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It turns out Greenland/Denmark and Canada aren't the only friendly countries that the US has been threatening, the Vatican's ambassador to the US (according to The Free Press and Letters from Leo a Catholic focused blog) was given both explicit and coded threats of military force against the Holy See.
JD Vance, a Catholic himself, has done a pretty rare thing for the Trump admin and said they're gonna get to the bottom of it first, instead of immediately dismissing it as fake news.. This doesn't confirm it as real, but that it wasn't immediately denied and dismissed like the typical M.O. is quite interesting.
This could help explain why Pope Leo has felt so emboldened to speak up against Trump's war efforts in Iran, cause the administration officials have been warmongering against them behind the scenes. The chance that the admin actually pulls the trigger and attacks the Vatican is obviously low, but that they keep threatening many of our allies both publically and privately seems quite concerning to me. It also opens up a new thing to consider, how many other allies are they threatening behind closed doors too?
I see a lot of people in the conservative press attacking Pope Leo and Archbishop Coakley for their statements against the Iran war, but I've seen very few examine the elements of Just War teachings within Catholic doctrine, because the Iran War will be found wanting if you examine them in terms of what has been publicly expressed.
Just War is so interesting, because we have the historical record where it is interpreted as, "My clerics say the throne is rightfully mine by both our laws, therefore I will wage war to press my claim," as just, but now we quibble about, "Sure they are destroying the weapons and weapon factories of a regime that is hellbent on killing us/our allies and executing their own citizens, but do we understand and believe our leaders' justification for doing so?"
New Polity did a podcast on the Iranian war and although they were very harsh on the war I came away believing that the war was not only just but that not prosecuting it would have been a wrong. Because they were just ignorant on the basic details of the whole matter, and when you substitute in the facts the argument goes the other way.
That’s always how it’s been throughout history though. And this is no different. “Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robberies?” Every claim is given at least a thin veil of justification and some justification may indeed really be present but power has always been a first principle, first and foremost. No country on Earth is going to cede territory to someone else out of superior moral arguments or by divine edict.
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Sure, we launched a coup to secure the interests of a British oil company to syphon more profits from Iran. Since paying the Iranians the agreed upon 16% of profits was apparently too much for said company despite sizeable profits over 40 years.
We then overthrew the elected government, after Iran (who were otherwise at risk of losing the country to communists) voted to nationalize their oil in protest, and we install a monarch puppet that repressed any political organizing on the ground so the only non government organized forces were devout Islamists. And when the Islamists launched a revolt and take American hostages, demanding the US hand over the former dictator we are harboring in exchange, we refuse and instead finance a direct invasion into Iran via Iraq that kills ~250 thousand Iranians over 8 years.
Our greatest ally happens to be embroiled in a conflict in Lebanon around that time so to show support we deploy Marines to Beirut, where they are then bombed by a paramilitary group Iran started funding after we financed the invasion of their country. Which puts the newly Iranian funded proxy groups on our radar as an existential threat to America, despite them being the direct consequence of an unfair intervention solely intended to rob a people of their national resources.
Somehow this all boils down to Iran being a lunatic rogue state that is hellbent on killing Americans, despite their national leader in public and formal capacity stating the exact opposite.
Well yeah. The IRGC literally talks like Saturday Morning Cartoon Villains out of GI Joe. They are behind October 7th, the Houthi's, Hezbollah, etc. They are a major source of instability and terrorism in the region (not the sole source, but one of the two big ones.)
A year ago 85% of Iranians did not support the IRGC and that was before the Basaji killed 45,000 protestors. Presumably the number is higher now. You are conflating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with the people of Iran, who largely want their 2,500-year-old monarchy back and permission to do TikTok dances without getting raped then executed.
What are the priorities of the "Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp?" You might be able to guess it, given that the I doesn't stand for Iran but for Islam. The Iranian people, the country of Iran, is not their priority. Instead, they see it as their primary purpose, "to prepare the world for the emergence of Imam of the Age.” Mahdism is their stated purpose, and Mahdism requires that they destroy the US and Israel to bring about the return of Mahdi.
If you doubt me, why do you think the Iranian internet has been mostly shut off except for members of the regime for the duration of the protests and war? The people of Iran do not support the IRGC, the IRGC does not exist for the benefit of the people of Iran.
Iran even before the war was on the verge of collapse. Even before the war, Iran was looking to relocate the capital because they mismanaged their water supply so badly. "Iran is looking to relocate the nation’s capital because of severe water shortages that make Tehran unsustainable. Experts say the crisis was caused by years of ill-conceived dam projects and overpumping that destroyed a centuries-old system for tapping underground reserves."
Droughts lead to food shortages, food shortages lead to famine, famine leads to millions of dead people. Yes, even in the 21st century.
