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 remaining primaries and convention at this point serve as little more than a coronation for the inevitable Trump nomination. It was discussed last week the unlikely circumstances in which Trump is prevented from running. The questions now are:
The likelihood Trump wins? Betting markets put the odds between 40-60%, which is not that useful but is what I would expect. The election will be very close and come down to the usual swing states like in 2020 and 2016. Biden's approval ratings are precariously low for an incumbent, especially given that the Electoral College works to Trump's advantage.
What will a second Trump term be like? My guess is much like his first term. A lot of hollow populist gestures to his base but not much happens. I still don't understand these people who are otherwise centrist or middle-left like Matt Yglesias and Noah Smith, who predict or expect a foreign policy crisis if trump wins , but always fail to articulate what this entails. I guess they have to keep toeing the 'orange man bad' line even though he was not that bad, and the economy and other metrics did well under his presidency (until Covid, which was out of his control anyway). Key alliances were strained much, as commonly feared in 2016-2017. The leadership of allies like Germany and France begrudgingly accepted Trump, and not much else happened.
I can't ascribe this to anything other than not paying attention:
(for just one example I dug up in 20 seconds)
Maybe you agree with these prognostications, maybe you don't. Saying that Trump's critics can't or haven't articulated their positions is just confusing.
"'Orange Man Bad' is the 'Buy index funds' of political commentary.". If historically left-of-center political commentators who have spent the past 8 years criticizing Trump and his policies continue to do so, odds are pretty good that they actually believe it.
If anything, the sudden flurry of "Oh, Trump wasn't that bad"-type statements from figures who previously criticized him reeks of groveling and bet-hedging. Jamie Dimon doesn't have to worry that Biden is going to punish him for making critical statements. Likewise for his many critics within the party who have 'come around'.
If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
This so isn't happening it is comical. But I accept it as an example of the hysterical detached-from-reality "what-if"ing that some people like to do about Trump and why he will ruin the entire world.
This seems like a willful misreading. Do you think "dominate" means "conquer by force of arms"? Because it's not as if the EU has been putting up vigorous opposition to Russian hegemony absent US spinal prosthetics.
Russia is not going to dominate Europe, force of arms or otherwise. Again, an economy about equal to Italy.
Hydraulic despotism using their oil is their only possible influence on Europe. Push come to shove we'll bomb every oil pipe and free Europe from that addiction.
This would also entail freeing Europe from having an economy beyond subsistence farming for a generation or two. The actual work required to free Europe from Russian oil would have to have been started at least a decade ago, maybe even more. This doesn't give the US hegemony over Europe - this just pushes Europe into the BRICS sphere and leaves the US even more isolated, because when EU leaders are given a choice between "reversion to third world despotism to keep the USA happy" and "having profitable trade with one of their closest neighbours" you don't have to be a genius to see which one they'll pick.
No one needs to ask Europe for permission. Pipes can just start blowing up. They are really long and as best I know not practically defensible.
Sweden is a cold country. They decided to largely use renewable energy and nuclear power. For the little fossil fuel they import, almost all is not from Russia. A modern developed European nation could just not rely on Russia for energy.
I get that transferring from an oil-for-energy scheme to something else is an enormous lift. But they may not be given the choice if more pipeline ""accidents"" occur.
And I'm not some hardass Anerican warmonger hoping Europe gets fucked and Germans can't heat their homes in the winter. But hitching their wagon to this particular mule appears to have been a mistake.
This proposed strategy is utterly moronic and I really don't see how you can think this is a viable approach at all. What, exactly, is the carrot being offered to keep the Eurozone outside Russia and China's sphere of influence when the American offer is just "if you want an economy more advanced than the middle ages we are going to bomb your infrastructure back to the stone age"? The US military is not going to have nearly as easy a time operating in Europe when they're enforcing a zero-development policy against the wishes of the EU.
