site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   17348 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A woman in Minneapolis has been killed in an altercation with ICE. I don’t really trust any of the narratives being spun up. Here are two three angles:

Angle 1

Angle 2 [Twitter] [youtube]

Angle 3 (Emerged as I was writing this)

This is actually a fairly discussed type of shooting. Law enforcement confronts a person in a vehicle, the LEO positions himself in front of the vehicle, the person in the vehicle drives forward, and the cop shoots the person. Generally, courts have found that this is a legitimate shoot. The idea being that a car can be as deadly a weapon as anything.

Those who are less inclined to give deference to law enforcement argue that fleeing the police shouldn’t be a death sentence, and that usually in these situations the LEO has put himself in front of the vehicle.

I have a long history of discussing shooters in self-defense situations [1] [2] [3] and also one of being anti-LEO. However, I’m softer on the anti-LEO front in the sense that within the paradigm in which we exist, most people think the state should enforce laws, and that the state enforcing laws = violence.

The slippery slope for me: “Fleeing police shouldn’t be a death sentence”

“Resisting arrest shouldn’t be a death sentence”

“If you just resist hard enough, you should be able to get away with it”

People really try to divorce the violence from state action, but the state doesn’t exist without it.

This puts a lot of new protesting innovations into question though.

Is the driver of a car justified in trying to run over a person standing in their way if they feel threatened?

“I’ll block you and if you drive into me I’ll retaliate violently and be justified” has been a leftist protest/escalation tactic since at least 2020, probably longer.

That’s not a new innovation in protesting or in self-defense law.

Driving at someone with your car is absolutely considered deadly force. State-specific laws about deadly force apply. Texas allows it, for example.

I think the irony is:

Scenario 1: Protestor stands in front of a car. Stunning and brave. Not escalating in itself to deadly violence. Does not deserve to be run over. The protestor's cause of the week is more important than the driver getting to where they want to go.

Scenario 2: Cop stands in front of a car. Boo, hiss, they must want someone to be killed. What right do they have to escalate a situation like that?

This does not seem like a consistent worldview, but I suspect that swap the roles and Conservatives would have similar responses. So what's up? I think liberals trust protestors more than cops and conservatives trust cops more than protestors.

This does not seem like a consistent worldview, but I suspect that swap the roles and Conservatives would have similar responses. So what's up? I think liberals trust protestors more than cops and conservatives trust cops more than protestors.

I think one important difference is that the police are privileged to detain and restrain people. That being said, it does not appear to me that the officer in question was attempting to block the person's car with his body. Rather, it appears that he just happened to be standing there.

The protestor's cause of the week is more important than the driver getting to where they want to go.

I think this phrase does a lot of the work here to create the irony/inconsistency. Your phrasing about an issue of the week invokes a dismissive attitude; would you feel the same if it's like, an MLK-importance event? While the ICE debate is subjective in its worthiness, some causes are more important than the driver getting to where they want to go.

I should say that MLK here deserves credit because a lot of their stuff was specifically calibrated to strike some kind of balance between inherent non-violence and visibility (partly stemming from inconvenience), and their cause was an excellent society-level one. Furthermore, the protests were designed to specifically appeal to the general moderate public. It's not at all clear to me that modern ICE protestors really know what they are doing nor if they are accurately assessing the scale and relative importance of their cause. In fact I have big doubts. However, the more excitable of them do seem to genuinely believe that 'stopping ICE' is a societal-wide values thing and a battle for the soul of America. Ergo, more flashy and obnoxious actions are justified.

Conversely, Scenario 2 hinges on an implied valuation of "rule of law" with which the worthiness of it determines how justified escalation is. Big importance? Bigger escalations. The law already recognizes this spectrum, if unevenly.

Now, even a protestor is to some extent engaging in a game of chicken with the cops: arrest me if you dare, but if you do (or are violent doing it) you'll look silly or mean and lose the PR war. It's important to realize that that's a feature, not a bug, of the game. I'd actually go farther and say that morally a protestor has good reason to oppose stupid fellow protestors who might lose them PR for various reasons (mostly misjudging the balance of importance). That modern leftist protestors in the last decade or so often seem to recently misjudge these situations does not in my eyes discredit the entire ethos and justification of protest - it just means the protestors are stupid.

So yeah, although I'm sure institutional trust in protestors or cops plays a role, I tend to view it through a "values" lens and with that lens there's nothing incoherent going on. Conservatives highly value rule of law and respect for authority even if unearned, and liberals highly value not being mean to immigrants and uphold annoying protest as a core American value.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats