site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 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.

I’ll assume for the sake of argument that Israel is trying to ethnically cleanse Palestine, that Harris recognized it, and that she also knew supporting them would lose her the election. Why, then, wouldn’t she say it out loud?

She actually did say out loud that she wouldn't do anything to stop them, and high ranking members of Netnyahu's government (Smotrich etc) were open about their plans for ethnic cleansing. If one person says "I think all the jews should be exterminated" there's not really much of a distinction between that and someone else saying "That person talking about exterminating the jews has an opinion that I respect and won't deviate from" - both of them are advocating for a holocaust, there's just a layer of obfuscation to gull credulous and stupid people in front of one of them. She didn't go out of her way to advertise her position on this topic because she knew it was politically toxic with her base, but you'll be hard pressed to find politicians who voluntarily run attack ads against themselves because they want to be honest with the people. I don't think the overton window really matters here because "just exterminate all the Palestinians so we can build luxury hotels" and "Starving those children to death is perfectly fine because they had pre-existing medical conditions" is still inside that window.