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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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What are the definitions of "projection" and "rational" you are using here? The former doesn't seem to make sense at all, and the latter seems to directly contradict your first sentence under any meaning of "rational" I'm aware of. (What other examples of beliefs that are "right, but not rational" do you have?)

You may be right that rational is not the right word (I actually kind of hate that word, I just wasn't being precise enough I guess) but projection and the general meaning of the statement as a whole should be pretty obvious--they are projecting their worldview and values onto other countries, that America and co have the same zero sum authoritarian worldview and that will lead them to conflict with russia, when it's obvious by their different actions (How NATO plays out vs historic Russian alliances) that this isn't the case. They then use this claimed worldview to justify things they were going to do anyways (invade a third party). I think it's totally fair to call this irrational, in that it's just not an argument that stands up to any scrutiny, but it is also has a clear purpose and the term rational is too wishy washy relativistic to be meaningful.