site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5180 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 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.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Iran has allegedly mined the strait of Hormuz

Washington — Amid Trump administration demands for Tehran to keep the free flow of commerce in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. officials have told CBS News that there are at least a dozen underwater mines through the vital passageway, according to current American intelligence assessments.

U.S. officials, who have seen current American intelligence assessments and spoke to CBS News under condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters, said the mines currently employed by Iran in the strait are the Iranian-manufactured Maham 3 and Maham 7 Limpet Mine.

I've seen a lot of discussion online about whether or not Iran would mine the strait, and it looks like it's happening.

I'm curious as to what is driving this. My understanding is that the Iranian military is structured so that military units can operate with a lot of autonomy if the chain of command breaks down. Is this a small, but official action, or is it the action of units who are operating with what they have in the absence of official orders?

What are the global economic impacts of mining the strait? I tangentially work in insurance, and talking to the Actual Insurance Guys, it seems like this is probably just as bad as regular missile attacks, if not worse. Do commercial ships have any way to protect themselves against mines, other than "don't be where the mines are"?

I've also been seeing vague rumblings in the news that non-Israeli Mideast nations may materially contribute to the conflict. Does this move the needle?

It seems to me that this represents a pretty significant escalation. While sea mines are not land mines, they are both indiscriminate area denial weapons that have significant risks of civilian casualties that can last long after the end of the conflict that caused their emplacement. They're hard to find and create significant anxiety for anyone who has to traverse the area.

Is this a good strategic move by Iran? I'm not an expert on global geopolitics, but my gut tells me it harms them more than helps them. Fighting a defensive war against the Great Satan put the Iranian government in a very sympathetic position with their neighbors, but shutting down one of the most important economic transit corridors in the world with weapons that most governments find distasteful at best seems like a signal to the region that Iran will drag everyone into the flames along with them. Theoretically, this might pressure those countries to abandon the US, but that's a high stakes choice.

Of all the stupid things Iran has done, this is perhaps the stupidest.

I've heard of no end of third worldists talking out of their asses, gloating about a petroyuan and the imminent fall of American hegemony. To those people, I say: how the hell can a sea mine collect a toll? At least drones and ballistic missiles can be aimed. How does this help the Iranians, who themselves use the strait to commerce their own oil? Any hope of Chinese or European arbitration in the dispute is gone now.

Was there ever a hope of arbitration? I figured China was laughing all the way to the bank.

I’ve heard no third-worldists gloating, for what it’s worth. Maybe that makes me lucky or oblivious. Most of the critics I’ve seen are in the doomsaying mode.

Stupid with respect to what? Of all the criticisms against American hegemony I've seen (and I'm not a big fan of it either), I've 'never' heard the statement you just made from "people talking out of their asses." At any rate, it wasn't Iran that was calling for a ceasefire most recently, it was the US. The media blackout in both countries is in effective and all sides are claiming everything is going well. But from the glimpses of Ritter, Mearsheminer, Wilkerson, Baud, Marandi, MacGregor, Diesen, etc. (people with fairly close connections to things on the ground) it's Israel who's the one really getting it's ass kicked and the US making itself out to be more the fool.

Nothing will create a global multilateral coalition faster than Iran indiscriminately making the strait of Hormuz impassible. You might as well declare war on the entirety of the modern economy. No, the world won't go along with a global depression just to spite the Americans and Israelis. Not even China. Not even Russia. Iran is diplomatically isolated in formal and informal terms and no one is joining them in their last, suicidal gambit. And if all of those intellectuals you've linked don't recognize the fact they're stupid - and wrong.

The only problem with this logic is that Iran didn’t close the Strait arbitrarily on a whim. There are two primary culprits driving this policy. And ironically, China and Russia can’t afford to let Iran fall because of their own entangled geostrategic interests, in particular with China. International conditions that have shaped up thus far don’t seem to me at all to support the direction your comment makes. People seem to be eyeing other actors as the ones responsible.

I know that the UN is something of a meme in terms of policy, but as signaling in international relations you can't get much higher then that. Take a look for yourself.

https://press.un.org/en/2026/sc16315.doc.htm

I'm not convinced that China or Russia are invested in Iran at all, if they won't even veto on a meaningless condemnation from the GCC toward Iran. Outside of the usual poke-in-the-eye espionage games against America, have Russia or China committed to any military or civilian aid to the Islamic Republic? What are these 'international conditions' you're vaguely posting about?

Who is Iran's great power backer?

Russia had supposedly been shipping (Iranian-design) drones to Iran, at least before Israel sank their Caspian Sea fleet.

You’re definitely right that I don’t take the UN seriously as a policy conductor, so I’m not going to put much weight behind that. They’re about as credible as the ICC’s arrest warrants.

I don’t think that Russia will sacrifice their aims in Ukraine to help Iran, nor do I think China will sacrifice its designs on Taiwan for Iran, but the commitments are real and they are there. Especially when you consider the energy relationship between Iran and China. Maybe Russia can supply some of that gap, but nobody really knows.

