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 -
You're going to need a lot of evidence for that claim when the simple explanation that the American government wants a government with nuclear ICBM aspiration that holds regular "death to America" chants changed is much more fitting. It certainly seems more in the interests of America than Israel, which will have to deal with the fallout of a neighbor's regime collapse.
Also, Israel will still be almost an order of magnitude less dominant in the region than Turkey, and much less than the Saudis as well. It's not even close to being a regionally dominant power.
Where do you think the animosity from Iran and its urgency to have a nuclear deterrent fomes from? It comes from Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, all locations in which the US and Israel directly flexed hard military power to achieve regime change on behalf of Israel's geopolitical objectives. Iran has only made it this far because if its missile deterrent.
Israel has been hostile and aggressive against all of its regional neighbors and used the US for its dirty work, and it's a shock that makes an enemy of Iran? It's one of the steep costs of this pseudo-alliance with Israel, which is not an alliance at all. It's subversive and always has been.
The notion that Turkey has 10 times more domination of those neighbors than Israel, who is actively bombing them and taking credit for overthrowing Assad and on the verge of overthrowing Iran, is of course totally delusional.
This is just geopolitically and historically ignorant. No, the US did not bomb or invade these countries at the behest of Israel. It was because of America's geopolitical objectives, which were to implement democracy and stabilize the region so that oil flow would not be impeded. The reason why Israel is an American ally is because they're the only meaningful democracy in the region and have most of the same objectives..
o act like Iran, an Islamic theocracy which hates America on a very fundamental ideological basis, only points its ire towards America because it invaded Iraq (which tried to invade Iran by the way, among other neighbors) and bombed ISIS and Libya is just factually incorrect. Iran's regime has been fanatically anti-America long before any of this went on and would still be even if its objectives of destroying Israel succeeded.
Do you know the history of Israel and what it's neighbors goals explicitly state they wanted and still want to do to it?
That Turkey is not at war with its neighbors is not evidence that it's much more powerful than Israel. It has more than 9 times the population, a much larger militaryt and it's also not totally ineffectually commanded like most Arabs in the region.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link