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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For the Nazis, a central example of inferior races would be the Slavic peoples. Obviously they should be replaced with Germans for most purposes, but for the time being they could still serve the Reich better through labor than death.


By contrast, the Jews were considered a parasite race. I think that an analogy would be to imagine that we suddenly discover vampires (e.g. of world of darkness) are living among us, killing with impunity, enjoying superpowers, making life miserable for the mortals through manipulating state affairs like they have been doing for millennia.


I do not think that most humans would support a policy of "merely take away their civil rights and companies, but leave them otherwise in peace to use their supernatural skills to scheme their way back into power".


For the Nazis, the two existential threats to the Reich were also Jewish in nature: the US (controlled by Jewish bankers) and the USSR (based on the writings of the Jew Marx, with plenty of Jews among the Soviet elite).


The analogy of the people as a human body ("Volkskoerper") is a common Nazi one. For the Nazis, the Jews were basically a potentially life-threatening infectious disease (like smallpox) of the body of the people, whose eradication was imperative. (I'd argue that they would have viewed the 'gypsies' as a less serious infection, an annoyance which should be wiped out where found but ultimately not a threat to the survival of the Reich.)


This explains why the Nazis started the Shoa before they had won their war, and spent a lot of resources direly needed in what they considered the war for the survival of the German people on their genocide project. Why they kept up the killing even when the Allies advanced and it became apparent that they would not win the war. The holocaust was never a bonus objective for them. It was an independent goal which was arguably as important to them as winning their war.


(In case I am somehow unclear: the Nazis were, in my not so humble opinion, horribly wrong about the Jews (among other topics). The group responsible for millennia of human misery is not the 'Jewish race' or some blood-sucking monsters, but good old h. sapiens torturing his own, and the fucking Nazis were clearly prime examples of their species in that regard.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is silly. Nazis borrowed heavily from American Eugencists and FDR borrowed heavily from Mussolini. Modern leftism derives a lot of its roots and ideas from 1920s American Progressives, 1920s Eugenicists, Facists, and the USSR Communists.




That is American Eugenicists -> Fascists -> FDR -> American Progressives -> Modern Leftists. If I'll give you the last one for free, which still leaves four degrees of separation.


I will grant you that the early pro-choice movement likely did not consider every possible child equally valuable for society for reasons of genetics and race as well as environment. (Apart from the race aspect, I do not think they are totally wrong. "You exist because your daddy was too drunk to wear a condom correctly and your mum too optimistic to go for plan B, and because abortion is illegal" is not a great set of dice rolls for a new character. Giving the women choice is a non-evil (unless you are Christian) to counter the unfortunate selection effects of g-dependent birth control).




there is a very fine line between a modern progressive and a person who thinks we should re-start mass sterilization, and most of that fine line is IQ denialism.




Okay, walk me through this.


The SJP are the ones in IQ denial, correct?


What exactly is IQ denial for you? The negation of HBD? The rejection of intelligence as a concept of colonizers? Accepting IQ, but denying any heritability (blank-slatism)?


I have to admit that 'a SJP who embraces HBD' does not invoke a particularly coherent image in my head, same as for 'a nihilist who finds Jesus' or 'a triangle without corners'.


Is the idea that they would embrace HBD and basically advocate for forced sterilization of low g people to raise population intelligence? Or that they would embrace white supremacism? Or that they would double down on their initial ideas about group differences, and try to form the world towards their own ideals, forcibly sterilizing smart Ashkenazim and stupid members of what they identify as low-g races to create an utopia where race is uncorelated with intelligence?


Given that forced sterilizations seem bad and any woke could be reading our conversation at this very moment, do you think it is safe to make them even aware of the fact that you consider them in IQ denial lest they cross your thin line and turn into monsters?


Or is it possible that you were simply signaling 'boo outgroup' by saying 'if $enemy realized ${thing they deny}, they would do ${evil action}'.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It thus had a practical (but of course wholly unethical) purpose and was unique in the world in the sense that it meant extermination and not only sterilization of socially undesirables




For the Nazis, the individual was completely subordinated to the Volk. The victims of T4 were considered genetically inferior, so they would not give birth of the Germans of tomorrow, and also unable to work for the present needs of their Volk, so for the Nazis they served no purpose, and were thus killed.


