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New footage of ICE shooter
Forgive another high-level post but the body cam (or cell phone?) footage of the cop who shot has been released by AlphaNews and this may significantly change perceptions of what happened (to those willing to have perceptions changed):
https://x.com/alphanews/status/2009679932289626385?s=46
To my eyes it appears that:
The ICE agent is clearly hit by her car and goes down
The ICE agent was not standing in front of her car but walking from one side to another
The driver’s wife is not passively observing but actively shouting at the agents (this should undermine the idea that the driver and her wife were somehow neutral people accidentally caught up in everything)
Perhaps most importantly, but maybe most open to interpretation, it appears to me that the driver looks directly at the ICE agent before driving forward. From this bodycam angle, her face is clearly shown looking directly ahead where the officer is seconds before she moves her car forward.
I suppose a lot of new interpretations are possible, but to me this video footage clearly debunks several going interpretations I have seen proposed. At the very least, maybe reasonable people can agree that the cop did not shoot the driver in cold blood from the side window.
I would also not be surprised to see the idea spread that this new video is AI.
Edit: per corrections from others below, this is not bodycam but cell phone footage (my mistake as it’s clearly even labeled as such) and this explains why it tumbles at the end of the video. Thanks!
Illuminating video, in how an angry but non-violent situation can suddenly become a violent one.
I think it's helpful to look at this from the perspective of the four main people involved.
Good: within a couple seconds the situation goes, through no action of your own, to one where someone is trying to open your car door while telling you to "get out of the fucking car" (unclear if he is grabbing her with his left hand or just the door?), and your wife is yelling "drive, drive". I think this was an insanely stressful situation, and she is completely blameless for the actions she took in this video.
Shooter: somebody mad at you suddenly starts driving towards you. In retrospect clearly an unnecessary shot, especially continuing to shoot once they are not aiming at you, but probably falls within reasonable discretion in the heat of the moment. I think essentially blameless for actions in this video.
Wife: government agents suddenly start trying to pull your wife out of the car without warning. Yelling "drive, drive" is clearly bad in retrospect, but I understand where she's coming from. Still, not an appropriate reaction, and she certainly deserves some of the immediate blame for how this situation ended up.
Second agent: pulls up, and immediately marched up to the car, saying "get out of the car, get out of the fucking car". I'm not sure whether he starts trying to open the door before or after he becomes aware that she's going to reverse. Either way, completely ridiculous behaviour. If he had just walked up and said "ma'am, can you please get out of the car" none of this would have happened. If he hasn't asked her to get out of the car none of this has happened (why and under what authority is he asking this? As far as I can tell he has not seen or heard her do literally anything at this point, and she is not a target of his immigration enforcement activities). If he had just driven past like she was explicitly letting him do, none of this would have happened. The lion's share of the immediate blame rests on this officer. Unclear exactly how much he even knew about what was going on when he pulled up, but either way he turned up the temperature on this situation hugely for no apparent reason.
Beyond that, there is of course the question of who is responsible for starting this confrontation in the first place. My biases are that that is basically 100% on Trump et al. for pursuing immigration enforcement in a way that is prioritizing intimidation over both civil rights and actually targeting the bulk of illegal immigrants who are working in agriculture etc, and on the agents who choose to work under these conditions. But obviously others will disagree and I've tried to keep these biases out of my analysis of the immediate situation above.
If being confronted by a police officer stresses you out that badly then you probably shouldn't make it your hobby to go out and antagonize cops. This is a decision that was entirely under her control before she deliberately created a situation where she would inevitably end up confronted by a police officer. You can just not do that!
While the wife is clearly an accomplice, the only extent to which I would find her responsible is the extent to which she participated in the decision for the two of them to go out and antagonize cops despite being clearly unprepared for the full implications of doing so. I don't think this is criminal. I don't think she bears any real responsibility for the stepping on the gas. A driver is responsible for the trajectory of their vehicle, nobody else.
She was barricading the road with her car, and had apparently been antagonizing them all day. Barricading the road was the last straw. ICE can arrest people for crimes, such as obstruction, committed against them.
Given a car literally drives right passed her, this clearly wasn't going very effectively
And if it turns out she actually was pretty effective, and this moment wasn't representative of her activities on that they, will that change your mind about anything, or will we just move on to the next bowl of spaghetti to throw at the wall?
Yeah I don't really have a dog in this fight
I think the high level goal of ICE is justified, I think it's execution is deliberately inflammatory and thus stupid.
