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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8638 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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Many Iranians in America had said to me before the war, for years in the past, that if Trump just dropped a few bombs on Iran and killed Khamenei it would be the best thing for Iran. Let's not totally ignore that things could improve over time even if right now it seems unlikely. The American and French and Russian and Chinese revolutions all seemed certain to fail at different times.

Iranian Americans are extremely disproportionately religious minorities. My guess is that even a lukewarm Shi’ite Iranian would not have this reaction.

I sympathize with exiled Iranians but they don’t know more about regime change than anyone else, many are just clinging onto whatever hope they might be able to go home in their lifetime, if this is it it’s it.

Yeah. I guess I'm just not geopolitically tuned in enough to intuitively understand what 'improvement' looks like or for who. So far the track record of US 'improvement' in the middle east has been lackluster to say the least, so I'd argue some pessimism is warranted.

I pray for my loved ones, unfortunately on both sides of the guns here.

In WWII, the same situation lead my ancestors to become Jehovah's Witnesses.

Are any of them still?

There's an entire half of my family that are Witnesses, yeah. I can go into the religious history of the family FiveHour if you'd like but I'm not sure it's particularly interesting.

I'm not sure your family history would address it, but I've been curious about what keeps people in JW (Where I am, I see recruiting fliers and the pairs standing around with literature frequently, but also "do you need help escaping JW" fliers, too). The organization as whole in the US seems perpetually stuck between cult and major religion with more of the drawbacks of the former than the benefits of the latter. To be blunt about the cost/benefits and not the theology, Mormonism is an obvious set of big benefits, many adherents are some of the happiest, most productive people I've ever met, and the costs aren't all that steep. I cannot say those things about JW and the adherents I know. Perhaps a question for Sunday.

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