Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being a hilarious insufferable reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man idiosyncratic party-line Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
7hr ago
Yes, they have an agenda. But I couldn't find the detentions and arrests bar chart anywhere else.
The availability bias is truly a wonder, and an easy tool to exploit.
Cause aside, 7 deaths in 15 days is anomalously high and warrants explanation.
Sure. But also questions. Among which- what would have been the death rate in 2023 had the Biden Administration surged ICE differently? After all, a core premise of your critique is the (in)competence. Incompetence requires a baseline of competence, which in turn requires a baseline of 'acceptable' failures across an institution.
And also- what would the death rate in January 2026 have been had the Obama and Biden administrations not taken their benign neglect for over a decade? Had they changed policy, would the downstream factors of January 2026 been possible?
But also- 115 compared to what base number? Not only what is the base numbers in January 2026 versus 2023, so that you can have some % comparison, but also what is the 'acceptable' number of deaths in general?
And this is if we concede 'cause aside.' Someone might- quite reasonably- believe that cause must not be put aside. It matters quite a bit for discussions of competence if deaths in ICE detention are because ICE beats the detainees to death, or if the prisoners kill eachother, or if they die because of heart attacks but previous administrations didn't have such figures because they were ideologically opposed to deporting people at risk for heart attacks when stressed.
That's usually how it goes. The dirt is usually unearthed by those who want to bring you down. Back during the excesses of the work movement, opposing statistics required swimming through doomer incel sewers. Just because they wanted to radicalize me into giving up didn't mean their numbers were wrong.
Ah, but numbers are wrong. Quite commonly. Especially numbers provided for the primary purpose of propaganda- and especially numbers presented to prime emotions. As they say, lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Dean
Flairless
7hr ago
b) "Don't talk about it until you have sufficient information to reach a conclusion" at best thought-terminating and at worst bad faith. You could indefinitely not talk about anything you choose forever, I'm not going to listen to people who tell me to not to think about and discuss things.
Fortunately I am not telling you to not think about or discuss things.
Your paraphrase is this-
"Don't talk about it until you have sufficient information to reach a conclusion"
And my position is this-
Refrain from judgement until you have sufficient information to reach a sound conclusion.
Do you recognize that the the later is not only not the former, but is itself a justification to talk and seek information to reach a sound conclusion?
c) New information could come to light 5 or 10 (or 500) years from now, take the recent example we found out of the Chinese officer who refused to march on the Tiananmen protestors in the 1980s. I'll discuss with what current information I have and continue to update it as I get more information.
Discussion was not what was being discouraged.
You continue to evade a foundational question, this time by trying to smuggle a change to the premise of the question in order to answer the question with a question, and leave with the final jab. So you were predicted on two of the three, so you shall be. Toro indeed.
That said, you have made a mistake in your attempted retort. A question that makes you look bad if you give a particular answer it is not necessarily a leading question. Some answers just reveal flaws the respondent would rather obfuscate. However, there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with first principles.
Do you disagree with the principle that if evidence doesn't actually support or deny a conclusion, it should not be used to support or deny a conclusion?
Dean
Flairless
8hr ago
Either way, ICE's operation isn't particularly effective either. The number of convicted criminals being detained has remained unchanged.
...you did catch at least a half dozen of the ways that link was trying to manipulate the reader, no?
Like, there are way more than a half dozen techniques being used. A common one was making a big deal of % increases without giving base numbers, or whether % increases they don't like correspond to % increases in things they don't care to admit. The 'Annual Deaths in ICE Custody' chart takes the deaths in the first half of January- without establishing any cause of death or even alleging they were a result of ICE mistreatment- and then multiplies them by the time for the rest of year to claim 122 'projected deaths' for 2026.
It's also notably including in the 2025 death count the migrant detainees killed by anti-ICE people trying to shoot ICE.
I particularly liked how the 'Systemic Accountability Failure' accepts "billions of dollars in claims" against ICE as the baseline (invented by people opposed to ICE no less) for which 'less than $1 million in settlement' is the systemic accountability failure in question to make the reader upset... and then goes on to blame / concede that acts of congress, longstanding judicial policy, and the sovereign immunity of the state. Only not in that order, of course, because sovereign immunity is the scary boo word, and the New Deal law passed by the Democratic Party and regularly used over the last half-century is to be last-noted and without such context.
The sort of people who will be moved by that website are not the sort of people whose opinions would be changed if and where ICE behaved particularly differently. That is an advocacy/propaganda website, and there will always be propaganda to make anything come across as a travesty. The only thing that would change the position of the people so easily moved by such blatant propaganda is if they didn't get propagandized.
This, in turn, would require the propagandists in question to not see a need to generate the propaganda. Which would primarily be if ICE wasn't doing deportations, as opposed to if ICE was doing deportations differently.
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
You do seem pretty insistent on avoiding a rather foundational question that should do the opposite of stir an emotional response. Speaking clearly, this is likely because you recognize that answer it directly will either make your first attempt to ignore it in favor of passing judgement come off as bad faith, less than competent, or both.
But since I will keep asking the question until you answer, or until you get tired of trying to avoid it while also trying for last word / parting jab...
Do you disagree with the principle that if evidence doesn't actually support or deny a conclusion, it should not be used to support or deny a conclusion?
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
You are neglecting the principal agent problem. 'The left' is not a unitary entity to learn, or judge success for failure.
A lot of people got very rich from BLM and associated advocacy funding. A lot of agitators got experience, social credibility, or organizational relationships and boosts to their careers in the party-NGO patronage complex. That BLM-unrest harmed the Democratic Party, or even 'killed wokeness' outside of the democrat political machines, does not mean that those inside the political machines felt it was a failure. Survivor bias alone, mixed with the bromides of 'lived experience,' gives a basis for many to go 'it worked well enough for me / here.' It's not like there's ever a shortage of socialist-adjacent politicians arguing this time will be different.
'The liberal establishment' is in the midst of a party civil war only barely papered over by Trump as a unifying antagonist. That civil war is because of a lack of consensus on what went wrong, or what is wrong. Many of those partisans may be
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
Oh, hey, you seem to have tried to dodge the original question. Again. What a surprise- who could have seen that coming? You even took more time to avoid answer it than it would have taken to answer. I do appreciate the commitment to the 'I'm not avoiding' evasion, though that sort of Marvel-esque irony is a bit dated.
Thankfully though, you did take the bait for brevity and answered the others. Let others make of them what they will, while we can move on to the question you may still try to evade.
Do you disagree with the principle that if evidence doesn't actually support or deny a conclusion, it should not be used to support or deny a conclusion?
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
Are you non-tribal, non-partisan enough to judge the actions of your in-group as they affect the out-group?
Sure.
Do you consistently fall to one side of each scissor event?
Nope.
Are you competent enough to speak on any of this, let alone judge my competence?
Aye.
Are you anymore competent in engaging in discussion around ideas than you are in waging the cultural war?
Indeed.
Now, that's four answers for you, and so I do believe you still owe four answers in turn. However, I'll settle for the first one you avoided. If you need more time, I'll refrain from any more responses so you don't feel a need to hurry and deflect. Take your time.
Do you disagree with the principle that if evidence doesn't actually support or deny a conclusion, it should not be used to support or deny a conclusion?
Dean
Flairless
10hr ago
Video evidence is unclear at best, leaning towards "does not have a weapon". Audio evidence indicates that a shot was fired before the arrestee was shot, but the origin is unclear. As such, currently my opinion is "ICE fucked up big time".
And basing your judgement on unclear video evidence, with potentially contradictory evidence, when you yourself note the gaps, it is what you are receiving a raised eyebrow for.
Given that I attempted to analyze the evidence presented and form an opinion of it based on the videos, I find your statement kind of rude;
And I find ignoring the conclusions of one's own analysis, such as how the cited evidence does not support a conclusion is but carrying on as if it did, also rude. Rude towards the persons who will be accused of murder regardless of what clearer evidence might show, but also rude towards other readers trying to come to conclusions.
Maybe we should form a rude club.
I suppose next time I should just say "lol ICE obviously evil" and leave it at that.
If you want, but that too would be rude.
Dean
Flairless
10hr ago
Well, yes, what else can one do?
Refrain from judgement until you have sufficient information to reach a sound conclusion. If you can identify key variables that would radically change your conclusion, start there.
