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 -
US military offers immigrants fast track to citizenship in effort to boost recruiting
I have some thoughts about this.
First, this looks suspiciously like textbook "How to lose your empire in five easy steps" guide:
Have your citizens grow fat, lazy and unwilling to risk their lives, especially in far away wars that they see no benefit from anyway
Hire strong and hungry barbarians to serve in the imperial military
Have the barbarians realize they are now doing most of the work holding up the empire together, while not getting commensurate benefits, which go to the fat and lazy citizens instead
Have the barbarians take over the reigns of power
The empire suffers bouts of "bad luck"
The historians write "Decline and fall of the $EMPIRE"
(Side note: since we live in the clown world, I feel compelled to add a disclaimer that the word "barbarian" is used in purely descriptive, not pejorative, meaning - as "somebody who is not part of the imperial culture" - and, in fact, for the purposes of this definition, I am a barbarian myself and many of my friends are Barbarian-Americans)
Second, we have been actively sold the notion that DIE efforts in the military are vital if we want to keep the recruiting targets and the strength of the military. I do not see this idea being empirically confirmed, and what is even worse - I am not seeing anybody even interested in empirically confirming or disproving it. I expect that from the left - you don't seek an empirical confirmation of your religion, you already know it's the true faith. But I would expect people on the right - and I mean all those talking heads, think tanks and high-flying politicians - be interested in figuring out whether DIE actually makes the army stronger - and if not, pushing that fact hard. I don't think I am seeing this. For the most of the 20th century, The Right sleep-walked into giving up almost every major societal institution to The Left's takeover, but I'd expect at least they'd put up some fight for the military. Doesn't seem to be the case. Is it that the only thing that can get people really caring nowdays is when a piss water manufacturer offends them? I'd say the military going woke is a bigger deal than piss water going woke, but I don't see the red tribe treating it this way.
As a Hegelian synthesis of the above, the third thought is that the barbarians should be, at least at the start, the least woke part of the society. Thus, them joining the army in large numbers (provided that indeed happens) should constitute at least a temporary impediment to the further assimilation of the military into the woke collective. However, again, I see very little interest - at least where I could observe it, maybe I'm not looking in correct places? - in the red-tribe thought to exploring this opportunity and building some kind of "welcome wagon" track to ensure these people will join the Right Side and vote accordingly once they become citizens. I am not sure how it should look like, but that's what these "think tanks" are for, aren't they? Do the thinking thing and figure it out. Or at least try - I don't see the trying, really. Am I wrong here?
Read the article. They’re recruiting people who already have (usually permanent) residency, which means they’re merely accelerating the citizenship process by a few years. They’re not recruiting soldiers from abroad. Everyone they hire through this program would get US citizenship eventually anyway if they never enlisted.
That said, the problem with the military in the US is that it no longer serves as a guaranteed pipeline for smart young people. One of the things that’s so important for ambitious young people is a clear path to wealth, status and power. For example, the military could offer an ‘accelerated leadership program’ in partnership with the state department, White House and prestige private employers like Google or Goldman Sachs to funnel officers into great jobs after they serve for several years. Not a ‘maybe Harvard will accept you for a JD’ like it is now, but an actual, relatively ironclad guarantee.
When it comes to enlisted soldiers, it’s even simpler. Just offer them more money. No shit recruitment has gone down when flyover country construction workers are making $70k a year now easily, whereas in 2014 they were making $40k and in 2011 they were unemployed. Double enlisted wages and see whether the recruitment problem subsides.
I think it’s still somewhat a problem simply because you have a huge potential for conflicts of interests. If we go to war with China, having a large contingent of Chinese nationals fighting will create the potential for defections. There are already cases of Americans choosing to compete for their ancestral home Olympic teams, which while low stakes (it’s just sports) does highlight the issue. If your officer corps is full of people who might not feel connected to America, they might not fight, or might give away intelligence, or simply defect with all the training that we’ve given them.
Has this ever actually been a problem? All the hand-wringing about treacherous immigrants during the world wars came to nothing.
There was the Ni’ihau Incident, in which the Japanese-Americans on the island immediately went to help the downed pilot — but in the context of, for example, the 442nd Infantry Regiment, this one incident can likely be counted as a rounding error.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder whether changing attitudes towards assimilationism also change the calculus. My cursory intuition: immigrants were far more pushed to assimilate back in the ‘30s and ‘40s than they are in these ‘20s, where metaphors like the “melting pot” are derided, the very notion of a “cricket test” is tarred as racist, and having a non-American (or better yet: non-Western) culture and family living in their Old Country is treated as a sign of moral worth. As such, I’d expect the number of “would-be-treacherous immigrants” to have risen.
(I recognize that this last bit contains a large number of rather unfounded assertions; I would like to provide concrete examples and details, but alas, phoneposting won’t allow me to do so.)
It seems to me that the only country we have a lot of immigrants from where these sorts of activities would be a major concern is China, and the young 2nd generation Chinese-Americans I know are at worst superficially anti-assimilationist, but in practice can barely speak the language and are made fun of by the tiny minority of truly anti-American Asian commentators/tankies within the community as "boba liberals."
The instances of corruption or treason I see with ties to the Chinese government are just as likely to be committed by white Americans and are usually done just for profit rather than ethnic solidarity. In the long run, the costs of unfounded suspicion are probably greater than that of treating people the same regardless of ancestry in these situations.
Very reasonable analysis. Thinking about the younger second-generation/first-generation-but-moved-at-a-young-age Chinese immigrants that I know, they tend to be rather anti-CCP (and although that doesn’t necessarily mean “pro-America”, it counts for something). And on the flipside, as you said, I’ve met young whites who are very careful to not say anything that might be recorded as being anti-China, lest it impair a future career eastward.
I suppose that in my original post, I was thinking more along the lines of young progressive second-generation immigrants I’ve met (often Latino) who loudly proclaim the evils of America (think “woke”, not “tankie”), put on affected accents, and declare their intent to return to their mother country — eventually. But lots of these progressive values that manifest as anti-Americanism are fundamentally American, and in the anecdotal cases I was remembering, it doesn’t look like the fabled return to the motherland is coming any time soon. I guess that I was conflating Blue-Tribe-ism with anti-Americanism.
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