site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32146 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Apparently, there is a viral video in Russia of a long discussion between a oppositional blogger and a pro-putin actor. I can only find a German news article on it, but I would love to see the whole interview (subtitled). However, I doubt such a video exists. For me, it is more the lack of effort by western media to gain insight into the thoughts of actual russians than the positions itself that I find astonishing and relevant to the culture war.

Both sides (pro-neutrality right and pro-ukraine left) have no interest whatsover to shed a light on the internal discussions in Russia.

Edit: The video exists on youtube, linked in a comment below. I feel dumb and incompetent now.

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/russland-gespraech-zwischen-putinisten-und-regierungskritiker-18626426.html

Oskar Kuchera is a 48-year-old actor and former host of the pop channel Muz-TV, which supports the Russian army. Recently, Yuri Dud, Russia's most popular blogger and opposition journalist, invited him for a three-hour interview. The interview appeared on Youtube on January 16, was viewed more than fourteen million times in the first few days, and continues to spread virally. For in the conversation, Kutschera reveals the mindsets of Putin's electorate, complete with jumbled ideas and propaganda slogans. On Youtube, he can be viewed like an exhibit in an exhibition about Russia. The Putin-supporting majority, here it is: seventy percent of the population merge into a nice, apolitical, basically peace-loving, not prone to analysis type.

Kutschera claims that Moscow and Kiev are equal for him; as the son of a Ukrainian Jew, he is half-Ukrainian. Like many Russians, he cannot answer the question of why Russia started the war. Apparently, propaganda changed the official purpose of the special military operation too often. Only the basic concept remains: the war started because America wanted to weaken Russia to get out of its economic crisis and arranged a war in Europe. And Russia did not start the war to conquer Ukraine, no! Although the September referenda in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya regions were, of course, a conquest of Ukrainian territory. But Kutschera does not understand much about this war, he is actually against war, war is terrible. But now he cannot turn against his country and its army. He supports Putin because he is on Russia's side, and the longer the war lasts, the more he trusts him.

"The West is waging war against us"

Dud: "Once again. Putin, whom you support, has started a denazification war . . ."

Kutschera: "I don't believe in denazification or demilitarization, I don't understand what it is. I think the real reason for the war is not told to us. I think this war is a global one. The special operation is not directed against Ukraine alone."

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

This guy appears to be more of a normie than a policy wonk, so I'll not pretend like he's a steelman of Russian opinions or anything. Goodness knows there are tons of Westerners who'd have similarly silly views on certain topics. Coherent political views are a skill like any other, and very few people rigorously test theirs enough to go toe-to-toe with people who do, like on this site.

That said, his perspective of "this is a defensive war against NATO" is still silly. I've debated plenty of pro-Russian posters both here and on other websites, and one consistent point that they don't even try to defend is the inciting incident of this war, i.e. how there really wasn't one. Sure, there are plenty of long-term irreconcilable issues between Russia and the West. But as for what prompted Russia to invade now... well Putin just woke up one morning and decided he wanted to. That's it. Ukraine was not close to becoming a part of NATO, and probably won't even be able to join NATO even if Russia loses. The US and European countries implied through inaction that they were more or less OK with the frozen conflict in the Donbas stretching on indefinitely. More and more attention was being paid to China as the ultimate threat instead of Russia. Germany was happy paying billions of dollars for Russian oil and gas. Relations were frosty, but things were OK between the two sides, before Russia decided to flip the table over in its "defensive" invasion.

This guy appears to be more of a normie than a policy wonk, so I'll not pretend like he's a steelman of Russian opinions or anything.

He is a normie, and that's exactly why he is a good representative of Ivan Sixpack's pro-war opinions. Steelmanning is a good mental exercise, but the steelman of, say, QAnon is a far cry from what the average QAnon believer thinks.

Ivan Sixpack

Culturally accurate would be Ivan Third-liter. The traditional way to spend your evening drinking was to get two buddies to share--and defray the cost of--a liter of vodka. Thus the phrase "на троих" (literally, "for three").

Two bottles? That's too much for three honest workers. That would make him Ivan Seven Glugs, since there's 21 glug in a bottle.

Why think there needs to be a single incident in proximity to an act of aggression that incites it? When the event being defended against is amorphous, ex. Ukraine being embraced by the West, there is no reason to think the preemptive move should be in close proximity to some triggering event. When the feared event is years away at best, you have the luxury of taking your time. Also, there are the potentially relevant factors of Trump's exit and a COVID delay that can help explain timing.

Because if any country could declare war over any potential threat then the entire world would be in war. Canada might someday invade America so let’s invade them.

People can and will do whatever they can get away with. I mean, if you expect some kind of all things considered justification to be a constraint to waging war, you're gonna have a bad time. Much better is to invest in friendly relations and building up your military to disincentivize aggression.

Uh, because it sorta takes the wind out of the sails of the argument that Russia started the war to keep Ukraine out of NATO? NATO membership wasn't even an option for Ukraine when Russia invaded, and it hadn't been for over a decade at that point. The US wouldn't let them in.

But its also clear that the west was forging closer ties with Ukraine, and that NATO publicly stated in 2008 that "[Ukraine and Georgia] will become members of NATO". Putin can only take NATO's words at face value. While the question of timing is interesting, it is not all that relevant to whether NATO is the reason for Putin's war. Putin's actions over the last 15 years can be seen as stalling tactics and preventative measures to delay or deny Ukraine eventual NATO membership. The specific timing at which he decided his interference is likely to fail is not all that informative. What he must do is act before Ukraine gains NATO protection. But he can't know exactly when that will be nor can he rely on predicting that point. The risk of acting too late from his perspective is infinitely more costly than acting too early.

The 2008 declaration's intentions died when Russia invaded Georgia, which is why Ukraine still didn't have a Membership Action Plan to join NATO almost a decade and a half after that declaration.

