Hadad
1mo ago
I'll keep that in mind the next time Chris wordily tells me to fuck off, but no promises.
Hadad
1mo ago
The only heat is coming from Chris. You needn't worry about me fighting with him; I already told him to hush.
Hadad
1mo ago
I object to your characterization of my post as maximum heat. It's maximum light -- it's not my fault the OP was asking for opinions on temperature. Am I to lie and pretend I actually care about the endless parade of institutional barriers to deportation the left comes up with? Am I to feign deep concern with a system so obviously abused we have tens of millions (possibly many more!) illegals in our borders, many of them happily shouting their allegiance to foreign powers, burning American flags, and in general being hostile parasites on my home?
That Chris is petulant about this doesn't mean I'm an outrage baiter. The social contract on immigration enforcement is genuinely dead. Democrats have gleefully imposed chaos on order; I'd like for that to be reversed.
Hadad
1mo ago
These people do not generally trust that the Economist is where well-informed people are. That's what widespread loss of faith in institutions looks like.
Hadad
1mo ago
The following is a nakedly partisan take, but that's because you asked for a poll of opinions. These are my sincerely held beliefs; there's no room for anyone to argue me out of them, but I'm not expecting anyone to share it, either:
They're not a necessary evil, but rather an actively good thing. The legitimacy of our immigration system and sovereignty are at all-time lows; the left half of the political spectrum has so wholly abused it for so long in word and deed that there is simply no good faith left at all in my heart. There is no legitimate way to get the job done. The job itself is the enemy for all my political opponents, and they will never operate in good faith. Every single step in the way of removing the aliens will be opposed, lied about, defied in the courts, gummed up with riots, proclaimed the end of the republic, of humanity, of compassion.
Compromises will be offered. Negotiations presented as reasonable offramps to escalation. They are lies. Amnesty was a lie the first time. It's still a lie. There will never be any meaningful reform. There is no negotiation in existential conflict. There is only the will and the power to act.
All actions taken to remove the invaders are intrinsically moral and just. They are righteous. The more pain and terror inflicted in the process, the greater the psychic wound sustained on the collective consciousness of these illegals and all others interested in following them, the better. They are not my peers, they are not my countrymen, they are not my kin. They are an antagonistic force weaponized by a hostile elite to prop up their comfortably parasitic lives as they extract ever more demanding rents from every system they infest.
I want the blackbagging. I want the fascistcore club music as a squad of red-visored faceless commandos mow down the rioters waving Mexican flags. I have not one single remaining concern for the processes, the systems, or the rules. They've been nakedly abused my entire life. They're hollow. It's all raw power, and I want my team to wear the boot.
Does that have its own risks and consequences? Of course. But none of them are worse than blues wearing the boot, and illegals are one of their shoelaces.
Hadad
1mo ago
Yes, the cost is potentially great. That's the primary limiting factor, for which we should all be grateful. And we should dread any context that alters that balance.
Hadad
1mo ago
Everything about this is bizarre. He somehow gained weight after losing the body armor and getting a cowboy hat. His wife worked for Tim Walz (Jenny Boelter). They also owned properties together.
Why was this well-off man with a family renting with a Papa John's pizza guy? Why would he text him?
My current thinking is the roommate is making it all up. As for the rest of it, dunno. Every emerging detail makes the story weirder.
Hadad
1mo ago
I too have seen reports his list involved those targets. But, tellingly, the sources saying this didn't share the entire list. They just said it included those targets. It's yet unknown if he was targeting only Democrats, targeting specific people, or targeting many -- ultimately, the cops caught him too early, so he didn't get the chance to go through his entire list. We'll have to wait for the manifesto to release, if it ever does.
I'll admit I'm curious as to his motives. He's so... out of the expected range of random killers.
Hadad
1mo ago
Conceptualizations of freedom and what it entails varies significantly person to person, so I won't dispute your take. Absent freedom, my point's the same.