This is all the more important in an information environment known to be contested by people who want to shape your first impression and conclusions regardless of ultimate accuracy.
"Here's my impressions from the video, here's an important question it leaves unanswered, here's the sort of evidence that would change my mind" is perfectly reasonable and I have no idea why you seem determined to describe it so uncharitably.
Because the 'key evidence' in question isn't evidence to change a mind, but to justify the conclusion one way or another in the first place.
There is a term for making a conclusion before you have the evidence for it, and it is 'assuming the conclusion.' This is a bad practice because it triggers fallacies and psychological biases that lead people to interpret later information in ways that confirm the first judgement..
It's more thoughtfulness than you'll see from the vast majority of people on social media.
That is a bar low enough to trip over.
I have a really hard time with considering shooting a man being restrained, kneeling, in the back regardless of evidence of having a gun or not, to be a good, defensive shoot.
Is your difficulty in considering potential factors supposed to invalidate the relevance of factors you did not consider but which may apply to the validity of the shoot?
I expect competence from Agents of the State, and this is not it.
Are you competent enough in the particulars of Agents of the State to judge competence?
I think much like a felony murder, an agent of the state acting in such a way that is negligent, and leads to the death of someone should be charged with manslaughter.
Are you any more competent in judging manslaughter than you are in judging competence?
Dean
Flairless
11hr ago
I'm not sure what part of this you think is defensible.
The question isn't my thought, but Zephyr's thought- which notes major gaps in the evidence ('it isn't possible to tell if he drew a weapon,' the 1:00 mark which is compatible with a defensible shoot) that undercuts its value as evidence to form an opinion off of.
Do you disagree with the principle that if evidence doesn't actually support or deny a conclusion, it should not be used to support or deny a conclusion?
"This definitely seems a lot less defensible, besides the part that might make it far more defensible, which I can't tell one way from the other in the video" is certainly a way to form an conclusion.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
That's how. Like, Amazon and Twitch are separate brands and people use them for separate things, and everybody with eyes can see that. It's not a grand political dilemma like the Minneapolis car incident.
Whose brand does such a website fall under? Does it change if we switch the word order?
Except the Somalis aren’t a cohesive voting block. The Somalis are clannish, and don’t all vote with one another.
They don't need to vote with one another. They only need to vote for the Democratic Party over the Republican Party, with the broader political machine papering the gaps and normal inter-party friction as competing sub-factions jostle for influence and favored candidates.
In terms of American party alignment, Somalis are very reliable voting block.
In the last mayoral election the Hawiye clan went for the Jewish incumbent, Frey, while the Daarood went for the Somali Fateh.
Both Jacob Frey and Omar Fateh ran as Democrats. Moreover, the Minneapolis mayoral elections are ranked choice voting, which is a system ideal for dominant political machines to prevent intra-party competition from compromising inter-party competition.
This is the party machine working as intended.
You are conflating causal and correlation relationships.
George Floyd and the anti-ICE protests are part and parcel of the same progressive-urban-racial spoils systems democratic party coalition. This coalition is what more broadly leads/coordinates/self-catalyzes the progressive front of the culture war, which emerged over the last 20 years as the Clinton coalition fell apart and was replaced by the more culture-war-enthusiastic Obama coalition. The Somalis don't cause this, they correlate with it as one part of the broader coalition.
This progressive democratic political machine, in turn, dominates the twin city region in part because of the Somali kingmaker status, which the Somalis support because it expands the spoils of the party spoil system. The Somalis are causal in this dominance due to their kingmaker role as a cohesive voting block, and the spoils they have capitalized on / engineered. Their influence emerged in the late 2000s/early 2010s due to the family reunification/naturalization cycle which only became apparent in the 2010s with the rise of a political Somali elite such as AOC.
The Somalis stand out due to how they leveraged the culture war / spoil system axis to stand out in their locality, which itself embraced the broader culture war in a way that it hadn't before their arrival enabled the progressive-municipality cluster to dominate to the degree (D+30) that they could pursue the culture war rather than the typical moderation for Minnesota politics. They stand out all the more as one of the remnants of the Obama coalition that more or less validated the emerging democratic majority thesis, just locally instead of nationally.
This makes for easy presentation of their political machine-area as emblematic of what's wrong with the culture war from the opposition side.
