site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   32099 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

ICE Needs Better Uniforms

Everyone's in favor of immigration enforcement until the masked goons in unmarked SUVs show up. Are a lot of these complaints pretextual? Sure. But it is hard to deny that ICE looks unprofessional. Law enforcement must command respect, or failing that, fear. Why are they in camo pants? Are they hunting illegals from covered positions with tranquilizer darts like deer? Such attire projects weakness. Our officers must be dignified, projecting the full power and majesty of the federal government, the greatest instituion God ever gave man.

There is an idea in the water supply that cool uniforms are fascism. People are far too afraid of ever doing anything that the Nazis might also have done. Still, aesthetics that conjure images of 1930s Germany are to be avoided (that means you Greg). I propose looking back even further for inspiration. 1914 was the last time regular armies in battle uniform looked cool. This sort of style would both pay homage to the heritage that the DHS Twitter account seems to think it is protecting, and project an aura of seriousness and respect.

Because it's 2026, I have created a small album of AI-generated concept art. Feel free to offer your own suggestions.

I believe this video changes everything and ICE is very much not shooting first. https://x.com/geiger_capital/status/2016640876865327169?s=46

So now the “execution” is a guy known by ICE for being violent with them. I am very much on the side of just shoot them but they have had an amazing amount of restraint on who to shoot.

Unless someone was holding on to these incidents being organic, rather than engineered by the protest organizers, I don't see how it changes much. They still made a mistake in the chaos of the situation.

Fairly obvious this was suicide by ice now

The dude was clearly looking for trouble, but I don't think it changes much about the shoot being justified.

I think this completely changes the incident.

  1. How often you fuck up I believe is a key metric. This is evidence that ICE has a lot of confrontations.
  2. We now know ICE knew he was dangerous and crazy. That’s important information for informing their state of mind and how jumpy they are with him being armed.

We now know ICE knew he was dangerous and crazy.

Did they? The DHS statement was that "DHS law enforcement has no record of this incident." A smashed-up DHS tail light, and a protestor with a broken rib, but apparently that's just another day ending in 'y' to everyone involved? Unless the first shooter happened to be one of the same officers from a week and a half before, by the time Pretti was killed he'd be just some guy to them again.

How did nobody involved in that first incident decide to make an arrest or file a report? Apparently that rib was broken while Pretti was tackled and pinned by five agents, but the agents afterward "quickly released him at the scene". I get that arresting people involves paperwork and isn't nearly as fun as breaking bones, but it is the standard approved method for getting criminals off the streets! To touch back on the topic of the original post: if our officers are going to act like Freikorps, then to reflect that status their uniforms don't need to be better, they ought to be worse!

Who would prosecute the arrest and who would on the jury? I get a sense that it would be nearly impossible to get a conviction in Minnesota. This may just be me being paranoid but I feel like jury nullification would be an issue.

You're definitely not paranoid here. Anything done against federal officers would be a federal offense, so finding a prosecutor shouldn't be hard, but getting a fair jury might be trickier.

Even ending with jury nullification would probably be better than what actually happened, though. At least the arrests would get threats (whether to the officers' vehicles or to themselves, in hindsight) off the streets temporarily, and the optics of "Minnesotans think criminals should run free" would be much better for them than the optics of "DHS thinks due process is no substitute for violence". Plus, arrests come with arrest reports, which aren't nearly as good as bodycams but which are still less patchy than "we found some guy with a cell phone video a couple weeks later". Did DHS tackle this guy because they were pissed that he vandalized their car? Did he vandalize their car because he was pissed that he broke their rib, but there was some prior reason for the tackle?

Put this together with the claim from CNN that Pretti interfered with ICE chasing people, and it seems like this guy was trying to cause an incident, and eventually managed to find some officers who screwed up. Didn't work out so well for him, though I suppose being a martyr for the cause is an old and honorable position.

Not surprising. If let’s say any physical contact with ICE has a 0.1% chance to turn out deadly by accident, it is most likely that anyone that dies is someone who has rolled those dice many, many times. You see the same with ordinary deaths in police encounters like Floyd

Does Renee Good affect your thinking here? She had no habit of confrontation and got killed anyhow.

She had no habit of confrontation and got killed anyhow.

