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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   31111 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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Fiery but mostly peaceful protests in Iran.

I don't quite want to take the position that the current unrest in Iran is bad, but I do want to consider it. There is a lot of discussion downthread about the insidious effects of pervasive and assertive civil disobedience on the legitimate exersize of state power, and I wonder why that same logic doesn't apply here. It's common in the American conciousness to assume that Iran = bad, but I get the impression that a lot of Iran's badness is exaggerated by Western media. Is the current government of Iran illegitimate? If so, why? Is it because Iran isn't a full democracy? The United States props up lots of countries that are less democratic than Iran. Is democracy in Middle Eastern countries even desirable? It doesn't quite feel right to categorically rule-out theocracy as a legitimate form of governance, even if most of us would find living under one alienating.

The elephant in the room is geopolitics. Iran is aligned with Russia and opposed to many US allies. It would be good for US geopolitical intrests for the current regime to fall. Does this somehow make angry mobs torching government buildings okay, another form of spooky moral action at a distance?

I am not an expert on Iran, so feel free to tell me if the Khamenei Regime is actually the second coming of the Khmer Rouge or Third Reich.

I do find it interesting that violent civil disruption abroad is winked at and generates sympathy from the right domestically (whereas the left mostly ignores it, be it Venezuelans or Iranians), but violent civil disruption domestically engenders the opposite feeling from the same set.

If not for the Islam, the muslim women would have been part of the thicc latina belt. Because everyone loves thicc latinas, everything that hurts islam and non secular rulers is good because it will bring more thicc latinas into circulation.

Thats why progressives love islamic fundamentalism, it keeps the real competition away from the true power base of progressivism, white women with nothing better to offer. Thats why the ICE agent shot the woman, his filipina wife was whispering "destroy my competition!" into his ears!

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