If we are negotiating a deal, and I ask if you plan to kill me in case we end up not coming to an agreement, and you say that it isn't off the table... That is a threat.
To interject just here- if you think I took a position that it was not a threat, you misunderstood the point of the post you are responding to. My position is not that it can't be a threat. My position, made more explicit and encompassing elaboration below, is that it is not a direct threat, that treating it as a threat is a choice of the recipient, and that even if you want to take that position then it is a weak threat.
Returning to the para in full-
If we are negotiating a deal, and I ask if you plan to kill me in case we end up not coming to an agreement, and you say that it isn't off the table... That is a threat. You are threatening to kill me if I don't give you what you want. You would just prefer a different way, but if that turns out impossible or too expensive, you are saying that you will in fact try and kill me.
It is precisely because you accept the paradigm that you are negotiating a deal that the indirect threat is weak and safe to disregard as a threat, and that treating it as a direct statement of intent is increasing the risk (and costs) for your negotiations here and in the future.
All negotiations deal with implicit and explicit threats. The very possibility of walking away from a negotiation is a form of threat, since it indicates a consequence of denying the opponent what they want (the subject of negotiation) at a cost the opponent prefers (the cost of a negotiated solution, as opposed to the costs of the baseline alternative to a negotiated agreement, i.e. BATNA). This is typically on the low end of the threat spectrum, but it is none the less a form of threat available to both parties.
At the same time, (competent) negotiations entail knowing when and how to deal with, deflect, or dismiss threats based on their credibility. Threats, after all, can be very cheap if they are only words. An insincere threat, one made without an intent to carry out, is still quite valuable if it drives the opponent to make a [concession] to make it go away. Getting something potentially valuable, but for practically free, is an incredible incentive, especially in repeat-game dynamics where the knowledge of willingness to make a concession informs further [concessions]. And there are few threats as cheap to make as an indirect / implicit threat that requires the other side to carry it for you.
And note that [concession] in this context doesn't need to be the nominal subject of negotiation. To dip into the OP context of Greenland as a US-Denmark negotiation, a weak threat over Greenland does not have to be answered with a handover of Greenland. It might be resolved by something like Denmark taking (or not taking/changing) a specific policy position on, say, chip production and trade with the Chinese. Or NATO funding. Or covering base costs. Or anything else of interest to the Americans. The value of cheap threats isn't [specific concession], but [concession] in general, especially in repeat game formulas where smaller [concessions] can add up over time if you know the other party is inclined to over-estimate your threats.
Going back to the general form, this is why if you on the receiving side of a threat, it helps to be able to deflect/dismiss it in ways without making concessions, especially if your goal is to deny the other party their ambition. In a 'defense' negotiation where you want to preserve the status quo, your goal is to raise the costs to the adversary enough that they no longer perceive it as worth the further cost to pursue. Dismissing indirect threats is preferable because a non-acknowledgement forces the offender into a decision to either drop the issue without gaining a concession, in which case 'you' have lost nothing, or to make the implicit threat more directly.
Forcing adversaries to make explicit threats rather than making concessions to implicit threats is good for you, the recipient of threats, because you are shifting the balance of costs against the threatener. The threatener wants to use implicit/indirect threats instead of direct threats in the first place because they are cheaper than explicit threats. Explicit threats often result in (typically) unwanted secondary effects, such as rallying the domestic political base around the leader being threatened, invite external intervention/support into the negotiation against the threatener, and raise the reputational costs to the explicit threatener if they back down by not carrying through. Not being willing to carry through is half the point of using the implicit threat in the first place. You, the defender, are under no obligation to make a concession to a weak threat that wouldn't be carried through.
But note- publicly treating an weak threat as a credible threat is itself a sort of concession to the threat-maker!
A more nuanced double-edged concession, but one that many parties willing to play 'the heel' will happily accept.
This is because the party elevating the threat is investing their own credibility and position into the adversary's threat for them. If you act as if the person threatening you really means it and would really do it, you are signaling to other people that they should take the adversary's threats as credible. And part of taking other people's threats as credible is making concessions to avoid the costs of those threats being carried out. Even if you make no other concession, and hope to reap in the benefits of domestic or external support, you can still be offering [concessions] in genenneral via enhancing the adversary's reputation and credibility to compel [concessions] in other- and future- negotiations.
