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 -
I know it's beating a dead horse at this point, but this whole Prigozhin situation made one fact crystal clear: American dissident right (and "anti-nato left" by extension) is extremely solipsistic, much more than other factions in American culture war. Just take a look at some of those takes which are prevalent among this crowd
/images/16875993326015117.webp
/images/16875993329050043.webp
/images/16875993330050533.webp
Essentially, their model of the world looks like: here we are, honest god-abiding Americans, and then there are "elites" — Biden, Hillary, DNC, Podesta, Bill Gates, World Economic Forum. How then do you view something that lies outside your usual experience and ideology? If you are dumb, you deny it altogether:
"Ukraine War is fake, all of it is CGI, Zelensky and Hunter Biden siphon gajillions dollars from American taxpayers to buy mansions in Bahamas"
For those people Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Finns, Prigozhin, Zaluzhny, Macron, Scholz, ... do not exist.
If you are smarter, you align yourself with perceived enemies of the elites: Putin, Xi, Orban, .... You say things like:
totally oblivious of cases like this
https://zona.media/online/2023/06/22/sko
being a regular occurrence in Russia, when a girl is sent to prison for putting anti-war slogans on price tags in a shopping mall. Of course they'll have prepared a long list of grievances with "elites" that are intended to persuade you that whatever happens in the US is much worse than repressions in Russia or China. And, sure enough, all of it "glownigger propaganda" anyway.
You might say: "Well, I don't care about anti-Putin Russians, unfortunate pro-Putin Russians who became victims of the regime, neutral Russians, Ukrainians, Uighurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese, ... all I care is that my children don't get castrated and turned into trannies". Fair enough. But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".
Whatever patience I had with American "anti-establishment" right-wingers, it ended. I guess Hanania is the only one I keep reading/listening at this point.
Russia (like the rest of Europe) is slowly dying. That's fine, everything eventually comes to an end. However it made an inadvisable move to lash out one last time before the inevitable, one final death throe before the end, but this too has backfired on it and made things even worse for the country as a whole. You can't blame them for trying something, but you can blame them for picking a particularly bad thing to try. In the modern world we have reached an equilibrium where military power means less and less compared to economic and cultural staying power and many of these events are just (painful) lessons to those who weren't able or willing to follow the winds of change. Experience is the best (and most painful) teacher as they say.
Sure, it sucks for current Russians (and Europeans) but this is just the wheel of fortune, nothing more and nothing less. There are times when you're climbing up, and times when you're being kicked down. It's just what it is. Given that it's very hard to compete with the current hegemonic American culture if Russia really wanted to be successful in spreading its ideas in the modern world it would defund its military and spend the money on boosting Russian fertility to create lots of people who believe in Russian ideology instead.
The military will always be relevant. The only reason it’s not at present is that there’s a pretty strong military hegemony in NATO and America. When there’s a military power that can bomb most countries to rubble in a matter of a day or two, the idea that a country can invade another and not be stopped is silly.
Those days are coming to an end. Americans are having fewer kids, and they’re less interested in joining the military. Politically, I think a lot of people are less interested in policing the world as well. If you lose the American military, wars come back and having a strong military becomes important again.
That's a smug illusion, which is being dispelled by the inability of the entirety of NATO to give Ukraine enough weapons to defeat a militarily inept country with the nominal GDP of Italy.
Russians are being barely competent and are not even trying that hard when it comes to war-economy measures.
I see you‘ve now embraced the pro-ukrainian side‘s italian gdp comparison argument your friends so derisively dismissed in the beginning, preferring a more flattering and delusional comparison to the US. I hope you guys adjust your claims regarding russia‘s rightful place in the world accordingly. How much shit are we supposed to take from a poorer italy?
I didn't 'embrace' anything - but even if you do PPP adjustment, Russia just has the GDP of Germany, which means American Empire has .. how much.. 5x more ? 6x more ?
And somehow..
Right, despite possessing 10x (PPP) to 25x(nominal) the economic power of russia, the West (US, EU + UK), have barely given enough aid to equal the russian military budget. If someone's not trying, it's us. Somehow... it was still enough to inflict territorial losses on the russians.
Territorial losses ?
Russia still has Crimea and the separatist republics.
The 'equipment' given so far seems to have been used up assaulting tiny patches of land and has been now sitting out in the open in no man's land for weeks.
This video here probably shows 10% of tanks, IFVs given to Ukraine sitting abandonded in a few square kilometers of fields.
EDIT: added the video link.
You seem to count some subset of tanks. Poland alone gave Ukraine around 330 tanks and 240 IFV (per https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/08/a-european-powerhouse-polish-military.html ).
This field has far less than 10% of that.
More options
Context Copy link
kherson and kharkov offensives. Obviously I'm not counting the gains russia made while we were still debating amongst ourselves what to do about it (zaporizhia), or even earlier, where we debating if we would do anything at all (crimea and donbas). Even taking your "probably" at face value, 10% of a few dozen tanks is nothing compared to the 2000 tanks and 2500 IFVs documented russian losses(oryx on the conflict. As you know, so far, the vast majority of our aid has not been in tanks, but it was clearly effective nonetheless.
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
Here we go again. The Russians aren't even trying!
You'd think after more than a year of the world laughing at them, they'd start trying already.
I'm not saying they're not trying.
I'm saying they're so bad at this, they've mobilized so few people, they've messed up with munitions productions - yet they still haven't been beaten.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I see we've come all the way from 'resistance is futile, Russian strength is overwhelming and their victory inevitable' to 'it's abject proof of weakness you haven't defeated the Russians already.'
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