As far as the actions the US took during the Cold War, people forget that the Soviet Union and Communism were legitimately bad and that communists were and still are existential threats. Sure, if you take all the actions the US did during the Cold War out of context of the Cold War, remove the enemy from the descriptions of events, they sound bad. You can do that for any conflict. "Did you know in the 1940s, the US and Britain invaded Normandy Beach in France and killed 10,000 people. Can you believe it? What did Vichy France do to the US to justify that treatment?"
Meanwhile, the IRGC has enough enriched uranium to make several nukes and had delivery systems that could reach Eastern Europe (as shown by that they were able to target Diego Garcia recently.) They were working rapidly on stockpiling conventional weapons to overwhelm Israel and hold them hostage the same way North Korea is able to hold Seoul hostage. Once that was complete, they could complete their nukes in peace, just like North Korea. They aren't doing this for the love of science! There's only one reason to have these expensive and risky programs and to keep increasing the range.
Yeah because GI Joe cartoon villains are imitating the Iranian leaders of the 70s.
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If catastrophizing otherization and conspiracy theories are enough to invade a nation, we can just call it a day.
The US and Israel also talk like cartoon villains. They also kill civilians en masse along with rape, torture and executions of prisoners. They also fund terrorists. If that wasn't enough, have some theological doomsday prophesy mixed in with your US military.
I don't doubt that the IRGC stands for its own interest and keeping itself in power over the interest of the Iranian people. But that goes double for the US and Israel. Considering the fates of Syria, Libya and Iraq, no one should have any faith that an intervention by the US and Israel would have a more positive result for the Iranian people than what they are suffering now. And no one believes the Iranian people have a favorable view of the US or Israeli governments or want to be ruled by them either.
If we cared about the Iranian people, and I do, we would stop playing these games against their government, open trade, and slowly worm ourselves into their society through the soft power of prosperity.
What's left of your post is rather annoying. It makes me feel you did not read what I wrote. As an example, I mention implicitly that communism was a threat to Iran. However you write as if I didn't:
Iran had a secular nationalist in charge. The US labeled him a communist to justify the intervention but he never was and the factual basis for doing so at the time was shaky at best.
You also claim I am taking things out of context, but instead of showing where, what context I removed and how it is relevant, you make a conceptual argument for what taking things out of context looks like. What is the point of this?
Finally, for the nukes and why Iran should not have them, you don't explain why. You just float an ominous conspiracy theories in a way that reads rather mad.
Is Iran intending on nuking eastern Europe?
Again, this reads like a conspiracy theory fever dream. Israel has the largest military in the world backing it... Like... How would this even work?
To have a nuclear deterrent so the US and Israel stop bombing them? Or are they planning to nuke the entire world?
We tried that with the Red Chinese. How well has that worked out?
It worked out great, for everyone involved. Billions would be substantially poorer all around the world if not for the Chinese reaching their current position. You could not have delivered that, you profited along the way. Is ruling the planet uncontested, no matter how much of a heap of crap you make it into, really the measure of success.
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You can argue that it worked for Vietnam, although that's because Vietnam is right next to China and they need to be friendly with someone who can oppose China, and the Russians aren't available any more.
It worked for China to the extent that China got a lot more capitalist and doesn't ideologically oppose the US, but of course ideology isn't all there is.
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When is the last time the United States of America shot over ten thousand of its own unarmed citizens for protesting? When is the last time the United States of America had as part of it's legal code a requirement to rape female prisoners before execution to prevent them from having a good afterlife? In what jurisdiction can you receive torture as a sentence in the United States of America?
Execution is fine and just but only for murder and only after a fair trial.
No, that is to demonstrate how far their current delivery systems have been proven to reach, since most people don't know how far Diego Garcia is from Iran. They have been working on delivery systems to reach the US. That is the direction they are heading.
And yeah, I feel comfortable saying I want the US to be able to attack wherever it needs to, and I do not want Iran to attack me. This is only hypocrisy if you view the US government and the IRGC on equal moral footing. You seem to. I don't.
It's not a conspiracy theory that Iran has nuclear material and is working towards making nukes. This is something everyone has known and the framework everyone has been operating under for the past 20+ years.
America doesn't kill its own citizens directly. They kill other countries citizens and in far greater number than Iran. There's also plenty of death by American government inaction, such as with drug overdoses, and plenty of rapes in American prisons. And people can be freely tortured if the CIA wants to torture them.
If Iran wanted an ICBM they could presumably just make one, or buy one from the N-Koreans. The notion that there is an ongoing race against time to get to Iran before they incrementally develop a missile that can reach further and further feels like childish propaganda.
What does this even mean? Nothing of what we were talking about relates to whether or not America should be able to attack where it needs to and no, I don't want Iran to attack you either.
I never claimed that the IRGC were good for Iran. The point was very simple: Considering the fates of Syria, Libya and Iraq, no one should have any faith that an intervention by the US and Israel would have a more positive result for the Iranian people than what they are suffering now. There is no need to attack Iran, there is no 'greater good' that can come of it and the US has no definitive moral high ground or mandate to necessitate their decision to attack Iran.