I dislike the fact that people are fucking with ICE such that situations arise where citizens get shot, which is a tragedy.
I also have some sympathy for those getting baited into protesting ICE, as I believe ICE has been designed to create flashpoints such as this. So they're taking the bait, which I personally would not, but I see why they do.
So does an eyewitness describing her as "very successful at blocking traffic" move the needle for you in any way?
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Yes, and people could also choose not to drive around in masks, tactical gear, and unmarked cars to intimidate people in a city that the president perceives as inhabited by his enemies. As I say in the last paragraph, your view of this will depend on who you think is acting morally in this situation.
I agree.
Did you watch the same video I did? She was not, as seen by the fact that a car passes during the video, and she tries to wave the ICE truck by. She is blocking one lane of a two-lane one-way street, which would certainly warrant action from a real cop but does not seem to be any business of ICE's. I have no idea what happened earlier (do we have any evidence anything did?), but it was not "all day" as the shooting happened at 9:30 am, and she had already dropped her kid off at school.
This is a long and roundabout way of saying "enforce immigration law," which is not only legal, but is literally the thing that the current president promised to do before he was elected in a landslide. If it's your honest belief that the government has no business enforcing its own laws immediately following an election in which the populace voted overwhelmingly for the government to do more enforcement of those very laws, I'm really not sure what you think the point of democracy is.
She is not a police officer and has no authority to direct traffic, and the convoy has no obligation to trust that she will allow them all to pass without, for example, obstructing just the back half of the convoy to split the convoy in half. If you do not understand why giving a hostile bystander the opportunity to split your convoy in half is bad tactics, you do not have sufficient insight to converse meaningfully on this issue.
My original post was to analyse the immediate events leading to the shooting. I'm not super interested in arguing about which side is more at fault for this kind of tense situation happening in the first place, I was just pointing out that there is possible and reasonable disagreement with your characterisation that it is her fault.
Sounds like you agree then that she was not barricading the road, merely that she could decide to barricade the road.
To be frank, this is Minneapolis, not Afghanistan. Despite what Trump et al. would have you believe, left-wing protestors are not generally violent agitators just waiting for an opportunity to murder federal officials. Even if they decide against all reasonable evidence that they can't just drive by safely, there are many options that do not involve immediately saying "get out of the fucking car" and then trying to tear the door open.
A person manning a barricade can decide to allow passage through the barricade without it ceasing to be a barricade. Please do not argue semantics.
The idea that the police force that is currently being protested by the person who has parked her car across the road, in the context of a nationwide spree of activists using their cars to disrupt ICE operations, can reasonably expect that she intends to behave cooperatively as they pass, is absurd. They absolutely should not expect that she intends to cooperate in their passage.
True, but they do have the explicitly stated goal of obstructing and interfering with law enforcement operations. There have been numerous car ramming attacks by left wing activists all over the country. It's pretty reasonable to treat the left wing activist sitting in her car sideways in the road in front of you as very likely intending to add to that number.
Police are under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to be nice to lawbreakers. Being treated unkindly by the police is a completely predictable consequence of breaking the law, and if you want them to treat you kindly you can simply not do that.
I don't think I'm arguing semantics, I don't see any indication that she ever made any attempt to prevent anybody from driving down the street, which is the core definition of a barricade.
I think this is the crux of our disagreement, I think this is an insane thing to believe. I'm not sure there's much else for us to discuss after that.
So after a year in which there have been 66 vehicle ramming attacks against ICE agents, you don't think it's reasonable to believe that the hostile activist who has been following you around all morning and is now parked sideways across the street in front of you, is more likely than not to be intending to use their vehicle to disrupt your convoy?
Exactly what is it reasonable to believe about the intentions of the hostile activist who has been following you around all morning and has now parked her car sideways across the street in front of you?
Let me lay it out more clearly.
You are an ICE agent. You are in a city whose governor and mayor have stirred up resentment against your lawful activities, in which activists have been organizing to oppose you.
A woman and her wife have been following you all morning, antagonizing you as you go about your work.
Later, as you drive down a street, you come across these women, with their car parked sideways across the street. You recognize them as people you have been having hostile interactions with all morning.
There have been 66 vehicle ramming attacks against ice agents in the past year.
Given the facts above, what is it reasonable for you to believe in this moment?
I do not believe it is possible for someone whose brain has not been swiss-cheesed by ideological capture to answer "actually I think it's most likely that she has totally legal reasons to be doing that which have nothing to do with me." If that's your answer you are an NPC, you have no theory of mind or independent opinions of your own.