You're treating Ukraine's admittance to NATO as an inevitability. It never was, especially after the conflict in the Donbas got started, and then frozen. NATO's membership criteria explicitly prohibits admittance for nations with active territorial disputes. The West was in no hurry to help Ukraine resolve this dispute. Wars always carry big risks, and Putin didn't have to take them in Ukraine's case specifically for its admittance to NATO, because, again, NATO wasn't an option at this point, and hadn't been for over a decade.

You're treating Ukraine's admittance to NATO as an inevitability.

I'm doing no such thing. All I am doing is acknowledging that Putin cannot take for granted the kinds of claims you can take for granted from your epistemic position. Ukraine gets accepted into NATO when NATO wants to accept Ukraine. That's all Putin can know for sure. Why would he risk (from his perspective) the security of Russia based on arbitrary legal constraints that only have power by convention of NATO?

It's strange how all discussions regarding this war involve this basic error in assuming your adversary knows or believes the same things you know or believe and should act in according with your collection of beliefs. Further, that any war should be perfectly timed and motivated in accordance with these supposed facts. It's the fallacy of the Platonic ideal war. Of course, only one's enemies are held to such a standard.

The prohibition on accepting members with ongoing disputes is another indicator that NATO doesn't want to deal with open conflicts. It's not indicative by itself, but it's another piece of evidence pointing to one side.

should act in according with your collection of beliefs

Viewing the situation from a neutral lens shows the vast majority of substantive Western (especially American) actions after 2008 and 2014 as long-term acceptance of Ukraine's status as not being part of NATO. Rejecting Ukraine's calls to join the alliance for almost a decade isn't "believing an adversary should believe according to your beliefs" as you accuse me of doing, rather it's very basic geopolitical signaling. If blocking NATO expansion near Russia's borders was the primary concern, Putin would have been much more focused on Finland and Sweden which NATO very much did want to join for a long time. Finland might have been perceived as having a more robust military than Ukraine, but in terms of likeliness of joining NATO, it's also far, far higher. Instead, Putin hand-waved the threat away when it materialized.

One could dismiss all past evidence and signaling regarding NATO and say they'd still leap to accept Ukraine if Russia experienced a moment of weakness; one could dismiss the larger threat of Finland and Sweden joining NATO by claiming Putin (mistakenly) thought Ukraine would be much easier to occupy; One could dismiss Putin's eventual annexation of Ukrainian territories as just a consolation prize. But it's hard to argue with Putin's own words written shortly before the invasion, which puts the situation into perspective: NATO expansion was a secondary issue at most, and the invasion was more about empire building. It was about "reuniting the Triune Russian people", i.e. making Ukraine subservient to Russia in much more than just policies towards NATO.

It's not indicative by itself, but it's another piece of evidence pointing to one side.

First lets be clear, this is not a matter of preponderance of evidence, it is a matter of utility maximizing. Again, the risk from Putin's perspective for acting too late is massively greater than the risk of acting too early. So for the sum total of evidence to weigh against invasion rationally requires a near-totality of evidence against Ukraine admission. But the facts as Putin can know them are not so biased against Ukraine admission into NATO in the future.

Rejecting Ukraine's calls to join the alliance for almost a decade

When it comes to national security concerns, a decade is nothing. What about 100 years into the future? Ukraine codified their intent to join NATO into their constitution while NATO has made written overtures towards Ukraine's eventual admission. Why do you think these points should mean nothing to Putin from a utility-maximizing framework?

If blocking NATO expansion near Russia's borders was the primary concern, Putin would have been much more focused on Finland and Sweden which NATO very much did want to join for a long time.

Not all landmass is created equal. Putin has made it clear that Ukraine and Georgia were redlines. Finland and Sweden are less of a concern, probably because they are further north and don't have direct paths to mainland Europe. As far as strategic land value for staging force projection, Ukraine and Georgia are of much greater importance.

But it's hard to argue with Putin's own words written shortly before the invasion, which puts the situation into perspective: NATO expansion was a secondary issue at most, and the invasion was more about empire building.

Any war will have two justifications: one that represents the proximal cause for the decision makers, and one for the consumption of the masses. I don't know why internet commentators have such a hard time with this point. It's always interesting to notice when people are quick to take an adversary's statements at face value and when they contort themselves to question them. The blatant self-serving nature of taking Putin's statements at face value here but not the last few decades of anti-NATO expansion rhetoric should give any honest interlocutor pause.

That could have changed with a single election cycle.

Any number of things could change with the passage of time, but this particular issue hadn't changed in three election cycles, and there was no domestic push for it to, nor was there any indication that there would be (e.g. Obama's "pivot to Asia", Trump's focus on China and friendliness to Russia).

That it hasn't changed doesn't mean that it can't. You just need a candidate that among other things make it part of it's rethoric, like Trump did with China.

Is it actually productive to try and understand Russian motivations? Regardless of their motivations, they're trying to use force to conquer an independent nation, one that was attempting to align itself with the West. The fact that they might see this as part of a broader conflict with the West isn't news, and it doesn't change matters on the ground.

In addition, it seems like most people in Western countries, including many people here, come at the issue of trying to understand Russia from the perspective of trying to justify war - the Russians are inherently authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish, and therefore must be destroyed. I don't think this attitude is helpful or should be encouraged.

Is it actually productive to try and understand Russian motivations?

Incredibly so. Understanding your opponent is insanely useful in defeating them, generally by allowing you to predict them better. For example, an actor in a war of resources behaves much different than an actor in a war of national honor. The former may be more likely to move troops into sparsely populated and natural resource rich areas, while the latter would be more likely to strike at a capital or some other area of symbolic importance.

Or, to quote Sun Tzu:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

the Russians are inherently authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish, and therefore must be destroyed.

