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 -
What will be left of Ukraine after Russia and the West are done with their proxy war?
It's hard to get good numbers as both Russia and Ukraine lie about everything. But it feels that Ukraine is exhausted and will soon lose this war. My heuristic for this is reading between the lines of the news. Every optimistic story about Ukraine's war effort in the last year has failed to bear fruit. And nuggets of facts go unchallenged, such as the average age of Ukraine's soldiers now being 42.
The U.S. estimate as of August (according to Wikipedia) is that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed with another 120,000 wounded. I would treat this as a floor, personally. The Ukrainian forces at the start of the war were 200,000 regular soldiers and 100,000 paramilitary. I think it's safe to say these troops have been utterly gutted. The size of the Ukrainian army is reportedly 800,000 today but at this point it must be nearly entirely conscripts. Conscripts with an average age of 42. To channel George Carlin, think of the average 42 year old. How would they fare in a trench? Now realize half of Ukrainian soldiers are older than that.
Millions of people have fled Ukraine. The population (as of 2022) had already declined from 51 million to 36 million within the 1991 borders. It is likely much lower today. We will soon see the first instance in more than 150 years of a country losing half its population. (Either the Potato Famine or the Paraguayan War seem like the last potential candidates for this happening).
What people don't realize is how incredibly RARE this is. The population of other war-torn regions such as Afghanistan and Iraq has skyrocketed. You can't even see the conflicts on a population chart. Syria had a brief decline but has rebounded and is now higher than ever before. The population of Russia dipped during WWII by about 10% but by 1955 had rebounded again to an all-time high.
The combination of low fertility, huge emigration, and war deaths will depopulate Ukraine to a degree that hasn't been seen in modern times.
I have to ask, at this point, why does the West still support Ukraine? Yes, it's very convenient that Ukraine is willing to destroy itself to hurt Russia. But, as a utilitarian, I am very skeptical of the benefits of "grand strategy" type decisions like this. The world is complicated. If we let Putin have the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine will he then demand the Polish-speaking parts of Poland? No. It's not like this war has been a resounding success. Furthermore, he could die tomorrow.
But the deaths suffered by Ukrainian conscripts (and yes Russian conscripts too) are very real. We are trading the deaths of real people for theoretical future benefits. And we are destroying an entire country in the process. Why not go to the bargaining table and end this cruel and pointless war?
Something akin to Pakistan, which is also an impoverished, US-aligned, authoritarian de facto rump state without authentic nationhood, ideologically founded on the rejection of the cultural and historical origins of her own people. In fact, Pakistan's situation is actually better in that regard, because at least religiously they are markedly different from India.
Or look at a similar country, El Salvador, which was a US-backed military dictatorship torn asunder in a lengthy civil war. After everything was destroyed and shot to pieces, the generals responsible for it all moved to Miami, where they went on to live comfortable lives as rich pensioners.
Does this mean eventually Ukraine will elect a Nayyiyyb Bukyyeyyle, who will rocket their safety and standards of living upwards through a revolutionary policy of incarcerating criminals?
More options
Context Copy link
What the hell does this even mean? At this point Ukrainian nationhood certainly looks more authentic to me than whatever hodgepodge the Russian government has cooked up from the various conflicting and strategically applied parts of Russian history from the empire to Soviet times to the 90s.
To illustrate the difference, the Halychynan/Galician people indeed have a distinct national character different from the Russian. But Galicia does not equal the entire Ukrainian state, the very name of which simply denotes ‘borderland’, a geographical region, and not a nation. Any argument I’ve encountered from Ukrainian nationalists put forth as evidence of their authentic nationhood strikes me as retconning, LARPing or just fantasy. I cannot take seriously the notion that Ukrainians are the true descendants of Vikings / ancient Slavs / noble Cossacks warriors /whatever, also devoted supporters of LMBTQ rights, liberal democracy and White European unity, whereas the Moskal are a tartarized/turkized Ingrian horde. This is as fantastical as Pakistanis posturing as true Muslims and thus claiming to be a real nation as a result.
The current Western propaganda war regarding the Ukraine would sort of make sense if NATO and the EU were composed of white nationalist ethnostates. But the opposite is true, which makes the whole thing a gigantic farce.
So? It's hardly the only state/nation whose name comes from a geographical designation - I mean, "Netherlands"? "Austria" ("Eastern Realm"?) "Norway" (most popular theory still is that comes from "North Way"?)
Is that any more ridiculous than Russia simultaneously being the descendant of Rus states (totally an unified entity and the Rus also were totally Slavs and not Vikings) and the defender of Christendom in the way of the Czar and also the descendants of the glorious Red Army on an antifascist crusade?
I would consider it this way - the history of Europe shows that when different regions spend long times under different rulers, they tend to develop different consciousness by default. Why are Czechs and Slovaks two nations, even though everyone acknowledges they basically speak the same language and were a part of the same country until 1991? Because one spent centuries under German and one under Hungarian rule, basically.
The same way, at the very least large parts of Ukraine were under Polish/Lithuanian rule while others were under the Duchy of Moscow/Czardom of Russia, while much of the rest was under neither but under the various remnants of the Golden Horde (Crimean Khanate etc.) and was settled by Slavs only later on. While Russia later took most of those areas, evidently at least enough national consciousness remained for Ukrainians to vote for those advocating Ukrainian nationhood at least in some form in the Constituent Assembly elections of 1917, something I've never quite seen any Russians stating that Russians and Ukrainians were unquestionably one nation at that era to explain.
The Western stance is based on preserving the postwar norms like non-annexation - nothing in the Western stance really demands a white nationalist ethnostate, and I do not see why it would do so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why not Vietnam, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, etc.? Why did you choose those two examples from a long list?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proxy_wars
Russia is directly involved in the conflict, so strictly speaking it cannot be called a proxy war. If we really stretch the definition, the Indo-Pakistani conflicts may be called American-Soviet proxy wars (unlike, say, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, which meets the definition perfectly).
In Japan or Thailand there was no such internal conflict and no foreign intervention, between the two German states there was never a war, so I wouldn’t count those.
Korea offers a better parallel, with the huge caveat that US troops have been stationed in the South from the beginning, so again, calling it a proxy war is quite stretching it.
South Vietnam, on the other hand, indeed is a good parallel. However, I wouldn’t say we’ll ever reach a point in the near future where US military aid to the Ukraine will be completely cut.
But anyway, it’s not the proxy war aspect that I had in mind.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link