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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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Iran - US - Israel War Flareup

“Israel says it has launched attack on Iran, as explosions reported in Tehran”

“The US has begun Major Combat Operations in Iran” - Donald Trump (headline flashed up just now on my phone, no link yet)

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More to follow but thought I’d post quickly for any commenting.

The ultra feminists on hacker news are busy downvoting me after I pointed out that the way Iranian regime treat its women makes the regime the worse side compared to US and Israel. That is all one needs to know about the current situation honestly.

Probably because it's transparently a bad faith argument. I'm guessing neither you nor trump care that much how $arbitrary_regime treats women and even if you did, would never advocate for starting military action on any nation that basis. if you did care about the women, starting a war is obviously not the most productive way to fix that, nor is there any guarantee that the women will be better off afterwards.

So this war is not about the women and your attempt to collapse the whole issue into "better or worse for women" is a cheap rhetorical trick to paint your adversaries as hypocrites for opposing it.

Calling it a "cheap rhetorical trick" is itself a cheap rhetorical trick to try to dodge a hypocrisy killshot. The alliance between Western feminist progressives and Islamic fundamentalists was always completely psychotic under any ideological framework other than "they just hate the West and don't believe any of their own bullshit". Rubbing their noses in it and taking the opportunity to diminish the extent that anyone takes progressive feminists seriously is points fairly scored.

It isn't, it's calling a spade a spade.

I'm confident it's a cheap rhetorical trick, because if the form of the argument were used against you, you would call it out as a low grade gotcha. "If you care about X, and Y is bad for X, then you should in all cases oppose Y and support any action whatsoever that harms Y" is obvious nonsense of the highest order. Just substitute "children" for X and imagine all of the policy positions that would result.

The alliance between Western feminist progressives and Islamic fundamentalists was always completely psychotic under any ideological framework other than "they just hate the West and don't believe any of their own bullshit

Uncharitable at best. Failure to model your opponents at worst. I think there's definitely an aspect of hypocrisy here but characterizing the situation as psychotic is not true. There are mechanisistic reasons we see this play out. It does have its own internal logic.

Rubbing their noses in it and taking the opportunity to diminish the extent that anyone takes progressive feminists seriously is points fairly scored.

Ahh. So it is just arguments as soldiers then.

Gonna have to bow out here, I don't see any further exchange between us on this topic being productive.

There are mechanisistic reasons we see this play out. It does have its own internal logic.

Which are?

I mean, I can think of a few off the top of my head - Muslims are fargroup, ingroup enemies matter more and I can hurt them more so I pick the battles I think I can win?

I don't live anywhere near brown people so I consider them a nonfactor to my immediate safety compared to white people, who are competition within the same class?

I think demographics are destiny and Muslims vote as a political bloc, I don't want to do anything that would weaken my political side?

The iconic weapon of Islamic fundamentalists are AK-47s that fire bigger bullets, and getting shot by one or blown up by an IED carries more risk than catching one from the bog standard American right-wing nutjob AR-15 derivative chambered in 5.56?

I don't think you're talking about any of those, but those seem like pretty logical reasons to me. The one thing that pretty much can't be argued is that Islamic fundamentalism is better for women than western conservatism - and if you do, please bring receipts, I'm interested to see the outcomes on a chart somewhere. It'd be really funny to find out if there's some negative correlation to be found on a chart between heart disease and hijabs.