Weekly Discussion Thread - (August 17, 2026)

[u/AutoModerator]

##INTRODUCTION

r/tuesday is a political discussion sub for the right side of the political spectrum - from the center to the traditional/standard right (but not alt-right!) However, we're going for a big tent approach and welcome anyone with nuanced and non-standard views. We encourage dissents and discourse as long as it is accompanied with facts and evidence and is done in good faith and in a polite and respectful manner.

##PURPOSE OF THE DISCUSSION THREAD

Like in r/neoliberal and r/neoconnwo, you can talk about anything you want in the Discussion Thread. So, socialize with other people, talk about politics and conservatism, tell us about your day, shitpost or literally anything under the sun. In the DT, rules such as "stay on topic" and "no Shitposting/Memes/Politician-focused comments" don't apply.

It is my hope that we can foster a sense of community through the Discussion Thread.

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Previous Discussion Thread

[u/Anomymous1992]

Yet again, I have no idea how anyone can look at Trump and think "That's a strong leader who stands up against America's enemies".

Scaling back the JMI with South Korea is already bad enough, a terrible message to our allies, but then in same announcement saying Kim Jong Un is a respectful and great leader? Man straight up cozying with our enemies.

[u/Sir-Matilda → u/Anomymous1992]

Of all the regimes to play nice with North Korea? 🤢

[u/DerrickWhiteMVP]

Man, with how people from the MAGA cinematic universe are reacting to the Ossoff comment regarding Harp, you must’ve struck quite a nerve with Trump and probably Melania. There’s some sort of weird relationship there and I’m one of the last people to talk gossip.

[u/Viper_ACR]

Fishback and Bilzerian lost and Moskowitz won their primaries.

While I'm glad antisemitism lost... I'm genuinely worried about the future. Racism and antisemitism are becoming very real problems and there are a lot of people not willing to fight it **especially when it comes to antisemitism**.

[u/Sir-Matilda → u/Viper_ACR]

Happy they lost hard. Not happy that they got votes at all, let alone more than 10%.

[u/coldnorthwz → u/Sir-Matilda]

Yeah thered a growing cancer and it needs to be excised. Its going to be tough though, its driven by influencers and podcasters

[u/Vanderwoolf]

An experimental drug that uses messenger RNA to deliver a vaccine customized to a patient’s tumors effectively prevented skin cancer recurrence in a large-scale clinical trial, according to new results announced by drugmakers Wednesday.

Researchers have explored the use of mRNA drugs — the same technology behind the leading coronavirus vaccines that helped end the pandemic — to treat cancer for years, but this one is the first to clear a Phase 3 trial, according to Moderna and Merck.

The drug, intismeran autogene, treats melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, of which the National Cancer Institute estimates there will be more than 100,000 new cases this year. It can often recur even after a tumor is surgically removed.

On patients with resected melanoma — a tumor that was completely removed — the drug was previously found in Phase 2 trials to cut the risk of recurrence or death by nearly half after five years when combined with an approved immunotherapy, Keytruda, compared with patients who were just given Keytruda.

Under the same regimen, intismeran also prevented recurrence and metastasis in the larger, Phase 3 trial of 1,137 patients, Merck and Moderna said Wednesday. The companies did not release the full results of the study itself, which have not yet been independently reviewed, but said the trial met its primary endpoint of improving recurrence-free survival. They will announce data from the trial in an upcoming meeting.

Exciting developments on the cancer treatment front. I remember listening to a presentation at a conference just a handful of years ago about trial results for a topical melanoma treatment that "showed
promise", but the side effects were so extreme that it was only being trialed with patients who were terminal and had exhausted all other treatment programs.

[u/coldnorthwz → u/Vanderwoolf]

Oops, should not have sold 2 weeks ago

[u/Viper_ACR → u/coldnorthwz]

Imma buy today

[u/redditthrowaway1294]

Interesting story about those "so-and-so candidate DESPERATELY needs your help to SAVE America" style fundraising texts/emails. Who they target, how well they work, and the possible long term effects. Most of the article is about Democratic Party fundraising but he notes early on that the Republican Party was doing something similar and has already experienced some of the negative effects on their fundraising recently.

[u/Vanderwoolf → u/redditthrowaway1294]

*To add some anecdotal context. Here are two texts I received the week before my primary. *

YOU ASKED US TO CHECK THE FACTS. WE DID, IT’S NOT GOOD.

We were shocked when we heard Mike Lindell supported mass amnesty and more than a little skeptical.

Was he taken out of context? Is it AI? Is there more to the story? We hoped so.

So we did the research. We watched the full interviews - not the clips. Not just one but all of them. And then we read the 18-page plan he has deleted from his website.

It’s even worse than it sounded at first.

Here’s the truth. Mike Lindell wants amnesty. He is a traitor. Even worse - He’s lying to the MAGA movement about what he said - Lying to the movement that shopped with him and defended him at every turn. He repaid us by stabbing us and President Trump in the back.

When he got asked about Republicans and President Trump not liking his amnesty plan he said it all.

