site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Daily Mail is not the best sort of news outlet, but they are serving as additional confirmation that the birthday book exists and that the Trump letter is real. Also that Bill Clinton sent one as well. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14921905/Donald-Trump-sues-Wall-Street-Journal-MoS-reveals-Bill-Clinton-letter-Jeffrey-Epstein-birthday.html

Important parts

Bill Clinton wrote a 'warm and gushing' letter which was included in Jeffrey Epstein's infamous 50th 'birthday book', The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Mr Clinton's letter is one page and is embossed with: 'From the desk of William Jefferson Clinton' at the top.

A lot of other people wrote letters

Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson – both friends of Epstein at that time – are also believed to have contributed letters to the book alongside Mr Clinton, who regularly flew in Epstein's private jet, dubbed 'the Lolita Express'.

Last night, a source said: 'Ghislaine asked everyone they knew and that included presidents, princes and kings.

'Bill Clinton wrote a warm and gushing letter. It was one page and profuse in its admiration for Jeffrey.'

The MoS has been told Epstein's close friend, Harvard scholar Henry Rosovsky, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and computer pioneer Marvin Minsky also all contributed letters.

The WSJ claimed Epstein's lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote a letter but he has yet to comment about the claim.

We don't know where the original book is at now.

The whereabouts of the original book is not known.

It is thought to have been seized during one of the raids on Epstein's homes in Florida and New York, where Maxwell kept 'dozens of albums' filled with pictures of their trips together including holidays to visit Prince Andrew at Balmoral, Buckingham Palace and Windsor.

The source says the book is real, the letters are real, but the evidence files themselves used contain facsimiles of them

The letters are believed to have been included in more than 100,000 pages of evidence recently reviewed by 1,000 FBI agents working in 24-hour shifts.

It is believed the letters were copied by investigators and entered into evidence as facsimiles around the time the book was seized.

A source claimed the WSJ's story was based on a 'poor facsimile' copy of the alleged Trump letter and said: 'The book is now sitting in a storage facility somewhere, if it still exists.

'What was in the evidence pile were poor-quality copies of single pages, not a copy of the whole book.'

This could be one of the funniest ways to confirm that the Trump letter is a real thing, a retaliatory leak against Clinton. Also suggesting that the Epstein files are a bit of a MAD situation going on with the parties and perhaps even other elites.

Daily Mail is not the best sort of news outlet

Off topic, but the hate the Daily Mail gets is surreal to me. They're literally no worse than any "respectable" media outlet.

They are worse. They fact check and are not hell bent on any ideology other than traffic.

If that's how someone sees "worse", then touché, I suppose.