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There is literally no reason to believe this. These lesbians were there specifically to obstruct ICE, there is no reason to think a little politeness will suddenly make them compliant.
She was there specifically to obstruct law enforcement. She ignored their orders to get out of the car. She tried to flee straight through an ICE agent walking directly in front of her car. On what dishonest leftist planet is ANY of this blameless?
It is shocking to me that even on the sacred Motte, of all places, even in the face of incontrovertible video evidence we still have to deal with insane leftist sophistry and blatant lies.
One is reminded of a certain relevant quote:
How do you feel about the Trump administration calling her a domestic terrorist who was participating in a violent riot?
It's inaccurate and over the top. They probably should run it by some marketing / PR people to come up with a snappy term that's less severe than "terrorist" but still makes it clear she was acting with malice.
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To be clear, when I say "in this video", I mean that she did nothing to escalate the situation in this video, up until the point where she had both the agent and her wife yelling at her. As I say, your opinions on ultimate blame will somewhat depend on who you think is responsible for creating this conflict in the first place.
I do not feel like you are viewing this person as a fully realized human rather than an undifferentiated member of your outgroup. Normal, well-adjusted people don't generally ignore polite but firm requests from cops, and I have no reason to think she was anything but a normal, well-adjusted person who made a dumb decision in a moment of panic. Honestly I find it pretty ludicrous to imagine that this situation would have ended up with someone dead if the agents had behaved like normal well-trained cops, and I think you should re-examine your biases if you believe otherwise. Leftists are not generally crazed lunatics who are unable to respond to incentives.
I do not understand how your reaction to my post where I state that the agent was probably justified to shoot her is to start ranting about insane leftist sophistry and quoting Hitler. Good to see the Motte hasn't changed since I used to post on Reddit.
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Well, thank you for perfectly illustrating what I've been saying, I guess. Look, you can believe you have an absolute grasp on the truth and anyone who disagrees with you is an insane evil liar, but while I was inclined to let this go as badly-argued overheated rhetoric, throwing a little Mein Kampf quote in there for extra-culture warring makes me think you're just trolling. Knock it off.
Okay, my apologies. I acknowledge my comment was over the top. However, in my defense, I think there is a point where blatant dishonesty is more corrosive to this forum’s norms of charitable good-faith discourse than any number of nasty words. Take LiberalRetvrn downthread spewing stuff like this:
This is such a flagrant and deliberate mischaracterization of video that all of us can see that it degrades the norms of discussion here and is exactly what the Mein Kampf quote was directed at. I will clean up my act but for the sake of discussion I implore you to moderate blatant dishonesty.
... Jews?
We do not make value judgments about whether someone is making good arguments or being honest when it comes to moderation. We'd be banning people right and left if we responded every time someone accuses someone else of being dishonest.
FWIW, I first saw that quote a few weeks ago and my immediate thought was "Holy shit, I know exactly what he's talking about! I've had that exact same experience a thousand times! I'd just call the person responsible a leftist instead of a Jew."
Given historical realities, it's quite possible that the specific people he's referring to (presuming such exist) happened to be both.
But that pattern... it's like God of the Gaps on steroids, run by a person with absolutely no concern for internal consistency or intellectual honor/shame. It's the purest essence of Arguments as Soldiers, the final form of "There's no such thing as objective truth, just competing power narratives". Maybe it shows up on the right too, and I don't argue with them enough these days to see it. But in all my years of internet atheisting and libertarding I don't think I ever encountered a fundie or neocon who went full... whatever that is.
And it is basically a particularly vicious form of nerd sniping against the kind of systematizing autists who frequent this place. But it's not actually against the rules. And it's effective, to an extent, because there's no real defense against it except to go full @gattsuru "He's an exhaustive list of every time this was explained to you and you failed to rebut the fact claims in any way."
I don't have any useful suggestions for wrangling this as a moderator (except to unchain The Gattsuru). Good luck, I guess.
Well, yes, that is definitely a pattern that exists. We've all encountered it (and I have encountered it with rightists). Hitler might have been describing a real phenomenon, but "This is specifically Jewish behavior" was obviously Hitler's hangup, and quoting Hitler to say "You're acting like a Jew" breaks a few Motte rules (none of which is, contra @SecureSignals, "don't say negative things about Jews").
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You mean other than blocking a street and harassing ICE agents?
In this video we do not see her blocking a street nor harassing ICE agents. She is sitting in her car trying to wave the ICE agents by.
False but doesn’t seem profitable to engage
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