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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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This is (modest) evidence that ICE are not all psychos: you can yell at them, spit at their door, smash their car light, and all they will do is push you down, and not even charge you. There were likely hundreds of similar instances in the Minneapolis area since the start of the year. [On an unrelated note, I think recent events are as evidence toward my thesis a month ago that humans naturally love engaging in the evolutionary Coalition-Trickery-Warfare repertoire of instincts. The anti-ICE folks love to engage in coalition-formation against a common enemy, they love harass the enemy “raiding parties”, they love to use Call of Duty -esque profane language against their enemies, they want to see them miserable and crying, they enjoy conspiring in secret on how to trick and subvert their enemy’s expeditions, and they are even using primitive war whistles. They have completely dehumanized ICE agents, which is also adds to the fun. I wanted them to activate these instincts against Somalis, but their ingroup / outgroup wiring is different, so they are having fun doing it against ICE, and investing many hours in it. Because it’s fun! These are people who would ordinarily call themselves non-violent pacifists; unfortunately for such people, they have the same exact instincts as the rest of us].

ICE are not all psychos

I believe that ICE is still mostly staffed by career civil servants who take their duties and their commitment to the nation seriously and are both highly trained and very professional. They are augmented by a huge influx of new hires who are inexperienced and undertrained and are being thrown into the front lines. Furthermore, some of the new hires (in particular those who do not come from a law enforcement background) might have questionable motivation for seeking the job, or so the story goes (e.g. claims that everyone who was once a Proud Boy is now a federal agent; probably not the case, but may have a glimmer of truth).

I think the most dangerous part of wokeism is how ego-syntonic it is. It tells you all your worst instincts are completely appropriate (against them), it tells you are a good person and you have empathy.

It's is a scaffolding which permits so much bad behavior, just as the worst religions do.