Including negotiations with you. Which- if you later approach with the history/perceived perception of being Very Very Scared- can convince your own faction that the adversary is credible and sincere in their threats and thus warrant concessions earlier at less cost. But worse, you might also convince the opponent that you see them as scary and credible, and thus increasing the incentive of threats. Which not only running into your own framing bias, but also have the separate issue that- if you do intend to call a bluff- they are in a position where the cost of being called is now closer to the cost of going through with the threat anyway. Which is the context where you actually should be offering concessions if you are serious about denying the [thing] from a position of weakness, because your negotiating goal is to keep the adversary viewing the cost of carrying out the threat as worse than the equivalent.
But there's another drawback here- even if you act as if the adversary makes a strong and direct threat, that doesn't mean they have. Or that the resulting support will do more to deter than to encourage the mentality behind the explicit threats. Adversaries have their own ability to shape the information space, and there are as few things as easy to respond to of 'you said that' as 'no I didn't, here's the proof of what I did say.' Proof may be irrelevant to various groups that would be aligned regardless, but it is a way to separate would-be supporters who might have supported the defender against an explicit threat. That division- or even the division of people who express nominal solidarity but caveat it accordingly because they recognize the implicit-versus-explicit distinction going on that you conflated- can itself be another [concession] the adversary might want. Splitting a coalition because Party B won't be associated/stand by/defend Party A's rhetoric is a classic gain. Worse (for the defender) is if the allies they count on for support would rather prioritize ties with the aggressor than maintain a common front- see the recent sacrifice of European economic interest groups, the nominal heart and reason for being of the EU, to prioritize the American security relationship. Such divisions invite future exploitation, which can create future divisions, which can invite future future exploitations.
This is why the rule of thumb advice is 'don't give a concession for free' also ties to 'don't treat a threat as serious/credible if you don't have to.'
(This doesn't try to address next-level formulations, where things presented as negatives above may in fact be positives from a different paradigm. For example- European elites who would like to exaggerate American threats to build political support for a common European defense policy, and American elites who would happily play the role of villain if it allows European elites to increase European military spending so that the American elites can disengage from the continent. In such a case, 'threats' like 'do this and we'll end NATO' turn into incentives, but this is so far from base premise it's a huge rabbit hole of its own.)
Using your own criteria here, there is a statement of intention: If a deal cannot be reached, the US military will seize the island from the Danish government.
This is not from a statement of intention by the statement of a threat-maker. This is an inference of intention, from the observer.
This distinction matters, both in terms of who is making it, and what it implies one should do regardingn the threat maker.
When he makes the threat again after bombing Venezuela, this indicates that the US is willing to risk a war to get what they want.
Substitute this with the distinction of who is making the which claim,
When I infer a threat again after he bombs Venezuela, *I act as if this indicates the US is willing to risk a war to get what they want.
Note that in this venue, the US does not have to be willing to risk a war to get what they want. But if you act as if they were, particularly if you believe they are, then you can be pushed into acting out the [concessions] such a framing would warrant, even by people who might accurately understand such a perception is unnecessary / factually wrong.
There is also a condition for how it might be avoided: "Sell or give us Greenland, on terms that are acceptable to the US".
This is, again, the inference of the threat, not the stated conditions of a threat.
This matters on the conditions-to-avoid end because it is much easier for a threatener to change the conditions if they never specified them in the first place. If the recipient would make concessions in response to implicit terms, they have already demonstrated their intent/willingness to make [concessions] in principle, and thus continue to make [concessions] to implications of further conditions... let alone further explicit demands. This deal's getting worse all the time and all that.
This is precisely the sort of context where forcing the adversary to make explicit their threats, and their conditions, can improve the defending state's ability to gather and utilize external support. Even if external supporters may not be willing to actively fight against the threatener on the defender's behalf, they may be willing to increase the costs of renenging on the deal, and so indirectly (or directly) enforce the deal in a way that stops the bleeding of [concessions] over the issue.
At the same time, this is a context where implicit threats may result in [concessions] short of the inferred condition that none the less encourage the use of implicit threats in the future. If, say, the Danish government makes a [concession] of 'we won't sell Greenland, but we will pay more of the costs of American soldiers in Greenland,' that may well be enough to lead the Trump administration to drop the push for Greenland's sale... but future considerations, such as budgetary constraints that lead to an attempt to short the bill, which a future administration may / may not use as a future pretext.
