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 mad, bro? You mad bro?” Too bad I was kind of looking forward to arguing again. Until next time!
You're as bad as Dase about taking advantage of your many AAQCs to occasionally descend into juvenile neener-neenering like this. Don't do this or I will send you both to bed without your suppers.
“Bed without suppers”? You can’t follow your own rules while you enforce them, you want to insult me and then hide behind your jannie hat. Go fuck yourself. Nobody cares about your AAQCs or your bans, and I’ll happily eat one to tell you off. We don’t need to be tone-policed by someone who can’t even police himself, a rude and nasty person.
I'm a very nice person, actually. The level of rudeness some people exhibit while flying into a rage because I sometimes chide them in exasperation is incredible, though.
Take three days off and chill out.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
For the record, I was enjoying reading both your and @DaseindustriesLtd's takes!
I think of it as a fun ongoing debate tbh
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You flinch away from self-reflection, which is in character, of course.
Guy who can’t face the inconsistency of his predictions telling me to self-reflect
They're perfectly consistent though. It's the US policy that's inconsistent, because the US has no culture of merit or human virtue and can elevate a random scammer to presidency.
Pretty sure you have complained in the past about anti-Russian sentiments or dehumanization of Slavs. And I know I have told you before that "America and Americans suck" falls under the same "Do not make generalized statements of universal boo-ness about broad groups" before.
This time I'm not banning you, though you probably deserve it, not because of your illustrious past glory, but because frankly this whole thread is terrible. You and @Shakes have been reduced to doing little more than "Nuh-uhing" at each other with some of the worst quality of argumentation we've seen in.... okay, in a day or two, but still. But whatever spite you feel for America, Americans, or the American president, you still need to take a breath and type the extra words that distinguish between specific Americans whom you hold in disregard and all Americans. Also lay off the ad hominems.
Thanks, I'll allow @Shakes to be the only one self-immolating this time. In my defense I'd say that obviously every people has a fraction that provokes dehumanization, and often that fraction takes the reins of power. My fellow Slavs these days tend to label me a Jew for what I usually have to say about our glorious Slav leadership they endorse or at least cope with, and by extension about loyalists and passive enablers. Everyone should understand that such disdain is exponentially less directed on fractions further from the causal root of the dysfunction.
I am not bantering about "no culture of merit or human virtue", however. It's a serious, good faith point that Americans do not ask of their political leadership to demonstrate any form of merit or virtue; there is no institutional requirement, and there's no bottom-up demand, apparently. Trump is legitimate, as much as Mamdani or Obama. He didn't have to be smart, or hard-working, or wise, or "presidential", or proven to have met some KPIs in governance, or anything; he just needed to win votes and he's good at that one thing. One can defend this norm (democracy, inclusivity, elite competition, larger selection pool, wisdom of the crowds, I don't care), but I don't believe it should be flaggable to bring it up.
If anything, I only concede I should have scoped it with "among elected politicians" (clearly these notions are often known and honored in other contexts, eg in the US Military below Hegseth level).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is a cartoonish, almost ghoulish understanding of the United States of America. It would be absurd to say about almost any country, let alone the country that has made possible the most flourishing in human history. I get criticized for grandiosity but this is far more extreme than anything I’ve ever said.
It's not my fault that you have a cartoonish "president" surrounded by cartoonish WWE caricatures, and that people like you seriously demand this freak show be recognized as a legitimate government of a nation. I understand it for what it is.
Charitably, we can say that the regime you endorse and feel kinship for is akin to a cordyceps growing out of the United States. Of course, it seeks to identify and legitimize itself with past American achievements.
Respectfully, this is just TDS. Your rebuttal is that you don’t like Donald Trump.
Yes, I really don't like Donald Trump.
It's worth a top level post though. Generally I think that "X derangement syndrome" can be a productive analytical lens. Here, for example, I use Elon Derangement Syndrome to explain what I see as unreasonable skepticism about Starship. I think Elon is a pretty bad person actually! But that has little bearing on the merits of his space program. He's an extraordinarily capable, visionary industrialist, SpaceX is a peerless global leader, Starship is insanely good. People derive "Starship won't work" from "Elon is a dishonest asshole" and I say that this only proves you don't need to not be one to win in space. Modus ponens, modus tollens.
