site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war

Trump brought this on himself.

There's a million ways he could've implemented the ICE program, and he chose one with the greatest optics of cruelty. Masked and armed bouncers dragging people away at gunpoint has horrible optics. There are documented cases of people being deported to random nations, a few people have been disappeared (from public tracking, limiting a family's visibility into where a loved one is) and there's a general allergy to due process. Horrible optics.

"Cruelty is the point". I didn't believe it during Trump 1. For Trump 2, I believe it.


Here are the 'job requirements' for a deportation officer. Literally randos. (I retract my statement, I was wrong here)

  • U.S. citizenship
  • Have a valid driver's license
  • Be eligible to carry a firearm

There is reason that police & military training take time. Using a gun for law enforcement is a heavy responsibility. ICE is picking untrained civilians, giving them guns and asking them to go be bounty hunters.

Democrats are justified in believing that this will select for bottom-feeder men with anger problems looking to get the high of having power over someone else. Given that most illegal immigrants are brown, I can see why democrats would believe that the average ICE agent is a raging racist too.

If Democrats believe what they claim to believe, then their actions are in line with those values. ICE agents look like an angry paramilitary that a dictator would deploy against his populace. People believe what they see. Democrats are cherry picking, but the cherry picked images are still real images.


Democratic response as what it is - basically outright treason against the U.S. federal gov

It may be treason. It may not. An accusation must be validated by a supposedly neutral arbiter. In your characterization, when the state oversteps its powers to oppose the federal govt, it is treason.

Now, both parties have operated in a maximally oppositional manner since Obama was elected. The adversarial nature has only gotten further amplified with every subsequent President. Given the way laws are written, both parties fight it out in the massive grey area between words. States vs Federal tussles are the most common form of inter-party warfare. This is business as usual. The system leaves it to Courts to decide what the bounds of this grey area are.

As with all accusations in the US, until the supreme courts weighs in, it isn't formally treason. Given that no one have been convicted of Treason since WW2, I think you're being hyperbolic.


I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.

I'm confused. Trump is consistently the first one to raise the temperature and to lower the bar for acceptable discourse. I don't want to sound like a kid. But, he started it. Only now, the democrats are responding.

Trump is the President and central figure to America's current polarization. If there is a civil war, it will be because of him. As the one in power, the onus is on Trump to reduce the temperature.

Trump brought this on himself. There's a million ways he could've implemented the ICE program, and he chose one with the greatest optics of cruelty.

There's a million ways he could have implemented the ICE program completely ineffectually. This way is delivering at least some level of results, and there is no reason to believe that any other plausible method would deliver better results.

"Cruelty is the point". I didn't believe it during Trump 1. For Trump 2, I believe it.

This has been a bipartisan pattern throughout the last decade, pretty clearly as a result of collapsing federal authority. Gun laws are routinely enforced this way, and have been for decades. COVID mandates were very clearly enforced this way. Trans ideology was enforced this way.

Here are the 'job requirements' for a deportation officer. Literally randos.

What job requirements would seem more appropriate to you? Can you point to some examples of how low recruiting standards have resulted in bad outcomes?

Democrats are justified in believing that this will select for bottom-feeder men with anger problems looking to get the high of having power over someone else.

As you say, "An accusation must be validated by a supposedly neutral arbiter." I disagree that Democrats are justified in such a belief. On the other hand, I can point to recent cases where federal agents promulgated official orders to violate their core mission to better discriminate against Reds.

As with all accusations in the US, until the supreme courts weighs in, it isn't formally treason.

I think you overestimate the sociopolitical "pull" maintained by the courts, including the Supreme Court. We are more than a decade into lesser courts, and local, state and federal officials operating in open defiance of rulings they disagree with.

The fact is that systems of law do not constrain human will, individually or collectively. "Treason" is a word invented by humans, applied by humans, and assessed by humans. If the argument here is that Democrat local and state officials probably won't be charged, convicted and sentenced for Treason for the things they're doing right now, I'll readily agree with you. But the fight that is happening right now is more likely to grow than to gutter out, and there does not appear to be an obvious point where it will stop. Blue Tribe has acted for decades as though it is above the law, and it turns out those actions have consequences.

Trump is consistently the first one to raise the temperature and to lower the bar for acceptable discourse. I don't want to sound like a kid. But, he started it. Only now, the democrats are responding.

