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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12732 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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A tiny note on the war

In the previous thread, I got some pushback for suggesting that not only did the US strike the Iranian school in Minab, killing 170 children or something like that, but perhaps it did so intentionally (or at least without remorse for the possible consequences of erroneous targeting). I admit that wasn't fully sincere. I realize that, even morals aside, there is no perceived military value in bombing children, at least not for the US (I do think Israelis may target children of IRGC officers out of their usual Bronze Age blood feud sentiment, Oct 7, Gaza and all, seen enough of their remarks to this effect; but then again they don't operate Tomahawks).

Well now the question on it having been an American strike appears settled. As for the intent – it's not so straightforward:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has gutted the Pentagon oversight offices that would have investigated the recent strike on an Iranian girls’ school — a move that has degraded America’s ability to protect civilians amid its largest air campaign in decades.
The Pentagon chief last year slashed offices that didn’t contribute to his goal of “lethality,” including the group that assists in limiting risk to civilians, known as the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. Around 200 employees who worked on the issue, including at that office, have been reduced by about 90 percent, according to two current and former officials and a person familiar with the effort. The team that handles civilian casualties at Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, has dropped from 10 to one.
Hegseth can’t close the offices because they are approved by Congress. But he has managed to make them nearly inoperable, according to the people, as the Pentagon investigates its responsibility in what could be the worst U.S.-led killing of civilians since 2003. Iranian state media said the strike killed about 170 children and 14 teachers.
“The fact that our secretary of Defense, that our Central Command commander, cannot actually tell us whether or not they dropped a bomb in this location, that is so unbelievably unacceptable,” said Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments until last year. “It just points even more to recklessness in this, in the entire planning and execution of this campaign, the fact that they don’t have any idea.”

Does it matter if there was no intent if the United States, as of now, also has a revealed preference to not bother with minimizing such risks, in favor of «lethality» and some zany Judeo-Christian nationalism courtesy the power-tripping macho TV host Pete Hegseth? I believe it does, but marginally; about as much as those girls matter to Lethal Pete. I rest my case.

More to the point. It's remarkable that there's so little discussion of contemporary historical events on here. I won't criticize anyone, be the change you want etc.; but what we are seeing is pretty astonishing from the culture war standpoint. Could someone like Pete be imaginable as the Secretary of War – no, Defense – in 2023? 2019, even? 2016? It looks as if the politically dominant culture of the United States changed overnight. Does everyone just like it too much to find the change worth commenting on?

There are an amazing number of people responding with, essentially, "shit happens in war", seemingly with giving any further thought to questions like "can we make shit happen less in war?", "does what we're trying to achieve justify this shit?", and "should the fact that shit happens in war make us more cautious about going to war?"

Christ

I risk sounding like a broken record here but that old Clemenceau quote is relevant again: "America Is the Only Country That Went from Barbarism to Decadence Without Civilization In Between".

When you look at things through this lens everything explains itself perfectly. The Americans as a nation have never been properly civilised, their national myth includes things like the Frontier man and the taming of the wilderness, but in one of those rather all too common twists of irony I'd say the wild has transformed Americans far more than they have ever transformed it.

Once you realize that America as a country has never had civilisation in the sense a European, a Chinese, or even dare I say, a Persian, would understand it, (I mean as a country, many many Americans are perfectly civilised people, the problem is not All Americans, the problem is Enough Americans) everything starts falling into place and making sense.

The way to deal with such a country is to treat it like it is: rather than trying to support the US or help them in their war against Iran out of some misguided gentlemanly obligation, Europe now has an excellent opportunity to twist the knife and extract huge concessions from the US on Ukraine and tariffs in return for them being allowed to use European bases to run their war. And make your demands and the concessions you get public as red meat for your domestic base. It's no different to what the Americans would have done to you had the shoe been on the other foot.

That's a nice free-form contentless rant, and like Dase I know you love sneering at Westerners, and Americans especially, as hard as we will allow, under the cope of speaking from a delusional sense of superiority. But do tell me: in what sense are Americans not (or ever) "civilized"? Non-rhetorically. Step up. What do those words mean?

Because under every definition with any non-rhetorical meaning, this is simply nonsense. It's a snarky pseudo-elite bon motte with no significance beyond the performative revulsion, the affected contempt.

What you actually mean by "civilized" is "has a culture I like and behaves in ways I approve of." And sure, everyone is entitled to like their own culture and think it is better than other cultures. You can disapprove of America and wish we were more like you all you want. But if you want to start trading cheap sneers about respective cultures and how "civilized" we are and aren't, you sure would not want us to take the mod guardrails off when talking about Pakistan, or Muslim culture writ large.

Whenever I see you toss these haughty sneers like you're an aristocrat curling your upper lip at the revolting peasants, I am just astounded at the sheer arrogance. Not offended, but genuinely astounded that you can be so lacking in perspective and awareness.

and like Dase I know you love sneering at Westerners, and Americans especially, as hard as we will allow, under the cope of speaking from a delusional sense of superiority

You deserve so much more, with your obscene sense of entitlement to boomered-out superficiality.

But for the record, I not only believe that Americans are civilized, but that they're distinct enough to merit classification as a civilization unto itself, separate from the Western one, more dynamic, with greater passionarity. Some don't like it, well too bad for them.

Maybe we can talk of Amero-Israeli civilization, or just Israeli civilization, in the vein of Hebraic Conservatism with offshoots – a very mainstream and respectable idea in America, despite it looking like insane sectarian gibberish to most Westerners! But I'd still say those, for now, constitute two distinct successful non-Western civilizations.

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