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 -
Remember the USS Liberty?
As much Israel discourse as there's been in the last 45 years, you never hear about the time the Israeli air force and navy attacked an American ship in broad daylight and killed 34 Americans, except from the most conspiratorially-minded places like /pol/ (and Brett Favre when he's being trolled by /pol/).
Why? This seems strange. One might think this is because it blends into the background of innumerable incidents that make up the Arab-Israeli conflict, and thus most people simply shrug and accept that, "yeah, shits really fucked over there," and leave it at that, but this involved Americans. You know, the people that matter. There's some dispute about what really happened and whether or not it was deliberate. It's not surprising that this would be controversial; it's surprising that this is not a real issue at all.
My tentative opinion is that it was a deliberate attack. The USS Liberty was a spy ship. It was not supposed to be as close to the coast as it was. Israel didn't want the State Department jeopardizing their OPSEC in the 6-day war, so they made sure the Americans had no eyes on the ground (or the water). It was probably the right decision tbh. US leadership decided that the incident wasn't worth making major foreign policy changes over, and so they went along with the Israeli cover-up.
Quite the opposite, I hear about it roughly six times a day. It's the most widely publicized attack on the US shipping since Pearl Harbor. Why? This seems strange, until you remember Joooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooos!
You need to start hanging out with other people than Nick Fuentes.
Then why did I first hear about it from weird dissident spaces, and not tons upon tons of documentaries, and references from war movies like I did with Pearl Harbor?
Or because unlike Pearl Harbor this was done by a supposed ally rather than a self-declared enemy?
There was a similar situation to USS Liberty, but that time Japan sunk a US naval vessel during peacetime. The difference between the famous "sneak attack" and USS Panay Incident of 1937 is that Japan, like Israel, took responsibility and paid reparations.
USS Panay Incident is likewise not much known.
IMO the USS Stark incident is a better comparison: a US frigate was hit by Iraqi Exocet missiles, killling 37 sailors during the Iran-Iraq war in 1987. While there was some diplomacy (and some accounts that it was deliberate), it wasn't viewed as a casus belli, although Iraq did end up paying reparations for it as part of a larger deal involving the whole Gulf War.
As opposed to the year later, where Operation Praying Mantis saw the US sink half of Iran's navy after USS Samuel B. Roberts hit an Iranian mine (somehow without loss of life), and almost fired on a Soviet ship that claimed to be in the area to "take pictures for history." A month later, USS Vincennes managed to shoot down a commercial Iranian airliner.
Honestly, I think the lesson is that fog of war is very real and it's quite likely that someone ordered the attack, and someone was aware it was an American ship. But these were quite likely different parties, quite possibly far apart, and making decisions hastily often leads to oversights.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Never heard of her.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link