To be considered a useless mouth to feed, being disabled was not enough. After all, a woman who has lost a leg in an accident can still serve her people and fatherland by giving birth to a lot of soldiers and soldier-birthers. Only being disabled because of a genetic disease was worthy of death by CO poisoning in a van, because in that case she might contaminate the gene pool of the next generation.




For this reason I’s argue that it cannot be considered an example of eugenics, which wasn’t even a word the Nazis used (“racial hygiene” was used instead).




The difference between eugenics and Rassenhygiene seems like a particularly fine hair to split.


Eugenics is basically: "Not all genetic variants are equally valuable and we should strive to increase the quality of our gene pool."


Rassenhygiene is: "The gene pool (not that they had the word, but certainly an equivalent concept) of our noble Volk is under assault from both without and within. Other, lesser races try to contaminate our noble bloodlines with their inferior heritage, and undesirable traits manifest themselves sometimes even within pure-blooded families. Like dog breeders, we must therefore prevent our women from coupling with inferior men and cull anyone whose blood would weaken the German Volk no matter their heritage."


If this does not convince you, consider the positive eugenics the Nazis engaged in. Lebensborn was the program led by Himmler himself. This included finding racially superior children among the Untermenschen in the occupied territories, which were then kidnapped and Germanized (or gassed, if they the SS doctors thought they had genetic problems or were not racially valuable enough to contribute to the Volk).


So I am with @self_made_human here, Nazi Germany went all-in on both positive and negative eugenics, albeit with a clear flavor of racial purity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that a case could be made that what made SJ so appealing to the upper-middle (and middle) class was that by denying class, it made them free to be as classist. Before SJP, expressing contempt of the working class would have gone badly in mostly left-leaning academic circles.


Now, it is totally permissible, because being working class does not make you oppressed. After all, with blank-slatism, everyone who does not manage to earn a degree in grievance studies despite not belonging to an oppressed group is clearly just lazy.


So if you are a white woman whose daddy paid for your college so you could work in HR, you a free to feel vastly superior to the proletariat in a way which would have utterly embarrassed any upper-middle person in the 50s. Just take care to refer to them as "deplorables" or "MAGA base" who can not even bother to educate themselves about what is really the secret handshakes of your class membership (like the updates to the pride flag, pronouns, or knowing when you are supposed to do a land acknowledgement) but what you conveniently pretend is the basis of being a decent person.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In Paul Fussell's nomenclature, the class of a math professor is definitely the 'upper-middle' class, not the upper class. Math is much too useful to appeal to the upper class (except perhaps as an eccentricity signal 'I am feeling so confident in my place in society that I can pick a subject used by people who need to think to earn a living, because nobody could possibly mistake me for them').


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that math class is probably the worst offender for pointless busywork.


Case in point: Polynomial long division. 100% "we make you learn an algorithm as a proxy for intelligence", 0% "something you will need to know as a prerequisite for understanding something else." The correct place for it would be "Having just discussed the properties of polynomial rings in general, here is as a curiosity a technique of dividing polynomials. You know that it will not be relevant for you exam because it involves just playing an algorithm (possibly even with concrete quantities)."


Instead you get tasks like "one of the factors of x^3+5x^2+7x-3 is (x+3). Factorize x".


People whose skill is to pass 'math' class in high school do not need to worry about being replaced by LLMs, because they were presumably replaced by WolframAlpha in 2011.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
While I agree with your defense of meritocracy, I also think it is possible to over-fetishize g.


The reason I took a longer time for writing my master thesis than most of my peers was (if I say so myself) not that I was dumber than them. Instead it was about a lack of ambition, depression, substandard social skills and so forth. So "can this candidate finish a 12 months thesis in a year?" actually tells you something useful about a person, apart from "what IQ did this guy have at age 10?"


