site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor and Nuclear Physicist, Nuno Loureiro, was shot to death last night in his own home. Loureiro was reportedly Jewish and somewhat vocally pro-Israel. No suspect is in custody. I cannot help but think that this might be related to the shooting at Brown University last week. My knowledge of the geography of the northeast United States is limited, but I believe the two locations are at most a couple of hours apart. The shooting at Brown seems to have targeted the class of a professor of Israel-US relations.

I think we are are now approaching five left wing domestic terrorist attacks in as many months. When I suggested we were on the verge of slipping into another Days of Rage after the Israeli embassy attack, everyone here pooh-poohed the idea. But my concerns have only deepened since.

Everyone is out over their skis on the Jewish professor. You shared no evidence that it was a political murder, and not personal or a robbery of some sort, and I haven’t seen any elsewhere yet. Happy to be proven wrong, but let’s hold ourselves to higher standards here.

You’re lucky I didn’t post my 40 page schizo ramble about Rob Reiner’s death. But anyway, If you sit around and wait for “respectable media outlets” to tell your what’s going on, you’ll never get anywhere.

palpatine_do_it.mp4

It’s indeed been a busy week when I forgot to mention this one in that other comment in this thread.

  1. His and his wife’s throats being cut does not seem consistent with the type of crime it allegedly is. Half-out-of-their-minds meth junkies committing a family annihilation crime of passion during a domestic disturbance aren’t usually that precise. 70 stab wounds a piece I would buy, but not throat-cutting.
  2. The police and the media (People magazine specifically) announced that the son did it way too fast. People Magazine would be gambling with a libel lawsuit in any other circumstance. I have never seen the suspect of a murder announced that fast, especially not for a case involving a celebrity.
  3. The fact that the daughter’s first instinct was to call a neighbor (Billy Crystal), rather than the police. The fact that the daughter immediately told the police that her brother probably did it, White House Farm style.
  4. Trump’s weird and kind of disturbing post about the murders.

It seems fishy to me.

The precision does not bother me. Trump’s deranged post is typical for him. I will admit however that People Magazine was shockingly quick, in a way I have never seen before, to blame the son. Do you have any theory that explains these peculiarities?

LAPD Robbery Homicide are notorious fame hounds, probably literally the single most famous police division in America, my understanding is they attract a certain kind of cop (the kind who wants to appear on documentaries and maybe have a lucrative sideline in or second career commenting on the news or writing detective thrillers, which many of them go on to do) who might well call up People and tell them what’s happening in the investigation. That plus the sister probably told them too, which is enough for an editor and legal counsel to make a publishing decision knowing that you have both a police source and the surviving family on board.