You could say the same about Americans. And Americans literally do say the same about other Americans, they're just divided into two groups who are each accusing each other of being authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish while they themselves are the only sane and rational people in the world. And you could say the same about pretty much any population ever if they happen to be stirred up into a frenzy at the moment. Look at how blindly most people (on all sides of the political spectrum) believe whatever their thought leaders tell them to. Look how violent people become when they declare a group to be their enemy. You are literally advocating the genocide of 143 million people because you believe them to be evil, not because you've met all 143 million of them, or probably even a dozen, but because of the government and military of their country is doing bad things and there is some amount of support among their populace. Do 90% of Russians support their military? Do 50%? Do 10%? Maybe it's only a tiny but vocal minority who don't face opposition because the 90% of sane Russians know better than to stick their necks out in an authoritarian country that's oppressing them. Or maybe it legitimately is 90%, but you have no idea and you advocate genocide anyway, because you decided that they are the enemy and thus deserve no mercy.

That sounds pretty authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish to me. If Ukraine had done something you don't like to incite this war, or if you had been born in Russia and had feelings of nationalist loyalty to them, or if the U.S. government had been allied with Russia and fed anti Ukraine propaganda (have you heard that they're literal Nazis?), I expect you'd be advocating their genocide instead. Because you're not any better than the Russian citizens. And you're not any worse. People have a tendency to get carried away, especially when fed propaganda, and it's important to understand them so you can deconvert them, demoralize them, and end wars without genociding the enemy whenever possible, because at the end of the day they're still human beings and they still matter even when they do bad things.

It is not my perspective the the Russians are orcish - I'm saying, that it seems to be a common conclusion among Expert Russia Understanders.

You are literally advocating the genocide of 143 million people because you believe them to be evil, not because you've met all 143 million of them, or probably even a dozen, but because of the government and military of their country is doing bad things and there is some amount of support among their populace.

I'm literally not.

It is not my perspective the the Russians are orcish - I'm saying, that it seems to be a common conclusion among Expert Russia Understanders.

That was part of my point:

Look at how blindly most people (on all sides of the political spectrum) believe whatever their thought leaders tell them to.

Your "Expert Russia Understanders" claim a thing and you believe them. The point isn't whether they're right or wrong on the object level, my point is that you trust them because they said a thing and you consider them to be an authority. If Russia's "Expert Ukraine Understanders" tell them that Ukraine is literally Nazis and evil and must be destroyed, and it is good that they be destroyed, a lot of the Russian citizens will believe them for the exact same reason.

the Russians are inherently authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish, and therefore must be destroyed

Did you not mean genocide? Are you advocating we destroy their government and then back off with no further intervention to prevent them from doing it again? Or are you advocating that we destroy their government and then imperialistically foist a new government with our ideals upon them? How do you destroy them without being authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish? How do you destroy them without doing to them literally what they're trying to do to Ukraine, for literally the same perceived reasons?

I'm not a moral relativist, I don't claim that all sides are actually equally justified and therefore stopping them from doing bad things would make us equally bad. Russia is actually in the wrong here. But, at least for the common citizens, they seem to be wrong because, on average, they're just as gullible as everyone else everywhere else in the world, and the main difference I see is that the government they blindly follow is worse than ours.

Your "Expert Russia Understanders" claim a thing and you believe them.

No, I don't believe them. I don't believe that Expert Russia Understanders understand anything, and I believe their 'understanding' is just a way to justify their preferred conclusion - Russia delenda est.

Are you advocating we destroy their government and then back off with no further intervention to prevent them from doing it again? Or are you advocating that we destroy their government and then imperialistically foist a new government with our ideals upon them?

No, no. For the second time, I am not saying that Russians are orcish. Maybe you should write less and read more.

Is it actually productive to try and understand Russian motivations?

including many people here, come at the issue of trying to understand Russia from the perspective of trying to justify war - the Russians are inherently authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish, and therefore must be destroyed.

Then I think it is productive for you to correct these people as they can be saved from thinking with their brainstem. The site states it's mission is to provide a "place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases". It would be rather disheartening to think that not even here could wartime propaganda lose.

Though I will admit, it does get a bit boring over and over again.

Regardless of their motivations, they're trying to use force to conquer an independent nation, one that was attempting to align itself with the West. The fact that they might see this as part of a broader conflict with the West isn't news, and it doesn't change matters on the ground.

I am not sure what you are trying to say in that first sentence but as for the broader conflict with the West, it puts them in a different perspective for me, and I bet especially for those Russians and Volunteers on the ground fighting and dying for those beliefs.

Is it actually productive to try and understand Russian motivations?

Even if only from a strategic perspective, the answer is yes. Knowing Russian motivations allows western nations to better counteract them politically and militarily. I don't know what the specific goals of Putin are (or the Russian security state) or why he chose February 2022 to be the time to achieve them, but presumably the CIA has a decent idea and this is forming part of their strategy to undermine the Russian state capacity to wage war.

Ukraine (and the west) of course might not be in this position if we had better understood Russian motivations, either because an acceptable peaceful compromise was reached, or because Ukraine was better prepared.

Maybe for the purposes of military planners. Is it useful for you and I to try and understand the mind of the lowly Russian serf? Are we going to learn Russia, throw ourselves into 500 years of complicated history, move to Russia and explore the nature of its people? Unlikely. We're going to read a bunch of articles on Wikipedia, maybe a thinkpiece (they all have titles like "How the EU is playing right into Putin's hands"). Is this kind of half-baked understanding going to reflect anything but our own biases, whether for peace or for war?

Is it useful for you and I to try and understand the mind of the lowly Russian serf?

Insofar as one is curious, of course!

Is this kind of half-baked understanding going to reflect anything but our own biases, whether for peace or for war?

