site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14003 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This most recent iran thread is a complete shitshow and I lost braincells reading it. Can the mods make a containment thread or something, I think it may have reached the point where it's necessary.

Edit: Just fuck off and give me a 6 month - 1 year ban or even permanently instead of this weaksauce bullshit. The below iran thread is seriously reddit and twitter tier on both sides and if this is what the mods think of as good high effort discussion then just do me a favor and show me the door. Otherwise I can't resist responding in kind.

I asked you only a month ago to stop with the low effort posts. You are doing this at the top level too.

I said I'd do a month long ban last time, and I'm not going back on that threat. 30 day ban.

I like the banhammer flair that got added to the offending post. Is that feature new?

Nah, it’s been around. It only shows up if we ban from the comment’s context menu, though. If we go through the user page (say, to compare recent comments), I don’t think it shows up.

How so?

I'd like to see one, because it would allow for smaller updates that don't fit into broader conversations already existing.

The discussion has been fine so far. What you are noticing is that the war is contentious compared to most discussion here because while the sub has been broadly right-leaning and probably honestly strongly right wing since (at least) 2017, there is a lot of disagreement about this war. That’s not a bad thing, although it does create more work for the moderators.

I think there is an argument to be made that somewhat independently of the ideological drift, the discussion culture of the forum has degenerated (because moderators have all but stopped moderating on tone, and the community stopped caring). The ideological drift somewhat masked this, because there was simply not all that much disagreement (the few token left-wingers usually are either on the verge of meltdown or necessarily have pathologically low agreeableness so it's easy to dismiss bad interactions involving them as being their fault). Now we have a topic that splits the dominant camp, and thus throws the degraded discussion culture into relief.

I don’t think moderation has become much more lax. Regulars were always held to lower standards (justified in many ways) and now the board is pretty much all regulars, so the spectacular flameouts of the Reddit days are few and far between (the last was what, Hlynka?).

I still don't understand the flameout ban, although I totally get that he was going to have to be banned eventually. I miss having a different classical conservative on the board and maintain that implementing a smoke the whole pack rule would have been a better short term solution, sort of like how secure signals got the single issue posting rule.

Right now I kind of wish this place had location markers, or at least an optional flag we could choose. But the best proxy I guess is how opinions seem to change drastically depending on time of day. Specifically, it's when the European posters go to sleep and the American posters wake up.

Sounds like those events where everyone has to wear a name tag with pronouns and identity markers to make the progressive stack enforcement easier. Israel continues being uniquely good at eliciting far left/far right horseshoe effects.

Most regulars are known to be American, Indian, Russian, Jewish, Chinese, Finnish, Dane…. I also keep a mental catalog of who might be what nationality based on their respective knowledge on things if they never explicitly revealed their nationality. I don’t think anyone’s intentionally hiding it anyway, so what real use does a location marker have?

How do you remember all that about everyone here? It's really hard for me to remember who anyone is here on sites like this where there's no profile pic or anything.

If you make a habit of reading usernames and try just a little to remember, you end up retaining a lot through brute forced reinforcement.

For example RandomRanger and magic9mushroom are Australian. Southkraut German. 4bpp and quiet_nan are a little more coy but they're easy to round off to "generic European." Gasshk and MaiqtheTrue are women. And etc. all off the top of my head.

Many people have profile pics, basically a blob of color. Their flairs are colored, and their usernames have a specific pattern. Yours, for example, starts with a capital B, has three capital letters, and is medium in length…

A lot of regulars also mention their nationality or ethnicity once in a while. Eventually you just remember.

I dunno. Maybe it’s my autism showing, but the autism prevalence here has to be really high.

sites like this where there's no profile pic or anything.

What are you talking about? A profile image shows up next to every comment, though it appears that everyone in this thread except me has not bothered to set his image.

it appears that everyone in this thread except me has not bothered to set his image.

That's what I'm talking about. And most people don't have anything else to really distinguish themselves either.

at least an optional flag we could choose

Nothing is stopping you from putting such information in your flair or your profile text.

Right now I kind of wish this place had location markers, or at least an optional flag we could choose.

There was recently a discussion about this, and given the number of expats, we would need a dual flag system to mark country of origin and current location.

We were the rootless cosmopolitans all along!

“🇺🇸 (Brazilian)”

“🇯🇵 (American)”

“🇬🇧 (Pakistani)”

Lol. Try on:

“🇬🇧 (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿)”

If N. Ireland and Scotland ever end up leaving, will you revert to St. George's cross or just keep the Union Jack? And if you keep Wales, can you make the flag depict St. George and the Dragon? I presume that would coax them to leave too, but I would also like to present the historical missed opportunity of a victorious Britain in the American War for Independence stepping on snek.

"🇺🇸 (American)"

I spontaneously burst into cheers of "USA! USA! USA!" and my favorite foods are Hamburgers, Freedom Fries, and Fried Chicken.

