Directed with unerring accuracy by Moscow specifically to seed discord and division.

The idea that this the inevitable direction of peace ignores the fact that the rise of the so-called culture war is part of an asymmetric conflict.

This is just the same old disproven "hard times lead to strong men, strong men lead to good times, good times lead to weak men, weak men lead to hard times" nonsense.

If you paid any attention to what the talking heads driving the culture war discourse in the US have openly said about what they have been doing, it's obvious that the "culture war" is about as much the fault of progressives as the Ukraine war is the fault of Ukraine. "DEI" and "wokism" is just the current designated battleground after drag queens, "CRT", "BLM" and masks/vaccines. The goal is to frame non-issues as apocalyptic imminent threats in order to create political momentum for otherwise unpopular politics of rolling back civil justice advancements (e.g. gay rights, reproductive rights, Black rights, women's rights).

War does not lead to technological progress. War accelerates technological progress. A majority of groundbreaking research happens outside the private sector and war economies usually see more direct state control of the economy and more state involvement in R&D, supported by heavy public spending. If you want to take a lesson from war driving technological progress, you could just do this in peace times.

It sounds like the peace time decadence is not kerfuffles over pronouns but entertaining a privatized economy concerned more with ROI for investors than contributing to a shared public effort.

> If you want to take a lesson from war driving technological progress, you could just do this in peace times.

that's exactly the point though. unless we're threatened with annihilation, or at least loss of access to valuable resources, we as humans don't seem very good at this kind of thing. we'd rather spend it on corruption, bullshit jobs, vanity projects, etc.

Not at all. I think you've confused the word "progression" with "desperation".

Killing is the most basic instinct of animals, a dog can do that if aggravated enough. In fact, a stupid strong dog can be much more violent than a smart strong dog. It's not anything advanced, really. So as war, which is just a form of mass killings.

Peace, on the other hand, is more advanced. It takes a lot effort, maneuver, calculations and compromise to make it happen.

Technological progress will happen (if not happen in a better way) without war, it could be driven by market, or people's wish etc.

War makes people desperate, so they wish to have something to keep them safe immediately, including methods/tools that makes them good at killing (formally called "Defense"). That's why we humans figured out how to build nuclear bombs BEFORE nuclear power stations.

There are also countless example on how wars halted progress. Do you know how many scientists lost their lives because of wars? How many regular people and their potentials gets destroyed because of wars? And how high the reparation could cost to repair what's lost the wars?

All and all, calling "war leads to progress" is a complete void-filled nonsensical bullshit. Kerfuffles, if keeps people safe to enjoy their lives, is way more productive than that.