're not exactly going hard on increasing defense production (happy to be proven wrong here, I would like USA to be stronger vs China than it is).
If Ted Cruz overplays America's hand due to ignorance, we all suffer
How do you imagine us suffering? What harm are you imagining China inflicting on us if we use too many bunker busters in Iran? China will never harm the US mainland, because mainland threats against nuclear powers don't happen. Perhaps, if we ran out of resources for awhile, we wouldn't be able to protect Taiwan. But, really, Taiwan belongs to China as it is -- same as Cuba is ours. We shouldn't really be protecting them anyway, we should be building our own domestic chip manufactories.
Iran isn't just going to sit there and take being bombed. They may not have air defenses, but they have missiles, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're going to use those missiles to take out Saudi oil infrastructure. Or they might just block off the Straits of Hormuz, which we could clear, but it would require more than just bombing stationary targets. Or they could decide to protect their own oil assets, which are close to the border, by invading Iraq, starting another war that Iran might actually win, taking more oil offline. The bottom line is that you'd better be prepared for a sharp spike in gas prices, and one that won't subside until the war ends. If, as you say, you're going to go after every possible military installation in a country that covers over 600,000 square miles and has 90 million people, you'd better be prepared to pony up at the pump for a long time.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link