"🇺🇸 (Heritage American)"

I cast a side-eye at all the Catholics and non-Hajnal Euro types around here.

Specifically, it's when the European posters go to sleep and the American posters wake up.

I'm really curious what is your impression of the differences? Are the majority of pro-Zionist posts made by Americans? I don't visit this forum much anymore, so I don't know about the situation here. But I feel like Europeans are generally more critical of the genocide in Gaza and the current attack on Iran.

This community is a spinoff of a spinoff of a rationalist community, there are is no question there are a lot of Zionist Jews here.

The MAGA types that would be here are more likely to be of the variety highly skeptical of the war (the low-IQ MAGA rank-and-file that supports the war at like 90%+ are not represented here much as far as I can tell). High-IQ Iran War supporters here, very likely to be Jews. Not to say there also aren't skeptical Jews as well.

But I don't get why people would want a location marker to correlate people's opinions on this question. If you really wanted signal you would want a different kind of profile badge that would not be appropriate for this forum.

It's interesting to see the parts of the American conservative coalition that are represented even after we account for tastes in intellectualism(like duh, megachurch Evangelicals do not want to engage in philosophical political discussion. That's not to say they're stupid, but they simply have different tastes). We have tradcaths but no orthodox Jews and I've never seen a confessional Lutheran. We have libertarian techbros and NrX types but few of the deep red RFK fan lifestyle skeptics- you know, the real life Ron Swanson types. Really very few crunchycons at all. None of the black dissidents you see hanging around conservative intellectual circles but lots of white nationalists. We've had conservative housewives in the past, but I think all of our women are working right now.

I've never seen a confessional Lutheran.

Hello.

like duh, megachurch Evangelicals do not want to engage in philosophical political discussion.

Speak for yourself! Some Evangelicals get C.S. Lewis-Pilled.

Are you a "megachurch" evangelical, though?

Eh. Depends on your definition. I’ve been at small churches and bigger churches over the years. Current church is on the big side, but I don’t know if it’s “mega”. I’m not sure how many members we have exactly, but there are two different service times and several hundred people at each service. Plus there’s a “satellite campus” on the other side of town, and another one up in the valley.

Have any of your churches ever utilized a smoke machine during a worship service?

More comments

confessional Lutheran

What does that mean, in this context?

A Lutheran belonging to a body which split from the main Lutheran body in his country over the belief that that body doesn’t embrace the Augsburg confession anymore. In the USA the main such body would be the Missouri synod, very common in intellectual conservative circles and big enough to be locally dominant in some areas- but all the self proclaimed confessional Protestants here seem to be reformed.

I actually had to look up the Lutheran church I grew up attending... Evangelical Lutheran, apparently (which is, confusingly enough, not "evangelical"?)

All I know is, the pastor was insistent that nobody bring lutefisk to the smorgasbord, which always disappointed my grandmother. Dunno where that falls ecumenically.

In Lutheran circles, "evangelical" means "believes in the gospel according to Luther's understanding of the gospel," or in other words believe in salvation by faith alone. Luther originally wanted his followers to be called "evangelicals" becaue he believed that his understanding of the gospel, evangelion, was the most important element of his theology. By this definition virtually all protestants are "evangelicals," roughly speaking, and it has that meaning in some of the northern European countries where Lutheranism became the normative version of Protestantism.

The term has come to mean different things in the British and US context because of the history of great revivals with the goal of convincing mass numbers of people to have an emotional experience of surrender to the divine, which was central to their understanding of the gospel in a way that Lutherans/Calvinists/Catholics generally connected to sacraments rather than conversion experiences. Evangelicals (in that sense) also strongly defined themselves as popular preachers who wanted to make large numbers of people have a conversion experience, and felt that naming themselves after the evangelion was worthwhile because that was their message. You could make the argument that Anglo-American evangelicals were also evangelicals in the sense Luther would have meant it, but they just shouted it really, really loudly.

In that sense, Methodism, Pentecostalism, and most forms of the Baptists had major evangelical influences, and you can still find some Anglicans in the UK (a few) and the US (a few more) who would identify with the evangelical movement.

The "Lutheran" term came about because the common Catholic custom was to call a heresy by the name of its inventor, as in Arianism, Hussitism, Calvinism, and also the old-fashioned Christian term for Islam that hydro likes to use, Mohammedanism.

I guess the lesson is that the terms people call themselves rarely denote something concrete. "Democrat" and "Republican?" Their dispute isn't really over whether the US should be a democracy or a republic, though some particularly confused and pedantic Republicans like to claim "the us isn't a democracy, it's a republic!" like those aren't compatible, and the US is of course a Federal Democratic Republic and those terms lent their names to the first American party system (Federalists vs Democratic-Republicans) and to the current party system, while "Democratic Republic" on its own means communist, and "The Democratic Republic of America" is basically the "Man in the High Castle" of conservative fear fantasies. We live in a confusing world, and whales are fish.

