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.

this thread is only intended to make the primary point that Trump, Noem, Vance, are portraying this with what can only be called outright propaganda, fabrications, alternate reality, whatever you want to call it, probably lies.

For what it’s worth, I do agree with this very specific point.

Unrelatedly, in the interests of not making another Minneapolis thread for a potentially uninteresting side issue: What do we make of the fact that this guy has a Filipina wife? The demographic replacement is coming from inside the house.

Good for him. Reports are that she’s a US citizen.

Naturally, the side of Empathy, antiracism, antimisogyny, and free love has taken to sneering at her and calling her a mail-order bride.

Nor does the side who keeps wailing about Empathy for Renee being a mother give the slightest fuck about Jonathan being a father.

have taken to sneering at her and calling her a mail-order bride.

Do you have some links for this one in particular? Any source will do.

A Xitter user with 43k followers explicitly describing Ross's wife as a mail-order bride. Heart-reacted 92k times, retweeted 15k times.

Richard Hanania mocking him for having an immigrant wife while thinking immigrants are a threat to America (refusing to parse the legal/illegal immigrant distinction, of course).

Richard Hanania asserting that Ross married a brown woman and then decided to devote his life to terrorising brown people (my God, do I loathe the term "people of colour", as if a Filipina has anything in common with a Somalian other than not being white).

Someone on Instagram comparing Ross's wife to the sexually exploited women she met while working as a missionary.

A Xitter user claiming that Ross married his Filipina wife specifically because the Philippines is the only country in the world which doesn't recognise divorce, thereby enslaving her.

If ICE was only deporting illegals, that would be true. But it doesn't seem to be the case. They are seen terrorizing not only legal immigrants but also US citizens. They even shot an innocent lady in Minnesota and decided to cover it up.

Besides Obama deported more illegals for a fraction of the cost. Where is the money going? Probably in terrorizing “brown people”, so that terrorizing part must be more by volume that ICE legal activities.

  • -21

Strange this one false stat keeps coming up recently.

Obama counted turning people away at the border as deportations to falsely inflate his numbers. He didn't actually deport them.

Changing the definition of something to make it much broader results in a sudden huge spike, despite no change in reality. But that's a politician playing dishonest games with definitions, not good policy.

And do you think Trump administration would not include those people turned away in their numbers?

But assume you are right. So, instead of spending money trying to deport illegals, you could just not let them in, for a fraction of cost?

Or maybe actually illegal immigrants in the US are net positive financially and not letting them in is not good for the economy?

What is the best policy?

You have to do both, obviously. Preventing people from committing crimes is good. Finding people who have committed crimes is also good.

I always find that if the country has a lot of illegal immigrants, it is always due to deliberate policy of that country.

The USSR had very little illegal immigration or emigration despite a lot of land and sea border. We could laugh about Trump building the wall (that was just an attempt of embezzlement), but if the country is serious, it can guard the border quite well.

The EU has a polity allowing a lot of refugees (in reality economic immigrants) in. It might be a bad policy but most likely dictated by desperate measures to counteract low birth rates. It is all deliberate and the EU has very little undesirable illegal immigrants. They find difficult to get jobs and receive services. Most so called illegals are requesting asylum and in most cases they receive it. Only small part of applicants are refused and deported.

The US is most likely the same situation. Most “illegals” are welcomed but the US does not control illegal employment as strictly as in the EU. That is deliberate as those immigrants have no rights and will work for low wages.

From human rights position that is fundamentally wrong. It is like slavery just with more steps. Now promises to deport them sound good from legal point of view, but expect a lot of protest from businesses who are using their labour.

The correct position would be to legalize most of those workers instead of deporting them. But I don't see democrats, nor republicans being interested in this solution.

More comments