Seemingly she wasn't just "decided to turn up on spur of moment" either, though, see this in The Atlantic:

Instead, what they discovered in the frozen North was something different: a real resistance, broad and organized and overwhelmingly nonviolent, the kind of movement that emerges only under sustained attacks by an oppressive state. Tens of thousands of volunteers—at the very least—are risking their safety to defend their neighbors and their freedom. They aren’t looking for attention or likes on social media. Unless they are killed by federal agents, as Pretti and Renee Good were, other activists do not even necessarily know their names. Many use a handle or code name out of fear of government retaliation. Their concerns are justified: A number of people working as volunteers or observers told me that they had been trailed home by ICE agents, and some of their communications have already been infiltrated, screenshotted, and posted online, forcing them to use new text chains and code names. One urgent question among observers, as the videos of Pretti’s killing spread, was what his handle might have been.

...Finally, there are those most at risk of coming into violent contact with federal agents, a group that’s come to be popularly known as ICE Watch, although the designation is unofficial—as far as I can tell, you’re in ICE Watch if you watch ICE. These are the whistle-wielding pedestrians and drivers calling themselves “observers” or “commuters” who patrol for federal agents (usually identifiable by their SUVs with out-of-state plates) and alert the neighborhood to their presence. Pretti and Good, the two Minneapolis residents killed by federal agents, fit in this category.

...Most encounters with ICE end like that. But sometimes situations deteriorate—as with Good, who was killed while doing a version of what Green Bean and Cobalt were now doing. The task is stressful for the observers, who understand that even minor encounters can turn deadly.

I don't actually know that Good had no habit of confrontation. But it doesn't matter, because it was her error (trying to flee through Ross), not the agent's error, that got her killed.

It's still a 0.1% chance, meaning that she just got very unlucky. It could be argued that she was attempting to flee but did not realize an ICE agent was in the path of her vehicle, and I would describe that as being unlucky.

The best way to maximize your health and longevity is to not get into physical confrontations with ICE, or really any law enforcement agency for that matter. You are far more likely to lose the fight than the cop is.

The "somehow" here being her formal application for a Darwin Award. Her shooting was, if anything, more justified than Pretti's.

I believe this video changes everything and ICE is very much not shooting first.

It is a completely different day. Just because you know someone is a bad actor doesn't mean you get to execute them when you get a chance. I'm not sure normal folks ever thought the guy was a saint. But he is an American citizen and extrajudicial killings of disarmed and restrained protestors by CBP is a violation of all of our rights.

I am very much on the side of just shoot them

When righties whine about lefties cheering on Kirk's death, I'll point them to your comment.

So I guess I have to put a limiting factor. They are obstructing then you can just shoot them.

I'm sure lefties will also find a convenient limiting factor for escalation to death. Probably something like: "Acting like a Nazi" to justify their future extrajudicial killings. Swell...

Probably something like: "Acting like a Nazi" to justify their future extrajudicial killings.

Future?. The New York Times of course decried the shooting... of the murderer.

Just wait till its the Department of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Enforcement, and they are executing chuds on the street to applause. One can't decry the viciousness and hatefulness of ones foes if you are in the pigsty rolling in the same mud with them.

One can't decry the viciousness and hatefulness of ones foes if you are in the pigsty rolling in the same mud with them.

Certainly you can; antifa has been doing so for a very long time.

There is nothing holding your side back other than practical considerations. Reciprocity does not factor into it. Any time there is an argument like "What if we did it to you?", the answer is either "You would anyway" or "You already have". And usually it's both.

Yes and nobody who is politically aware and independent/moderate gives antifa any respect. We all know they are violent hypocritical thugs. The right won that moral high-ground. Now the right can throw away that hard fought and sacrificed hill for some cheap shots at the other side. On the mistaken belief that everyone is already on one side or the other. but it is frankly a very narrow black-and-white view of the world.

Being a knuckle dragging ape when it comes to politics might feel good but it is giving into the basest and worst impulses of humanity. Some of us want to aspire to a more evolved human species without such primordial tribal bickering. Returning to dunbar number-capped polities is not the goal.

EDIT: edited to be less curmudgeonly, I seem to only comment when I am grumpy enough get past my threshold against posting things online

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats