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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   32791 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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Mostly ignoring Gaza is a sign of a healthy forum culture, unless your forum has a mission that specifically includes paying attention to obscure third-world humanitarian disasters. The Israel-Palestine conflict is boring, notoriously intractable, and has a low death toll relative to a mid-tier African civil war. It gets far more press than it deserves because it somehow became a proxy for the US culture war.

The key point of interest IMO is that we funded it and supported it, and so, as the evidence right now points to a lot of children having faced needless starvation for no legible reason, we actually funded and supported a policy of arbitrary mass starvation directed at children. For a lot of Americans that deserved attention in a way that an African civil war typically does not, although I’d note that we cared a lot about the Rwandan Civil War back in the day, and even growing up years after the fact I can recall seeing a lot of ambient social and political interest about it.

supported a policy of arbitrary mass starvation directed at children

The communications around this are/were so messy and awkward that it became quickly illegible to most people.

I agree that Americans have more of an excuse for caring about the I-P conflict than other Westerners do.

"The UK should butt out of the I-P conflict, and individual Britons who pick a side either have dual loyalties or are idiots" is probably my most dangerous political opinion in polite company.

for no legible reason

The reason is that their leaders which enjoy overwhelming popular support started a war. You might not like it but it is a very legible reason. I'm personally on the fence whether anyone in the middle east should receive western support, but if it's going to be anyone it's going to be israel over palestinians every day.

But really, middle east is gonna middle east, no point discussing it too much.

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