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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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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

Some questions I am puzzling over currently:

  • Has anyone done the napkin math on how safe it is to be apprehended by ICE? I think it’s 30k ICE agents and only 1-2 people shot with questions of justification this year. It’s likely that on a per-hourly basis you are safer being around an ICE agent than you are around the most criminally-prone young male demographic, or walking around certain cities at night. I wonder what a top-tier AI would calculate on this. If ICE agents in the line of work are safer than the average person, then I’m not sure why anyone would be worked up about this event for a rational reason, but if there’s a non-rational reason then…

  • … Do humans have some instinct to argue about death? This would explain the perennial popularity of these stories + TrueCrime. I suppose it’s possible. Or is there an instinct to really, really hate when a low status male kills a female in the “tribe”? “White police officer” is coded extremely low status in Progressive America, and I can’t imagine anything near the same response if the officer was a Somali woman (!!!). Would these White progressives really shout “shame” at a Somali woman in uniform, which would connote high status and deference? Re: low status femicide, this would explain why the national park couple murder event got so much traction some years back. There was a uniquely large amount of vitriol online expressed against the murderer in this event, as in, more than both the typical murder (no one really pays attention) and the typical true crime murder.

  • Were it the case that everything is so instinctual, is there any way that ICE can short-circuit the instincts at play here? Maybe they can paint images of empathy on their car (cute animals, maternal colors, mothers protecting their young). Or better yet, like the Ancient Greeks with their apotropaic magic imagery, they can paint a Medusa’s head on their car, except the Medusa is actually an image of a strong disabled black woman in a same sex relationship. I have a hard time believing the protesters would yell at vehicles wielding the ultimate seal of inviolability within their own cultural norms. It would be a bad look. Or maybe there is a way to change the entire “spirit” of the social encounter through music. What if you played really relaxing Enya or Jack Johnson music from loud car speakers? Or, going the other direction, just for curiosity, Richard Wagner? I wish these kinds of things were studied.

Has anyone done the napkin math on how safe it is to be apprehended by ICE? I think it’s 30k ICE agents and only 1-2 people shot with questions of justification this year. It’s likely that on a per-hourly basis you are safer being around an ICE agent than you are around the most criminally-prone young male demographic, or walking around certain cities at night.

A similar thought experiment: Who would you rather babysit your kid for a week—a randomly selected ICE agent or a randomly selected Somali migrant?

“White police officer” is coded extremely low status in Progressive America, and I can’t imagine anything near the same response if the officer was a Somali woman (!!!).

While I also can't imagine there'd be anything near the same response, the Somali woman would still get some blowback for being a pick-me and Uncle Tom.

Were it the case that everything is so instinctual, is there any way that ICE can short-circuit the instincts at play here? Maybe they can paint images of empathy on their car (cute animals, maternal colors, mothers protecting their young). Or better yet, like the Ancient Greeks with their apotropaic magic imagery, they can paint a Medusa’s head on their car, except the Medusa is actually an image of a strong disabled black woman in a same sex relationship.

Or the ICE car version of a "pride missile."

Who would you rather babysit your kid for a week—a randomly selected ICE agent or a randomly selected Somali migrant?

I'd have a lot more recourse if the migrant tried any funny business.... (This reasoning was also given by some women who chose the bear.)

What recourse would you have against the Somali migrant that you wouldn't against the ICE agent? In the role of baby-sitter, the ICE agent has no special privileges above those of a normal citizen. The most likely offenses a baby-sitter would commit would be state offenses, and it is well established that local law enforcement is not particularly supportive of ICE atm, so it seems unlikely LEO camaraderie will benefit them.