For Europe, the only alternative to Russian energy is deprivation - remember that Biden just turned off the LNG exports designed to cover the shortfall in order to get back at Texas. You can't have a modern first world economy (or a modern first world welfare state for that matter) without copious amounts of fossil fuels. Green and renewable energy cannot make up for the shortfall, and neither can nuclear. There is no alternative to Russian fossil fuels - right now Europe is still using them, they just have to pay a big premium to India in order to get around US sanctions and pipeline bombing. I was one of the people who thought the sanctions would have caused massive problems in Europe last winter, I just didn't think the US would accept such an obvious and naked end-run around their sanctions.
It isn't just an enormous lift - the calculations on exactly when the transition process has to start in order to avoid severe involuntary reductions in societal complexity have been done, and the answer was several decades ago. Switching to a new energy source is going to be a massive, society-wide challenge WITH Russian fossil fuels. Without them? lol
The moment the US switches to an approach of "You are going to stay poor, cold and freezing because we want to hurt the people you buy gas from, and we are not going to make up for the shortfall in the way we promised because our own states are rebelling and need to be punished" the Europeans are going to just welcome the Russians in through open doors. Of course, now that I think about it, that doesn't really seem that unrealistic given the fecklessness of the current administration.
There's only 20 something oil pipes from Russia to Europe and 3 have already been bombed. Call it dumb and correctly point out the negative consequences. But if Europe is in real danger of being dominated by Russia because of oil then any nation with a naval diving team can anonymously bomb a few more sections of pipe. Or like how the CIA likely destroyed a section of Rusdian gas pipe in 1982 by engineering a computer ""accident"". The leaked Pentagon documents include Zelensky discussing bombing Russian pipes to get back at Hungary.
I'm not saying it is a good thing. I'm saying it already has happened a few times and will keep happening if need be. And it can be done anonymously and Europeans can be left speculating who blew up the pipes.
Sweden imports a single digit percentage of their fossil fuel from Russia. If they were cut off from Russia they wouldn't suffer. It is possible to be a modern Western nation and not hopelessly dependent on Russian fuel. Sweden chose this. Germany did not. Rather than shut down nuclear power plants in order to replace them with even more imported Russian fuel, Germany could have built more and then have imported less Russian fuel.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's in the process of conquering the second largest country in Europe and would have succeeded if Trump had been president.
It's not so much that Russia is stronger than Europe, it's that it's crazier. Someone willing to fight can dominate a room full of equally strong people who aren't.
Lol wut?
Either Trump is critically destabilizing the region by allowing US sales of advanced Air Defence systems to Poland, publicly entertaining the possibility of Ukraine Joining NATO, and undermining the Russian economy by increasing US energy exports to Europe. Or he's secretly in Putin's pocket. Which one is it?
In either case the Russian military has been revealed as a paper tiger and clearly aint conquering shit. The best they can hope for at this stage is to turn Eastern Europe a desert and call it "peace".
That would be quite the inconsistency, if I'd accused Trump of doing the former.
Given massive US support. And even with that, Ukraine is far from winning.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Interpreting the war in Ukraine as a sign of Russian strength and capability is quite the contrarian take.
Russia is exhausting itself in a multiyear grinding war against a flat open nation of 35 million people. Their economy is so small that they can't replace much of the expended equipment and weapons. They still might win, either keeping a lot of territory or conquering the whole country.
But, having battled so hard for so long at such a great cost to fight a nation of 35 million people to a standstill, I'm now taking Russia's larger threat to Europe much less seriously. They are willing to fight, but frankly not very capable.
Ukraine is feeling a lot like Winter War II at this point.
More options
Context Copy link
Indeed, but it's not my take: "It's not so much that Russia is stronger than Europe, it's that it's crazier. Someone willing to fight can dominate a room full of equally strong people who aren't."
Russia has shown that it's aggressive. It would have been successful if Trump was president, because Trump is more favourable to Russia/Putin than Ukraine/Zelenskyy. That's why RT etc. likes Trump and dislikes Biden. And I say that as someone who also dislikes Biden.
A flat open nation that has had massive aid from the US. Assuming that sort of assistance, I also have little worries about Russian expansionism, but the question is whether Trump would be true to his word and be less supportive of the Ukrainians etc.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why didn't the invasion happen during Trump's presidency then? 4 years should certainly be enough, right?
