site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Since no matter what "peace deal" there is, you will say it's good, yes, you are just defining yourself to be correct no matter what.

This is cartoonish.

I’m making a prediction which you said I was too weasly to manage. Etc etc

Your "prediction" has no circumstances in which we could say it was wrong. I suppose if Iran literally conducts an atomic test, you might concede you were wrong about that (though I am not even confident of that: it seems you would spin it as "We did not allow them to do this until we did/until they snuck it past us, and obviously we will punish them for it and not let them actually use their nukes"). But otherwise, if we are in exactly the same place we are now a few years from now, you will say that's fine because we made our point and can always bomb them again. That, to me, is not a "victory." If you were actually willing to define victory and own that that's what you're saying-yes, we may be perpetually at war with Iran and we will have to keep doing this- then I would disagree with you that that is a favorable outcome but at least we'd have something to disagree about. Instead, you are just saying "We won, we will win, because winning is whatever Trump says it is."

The difference is my predictions have conditions under which I will have to say "I was wrong." I don't TDS out, however loosely you define TDS, and say "Everything Trump does is bad and nothing he accomplishes could possibly count as a victory." I am not saying "The US lost the war." I know some other people are saying we did, by virtue of not having accomplished our goals. I am also of the opinion that we have not accomplished our goals (though it's also not clear to me what our goals are), but there is a difference between "losing" and "failing to achieve victory." Militarily, we won. How many times do I have to no-duh that? But winning anything worth calling a victory requires more than just inflicting a higher body count. We could say we're going to put an end to lawlessness in Haiti and drop bombs on them and say we won. Yeah, and?

"What are we doing here and is it worth it?" is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask.