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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

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DEAR FELLOW MEN: You’re making us all look like emotionally-stunted meatheads over this Lindsay Clancy thing

Tracey's takes are always interesting to me, and I enjoy his writing because I often find myself on either side of his opinions on a case by case basis. This time, I'm somewhat against him.

I don't doubt that plenty of men have had less than respectable takes on this case, but the far-and-away more interesting story surrounding this case is the social media response from women at large.

Tracey seems particularly focused on the first-degree conviction that the state is trying to prove, but that's not so interesting to me. Whether she spends 50 years behind bars or 50 years in a mental institute doesn't make a difference to me, really.

I guess my contribution to this is just the observation that what you think is worth talking about and what you think can be ignored is the essence of culture war. Or, put more simply, the culture war is the debate over our unstated and unexamined assumptions about right and wrong, and its hard for us to even realize this is what we're doing in the moment because we're blinded by the emotional flares of the object-level debate.

Doesn't this entire controversy seem to be rapidly developing into a perfect example of the Shiri Scissor / Scissor statement?

I think it's better characterized as an extension of the increasing trend towards people feeling very comfortable having opinions (especially those that are political adjacent) without any expertise or full context and the related resistance to updating views on getting new information (especially from experts), as well as just lack of critical analysis (especially from social media).

Most of the takes I've seen that engage with the facts are missing pretty big pieces of legal or medical context leading to incorrect or incomplete conclusions - and unlike with "real" scissors people who want to hear more about the circumstances update pretty strongly.

I've also seen takes that totally don't engage with the facts at all, like female doctors going "IDK the husband seems sus" and just refusing to actually look at information about the case, just sucking up whatever pops on TikTok.

It's pure brain rot.