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 -
The current War of Northern Aggression "discourse" has brought to mind the top 100 first place greatest mistake in US state craft: not letting Burnen' Sherman just march back and forth for a couple years or finishing hardcore full reconstruction.
Every degenerate tendency in US Con. politics has originated directly from the South's special position as a rebellious territory that was allowed to maintain it's cultural legitimacy, or second order effect from it. Imagine the conservatives we could have in this country if the wellspring of the tendency was John Adams and the federalists; rather than Rutherford and the lost causers.
Wrapping up the entire holographic southern cultural package with opposition to Washington eg. the North, eg the technocratic, rich part of the country has led to a situation where Technocratic Tech-billionaire Technologists are shackled to the cultural traditions of south, either Cavalier hedonistic indulgence papered over with cheap aristocratic pretension lacking any of the actual cultural roots that european aristocrats have; or hill people proud ignorance and shiftless rebellion against anyone who might have gotten any of that big city 'lernin.
You can watch these tendencies poison Republican politics live all the time; it's why even though the Democratic party is jam packed full of passionless ossified corporate aphorism chat bots, when republicans have all three wings of the government they STILL can't get anything done. There is a deep state problem, but it's not the 'unelected bureaucrats' in washington, it's the decaying corpses of Jefferson Davis and Johnny Reb clinging on to conservatism's ankles and dragging it down into the mud.
Why are so many Americans committed to sneering at and impugning the traditions of their warrior class? We all know that the South provides a disproportionate number of soldiers. Washington DC has the lowest enlistment ratio proportionate to population (this reveals a lot about how the US works), South Carolinas has the highest. Furthermore whites take up a larger proportion of the combat arms, diversity is more prevalent in rear areas and admin. I conclude that Southern whites are integral to the US war machine.
Nearly all of the people here are white-collar, I assume. A few have military experience but not very many. It's not our place to belittle those who march off to fight and die at our direction, at the will of the white-collar class. We can give orders, we can enjoy a privileged position at the top of a hierarchy, we can enjoy the fruits of war without sharing in the costs (should there be any fruits) - the bare minimum we should do is give some respect to those who do the fighting.
In Australia we had this case where some of our special forces were a bit overenthusiastic, they shot a couple of prisoners because there was no room on the helicopter, according to legend they stole one guy's artificial leg for use as a drinking trophy. There was a huge media storm about it, a Royal Commission, a massive defamation trial trial that our special forces guy Roberts-Smith lost. He was uncouth, the whole thing was a bit of a shambles. You could tell that the legal class were disgusted and repulsed by this guy and he despised them back.
OK, so Australian special forces killed a few dozen people they shouldn't have. That's a drop in the ocean compared to the West extending the war 10 years past the point we'd clearly lost, allying with the child molesters and drug exporters against the Taliban. The vast majority of the moral harms were committed by careless policymakers and senior officers who committed troops to achieving the unachievable. A huge part of it must have been embarrassment over losing to a small band of semi-literate goatherders with no advanced weapons, foreign backers or money.
And yet nobody dragged Bush, Obama, Petraeus or Trump over the coals - no Royal Commissions (or whatever American equivalent) for them, not for disastrous wars at least. If our leaders get zero accountability for huge crimes, those who follow their commands and deal with the farcical conditions should enjoy immunity for small crimes, let alone not being sufficiently classy.
Who wants to join special forces, do intense training, go off to fight a meaningless, futile war and be hauled over the coals for any excesses?
Who wants to join the US army if the war memorials and bases for their subculture are going to be defaced and renamed, if they're going to be sneered at for being uncouth hill people? Perhaps this is why the US military is so understrength in a time of global crisis. You don't tend to get classy, sophisticated people joining as infantry (who are still vital) - we should appreciate this and not demand this from them.
Do you want to go and risk getting turned to meat paste by Chinese hypersonics? Do you want to risk getting your guts ripped out by HE, get burned to the point everyone is repulsed by the sight of you? No. I don't either. Those who take that risk are making a special social contract and deserve support from the top of the pyramid, not contempt.
They sign up to potentially kill complete strangers on government orders, because they believe in the cause and/or for money. They willingly turn themselves into tools of the government. Hence I will belittle and mock them just as surely as I belittle and mock the government itself. If you are fine with belittling and mocking the government, then there is no reason not to belittle and mock the people who willingly make themselves into that government's agents.
100% of the actual harms were committed by the soldiers, not the politicians. If the soldiers did not follow the orders, the harms would not have happened.
Nobody has to risk that to begin with. The US is more than well-enough protected by its nuclear arsenal and, on top of that, by the oceans. If some American decides that going to fight for Taiwan or South Korea or whatever is really important to him - either because he cares about those countries or because he cares about maintaining US global military dominance and economic might - then alright, fine, but I'm not going to pretend that it has anything to do with defending the US itself from a threat of being militarily attacked.
