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 -
Is it still a military success if Congress defunds the war Vietnam style?
If Republicans had received a "narrowly lose Iowa and Texas" sort of repudiation they might have closed ranks and held Trump's veto but losing Mississippi is enough of a buttblasting to put the fear of God into the hearts of Senators who haven't faced a competitive election in their lives. Even Ted Cruz is calling for an end to the war at this point.
Cruz said "...the Iran war has dragged on too long. It should have been brief, decisive, and over. It needs to end..."
He didn't say "the Iran war should never have happened in the first place".
He is still cucking for Israel.
More options
Context Copy link
That's a wild, detailed tweet from Ted Cruz. I've seen leftists who didn't even go into as much detail about ways that the economy sucks.
More options
Context Copy link
This will be the greatest gift the Democrats can give the Republicans. Giving them a way out of it while owning all the nasty second order effects from stopping the war with not defanged Iran is a blessing some of them pray for.
I won't say it is 5D chess (mostly because it is advanced stupid), but some of the messes Trump has created put Dems into unenviable position because cleanup requires more effort and capital than shitting on something. And they have mandate and power.
Don't regulate AI and bubble pops - you had mandate to regulate it, and you piss off your base.
Regulate AI and bubble pops - you caused recession.
Regulate AI and China wins - congrats USA lost the tech race of 21st century.
Defund Iran war - congrats - you own nuclear armed Iran and their ability to extort the global economy.
Prolong Iran war - the democrats base will be pissed off beyond everything possible (although I will find amusing the mental gymnastics their die hard partisans will make to justify it).
The cost of living will keep rising. AI will cause unemployment, stopping AI will cause unemployment.
People will blame Trump and Republicans for whatever happens next in Iran because he started it so he owns it.
And not to mention he's still president and so the figurehead. "akshually this was congress's fault" is too complex a statement to get into the average voter's head
More options
Context Copy link
That's not how it works. Obama got lots of flak for staying in Afghanistan and Biden for leaving it. Last person who touched it is to blame. This is not only in IT.
For the purposes of the blame game by voters, people barely even know congress exist as an entity. It's always the president, the top executive, who gets the blame or the credit for better or worse. Your example of Obama and Biden actually a good example of this, individual leaders get blame, not amorphous entities.
Believing otherwise is wishful thinking and not keyed into reality, and will result in a worse electoral result in 2028 if you believe high turnout of low propensity Trump 2024 voters will recoup midterm losses. Specifically, wishful thinking leading to misallocallcation of senate fundraising could give dems a filibuster proof 60 seat majority.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That’s a military victory and a political loss. Neither invalidates the other.
These distinctions have always been cope. The purpose of military action is to achieve a political goal.
There's a sense in which one can identify immediate or battlefield success even while acknowledging that it may not have successfully contributed to a larger goal. We say that Hannibal was a brilliant general even though he did not achieve any of Carthage's political goals.
Nonetheless I think we understand that it would be absurd to say that the Second Punic War was a military victory and political loss for Carthage (even notwithstanding Zama). It doesn't matter how many battlefield victories you can list if you cannot achieve your overall political goals. Local military victories are possible, but a war is, ultimately, a project whereby a state attempts to use military force in order to accomplish particular goals, and if the application of military force does not accomplish those goals, then it failed.
The United States was defeated in Vietnam. The United States was defeated in Afghanistan. It looks like it may well have been defeated in Iran. Whining along the lines of "we beat them every time we met them in battle!" is absurd.
This is not really the thread or the moment in which I want to have this debate. But for the sake of mutual understanding I will say: your position reads to me as, “Yeah we won militarily but we don’t like the war and want to surrender, therefore, we did lose.”
I just think it's absurd to try to split hairs to draw some sort of 'victory' out of a national project that clearly failed to achieve its goal. All military action occurs within political constraints and for the sake of political goals - if a military force was unable to achieve its goals within the political constraints it inhabited, then that's a failure. The most famous example, the Tet Offensive, was a failure for North Vietnam in the sense of taking territory or inflicting casualties, but it was a success in the sense that it meaningfully contributed to and helped achieve the political aims of North Vietnam.
This is, I suppose, a semantic dispute. We use phrases like, 'military defeat and political victory', or 'tactical defeat and strategic victory', or the like, to try to communicate that. We would all agree, for instance, that in Afghanistan, American troops generally defeated Taliban (and other) troops when engaging them directly, but also that, overall, America failed to achieve its goals and the Taliban did achieve theirs. Of course differing levels of political will or commitment to the fight are key in explaining why the Americans withdrew and the Taliban kept fighting, and I think that's just part of war. Level of political support or commitment is part of the mission profile, and it's something that each combatant has to manage, shoring up their own suppport as well as degrading the opposition's commitment.
At any rate, it doesn't sound like we disagree about any specific facts on the ground. I just get grouchy about this sometimes because I am mildly annoyed by Americans saying things like "the United States has never lost a war", a claim which is only possible to sustain by redefining the concept of 'losing a war.'
But the Tet offensive succeeded precisely because it influcted casualties and took territory. Not as much as hoped but still significant.
Look at it from the other way. The Ichi-gou operation "succeeded" because it devastated the NRA, struck one of a series of deathblows (counting from the war all the way to 1949) to the KMT, took massive swathes of territory from KMT control, and on paper achieved its tactical operational goal of creating a land passage for the northern and southern areas controlled by the Japanese. But if we consider the broader context of WW2, this was a failure; the operation didn't knock the Chinese out, didn't eliminate US air support, didn't improve the logistical situation (and if anything worsened it significantly), and the Japanese couldn't even credibly control the countryside of the areas they nominally held.
Resounding tactical victories, clear operational success, yet generating none of the big picture strategic impacts that were actually needed to win the war for the Japanese given that for them to "win" they had to vassalise China.
More options
Context Copy link
The Americans took plenty of territory in Vietnam and it still didn’t translate into victory, much less anything meaningful. That was what made the Battle of Hamburger Hill so infamous; for how worthless it was. It isn’t anything new though. Go back to the Roman Empire if you want. When you look at the height of Roman expansion, one thing that stands out if you’re familiar with its history is why Gaul was left out by certain academics, or there at some points and not at others; despite the fact that Rome went in and beat the shit out of them numerous times. The reason for that was because when the Romans went into Gaul, there was nothing to “take over.” The only cities there were in Gaul were the ones the Romans built, while Gallic militias and rebels would retreat deep into their own territory.
The romans won gaul though and it was a super important conquest.
I would also argue that the US lost vietnam partially because it didn't take territory. It was some retarded defensive intervention than a real war. Kind of like the current Iran conflict.
I myself have big reservations about whether Trump's retardation in this conflict will accomplisha nything. But your argument makes no sense.
Of course. The issue wasn’t them defeating the Gauls. That’s the entire point. They beat them time and time again, and yet still had a problem holding it down.
Edit: You edited your comment after I made my reply, but I’ll briefly address the rest. You claimed in your other comment that the Tet Offensive succeeded in good measure because it took territory. The counterexample to that is that there are places were Americans took territory at great cost, only to later abandon it because they realized how worthless and costly the pursuit was to begin with.
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
More options
Context Copy link