site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 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.

There are certainly complaints about Trump which boil down to him not behaving like someone of the upper middle or upper class.

If I express disgust at the way he decorates the White House with gold, that is a mere complaint about aesthetics.

If I complain that he is a narcissistic con man, you can certainly claim that I am mostly complaining about the fact that his cons are not targeted at my class.

Still, I think that Trump/MAGA is different in important ways from the traditional DC swamp. With previous administrations, the corruption was mostly in the zone of deniability. Hunter Biden being on some Ukrainian board of directors, senators earning lucrative consulting positions in the companies they were previously regulating, the usual. This was bad, but not maximally bad. Presumably, many corrupt deals did not take place not because the politician was honest nor because nobody wanted to bribe them, but simply because there was no good way to do the transaction while maintaining deniability. For example, a rich scammer currently under investigation by the DoJ did not have a good way to bribe GWB or Obama. Even if they were interested, unless he was a billionaire, it would simply not have been worth the political capital for them to meddle with some investigation.

With Donald Trump, there is no fig leaf of deniability. Nobody is under any illusion that he is honest any more than anyone is under any illusion that he is Christian. This means that he has a much easier time coordinating with people wanting to bribe him, to the point where other scammers can just buy his shitcoins to make their DoJ problems disappear.

Likewise, his attitude to truth. Politicians have always lied on occasion. I remember GWB and Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Still, typically politicians tried to avoid outright lies because their voters might vote for someone else if they feel fooled.

With Trump, the lies are priced in since his advent with birtherism. There is still some limited distrust, it seems unlikely that he would have claimed to have captured Maduro if he had not done so, but any lie which will still be believed by 10% of the electorate despite counter-evidence is still worthwhile for him to peddle.

More generally, politicians have to manage both perceptions and the real world. With MAGA, there is very little in the way of acknowledgement that there exists a real world at all, that we are not free to decide what is causing autism. If Trump tweets about the hundreds of wars he has ended and how he deserves the Nobel more than anyone, that feels to me like he is trying to convince the universe itself to start believing his story. Likewise him trying to win the Iran war just by claiming victor, and the universe and Iran somehow just not getting his memos.

With Donald Trump, there is no fig leaf of deniability.

The counterpoint to this is that there's no benefit to actually denying. If every single person who has any trust in left-leaning media is going to interpret ant vague, unsubstantiated accusation as a damning indictment, there's no reason to consider the optics. A large chunk of the country has utterly insane beliefs that the man commmitted 34 felonies by raping middle schoolers on Epstein Island.

Still, typically politicians tried to avoid outright lies because their voters might vote for someone else if they feel fooled.

Do they? "If you like you plan, you can keep your plan." Joe Biden ran because of the "fine people" hoax (see paragraph 1), and generally, his entire life and personal story was all just lies. Mamdami just made a post bragging thjat he'd fixed the NYC economy, when what actually happened is that he got a huge bailout from NY state and stopped paying into pensions.

Trump is playing the meta. Is it a build that feels gross and stupid? Yes. But it comes with psychological invincibility to being lied about, and that's basically a prerequisite for a Republican these days.

With MAGA, there is very little in the way of acknowledgement that there exists a real world at all, that we are not free to decide what is causing autism.

Once again, let me know when the other party can figure out what a woman is. Then we can move on to more advanced topics like "the difference between spending money and getting something for that money".