site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What this means in practice is unclear, because no previous President has rented space in a foreign prison to house people detained under US law. If the President tried to do this type of deal to house US citizen criminals in a foreign prison without explicit permission from Congress, I would expect him to lose 9-0 at SCOTUS.

There is a bare distinction between simply leasing the land on which you build a prison, and just leasing prison space or paying for detention directly.

The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, is, of course, built on land leased from the Cuban Government.

The government is explicitly not claiming this - that is why they are using the Alien Enemies Act (which doesn't require probably cause of a crime). The affidavit linked by @Quantumfreakonomics says that the government has probably cause that the detainees are "members" of TdA, but that isn't in itself a crime. The affidavit conspicuously fails to allege that all the detainees provided material support to TdA (which would be a crime because TdA is a designated foreign terrorist organisation), only that some of them did.

If there's no probable cause then holding them AT ALL is the violation of their rights, regardless of where they're held.

So I'm doubtful that there's a complete lack of probable cause, because there's a 90% chance some Judge has already made a ruling that there was.

Detention without due process based on the use of emergency war powers during peacetime is a break glass moment if you care about the rule of law.

We haven't been at 'peacetime' for over twenty years. That's what the AUMF that allows continued detention of prisoners in Gitmo says.

The only distinction is that this particular act, which has existed for centuries and has been used on various occasions, and may allow the President to unilaterally remove foreign nationals effectively as he sees fit sans an act of Congress.

I say this as someone who vociferously despises the Patriot Act (I voted for Obama in '08 and explicitly dropped support for him for Renewing said Act), its still likely to pass Constitutional muster under the line of precedent that currently exists and the current makeup of the Supreme Court.

THE GLASS HAS ALREADY BEEN BROKEN AND EVERYONE ELSE IS JUST LATE TO THE PARTY.

Here I go feeling smug again. I keep saying 'maybe reign in these powers that are clearly prone to abuse and set bad precedent, because someone you don't like might use them." Free Speech is important. Due process is important. Gun rights are important. the Right to Privacy is important. But for the last 4 administrations everybody has looked the other way in most cases when it came time to defend them.

And here we are.

Here I go feeling smug again.

Out of curiosity, what was the content of the comment you were replying to? It's been deleted.

The post as I recall it was that Trump and Co. taking steps to punish universities for allowing anti-israel/pro-palestine protestors to occupy buildings and harass students, and the deportation of the one guy who was here on a green card.

It had a lot of other details in there but the gist was trying to make it seem like some massive assault on first amendment rights was occurring.