site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Poopgate is just the natural result of the claims that Trump wears suit jackets with large tails so he can hide evidence of soiling himself. The story was, and is, that he's not just Evil, he's also dementia-riddled and hence losing control of his bowels.

Did you watch the video? Someone was having a bad time. I don't have Trump's soiled diapers to rub in your face, but even if I did, you wouldn't believe me then. /shrug

Though I do note how you wove in that last sentence about Trump's mental faculties: are you claiming the Poopgate et al. videos are true, or is it simply a case of "who cares if they're true, so long as the stick beats the dog?"

Again, the video itself is 'true' insofar as it exists and isn't doctored by AI to my knowledge. The point of the last line is that Trump could deteriorate fairly quickly in the next few years similarly to Biden. I'm not sure why you'd leap to insinuating that the point is to undermine the public's confidence in Trump, why my point is that the ground truth could be mental decline.

Looking at your linked map, for instance, there's an odd clustering on the Connecticut/New York state border. And the areas with low immunisation include New York state, whereas West Virginia has high immunisation coverage. Minnesota, that impeccably Blue state, also has low coverage. So "voted for Trump" does not seem to be correlation, much less cause.

Looking at the state level is misguided. Every red state has blue urban centers, and every blue state has red rural counties. More granularly:

The Northeast, Midwest, Northwest, and Pacific coast had high MMR vaccine uptake, and clusters of high coverage were concentrated in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. Low coverage was seen in West Texas, southern New Mexico, northern Arizona, parts of Mississippi, and the rural Southeast.

At the state level, county-aggregated estimates ranged from 61.6% in New Mexico to 79.1% in Massachusetts (median, 71.3%). County-level estimates showed even wider variation, with a median uptake of 71.4% (range, 35.8% to 86.8%). Counties with the lowest uptake were mainly in Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, with the highest coverage in parts of Indiana, New York, and Oregon.

So, uh, let's blame those Ukrainian Mennonite Mormon Trump voters?

I grant that they aren't garden-variety Trump voters, but do you think Mennonites vote for Harris?

  • -10

Friend, there are things called adult diapers for elderly people with incontinence problems. I don't need to watch a doctored video about "Trump poopy!" to know when I'm being offered partisan clickbait. If Trump really had such problems, he would be using those garments and not "ooh ooh I soiled myself ooh ooh".

You can try to serve me up shit as chocolate mousse, but I'm not buying it.

I grant that they aren't garden-variety Trump voters, but do you think Mennonites vote for Harris?

Mennonites are notoriously non-federalized, but AFAIK the conservative ones don't vote at all. (with possible exceptions made in the event of the Second Coming, but even then you'd want to watch out for the Antichrist!)

IIRC Trump ran a specific outreach to the anabaptists on the basis that democrats would take away their customarily higher-than-usual levels of religious freedom, and this was successful in increasing his voter rolls.