Bingbong
16hr ago
Abortion's a tricky one to me since whilst I personally believe it's something that shouldn't be done frivolously but there are legitimate applications. I can see how somebody's belief systems can directly draw a line from abortion to cold-blooded murder of the most vulnerable, in a far more coherent and sensible way than a lot of other protest movements.
Bingbong
1d ago
By saying I am arguing in bad faith I feel that you are 'Mean Girlsing' me.
Prepare yourself for I shall come at you with the full force of Vigilantism
Bingbong
1d ago
You're the one coming to this point in radical centrism and advocating for the slaying of random political pundits on account of them resembling 'mean girls' and you feeling you have no adequate defense that isn't homicidal. Any real extension of this belief places everybody in the crosshairs.
Bingbong
1d ago
I agree it's not perfect but I think a gunshot in close proximity moves it way closer to a good shoot than where it is otherwise.
Bingbong
1d ago
Seems like sufficient leeway to start blasting under your preferred guidelines to society, though.
Bingbong
2d ago
So Charlie Kirk is not entitled to his beliefs due to them potentially being against the absolute maximum freedoms for other people, or is simply not allowed to advocate for his beliefs in public if it may result in any modification of society that resembles that?
Bingbong
2d ago
There is no possible argument for the Charlie Kirk killing being in anything but cold blood with an abundance of forethought. Even if you are maximally pushing the 'he was doing harm through espousing his ideology', you have to acknowledge that it was a planned assassination from somebody who sat down and rationally thought through the plan. I don't think the Pretti killing was necessarily good or justified, but it was a spur of the moment decision from somebody in an inherently stressful and chaotic situation.
Bingbong
2d ago
Additionally doing the 0.0000000001m stunt whilst armed is just massively increasing the risk of something going off the rails even if you are actually 100% compliant and pleasant in your interactions with law enforcement.
Bingbong
2d ago
One was gunned down in completely cold blood whilst the other was deliberately trying to make an already hectic and confusing environment yet more stressful essentially entirely for the purpose of generating videos of bad activities by making them more likely.
Bingbong
2d ago
Yeah prettymuch the only thing that'd change my vibe on Pretti would be conclusive proof on whether or not his gun misfired whilst being confiscated. If it misfired and people reacted off that I think there's sufficient argument for it being a reasonable shoot, whilst if it didn't then it's essentially inexcusable.
Most of the Minneapolis Mounted Whistle Orchestra is coordinated and belligerent so Pretti having multiple contacts with ICE is pretty par for the course.
Bingbong
2d ago
I see similar shotgun, canned openings for skilled positions in the engineering field that aren't really trying to be competitive if you look at their offered compensation, they feel more like dangling a hook hoping to get a bite from a desperate engineer they can snap up for cheap even as the engineering field as a whole supposedly has huge engineer shortages.
Isn't this atleast partly to justify having unfillable positions that require H1Bs et all?
Yes but inevitably like all issues of this nature the stack of asylum seekers will be sifted until a small core of genuine and/or sympathetic applications will be surfaced then the entire narrative will be forced to pivot around them despite massive grift outside of it. Plus Trump's team is already running into random vigilante judges in farflung circuit courts attempting to adjust whatever they pass.
Bingbong
2d ago
Yes but that is a vast oversimplification and at best all it can do is briefly reset the current issue.
Bingbong
3d ago
It's clearly not being done in good faith though when they are not investigating the ice agents involved.
Good's widow is on camera committing a clear offense. The ICE agent singular has an adequate argument for self defense and I can't really see what you'd try pinning on the other guys who didn't shoot.
Bingbong
3d ago
The United States accepts asylum seekers because of laws such as the Refugee Act of 1980, which was passed into law by legitimately elected democratic representatives.
Yes but it was contingent on a good faith application and used in a world with far more poverty and random bloodshed. Decades of concept drift, deliberate gaming of the system and the inherent tendency of a judicial system to continuously swing more permissive as cases accumulate have then produced the current metagame.
