site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23843 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I actually agree that these measures are pretty draconian, but its hard to feel like "due process" is a major concern.

It'd be MUCH, MUCH easier to get Due Process if these folks, you know, followed the process and entered the country via the channels established to keep track of them and grant them status to be here.

"I intentionally skipped the procedural steps that would have established my right to stay in the country, but don't you DARE skip the procedural steps that would delay my inevitable removal from the country" is not a winning argument, I daresay.

There's a lot of people in between US Citizen and illegal immigrants, like green card holders, legal immigrants and temporary (legal) visitors. Tens of millions, in fact. Where do they stand on the "Due Process" scale? Because even if you are right and US Citizens do have legal recourse, the non-Citizens legal immigrants sure don't.

I think they're at least entitled to get a hearing as to whether they were legally entitled to be in the U.S., and to contest any grounds the U.S. used to remove them, on that basis.

I'm NOT certain if it then follows that they can demand that the U.S. return them back to U.S. soil.

What would probably result in that case is that they get released from El Salvadoran custody and then can buy a plane ticket back on their own dime. Not certain though. The whole idea is that Green card status is a privilege that is granted by the U.S. government and exists only so long as the government chooses. Its not a strict entitlement.

Wouldn't that solve the issue? They got their due process (albeit not on U.S. soil) and are not barred from re-entering the U.S. if they want, since they still have the green card.

Again admitting that its Draconian to sweep up nonviolent, legal 'guests' and 'visitors' alongside verifiable criminals.

BUT I WOULD ONCE AGAIN SUGGEST THAT SUCH PEOPLE CAN PETITION THEIR HOME COUNTRY FOR REDRESS.

BUT I WOULD ONCE AGAIN SUGGEST THAT SUCH PEOPLE CAN PETITION THEIR HOME COUNTRY FOR REDRESS.

Isn't this guy actually Salvadoran? His home country is the one holding him in prison, which might complicate efforts to ask for him back even if the administration wanted to. Unless it's something they explicitly negotiated, it seems a bit odd to argue for jurisdiction. "Please send us this guy of yours you have in prison, we don't think he did anything wrong" doesn't work for political prisoners internationally most of the time.

I mean if the US said "we are no longer going to pay you to keep this guy in prison" and El Salvador said "ok cool but we're still keeping him" then I think the admin's "we don't have jurisdiction" argument would hold together a bit better. They should try it.

Only tangentially related: I wonder if the US is paying any other countries to keep their own citizens imprisoned. I wouldn't be surprised if there is foreign aid for "criminal justice" tied to anti-terrorism laws, for example.

I can agree with most of this and I believe you are internally consistent. My worry is that there's a negative incentive here. There's nothing to disincentivize the government to do the wrong thing in your framework. I believe the US government should be compelled to reverse its actions if it accidentally removes someone who has the authorization to be in the country and ships them off to a foreign prison (regardless of whether the government can be compelled to do so in the current legal framework). Otherwise, the government is not disincentivized to commit more "oopsies" in the future, and it becomes much more likely to incorrectly ship people to foreign prisons, causing tremendous individual harm to people who may not deserve it.

My worry is that there's a negative incentive here. There's nothing to disincentivize the government to do the wrong thing in your framework

Perhaps.

But under the previous setup, there was nothing to disincentivize people from coming in illegally, since they knew that even if they got 'caught' it could take a long time for 'due process' to occur before they get removed.

I strongly believe that's the goal of the current actions the admin is taking. Make it clear that you can't just hop the border and expect to stay here for years while your case is held up endlessly in court. You have a real chance of getting removed, and a real chance of ending up in a foreign prison if you have a criminal record.

I DO NOT think that the Trump admin wants to deport thousands upon thousands of criminals and pay for them to stay in an El Salvadoran prison. There's no strong benefit to having to pay for their imprisonment indefinitely, vs. kicking them out and not have to worry about them returning.

Now, your concern becomes very valid if it comes to intentionally targeting noncitizens for removal as a means to, e.g. punish dissent or scare citizens into taking or refraining from taking some action.

But I don't think there's any way around the fact that a national government claims the inherent authority to decide which foreign parties are and are not allowed to be in the country. And thus you can't expect them to accept a regime where ANY attempt to remove noncitizens, regardless of justification, has to be held up by the courts before it is executed.

Like, we agree that if there were an active war popping off, the U.S. would be justified in kicking out any citizens of the enemy nation that were residing in its borders, yes?

Trump is in fact trying to make the argument that there's an 'invasion' occurring, and so you can see how this might slide the situation into a bit of a grey area.