(Of course, your NBA argument applies: differences in g are small within select groups because their effect is oversized. You can study physics while being alarmingly pathological on a lot of different axes. But no amount of conscientiousness, well-adjustedness, healthy eating habits, mental balance, social life, and so will compensate for the handicap of having an IQ of 90. So anyone who struggles with their thesis is unlikely to struggle because of g.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Civil right legislation aside, I think that in many cases the market would solve this problem to everyone's satisfaction.


If you have five food trucks, and one of them is run by a KKK member who only wants to serve White people (and not the wrong White people, either), I think the market can solve this. Likely he will mostly be serving burgers to Neonazis, and the four wiser food truck owners will pick up his mainstream customers.


There are of course situations where a market failure is more likely. If our KKK member has leased the only cafeteria at a workplace, or is the only decent ISP in an area, they might deserve more regulation. (Things get messier if there is a prevailing sentiment of customers distorting the market, like "places willing to serve Blacks are low-class". Or if the government leans on businesses, but I already mentioned that.)


I think most businesses are aware that preemptively banning outgroups means opening a can of worms which they do not want opened. "We do not preemptively ban anyone" is an easy Schelling point to defend. Once you saying you will not serve people who are convicted of sex crimes against children, that is as good as saying that you are positively willing to serve people who have committed sex crimes against adults, or non-sexualized violence against children, or murder, or large scale fraud. And once they also ban all of these, people will demand they ban people with BLM or MAGA outfits, and no matter what they decide they will lose a fraction of their customer base.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you read my quote very carefully, you will notice that the fourth word is "paternalistic".


Putting someone into forensic psychiatry for crimes they committed is not paternalistic, it is clearly 'for the good of society', not 'for their own good'.


I have no problem with putting people into forensic psychiatry, provided that that get their day in criminal court, that their maximum stay duration is no longer than the penalty the law provides for their offense, and that they have the option to transfer to regular prison if they want to.


So if you jurisdiction allows for sentencing a sane person to life in prison for their third unqualified assault (which might set bad incentives on its own, however), I have no objection to you locking up a psychotic offender in forensic instead.


Of course, this also involves society being willing to pay the costs of keeping someone locked up in a psych ward long term, not only for patients who are naturally inclined towards violence, but also towards any patients which might prefer this to being left to their own devices, if they exist (because qualifying on purpose would be trivial).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Okay, here is my hot take. Get rid of paternalistic involuntary commitment, and you will cut down the instances of violence by half. (Most of the remainder will probably be prisoners in forensic psychiatry, e.g. people who committed (mostly violent) crimes but were found not guilty for reasons of insanity. These are probably best considered prisoners first and patients second, just like normal, sane, sociopath serial killer serving life who also has a bad toothache is unlikely to be rendered less of a danger because of his medical condition.)


Specialties of medicine which respect patient autonomy presumably have a vastly lower incidence of patients turning violent. Take oncology. Breaking off a promising chemotherapy is probably among the treatment decisions which carry the highest QALY cost, outside of outright committing suicide while healthy. Yet for adult patients, society and healthcare professionals generally accept that it is the patients decision. Very few cancer patients will attack a nurse out of desperation, because if they want to leave, they are just one signature of their own death warrant ("leaving against medical advice") away from getting out.


Contrast with specialties which do not give a damn about patient's autonomy, psychiatry first and foremost. I wish I could say that a month in a psych ward had the same long term QALY gain associated with a month undergoing a promising chemotherapy, but while both treatments may share a similar quality of life during treatment (i.e. utter misery), the long term outcomes of these intervention are as different as different as a shot of rum and fentanyl are for pain management: in my experience, the main goal of psychiatry is to keep their patients alive for another day. A mostly functioning patient going into a locked ward for debatable psychotic symptoms might emerge a month later addicted to benzodiazepines (which effectively removes them as a further treatment option), prescribed some antipsychotic (which he will stop taking at the earliest opportunity), having experienced physical restraint (because people who mostly cope with life in freedom sometimes cope badly when put in very stressful situations) and a life-long conviction that anything related to the mental health system is utterly evil and terrible (which further limits their treatment options). (On reflection, likening this to rum for pain management seems optimistic, and it might be closer to chewing glass for pain management.)