It’s better than nothing! I struggle with your intellectual defeatism and know-nothing approach. Tug at small threads for long enough and eventually you will have the entire sweater! (in a pile of spaghetti on the floor)

I don't really agree - I think it's better not to form an opinion at all than to form a really bad one, and I think it's better to stick conservatively to what is known for sure rather than speculate wildly on what's going on in someone's head. This doesn't mean we can't know anything, but what we can know has to have a rock solid base. For example, I think it's reasonable to say that one motivation behind the Russian invasion is that they thought it would be easy. This is so common-sense and obvious that I rarely see people discuss it. It's obvious for many reasons - firstly, it's why we go to war as well. Secondly, we ourselves perceived Ukraine as being vulnerable to invasion in the run-up to 2022. None of this requires us to try and get inside Putin's head, or to develop any understanding of the Russians - in fact, to try and develop an understanding of the Russians assumes there is something to understand, that they differ from us in some fundamental way.

And more broadly, I think that being excessively curious presents it's own danger. Humans are absolutely capable of overthinking, overinterpreting and overfitting, generating patterns and order out of chaos, going back to the astrologers who tried to match events on earth to the movement of the heavens.

I have a simplified model of Russia. Imperial ambitions and territorial expansion is deeply embedded in their psyche. They never lost their colonial possession like the rest of Europe. Russian desires to dominate their neighbors is as deeply embedded as Americans clinging to their amendments. It’s what makes them feel Russian to be the top dog of their neighborhood.

Hence this is the war to end that with a humiliating defeat.

Centuries ago one people dominating the region may have been necessary due to the mongol/hun/etc, occasional European invasion threat due to geography. And hence Russia spent centuries fighting territorial expansion wars.

That doesn’t explain the peaceful breakup of the USSR.

Explain?

I have a simplified model of Russia. Imperial ambitions and territorial expansion is deeply embedded in their psyche.

It's a bit too simplified. Any empire (and since we're talking about imperial ambitions we're talking about empires) has a few distinct groups with distinct priorities that should be modelled separately:

  • imperial elite

  • titular nationals

  • colonial nationals

  • colonial counter-elites

The imperial elite is the group that is the most interested in the preservation of the empire, since their prosperity depends on its existence.

Colonial counter-elites are the natural opposition to the imperial elite. When the empire is strong, the counter-elites have no political power and even their cultural power is reduced. When the empire grows weak, they naturally grow stronger and start dreaming of their own nation states.

Colonial nationals have two paths for advancement: imperial service that ultimately gets you promoted into the imperial elite and nationalist resistance that promises much more if it succeeds.

Titular nationals have just a single elite that represents them, the imperial elite, which is a perverse situation, as it doesn't actually represent them, it has its own interests on the mind. Titular nationals are its principal tools: it uses them to enlarge and stabilize the empire; the further a titular national advances through the ranks of the imperial service, the less he has in common with the titular nation.

This explains why there's no political path towards a counter-elite for the titular nation. Why doesn't a national counter-elite form in the cultural sphere? The imperial culture is the culture of the titular nation, a high culture form of it, at least in name only.

Colonial nation, in contrast, are allowed to only have their low culture. What if you crave critical acclaim? If your name is Wilde, you move to London and write in English. If your name is Gogol, you move to St Petersburg and write in Russian. Then you travel to Paris to immerse yourself in the most haute culture. If you write about your native culture, it's only to show how quaint it is. Colonial counter-elites will despise you for making your co-nationals fall in love with the culture of the oppressor.

If you're an artist from a titular nation, your path to acclaim is much less thorny. Your language is the language of balls and battles, courts and conquests, violins and violence, not fiddles and frolicking, bars and brawls. The imperial service drains the titular nation of its bravest hearts and quickest minds, the imperial culture takes over the hearts and minds of the rest.

What does this all have to do with your model? Well, your model adequately reflects the psyche of the imperial elite. But the average Russian's psyche is held hostage by the imperial culture and the aftermath of the generations of the imperial service. He has no ambitions of imperial expansion, but he has a strong sense of cultural superiority. At the same time, he is afraid of imperial contraction, which will leave some Russians left behind in hostile nation states and the rest stuck with either no elites at all or with formerly imperial, now irredentist elites too big for the rump state they've been left in charge of.

Losing over 20 million in WW2 is going to induce some intense paranoia about foreign threats. Russia lost 12% of its population in WW2, Belarus lost 25%! Ukraine was in the middle with 16%.

The UK lost 1% in WW2, 2% in WW1. The US lost 0.32% of its population, a rounding error. The horrors of the Somme, all the anti-war poetry and so on in our entire Anglosphere cultural canon... it stems from casualties that are negligible compared to those on the Eastern Front. We have not experienced anything like that.

We're dealing with a country that is still traumatized in ways we cannot truly understand, a country with a very large nuclear arsenal. WW2 was formative to Russia's leaders - Putin lost his brother in the siege of Leningrad. The impact on Russian culture is significant, to say the least.

If we think of colonies in a kind of abstract extractive sense where you take rubber from Malaya, secure naval bases and supply routes through Suez and it's all sort of unfair to take other people's resources and profit off them... well we're not going to understand people who see them as matters that decide the life or death of tens of millions of their citizens, providing desperately needed time and space.

This situation is literally unprecedented. There has never been a major proxy war with a nuclear superpower fought right on its border. We are wandering into a very dangerous situation, harassing a paranoid schizophrenic with a fully loaded machine gun. Our Ukraine policy should have been not to have a policy, like we don't have a policy on whatever terrible things Saudi Arabia does, invading countries and blowing up civilians. Saudi Arabia is a can of worms we shouldn't open and they're useful as a partial ally. Russia is the same - it had tremendous possibilities as a counter to China, the real danger. The issue is that people like Brzezinski and co with understandable grudges against Russia arrived in the West and pushed this line of argument: 'Russia is innately imperialistic so the West must harass them at every turn and break their will to resist'. The interests of Poland or the Baltics should not unduly and expensively affect Western foreign policy.

If Russia was attacking important countries like the oil-rich Middle East or Taiwan, then it would be wise to defend them and obstruct Russia. But Ukraine is not important. What are we defending? There's some gas in Ukraine but far more in Russia, which we have now lost access to. They have some titanium but Japan produces far more. The moral argument against invading countries is ridiculous given our Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya adventures. There are still US troops in Syria.

