site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The complicated but true thing is that Good appears to be de-escalating, but her wife is obviously escalating. It's tempting to treat them as a single unit, but that's not really true. Shocker: they are different people. And anyways, good policing is telling Good, "if you continue to block the road you will be arrested" and then taking it from there. Bad policing is for example the other agent reaching his hand into her window to try and unlock the door from the inside as she's got the car in gear. Bad policing is boxing in a car from all sides including the front with bodies. Good policing is using the minimum necessary force for a situation, something the policies and law alike instruct to do. Bad policing is jumping directly to force on a whim, and lethal force on a split second.

But all of this is beside the point to some extent. You are implicitly (!) alleging that Good is correctly and objectively categorized in with dishonest protestors who would punch a man while screaming they are being attacked. There's insufficient evidence to claim this. And that's the point about how strong the biases have become that you see this shooting and go "well, she/they deserved it".

Do you believe that the officer should be charged, or punished in some alternate way? I'm not asking what you think the result should be. I'm asking whether you think he should even be investigated and considered for punishment.

I'd also like you to address the Trump and Noem comments. It's plainly obvious that they are deceitful, that's not even really up for debate. How serious a problem do you think the comments are and why?

How on earth is insisting we go through the process for Ross risking not having a country? Talk about hyperbole. And you really don't think the overall response was callous in the slightest?

You are washing over the raw fact that this person was purposely obstructing justice. That is still a crime. This wasn't (or shouldn't) be legally protected free speech. She purposely put herself in a position to obstruct legal law enforcement activities. Then we had the front line of lies about her just being confused, or trying to do a 3 point turn, or having gotten lost. Lies which still seem to cling to your heart as a reason none of this deserves to have happened.

But rest assured, if you have Democrat politicians telling their voters "These aren't real police, you don't have to cooperate with them" and you have NGOs training randos "Here are all the ways a lawyer told us you can fuck with ICE that might hold up in court" and you have these twin forces sending people out to fuck with ICE at scale, shootings like this were unaviodable.

Given how quickly the fallacious narrative was spread, and how quickly protest materialized, I'd say that was always the plan.

Do I have iron clad evidence this woman was part of a conspiracy to make this happen? No. But I think you'd be a fool to see she didn't take a very deadly bait from people she thought had her best interest at heart. Which is more or less what the Democrats plan for all of us.

To summarize, you don't get to obstruct justice, you don't get to flee police, you don't get to drive through police. Dude wasn't standing blocking her car, he was circling it filming, likely for evidence. She chose to floor it at him in the 5-10 seconds he was passing in front of her, which was lethally poor judgement on her part. She won a well deserved darwin award. She probably could have gotten away with everything else she'd done but for that. These are not things normal people need fear.

Once again, I'm reminded of another forum I used to frequent, and their emotive meltdown over the Rittenhouse verdict meaning "Conservatives can just murder progressives". Ignoring the fact that before the congenital felons who chased down Rittenhouse got shot, first they were rioting, then they chased him through the streets, then they beat him over the head, then they ignored him yelling to get away, then they lined up one after another for a chance to murder him while he heroically defended his own life. They could have gotten away with the rioting, even chasing him off, without getting shot. All they had to do was not try to murder him, and Progressives whinge about "That could have been any of us!"

Likewise here. All the lady had to do was not drive forward while an ICE officer was walking in front of her, and people like you go "That could have been any of us!" Do you even hear yourself?

Edit: You know, what, furthermore...

This wasn't some "one neat trick cops can use to murder you" type bullshit. I would expect any reasonable person as of a month ago, when asked "Hey, if someone tries to run over a cop, do you think the cop might shoot them?" would have gone "Yeah, probably." I donno, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we've gone so far that above the bugman constant literally believes cops allowing themselves to be seriously injured or killed is just "part of the job", and they must allow their life to be snuffed out forever by congenital felons, brainrotted retards and traitors.

"Hey, if someone tries to run over a cop, do you think the cop might shoot them?"

When you ask such a question, most people in their heads would envision a car already at reasonable speed intentionally crashing into a cop, not a scenario which was visible from the various footages here.

I think it's very simple to understand that maybe people don't want to live in a society where a consequence of obstructing justice to any degree is getting shot, especially if it is predicated on how the officer just happens to feel in the situation.

Doesn't help that in this scenario President himself added fuel to the fire with the original tweet by garnishing Good's actions with hyperbolic or even outright false adjectives.

When you ask such a question, most people in their heads would envision a car already at reasonable speed intentionally crashing into a cop, not a scenario which was visible from the various footages here.

Hard disagree! And I think the only reason you think that is because suddenly, the entire discourse is revolving around everyone being a fictitious expert in exactly was sort of pedestrian-vehicle collisions you are allowed to fear for your life in. Prior to this being such a scissor statement, I believe most people would have said "All of them. Are you retarded?" Now, suddenly, because one side can't be correct unless there are hairs to split, people are parsing the exact position of the pedestrian and the SUV, the exact speed they were going, the exact point of impact, the exact angle of the tires. It's all bullshit, it's all hindsight, and it's a standard that no one has ever applied to hitting a pedestrian before in the entire history of cars hitting humans. Ask the poor schmuck who got railroaded into several life sentences at Charlottesville!

Dude wasn't standing blocking her car, he was circling it filming, likely for evidence

Either that or because ICE has been tasked with generating tonnes of footage for White House social feeds: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/ice-social-media-blitz

Do you believe that the officer should be charged, or punished in some alternate way? I'm not asking what you think the result should be. I'm asking whether you think he should even be investigated and considered for punishment.

My personal opinion is that this agent is too trigger-happy, possibly due to his having been attacked with a vehicle in the past, and that it would be appropriate to reassign him to different duty while he conducted psychological examinations and additional use-of-force training. But that's me holding him to a much higher standard due to him being a police officer. I don't think he should be criminally prosecuted or personally liable.