site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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!

Given that the other videos showed the cars wheel were fully turned, I don't think she was deliberately trying to run him down. I think she was trying to recklessly and illegally trying to escape police detainment, and between the panic and bad driving and recklessness, may have clipped the officer with her car. This is downstream of her probably being misinformed that ICE had no ability to arrest her. As I understand it, ICE cannot serve arrest warrants for citizens, but if citizens are illegally obstructing ICE operations they ICE does have the power to arrest. So she and her GF thought they could smirk and harass and insult and obstruct and then drive off with no consequences.

I think the shooting is legally justified, but I wouldn't want that officer hired to be my local beat cop. He was more careless with his positioning and more trigger happy than he had to be.

She doesn’t seem panicked at all in the video. She is smiling, unstressed, comes across as giddy, arrogant, cognizant

She wasn't panicked until the other ICE employee wearing a balaclava charged in yelling "get out of the fucking car".

  • -20

I question your authenticity.

I don't think it's a good idea to publicly question the authenticity of people who post opinions that appear to be quite common. It drives me absolutely insane that mods on Reddit accuse me of being inauthentic or "trolling" for posting opinions held by the median Republican. Don't fall into the same trap.

It would’ve been reasonable to post this if hyperbolic yesterday. But after the video today it seems straight trolling.

I really dislike this sort of debating where whoever is in hostile territory needs to be 100% perfect and get everything 100% correct or they get eviscerated and get called intellectually dishonest. Zero charity extended. (I get this all the time on Reddit)

Like, when @LiberalRetvrn said the ICE agent was yelling "get out of the fucking car", but actually the agent was just saying it very firmly in a confrontational way - not actually yelling. So he's technically factually wrong so now everyone gets to sneer and dunk on him. Or when he claimed the woman was panicked, but people here are certain that she wasn't panicked based on half a second of low pixel facial expressions in that video. So he's factually wrong again and is being a dishonest troll and everyone gets to dunk on him.

I really dislike this sort of debating where whoever is in hostile territory needs to be 100% perfect and get everything 100% correct or they get eviscerated and get called intellectually dishonest. Zero charity extended. (I get this all the time on Reddit)

It's interesting you see it this way, because from my point of you it looks like LiberalRetvrn just gets to make shit up, and to even respond we have to provide timestamped videos.

More comments