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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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“If you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country”

  • Bernie Sanders (paraphrased)

When you stand against immigration enforcement you stand against the future of the entire civilization we share. You are saying that you want your descendants and mine to live in a dirtier, poorer, more squalid, more corrupt, more unequal, more violent country, forever.

That is treason no less severe than selling nuclear secrets to Russia or Iran, and perhaps moreso. Trump’s loss in 2020 was sealed the second he started showing sympathy to the Floyd rioters. He shouldn’t make that mistake again, and I’m glad that so far the administration is making a strong stand.

If you obstruct ICE in any capacity, why should I care what happens to you, when by your very action you are saying you don’t care about what happens to me?

So you are saying that by exempting enforcement against undocumented/illegal migrants working in the hotel, gastronomy and agricultural sectors, Trump is in fact ruining the future of the US?

Yes, or at least he is failing to take the action he should and so allowing that ruin to happen. He should listen to Miller instead of the agricultural lobby.

What a childish argument.

When you stand against immigration enforcement you stand against the future of the entire civilization we share. You are saying that you want your descendants and mine to live in a dirtier, poorer, more squalid, more corrupt, more unequal, more violent country, forever.

If you obstruct ICE in any capacity, why should I care what happens to you, when by your very action you are saying you don’t care about what happens to me?

Why should I care that Charlie Kirk was shot? Trump? Should I care when the Sandistas drag your rich family from their Manhattan penthouse, given that I suspect I'd take a dim view of how you acquired your wealth if I knew the details? Should I cheer for cops to shoot people violating COVID lockdowns because they obviously don't care about what happens to me?

Have you met your quota of 8 white/Jewish babies? Do you support my policy of sterilizing the genetic undesirables? Have you donated to my paramilitary group going door to door administering rapid-SNP tests and euthanizing people with below-average IQ PGS? No? By failing to out-reproduce the blacks and latinos and borderlander dysgenic trash you're dooming my descendants to squalor! Why should I care what happens to you?

Have some empathy and respect for your country(wo)men because the alternative is worse. Even if you're acutely self-interested and lack any altruistic impulses whatsoever, the alternative is worse for you as well.

  • -10

The groypers/tankies/islamists would kill/expel/rape/torture/imprison me anyway, so I’m unclear as to why I owe them any empathy.

And I’m not defending her death. In fact, you can go back to 2020 when I was a comparative moderate (when compared to some regulars) on Floyd because I believed (and still do believe) that on balance, Chauvin’s hold was unreasonable - even if I don’t think he should have gone to jail, certainly not for the length of time he did, for it.

But the episode taught me one thing. If you give the left an inch, they take a mile. If you agree that a single cop did something dumb, you get the police defunded, a wave of ridiculous and damaging woke in the private and public sector, and the greatest crime wave in decades. So while I don’t defend this, I know the only thing for it is to say “OK, what about it?”, to give not one inch.

The groypers/tankies/islamists would kill/expel/rape/torture/imprison me anyway, so I’m unclear as to why I owe them any empathy.

Pretty small subsets of society, but sure, you can have a pass on people whose platform is explicitly kill/torture Jews. The woman who got shot in the head was presumably none of those things, although I doubt she had warm feelings for Palestine.

But the episode taught me one thing. If you give the left an inch, they take a mile. If you agree that a single cop did something dumb, you get the police defunded, a wave of ridiculous and damaging woke in the private and public sector, and the greatest crime wave in decades. So while I don’t defend this, I know the only thing for it is to say “OK, what about it?”, to give not one inch.

And if you give the right an inch, they take Venezuela. Compromise is for suckers, smart people hit defect, right?

But regardless, you learned the wrong lesson. Defund the police didn't happen because you gave an inch to extreme leftists, it happened because broad segments of the population across the political spectrum were disgusted by what happened to Floyd. COVID lockdowns didn't happen because you ceded ground to some tiny fraction of hypochondriacs; they were supported by the majority of Americans, particularly early on in the pandemic.

You can be as callous as you like when you're in power, but a majority of Americans disapprove of ICE. And when they're back in power and you trumpet the latest MS13 murder, what's to stop them from smiling and saying 'why should I care?'

There was a moment at the end of the Biden administration where I thought there was relatively broad bipartisan agreement that something needed to be done about immigration. The left knew it was a losing issue, all the talking heads on the center left agreed something needed to be done, etc. The right (well, Trump really) chose to score political points instead and unilaterally take a bunch of actions that will be reversed three years from now.

ICE isn't enforcing immigration and borders tho.

treason no less severe than selling nuclear secrets to Russia or Iran

Amen.

May his holiness behead every twink who stands in his way. The crusaders will prevail. Constantinople will be red white and blue. It is the American way.

/uj dude, you okay ?

Very dramatic and I don't even disagree, but I hope the tone police sends a warning squad to crack down on you with the full force of the forum rules!

I notice you haven't reported her post.

What, specifically, do you think was against the rules?

ETA: To expand on this, @2rafa's comment was belligerent (in a general, undirected way) and arguably "mean." She wasn't attacking anyone personally (except maybe the woman who was killed) nor explicitly saying anyone should die. The implicit message is definitely that the woman deserved to die, but people say "Such-and-such is antisocial behavior and people who do it deserve what's coming to them" quite often. IMO it was heated (and did draw some reports) but then, so was @Chrisprattalpharaptr's response (which also drew reports).

Generally speaking, this comment thread is turning into kind of a trainwreck because everyone is rushing out their most belligerent hot takes.

Humor is hard, OK? I know I shouldn't even try. I didn't report it because I don't see it as breaking the rules. The main issue I have with it is that it is being overdramatic. Not even wrong, just jumping a little too speedily from an unwise woman getting herself shot to the fate of civilization. I shouldn't have posted.

It was extremely uncharitable. Obviously, hardly anyone who opposes the deportation of illegal immigrants thinks it will lead to "a dirtier, poorer, more squalid, more corrupt, more unequal, more violent country, forever."

She's arguing that it doesn't matter what happens to anyone who supports illegal immigrants based on a totally fabricated assessment of their beliefs. It's needlessly inflammatory and false. It's untrue, unkind, and unnecessary.

Jeez, how many people can report a comment in 45 minutes? Are they just sitting there refreshing the new comment feed?

Refreshing the new-comment feed is a perfectly normal way to browse this forum.

You'd be surprised how many Motte Karens there are.

If you don't have laws, you also don't have a country. Yet there are degrees of severity and arbitrariness in creating/enforcing laws, and some of those degrees are, in fact, worth to be obstructed. Giving carte blanche to anti-immigration doesn't sound any more obviously a good thing to me than giving carte blanche to police. Certainly not when operating within borders.