(I am fine with people who attempt to kill themselves without success or are expressing the intend to commit suicide spending a few days locked up for their defection around social norms. There is no intrinsic right to fail to kill yourself or distress others with your plans. Just let them out after a few days, and hope that they have overcome their acute suicidality,  learned their lesson either about threatening suicide, or the lesson about which way to cut and keeping their mouth shut -- suicide is a human right, after all.)


If a base jumper falls to his death, that is sad, but not particularly upsetting. After all, when he took on his hobby, he was perfectly aware that humans are ill-suited for gliding close to the ground.


If someone who has made it their profession to lock people up without them having violated criminal laws gets attacked by one of his prisoners, that is also sad (and generally wrong and evil on the part of their prisoners, because typically it will not lead to them escaping), but also not particularly upsetting. Treating people as unable to make decisions about their own life (which is why you lock them up, after all), while also expecting them to respect norms of polite society e.g. about not sticking a cake fork into through your eye socket seems to be both hypocritical and utterly foolish.


Further reading of my opinions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am not deeply familiar with McCarthyism.


Basically, given my stance, I would say that if a studio decided that it did not want to hire commies, that would be fine. However, if all studios decided on that, then I would suspect that this is not because their execs are fierce anti-communists, but because the government had told them that they could do this either the easy way or the hard way, and they chose to comply rather than being singled out for tax or fire safety audits or whatever other regulatory repercussions a state might visit upon a company it wants destroyed.


It is not dissimilar to the government telling social media companies to censor COVID misinformation 'or else'.


There are positions which are genuinely so unpopular that most people will prefer not to do business with you, and it is ok if they collectively decide that. It is different if someone is coercing them to do so, especially if it is government.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree that the capabilities of air power have changed.


I also agree that this does not mean that air power can suddenly deliver on the promise of strategic objectives. The US may well invest a few billions to force Iran to abandon its barracks and police stations. But nothing would stop the regime from evenly distributing their goons evenly over the apartments of Tehran. Even if the US can bust any bunker the regime might dig out, I am not convinced that the bunker busters are actually cheaper than digging out bunkers.


As others have pointed out, Hamas is a cautionary tale on what you can not do even with total air superiority.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Even if Trump does nothing and the Ayatollah crushes the riots, then what? Irans currency is still getting annihilated, their water situation is not unfucked, their "allies" are both faraway and incapable, their neighbourhood actively hostile.




None of these indicate that they are neutralized. I can think of historical examples of countries where citizens where got used to fleeing to bomb shelters and food was rationed, and still the country was both quite resilient against changes from within and also an imminent threat to world peace.


For example, you can not just look at the North Korean GDP and declare that they are surely a military irrelevant shithole, because e.g. fielding a quarter of their population does not actually require a great GDP.


Just from its size, Iran is a big regional player. But it gets worse. Their drone designs get widely used by the Russian military, inheritors to what was once a top notch superpower. Now you can argue that this reflects more on Russia's decline than on Iran's rise, or that Iran is simply able to sell the cheapest minimum viable drone, but even then they are beating whatever the military version of temu is at its own game, which seems impressive in its own right.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Cubans are too lazy for revolution and those smart and ambitious enough to try it either rise within the Party or flee to America.




Now I am wondering if the decision of the US to liberally grant asylum to any Cuban refugees resulted in stabilizing the Castro regime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is purely waging the culture war. If you have some information that Good was specifically trying to hamper the deportation of a specific murderer or rapist (who for some reason was not in prison), please share it with the class.


Also, can you back up the claim that she was consciously and willingly risking her life, that would be helpful.


Finally, your claim makes her actually sound impressive. Rare is the human willing to risk her life for the sake of a stranger, still rarer the one trying to help the lowest of the low. Keep talking like that, and the pope might canonize her.