The negotiating leverage is that no sane country wants to fight the American military, and Trump knows this. He is using the threat of invasion as leverage to get a better deal.
He would have no leverage with this threat if people dismissed is as the weak, indirect threat it is instead of treating it as massive leverage, which requires a concession of credibility.
Leverage in negotiations is not an objective metric score. It is highly subjective. It is also subjective in both directions.
Dean
Flairless
14d ago
Does anyone have any theories as to why this is?
Democratic party machine politics that evolved over the post-90s with invitation / incorporation of the Somali diaspora, which was part of an evolution from from a blue-collar/labor coalition to the more modern progressive/racial-interest group coalition.
Minnesota in the 90s was a soft blue-tribe area in the 90s, but also politically heterodox enough that spoiler candidates or waves could reverse general trends. It was that sort of 'close-but-just-enough-of-an-edge' that consistency in turnout machines can provide a decisive edge. You can see an example of the narrowness of edge in the district political leanings table, where- for example- the Democrats hold onto the 2nd district with a D+1 margin. (Note also the 4th district, which is D+30. That will be important later.)
In the 20th century, that political machine was a farmer-labor party, mixed with the political machine of the major cities. Basic late new deal coalition politics, the gradual decline of the new deal coalition model, etc.
But in 1991, as a result of the Somalia Civil War, Somalis were designated with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The Immigration Act of 1990 authorized TPS under a general concept of 'if something goes down while they are here, you don't have to send them back.' It was, as the name implies, intended to be temporary, and subject to renewal by the executive branch every 18 months.
Of course, the civil war didn't end within 18 months, and so it kept getting extended. And Somalis in the states could use their position in the states as a basis for getting family back in Somalia under family reunification policies. According to a flier from the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, 2/3rds of US legal migration is under family reunification policies. Vague but hard-to-objectively-assert claims are that Somalis are a prominent family reunification community, not dominating the applications but a disproportionate share (that I was unable to verify).
Of course, back in 2008 a State Department found
A 2008 State Department study of African refugees (many of them Somali) seeking family reunification in the United States found that 80 percent of applications included at least one fraudulent family member. The program was then suspended for four years until a DNA testing requirement could be added.
This, of course, is the scandal referred to by the International Refugee Assistance Project, though the scandal is how requests-for-evidence delay refugee applications from various muslim countries like Somalia, not the false family claims. The IRAP helpfully offers a help-sheet for avoiding requests for evidence in refugee family reunification petititonns. This includes a significant emphasis on challenging the legality of the request for evidence to push back against having to provide such evidence.
Anyways, Minnesota and the Somali community. The somali diaspora settled heavily in the Twin City areas, i.e. the political nerve center of the state, i.e. includes the 5th district area referenced before. Citing wikipedia to track that growth over time-
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, 23,915 refugees arrived in Minnesota from Somalia between 1979 and 2017. The Minnesota Department of Human Services recorded 13,582 Somali refugees arriving between 2005 and 2018.[8] In 2024, Minnesota recorded 1,267 arrivals from Somalia. Secondary migration from other U.S. states has also been a large source of population growth. Between 2010 and 2016, Minnesota received 3,740 documented secondary arrivals, primarily from New York and Texas, settling mainly in Hennepin, Stearns, and Kandiyohi counties.
Or to reframe- of about 24k that arrived over a 38 period, over half arrived between 2005 and 2018. 2005 is about 15 years after the first TPS admissions would have started, which is also about 3 naturalization cycles (5 years from legal resident to US citizen). That broader period is itself about a generation and a half of born-in-the-US-to-legal-adulthood generations as well. Which, of course, allows them to participate in family reunification appeals as well. And most of that hyper-growth period was under the Obama administration, which was certainly sympathetic to the idea of the permanent Democratic majority thesis of demographics and destiny, and involved a whole host of activist groups- such as the IRAP- who wanted to help it along.
The point here isn't that the Somali diaspora growth in the Twin Cities region was illegal, but rather that it was purposeful. Purpose without a shared intent between all the actors involved, but purposeful all the same.