What makes you think Iran needs some major power backer at present? They’re doing quite well in this conflict on their own as I already pointed out. The real question is what cards does the US have to play that’ll turn the tide in their favor? It’s not like they abide by the UN charter at all. When you’re the world’s only superpower, you don’t have to because hypocrisy runs the show.

Nothing will create a global multilateral coalition faster than Iran indiscriminately making the strait of Hormuz impassible.

You would think. But they did, and the global response was "fuck you, US, for doing this". Then Europe backed off a little and sent a strongly worded statement asking the strait to be reopened and nothing more.

I doubt anyone seriously expected the Europeans to do anything. But indifference from the international community to the Iranian war is good enough. If China and Russian can't even be bothered to veto the Security Council resolution against them, the Europeans tut-tut, and the GCC is on side - it's just letting the Israelis and Americans do the dirty work.

If the GCC acted at all like the Europeans, the Iranian strategy of "if we're attacked, we'll shoot at anyone we can reach" probably would have worked a lot better. The Gulf states would be expelling us, embargoing oil, cozying up to Iran, etc.

Russia of course is happy because less oil through the strait = more oil sales for them.

You would think. But they did, and the global response was "fuck you, US, for doing this"

Why would you think that, and why should the global response be anything else? I get the "American hyper-agency syndrome" argument when it comes to the war in Ukraine, but it wears a little thin when we're talking about easily predictable retaliation in a war you started.

I shoot at you. In retaliation, you throw a grenade into a crowd. I knew you had the grenade... who is responsible for the grenade damage?

In other words, yes, this is still American hyper-agency syndrome.

I shoot at you. In retaliation, you throw a grenade into a crowd. I knew you had the grenade... who is responsible for the grenade damage?

If you shoot at me from far outside my reach, and the only people I can reach to hit back are some of your friends who happen to be very economically important to you, then yeah, you're the one responsible for your friends getting hit. Your crying about them being attacked is roughly equivalent to hypothetical Iranian crying that you parked your forces out of range, or are using stealth tech.

I've heard of no end of third worldists talking out of their asses, gloating about a petroyuan and the imminent fall of American hegemony

I've noticed that this is a pretty common sentiment among the college students near me. I don't get it. Do they genuinely think that a world where normalizing blockades of international shipping is one that they would actually want to live in? I like being able to afford food, and generally dislike freezing to death in the winter. What's driving the disconnect between them and me? It honestly feels like pure nihilism.

I really doubt that they think so, but I suppose I haven’t seen the sentiment firsthand.

I would posit that you could get the average college student to cheer for mass killings if President Trump spoke out against them. Countersignaling is cheap.

The sentiment is that the future is going to be, at best, pointless and at worst, bad anyway. So anything that causes an upheaval and bloodies the nose of the groups they dislike is good.

"If it bleeds it leads." William Randolph Hearst understood this.

They have the same attitude as Iran -- that America is the Great Satan and the source of all evil, and so anything that weakens it is good.

Everyone was cheering when Israel infiltrated a consumer electronics supply chain to plant hidden explosives inside batteries. That is actually pushing the boundaries of normalized warfare. Blockades when you are at war has long been normalized. The US has been blockading Venezuela and Cuba international shipping without any sort of war.

I like being able to afford food, and generally dislike freezing to death in the winter.

Me too, but rather than bemoan the predictable consequences of an aggressive war it's more productive to contend with the apparatus that brought the world to this state.

Everyone was cheering when Israel infiltrated a consumer electronics supply chain to plant hidden explosives inside batteries. That is actually pushing the boundaries of normalized warfare.

Did anyone not in Hezbollah get a pager with explosives in it?

If you define Hezbollah as, “the entire Shia population of Lebanon,” then probably not. If you define Hezbollah as, “people engaging in or directly supporting militant operations,” then yes, a whole lot of innocent people got exploding pagers.

I have no idea how this didn’t kill the export market for Israeli electronics. For all we know, Mossad has the capability to kill anyone anywhere in the world with an Israeli-made chip in their car at any time.

Mossad has deviously sabotaged Intel's 10nm and 7nm processes, forcing Windows laptop manufacturers to rely on Israeli-made chips - when overloaded with excess wattage - to reach temperatures high enough to detonate the lithium ion batteries within. That's why real warriors of the Ummah use AMD and ARM.

There were reports of collateral victims, yes but that hardly matters. Planting hidden explosives in the consumer supply chain is normalized terrorism, so I don't really want to see people act shocked that Iran is projecting power over its Strait, literally the most normal and predictable wartime maneuverer ever.

I don’t love the term “terrorism” here since the electronics were clearly aimed at military targets and not civilians. No one calls it terrorism when you bomb an army base but some collateral damage kills civilians too. Terrorism I think by definition is causing civilian harm to change politics.

No one calls it terrorism when you bomb an army base but some collateral damage kills civilians too.

American authorities have done this regularly since at least the 1983 Beirut bombing, through the attack on the Cole, and the Kabul bombing just a few years back. Maybe their definition is slightly more consistent if you expected uniforms while doing combat actions, but "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" isn't completely wrong either.