Even people who agree with you that her cause is insane might be impressed at her level of dedication.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Non-violent resistance and civil disobedience are things, actually.


A few people might believe that their government is always morally right, axiomatically. Most believe otherwise.


A lot of people will concede that a government can become so evil that it is imperative to violently oppose it. I think that is a popular idea in America, in the abstract.


But what if government does evil, but not on a scale were you feel justified waging total war against it?


Then people often employ methods to hamper the goals of the government, especially the goals they find morally objectionable, without resorting to violence. Perhaps you just 'forget' to add the fuse in half of the bombs you build for the Nazi war machine. Perhaps you use your privileged status as a white person to help slaves escape to the northern US. Perhaps you give aid to civilians persecuted by a regime. Perhaps you just decide that you did not see a petty theft.


The specifics vary widely over axes such as personal risk, effectiveness, cause. Morality being subjective, some causes you will agree with and some you won't. I don't share the world view of anti-abortion activists, so I would view the attempt to sabotage an abortion clinic by welding their front door shut as property damage. However, I will vastly prefer an activist who employs such tactics to one who has decided to just blow up doctors instead. The former is an annoyance, but at the end of the day we are merely disagreeing about some details how civilization should work. With the latter, there can be no peace or common ground.


Nor is non-violent resistance necessarily ineffective. The underground railroad freed a lot more slaves  than John Brown did (debatable indirect effects like the ACW aside).


Good was obviously believing that using her plot armor as a white US woman to hinder ICE was moral. (Like whenever a human does something, there were also signaling considerations involved, but to pretend every action is just caused by them is too cynical by half.) She was likely willing to deal with fines and the like for her cause, but probably did not expect to be shot.


I have criticized her rather harshly for her fatal decision, but on reflection I think I was wrong to characterize her as 'cosplaying #LaResistance'. Her beliefs are not my beliefs, I would have preferred for her to work and donate to some EA cause area (not that I am one to talk, there). But for all these differences, she was faced with something she considered morally wrong in her society and did not react by mashing the defect button as much and as fast as possible, e.g. planting IEDs against ICE.


TL;DR: 'She should just have stayed at home, and nobody would have shot her' only works if either you believe your government to be infallible or your own moral beliefs to be fundamentally true while every other belief is just a silly error.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Cars are not toys. They are about equal with guns in terms of killing people in the US each year




Come on, this is a false equivalence. Try parking a truck into the parking lot of your local police department, then walk in while carrying a shotgun. Carefully observe which of these actions will cause more concern. Try to convince them that the real danger is your truck.


Cars kill a lot of people because they are ubiquitous. The majority of adult Americans are drivers, and drivers spend around an hour per day driving. The average American definitely does not spend half a hour every day shooting or even handling guns. There is a reason while there are few mafia movies where the cleaners rely on cars to kill their victims.


If she had pointed a gun at Ross, I would completely concede self-defense immediately. The main purpose of a gun is to kill or incapacitate soft targets, and given the low frequency of mountain lions in urban Minnesota, it is 100% reasonable to assume that she was in fact going to shoot Ross. Even if her gun was later found to be unloaded.


But cars (even bloody SUVs -- that is another CW angle) are rarely used in intentional or even depraved heart homicides, most car deaths are accidents, negligent manslaughter.


So Good driving in the general direction of Ross is a lot more ambiguous than her pointing a gun at him, because cars have plenty of uses besides killing federal agents. There was of course a chance that she was absolutely going to murder him. There was also a chance that she was going to drive over him because she had decided that ICE lives don't matter (depraved heart), or that she had not realized that he was standing in her path. There was also a chance that she was merely going to graze him either from a motivation of depraved heart or because she had misjudged the turn radius of her car. Possibly there was also a chance that she was going to miss him entirely.


Now, if she either intended to run him over or did not give a fuck about killing him, I will concede that he was entitled to self-defense in an unlikely attempt to stop her. (Though the risk of hitting bystanders would still need to be weighted against the probability of stopping her car.) Even then, it was not a good tactical move compared to getting out of the way, but that would not have been a legal issue.


