ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
No bio...
User ID: 1012
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Citizens shouldn’t have to worry about being detained for even a few hours by federal agents just because those agents randomly decide your license is fake, especially in a country like this where limiting government overreach was a core value of our constitution.
I agree. Unfortunately we are in a state of exception, because a large proportion of the people within our borders are not supposed to be here, and until very recently they were coming in at a faster rate than we could kick them out. Once there are almost no illegal aliens in our country, I will gladly join you in support of strengthened civil liberties to prevent ICE overreach (coupled with extremely strict and aggressive border controls, of course!).
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
what if they accidentally pick up a US citizen
Cost of doing business. I don't care. As a normal middle class person with a job who isn't tatted up or dressed like a thug, ICE is literally a 0% threat to me or any people I know or care about.
Again, what if the government makes you a lawbreaker? This is such myopic thinking. These are terrible precedents. This is literally the definition of the "first they came for" quote but you're just super confident it'll only be the first step.
It's not myopic it all, in fact the liberal scales have fallen from my eyes and I see clearly. The Left is going to eventually come for me anyway, and in fact they have already been boiling the frog for decades. No matter how hard the Right contorts itself to please the Left, it will never be enough. A lot of Leftists would already like to declare me a lawbreaker for my gun ownership, political and religious beliefs, and educational choices for my own children. They just haven't gotten the right tyrant in the power yet. They have a religious view of Progress and a Manichaean worldview that divides people into Decent Human Beings and chuds. Chuds deserved to be silenced, disarmed, barred from employment separated from their own children (who will be forcibly converted into Decent Human Beings by state education)..
Sure, but then you can't complain when I call your guy a retard and his policies terrible. If you want to have low standards that's fine, but I get to point at them and call them terrible. Your standards suck.
I'm not sure what you're trying to convey here. He's a "retard" because... he's doing what he was elected to do less than perfectly? Does "retard" here just mean "MAGA shitlord" or is there a more specific meaning you intended? To me, a retard (here I mean "foolish or naive person") would be trying to deport people with the best possible optics in attempt to please both sides while failing to accomplish anything of note because he'd be using a bureaucratic state full of hostile partisans. Under this definition, Trump is clearly not a "retard." Optics and decorum have been effectively weaponized by the Left, and only a retard would allow his supporters' agenda to be stymied by accusations of "racism" or "14 heartbreaking photos"-style manipulation.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. I am not very pro-immigration myself. I am mildly distressed I guess, but mainly because I feel kind of like I'm screaming into the void as a centrist.
You know, I am actually sympathetic to distressed centrists. I never wanted to be an angry partisan, and I am in fact weary and a little ashamed of my partisan thoughts and feelings. At heart I am a disappointed liberal. My world was more pleasant when I thought my fellow countrymen and I just had the same fundamental conceptions of goodness and justice, and we merely disagreed over the best ways to realize both. But it seems undeniable that the worldview of a large segment of the Left and the majority of the Right are actually incompatible and irreconcilable, and the Left believes in their political position with religious fervor. And so, in a great irony, the descendants of those religious men who laid down their arms and embraced Liberalism in order to end all holy wars must now arm themselves against a fanatical religious movement which is the fruit of that same Liberalism.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Masked non-uniformed men are stuffing people into vans. Not just that, they're sending them to third world prisons??? That's insane.
They're not US citizens, I don't give a fuck. It's extremely sane, and extremely awesome. FAFO, lawbreakers.
What if the Democrats spin up the "super ATF" who start kidnapping people who fuck up their gun paperwork into unmarked vans to be sent to Romania?
Gun people are meticulous about paperwork, and don't have much sympathy for people who don't do their paperwork. FAFO, lawbreakers.
So make ICE not maximally shit looking, and then let the Democratic leadership alienate themselves protesting something Americans like, instead of currently, where Americans are starting to dislike ICE.
I have already covered this before.
This massively undermines the legitimacy of ICE.
Perfect is the enemy of good. When the GOP fields a "deport all lawbreakers except hotel and farm worker candidate" versus a "deport all lawbreakers" candidate, I'll vote for the latter. But so far, we've only ever been offered the former.
They made ICE maximally inflammatory, and then you act suprised the Dems are inflamed?