If Russia was attacking important countries like the oil-rich Middle East or Taiwan, then it would be wise to defend them and obstruct Russia

Russian attacked the United Kindom. Twice. Using WMD.

I understand the good and sufficient reasons why the response to this provocative behaviour was not loading a glitter bomb onto a Trident missile, attaching a note saying "Dear Vlad, we only have one kind of WMD, Take care, Love Lizzie" and setting the thing off in Red Square. But if Russia has decided they want to be our enemy, then obstructing them is the right thing to do, and Ukraine is a good place to do it.

By this logic, the US has attacked Pakistan many times, bombing their citizens on their home soil. That doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't work together at times. Diplomacy is about making cost-efficient moves to advance one's interests, not about marking someone as an enemy and then harassing them indefinitely.

The Italians invaded Ethiopia back in 1935. It was very bad, they did all kinds of war crimes, used gas and so on. The British and French decided to impose sanctions, which didn't really have any effect... other than pushing Mussolini into Hitler's arms. Prior to the sanctions, Mussolini was their ally in the Stresa Front and strongly opposed Germany annexing Austria, exposing Italy's northern flank. Taking actions rooted in simplistic moral thinking about good and bad or friend and enemy can be massively counterproductive.

What kind of Russian 'obstruction' are we going to face in the future, from our 'obstruction'? That is what I am concerned about. The key conflict is between the US and China. That will decide the century. Now we've locked in Russia as an enemy and little can be done at this point. But this was not a good idea!

This situation is literally unprecedented. There has never been a major proxy war with a nuclear superpower fought right on its border.

The Soviet Union bordered Afghanistan, though that was a much smaller war.

Not proxy wars, but there were at least one war between URSS and China in 1964 and one between India and Pakistan in 1999, in both cases with both participants having nuclear weapons (and URSS being a superpower). Though admittedly both were fairly small in scale.

On the first part I agree they have a reason to paranoid and traumatized but it is in fact paranoia and irrational.

Even when America has invaded and occupied it’s been fairly good for the occupied. Germany and Japan were rebuilt. Iraq and Afghanistan suffered no long term decline in population trend. Barely a one year blip. Then a fuck ton of American money to rebuild anything we broke and then some. Afghanistan basically doubled per capita income under American occupation. Our aid spending was basically 100% of preoccupation gdp.

Which if we consider what a NATO occupation of Russia would be if we invented a device to deactivate every nuclear bomb in existence and could go in. After we invaded, conquored, occupied it would be a bunch of checks written to elites for their cooperation. It would be a bunch of money for development. It would be selling every commodity they could for more riches. Pre-war Europe exported a ton of machine parts for industry basically in exchange for energy and commodity exports. That would resume. Russia has always depended on western importation of industry and that includes under the USSR when western consultants pored in and built their factories. It would be everything we’ve ever done for them but more of it. And a bunch of checks written to Russia with some of the money stolen by oligarchs for a decade and a bunch of fat consulting fees for the McKinseys and less known Booz (which specializes more in that space). This is the true “realism”.

Ukraines kind of important too. It’s not like Ukraine isn’t the buffer that protects Poland and a lot of other countries that hate Russians who use to be Russian colonies. Who are just like Ukranians who are not NPC and hate Russians because of what Russians have done to them. The Ukranian war is popular in Europe because that country protects the rest of Europe from the Russian threat.

And to be honest we never really had a Ukraine policy before the war. They couldn’t join NATO with territorial disputes. They had some trade deals.

And I disagree with an assertion that the west has harassed Russia. When have we invaded them? We basically built their industry and war machine. Italy and Germany lived off exports to Russia. They didn’t want to build an army to conquor Russia when they could just send them machines to pay for oil.

The west didn’t pick the proxy war. They let Russia take 3 territories and were fine with the status quo.

Funny as I go thru this thought process the best resolution to this war would be Putin asking for a trillion dollars in aid, removing all sanctions (100 billion stolen by putin friends), a western friendly government, and no pride flags (Japan deal). Would put a lot of pressure on China.

And to be honest we never really had a Ukraine policy before the war. They couldn’t join NATO with territorial disputes. They had some trade deals.

Wasn’t the US heavily involved in the leadup to and aftermath from the 2014 revolution? With a strong policy interest in removing Yanukovich?

No. US had no very little involvement in that. Mostly propaganda we played a role.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-ukraine-tape/leaked-audio-reveals-embarrassing-u-s-exchange-on-ukraine-eu-idUKBREA151VA20140207

The audio clip, which was posted on Tuesday but gained wide circulation on Thursday, appears to show the official, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, weighing in on the make-up of the next Ukrainian government.

Nuland is heard telling U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt that she doesn’t think Vitaly Klitschko, the boxer-turned-politician who is a main opposition leader, should be in a new government.

“So I don’t think Klitsch (Klitschko) should go into the government,” she said in the recording, which appeared to describe events that occurred in late January. “I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Separately on Thursday, a senior Kremlin aide accused the United States of arming Ukrainian “rebels” and warned Russia could intervene to maintain the security of its neighbour.

So she did nothing? Discussed the situation . I don’t know people post nuland when it’s been confirmed she didn’t intervene or act.

My understanding is that the US was heavily interested in and involved with Ukraine leading up to 2014. And certainly afterwards. I am not an expert, but I believe I can come up with hundreds more links if prompted. Do you wish to restate your understanding of the US foreign policy interest in Ukraine before the current invasion?

More comments

Which if we consider what a NATO occupation of Russia would be if we invented a device to deactivate every nuclear bomb in existence and could go in

Firstly, we can't have such a device because it doesn't exist. If we did, we'd simply have to occupy Russia, a task that is notoriously difficult. They'd probably dump smallpox or bioweapons on us if we nuked them.

Secondly, the NATO/neolib occupation of Russia was tried in the 1990s with 'shock therapy' and US interference in the 1996 Russian elections to help Yeltsin, a drunkard and a putschist, stay in power. The guy made Jan 6th look like a tea party in a dollhouse, he had tanks shell the Russian Parliament in 1993 and killed 187 people. This was the guy we gave massive aid to - Putin is the reward we earned with our own efforts. If you massively subsidize and assist a cartoonishly villainous thug who steals from the people and shells the Parliament, people are not going to trust in your goodwill.

We already had the McKinsey school and Chicago school go in, we gave cheques to local elites - they made a complete mess of things. If your last experience of liberal democracy was grinding poverty, economic collapse, national humiliation, horrific life expectancy collapse and the creation of the oligarchs... why would you not be paranoid about the people who propped up Yeltsin? I'm not exaggerating about the 1990s, there were incidents where workers went without pay for months just to keep their jobs since they certainly weren't getting other ones if they quit!

I am not satisfied that we know how Russia should be run and have the skills to avoid making a massive economic disaster, even if we had the power to force the issue. At the time Western influence was greatest in Russia in the 1990s, it was wrecked 10x worse than anything this war could possibly do.

https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-per-capita

Thirdly, our intervention in Afghanistan was a tragic farce. We funded institutionalized pedophilia in the Afghan Army, integrated Afghanistan into world heroin markets and funneled vast amounts of wealth into a newly created class of Afghan oligarchs. Some of our trillions trickled down to the population, who are now starving since we cut off the funds. We totally failed to create a liberal democracy. Rather similar to how we totally failed to make a liberal democracy in Iraq and Russia. We are not very good at this and should stop.

The Ukrainian war is popular in Europe because that country protects the rest of Europe from the Russian threat.

NATO and nuclear weapons protect the rest of Europe from the Russian threat, not the Ukrainian army. It wasn't the Ukrainian army that warded off the Soviets during the Cold War. Furthermore, is there a Russian threat to Europe? There's a Russian threat to the Baltics and maybe Moldova where there are large Russian minorities. If we look at both this war and the Georgian war, we see that Russia only invades countries in some kind of conflict with a Russian minority. Simply avoiding conflicts with Russian minorities will avoid war.

The Russian threat in offensive conventional terms is greatly overrated, the Europeans vastly outspend them. Russia's power is 95% nuclear. Ukraine is soaking up nearly all of Russia's offensive conventional power but they still have enough nuclear weapons to raze Europe and North America, a fact that won't change regardless of what happens in this war.

an assertion that the west has harassed Russia

There's the bombing of Libya, where the Russians were hopping mad that their oil and gas contracts with Qaddafi were lost. There's our proxy war against Syria, Russia's closest ally in the Mediterranean. What about sanctions in 2014? What about our media complaining non-stop that Putin was behind Trump's election from 2016-2020? Withdrawing from the ABM treaty and basing ballistic missile defense in Eastern Europe, weakening Russia's nuclear deterrent? What about our massive aid to Yeltsin who wrecked their country? Providing significant quantities of weapons to Ukraine under Trump, such as Javelins? Our Ukraine policy was to build up Ukraine and use it to put pressure on Russia, that's why we were training their army and providing them with weapons. That was why we orchestrated a coup to evict Yanukyovich, who was too close to Russia.

And to be honest we never really had a Ukraine policy before the war. They couldn’t join NATO with territorial disputes. They had some trade deals.

We made Ukraine our proxy. The National Endowment for Democracy and Open Society Foundation worked hard and effectively, molding Ukrainian politics and media, turning the country into a weapon against Russia. We were providing NATO weapons and training to the Ukrainian military.

We should have just done nothing. Done nothing in Iraq, done nothing in Afghanistan besides some intensive bombing to take revenge for 9/11, hunt down Al-Qaeda with special forces. Done nothing in Libya, done nothing in Eastern Europe. We sit back behind our nuclear weapons and powerful militaries and focus on China, the greatest threat.

The most realistic conclusion to this war is a lot more Russians who hate the West, some kind of negotiated peace where the Russians get bits of the Donbass and a land connection to Crimea, cheap Russian energy for China, European economic decline and more Russian assistance for whenever China fights the West, perhaps opening up another front in Ukraine. We have once again made things worse for ourselves at vast expense and cost of Ukrainian life.

This feels like well propaganda to me.

You get basic facts wrong like not respecting Iraq as a democracy. Afghanistan you some how blame us for no longer giving them money.

Nuclear weapons aren’t protecting Estonia (part of nato in your view) if we aren’t willing to fight in Ukraine. Then we aren’t dropping a nuke on Moscow if they invade the Baltics.

There’s no evidence we turned Ukraine west. We didn’t turn Belarus west, ukranians just CHOSE us.

I never supported US involvement in Syria and always liked Assad. So don’t paint me with that.

Not sure what you are accusing us of doing in 2014 - didn’t Russia invade a neighbor that year? Russia declaring war is suddenly something bad the US did? Makes no sense.

The Russian threat is overrated? Haven’t they obliterated a few countries and some of Ukraine with artillery? Keyboard warriors can say that but not when Russian artillery is outside their town.

Hate to tell you this but the most likely conclusion is Ukraine wins. Sometime next year their getting f-18. If the west got the guns then why not use them and kill some Russians? Fuck I pay a ton in taxes for the military and like Ukranians so we better give them whatever they need to kill Russians.

Iraq is not a liberal democracy, as I said. Even the Atlantic Council agrees with me. It's a massive fragile mess of Iran-backed Shia militias, ex-ISIS militias and Kurdish militias.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/the-truth-about-iraq-s-democracy/

The US went into Afghanistan, got hundreds of thousands of people killed in the war, expanded Afghan drug production with their incompetence, subsidized bacha-bazi in the Afghan Army (also known as the rape of boys), squandered trillions of dollars in corruption. Then they left and obstructed famine relief, confiscating $7 billion from their national bank. The US really is not interested in the welfare of Afghans, otherwise this wouldn't have happened. It was a complete clusterfuck.

