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 -
In your effort to notice, you seem to have forgotten to notice that there is nothing surprising about the Americans opposing attempts by Europeans to create precedents of universal jurisdiction that could also be applied against the Americans by international legal institutions Americans also aren't a part of. And by nothing surprising, I mean that the so-called Hague Act is over two decades old, and over half of that was under Democratic administrations.
The Americans have consistently opposed various European efforts to apply the Rome Statute beyond the jurisdiction of the Rome Statute, which has very clear jurisdictional limitations even when you factor in the internal-ICC efforts to claim jurisdiction over the Gaza conflict via a membership application by the Palestinian Authority, which is not a sovereign state, over a decade after the Palestinian Authority was thrown out of (or off of high rises within) Gaza. That various members and lobbyists in the ICC are inclined to ignore this in pursuit of their foreign policy preferences doesn't really change the implications of this longstanding opposition. It doesn't change things even if they are Europeans doing it in Europe with European funds to European applause. They they attempted to apply this against an American ally, in a format that isn't-currently-but-could-easily be invoked against American administrations were it successful, is merely poor statecraft.
That it is also poor legal policy on their part, and very likely counter-productive to the aims they claim to be pursuing, are entirely separate matters.
As a side note, from what I hear, there was a decent amount of internal dissent within the ICC over the decision to go after Netanyahu. Apparently there were some elements who correctly predicted that doing so would not accomplish anything except to undermine the legitimacy of the ICC.
But I think that when progressivism infests an organization, it's analogous to a virus infecting a living organism. i.e. the organism's systems and resources are hijacked to primarily serve the interests of the invader as opposed to those of the host. So that in the same way Disney keeps churning out lousy woke movies that lose money, the ICC has seriously undermined its own legitimacy in order to damage Israel.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link