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 -
NYTimes steps up to sabotage the Trump administration's attempts for peace on the Korean peninsula
Yesterday the New York Times broke a story revealing that in 2019 the Trump Administration attempted to insert a Seal Team to plant an electronic interception device to capture Kim Jong Un's communications. The mission went sideways and was aborted after the commandos ran across a fishing boat, thought they had been discovered, and broke mission silence to kill them. There are probably volumes to be written about different contingencies that could have been taken and how the mission was poorly designed, but we're here to talk about culture war.
Specifically, I wanted to talk about the suspicious timing of this article. It is pretty obvious to anyone who is watching that Trump has been gunning for a Nobel Peace Prize. He has inserted himself into the Israel-Gaza conflict to try to find peaceful solutions, he's been trying to negotiate between Putin (who seems to be playing him) and Zelenski, he successfully stopped a conflict in Cambodia (which somehow got more press abroad than in the US), and he claims to have put pressure on India and Pakistan to wind down their conflict.
Well, two weeks ago during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, Trump and Lee found common ground over seeking peace with North Korea. In Korean news this was reported as "Trump says he wants to meet Kim again", but reading a transcript, it looks like Lee broached the topic first and was a bit flattering Trump's ego: "So I look forward to your meeting with chairman Kim Jong Un and construction of a Trump Tower in North Korea and playing golf at that place. I believe he will be waiting for you." Trump was playing bad cop at first, mentioning B-2s and B-52s, but ended up remarking that "I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future." And there was a really good line by Lee: "And the only person that can make progress on this issue is you, Mr. President. If you become the -- the peacemaker, then I will assist you by being a pacemaker." So the South Korean public, who still dream of Korean Unification, was pretty happy about this summit.
The timing for peace overtures could not be better. Although North Korea declared South Korea a "permanent enemy" state two years ago, they contemporaneously also began the process of market reforms in farm management, and just a few months ago discontinued use of cross-border propaganda speakers. It's a small token, but a small step in the correct direction.
And now the New York Times reveals that US Special Forces went into North Korea in 2005 and 2019, and killed North Korean civilians while executing a mission under Trump's "direct approval". The Times claims that it is important to break this story because "If the public and policymakers become aware only of high-profile successes, such as the raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan, they may underestimate the extreme risks that American forces undertake." I suspect this the timing is less of a coincidence: either former members of the Biden administration (who performed a classified investigation into the mission's failure) reached out recently to spread the story, or the Times has been sitting on the story for a while and decided to publish in the event that Trump made overtures to North Korea. Either way, I expect the North Koreans will be furious, this will renew their dedication to not seeking peace, and any inter-Korean summit will be off the table for at least another year.
So is the Times deliberately sabotaging peace on the Korean peninsula just to hurt Trump? I have no way of knowing, but the timing is a hell of a coincidence.
First off, there is no way that Trump is getting a Nobel without first invading Sweden and replacing their committee. They gave Obama the peace prize for not being GWB, Trump would basically bring liberal democracy to China before they would even consider him.
Secondly, your reasoning seems to be akin to "when the girl started to talk about her father sexually abusing her, she destroyed what had previously been a happy family".
The job of the media, even the fucking, thrice-damned NYT, is to report the news. A previously unreported US military operation in North Korea seems pretty clearly news to me -- unlike outing or doxxing people, which seems evil in itself.
Like most actors, news media often have an agenda. They put spins on things, they select what to report on and when to release their reports. That is all SOP. If they want to frustrate Trump's efforts at peace, that is perhaps not maximally nice, but well within their expected alignment constraints. FWIW, I do not think that a few dead fishermen will be a dealbreaker for Kim Jong Un.
Did the NYT stop anyone else from discovering the story and publishing it in 2021? No? Then your problem might just be that their competitors suck at investigative journalism.
Finally, I think that this is just more of Trump trying to collect all the achievements that Obama got. I do not think he is very coherent about it, more completionist than seriously role-playing. So he got out of the Iranian deal and bombed them instead because he wanted the "Bomber President" achievement, then he makes some token effort to get his "Peacemaker President" in Korea, is gunning for "Law and Order achiever" while also maxing out his corruption meter.
More options
Context Copy link
It could also be officials in the administration leaking this to the NYT now to sabotage Trump's peace efforts.
More options
Context Copy link
There's another option between "hell of a coincidence" and "deliberate diplomatic sabotage", which is simply that the NYT is chasing relevance. They'd been sitting on the 2019 story not because it was a weapon kept in reserve, but because it was old news without enough relevance to make headlines years down the line with Trump out of office. Only now, when "Trump's relationship to North & South Korea" is again a newsworthy topic, do they deem it worth their while to run the story, because people will be listening. I think this calculus would exist whether the story was favorable or unfavorable.
More options
Context Copy link
Isn't a much better question to ask if the Trump administration sabotaged the process on their own by authorizing a mission that killed three civilians and then mutilated their bodies so that they wouldn't be discovered? A mission that, judging by nothing serious happening due to its failure, clearly wasn't that important in the first place? Because I'm much, much more inclined to blame military/security state overreach than I am the people reporting on it. Nobody had to authorize this mission. Nobody had to give them rules of engagement that apparently left no room for even a moment to determine whether the people they spotted were security personnel or fishermen. If peace was really such an important goal (which to be clear, I don't think it is, either for this or the previous Trump administration), why do something so stupidly provocative in the first place?
