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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
After a day of reading and watching videos of the woman killed in Minneapolis yesterday, here are some thoughts:
This iceman was hit by a different car previously.
The woman was cosplaying resistance fighter, not really realizing how dangerous what she was doing actually was.
It is unambiguous given the videos that she did try to hit the officer with her car, but just barely, and seems to have backed off immediately when her tires slipped on the ice.
it seems reasonable to me that the iceman was looking for retribution for the previous car strike, and she gave it to him.
Shooting her would have had no effect on his safety, even if she had gotten traction. They were at “point blank” range.
All in all I think everybody here is a victim of the current evil in our society. A woman in a gay relationship with a recently deceased husband, in a new city, is being fed a constant stream of propaganda. I can imagine the state of mind if this person, and it isn’t pleasant.
She decided to try and help, which is good, but was essentially a pawn, or unknowing martyr for political power struggles I doubt she understood. A comparison could be a child soldier/suicide bomber.
The iceman: I expect better than this. Unlike the woman, acting on pure propaganda fueled adrenaline, he is supposed to train for this. He also interacts with these people daily. He should be thinking rationally here, and the rational move is to just get out of the way, not walk in front of the car of a neurotic woman screaming at you. He is legally, technically in the clear, but this was immoral. Hes basically exploiting a series of laws and norms to allow him to “innocently” kill a woman as a form of retribution. This is akin in my mind to entrapment of some form. The iceman sets up a series of traps, and just waits for an untrained, trigger, fight or flight woman to fall into one of them. He shouldn’t be setting traps, he should by building golden off-ramps to de-escalate.
Unfortunately the same which gripped both the woman and the shooter is gripping everybody forming an opinion online around this. nyTimes put out am [absurd] “forensic analysis” and determined she was trying to escape, which will never be questioned by the blue tribe ever. We will forever live in the reality where an iceman killed a woman in cold blood on Jan 7th 2026 in Minneapolis.
I don’t think this will metastasize into Floyd 2.0, mostly because the woman was white, but also because of the weather. We’ll see how this weekend plays out though.
A final question: will the shooter be charged with a state crime in Minnesota and will he be able to avoid that charge? Could we run into a Chauvin type situation here?
Yesterday I wanted to reserve judgment until I saw body cam footage. If ICE was conducting an “enforcement action,” their policy is supposedly to have cameras on. It should make the direction of the car obvious.
I think we started from similar assumptions about the role of the officers. ICE has the funding, the manpower, and the operational initiative. They ought to have a better plan than having some guy stand out on a frozen road. And if that really is the best they can do, they should at least be able to cover their asses. Do it by the book. Show us the book. Release the footage. Not this tight-mouthed bullshit.
Sure, ICE almost certainly is not following the best policing practices ever. But driving directly at an officer while resisting arrest is still a darwin award.
More options
Context Copy link
I mean these federal agencies are designed to operate with local LEO support, but in blue states that is refused. That causes problems.
Furthermore ICE is the victim of an organized protest movement that has a specific goal of making it impossible for them to do their job safely. Well.....it works.
I more or less agree with this. Anyone who argues that ICE should have better plans and procedures needs to address the point that whatever these plans and procedures are, these protestors are going to develop counter-plans and counter-procedures designed to frustrate, provoke, and embarrass to the maximum extent possible.
So, for example, suppose ICE implements a policy that they won't try to apprehend someone behind the wheel of a running car but will instead photograph the person's license plate and arrest that person on a future date. In that case, you can bet that these protestors will (1) arrange their cars, with the engines running, so as to block ICE vehicles; and (2) use borrowed cars so frustrate any attempts to later apprehend the drivers.
More options
Context Copy link
I've seen this as the most consistent problem with recent ICE operations. Local police should be controlling the crowd. Actually there shouldn't be a crowd at all. Somehow there is a coordinated convoy stalking the ICE facilities and either blocking the facility itself, or tailing the vehicles to disrupt them as they go to make an arrest elsewhere.
Local Mayors deliberately refuse support, then when the situation escalates into violence, use it as ammunition to pressure ICE to leave their cities. All this helps their public opinion at the cost of public safety.
This is the result of policy that is designed to both accomplish something, and be maximally inflammatory to own the libs.
The way ICE has been set up, and communicated, which I will refer to as "the policy" as a shorthand, is a bad (or suboptimal) policy for enforcing immigration.
If you want to accomplish a policy goal, and your chosen avenue to do this causes roughly 50% of your population to hate it, and a smaller subset of that 50% to actively interfere, and for local politicians of areas dominated by that 50% to get popular support by opposing the policy, it's a stupid fucking policy. I'm not against ICE or its goals, but having local mayors and PDs refuse to help means you now cannot enforce immigration as effectively.
You can enforce immigration, you can own the libs, you cannot do both at once as effectively as focusing on one.
A well designed policy (or software system, or basically anything designed) has to take into account the way the average person will interact with it. It doesn't matter if your solution is theoretically the best solution in the world if it starts going sideways when it starts interacting with the world.
Another way of looking at this, if Spock and the Vulcans were designing ICE to maximize the number of immigrants removed from America, they wouldn't have made ICE so emotionally charged (it still would have become emotionally charged, but they'd do everything they could to mitigate that, instead of inflame it).
This is the chickens of bad policy coming home to roost. If you don't want this to happen in blue cities, design better.
If you want an example of genuis policy in a similar vein, bussing migrants to NYC a few years ago was a masterstroke. Lowered support for immigration AND owned the libs, it was deeply impressive.
There are huge bottlenecks for the Federal Government w/r/t deportation. It takes years to get the final order of removal for everyone. If they want to achieve their goal of reducing illegal immigration, they need to try to create strong disincentives for illegal immigration outside the normal process.
So they set up ways to soften the blow of self-deporting. Just use an app, we'll set up a flight anywhere you want to go and give you cash.
And if you don't self-deport, here is the consequence. Swift arrest without being able to settle your affairs.
An estimated 1.9 million people self-deported this year, with or without the app. Far more people are leaving on their own than are being removed by ICE.
More importantly, this signals to others not to make the attempt. Even when the US goes back under control of the Dems, there will always be this hesitancy for an entire generation of people. "Do I really want to go to the US, set up a life, just to risk the Americans electing another Trump and losing everything I built?" Now it seems possible in a way it didn't before.
ICE will never deport a tenth as many people as it can disincentivize from staying.
More options
Context Copy link
Doesn't the whole sanctuary city thing indicate that even if you're trying to enforce the most milquetoast sort of stuff in this arena a decent amount of the country will just say 'No fuck you' and jam up the gears deliberately? Especially considering the Sanctuary City movement started in the 1980s and is almost 50 years old so you can't even say it's responsive to Republicans or Trump.
I do also think the clumsy visibility of ICE is intentional for two reasons. Firstly, it means that the Republican base feels that 'something is being done' to a degree that it hasn't in recent history since a plethora of headlines are generated. Secondly, it does a lot to change the tone of immigration and IMO has probably been part of why fresh incursions are very low.
More options
Context Copy link
Well if you were a senior official in the Trump Administration, how would you suggest changing the Policy so as to be substantially more effective?
By doing exactly what?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link