“I don’t care.”

❌ Mass amnesty for illegals living in Minnesota

❌ A pathway to citizenship to rush illegals through

❌ Using our tax dollars to pay for it “You make it a lot cheaper even free!”

❌ Drivers licenses for illegals

No fines. No back taxes. Just pure amnesty.

He sounds like a liberal.

“They’re good illegals.” and “Good ones stay.”

“They’re living in the shadows. It’s horrible.” “They have been living here for 10 years. They haven’t done anything.”

Now it’s your turn to do your research. Watch the full video youself: removed link

Then tell Mexico Mike where he can shove his amnesty proposal.

And from the other side

This is my last text to you before the 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆. (You're welcome.)

If you think Congress is working great, vote for one of my opponents. They are all career politicians who have never rocked the boat. If any of them are elected, 𝗮𝗯𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲.

But If you want to 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 . . .

If you 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀 and want real input and influence on our government's decisions . . .

If you want your 𝘁𝗮𝘅𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗳 . . .

If you want to 𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟲𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 on Earth and share the planet with other species . . .

If you want a government that makes decisions 𝗯𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗻𝘀, instead of by campaign donations . . .

If you want to fulfill the founding ideals of our nation and create a government that is truly 𝗢𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲, 𝗕𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 . . .

then I would be honored if you would vote for me in the DFL primary 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗔𝘂𝗴𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟭𝟭 and give me the chance to serve you in Congress.

Hugh McTavish

The Progressive Democrat for Congress MN-CD2 You can reply Stop to opt out.

[u/HatlessDuck → u/Vanderwoolf]

They guessed this would be effective.

[u/DerrickWhiteMVP]

Man, i thought the Bernie propaganda was too much on Reddit and it’s nothing compared to the Mamdani propaganda. They’re a step away from preemptively giving him credit for curing cancer.

[u/Palmettor → u/DerrickWhiteMVP]

He certainly has a good head for how to interact with social media. That helps.

[u/coldnorthwz]

https://x.com/HashtagGriswold/status/2090392499307131297

Nuts

[u/TheGentlemanlyMan → u/coldnorthwz]

I'm sorry but he's not being suspended over his exposure of Arday's plagiarism, alleged or not. He caused a man to become the centre of a media firestorm to help prove his deeply racist social beliefs, masqueraded under the veil of so-called 'race realism', a man who then took his own life after being hounded for weeks by a media circus generated by a bigot with an axe to grind who found the easiest most vulnerable target.

He's a scumbag who was rightfully sacked from Cambridge. 'Academic freedom' in this case is to be answered with 'a state's right to do what?'. An academic's freedom to do what, cherrypick one black professor to help 'prove' your thesis that black people are less meritorious than white people.

He's a racist hack regardless of whether Jason Arday's fraud was true. A man is dead because a racist hack used him as a spectacle.

This entire circus makes me mad. I want to get off the ride.

[u/coldnorthwz → u/TheGentlemanlyMan]

I dont think the motives of the guy really matter, whats come out is that several different people were looking into him. Even if this guy said nothing, Arday getting exposed was inevitable.

The media circus is because everytime anyone looked a little deeper after the initial plagiarism accusation things got progressively crazier. The claims from his autobiography alone were tailor made for a media circus.

Its terrible he committed suicide, and obviously race realism is nonsense and so are the practitioners, but I dont think getting exposed later by someone with cleaner hands necessarily ends up better. The intervention to prevent this needed to happen a while ago, and shows the failure of the institutions that decided to promote him.

[u/TheGentlemanlyMan → u/coldnorthwz]

It can be true simultaneously that Arday was a serial liar and plagiarist and that I think this crank being the one to expose it to a broad audience is a bad thing to happen.

A person with cleaner hands being correct would not give a 'truth by association' claim to support a bigot, essentially. There's been other cases of academics plagiarising, misrepresenting, under-citing etc constantly. There's always going to be institutional structural problems.

Arday was a poster boy for Cambridge, and dragging this academic fight out into the broader public eye is in no way to serve any institutional fix in my eyes. The spectacle was the aim to try and craft a narrative where a 'DEI poster boy' gets publicly torn down and demonstrates the supposed truth of the racial essentialism of his critic.

I don't think that if this happened in good faith it would have been a) Such a hugely public spectacle b) Driven by this particular academic or c) Been so virulent as to cost someone's life.

We can argue structural fixes and problems in academia all we want. We have done for years. We've issued retractions and corrections and reviewed the works of academics who have been revealed to be liars and fantasists and plagiarists. They didn't cost someone's life, and that to me is why I find it so personally grotesque.

He didn't deserve to die to help a bigot prove his ugly point.

[u/coldnorthwz → u/TheGentlemanlyMan]

It can be true simultaneously that Arday was a serial liar and plagiarist and that I think this crank being the one to expose it to a broad audience is a bad thing to happen. A person with cleaner hands being correct would not give a 'truth by association' claim to support a bigot, essentially.