Presumably it means, “Lutheran, with conservative theology,” or in other words a Lutheran who believes in the real presence as a literal metaphysical belief and takes the Augsburg confession as a literal statement of truth about reality.

Though I’m not sure it’s true we don’t have any. I know we have some confessional Protestants who have positive views of Lutheran scholasticism. Presumably at least one of those is a Lutheran.

Yes, my impression is that the Europeans are much more critical of the war in Iran and the US in general, for obvious reasons. Americans are... pretty split about Zionism, but a lot more likely to support Trump. But I'm just generalizing wildly based on time of day and how people write. I have no idea where most of the people here are from.

But I feel like Europeans are generally more critical of the [self-defense by Israelis against Hamas terrorism emanating from Gaza] and the current attack on Iran.

FTFY. But that's my impression as well.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds

Is this the same Human Rights council that has condemned Israel more times than every single other country in the world combined? Or is that a different part of the UN? If so, I'm not sure they're entirely unbiased... or I'm wrong, and Israel really is worse than Iran, Russia, North Korea, China, and everyone else on the planet put together.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds

I'm not going to debate it in this sub-thread.

Then please don't make drive-by shitposts on the topic. If you don't want to have the conversation, don't bring it up.

Most regulars are relatively open about what they support and what their broad tribal identity is, I don’t think this is a big issue here.

You can definitely tell the Iran war has really hit some identity-buttons, because most of the thread is about what the war (or the causes of the war) means for national identity, political identity, and of course, as always, the Jews.

I have very strong views of opposition to the Iran war as I think it will not work and puts Americans in harms way for an impossible objective, but psychologically it's very hard to try to argue measuredly against accusations from foreigners that my country is evil, even if I agree with them on the object level. The fact that things like the Iran war harms American prestige abroad factors into my feelings about it, but it's one thing to evaluate American desire for regime change and dislike of non-aligned regimes in the Middle East from the inside, and another to feel like I have to justify my country in the midst of our worst impulses.

I think some element of the "I voted for this, bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran," energy is a kind of reaction formation to feeling like the country as an entity is being criticized from the outside based on actions that almost everyone in the country is either opposed to or bewildered by. Everyone I've talked to on the ground is completely confused by what's going on, no one is going John McCain "Iran deserves it."

Americans have a lot of that -- feeling like we're powerful enough that the world inevitably views us as wildly suspicious, yet without much international glory and prestige to show for it. We theoretically have the power to level cities, yet our government could not protect us from a Saudi rich boy living in an Afghan cave flying fully-fueled jetliners into skyscrapers, and the headquarters of our military. Inevitably some level of response is "maybe we gonna level they god-damn cities."

I think the American psychology is a sense of being burdened with the criticism, responsibility, and threat that being a great power inevitably generates, but without any of the respect, from within or without, that such power might engender. Some element of our worst impulses, and even the Trumpian "America First" political movement, is about examining the Machiavellian dilemma, observing that with the US's power it is unlikely to ever be loved, and therefore choosing whatever means might make us feared.

Unfortunately, war is always a complete shitshow. But especially so when identity, fear, pride, ego, and power get involved. In other words, always.

I appreciate the sentiment of this comment. We can direct all Iran war discourse directly at phailyoor.

I get the irony of me posting a discourse on the war to someone who was upset about the discourse about the war, but my point was that I actually agree with phailyoor that the thread is a shitshow and I wanted to provide a meta-discussion on what exactly made it so frustrating to read. If phailyoor is unhappy with this I'm happy to re-post it somewhere else.

Edit: I notice that phailyoor got angrier after posting his comment and is now banned. I'm sorry if my comment did something to contribute to the frustration, my goal was to commiserate and not to add to the fire. I found the Iran thread frustrating as well, and hard to read.

We very rarely need "containment threads." We're not that large and there isn't that much activity.

If you don't like it, don't read it.

Can you not minimize the thread instead? Splitting the small userbase is bad for discourse.

I feel like that's what the transnational Thursday thread should be for.

The transnational thursday thread is pointless. There is essentially a separation between ‘issue’ discussion and ‘community’ discussion on the board. Issue discussion (encompassing news, politics, diplomacy, the economy, culture as it relates to the above obviously) goes on the culture war thread, community (encompassing casual social discussion, media recommendation, slice of life updates, advice, humor) goes into the various other threads.

There is only one overlap thread (Sunday) which kind of works since it’s the last thread of the week and the CW thread is quieter. Other threads are the occasional essay and links to blogs.

I am registering my support for a schizo Saturday thread. Put conspiracy theories, manifestard ramblings, fringe science ideas etc in the second to last thread of the week. It'll be dead Monday or Tuesday, contain all that shit to one place.

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