site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This might be old news.

A Swedish newspaper published a report, ostensibly a leak from RAND that purports to be a cynical summary of what anti-atlanticist Europeans believe to be the US strategy - sabotage Europe by denying it Russian energy, forcing investments and people to leave for the safer haven of US. Example of that is this substack post by disgraced academic Noah Carl.

The report is not very long and could very easily be a fake.

My intuitiojn says I think it's probably a fake, well within the capabilities of some of the less stupid Russian disinfo experts to create. Certainly I can imagine Russian spooks may have at least one or two people like Ilforte, but rabidly nationalist, who could make that up during lunch break.

Anyway has anything to say about it? I'm assuming the newspaper isn't a well-regarded one or a very professional one. But then I've heard very dire things about Swedish journalism, namely that it was extremely well aligned in the service of the 'liberal' left agenda of endless migration and self-hatred. That was years ago, things may have changed.

The very first paragraph of the Executive Summary has red flags: "the uncontrolled issue of cash" instead of "issuance," "dollar supply" rather than "money supply."

Also, "loss in the position of the Democratic Party in Congress" is odd phrasing, and I doubt that RAND would refer to "costs for us" rather than "costs to the United States."

And "the" is omitted in "a major obstacle to it is growing independence of Germany," and is used unnecessarily in other places. Classic English language learner errors.

It's an error that I believe is more prevalent in Slavs, who don't use that many definite articles. Or any. Not clear. What do you think /u/georgioz ?

Germans probably wouldn't make that many similar errors, on account of them using definite and indefinite articles.

Heinlein's (quite good, actually) book 'Moon is a Harsh Mistress', where the Lunar colony has a significant Russian speaking component is written without using many definite articles.

The use of articles varies subtly even between languages who generally use them; Romance languages use articles in many situations in which English does not, and vice versa.

The only Slavic langauges with articles are Bulgarian and Macedonian (which sometimes considered as a dialect of the former) and they don't look similar to types in English etc.

Polish has no articles at all. But more importantly, as I understand, they do not exist in Russian language.

a/an/the is an irritating stuff for me.