Other hypothesis is that Russian financial system was not sanctioned proofed back then. Pro-war Russians would not like getting their Visa/Mastercard blocked; Russia built Mir cards since then.
More options
Context Copy link
In 2016-2020, Russia hadn't even prepared for annexing the Donbas, let alone invading Ukraine. Russia also had hopes of reversing Euromaidan. After all, Poroshenko was unpopular, Zelenskyy was an unknown quantity, and Ukraine had performed a similar reversal from West to East after the Orange Revolution in 2005. Invading Ukraine would guarantee that such a reversal would not take place.
By 2022, Russia and its Donbas puppets were militarily, politically, and administratively prepared, while Zelenskyy turned out to be just as much of a problem for them as Poroshenko.
Trump's reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine would have been to cry a few tears for the Ukrainians, praise Putin's savvy and genius, and provide less support for Ukraine than Biden has done, and hope to appease Putin by encouraging Ukraine to cede the territory that Russia wants. We can predict all that, because that's what Trump's position has been on the Russia-Ukraine war.
I am no fan of Biden, but it's irrefutable that Trump is far softer towards Russia than Biden. This is one reason why many people like Trump! Trump's policy towards Russia has always been appease, withdraw, and sincerely pray to the Almighty for the victims of the consequences.
The problem with this take is that by the summer of 2015 Russia had already annexed the Donbass and Crimea in all but name, or have you forgotten all the talk about "friendly green men" from 2014?
The Russians problem seems to be that they drank their own Kool-Aid. They seem to have seriously underestimated the degree of support that Euromaidan enjoyed on the ground in western Ukraine and seemed to genuinely believe that if they landed some paratroopers in Kiev and seized the Rada they'd be welcomed by the populace as liberators rather than with a hail of gunfire and molotov cocktails. That shock of expectation vs reality seems to have set the tone of the war going forward. Ukraine may eventually lose this war but Ukraine losing doesn't necessarily mean a win for Russia.
More options
Context Copy link
Huh? And what further preparations would have been deemed sufficient? Because we're aware of the extent of preparations made before the 2022 intervention, and they turned out to be, well, more or less laughable, at least in the Northern areas of operations for sure. I mean surely the Russian state had at least the same amount of resources and troops available in 2018 or 2019 as well.
Fair enough. That said, this is the same Russian regime that, according to the mainstream interpretation, successfully manipulated the results of the Brexit referendum and US elections of 2016, and colluded with Trump. Surely it was within its means to manipulate Poroshenko or get him replaced by someone more pliable, to let Russian puppets gain positions all over the Ukrainian state apparatus, and to collude with Trump to rob Ukraine of US assistance! And yet Trump did the opposite, by allowing the supply of lethal military aid to Ukraine in 2018, which no other US administration had done before. Something doesn't add up.
I suggest that his position might have something to do with no longer being in power.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
We can't even agree to aid the people who are currently in a hot war with Russia. Until that happens, the idea that we're going to comprehensively destroy European energy infrastructure is a touch laughable.
Even if true, it kind of runs counter to the Trump is NBD narrative.
If Italy could figure out a way to leverage boutique luxury goods into military and political power they could make a play for regional hegemon as well.
It already began: Nordstream pipes were blown, and almost nobody protested.
More options
Context Copy link
I seriously doubt Russia could pull off hydraulic despotism. They'd be cutting themselves off from their own customers.
And after the bombing of Nord Stream pipelines I think it is clear they won't be squeezing Europe this one way. This isn't some weird hypothetical I'm making up, we've already seen an example. The pipelines are inherently vulnerable and too many interested parties get a veto by bombing the pipelines.
I keep comparing them to Italy to say they are equivalent to a small portion of Europe. This talk of small GDP Russia dominating vastly larger in GDP and population Europe is quite the uphill battle.
I'm trying to fairly consider Russia's ability to dominate Europe if the US became isolationist. The prospect is more silly than plausible.
Well, sure, but isn't this old timey war of conquest on Russia's part a scheme to add Ukraine's economy and population to its balance sheet? A disinterested, Trump-led US makes Ukraine and the rest of the Eastern bloc sitting ducks and their aggregate could form a threat to Western Europe.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link