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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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There are no new strategic options today that didn’t exist yesterday. That has always been the problem. Egypt doesn’t want Gaza for obvious reasons. An occupation would be unimaginably bloody, expensive, permanent and occupy a huge amount of the IDF’s attention when there are other threats to the north.

They can’t trade for the hostages because I can’t imagine the public will support them doing so now. Hamas will demand every single relevant prisoner Israel has, and that’s not politically viable and would be extremely stupid from a security perspective. They’ll have to go in, eat the casualties, and accept the inevitably brutal videos and pictures of the resulting civilian deaths.

KSA will performatively pull out of negotiations (exactly as Iran wants, presumably) but will continue dealing with Israel behind the scenes. Maybe Biden can offer more help in Yemen to save some face but the situation there is complex and it’s unlikely. The most important thing for Israel is that it moves toward firing squads and summary execution of perhaps 10,000-30,000 fighting age men in Gaza, as well as the entire political leadership, mercilessly but quickly and professionally. But then again, I’m a Zionist.

Summary executions for prophylactic purposes aren't exactly going to endear one to the international community. I'm generally pro-Israel but if that happened I'd have to concede to my tankie friends that yep, they were right all along, Israel sucks. I suspect most politicians with the exception of some on the American right would agree with me, and Israel would lose whatever special status it has in the international community, if not become an outright pariah state. Next you'll have rocket attacks coming from the West Bank with Jordanian support, and the West won't be there to force them to Lebanon, or Tunis, or wherever.

I think Israel has been remarkably restrained since the mid-90s, and I’d like to see technological superiority used to kill at least a substantial number of violent young men. Retaliation would be limited, and in any case could be met by more destruction. Having been radicalized by the footage from today, I don’t consider these people’s lives to have substantial value.

Israel has been restrained because it is indeed fighting for the subjugation of a population with a size equivalent to its own. The alternative to restraint is not killing "at least a substantial number of violent young men", it is genocide. The definition of "violent young men who might take up arms against Israel if provoked enough" is "99% of Palestinian men". In a society like Palestinians intentionally or unintentionally killing someone is enough to convince a dozen of their male relatives to swear an eternal oath of revenge against you and genuinely pursue this.

I generally sympathize with Israel much more than Arabs instinctively because I perceive them as civilized people dealing with barbarians (a specific type of Islamic barbarity that I personally have reasons to specifically hate). If Israelis become another tribe of barbarians engaged in genocidal clan war then I simply do not care.

Thanks. I think you raise a very important point, which is that there is no such thing as partial humiliation. There is only absolute, total humiliation and total conciliation. Given that the latter is obviously politically impossible with regards to Palestinians, the former - which I agree is a poor option - is the only option.

Drone production, heavily automated surveillance including via facial recognition, all these things can, as Dase said earlier, make effective repression easier. I think it possible.

Drone production, heavily automated surveillance including via facial recognition, all these things can, as Dase said earlier, make effective repression easier. I think it possible.

Yes there is serious potential in this direction. It is not even unique to the Israel/Palestine conflict situation. This might become the testing grounds for a new type of government model for this century where AI developments drones and digitalization makes it viable to implement a degree of totalitarian control over human populations never seen before in human history.

I sense a hidden enthusiasm among some posters here for such a future for Palestinians. I hope they realize that their own governments won't shy away from imposing it on them in a couple decades either.

While people here have some outside-the-overton views, a lot of the eg. problems with things like mass immigration and ‘justice reform’ policies could be solved by this kind of police state. My primary issue with modernity is anarcho-tyranny. A replacement with simple but effective CCP-tier tyranny would be acceptable, if not the best solution.

What makes you think such a situation would be incompatible with anarcho-tyranny? "Regime clients do as they want while unfavored groups are trapped in the perfect surveillance state" is the most likely outcome of such a situation. East Asian people are genetically and culturally averse to random criminal acts so this is not an issue in those countries, but then they still have massive criminal triads as well as regime connected corrupt businessmen type of people who will use the state security tools to confiscate your property, violate your person and family.

Hmmm, maybe, but I think it’s so easy to use this tech to solve violent crime as an issue that it will happen.