Every truly great Western nation in history has aspired to imperial dominion. The isolationist position is so pathetic precisely because it runs contrary to that great impulse to conquer, to lead, to rule, to expand that drove the settlement of the Americas in the first place.
Isolationist conservatives ironically reject this core aspect of traditional European civilization.
More options
Context Copy link
Given that the aus SF execution happened in afganistan - what would be your response to 9/11 if we had no govenment agents? Nuke them? How does the US deal with houthis attacking shipping? Nuke them too?
An isolationist US wouldn’t take responsibility for freedom of the seas; that would probably be France or Britain(after all, the suez is their canal).
My argument is that we need a military. Every state needs a military. Or an alliance with a state that has one. What other state has ever existed without a military? If you can think of an example - how tenable is it for the US to emulate that example in a 21st century globalized economy? I contend that no such state exists, and if it did exist it would be completely untenable for the US to emulate it. I contend so because even in @Goodguy's response he acknowledges the need for a military - who else would be doing the physical act of nuclear deterrence but the military? I contend so because he offers no serious resolution to acts of hostility by state or sub state actors that clearly do not merit a nuclear response.
You yourself reference other states taking responsibility for stopping piracy or freedom the seas - do you see any value in this? What happens when you generalize @Goodguy's argument - should the UK or France also mock their armed forces? I would also like to point out that you yourself have made a foreign policy critique here.
So the question is: If we need a military and cannot exist as a state without then why hold them in contempt? Why blame those that serve for the failure of our foreign policy? It is misguided and misdirected ire, we need a military regardless of the competence of the state department.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If I had been in charge of US foreign policy for the last 60 years or so, 9/11 would not have happened and the Houthis would not be attacking any US shipping because I would not have intervened militarily in the Middle East or supported Israel, so Middle Eastern military and paramilitary groups would not have had any reason to resort to such drastic measures against the US.
Would Somali pirates have happened on your watch? Please explain without retreating to the counterfactual. Do you honestly take yourself to be such an adroit statesman that the US could just... not have a navy? You hold those who serve in such contempt. But even in your own response you aren't actually taking issue with the soldiers and sailors themselves, you are pointing to US foreign policy as the problem.
I'd still have a navy to fight pirates. Because while I'm not in favor of supporting Israel, I still think it's reasonable to spend a bit of effort to keep innocent merchant ships from getting stolen.
And no, I am absolutely taking issue with the soldiers and sailors themselves. They carry out the policy and as such, are the ones most to blame. At the end of the day, they are the ones who pull the triggers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why were people living in a cave in Afghanistan allowed to enter the US? Why had the US pissed off so much of the middle east?
As for the war it caused a surge in heroin production and pushed waves of migrants into the west.
I don't think Afghans should be let into the US. I also think the US has had poor foreign policy on the mid east. But these are policy critiques, the people that serve in the armed forces do not decide these. Why hold the armed forces in such contempt for decisions they didn't make? What is the alternative to having them? If there is no alternative then why mock them instead of those who make the decisions that you actually disagree with in your response?
A lot of them knew what they signed up for. They signed up for the war. I am sure there were some unlucky soldiers who signed up in 2000 who were forced to deploy.
They haven't really done anything that helps the average person in the west.
Again - I agree with you regarding US policy in the ME, I also think that is and has been poor. Again I will point out that this is a decision that was not made by those individuals who enlisted.
The US imports $3 trillion in goods every year, the majority of which is by sea. Does that benefit the average westerner? The US exports $2 trillion of goods a year, the majority of which is by sea. Does that benefit the average westerner? The US Navy ensures freedom of trade on the oceans which enables this trade to exist. Until England and later the US ensured this fact the reality has been widespread piracy. Within the timeframe you describe the US Navy has dealt with piracy from Somalia in one of the busiest shipping lanes used by the west. Does that benefit the average westerner? Even if I were to concede that 99% of what the US military does is misguided that last 1% is materially vital enough to justify its existence. We absolutely need people doing this job, there is no alternative to having a military. It is makes no sense to hold them to account for foreign policy decisions that they have not made. Blame the state department.
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
There's a distinction between despising someone for being tools of the government and despising them for being
OP isn't anti-US government. He's calling for more aggressive use of state force against Southerners - Sherman.
Their whole job is to follow orders! The division of labour is that the elite decides who is the enemy, then the soldiers destroy them as directed. When a bridge fails, the engineer can't just throw up his hands and say 'if the builders didn't follow my retarded schematics then we wouldn't have wasted all those trillions of dollars and thousands of lives'. It's the engineer who is to blame.
The US has global interests and it's straightforward that protecting them incurs risks. Taiwan and South Korea are really important to the US. He who controls East Asia and semiconductors rules the world. Plus a good part of America's living standards relies on being the strongest great power, if that mantle is lost then the US is in for a very tough time. Instant depression IMO as the US dollar stops being a safe haven, equities dumped, interest payments on bonds soar, terms of trade get markedly worse, plus a massive political crisis.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link