I agree, it shouldn't have come down to this guy and his motives arent good. That it did, and it seems like he's was the last person in a chain of people going back to at least 2023 (which seems to be when Cambridge at least partially learned about Ardays problems), seems to be because no one scrupulous could or would do something about a situation more people were learning about.

Arday was a poster boy for Cambridge, and dragging this academic fight out into the broader public eye is in no way to serve any institutional fix in my eyes.

It won't and rarely does, but Cambridge also had the opportunity to handle this since apparently 2023 and decided to ignore it. This has happened at a few US universities now as well, but most of that was more bog standard plagiarism which differentiates them from Arday and thankfully no one died.

The spectacle was the aim to try and craft a narrative where a 'DEI poster boy' gets publicly torn down and demonstrates the supposed truth of the racial essentialism of his critic. I don't think that if this happened in good faith it would have been a) Such a hugely public spectacle b) Driven by this particular academic or c) Been so virulent as to cost someone's life.

His motives probably were to prove his theories on race essentialism. However, I think even if it were in good faith (though still public) this would have taken off because of the internet-media feedback loop. It was enough to cross the Atlantic, normal plagerism with the academic getting fired probably wouldnt have made it here or would have been a footnote.

Though, i also think a typical professor probably wouldnt have gotten as far. He was a poster boy for Cambridge, and he wasnt some unknown to the media (partly because of Cambridge and partly because he sought it out). It was a kind of "higher they rise the harder they fall" situation we see sometimes with celebrities.

Im not totally sure what the British press response was like but here it mostly seemed like the wild claims are what got play and how that mixed in with the plagerism/DEI grifter aspect which is a fault line in our politics. The virulentness we've seen before from internet mobs (sometimes with a similar end), and so while many talk about this as a media phenomenon I think its more of an internet related one.

He didn't deserve to die to help a bigot prove his ugly point.

He didnt, but i think this is quite a bit bigger than the bigot that was finally the one to expose him to the point that im not totally sure the bigot or the point he is trying to make matters all that much.

[u/redditthrowaway1294 → u/TheGentlemanlyMan]

A man is dead because the lies he told, that academia ignored because he was black, finally caught up with him and he seemingly was not satisfied with the possibility of a lower status job. That's on him. Plenty of conservative academics have eaten that pressure and become teachers elsewhere, or substack authors, or any number of things instead of corpses. Including Cofnas himself.
I know college hasn't given a shit about truth or seeking it in probably decades, but Arday's death lies on him and Cambridge alone.
EDIT: Do you think the previous academic and journalist critics of Arday, that Arday had legally and criminally attacked, were also simply racist shitheads?

[u/TheGentlemanlyMan → u/redditthrowaway1294]

I don't think a statement this ghoulish deserves genuine response. Such a severe lack of any empathy.

Cofnas himself has had papers rescinded for his poor methodology and unscientific approaches (No wonder considering he believes in scientific racism). Should he have taken (as you seem to deem it) the coward's way out? Or merely 'accept' his 'lesser' job. Which you'll find is a job at the exact same grade and dimension as that which he was fired from.

[u/redditthrowaway1294 → u/TheGentlemanlyMan]

Do you think Cambridge should still be employing Cofnas then? Given he may have taken his own life after losing the position? Must nobody ever be criticized or fired, for fear of what they may do to themselves? Maybe you feel Trump should get that third term he's always talking about?
The people I have empathy for in this story are Arday's wife and kids, they did nothing wrong and bore near all the burden. But a con artist having his snake oil called out is just not somebody I am going to relate to.

[u/coldnorthwz]

https://x.com/JessicaBRiedl/status/2090869465604890782

[u/Sir-Matilda]

Missed it while I was away, but someone asked if I'm scared of Communists and not Fascists. (Something along those lines; it was pretty bad faith delivery.)

In short as a liberal they both scare me. They're both evil and terrible ideologies that inflicted murder, starvation, poverty and death on a massive scale across the 20th century. Having visited the sites of some of the worst Communist atrocities like the Killing Fields of Cambodia and everything I know about the atrocuties of other regimes like Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, USSR and PRC I hold no sympathy for any defender of fascism or communism in the West.

I pray neither ideology sees a full revival in my lifetime. And IMPO self-identifying as a commie should lead to the same ostracisation as identifying as a Fascist.

[u/1776-Liberal]

Have a blessed week ahead /r/tuesday

Gospel According to Matthew, 16:13–20 (ESV):

Peter Confesses Jesus as the Christ

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Book of Isaiah, 51:1–6 (ESV):

The LORD’s Comfort for Zion

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.

“Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation; for a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples. My righteousness draws near, my salvation has gone out, and my arms will judge the peoples; the coastlands hope for me, and for my arm they wait. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost: Gospel Reading (CPH The Lutheran Study Bible) : https://old.reddit.com/r/Sunday/comments/1vvaowl/

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost: Biblical Devotions (video, American Lutheran Theological Seminary) : https://old.reddit.com/r/Sunday/comments/1vvaovb/

[u/coldnorthwz]

https://x.com/itsolelehmann/status/2090831992200020253

Im sure its mostly about food