site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"Barricaded doors" is doing too much work here. The fact of the Capitol riot is that the police were intentionally undermanned, and also engaged in basic incompetence at nearly every phase of the event. The long and short of it is that they never actually barricaded anything. The Capitol is essentially a medieval fort, and over a hundred armed men let it get sacked by a bunch of unorganized people essentially engaging in Brownian motion in the general vicinity of said fort. The fact that the whole force wasn't fired is...questionable. The fact that all of leadership wasn't is conspiratorial.

What was the defensive setup? Well, most of the police were deployed behind small lines of these things which are used for directing orderly lines of humans into an entrance, they are not appropriate for riot control. These are not barricades.

Because the forces were isolated and far from the building, they immediately began panicking and ran to the door. The doors were never closed or locked. Hardly a barricade. Again, the slow pushing mass of unarmed people overcame this "defense". Then we had some chaotically strewn furniture in hallways. Not really what we'd call a barricade either.

In the end, Jan 6 is the answer to a very specific question: What would happen if an understaffed, poorly trained, and even more poorly managed police force faced a crowd composed of people who could easily kill them all, but had absolutely no intention of actually doing so? Is Babbit's payout comically high? Yes. But that always is the case with these cases. She certainly has a pretty good case compared to the average rioter case. If she wanted that officer dead, he would be. She was, by all accounts, a competent combatant when armed, which she was intentionally not.

There is a sliding scale of "adequate". All the members of congress were unharmed and successfully certified the election despite a riot. Minimum viable standard, but still successful. Why would it be the responsibility of the Capitol police to handle an unprecedented riot better than the rioters themselves.

The fact that all of leadership wasn't is conspiratorial.

The straightforward conspiracy when guards are undermanned is "the guards are expected to fail at protecting what they are supposed to be guarding". A conspiracy plot to the effect that "the guards are supposed to look like they almost fail protecting congress from a riot in a way that makes the riot look extra bad and scary" is a conspiracy theory with additional epicycles. Did the nefarious conspiracy organize the riot, too, or was it counter-conspiracy organized in response to the planned riot to storm the congress conveniently organized by parties-unrelated to the nefarious conspiracy?

The fact that Trump had given orders to protect the rioters and thus National Guard was not in vicinity of Capitol puts a bit of evidence towards the first kind of conspiracy than the second kind.

There is a sliding scale of "adequate". All the members of congress were unharmed and successfully certified the election despite a riot. Minimum viable standard, but still successful. Why would it be the responsibility of the Capitol police to handle an unprecedented riot better than the rioters themselves.

Riots happen, or rather they can happen. Why they happen is based on a confluence of factors, but the police deployment and response is always an important factor. People rarely riot when law enforcement is well deployed and competently managed. This riot was not unprecedented in any way other than it was comprised of Republicans. The failings of the police force is basically the only interesting part about what happened.

conspiracy

Its not a conspiracy. We generally know what happened. The chief of the Capitol Police has testified to this many times. His deputy (who was promoted to chief after he was let go) was briefed about an increase in the expected crowd size and an increase in potential agitators in the crowd. She did not give him that information. Regardless, he requested additional troops including overtime and National Guard. Those requests were denied by leadership (Pelosi and McConnel's offices), possibly because he did not have the additional credible threat information, possibly just optics. Then as the riot developed he requested National Guard again, and this time both offices took about 5-6 hours to give him a response.

And in any case, conspiracy or not, who benefited from Jan 6 clearly the Democratic party and anti-Trump Republicans, so we don't need epicycles, just knowledge of how media coverage works and insight into the minds of Capitol leadership, which is not hard to divine.

The fact that Trump had given orders to protect the rioters and thus National Guard was not in vicinity of Capitol puts a bit of evidence towards the first kind of conspiracy than the second kind.

Here is an actually conspiratorial idea, which is directly contradicted by tons of public evidence, but you seem to think its worth talking about.