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 -
So Trump had a fun day on the golf course.
While golfing yesterday, he got the news that Colombia will not be accepting two jets full of repatriated criminals. So he goes on TruthSocial and posts that, immediately, Colombia will get slapped with 25% tariffs, as well as visa revocations for ruling party members.
This causes an immediate reaction from Petro, the unpopular socialist leader of Colombia, who offers to fly convicts back to Colombia in his Presidential jet.
There is much celebration and dunking from Trump supporters.
Not so fast. It turns out Petro might have been drunk, because he later goes on to post this insane rant on Twitter and then threatens the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs.
Now the Democrats are celebrating (because obviously it's good to hurt Trump even if it's bad for America). We are driving Colombians into the arms of China! Who will work our coffee fields? That kind of stuff.
The evening goes on. Trump finishes golfing. Petro sobers up and probably gets some, um, interesting phone calls from prominent Colombians who will have to pull their daughters from American finishing schools. Petro apparently caves, as the White House posts this, announcing that Colombia will accept unlimited flights. No tariffs for now, but the visa restrictions remain in force until Colombia follows through.
It's hard not to see this as a massive win for Trump and for America as a whole. He accomplished more in a few minutes, while golfing, than a normal administration would in weeks. Sometimes you can just do stuff.
MSN reported it like this: Donald Trump starts massive diplomatic crisis with Colombia while playing round of golf.
Was there ever any non-fake disagreement between Colombia and the US here?
Per centrist Twitter, deportation flights to Colombia had been running smoothly in civilian planes, Trump switched to using military planes without asking permission, Colombia turned the planes round due to lack of permission, Trump asked for permission (impolitely), Trump got permission, and everything will continue in an orderly way, apart for both sides spending the length of a round of golf trolling each other on social media.
Whether this is a win for America depends on whether you think being gratuitously boorish when you can get away with it is good diplomacy (because it makes you look tough and dangerous) or bad diplomacy (because it makes you look like a boor). This is a point of genuine partisan disagreement in 21st century America.
Maybe. I'm skeptical of that framing.
For one, how many planes have arrived since Trump took office? Presumably this was the first batch. Colombia might have been okay taking a plane every once in a while. Will they be okay taking 100x as many planes? These will be just the first of many, many flights.
And, of course, the correct response to rude behavior from an ally (sending the military planes, although I haven't verified this was actually abnormal) would be to accept the planes and politely ask for clarification. It would not be to make the leader of the free world lose face.
The bigger issue, of course, is the message this sends to Mexico and other countries that would refuse to take back their own citizens. Trump will immediately escalate and win. Despite what many people on this forum claimed, he is serious about mass deporting hundreds of thousands of violent criminals.
It's not a winning issue for the Dems either. Wait, you are upset that a country doesn't want to take back its own citizens? You are upset that violent felons can't stay in the US? They will just keep losing if they make this an issue even if they say its really about breaches of diplomatic etiquette or whatever.
No - it isn't. That's why I find fakery plausible - the whole thing couldn't have been stage managed better if the goal is to make Trump look good domestically.
If it is 5x, I'll eat my hat. My guess is that Trump puts in comparable numbers to Obama ("removals" is the best approximation to "immigrants deported from inside the US, not turned back at the border" and the number peaked at 432k in 2013) but both the MSM and right-wing Twitter make a lot of noise about it as if the number was unprecedented. Mostly because that is what happened in the first term. That delivers the best possible results for Trump politically - he is seen to be clamping down on immigration, which is popular, but nobody's nanny or landscape crew gets deported.
I'll agree that the Trump admin is grabbing the low-hanging fruit right now.
There are an estimated 1 million illegal aliens who are violent felons who can be deported without much blowback. Most of these came over in the Biden wave, and conveniently, the federal government already knew where many of them were. So it was pretty easy to grab and deport them once we got a competent administration.
Going after nannies and such is a different game altogether and I doubt they will.
But that doesn't matter much in my mind. Because Trump's words and actions will prevent millions of people from entering the country, and will result in millions more self-deporting. This is greatly superior to forced deportations.
That number can't be right. CBP says about 20,000 per year:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics/criminal-noncitizen-statistics
Which would be about 2 months of Trump deportations at current rates.
So an immigrant with a criminal record in US databases is arrested at the border, and then gives the border patrol his real name, birthdate, national ID number, etc... so they can look up his crimes in their database.
Yeah, I can see that number being less than 20,000 per year. It's remarkable that it's that high, but criminals be dumb. Or maybe they (accurately?) believed that previous felony convictions wouldn't matter and they'd get released into the US anyway.
Oh right. My bad. Let's do an estimate instead. The violent crime rate in the US is 380 per 100,000 (Wikipedia, 2022), with the most violent "state" being DC at 812 per 100,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_violent_crime_rate
Assuming deportations have not been enforced for four years and no multiple-offenders, it would take a population of 65 million illegal aliens to generate 1 million violent criminals at the US average, the base population of illegal aliens would be 31 million illegal aliens at DC's violent crime rate.
The standard estimate of illegal alien number in the US was 11 million in 2022. However, 'alien encounters' were three times higher between 2021 and 2024 than between 2021 and 2017. https://homeland.house.gov/2024/10/24/startling-stats-factsheet-fiscal-year-2024-ends-with-nearly-3-million-inadmissible-encounters-10-8-million-total-encounters-since-fy2021/
But as we learned during the VP debates, asylum seekers were not considered illegal under the Biden admin. In 2022 there were 1M applications for asylum, in 2023 there were 1.1M, and in 2024 there were 1.5M asylum applications. So that might be another 4M people.
So if I had to guess, there are 15 to 20M illegal aliens in the US at the end of 2024, which implies much less than 660k violent felon illegal aliens.
You need to correct for the fact that Latin America has a violent crime rate that is multiples of the US. Also what percentage of illegals are young males?
I will concede that even if, statistically, we can estimate that 1 million illegals are violent criminals, we don't know exactly which ones they are. Fortunately, we don't have to. We can deport the 22 year old with face tattoos even if we can't prove he committed a crime.
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
More options
Context Copy link