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’m not sure where the misreading of the Bible is here, because I’m not sure what the prophecy he’s going on actually says. It’s plausible he’s actually right about those verses.
But I think hyper fixating on “omg” he doesn’t know the population doesn’t mean much for very obvious reasons.
First of all, he’s not remotely involved in planning the war. The people who are absolutely have the relevant information and probably intelligence assets on the ground telling them where the targeting drones should go first. It’s like being shocked that the CEO at apple doesn’t know exactly how much RAM the new iPhone has — he’s not the one designing the phone, he’s the one who demanded the phone be designed at built. As with most high powered elites, he has people to handle the details and he has been told that the military can probably pull this off. That’s all he needs to know.
Second, the exact population is irrelevant compared to things like geography, technological levels, military strength and enlistment numbers, and so on. China has a billion people, but how many of them are in the military? How many are rapidly aging members of the generation before the one-child policy? How many are women? Deciding Cruz doesn’t have any idea about Iran because he didn’t know off by heart tge exact population of Iran is really silly.
The implication is that if he doesn't even ballpark know how many people live in Iran, there's no way he knows any of that other stuff. And if he did, he could have said something like "well they are enlisting X people per year, and American enlists 2X, so probably roughly half of the American population" and at that point if Tucker said "um ackchually it's not 160 million it's 90 million" people would just think Tucker was being pedantic and wouldn't care. But Cruz didn't try to switch to a statistic that he did know, he just got defensive and butthurt which makes everyone assume (IMO probably correctly) that he really knows next to nothing about Iran.
More options
Context Copy link
The prophecies he’s referring to are mostly Christ’s foretelling of the destruction of the second temple- which, as you may recall, happened in 70 AD. Ted Cruz’s misreading is the claim that these are end times prophecies as opposed to a divine punishment for the deicide of Jesus.
I would be interested in @Felagund’s take on millennialism. Last I checked, the stridently Reformed are generally fully on-board with the more reserved interpretations of apocalyptic prophesy, because it’s Augustinian.
I don't have an opinion on end times things at the moment (but thanks for the mention!). Among many of the contemporary reformed, I think amillenialism (we're living in the millenium right now) is the most common view, and is probably what you refer to as the most reserved interpretation, though there do exist postmillenials (especially among the Doug Wilson-adjacent) and premillenials. Dispensationalism is usually seen as beyond the pale, though.
Historically, many in e.g. the 17th century read Romans 11 as talking about a future conversion of ethnic Israel to Christianity, though that's less popular of a reading now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link