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 -
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.
This trick might work on internet arguments when you can just say "Well there's no clear and undeniable photographic evidence of it happening so we can just never know" but there's no way that it will be taken seriously wrt geopolitical concerns like this. There's no need for speculation, and there wasn't even any need for speculation with the Nordstream bombing either - it was extremely obvious who did it and why, and the only reason there was any confusion was the people who did it also have substantial influence over the western media. In this hypothetical scenario where the EU moves out of the US orbit and into the Russian one, the ability of the US to just surreptitiously blow up pipelines and commit acts of actual war against the EU will be substantially degraded. When the US is forced to just go out into the open and admit that they're keeping Europe poor because otherwise Russia would benefit, what do you think that's going to do to the political situation there? Nationalist parties are on the rise already, and this would just give them substantially more power.
Not for long, and especially not if you're Germany (Norway can get away with it for obvious reasons). Fossil fuels are the bedrock of any advanced economy and there is no viable replacement or alternative. The shortfall created by denying Europe access to Russian gas cannot be filled by nuclear or renewables - not only is there not enough time to spin them up, it is doubtful that they can cover the gap and impossible for them to replace the other uses of fossil fuels.
Of course, the other aspect to this problem is that Russia doesn't have any problem finding other buyers for their fossil fuels. Sure, they might make a bit less money selling them to China, but that'll serve as a nice little boost to the Chinese economy and military. These moves don't just hurt America's putative allies, but actually strengthen their enemies. Of course that's not to say the US wouldn't do it - the war in Iraq was a transparently terrible idea with millions of negative outcomes people correctly foresaw and warned about in advance, but that didn't do anything to stop it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Energy_mix_in_Germany.svg
If you think that building a few more nuclear plants would have obviated the need to import Russian fuel I do not think you have a very good grasp of just how much energy nuclear or fossil fuels provide. You would have to multiply their nuclear power generation capacity by close to an order of magnitude to cover the fossil fuel shortfall. This is just not a serious proposal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link