I believe the US government should be compelled to reverse its actions if it accidentally removes someone who has the authorization to be in the country and ships them off to a foreign prison (regardless of whether the government can be compelled to do so in the current legal framework)

I think if this becomes enough of an issue then yeah, perhaps there should be some actions taken by the home countries of the person in question.

Like I can't believe nobody seems to think that the countries that these people are nominally citizens of aren't interested in freeing them from a foreign prison? Why is everyone expecting U.S. COURTS to intervene on behalf of foreign nationals???

I also think the economic incentives are such that if the U.S. accidentally removes people who are doing very productive work for the U.S., then various parties have reason to intervene and pay large sums of money to both retrieve them and lobby to prevent it from happening again.

I’m in agreement on the incentives both for the protests on college campuses (in which at least two students lost visas) and the mass deportations. The point is to let both the public and potential immigrants that the days of crossing into the USA and just staying forever and doing whatever you want are over.

I think long term we need some sort of expedited hearing system to prevent mistakes and allow people to question the deportation. But that can’t happen until the numbers are low enough that you can have reasonable processes. As it stands now, the legal immigranttion process is extremely difficult and takes almost a decade unless you qualify for H1B. The process for asylum is overwhelmed because everyone who gets caught knows they get to stay if they claim asylum, and they know it will take years and suspect that Congress will eventually pass another amnesty before the hearing ever happens.

Until you get this into a position where the numbers are less than what can be reasonable to have our system handle with some speed — maybe clearing the median case within 3-4 months instead of a decade — I just don’t think the logistics work.

I'm NOT certain if it then follows that they can demand that the U.S. return them back to U.S. soil.

Why not? If they were allowed to be in the US, and the US expels them erroneously, surely it's not fair to them to ask them to front the cost of the trip back, which they wouldn't have needed if not for the government screw-up.

Suppose I'm at a neighbor's house party. The guy gets drunk, mistakes me for a personal enemy of his who snuck in uninvited, punches my lights out, then drives me to the next town over and drops me off at a bus stop before I come to. Once he sobers up and realizes, I think he owes me more than an apology over the phone and invitation to come back over if I want. I think he definitely owes me bus fare at least, and probably some extra compensation for my trouble. I've got no absolute right to be at his house whenever I want, but that's not the point!

surely it's not fair to them to ask them to front the cost of the trip back, which they wouldn't have needed if not for the government screw-up.

I mean, if he can meet the standard for a false arrest case he might have a shot.

But I think the entire point of the case is hinging on whether there was or was not probable cause to detain him.

And its not inherently required to return him to U.S. soil to hold that hearing either.

Like, if you get arrested (they falsely thought that you were a vagrant for sleeping at a bus stop with alcohol on your breath) and taken to jail, then it turns out there was no basis to actually arrest you, you get released. But the cops aren't obligated to drive you home. They might do so by way of apology/to avoid bad press.

Fundamentally I think its FAIR to fly him home. In fact I'd say that's the best way to smooth over the situation to mitigate bad press. But that's only IF there's an actual finding that the detention was unjustified/unlawful and there is in fact no other legal reason to keep him out.

Goes to my other point that every Nation State claims the authority to exclude foreign nationals if the need arises.

Remember Trump's Travel Bans from his first term?

The Supreme Court upheld most of THOSE travel bans when the administration bothered to defend them. This should add on to the point about what 'due process' foreign nationals are entitled to.

In this case, it's not so much "the next town over" as it is "home": the guy in question is a citizen of El Salvador. Although I think there are reasonable asylum claims about how one's own (legal) country will treat them, and maybe even those are sufficiently sympathetic here, but it does complicate the "sent to random country" narrative.

In this case, it's not so much "the next town over" as it is "home"

Okay, so let's say he dumped me back in my home town. But I left all my stuff at his place before he deported me and, since I intended to stay in town for the night, I had dinner reservations in the morning. No matter how you slice it, being unexpectedly moved across borders at short notice is a serious inconvenience at best, and the government ought to make it up to people if it forces it upon them by mistake.

Your analogy misses some key important points (e.g. the neighbor house party should be a strict invite only event, and you only got into it because you literally snuck through the window), but more importantly, the issue is not compensation for plane ticket. I'd be happy to give that guy $1000 for him to fuck off. He can buy plane ticket to US with it, but he will not be admitted into the country, because the US government is under no obligation whatsover to admit any noncitizens into the country.

(e.g. the neighbor house party should be a strict invite only event, and you only got into it because you literally snuck through the window)

This comment-thread is about how to treat non-citizens who were legally on US soil and are then mistakenly deported. Which may or may not describe this particular guy, but we'd moved beyond talking about him in particular.

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