But "TDS" is a cop-out, it is an assertion that all criticisms of Trump are driven by some instinctive hatred of the man, and not his object level failings or directly relevant priors about Trump's behavior. That's of course nonsense. The problem is that Trump really is an astonishingly low quality leader, in virtually every specific respect, a singularity of INTENSE BADNESS OF LEADERSHIP, as has been demonstrated through his entire career in more meritocratic contexts (shitty developer, shitty entrepreneur… unfortunately American politics is not meritocratic, you don't need any qualifications to rule at all); so every specific reason to disapprove of his actions kind of melds with every other reason, and you end up with the ur-reason "this kind of thing should not have any power at all", which is easy for followers to dismiss as "derangement". But it can also be just… objective assessment. Which it is.
I can praise Trump, though. Behold. He's not a coward, even seems to be personally brave (at least he has the instincts of a brave man). He's damn funny, and occasionally shows that he's a genius wordsmith. He's good at inspiring loyalty. He's kind to his friends. He can, apparently, instill party discipline. For most of his career he hasn't been a warmonger. He is capable of pointing out truths others try to ignore. He is not tribal (which is actually pretty impressive) – this is partially narcissism, but it lets him transcend insecurities and bigotries of his base, refuse to run cover for American deficiencies or problems, because he has his own brand which he holds in higher regard than "America", "White people" or "Republicans" or any other group. There might be more virtues. The best description of Trump in politics that I've seen can only be expressed in Chinese: «真小人 in a sea of 伪君子». 小人 is basically Trump's base; 君子 is what his tribal enemies want to present themselves as. But he's a genuine, exemplary specimen of his type, and they're frauds.
Alas, it does not make up for his deficiencies, and in many ways only exacerbates them. He's ignorant, stupid, impulsive, petty, vainglorious, dishonest, amoral, proud, opportunistic, greedy, corrupt, nepotistic, ungrateful and so on, a 小人 through and through. This influences his every action, and although every action can be deconstructed and traced back to specific failures in his decisionmaking, it's cheaper to just say it's Typical trump.
Part of the problem, as someone who also dislikes the man, is that there does genuinely seem to be a difference between those who dislike him on principles, and those who dislike him as a principle. Trump Derangement can be a cop-out, but there's far too many people who start with long lists of new superweapons they want to bring, a long list of supposedly unique grievances that justify their use, and then after the parallels or exact precursors to those grievances are shown to have been common or applauded, the need to launch the nukes remains. That's been true from Trump v. Anderson to the campaigns against the vulgarity of the office to grifting.
... which, uh, raises the obvious question. There's a pretty large number of other world leaders for whom each and every one of those criticisms applies, and a larger number of polities that have been either infected by or been the morass from which those leaders arose.
More options
Context Copy link
You could write a top-level if you want, but I don't know if we're going to get very far. I disagree in the strongest terms that Trump is a bad leader and I severely question many of your assessments: Shitty developer? Shitty entrepreneur? Moreover, Trump has shown intense leadership of both the Republican Party and America using qualities you have not named: his loyalty to people who are loyal to him; his loyalty to the base; his willingness to sacrifice his private comfort for a life of public politics; his flexibility on things that don't matter; his refusal to back down on things that do matter; and, yes, we agree at last, his bravery. Because Trump has lead the way on a dozen major issues that have gone from outside serious political consideration to mainstream. He has turned the world.
So when you call America a cretinous nation and justify that with your assessment of Trump, yeah, I call that TDS. It doesn't matter if you can articulate it at length in measured ways. I don't use "TDS" to compare you to the incomprehensible rage of a leftist full of hate. I simply think your assessment is so wrong that it can only come through a kind of reality-distortion field.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's a reason I assume he's trying to ingratiate himself with his new overlords. Legit sounds like a classier translation of racist xanxia slop.
We should be demanding the same level of shamelessness from our own immigrants.
Yes, the reason you assume so is extremely hierarchical, amoral and anti-aesthetic priors of your psychology, pure lustful brownshirt orientation towards power and impunity. The same reason makes you a Trump supporter to begin with, and incapable of understanding principled disgust. I guess the same reason makes you insist I've moved to China, bizarrely. (I have not, and have no plans to jump through necessary hoops or put up with their own problems).
At this rate I'm more likely to come under American overlordship, if anything (hopefully not). It would be quite prudent to ingratiate myself to this ridiculous regime; and believe it or not, I've turned down some opportunities offered from up high.
Well, that psychologizing is about as off-base as possible. Fun verbiage though, makes me want to go reread some Ayn Rand.