It is certainly true that Trump started raising the temperature, if one carefully defines "raising the temperature" to exclude everything Democrats have done to raise the temperature over the last decade or more. Trump is essentially a copy of Bill Clinton. His cabinet and associates are full of former high-tier democrat figures. His policies used to be entirely normal within the democratic party as recently as a decade ago. Red Tribe has slaughtered numerous sacred cows to assemble their current coalition, essentially capitulating to broad swathes of the Democratic policy platform. The democrats have only moved further left in response, and have made both unconscionable government repression and large-scale, organized lawless violence core aspects of their political program.

The democratic party announced their intention to use mass immigration to secure a permanent majority Twenty years ago. It turns out that this was not quite the silver bullet they expected, but Reds are assessing future cooperation in terms of intentions, not results, and Blues have made it abundantly clear that further cooperation with them leads to no livable future for Reds.

Reds are not going to back down because there is no retreat available to us. We decline to be reduced to second-class citizens in our native country. We decline to be victimized by the full power of the Federal Government. We decline to uphold rules that are enforced only to our detriment and never to our benefit. We decline to maintain systems that exist only to oppress us.

No justice, no peace.

there is no reason to believe that any other plausible method would deliver better results.

This is factually false. E-verify is a thing. If you want to stop people who are not authorized to work from working, then mandating that employers actually check that their employees are authorized to work for them seems like an obvious step to take.

If you haven't even taken the step of mandating the use of e-verify for all employers, I don't believe you when you say "but we have to disappear people, it's the only strategy that could possibly work".

I don't believe you when you say "but we have to disappear people, it's the only strategy that could possibly work".

Nobody is getting disappeared. Everyone apprehended can be looked up on a public website. https://locator.ice.gov/odls/#/search

Nobody, you say?

A federal judge has ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to temporarily end round-the-clock surveillance of a man hospitalized with a broken leg he suffered during his arrest [...] The man, who suffered a broken leg while being arrested in California on August 27, had been detained for more than 37 days [...] To date, ICE has not placed petitioner in removal proceedings, charged him with violating immigration law, set bond, issued a Notice to Appear or otherwise processed him [...] The man, registered by ICE with the pseudonym “Har Maine UNK Thirteen,” was arrested by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the Carson Car Wash in Carson, California, on August 27

So ICE arrested someone, detained him for 37 days in the hospital under armed guard, did not charge him with anything, denied him legal counsel, and used a pseudonym when registering him in the locator. That sure sounds to me like "ICE disappeared that guy".

It does not appear he was "disappeared". Otherwise, how would the habeas corpus petition be filed in the first place?

The habeas corpus petition was filed on September 30. He was detained on August 27. That's a solid month. How long do you think is appropriate to hold someone without charging them?

On September 17th, 3 weeks after he was first detained, CBP informed him that they still hadn't assigned him an A-number - so

  • the ICE locator mentioned upthread wouldn't show him by his name
  • the ICE locator mentioned upthread wouldn't show him by a-number because one had not been assigned

My non expert reading is that the judge is pissed at a level that is not normal. From the temporary restraining order

There is generally no public interest in the perpetuation of unlawful agency action. To the contrary, there is a substantial public interest ‘in having governmental agencies abide by the federal laws that govern their existence and operations.

And looks like she's expecting malicious compliance from ICE as well

To be clear, Respondents must not remove Petitioner from the hospital, cause his discharge before his medical team deems it medically appropriate, or require his in-person appearance before an immigration officer prior to his discharge from the hospital. Rather, the Court orders that guards be withdrawn from Petitioner’s hospital room, that restrictions on his activities be lifted (including his ability to make telephone calls to family and friends and to confer confidentially with counsel outside the presence of ICE agents), and that any physical restraints, such as handcuffs, be removed.

This guy had 2-4 guards posted 24/7 for over a month. Someone high up signed off on this, this can't be written off as a single agent acting alone. Seems pretty egregious to me..

The habeas corpus petition was filed on September 30. He was detained on August 27. That's a solid month. How long do you think is appropriate to hold someone without charging them?

That wasn't the question. The question is whether he was disappeared. He was not. I do not know why it took a month to file the petition.

It's quite possible ICE did wrong here. What they did not do is disappear someone.

My non expert reading is that the judge is pissed at a level that is not normal.

I don't much care. Performative pissyness from judges seems to be pretty standard in political cases, and doesn't stop the judges from being overruled.

That wasn't the question. The question is whether he was disappeared

What if we amend "disappeared" to "breaking someone leg and unlawfully holding them in a hospital for 37 days without charging them and while making them hard to find for a month"

Are you fine with your government doing that to it's people? Weird hill to die on lol

More comments