The vast majority of these asylum applications are simply contigent on the processing timeline being so long (due to the sheer weight of frivolous applications) that you can easily apply without any real expectation of actually getting it then frolic around randomly whilst you wait. This is playing out consistently across essentially all developed Western democracies
Bingbong
3d ago
Actually I think the Right could lean in to due process as a meme here -- especially with regards to folks who have had asylum denied, had their chance to appeal to the BIA and already ignored a final order of removal.
It seems to me as an external outlier that quite a few of the 'heartbreaking story of peaceful productive illegal immigrant removed stories' are these people, though. Cases where they entered the USA in 2005 or whatever, have explicitly run through all of their options for appeals over the course of a decade and have then wandered off the reservation till occasionally picked up on the current day. Even the OP mentioned with the Grandma who had explicitly received a final order of removal.
Also hasn't a soft-amnesty and opportunity to self deport also been provided with an additional payment to those who take it up?
Bingbong
3d ago
Was he expecting to get out of China and enjoy the profits in Miami? The way I look at it, better appropriate $100M in the PLA and risk a humiliating expulsion and retirement
This does seem the crux to me as well. The guy's already in position for unfathomable amount of power, influence and cash (without even having to particularly push the corruption). I can't really see/imagine what leverage the USA would have on him for selling secrets or what they'd be able to pay him that'd really justify the literally mortal risk.
Bingbong
3d ago
Yeah he's indicated he's gonna try to go back to a yearly cadence but after the last 2 books took 5 years each it's hard to be super bullish.
Bingbong
4d ago
Honestly it's a weird one as well since it's such an extended saga. I know the first half of the story but the bits after the first generation get very vague.
Total War: Three Kingdoms also works.
Bingbong
4d ago
I enjoyed it though felt that it didn't do enough to advance the metaplot considering the 5 year wait between books.
Bingbong
4d ago
there are fundamentalist families in Riyadh working oil & gas who will have 5+ kids.
Working is frequently a very strong word for what the native members of big Oil & Gas companies do in societies like Saudi.
Bingbong
4d ago
supported a policy of arbitrary mass starvation directed at children
The communications around this are/were so messy and awkward that it became quickly illegible to most people.
Bingbong
4d ago
I'll admit most of my Romance of the Three Kingdoms knowledge comes from 100%ing a few Dynasty Warriors games when I was growing up, but that does actually give you familiarity with the major players.
Bingbong
5d ago
Enforcement specifically in Minneapolis is kind of a stupid waste of time, as there's not that significant an illegal immigrant population and it's more kneejerk responsiveness to a combination of the Somalis and the general vibe from major Minnesota figures such as Walz and Ilhan Omar.
On the other hand, the situation is showing the weakness of trying to do any sort of aggressive policing in the age of short-form video content as even the most compliant, disciplined and skilled police force ever are going to occasionally throw up incidents where they look oppressive from some angle if redacted sufficiently. The conditions that ICE is operating under with regards to 'random interlopers on all tasks actively interfering with police work with no particular expectation of punishment' are also incredibly rare for any sort of a police force to have to work under. I don't believe ICE are necessarily massively less trained and equipped than other legal forces in effectiveness terms, but 'you are trying to do your job in the face of the Armed Minneapolis Vehicular Vuvuzela Orchestra' is going to inherently increase the friction and likelihood of issues.
Doing anything at scale is going to produce edge-cases, especially something as messy and emotionally charged as this. Completely derailing the artifice of state every time something somewhat sad happens is what produces the massive scope drift and inefficiency that is slowly choking the Western world. The protestors even having the privilege of acting like this is reflective of the extraordinary liberal permissiveness of the USA by any real historical or world political standard.
True but money where his mouth is for Stancil doesn't mean a ton aside from exposure to maybe getting gassed. It doesn't seem to have impacted his academic position at all to spend days meandering around driving after ICE.
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