I'm not surprised, I'm indifferent. They are inflamed because I exist. I don't care that they don't like it. No matter what I do, they will be inflamed and continuously encroach on me and mine. It's war now, war to the knife. The time for talking is over.
I write this not to wage the culture war, but to express what (I think) many who support these ICE actions are feeling and thinking. In the context above, supporting ICE makes sense. Your use of caps lock made me think you were genuinely distressed and looking to understand the other side. Maybe my answer is disappointing because there is nothing there for you to relate to (hopefully I'm wrong!), but I really think that many people feel this way and therefore really do not care what ICE does to illegals.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Yeah, I also caught that. What's with all the decade-old political references?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Thanks, I enjoyed the screed. I'll respond with some only slightly on-topic rambling.
I've reflected on my phone use before (as well as my alcohol use) and I've concluded that I don't actually really enjoy either of those things much in isolation. When I'm having a great day doing something fun and active I rarely drink or look at my phone. When I'm at home scrolling/and or drinking, I'd actually rather be doing any of the following:
- reading a book
- sitting in silence
- making small handicrafts
- listening to some relaxing music at a low volume
- enjoying a cup of tea
What I think I really want is some inward-oriented quiet time. My wife and I are introverts, before having kids we would spend entire (romantic!) evenings together exchanging only a few words. Now I have a job that requires me to talk/message all day, multitask, and manage human relationships. But when I go downstairs, instead of peace and quiet, there are 4 small children hitting each other, jumping, screaming, and otherwise causing a ruckus. Which is great, I love my kids to death. Still, I need time to recharge in between work and home life, but I don't get any. I'm trying to cut booze so I live to see 60, and so I scroll.
I know the scrolling is bad, but the alternative is losing my temper or just bottling everything up. The former is bad for obvious reasons and the latter impacts my sleep and I sometimes end up staying up late and only getting a 2-3 hours of sleep due to stress.
I suppose my point is that not everyone scrolls out of laziness or neglect. That doesn't make it okay. Just wanted to give a different perspective. I suppose I need to somehow find time to decompress between work and home life. Tough to do when working at home in a small poorly soundproofed house.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I'm going to try it.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I was horrified to see that I spent 7 hours looking at my phone yesterday.
The biggest challenge for me is finding a replacement which allows for frequent interruption without diminishing enjoyment. Memes and X threads take a seconds to consume, so if one of my many children spills a cup of milk or bumps his head I can easily put the phone down. Even smartphone games require too much unbroken engagement. I would love to read some of my many books, but I've tried and I just end up reading the same page 47 times.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Interesting, I have the opposite experience with sleep trackers. Rather than feeling wracked with guilt for feeling energetic despite my low sleep score, I feel confused because unless my sleep score is >90 (Garmin) I feel at drowsy and a little sluggish.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
English and Chinese, then a big gap, then probably Vietnamese and Tagalog.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
You know where to find out postmortem template. You can use Gemini but be discreet about it. Drop a link to your PR in Slack when you're done.
(but srsly, thanks for your hard work and transparency)
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
What I don't understand is how absolutely swamped with shovelware and cheap scams every app marketplace seems to be.
Mobile app stores have been bad for a while -- any popular game will have tons of shitty knockoffs with similar names available for download almost immediately -- but in the last few years, even Nintendo of "Nintendo Seal of Quality" fame has their eshops flooded with low-effort sleaze like "Hentai Girls: Golf"
Clearly this is a solvable problem; Reddit and Facebook purchased armies of jannies to carry out "Anti-Evil Operations" against wrongthinkers. The depressing conclusion would be that there are enough slop enjoyers and straight-up cretins out there to make stricter app store curation a financially unwise decision even taking into account the reputational damage caused by this slop. But I'm hoping there's some other reason for it.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
there’s some lobby, somewhere, which has been clamoring to remove this exemption.
After lying low for years following a costly debacle, the shadowy hand of Big Shaving Cream makes the opening move of its master plan to win back the hearts of normal Americans...
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
You do realize what a shame it is that Reddit midwit sarcasm has ruined so many useful phrases...
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Spanking is appropriate for a baby, community service is appropriate for a juvenile delinquent, and beheading is appropriate for a hardened, unrepentant public enemy.