For the injuries she actually inflicted on him, a headshot was clearly an overreaction, I think most people will agree that letting people grazed by cars shoot the driver is generally a bad idea.


These probabilities do matter if we evaluate a claim of self-defense. Basically, if you see a 6yo (-15) in Germany (-20) on Fasching (-20) point a gun-shaped object which looks like plastic (-15) at you, it is not reasonable to conclude that you are about to be shot by a live firearm and kill the kid. If you see a drug addict in Central Park point what looks like a firearm in your direction, that conclusion would be different.


In this case, a good prosecutor might make the case that you had someone who was distracted by filming with a mobile phone getting startled by a car which was suddenly moving towards him and then decided to compensate his lack of situational awareness through deadly force.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


My exact compromise suggestion was "let the Minnesota authorities carry out the arrests safely" so we don't get Feds in the neighborhoods.




If Trump was giving ICE the same mission in every state, asking local PDs to assist them might be reasonable. Instead, he is sending ICE into cities which voted against him, and agricultural workers in rural areas are not deported at all.


What Trump is doing here is clearly selective enforcement, alike to pardoning Hernández while kidnapping Maduro. I do not feel that local PDs are obliged to help with enforcement action whose purpose it is clearly to annoy the local taxpayer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


However, there is a population whose goal is to terrorize ICE agents, which is why ICE wears balaclavas now.




I am sure it is a reason, but also sure that it is not the only reason.


I assume that perhaps 1% of the population believe in their heart of hearts that it is good if cops are killed on general principle, and perhaps 5% believe the same about Trump's ICE. Luckily, most of these people are also cowards not willing to die or go to prison for their moral beliefs. I am sure that there is some story somewhere of an ICE agent being identified by violent anti-ICE activists and then tracked down and murdered while off duty, just like some criminals will id and kill the cop who arrested them, but if there was a general trend of catfishing and murdering ICE agents, I think we would have heard about it.


I think the bigger reason is that a third of the population despises Trump's ICE without actively plotting to murder them. To be fair, they are easy to despise: sent into states not selected for their high fraction of illegals, but for voting for Harris in 2024 (because Trump is vindictive af), arresting kids in schools, sometimes arresting foreign-looking citizens by mistake, etc pp. (A further third believes that ICE is doing the most important job in the country, and a further third is mostly meh, I guess.)


Some of the despisers might actually commit minor illegal acts towards identified ICE agents, like spitting in their coffee, but most will probably just treat you like if they had seen your blood group tattoo -- refuse to do business with you, shun you socially (and invite their friends to do likewise), perhaps offer your liberal parents their condolences on Facebook for having a child with such a career. Entirely legal.


With the number of protesters (legally) filming ICE on the job, virtually every ICE agent working in public would be identified in short order. And the SJ left can be just as petty and vindictive as Trump. With ML, programming a website 'iceassholescanner.example' which takes random snapshots of civilians and tells you if they have worked for ICE during Trump II is easily within the capabilities of the wokes.


The relatively high salary (considering the length of the training) is definitely meant as a compensation for 'a third of the country will shun you'. But if you operate masked, you can have your 100k$/year cake and eat it too, all for the low cost of matching some Daesh aesthetics.


I am sure that most ICE agents delude themselves into thinking that they are hiding their face to foil murderous Antifa terrorists who would otherwise try to murder them in their sleep, but realistically, most of the utility is in the woman you will be dating in five years not getting urged by her girlfriends to dump you for having been ICE.


**


This leaves the moral question which life choices should be made public and which life choices should be kept private (if the individual desires that). I will admit that I have a bit of trouble fitting my liberal sentiments into general principles here, so the following is more ad hoc than a long held deep belief system. E.g. frequenting a gay night club should be probably kept confidential (excepting sex partners, and possibly excepting extreme cases of hypocrisy), medical records (including abortions, births, gender surgery) should be kept private, as should be membership in less political religious organizations (e.g. the RCC). For more political organizations, e.g. the KKK (also religious in a way, I think), the John Brown Gun Club, the GOP, the Dems, the DSA, I think outing members is not immoral.