And this goes back to the point of Minessota as a previously soft-blue tribe state with a relatively even equilibrium. In a relatively weak balance of power, even a relatively small block- if concentrated and coherent enough- can decisively shape the balance of power. And not even the balance of power between parties, but within parties.
It's not that the Twin Cities were previously a republican stronghold that was flipped by mass migration. Rather, the post-new-deal coalition of labor, farmer, and city machines saw a relatively organized and consolidated Somali community dropped onto the city machine, whether they promptly pursued their self-interest in things ranging from migration assistance lobbying to, well, social welfare such as childcare. They might not have been able to dominate the Twin Cities themselves, but they could play Kingmaker in democratic coalition politics, which is how you get things like years of Democratic administrators too afraid to confront the Somali fraud scandals.
And that shift came within the broader shift over the same decades of the Democratic party in general, which shifted from a general new deal labor coalition- the stuff of the Minessota farmer-labor party origin- to an urban racial-spoils coalition, where DEI was the policy mechanism by which to reward / advance allies in the racially-self-conscience coalitions. Like, say, the political Somali community. They didn't cause the game, but they are a product and a player in the game.
But remember- there's a discrete start point to this. The number of Somalis in Minessotta before 1990 was a not-quite-0k. Almost everything starts with the 1991 TPS admissions. But it still takes 5-ish years for people who were just arriving then to naturalize, and then use their citizenship as a basis to bring in people who will need another five years. So the policy started in he early 1990s, would only start to self-catalyze into a critical mass by the 2000s, where it coincides with the Bush-era immigration debates and then leads into the start of the Obama coalition. And even then, it's not a sudden change, but rather a shift in the internal balance of the city-machines of already democratic places. But they are a part and parcel of the shift of the democratic party from the previous labor-leaning coalition of the pre-1990s, to the urban culture warring coalition of the 2000s.
So for an outsider, it's relatively easy to have not see the ground shifting underneath until... bam. Democratic coalition of progressive culture warriors and racial coalitions has taken over the Democratic Party in general, and Minesotta in particular.
Dean
Flairless
15d ago
Wasn't her partner's videos one of the earlier released and claimed as evidence against the ICE? I.e., a pre-staged filmer for a deliberage ICE obstruction stunt?
Threaten a military takeover. He did this by stating that military intervention was not considered off the table. This was shut down by European leaders promising to retaliate.
This just bugs my 'words have meaning' nerve.
In its most general form, a threat is a an indication of intention- verbal or non-verbal- to inflict harm of someone. Often this comes with a conditional, but not always.
When Trump said he was 'going to bomb the shit out of [ISIS],' that was a threat. It wasn't conditional, but it was very much an indication of an intention soon followed.
When Trump said that threats with North Korea would be met with 'fire and fury,' that was a threat. It was vauge on what said fire and fury entailed, and allowed people to project a nuclear dynamic, but it was a threat with a condition (of North Korea threats continuing).
When earlier today Trump said he called off a second wave of attacks on Venezuela because it released a large number of political prisoners, that is a threat. The indication to attack was conditional on a condition no longer present, i.e. Venezuelan behavior, but the threat is on the condition of if that cooperation changes.
'Military intervention is not off the table' is not a statement of intention. It does not indicate an intent to inflict harm. It does not set a condition for which it might be avoided. It does not even set a condition for it to be enacted. It's a non-denial, but a non-denial is not an affirmation. It is, at most, the implication of the possibility of a threat... which has no negotiating leverage or coercive value if you simply choose another implication to interpret, at which point the speaker either has to up the ante by making a more explicit threat, or not sustain the implicit threat.
I tend to loath macho posturing comparisons, but even if you want to act as if that's a threat, it is an incredibly weak threat by the standards of Trump- who is not exactly adverse to explicit threats of military attacks- and it makes the sort of people who treat it as a strong threat seem even weaker in turn.
...and neither of those give you legal equivalency a law enforcement officer conducting legitimate law enforcement activities.
The last I checked the criminal laws police officers conducting law enforcement operations didn't get any special privileges regarding standards when lethal force is justified,
This begs three questions:
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When did you last check?
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How did you last check?
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Why did your check fail to find rules of engagement?