So if a mail bomb is sent to some IDF recruit by Hezbhollah to blow up inside his house then that's not terrorism because it's a military target?

It's not the target that is exceptional here, it's the clandestine appropriation of a consumer supply chain as a weapon. That is actually unprecedented, it's a method of warfare that fundamentally erodes global trust in economic trade and cooperation, it is far more unusual than a blockade of a Strait in the middle of an existential war. As to the semantics, feel free to not call it terrorism if it makes you feel better, even though you would call it that if/when bombs are set off inside the homes of Israeli or US troops.

Spitting in the food in the back kitchen isn't such an enormous taboo because of the direct consequences, but because none of us want to live in a world where that is remotely acceptable behavior, we want to trust our food has been handled properly and not question it when we sit down to eat. But people here defending the planting of hidden explosives in consumer goods can't seem to wrap their minds around those consequences. Why is Hezbollah such a dangerous enemy Israel has to normalize spitting in the food as a method of warfare?

Targeted killing of enemy combatants is not terrorism. Simple as.

The US has been blockading Venezuela and Cuba international shipping without any sort of war.

Are either of these strictly a "blockade"? The Cuba embargo is strictly rules on US businesses in (most, but not all) industries doing business with Cuba. Other countries' ships and planes can and do go in and out there. The closest to a blockade proper was the Cuban Missile Crisis, but that's quite a long time ago now.

There were some seized ships going to Venezuela recently, but those were nominally illegally-flagged vessels ("shadow fleet") in international waters. I don't think correctly-flagged vessels saw any disruption.

Blockades aren't unheard of in hot warfare, though.

Cuba is facing essentially a full-country blackout from three months of US oil blockades...

In early January, the US cut off Cuba’s main oil supplier, Venezuela, after capturing its president in a military raid and forcing its acting government to halt shipments.

Weeks later, Cuba lost oil supply from other providers, such as Mexico, after the US threatened them with additional tariffs, arguing that Havana posed an “extraordinary threat” by aligning itself with “hostile countries and malign actors, (and) hosting their military and intelligence capabilities,” a claim that Cuba rejected.

If by oil blockade you mean 'no longer receiving it for free from Venezuela', then I suppose there is a global oil blockade on everyone. Cuba is the world's worst sovereign in paying back its debts: even North Korea has to play nice with China and Russia on occasion. It's like a bankrupt whining about a 'loan blockade' after defaulting on credit cards several times.

Cuba could very easily buy oil from Venezuela or Mexico. They just choose not to, because their government wants to pocket the American dollars for themselves.

I'm sorry, can we just cut the bullshit? The US kidnaps the leader of Venezuela and then forbids them from shipping oil to Cuba. Then it strongarms Mexico into stopping oil shipments to Cuba. No matter how you try to rationalize this, it is certainly not more normal than Iran's restrictions on the Strait.

Iran is fighting an asymmetric war for its survival. The only two possibilities were ever immediate surrender or blockading the Strait. Most likely the Friday timing of the attack on Iran was intended to wrap up the war before the markets even opened by Monday in the best case scenario. But I find it hard to tolerate people complaining about Iran acting in a way that's unprecedented or unpredictable, when it's neither of those things. If Iran wants to survive, blockading the Strait and threatening regional infrastructure are things it must do. And no I do not like it, which is why I was strongly opposed to this war and want it to end.

All of this was extremely predictable. The question people should be asking is not why Iran is doing what it is doing, but why we were led here by our own leaders walking directly into extremely predictable consequences. There is no good answer for that.

It took me a moment to find the article, but the Americans have no formal oil embargo on Cuba from Venezuela.

It's not a rationalization: it's an objective fact, and you are the one who is full of shit. You're a third worldist who is upset that a communist nation is not getting free gibs. The fact the Cuban economy cannot afford oil imports at market rates is a result of their mismanagement, corruption, and incompetence. Mexico can quite easily sell to Venezuela at below-market rates. Why don't they?

Is because, I don't know, they want to make money, and not give away gibs?

More comments

Do they genuinely think that a world where normalizing blockades of international shipping is one that they would actually want to live in?

The answer to your question is No, because the answer to the first 4 words of your question is also No.

What's driving the disconnect between them and me?

An inability to actually model the world. They are so sheltered that they cannot conceive of a lack of material abundance being available. It's too abstract for them. The world is too complex for them.

how the hell can a sea mine collect a toll?

You mine the area except for a narrow safe passage that you can control with your military -- currently that means passing between Qeshm and Larak Island and then hugging the Iranian coast near Bandar Abbas. Anyone who doesn't pay the toll either hits a mine or gets boarded and/or blown up by your military.

This doesn't work so well for Iran if they lose control of the coastline and islands, however, which I suspect is going to happen in the next few weeks.

Note that the few ships traveling through the strait are currently using a small area near the Iranian coastline.

I have strong suspicions that the non Iranian ships doing so have made "donations" to appropriate Iranian parties for safe passage.

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