For professional careers, I tend to think that putting people on lists is generally morally permissible. So the person who shot one porn home video which got leaked to the internet is not on the list, but if someone wants to make a list of all porn models which have produced lesbian/fetish/interracial content, I don't think it violates their privacy. Or if someone wants to make a list of lawyers who have ever defended a cop or an accused rapist or worked for big oil for some reason. I guess this means that the anti-abortion radicals can have their lists of gynecologists.


Additionally, I strongly believe that people who employ violence, either particularly (accused criminals, people acting in self-defense) or professionally for the state (cops, soldiers) or third parties (security services) should be a matter of public record. Social disapproval is a useful tool to deter immoral violence, after all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That seems to expand the word terrorist beyond all usefulness.


X is on their way to a demonstration or political convention. X misses a red light and hits a pedestrian. Violence? Check. Political motive? Check. Ergo: terrorist.


Outside of Trump's mind, in what we might call the real world, not even every political motivated violence (which Good's behavior is almost certainly not -- she was politically motivated and reckless, but her obviously politically motivated actions were not reckless and her reckless actions were not politically motivated beyond reasonable doubt) is considered terrorism. Someone who throws a rock at cops in riot gear during a political demonstration (despicable as that is) is generally considered a rioter, not a terrorist.


Terrorism commonly involves serious, generally premeditated violence (most often murder, but arson or maimings would likewise qualify) for the purpose of causing general fear to further some policy. That sick fuck who throws rocks will generally hot hope to cause enough damage to cause widespread fear. If he decides to throw a hand grenade at the cops instead of a rock, then that could well be called terrorism.


In short, there is applying a strong spin to statements (see "the media very rarely lies") and whatever Trump is doing. The press might call the Moon "the brightest celestial body" (implied: visible at that time and place), but Trump will just go out and call what is obviously the Moon 'the Sun'. And then some will come along and try to argue that technically, he is not 100% wrong, after all, most of the light we get from the Moon is ultimately sunlight, and would it not make sense to expand the definition of 'the Sun' to also cover the reflected sunlight from other celestial bodies such as the Moon or Mars -- which would be almost invisible if the Sun went off, after all -- in a blatantly motivated argument.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am with @ToaKraka here. You just threw in "sympathy for traffickers" as a Boo-light.


Nobody (so far) seriously claims that the reason MN is soft on migrants is that they are feeling sorry for pimps who are importing sex slaves. You know fully well that the left is primarily sympathetic to the illegals, probably indifferent towards smugglers and probably hostile towards people trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation.




This is the same thing, except it's women wanting cheap men to use and throw away.




Even if I grant you for the moment that everyone who supports turning a blind eye towards illegal migration is motivated by using the male illegal immigrants as fuckbois (which seems a very far-fetched claim in itself), that is not trafficking. Consider: if I supported letting in a million hot single Latinas, in the hope that they will enter the dating market and make that market more favorable for men, that is not trafficking. I would have to add "... and then these Latinas will have no choice but to find a sugar daddy or starve" to even come close. Even then, this is not the central case of a trafficker, which is someone who gets paid for providing victims of exploitation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is so obviously a murder.




Let me stop you right there.


I would, based on what I have seen so far, be inclined to convict Ross of manslaughter if I was on his jury (which I won't be, as a foreigner). I don't know the law well enough to say if the prosecution could sell me on murder 2, and there is always the possibility that the defense could convince me of their story, of course.


However, if you are saying that this is "obviously a murder", you are distorting the truth, almost as much as the bloody Trump administration.


I do not think that anyone will be able to prove that what went through Ross head was "finally that bitch made my day and gave me an excuse to cap her". It seems entirely possible that Ross was unaware that she was not aiming the car for him before he fired his shots and was under the impression that she was going to run him over with her SUV unless he stopped her.