Hadad
1mo ago
I don't share that take. I've noticed a steady rise over the years in left-wing violence, and seen how it's correlated with a steady rise in the left getting their way on various matters of national significance. I look to history, where violence is both the cause of and solution to many problems. Violence is costly, enormously costly, if you don't perfectly get away with it -- but the rewards are high.
Hadad
1mo ago
I don't know to what extent Walz cared about his appointment or knew who he was, so I didn't theorize on it. It's possible he's just a rubber stamped crazy that slipped through the cracks or got radicalized in office.
Hadad
1mo ago
Of course if you reduce life to its broadest and least specific terms, we all want Good Things and don't want Bad Things. The problem is that there's no such thing as prosperity, or health, or safety, or relative freedom, or an educated populace. These aren't objective measures, they're vibes and negotiations, and the negotiations have been breaking down for decades.
Is it healthy or unhealthy to support trans rights?
Is it safe or unsafe to tolerate drugged-out homeless on the streets and public transit?
Can our nation be prosperous without disarming its citizens? Can it be safe?
You can't balance civilization on platitudes.
Hadad
1mo ago
Correct. I think even the most objectively mild form of mass deportations would involve crying children, separated families, and coordinated meanness via law enforcement. I think, further, it would be responded to as a humanitarian crisis and proof of Trump's fascist intent. I believe this because this is how everything Trump does is treated by his opposition. With that in mind, he shouldn't worry about the negative reactions at all. He should -- and did -- use it to rally his supporters and pump them up.
Hadad
1mo ago
Awareness might inflame the tensions, to the extent you can't fight an enemy if you don't know he's there, but I don't believe the problems are people being "told" anything. The problems are genuine and irreconcilable differences in terminal values and mutually alien axioms. Once, those differences didn't exist or weren't known, so we muddled along, but there's shared knowledge now. We do, in fact, know what our fellows think, what they want, and what they vote for.
The Fruit of Knowledge has been eaten. We cannot now lose our awareness of good and evil.
Hadad
1mo ago
I don't think there's a way for Trump to do ICE raids that is not responded to as if it were a maximally offensive, existential threat by his political opposites.
Hadad
1mo ago
I see, there's a misunderstanding in my pairing of abundance with malaise -- I was not meaning to suggest the abundance caused it, but rather, I was contrasting the fact we have abundance with the fact we still have greater malaise, because our malaise is for non-material concerns such that abundance cannot help.
I personally adore abundance. It's great. I would not chalk our malaise up to it. I can readily imagine a prosperous society that has abundance and spiritual richness.
Hadad
1mo ago
I am the op. I don't think the problems with our spirituality are from AI art.
Hadad
1mo ago
+1 to that post. I remember it, and most of what you write. The sides are getting better at hurting the outgroup and minimizing trouble.
Hadad
1mo ago
I'm not worried about AI art, myself. Those with a transcendent message to share will still be around. Everyone else gets to make fun pictures, or characters, etc.
Hadad
1mo ago
I think that the US actually has an incredibly low level of political violence if you consider how easy it is to buy a gun here.
I agree. I wouldn't say we have a political violence problem yet. But I do believe we're seeing a rise in political violence, both in actual perpetration and in rhetorical support from the masses. This is what I'd imagine the period before the American Troubles would look like. I'm not wary of the situation right now.. just worried about the direction it's trending.
I also suspect it's going to become easier to get away with this as it continues. In normal contexts, you pretty much have to be a wacky fucko to risk your entire life on a mad crusade to kill a famous person - especially since it's unlikely, even if you kill them, to have a meaningful change on the system as a whole. So killers and would-be John Wicks have primarily drawn themselves from a host of impulsive, low capital, and frequently mentally unwell people.
But if it's normalized? As in, if it starts being done by normal but pissed off people? That changes it. I'm not inclined to murder, but I'm reasonably sure it's actually very easy to do it, provided you're careful and adequately random in your targeting. And I'm not an especially bright or competent man. Get someone motivated, trained, someone ready..
Well. Like I said, it's the trending line that worries me, not the current status quo.
Yes, I know, thank you.
More options
Context Copy link