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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Epstein files are currently being released. DOJ link HERE. Epstein Files Transparency Act PDF HERE.

Some notes from picking a random place to start and going through them one-by-one:

  • Lots of questionable redactions.

  • Funniest one so far. Cumstained porno mag. Looks like they decided to redact only her tits. Can they do that under the law? NSFW Link.

  • There is at least one male whose face is being consistantly redacted. Were there any male "victims"? Not sure what the legal basis for a redaction could be. Doesn't look like Trump to me.

  • Jeffery is definitely a boob guy.

  • Some of the ass pics that are in there are unredacted. Interesting choice.

  • A second redacted male figure. Looks like Epstein himself tbh. Maybe an accident?

  • Quote from a victim's interview notes: "What doing? Why bringing me dark girl?" "Bringing young girl." "Yeah but not dark."

  • They are definitely redacting the portions of interviews where they describe what Jeffery did sexually. Understandable, but not sure if legal under the Act.

  • "Tell girls don't wear heels, just wear casual everyday clothes." Really makes you think.

  • I'm glad I didn't do a direct download.

  • Now I'm getting big binders full of thumbnail pics. I hope the corresponding full-size photos are somewhere else in the files.

  • Lots of pictures of clouds. I think the guy just liked photos.

  • Did we really need to redact the photos of the other guys in the police photo lineups? Are they victims? Not super relevant but gives you an idea what the culture was in the office when they were putting these together.

  • Very ominous scrapbook page titled "Looking For a Way Out", with redacted pictures of a girl.

The mainstream conspiracy narrative is so ridiculous. If the government is under control of foreign blackmail, none of what it releases can be trusted anyway (it's at best selectively-released, if not outright fabricated). If the government is a trustworthy source of information, then it's not under the control of a blackmail cabal in the first place. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Also, this whole redaction thing is such a troll. If you want to release 50 pages and hide 50 pages, you don't release 50 unedited pages and 50 pages of black boxes; you just release the 50 clean pages and don't mention the other pages you left out (and yes, I do deem the government capable of re-numbering a list, especially with the help of ChatGPT).

I find the whole "release the files" thing so funny.

If you really believe that there exists a DoJ employee who is so moral and ethical that he would neither leak an incriminating document during the Biden admin, nor destroy it during the Trump admin, and so powerful that he could not be fired or forced to do so during either; then you probably believe in the Easter Bunny.

If there is anything incriminating in there, it's going to come together weeks from now. It's going to be a reference that correlates to a hint that leads to a receipt that pulls on a thread that leads to an angle. It's going to be some clue so small that they forgot to redact it, and it's only going to make sense as a piece of circumstantial evidence, a piece that completes a puzzle we haven't taken out of the box yet. But probably it won't be that either.

It's not going to be something that MSNBC can broadcast in real time.

It was clear that nothing much would come of it.

If there was solid material evidence that Trump had fucked 13yo's, then the Biden administration would have gone after him. They certainly tried to get him for everything else in the book (some of which was fair, other stuff less so).

Still, Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files, which played well with his base but was an unforced error on his part given how much he hung out with this guy. Likely all the photos of him hanging out with Epstein were already leaked, as was his creepy-as-fuck birthday card.

The Democrats forcing the DOJ to release the files was just them cashing in on that. It was clear that either he would have to release the files with him being in them, or redact everything which mentioned him. Both would harm him, somewhat. Unsurprisingly, he did not want the photos of him and Epstein going through the press again, so he redacted everything. But less than 5% of the electorate is going to take that as "this proves that he did not know Epstein".

If there was solid material evidence that Trump had fucked 13yo's, then the Biden administration would have gone after him. They certainly tried to get him for everything else in the book (some of which was fair, other stuff less so).

I keep seeing this argument from "moderates" on both sides and I have no idea why when there's a very obvious explanation: because the collateral damage would have brought down a bunch of bigshot Democratic politicians and donors too like Bill Clinton. That's why the top congressional bigshots kept their heads down and the release was largely led by gadflies Ro Khanna and Tom Massie.

Same reason Dems never really pressed the Dennis Hastert scandal even though one would think that the opposing party's Speaker being exposed as a serial pedophile would be a great issue to campaign on. Everything falls into place if you operate under the assumption that most high level politicians from both parties are pedophile rapists, or at least pedophile rapist adjacent.

Everything falls into place if you operate under the assumption that most high level politicians from both parties are pedophile rapists, or at least pedophile rapist adjacent.

So all the fierce fighting between Trump and the Democrats is just kayfabe, then? Harris and Trump were laughing about the electorate seeing them as opponents while raping some kids?

And why would a cabal of kid-fuckers end up in charge, anyhow? Unlike being a lizardman (possibly), being a pedophile does not convey an intrinsic advantage at winning primaries. You could perhaps convince me that being a child-rapist is the kind of dirt which will keep a politician firmly in the hands of his blackmailers, who might therefore favor him over less controllable candidates. But such blackmailers would want to compartmentalize their assets, having them all go to Epstein parties seems terrible opsec.

Or it could be that child rapists pursue political careers at higher rates than baseline because they hope that political influence will shield them from law enforcement. But this would be stupid, because being a politician also means that a lot of people will dig for dirt on you, and they do not know if some elite pedo cabal even exists.

Even more if you consider that even Epstein himself was not into 6yo's, but rather girls at puberty. In any country in which you have extreme poverty, you will also likely find underage prostitution. Plenty of these countries are also corrupt as fuck and will likely have little moral outrage over tourists fucking slum girls. Nobody is running for Congress to fuck 12yo's.

Then there is the fact that such a conspiracy would require some way to disincentivize defectors. Probably one in ten politicians would have a late onset of conscience on their deathbed and be willing to spill the beans to make amends.

Or the thing that they did not make a very good job of covering up Epstein. Do you think every last cop who was investigating him was in the pedo cabal? If not, how did they make sure that none of the cops would leak incriminating videos of senior politicians raping kids, especially once they found out that their case would not go anywhere? Whistleblowers have martyred themselves to get much less juicy stuff out to the public.

Normie hetero men aren’t likely to make a real attempt to bone pubescent girls even if they happen to have a strong urge to. But it’s not such normie men who usually rise to the higher levels of political power. It’s in fact something that psychopaths are likely to pursue. Also, the exercise of political power is ultimately a collective act. Nobody can seize and exert power on his own, he’ll need people he can trust. And a group cannot exercise political power unless they all hold one another in check and there is a tangible risk of penalties for betraying that group. Hence politicians are incentivized to work with and recruit other politicians who have dirt on them.