In that case, even a manslaughter conviction would hinge on messy little details of the case. Would a reasonable officer in his situation (who was not previously physically harmed by cars, and not distracted by making his little movie on what was presumably his private mobile phone instead of relying on his body cam) have concluded the same thing? Did he forfeit his right to self-defense by recklessly placing himself in a situation where he would be forced to resort to lethal violence, possibly in violation of tactical rules how to behave around a suspect's vehicle?


If the car had been in neutral while Ross shot, I would agree that it looked like straightforward murder. But it was moving forward, and reasonable people could disagree over the interpretation of all of these messy little details -- many here did disagree with me, in fact.


I have seen nobody here claim Trump's version, e.g. that she was a domestic terrorist, presumably because she was trying to kill Ross (but weirdly incompetent at driving over a person just in front of her car). Sadly, this makes your version "obviously murder" the most outlandish claim I have seen argued here. (Though my the trophy for maximum disagreement still goes to "I would acquit ICE no matter what the facts were", but you could still get a tie if you were willing to unconditionally convict ICE regardless of the facts.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That is plausible. Still, what does Israel gain by loudly backing Pahlavi? Presumably, the Ayatollah regime would crack down as hard on "we want to install the Shah" as they do on "we want to install the Shah, who is btw best buddies with Israel".


Plus, there is a general value to not announcing your astroturfing campaigns because it will make people who claim that a campaign is taking place look like delusional paranoids. 'Actually, Mossad was pretty open about their social media campaign against the Mullah regime' is not an argument you would your critics for free.


Then there is the signaling aspect towards both Pahlavi and future allies. "Oops, we leaked this by mistake" is not something anyone is likely to buy from them. They can have great opsec if they want to have it.


One thing which might explain their behavior is that it might be much more expensive to run an operation with good deniability. But in a world where the Trump administration calls Good a 'Domestic Terrorist', e.g. where statements are made for the sake of the most gullible 5% of the population, one would expect that any threadbare denial would be beneficial.


Perhaps the calculation is that the regime is much more likely to kill its opponents if they believe they are Mossad agents. Opposing the Ayatollah will probably earn you a long prison sentence, but being paid by Mossad will reliably get you executed. So telegraphing "btw, the protests are our doing and all the protesters are our agents", they are egging on the regime to kill them in large numbers, which will in turn force Trump to act, as you observed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that having a leader who is not fundamentally hostile to Israel would be an upgrade, yes.


However, most of the population in Muslim countries have long expressed some hostility towards Israel, and Bibi's war/peace in Gaza has done little to win their hearts and minds.


Any leader who is seen as a Mossad stooge will start with a 50 point penalty to stability, basically.


Given these circumstances, I now wonder a bit what Mossad is playing at. If they were serious about installing Pahlavi, one would think that they would keep their involvement non-obvious. They can keep a secret if they want to, so it appears they want the world to know that the Shah has their support. I do not have the context to know what their play is here, though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


As for the "Evil Empire", regardless of what they did or didn't do to the US, the USSR was that; ask the Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Hungarians, and the survivors of the Prague Spring, among many others.




Oh, I am not doubting that. I am not some Holodomor denier.


I am also not saying that the net effect of the US is as atrocious as the net effect of the Ayatollah regime. FWIW, I consider the net effect of the US to be strongly positive from a global point of view. However, I would claim that if we only consider the territory of Iran, then the effect of the US seems pretty clearly net negative. The Ayatollah has certainly be worse from my PoV, but Iranians have little reason to like the US.


While I am sure that the Iranian hostage crisis was in some ways "unprecedented", I don't think it will even make the top 50 atrocities committed in the ME. Presumably the perception of the revolutionaries was that the Shah was basically a stooge, and the US the puppet masters. The people in the US embassy were working very hard to keep the Shah in power and Iran under the thumb of the US. Sure, the Shah had guaranteed them diplomatic immunity, and violating their embassy would be a defection from diplomatic norms, but it does not read to me as an act of pure evil.  (With the benefit of hindsight, it was also very stupid on part of the revolutionaries. They gained nothing, antagonized a global superpower and also set themselves up for becoming a diplomatic pariah.)