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.

rather than debating the videos

I am not, give me that angles!

First we have this home surveillance with narration by CNNs Anderson Cooper. It lacks pixels though nd there is a tree in the way:

https://x.com/TheMaineWonk/status/2009506563732676847

Most frustrating is this new film by a neighbour: It has the clearest view and cuts at the exact important moment! Right wingers are retweeting it as it shows Ms Good being obnoxiously honking, but I wonder if it was leaked to them and why it was cut. If it would show the Ice officer only lightly (harmlessly? calculated by him?) being touched by the corner of the car the optics would be bad.

https://x.com/GrageDustin/status/2010037103665787019

There’s a longer video of the honking out there, it kind of pans annoyingly back and forth on the street for several minutes. You’re seeing a cut version because there’s nothing of interest immediately after. She’s on the street honking and dancing him her car, parked perpendicularly and waving through non ice vehicles. At some point (off camera) she pulls back (to let non ice vehicles pass through).

The only think of interest there is that based on how far out the car was on various pans, it’s clear that she was pulling back and forth in the car, to variously obstruct and allow passage. She was not stationary until the attempted peel out. This (minorly) adds context to the agent not knowing exactly what she is doing / her actions being more unpredictable and the alertness / sense of danger being heightened.

I think that alone is a stretch but my point is that every single additional video that dribbles out throws addition drops (at least) into the full picture always looking worse for her.

We’ve moved far beyond “confused and panicked mom just dropping off her kid approached by masked strangers”, yet that remains the “moral” starting point from which every counter narrative tries to gap.

Instead we see that she was actively using her car as a deliberate object of obstruction, moving it strategically to thwart the ice activity, and was using noise to rile up the situation and interfere with ICE apprehensions. She was creating a dangerous scenario intentionally for several minutes, and that context is very relevant to what happened in the heat of the moment 3 minutes later.

At the very minimum she was hoping to help attempted detainees to flee arrest and prevent ICE from safely pursuing and apprehending them. So she was creating deadly conditions from the get.

Suppose she was blocking a SWAT team from a drug raid while also shouting into a loudspeaker to alert the suspects. There would be no question. That she was creating a physically dangerous environment and that would factor into the police’s actions and assumptions and benefit of doubt in those moments. It would be very different than reading the same outcome with the assumption that she had just been walking a dog by the raid and gotten confused.

Yet that initial frame was intentionally set to poison public opinion and create artificial priors in the public to emotionally distort the interpretation

it’s clear that she was pulling back and forth in the car, to variously obstruct and allow passage

If that is so, it should knock on the head the narrative that "she was only an innocent passer-by, driving home with her wife after dropping her kid off at school, a stranger to the city who wandered into the middle of this by mistake".

This entire situation was a mess, but this does sound like "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". She's moving around with the car, blocking and unblocking, and clearly putting herself into an adversarial position. Doesn't mean she should be shot dead, but she's making herself seem like a genuine risk.

I think the larger point here is this is happening numerous times a day, day in and day out.

You play this out a thousand times something will go sideways in an encounter. This was that encounter.

The leftist harassing ICE is stochastic hoping for a viral moment.

The leftist harassing ICE is stochastic hoping for a viral moment.

Exactly, especially considering one lapse in the rules of engagement for ICE can be blasted into the media forever (even this one probably was a legal shoot but had poor vibes) whilst anything that's palatable will fall off the radar immediately.

Isn't a lot of how ICE is being presented also hoping for a viral moment though? The administration wants ICE to create conflict in blue states, so that they have more people to villify.

Not really. The reason ICE is visibly present in blue states but not in red states is because of sanctuary laws. In Texas or Florida, once an illegal immigrant fails to show up for a deportation proceeding, or receives a final order of removal police departments across the state receive notice. When they then pull that fellow over for expired plates or DUI or speeding, they then arrest the illegal. That illegal is held for a statutory amount of time, typically 5 business days, for ICE to pick them up. Then ICE takes them to the judge that issued the warrant/order and then puts them on a plane home.

In Minnesota or California, that does not happen. If the illegal gets a DUI, the police just let him go with a court notice to show up in a month. Then ICE has to somehow find out on its own about that court date and arrest him on the courthouse steps, causing a scene. Or they have to go to his home, work, or school, causing a scene. Or they have to do a raid of an apartment complex they have probable cause has many illegals in it, causing a scene. The lack of cooperation causes extra work for ICE per deportee, and also requires more ICE agents.

That's not quite true - the administration is hoping to make it obvious that ICE can and will catch you if you're in the states illegally. They're hoping to set up an environment that feels unwelcoming for illegal immigrants, which means that they need to raid blue states as well.

It is probably to the administration's benefit if they capture people behaving badly, but not their purpose; you can trivially prove this by thinking about what happens if the resistance to their actions disappears.

If the blue states stop protesting ICE, ICE is still going to be arresting illegal immigrants. If ICE stops arresting illegal immigrants, then the protestors will stop protesting ICE (presumably; there is a chance that they simply swap to anti-Trump protests, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt). As a result, we can intuit that ICE is opposing illegal immigrants, while the protestors are opposing ICE.