In Germany, and to my knowledge other european countries as well, police are taught to shoot for warning, at the leg or at tires, so there exist competing schools at thought and differing laws.
There may different schools of thought and laws, but there aren't different schools of biology. The leg is not a vestigial body part that can be safely and predictably punctured with ordinance. It may not be 'as' deadly as a shot to the chest or the head, but this is because of the order priority of critical organs, not because of a lack of critical bodily functions, i.e. arteries.
If someone competent tells you that they are shooting at the legs to warn rather than kill, they are lying to you. It may be policy to lie to you, it may be part of security theater to make the public feel better and that things aren't so dangerous, but it is at best a case of 'and trying to kill,' not 'instead of.'
Dean
Flairless
16d ago
You were a police officer conducting a law enforcement action at a bank drive-thru with a 4-year-old-kid?
Dean
Flairless
16d ago
I'm not claiming to know exactly what legal standard applies in this case, but normally, when there's a threat, you have a duty to flee.
"I don't know the legal standard that applies, so I'm going to introduce an entirely different standard (that also may or may not apply) premised on typical assumptions towards an atypical context" is certainly a take.
You do not have the right to kill someone unless necessary to protect yourself from serious injury or death.
This is much less so, since it entirely depends on who 'you' are, and in what contexts. Just to take one, governments reserve the right to kill people who challenge their monopoly on legal violence, whether that challenger personally threatens a representative or not. And this does not go into the rights to kill people who are threatening other people, whether members of the public or other agents of the government, let alone matters of perception of threat.
Perception, in turn, is what many of the legal rights to kill in self-defense hinge on. Particularly the perception of 'you', the person who feels in danger, and not 'you', the person who does not.
The cop easily got out of the way and was just barely in the way to begin with.
Why do you believe* the cop 'easily' got out of the way, as opposed to 'nimbly' when a slight difference of balance or attention would have not gotten out of the way?
Moreover, why do you believe 'easily' matters at all? If you are conceeding the officer was in the way of an accelerating vehicle, it does not matter if the were 'barely' or not. Being in the way is a binary state- you either are, or you are not, and if so then it validates perception of threat.
*Aside from the framing bias effect of the slow-motion video formats going around, which is a format that is typically used to exagerate to the audience how much time was on hand to process events, and use that implication as an anchoring bias to shape future considerations?
He was standing in front of the corner of the car. The car was not going fast enough to seriously injury him and the wheels were turned.
Getting run over by a car can potentially seriously injur someone regardless of what part of the car does so. In turn, the wheels were turning multiple directions in the event, including in directions that would- by your own admission- put the officer in the way.
She did not go straight forward. She was clearly trying to get away, not run him over.
Why do you believe she was 'clearly' not trying to run him over, from his perspective?
Remember, perception matters in self defense and use of force. Even if 'you' would have clearly felt she was not trying to run 'you' over if you were in his position, that would merely mean it would be unjustified murder for 'you' to have shot her. It would not change that if 'he' perceived differently, it would merely be a justified self defense.
'I wouldn't have felt afraid for my life if I were in their position' is irrelevant even if true. Reasonable person standards for perception don't enable a veto even by a reasonable person, because reasonable people can disagree.
The cop fired a second time from the side when he was well clear of the car and there was no risk to anyone.
Why do you believe there was no perceived risk to anyone to people who just perceived risk to themselves?
You 'answered' by trying to ignore the premise of the question- evidence that doesn't actually support or deny a conclusion- and then tried to insist you need to know ahead of time, at which point you transitioned to questioning future prediction. This is a deliberate inversion of the framing of something known into something not known, in order to insert your deflection of a question of future prediction.
Future prediction is not needed when you already have reviewed evidence to determine what it does or does not support. Removing evidence that neither supports or refutes an outcome is not bias towards one outcome, because it supports neither outcome.
Yours was a transparent dodge, for a transparent purpose of giving a non-answer after earlier concessions that you didn't want to answer the question. First the evasion you denied you were avoiding, before you conceded you weren't answering but insisted it was because it was a leading question, and now this attempt to change the question.
Thank you for the public demonstration. At this point I suspect anyone knows what your answer in that dark alley would be, however incriminating it might be for you. Feel free to take your last word and zinger if you'd like.
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