site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24483 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

We won militarily in Afghanistan completely and then committed to occupying the country forever so that girlboss NGOs could educate the Taliban about anal sex.

We’re not doing that this time.

This is an absurd exaggeration of what the US did in Afghanistan. Like come on the US occupied it because supporting the Mujahedeen and then leaving a power vacuum worked out terribly last time and led almost directly to 9/11. And come on the NGOs in Afghanistan were doing things like teaching women to read and digging wells they weren't busting out the gender unicorn.

America committed a lot more than that. From the official Special Inspector Report "Support for Gender Equality: Lessons from the US Experience in Afghanistan":

(Pardon the bing search link)

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=3274be0ed828a64327f591595169b4050f8cec24564f797aaf9ff874827db94eJmltdHM9MTc4OTQzMDQwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=01dcd28c-902e-6f4c-3fd6-c55991396e4d&psq=Support+for+Gender+Equality%3a+Lessons+from+the+U.S.+Experience+in+Afghanistan&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ292aW5mby5nb3YvY29udGVudC9wa2cvR09WUFVCLVMtUFVSTC1ncG8xNTY5MzAvcGRmL0dPVlBVQi1TLVBVUkwtZ3BvMTU2OTMwLnBkZg

Consider pages 42-43:

In pursuit of greater gender equality in Afghanistan, the U.S. and Afghan governments adopted an approach known as gender mainstreaming, in which the design and implementation of development programs are required to be sensitive to gender norms and disparities. In theory, mainstreaming encourages donors to evaluate the potential effects of any development policy or program to make sure that those efforts do not inadvertently exacerbate existing inequalities.

The impetus for this concept was the growing recognition of the ineffectiveness of stand-alone gender programs. Instead of relying solely on separate projects for women, gender mainstreaming advocated bringing women’s issues and perspectives into all programs or policies, with special attention being paid to how an intervention might impact men and women differently.

(Thrilling stuff!)

Official American policy was to implement "Gender Mainstreaming" into all aspects of Afghan policy; in effect, the US military was used to prop up NGOs who wanted to socially engineer Afghanistan into having completely modern American liberal views about gender. This included mandating all "project designs" address gender, the creation of a stand-alone Office of Gender, routine "gender analysis" -- for example:

The purpose of requiring a gender analysis, as noted by one senior gender advisor at USAID, “is not just to do it, but to use it to shape the documents you are working on.” For example, a gender analysis might reveal that income-generating activities for women can provoke a rise in domestic violence. Taking this into account, USAID officials designing a project might then include activities that encourage men to be more receptive to a shift in power dynamics within a relationship.

So you want to spend some American money to support Afghan farms, but you can't do this without also making women get some of the money, but you can't do that without conducting a gender analysis which concludes that we need to encourage Afghan "men to be more receptive to a shift in power dynamics within a relationship".

Page 47 of this report, by the way, concludes that the "failure" of "gender mainstreaming" "does not necessarily mean that it should be discounted as a viable means to raise the profile of gender equality".

They think it was working.

This is not conspiracy Fox News red meat conservacon slop stuff. Washington DC used the American military to support an endless cultural revolution within Afghanistan, and their own autopsy concludes that they didn't try hard enough. This is no surprise if you have spent any time in Washington, because it is full of endless NGOs that want to use our tax dollars to promote endless impossible grifts that have all the right credentials and K Street speak.

At the same time, as anyone who served in Afghanistan can tell you, while the NGOs were running around promoting extremely unpopular social revolutions, the American military was being used to safeguard the poppy fields that grew the opium that kept Afghanis in thrall to an addiction. This was extremely unpopular and the Taliban earned a lot of goodwill by stamping out the poppy industry wherever they could.

It's silly stuff.

Donald Trump is not doing any of that!

He is simply going to bomb them until someone he can negotiate a deal with comes to surrender.

We’re not doing that this time.

Very true. You actually have to win the war and occupy the country first before you can lecture them about anal sex.

We have won the war. We achieved all of the goals President Trump laid out at the beginning of the war and Iran couldn’t do anything to stop us.

The Strait was open before the war.[https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-hormuz-trump-yemen-houthis-2b126da67b09de2f328846eb656abe0e](It is not now). That is backwards progress. But I don't even care about this because even if it was open, it wasn't in the defined objectives before the war. At best its a return to the status quo and not a victory.

If victory requires the United States to keep bombing Iran indefinitely so Iran cannot rebuild, then Iran's nuclear/missile capability hasn't actually been permanently eliminated. This is tautological. What has been established is U.S. suppression of those programs, but nothing permanent.

Plus, you are repeatedly contradicting yourself and speaking out of both sides of your mouth. If Iran literally cannot build a weapon, there should be no need for repeated future bombing. Your argument concedes the point. The United States may be able to prevent Iran from completing a weapon through continuing military intervention, but that's very different from having destroyed Iran's ability to obtain one. The US military itself admits this hasn't been accomplished yet by the way.

You simultaneously says Iran is “totally impotent” and “cannot retaliate,” while acknowledging that Iran continues launching missiles and is attacking third parties. Again, you concede the point. Those attacks have happened in the past week. Clearly this is not a completed objective, even if they have been weakened. Plus you carve out an exception (admitting you are wrong) when you say, “The only exception here are the Houthis in Yemen." By your own admission, it is not accomplished yet.

Your argument is the classically motte and bailey. What you are arguing is that Iran is badly weakened, America enjoys escalation dominance, and Iran isn't currently capable of reversing the military balance. I don't agree that is true, but it is a defensible argument. But what you are doing is claiming Trump won, then retreating to the motte of America is winning when called out. Maybe we're in a new postmodern war when you can just say you've won and you won, but by traditional metrics (and those defined by the admin) the war is so clearly not over that it isn't even a debate.

Your other comment you literally admit that they haven't been all accomplished. Is this performance art?

I argued that they were basically all accomplished because we can attack Iran arbitrarily and they can’t do anything in return.

Basically? More hedging.

We won militarily in Afghanistan completely

"Completely" doesn't seem to be true given who is currently in charge. No one intended on the forever war, it was just the quagmire they ended up with when it turns out the offramp wasn't easy. The second we pulled back they resurged.

Trump might not want the forever war, but if there's no other plan than "just keep bombing indefinitely" then it is one.

You’re conflating two different military events. There’s a big difference between defeating a country and occupying it.

You compared Iran to Afghanistan, but in Afghanistan we defeated their military completely. We lost the occupation. We are not presently trying to occupy Iran.

You compared Iran to Afghanistan, but in Afghanistan we defeated their military completely.

So wait why do the bad guys control it now and not the good guys we put there if the bad guys had literally no military power left?

You’re conflating two different military events. There’s a big difference between defeating a country and occupying it.

You’re conflating two different military events. There’s a big difference between defeating a country and occupying it.

In what way did we "completely defeat" the taliban when they currently rule the country with total impunity? Maybe we're just using substantially different definitions for what complete means, but mine just doesn't square away "'complete" with "still in power"

We kicked their asses at the tactical and operational level every single time. We then allowed American scam NGOs to pursue unpopular social revolutions that ginned up new opposition every time we turned our backs. So we decided it wasn’t worth the trouble and pulled out.

I can’t say for sure so it might be unfair of me to say, but I imagine that you are probably in favor of the policies of the NGOs.

Not to comment on whether this war is a good one or not, but it is much cheaper to keep doing what we're doing in Iran (i.e. not much) than it was in Iraq and Afghanistan which we were able to keep up for 8 and 20 years respectively.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats