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 -
Just chiming in to say that I have a very similar opinion as you and it disturbs me a little how similar our opinions are.
Israel is always contentious topic, but repeatedly whenever antisemitism-du-jour or unpopularity of how Israel-US relations are among the western world is brought up my reaction is always "obviously?"
What Israel is, is an ethnostate with religious and political mandate to entrench itself in a land surrounded by their religious enemies, full of people that have been historically persecuted on an industrial scale (the exact scale is apparently a hot topic of debate in some circles), and have managed to secure themselves power, a modern military, and alliance with a hyperpower.
What did people think was going to happen if their civilians got shot up and kidnapped?
You look at the countries surrounding Israel and they're generally not very well run. How much of this is down to Mossad/US efforts is up for debate, also, but Arab governance today just generally isn't great. The Chinese attitude is pragmatic; it comes into the mind of the Chinese that if they were in a modal Arab nation that wanted to wipe out Israel for realsies, they would conduct themselves in a very different way after one or two costly failures.
What Israel has done is demonstrate power and capability and networks. They've burned a lot of political credibility to do it, and I'm not sure how popular Bibi is within Israel these days.
The greater problem with the conflict is that everyone looks bad; Arab leaders are caught in a weird catch-22 as always where they need to placate the more card-carrying Muslim extremists within their tribes to maintain political power but are also aware that the further down that path they tread the less likelihood of them being able to function as a country. I believe American hate for Israel is just an ingrained pathology of supporting the underdog, and anger at the use of American resources to support a country they don't really care that much about and personally see no benefit from supporting. The American argument for strong allies in the ME has deteriorated with the tidal wave of oil fracking, and even enforcement of the petrodollar has imploded with oil being now traded in other currencies.
And there's also no way of extricating Israel from this conflict or de-escalating relatively peacefully in a way that either side can accept. Maybe Bibi is aware that America's sufferance for Israeli dalliances will end; America will be happy to keep selling them weapons and infosharing with Mossad, but politically the younger generation getting into politics and the increased irrelevance of traditional American media structures may spell a lapse in Jewish influence on American populism. They'll be fighting over the ME forever, even if America ends up having nothing to do with it.
Hollywood was one of the key structures of Jewish soft power and one of America's most widely exported methods of cultural agitprop; I don't know if anyone's noticed but they're not doing too hot recently. Silicon Valley is American, yes, but a larger and larger share of corporate tech CEOs are looking quite non-Jewish recently.
If the Chinese were in the position of the Arabs they'd form an Arab United Front in 1948 (which, to the credit, the Arabs did try, but the coalition was nowhere near as large as it could have been) and prevented the creation of an Israeli state from the outset. When presented with the horrible atrocities and butcher's bill, they'd say 'send in the next wave'. They wouldn't stop until the Americans and Soviets threatened to intervene and they'd draw up on the armistice lines and actually make peace.
The Japanese did way, way, way worse to the Chinese than the Arabs did to the Israelis, and yet in the modern day they do business with them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link