This is a bizarre claim. The goal of the 2019 talks was to come to some agreement with North Korea, and no such agreement was reached. What more profound failure could possibly have resulted from lacking intelligence? Are you seriously contending that being able to listen in on Kim Jung Un's discussions wouldn't have been an advantage at the negotiating table? That's no minor thing. I'm not confident that that information would have led to success, but you haven't done much to justify your confidence it wouldn't have.
The US planting listening devices in proximity with world leaders is a subject with a storied history, by the way. It rarely results in deaths, but I suspect mainly because most nations are sufficiently foolish as to trust US-made infrastructure the NSA can trivially compromise.
(North Korea has gone so far as to develop its own national operating system for this reason, among others.)
It came out in the Snowden leaks that they'd casually tapped the phones of 35 foreign leaders, and that was just the program he knew about. And these were people we had a lot more to lose by offending. This program persisted through both Bush's term and Obama's; I find it hard to believe either would have failed to approve this operation, provided there actually was a meaningful possibility of success. Both certainly did approve operations that killed more foreign nationals for much less potential upside.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah I'm not sure why the takeaway should be "don't report on our military fuckups" instead of "don't do military fuckups". Even if it got leaked on purpose now, so what? The press's job is to inform the public. It never would have been possible to leak to begin with if they didn't fail so badly in a mission that clearly wasn't very critical.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think Zelensky is playing just as much as Putin. Neither really wants the war to end.
Zelensky has too much sunk cost. If he ends the war, and loses ground, there's a good chance he doesn't live for very long afterwards.
The war ending with territorial gains by Russia leads to a greater likelihood of further wars of territorial aggression, which in turn leads to a greater likelihood of a Third World War.
Therefore, if Mr Zelensky ends the war and loses ground, there's a good chance none of us live for very long afterwards.
More options
Context Copy link
Oh please, Zelensky will run like a frightened hog and live in exile somewhere he can access his swiss bank account and Ukrainian ultranats can't get at him.
...until the neighbour of whichever country to which he moves decides that they would like more clay....
More options
Context Copy link
If only there was some kind of event in Zelensky's biography that could let us judge whether or not he's inclined to take the exile route when his life is in danger
Zelensky is not a fully independent actor. There’s a lot of players involved both inside and outside his administration that are pulling chains on him. He should’ve went for a peace plan right out of the gate and tried as hard as he could for that. All of his efforts will be in vain now when he empties the clip of whatever political capital he still has left, things end the way people thought it would from the beginning only now with hundreds of thousands of bodies and a wrecked country trailing behind him.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And where is this magical place that is nice to live and has no Ukrainian refugees?
Large parts of America, for one.
More options
Context Copy link
Epstein Island?
I bet Epstein Island had a higher concentration of poor Slavic girls than Ukraine itself.
More options
Context Copy link
Doubt it. A lot of underage Ukrainian girls left Ukraine after the war broke out.
I thought no one's using it right now. He could even forego the underage girls entirely, and just chill on the island.
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
The NYT also broke the story of the August 29, 2021 US air strike that killed 10 civilians during the Afghanistan withdrawal. And I don't think it's likely that they broke that story in order to sabotage Biden's diplomacy or his reputation. I see no more reason to believe that they are reporting the Korea story in order to damage Trump, other than that clearly they dislike Trump more than they dislike Biden. But even with that dislike, they do have a track record of breaking stories like this even when it does not suit their political lean, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they may actually just be doing honest journalism here.
Personally, I certainly appreciate knowing that this incident happened. Whatever the motives of the leakers are, and whatever the motives of the NYT are, I now know more than I did a couple days ago. So one way or another, and whatever the motives might be, in this case journalism has succeeded at its fundamental purpose of discovering and publicizing information.
The August 2021 airstrike was also the sort of the story that would have broken out soon after due to exceptional international visibility in Afghanistan, including substantial foreign media coverage. The NYT did not break the story as much as shape it's unfolding.
There are substantial differences between shaping an emerging media event, and instigating a media event yourself. When dealing with people attempting to shape discussion, what matters most is typically what they are trying to emphasize / lead the audience to and how. When dealing with instigated discussions, another distinct additional need is 'why now?'
I see no reason to think that the NYT tried to shape that story's unfolding in a way that would benefit the Biden administration. Here is the story: https://archive.is/TFvyH.
You're looking at this through a narrow partisan lens and I don't think that helps you. The NYT doesn't have to be completely aligned with the Biden administration for rokmonster's point to stand true, and certainly not for Dean's point to be true, either.
I think the general point is that the NYT holds the special privilege of receiving exclusive government leaks, and distributing them as they see fit in order to influence public opinion to the editorial desk's particular preferences. They are also a newspaper but they primarily occupy a political position much more powerful than just a newspaper.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Agreed. Although they make a half-hearted attempt to pin it on 'Mr. Trump' for reducing the level of official deliberation required for these missions, this story is broadly:
Kudos to the NYT.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link