site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28907 thread views

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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Oil tankers are now filling up at American ports because we have oil and the rest of the world does not. America controls a near-majority of the world’s oil supply and has a surplus even if prices go up. We destroyed Iran’s military and are dictating terms. I guess America is losing because Europeans are mad it’s not going faster?

There's a big shift in how the American empire now functions. It used to be the source of stability, projecting Pax America over its sphere of influence. Even Iraq, not exactly a success story in nation building, was viewed more like a "good idea, terrible execution" mistake.

The new American empire is the source of instability. It's telling other countries, "You have to work with us, because only we can afford to fuck up the rest of the world and weather the fallout".

Take Qatar, for example. Did everything the US wanted, played its role of a small friendly petrostate heavily investing into soft power perfectly. What did it get for this? Iran destroying its economy and Trump telling it to suck it up. The only reason Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani hasn't publicly thrown in his hat with Xi after this is because there's a non-zero risk Trump might bomb Qatar after reading about it on X.

Everyone is going to start hedging their bets now instead of viewing being friends of the US as the safe default.

The only reason Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani hasn't publicly thrown in his hat with Xi after this is because there's a non-zero risk Trump might bomb Qatar after reading about it on X.

Are you referring to something specific or did you just make that up? Because publicly the Qataris are talking about how this is ruining their impression of Iran, not America. And privately nobody is contemplating anything close to America bombing Qatar. You think Trump just wakes up on Twitter and decides who to bomb? You aren’t being dramatic? Trump is on Twitter so you can hear his message, not the other way around. If you think differently maybe you also think the hooker has never seen one so big before?

The logic of the whole war is Trump stitched together a new Middle East coalition of Israel, Saudi, Qatar, UAE, and Bahrain. This entails all working more closely with America which is how Trump got the buy-in to start the war in the first place. Did someone tell them that America is a partner of instability and everyone is moving out of America’s orbit? They didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

So far none of these "coalition members" have been rah-rah about the war. What exactly are the Gulf states getting out of it? Two months ago, they were pumping oil and shipping it to their customers with no problems at all. Today, they have to join this coalition of yours, spend their oil revenues on air defense, on navies, on a land invasion of Iran just to go back to what is basically status quo ante bellum: pumping oil and shipping it to their customers with no problems at all.

The Sunni states hate Iran and have been informally allied against it for a generation. They are not amused that Iran is bombing them and they want to see Iran put down.

https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/world-news/israel-iran-war-uae-joins-bahrain-in-urging-unsc-action-on-strait-of-hormuz/articleshow/130050237.cms

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-891956

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8lzn2ejpjo

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/uae-minister-coexistence-with-iran-impossible-right-now-addressing-threat-essential-for-peace/

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/us/politics/saudi-prince-iran-trump.html

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/kuwaits-top-diplomat-blasts-irans-destabilization-of-the-region/

Stories like this are extremely common. The Gulf States do not want to be constrained by a rogue nation willing to blow up their international trade routes. They do not want Iran to toll the strait. They are happy to use America’s military to achieve their objectives. If your model here is that Saudi et al. were happy with Iran until America blew it all up, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. If you think Saudi et al. view this like European countries seething about everything Donald Trump does, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.

I didn't say they were happy with Iran, I said they were happy with the status quo, that is, Iran shouting "Death to America" and funding proxies in various shitholes away from the Gulf. Iran didn't blow up their international trade routes or try to toll the strait, because it had a reasonable expectation that it would get attacked by literally every major country if it tried this without a provocation. But now the window of acceptable fuckery from Iran has been widened thanks to the US and Israel launching a decapitation strike.

The major evidence suggests the exact opposite of what you're saying here. The Gulf Powers were not happy with the status quo (they've all wanted Iran cut down to size for generations, are you really disputing this? Why are all the Gulf States condemning Iran in public if they're actually debating how to create a new order without America?).

But now the window of acceptable fuckery from Iran has been widened thanks to the US and Israel launching a decapitation strike.

I don't even know what this could possibly mean. "The window of acceptable fuckery"? We blew up Iran's military and are now going to blockade them. The material with which Iran would actually block or toll the strait is shrinking by the day. Saudi Arabia is increasing the flow of oil through pipes that go around the Gulf and is interested in building more. Bahrain and Kuwait and UAE want Iran bombed back to the stone age so that Iran can never bomb then again. "The window of acceptable fuckery?" The status quo was that Iran had an ambiguous threat to target the straits, the new status quo now that they've used it is that their power to constrain the other Gulf States is being systematically destroyed.

US economy and stock market will be and are worse from the war. For the US, our own fossil fuel production and exports cushion the blow, but it is unambiguously an overall negative.

I disagree, that this is "unambiguously an overall negative"

There are geo-political considerations that go beyond just "make number go up"

That's AI slop.

As a rabid AI slop hater and slop hunter, I don't see anything too suspicious in this video when I look at the transcript. Additionally, gpt zero also scores it as a human.

The publication appears to be a real television station on the air in the UK, which is weak evidence against ai slop.

Are there any tells or other signs of AI that I missed?

It was originally a link to an AI slop tweet that included the video.

Hm, then shame on charlie for changing his post silently when called out on it, rather than acknowledging it.

Would be nice if this site had an edit history viewer.

Did you watch the video?

The US is a major oil importer and the US exports oil because it imports oil, refines it and sells the refined oil. The US isn't energy independent because the US doesn't produce enough diesel. The US has more light oil that it consumes but not enough of other grades.

The US isn't dictating terms. The US is desperate to open the straight and has abandoned all its original goals and adopted Iran's demands as a basis for negotiating.

The US is desperate to open the straight and has abandoned all its original goals and adopted Iran's demands as a basis for negotiating.

Honestly I think if Iran played their cards right, thus might have happened. If iran opened the strait last week, then hung the threat of no deal = strait closes again over the negotiators heads.

But Iran insisted on playing stupid games and now it's unclear if Iran is willing to open the strait irregardless of what the US offers. Iran's semi-official media seems to imply that tolling the strait is a red line for Iran - which if true means no deal, even if the US was willing to give up literally everything else for the strait.

I think this is totally out to lunch and if you were right the US would have accepted Iran’s terms already

Iran's terms mean nuclear war in the Middle East probably within a decade. The US can't accept Iran's terms, neither can the force Iran to accept theirs. So the strait remains closed (soon by us too) until enough other nations decide to force our hand or Iran figures out how to make a bomb during the war.

If one saw the kinds of things that Indians and Pakistanis regularly say about each other, one could expect there to have been a nuclear war between the two countries by now. Yet there has not been one, even though both have been nuclear-armed since 1998 and they actually fought a conventional war recently.

Iran can’t make nukes because we can bomb their facilities faster than they can build them. Their options are to surrender now for good terms or later for worse ones

That only works until the build one we don't know about or that we can't bomb.

And that's why taking out their powerplants is an option that is on the table. As I keep saying, you can't run a uranium enrichment facility on portable generators and rooftop solar.

It's true that the US is a net importer of crude. In fact, the US tends to export light sweet crude and import heavy sour, because we have a lot of refining capacity for the heavy stuff that many other refiners don't have. But that crude is mostly coming from Canada, Mexico and South America, not the ME. And in January a bunch of Mexican heavy crude refining capacity came on line, leaving US refiners with a problem, at least until Venezuela happened. I rather suspect Trump knew all about that too.

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