TY for the straight answer.
I think it's perfectly on point though. Many of Freedom Stans' accusations are best understood as unconscious projection of the authoritarian brownshirt impulse. "Hierarchical and individualistic white males" is considered a Based Type in the culture war, but that "Hierarchical" part has obvious costs that Adorno et al were, frankly, just correct about. You guys want a Koryos and a Great Leader. You waited for one for your entire lives.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Given the kind of patriotic preening Shakes routinely engages in, his unconditional and triumphant support for yet another war of aggression in the Middle East, his constant tendency to claim US victory under virtually any circumstances including the now-defunct MoU (his theory of victory seems to reduce to "We fucked them up! We fucked them up so bad"), and considering the brainrotted knee-jerk condemnation of everything China that you and many other posters routinely engage in, I'm most certainly not convinced that Dase is anywhere near as shameless as half of the posters here.
It's almost as if US hawks have no barometer for how insane they look to the rest of the world, and consider any China-bullishness as "ingratiation" because nobody could possibly ever like that country for any reason at all.
Which is still vastly more self-aware and humble than what Daes engages in on this topic, or what we see from the "America lost" faction. My god, it's like the Black Knight from Monty Python.
I actually rather like China. I don't trust them as a nation, but I do have a certain fondness. I just don't take it seriously when someone does, er, literally exactly what you're accusing Shakes of doing - shameless, jingoistic boosterism that doesn't even try to make a serious analysis of their situation. Which is easy because of how opaque they are, compared to the ten million words we spill on this forum alone wrangling over the issues and struggles America is facing, based on enormous quantities of reasonably transparent data and reporting.
Because it comes off as projection. Screaming "America lost" when what you actually mean is something more like "Iran is still holding on while their military and economy are in shambles after a few months of casual love taps, and this is arguably a failure to attain all strategic goals of the war" sounds genuinely insane. It sounds like you're trying to manifest a conclusion via sheer memery, rather than making any effort to understand - particularly when even the most jingoistic Americans (Shakes) are making meaningful admissions.
It just comes off as shameless, low-trust rhetoric, like watching some underclass defectbot try to scam a quokka.
In that case, kindly point to a comment that Dase has made regarding his China-boosterism that doesn't include any "serious analysis of their situation", and is situated in the context of a thread where he hasn't made any serious analysis. That would help prove your charge against him. I follow the guy, and while he can be needlessly inflammatory I have to say his comments are routinely more well-informed than the America First crowd here. And on Xitter there are a good number of tweets where he criticises China (I think he has requested that his account not be shared here though), so I don't think your model of him as a jingoistic unconditional booster is accurate.
This is far more true of Shakes regarding America, who talks about the war in cartoon-villain ways like "Now I advance the argument that Bestern Civilization is better than the Third world, and better than Iran, so I support our moral claims against theirs etc. etc. etc. etc." and "It's good to destroy evil and it's evil to destroy good" which just translates to an unconditional support of America against its enemies regardless of what they do and how many second- or third-order effects it may have. In spite of how inflammatory Dase can be I don't think he has said anything to the effect of "China blowing up its evil, disgusting enemies is Good Actually and I support it unconditionally". It is low-quality tribalism par excellence, it is disturbing, and it is the farthest thing from "self-aware and humble" I can think of.
Also where did you get the idea that Dase was living in China? Since many of your comments appear to imply he currently does, I'd like to see where that was indicated. I am genuinely curious FWIW.
Okay, what "meaningful admissions" is Shakes making? He's doing exactly what you're accusing the "America lost" crowd of doing - claiming "America won" when what he actually means is "America caused damage to Iran without achieving many of their larger strategic goals in the timeframe they expected, has likely burned through a significant portion of their interceptors, and is now trying to find a way out of a costly war it can't back out from without losing face and ceding ground it's not willing to cede". The idea that this constitutes "winning" is quite ridiculous; they might win yet (and they may not), but Shakes keeps proclaiming victory every time there is any shadow of an agreement and when these agreements fall apart he predicts victory any time soon. It's tiresome and it's like gleefully proclaiming that Libya was a victory in any meaningful sense because the US fucked them up so bad. It is not a reasonable metric through which to measure foreign policy, and if wanton destruction is the sole endgoal of all your engagements you should expect pushback from those who don't revel in turning countries into Somalia.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Thank you for presenting my most based beliefs, but this doesn’t defend Dasein’s statement at all
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link