There’s no evidence we turned Ukraine west.

The Nuland phone call has a recording of them plotting out who will be in the new Ukrainian government. US-based NGOs like Open Society and government backed organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy have spent billions in Ukraine, funding NGOs and protest groups. This is well documented. That buys loyalty and influence.

Nuclear weapons aren’t protecting Estonia (part of nato in your view) if we aren’t willing to fight in Ukraine. Then we aren’t dropping a nuke on Moscow if they invade the Baltics.

Do you understand what an alliance is? Azerbaijan invaded Armenia - the US is not obliged to do anything because they're not allied. If China invades Nepal, the US is not obliged to do anything. But if Russia invades Estonia, they are obliged to fight because they are allied. It was a foolish idea to bring these small countries into the alliance, they contribute very little while creating risks. But now they're there we have to stick with them.

Not sure what you are accusing us of doing in 2014 - didn’t Russia invade a neighbor that year? Russia declaring war is suddenly something bad the US did? Makes no sense.

US and EU imposed sanctions on Russia that year because the Russians took Crimea. That's harassment. They didn't declare war, they still haven't declared war. Nobody has declared war.

Sometime next year their getting f-18.

There are discussions over sending F-16s to Ukraine, not F-18s.

The Russian threat is overrated? Haven’t they obliterated a few countries and some of Ukraine with artillery? Keyboard warriors can say that but not when Russian artillery is outside their town.

You don't understand what I'm saying. The conventional threat to the West is overrated, the nuclear threat is underrated. The US has wrecked a few countries in the last 20 years but that doesn't mean Belgium is threatened by the US in the same way Iran or Syria is. Threat is relative.

If the west got the guns then why not use them and kill some Russians? Fuck I pay a ton in taxes for the military and like Ukranians [sic] so we better give them whatever they need to kill Russians.

This is a really unsophisticated argument. Have you thought about what you're saying for more than 10 seconds? If the Ukrainians ask for your whole army, navy and airforce would you hand it over? Your nuclear arsenal? Foreign policy has consequences. These can include fuel shortages, inflation, making enemies, getting into wars, starting nuclear wars. It should be approached carefully.

You are literally ridiculous. Your first article that you cite said most of the election irregularities are just poor losers but should be investigated. By that definition America is NOT a liberal democracy. Did you even read the article - it supports a position that Iraq is a Democracy.

Sure we didn’t transform Afghanistan but we didn’t make it worse. There population grew on trend the entire time. No excess deaths.

We also signed treaties with Ukraine that we would protect their sovereignty. Baltics would be very hard to defend if Russia controlled Ukraine. And once you break one vow to defend then I’m not sure how you can assume we would keep a vow to defend Estonia. Come on man make some sense with your arguments.

Lol it’s harrassment that when a country invaded your friend you limit trade with them.

Dude if you haven’t been paying attention F-18 are when not if.

Don’t insult me for not being sophisticated. I’ve thought it thru and completely support giving Ukraine whatever weapons they want and support American boots on the ground. Nukes I wouldn’t give them. Russia literally has zero chance to win the war. Even if they get a breakthrough there would be a NATO counter probably polish boots. Again I pay taxes for military weapons. I want to use them to kill Russians.

NATO goes into Ukraine then your city is toast. Why do Americans feel so part of this anyway? It’s a fight thousands of miles away.

More comments

Iraq’s road to democracy is still long, and while this election could be seen as a step forward, it has also underlined the fragilities and setbacks that might result in further disillusionment

The article says that Iraq is not a liberal democracy. If it's on the road to democracy, it's not a democracy, let alone a liberal democracy! If a doctor gives a report about the state of someone's health, it doesn't mean that they're healthy.

Sure we didn’t transform Afghanistan but we didn’t make it worse. There population grew on trend the entire time. No excess deaths.

No excess deaths is not the sole standard for how benign a military operation is. Imagine if the US raped and impregnated all the women there. Population grows on trend! But that's still a bad thing.

We also signed treaties with Ukraine that we would protect their sovereignty.

No, you didn't promise to do anything.

https://www.whsv.com/2022/02/25/does-us-have-an-obligation-protect-ukraine/

Baltics would be very hard to defend if Russia controlled Ukraine.

Look at a map. Ukraine doesn't even border the Baltics. The Baltics are already hard to defend because of geography and Kaliningrad in conventional terms.

Lol it’s harrassment that when a country invaded your friend you limit trade with them.

Yes. They froze hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian banks, preventing them spending their own money. It's also harassment when a country organizes a coup in your friend as in 2014, or manipulates your elections, as in 1996.

Dude if you haven’t been paying attention F-18 are when not if.

There's no evidence for this. F-18s are much more advanced and expensive than F-16s and would be too hard for Ukraine to supply. That's why they asked for F-16s. That's why everyone is talking about F-16s, not F-18s.

Nukes I wouldn’t give them. Russia literally has zero chance to win the war. Even if they get a breakthrough there would be a NATO counter probably polish boots. Again I pay taxes for military weapons. I want to use them to kill Russians.

Great, then we get a nuclear war. That would kill a lot of Russians!

More comments

Supposedly Russia was considering joining NATO in 2000.

The Labour peer recalled an early meeting with Putin, who became Russian president in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”

The account chimes with what Putin told the late David Frost in a BBC interview shortly before he was first inaugurated as Russian president more than 21 years ago. Putin told Frost he would not rule out joining Nato “if and when Russia’s views are taken into account as those of an equal partner”.

Russia doesn't want to be an American lapdog like Germany or Japan.

and no pride flags (Japan deal).

That was the 1940s deal, American foreign policy prioritizes women's rights and anal sex.

If they tried to teach the Taliban to respect women, why would they not teach the Russians to have anal pride?