You are comparing the IRGC to some American ideal like Massachusetts. In which case, I agree, USA all the way! But I'm comparing the IRGC to war torn years long military occupied Iran. Which is better for the Iranian people? Which is better for the world?
This is just not what was going on in the comment you wrote or the comment I replied with. You said Iran was stockpiling conventional weapons to take Israel hostage to buy time for themselves to make a nuclear weapon. Again, what is this? Why do you write this?
I noted that it would make sense for Iran to want nuclear weapons as a deterrent. What gain Iran would have from instigating a nuclear war against the holder of the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world remains to be explained.
You may not like the US, but I would rather be arrested in the US for suspicion of killing my father than arrested in Iran for suspicion of not wearing a head covering.
I would rather be an enemy of the US than an ally of Iran. Iran has responded to attacks by bombing civilian infrastructure of previously friendly countries. Meanwhile, the US is very precisely (as far as these things go) targeting enemy combatants and the infrastructure of war.
There is a huge moral difference between the two regimes which cannot be conflated and it really does color the rest of the analysis.
I mean yes, it is clearly a purpose of Iran to stockpile conventional weapons until the point where attacking them would be too costly to consider. You do not dispute that their long term goal is to make a nuclear weapon.
You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to just think, if the first objective was achieved, how would it impact the second? It's not a conspiracy, even if absolutely no one in the regime was thinking on these terms it would still be true. If Iran had enough weapons they could hold the whole Middle East hostage and we would have no ability to intervene in their Nuclear ambitions.
And they are willing to do so as we can see with their present actions. It seems that the only fallacious thinking on my part is that they would be content to hold Israel hostage, when clearly they would also turn on the Gulf Coast as well.
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What they would gain, and what they think they would gain, are two different things.
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I’m skeptical that anyone could beat the Trump and Netanyahu administrations at sounding like cartoon villains. The IDF named its last-minute bombing campaign in Beirut “Operation Eternal Darkness”. Feel free to drop some quotes to prove me wrong though.
85% of Americans do not approve of congress. This in no way implies that Americans would rather be ruled by an executive council appointed by Xi Jinping.
If the poll was before the regime killed thousands of protesters, it was also before the IRGC successfully repelled a US/Israeli military operation aimed at subjugating the country. A big mistake the US made in Vietnam was assuming that people joined the Vietcong because they were communists. In reality people joined the Vietcong because they were fighting for Vietnamese independence.
This is a fringe view. The majority position is that Imam Mahdi will reappear first, and then he will lead the forces of Islam to liberate Palestine and defeat the West.
Unfortunately the fringe happens to be in charge of a country.
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And note that this is a general point about escheatology. Treating end-times prophecies as warnings about events that will happen in the future by manifest divine intervention (with no-one to know the day or the hour) is effectively harmless.
The dominant interpretation of Christian escheatology in Catholicism and mainline Protestantism is preterist - i.e. that most of the apocalyptic prophecies in Revelation etc. were already symbolically fulfilled by the destruction of the Temple after the 66-73 Jewish-Roman war and the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine after the 132-135 Bar Khoba Rebellion, but it isn't dogma. Treating it as a symbolic roadmap for contemporary geopolitics is something that only happens in American evangelicalism, and even then it is a minority view. (The most popular escheatology in American evangelicalism is the Rapturism of the Left Behind novels, which are mainstream in the limited sense that they treat Revelation as a warning and not an instruction manual, and they predict that the prophecies will be fulfilled by manifest divine intervention and not human action)
Similarly, in Judaism the Third Temple movement (which seeks to actually act out parts of the Messiah prophecy) is fringe even within religious Zionism.
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To be fair, Iran is just one of the first countries to get hit by this. There’s a pretty good chance that you will see similar hydrological collapses in multiple other middle eastern countries, India/Pakistan, Western China, and the American Southwest.
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So what? Iranians are rational, more rational than the US or Israel. Don't launch or abet wars of aggression (extermination?) against Iranians, and you're good. Their handling of this war makes this rather clear; they are disciplined and acting very decently, despite being under existential threat. I'd trust IRGC with nukes, no problem.
Such a twisted mindset, "held hostage" when they can reach you or yours, but perfectly fine if you can reach them (and use that ability at will). It is in Iranian interest to have nuclear missiles aimed at Israeli and American cities, and in my interest as an Eastern European too, since I like my oil imports cheap.
Which is why Iran armed and trained Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel. Israel, which was on Iran's side during the Iraq-Iran war.
Or, to resist / defend against Israeli aggression. I still don't expect Iranians to be aggressive towards Europeans unless we start it, and I'm not afraid of them having nukes that can reach me. I'm mildly afraid of them not having nukes that can reach you.
I don't know anything about the period. So Israelis helped Iranians against Iraq, ok. That by itself does not imply anything beyond a transient common interest no longer relevant.
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