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 -
I am curious: Trump campaigned on being anti-war, and has attempted to brand himself as a peacemaker this past year. Will starting a war be what drives his supporters away from him? Or will this be considered largely justified?
I could see a world where it is spun as being the best way to spend American resources in the interest of the people, in some roundabout way furthering "America First". But would the voters really buy that?
As the Dreaded Jim said in response to a commenter snarking about how "your neocon “peace president” commited yet another act of aggression":
Si vis pacem, para bellum. There's a difference between being pro-peace, in that you're against large-scale wars — and the kind of "foreign entanglements" that result in your country getting dragged into one — such that you're willing to use smaller, more precise applications of force to help ensure the prevention of bigger conflicts; and being the sort of "principled pacifist" who's against any use of force, no matter the consequences. A difference between preferring not to fight, but being willing to do so just as much as needed; and being unwilling to fight.
America has bombed another sovereign nation. This is literally starting a war with a country that was not a military threat to the US, and (at least to my knowledge) were not at all at risk of going to war themselves. Even if it turns out to be short-lived, this starts a war that would have not otherwise occurred. The literal opposite of peace. I would suggest that people who support this are not anti-war at all. They are anti-losing, anti-spending-lots-of-money-on-prolonged-conflicts, pro-US-can-do-whatever-it-wants, and they clearly do not care about the sovereignty of other countries.
You argue that this intervention was needed but do not explain why. Until I gain a satisfying explanation of why this attack was necessary and worthwhile, I will be forced to believe in the above.
OK, but why would you have thought differently about them? The objection to Afghanistan from those quarters was never that the Taliban had the sovereign right to rule.
I grew up being taught the ideals of a rules-based world where the US stood for international law based on western values. Besides, conservatives tend to use the sovereignty of nations as an argument against globalism. I assumed the argument against foreign aid programs was one of sovereignty. Each country is responsible for their own people. Perhaps most importantly, I was under the impression that being anti-war was a really important part of Trump's campaign. I genuinely believed that was a big reason for people to vote for him.
It seems my desire to be charitable may have led me to wrong conclusions, which have now been corrected. At least until further evidence presents itself.
Yeah, but what were the rules? The inviolacy of embassies, as practiced by the Iranian Revolutionaries or the US in Belgrade? Respecting of sovereignty, as the USSR practiced in the Baltics, Hungary, Czechoslovokia, and indeed Afghanistan, and the US in Panama (more than once) and Grenada? The right to free and fair elections, as practiced by Maduro or the Chicago Democratic machine?
No, the objections were not about sovereignty, and I find it unlikely anyone had that much "charity".
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
Did the bombing of teh Iranian nuclear facilities start a general war? Trump has ordered a fair few military actions, but none of them so far have lead to a wider conflict. Every time he does this, or engages in some sabre-rattling diplomacy, everyone shrieks that he's starting WW3 and wasn't he supposed to be anti-war?
Well, can't know what's in Trump's head. What we can know is the track record. I oppose a general invasion of Venezuela and hope that isn't Trump's plan. As far as a night of bombing and snatching a foreign head of state? It's cool if you get away with it.
Yeah, this is the thing, I don't like everything Trump has ever done, but particularly in foreign affairs I judge him compared to the other option, and he's been remarkable at only doing limited military stuff. (And pretty much every US President ever has done at least dabbled in military action). I actually think that he dodged (at least so far) the scheduled all-out war with Iran, which I think is good.
(And I do mean scheduled, the Littoral Combat Ship seems, at least to me, to have been basically purpose-built for derping around in the Gulf shooting up Iranian speedboats and what have you.)
More options
Context Copy link
Yep. It's risky as hell because you can get dragged into a general invasion and contested occupation that way, but Trump is no stranger to risk.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not an American so can't speak for his actual supporters, but yup, that's the last stop on the Trump train for me.
More options
Context Copy link
I suspect his supporters are more anti-losing than anti-war.
More options
Context Copy link
Seems like that ship sailed ages ago. Even before this you had MTG leaving and Tucker criticizing him, while Pence and Bush praise him. I think at this point the question is more how much this will end up tanking Vance? He's done almost nothing to separate himself from the Epstein coverup, the foreign wars, etc. Just kinda sat in the background and done cheerleading when asked. Seems like his chances are going up in smoke.
You've got the model wrong. Even if this literally went against things Trump promised (and I don't think it does), as @sun_the_second says, it's losing that's the real problem for most of his supporters, not war. It'll tick off the pro-Russia contingent, but most of his supporters will be in favor so long as it looks like winning, and he'll probably increase support from the remnants of the neocons.
Trump doesn't win elections with only "his supporters." Trump needs to win with his actual voters and his actual voters want him to focus on America at home. This move will make that even worse than it already was.
Losing would indeed be even worse than that. Doing literally none of it and instead focusing his political capital on what he ran on and what his voters want would be far better.
The current path of focusing on dumb neocon interventions all over the world is a path to a 2006-style GOP wipeout in the midterms and everything which will stem from that.
Those who are 100% concerned with domestic issues aren't going to be upset by this either; it just won't make them happy.
The midterms may indeed be a wipeout. This isn't going to make it one iota worse and might make it slightly better.
Even with this hypothetical person who is 100% concerned with domestic issues, itself a strawman of my comment, foreign interventions spend political capital and energy which take away from the domestic issues and effect domestic issues. It will (and has) here just like it has throughout US history which is chalk full of presidents with derailed and failed domestic agendas because they got sucked into foreign interventions.
you have to motivate people to vote and engaging in yet another neocon war project does the opposite of that for the Trump coalition
No. Pleasing more educated coastals who didn't vote for Trump, don't support Trump, won't vote for Trump, and actually wanted Trump to be thrown in jail on Jan 7th, 2020, at the cost of, at best, demotivating your own voters, will make the midterms worse.
No they don't. "Political capital" is only expended if there was some sort of deal made here, which there was not; Trump did not make domestic concessions in order to gain support to attack Venezuela, because he didn't need to. The US is a large country and is able to do more than one thing at a time, and indeed pretty much always will do so.
trump doesn't need to make domestic concessions in order to gain support to attack venezuela for it to take political capital, admin energy, and appear to his voters he cares more about foreign intervention than domestic issues
no deals need to be made to spend political capital; political capital is a well of energy which allows political maneuver and action and everything an admin does spends some of it
to be frank, I really struggle to believe you think any Trump voter who wants Trump to focus on domestic issues (a large and growing block across all polls) doesn't care at all about his foreign interventions overseas so much so it doesn't affect their behavior
the neocon war projects themselves are domestic concessions to get stuff Trump wanted earlier in the admin as he was being held hostage on ICE spending and other issues
and yet history is still chock full of other presidential admins who had big promises and big domestic agendas which were completely derailed because their admins focused on foreign interventions
the trump voter will look at the domestic agenda which has been stymied and almost completely stalled with the economy being bad, jobs being bad, affordability being bad, look at what the Trump admin is doing and what they're talking about which is nearly entirely foreign crap and this has been true for many months, and conclude the foreign stuff is being focused on at the expense of the domestic agenda
Trump's attention and follow through which represents nearly the entire engine which gets anything done in his admins is fickle and easily distracted which is why both terms are full of examples of big bluster and threats and then a wholesale failure of follow through as Trump sees something else on Fox News and the moron he appointed to follow through fails to do so for various reasons.
Maybe you have special insight into all these domestic deliverables which will come any day now because the Trump admin can totally do more than one thing at a time, but currently and since May/June it just looks like most of their time, effort, and energy is spent on foreign crap which his voters, at best, do not care about and which they'll think about whether or not they're going to bother showing up to the polls.
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
Nope, it'll eat up airwaves until the midterms. Americans want to focus on America, that's why he's been dropping so hard in the polls for the first year. Immediately started to bomb and lost basically everyone under 40 after the Iran stuff and Epstein. They'll lose the midterms by a landslide and it'll be nothing but downhill from there. You older voters just don't understand the newer generations. I'd expect a short term bump as the brohaha low T people feel bigger for a bit. Then steady decline to the midterm losses.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The base and the elite are already splitting in the groyper war. The base wants America first, the elite want Indian H1B visas, more foreign war and more military industrial complex.
Just making fun of SJW while continuing George Bush policies is going to lead to Trump losing the election.
Who is supposed to support this war? The left wing voter base is not pro war. The America first crowd isn't excited about wasting billions on a foreign war that is going to end up swamping the US with migrants.
TBH I'm an anti-trump neoliberal and I kind of do. I've been pretty vocally against intervention so far because I thought it was stupid, tyrannical, and anyways wouldn't work-- but given that it so far has been short, sweet and (apparently?) successful, I'll be happy to eat crow if it doesn't backfire spectacularly in the next few months. The monroe doctrine is a good thing and so is american imperialism.
More options
Context Copy link
It’s more complex than that, Fuentes actually defended the Monroe doctrine and was ambivalent to sympathetic to attacking Venezuela a few months ago.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires are pretty well known, but Reagan was re-elected after (successfully) invading Grenada, and I doubt most Americans think of it at all these days. HW lost re-election after (successfully) invading Panama, but I think it's generally considered to be for other reasons. JFK and the failure at Bay of Pigs is a harder comparison, but probably relevant.
Grenada was a tiny war against an insignificant country. Just wait until Venezuela lacks a government when it turns into another Libya, Syria or Iraq. It will be an absolute haven for narco cartels just like Afghanistan was and it will cause a mass exodus of refugees.
Venezuela has been holding elections since 1831. There have definitely been hiccups, but it has a long history of elections being the default. That's not the case for Libya, Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
I'm cautiously optimistic. The most likely outcome is an interim government followed by elections. Sure, it's possible that a Maduro successor might win. But I don't think that's likely given how aggressively Maduro was banning opposition politicians.
There is no way the Venezuelans are going to vote to give their oil to American companies.
Also bombing their country isn't going to make them more pro American. All it will do is destabilize the country causing more migrants.
Of course not. They're going to vote to SELL their oil to American companies. Because the choice will be between doing so and not selling much oil at all; they no longer have the domestic expertise and the US isn't going to let anyone else in.
More options
Context Copy link
Maybe. It depends (1) how much damage was done and (2) if they view it as liberating
More options
Context Copy link
It's not at all clear why Big Oil would want venezuelan oil on the market at a time when prices are too low for shale. If anything a war for oil conspiracy would rely on taking oil production offline to raise prices.
And it's not like Venezuela needed American help to destroy their own oil production capabilities. How much crude are they even exporting by this point?
American oil companies want energy subsidies, domesric pipeline investments, looser fracking regulations, and assistance in expanding their portfolios to include more renewables. In terms of where their lobbying dollars are best spent, invading Venezuela doesn't hold a candle to these boring domestic policies. This is an immigration/drugs/dick waving war, not an oil war.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Except those things already happened.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link