Nobody thinks we should instantly behead babies or lunchtime rowdies, but many people think we should stop handing out spankings and community service to hardened, unrepentant public enemies.
Not super invested in this argument, but --
Obliterating Somalia because some enterprising fishermen decided to moonlight as pirates would be silly on top of appalling.
This only makes sense if you extend care to all humans equally as part of an internationalist humanitarian ethos. Many people don't, so they don't really care if 1 or 100 or 100,000 Somalians get killed in reaction to bothering us. If you ask them directly they would probably mumble something about how terrible it is because it's socially expected, but if you asked them to e.g. pay 5% higher taxes to Stop the Nuking of Somalians I doubt you would get much support.
It's a level of deranged collective punishment that would instantly turn the rest of the world against the US because nobody is sure when we're going to make an absurd demand at nukepoint.
Internationalist humanitarian true-believers are only (somewhat) common in U.S., Europe, and maybe Japan, countries so rich that luxury beliefs have become widespread. Most other nations' peoples still posses the tribal mindset I outlined above, and so to them the value of Somalian lives is approximately zero. Belgium and France might whine about it, but they increasingly irrelevant. Russia and China, who are relevant, would not care, though they would certainly cynically posture and feign outrage (just like the U.S. often does).
I don't really think maximum brutality is as beyond the pale as many (including myself) hope. There is a lot of room for American nastiness before Russia and China seem like more trustworthy and reliable allies, IMO.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
@CrispyFriedBarnacales
Is that his Mexican alter-ego?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
"Alice's Adventures Through the Windshield Glass"
Maybe AI will do what Ron Paul failed to do and make anime real.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Much of our politics is being driven not by events viewed rationally, but by narratives about events.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There's no such thing as a "neutral" viewpoint. It's narratives all the way down, always has been. The liberal consensus is breaking down and as a result so is its narrative (which is what I presume you mean by "events viewed rationally"), and there are now two major narratives competing to replace it. The liberal narrative is dying because it's no longer a coherent frame for the things that are happening in our society. You can't just roll that back.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
When I have seen this on the right among normies, it's usually in response to the left's own Manichaean worldview, not because they view the left fundamentally as enemies who cannot be reasoned with.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
They already fancied themselves Jedi rebels and Dumbledore's Army before the ICE masks. I've seen the bumper stickers and reddit comments. ICE agents could wear rainbow tracksuits and helicopter beanies and they would still get called stormtroopers.
Making ICE scary definitely seems to be freaking out illegals judging by the empty Walmarts and Home Depots we saw earlier, so it seems like an effective way to encourage self-deportation. And if my brother or son were an ICE agent, I would definitely want his face covered and his name hidden while doing his job given the now-regular leftist violence against right-wingers. The extreme left is going to hate his guts regardless.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
When this happens, they will be met with stone-faced negation from Red Tribe,
I can only hope. If it were to happen tomorrow, I don't think it would play out that way. There are still too many right wingers (mostly boomers, but also some enlightened center-rightists) who think we can rollback the clock to 1990 and will thus aid and abet the left by chiding and policing their own side.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Thanks, this is a good reality check. There seems to be a lot of romanticization of the trades happening these days, and I've always been a little skeptical. Sounds like hard but steady work that comes with its own set of tradeoffs. One of my sons is technically inclined but a bit ADHD/on the spectrum. I've been wondering if he would do better as a field tech of some sort rather than as a white collar desk jockey. Personally, my years as an IT dispatch tech were the most fun I ever had in my working years. Long hours and lots of BS, but a great crew, rewarding work (you can see the things you fix), and I loved getting paid to drive around and see different towns and the "backstage" side of many businesses. Sounds like working a trade has some similarities.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
How has that worked out for you? I have been thinking about whether or not I should send my kids to college. My kids are smarter than average and we plan to homeschool, so I think we could set them up for success pretty well. At the same time, I'm concerned that not having the magic paper might hinder them early in their careers. Have you experienced that?
I will gladly pay twice as much for strawberries or steak in the U.S. if it means Americans get those jobs. I currently live in Japan, and so I'm already essentially doing that. It's really not that bad.
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