You now have a well-established pattern of contributing nothing but heat and low-effort sneering. With 5 warnings and 2 bans and no signs of improvement, this ban will be 2 weeks.

hat was the 1940s deal, American foreign policy prioritizes women's rights and anal sex.

Lol, If only.

Ok so a peace deal is fine if Trump is POTUS and no anal sex?

Russia started the second chechen war in 2000 and your quote says equal partner. Maybe nato couldn’t add some one looking to invade neighbors with veto power.

I could see Trump making peace with Russia.

It's possible that the US would not force Russia to go gay just like they are not forcing Japan now.

Japan is probably too powerful and useful against China currently, and Russia may be in the same situation.

But with the way things are going, they may be hoping to weaken Russia enough to make them irrelevant and bend them to pride.

Or they're just looking for a world war, as some kind of stimulus for the global economy perhaps?

I can't explain why they led Saudi Arabia to start considering alternate currencies to the petrodollar.

Pride isn’t even winning here. Gay marriage yes which I disagree with but men are women has a huge push back.

And I’m not some pushover - I’ve told gay friends to just take a wife who wanted a family and do some shit on the side.

Jesus! Oh, these national ideas, printed in the genetic code since the time of the Huns. Is this a serious theory?

First, the negative attitude towards the US and NATO and the perception of its expansion as a threat to personal and state security. It started back in the Cold War and hasn't gone anywhere.

Secondly (and it's strange to me how people forget about internal and external groups in the culture wars thread) the population of Donbass is an internal group. And when Ukraine attacked a region that wanted to join Russia, the bulk of the Russian population perceived this as an attack on their own group with a predictable reaction. And the fact that there is no Ukrainian Internet and all Ukrainians are in RuNet only exacerbated the confrontation. And guro with Russian military finally consolidated this.

The NATO fear (which is irrational) dates back centuries. I also never said it was genetic. It’s cultural and educationally transmitted.

There’s no evidence Donbas wanted to join Russia. There’s never been independent not occupied votes.

Let’s remember Germany was spending like 1.3% of gdp on defense. Those areas that could have been “invasion” threats had already decided to unilaterally disarm.

I also never said it was genetic. It’s cultural and educationally transmitted.

After 1917 the Soviet Union completely changed the culture and education system. The Huns cannot be relevant.

here’s no evidence Donbas wanted to join Russia. There’s never been independent not occupied votes.

Well, first of all, it was (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Donbas_status_referendums) .

And secondly, you will not create a successful militia in a small region, fighting the army of a 40-million country without the support of the local population. You can talk as much as you want about Strelkov connections with the FSB, but Strelkov had a lot of fighters from Donetsk. And the Russian army intervened in the conflict much later.

Let’s remember Germany was spending like 1.3% of gdp on defense

The US has never disarmed. And they actively demonstrated their readiness to attack random countries.

The NATO fear (which is irrational)

A military alliance with a population of a billion people and a GDP of 60 trillion that denies you the right to become a member, but stubbornly continues to push towards your borders, creating opportunities for proxy wars or a critical violation of your nuclear deterrent. Can't this be taken as a threat?

“In 1917 Soviets…..”

Did I miss all the Soviet invasions into Eastern Europe pre and post Cold War?

You know those referendums were not free and fair elections. And some population had left.

US did cut military spending. And outside of Mitt Romney like I remember some guy named Obama making fun of Romney and the Cold War and everyone laughed.

Edit: we never explicitly denied Russia from joining NATO. And a lot of analysts are disappointed with Germany and a lesser extent Italy and a few others providing Russia with the machinery they needed to build weapons. Germany built the Russian military infrastructure.

Did I miss all the Soviet invasions into Eastern Europe pre and post Cold War?

The logic of the world communist revolution and the Cold War had nothing to do with the opposition of the feudal states of Rus against the Polovtsians. Like the pan-Slavism of the Russian Empire. These are too different societies and states for inheritance to make any sense.

You know those referendums were not free and fair elections.

You strangely assume that the pro-Ukrainian population left, when in fact there were people who fled the war to Ukraine and Russia. The referendums sufficiently reflected the will of the majority of the population. Legal formalities are much less important.

US did cut military spending.

Show me this on graph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Defense_spending.png

And outside of Mitt Romney like I remember some guy named Obama making fun of Romney and the Cold War and everyone laughed.

The beginning of the Obama presidency was rather a strange exception, which quickly ended. As I understand it, the US was afraid that the 2008 crisis would turn their economy into Japan and began to behave like a good boy, normalizing relations with Russia and China. But it just ended in nothing when it became clear that quantitative easing was working. In general, the beginning of the Obama administration is a short and atypical period of change in rhetoric.

we never explicitly denied Russia from joining NATO.

And the EU has never denied Turkey membership. It is not in politics to publicly refuse such things. This does not mean that the de facto refusal did not occur.

And a lot of analysts are disappointed with Germany and a lesser extent Italy and a few others providing Russia with the machinery they needed to build weapons.

The Russian military-industrial complex has always remained quite separate from other countries. Except for buying electronics.

Germany built the Russian military infrastructure.

It was built by the USSR.

If some fled to Russia it only supports my opinion it wasn’t a real referendum. No one wants to vote in a war zone.

You really want to claim Obama was an exception? Versus America not caring?

Ya sorry Russian industry was built by the west.

Did I miss all the Soviet invasions into Eastern Europe pre and post Cold War?

Yes, apparently you did. While I understand that Russian sympathizers here on the Motte like to imagine that Soviet history starts with Sputnik, there are a lot of people in Poland, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Western Ukraine that would beg to differ. Let us not forget that Hitler and Stalin started out on the same side.

I can only find a German news article on it, but I would love to see the whole interview (subtitled). However, I doubt such a video exists.

The first result on youtube when searching for their names is the full three-hour video with English subtitles.

Thank you, I am dumb. I mistyped the names when I searched for the video.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats