Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
No bio...
User ID: 314
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
3hr ago
My question is mostly, is it normal for the Red Tribe to believe the "official story" over their "lying eyes?"
They expect Blue Tribe outlets to reliably lie all the time. If the Blue Tribe is making furious, emotionally-laden claims about the police, then my bet is that the police are probably at least less in the wrong than the Blue Tribe is saying, because I expect Blue Tribe media outlets to wildly exaggerate at best.
If the NYT and MSNBC were very performatively angry that the sky was blue, I'd lean over to the nearest window to check.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
3hr ago
relatively unbiased medium of local news
Bro, did you watch your own video? It's literally a press release from an anti-ICE activist group presented as a news clip. Every single person interviewed is from the same anti-ICE rally without a single countering take.
Meanwhile the reporters do note that the agents had a warrant and arrested so many illegals that both locations shut down temporarily. That is nothing like the "legal immigrants dragged away while begging for the chance to go get their papers" crap I was replying to.
the perception exists among a lot of people
And this perception has little to do with reality. So please stop actively making it worse. "A lot of people believe these wild exagerrations and lies I'm actively peddling, so you'd better start acting as if the lies are true". How about I keep pointing out that they're wild exagerrations and you stop making it worse?
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
4hr ago
First, you don't get to just assume what's happening there. What the agents are actually doing in that video is restraining a guy. There are countless examples of old, boomer libtards assaulting these officers because they are bad people with delusions of grandeur. Maybe the ICE actions against that guy were unprovoked and unreasonable, but you certainly don't get to just assume that.
Have you ever actually lost a fight or suffered serious physical pain? Most people, in that situation, act a certain way. They become irrational and agitated, stressed and panicked.
The guy in that video reminds me of a different video. I won't link it because it's quite upsetting, feel free to look it up. In the video, a couple confronts a male neighbor in the snow over some petty bullshit, the culmination of months of relentless Karen harassment, and the man, a single father of an extremely disabled child, finally loses it.
He goes back into his house, gets a gun, and opens fire on the couple, fatally injuring both of them. And the truly remarkable thing about the video is that while the couple is bleeding to death on the ground they are still ranting and screeching like the unholy avatar of Karen. Not "OMG, help, I'm in so much pain." But "I don't care if I'm dying, your brutally autistic son's wheelchair makes too much noise in the morning, and I'm going to report you to the HOA! Why haven't you shoveled your driveway?! You're a disgrace, no wonder your son is a retard!"
That's the energy that dude brings in the ICE video. He doesn't sound hurt, or even alarmed. He sounds like he's saying the magic words that make law enforcement the bad guys. He'll probably get to pop a Cialis and fuck an old hippie afterwards.
But I don't think you're correct about "most people". This crap comes from a special breed of entitled Main Characters and every bit of enabling just makes the world a worse place. Do you really want carefully clipped sections of those videos to be the new meta for what we see at the ballot box? Because there's about a million hours of body cam footage going the other way.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
5hr ago
A libertarian nightwatchman state was off the table before I was born. If you build a boot and gleefully stomp on the faces of your opponents, you don't get to cry when the boot ends up on the other foot.
Alternatively, would you rather Trump just issued letters of marque and reprisal to citizens to hunt illegals and communists? Something tells me you'd flood the zone with tears over that, too.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
5hr ago
"Detained". So, comprehensive examples of "detained" that have come up in the stories I've seen and that we've discussed here.
-
Retired vet who was working security at the weed farm that used illegal child labor. Was held for a few days.
-
The guy who was technically born in the US, then his mom took him back to Mexico to raise him in a remote village that didn't even speak Spanish. Guy snuck back over the border with his actually illegal friends and got stopped by them in Florida. Was held for a few days while the authorities figured out what Aztec language he spoke and confirmed his identity.
And in general, 170 out of 500k is an arror rate of 0.00034. Can you name another government function with an error rate that low?
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
9hr ago
I found a video that starts with the man already on the ground, bitching like a Karen, while an angry crowd crowds around the agents screaming hostilities.
I'm going to express a bit of skepticism that things played out the way your "friends in the area" say it did.
And just putting this out there, but these anti-ICE protestors are doing a lot to radicalize me. They come off as so delusionally self-righteous, so appallingly entitled, wreathed in such false bravery, that I think they nearly automatically discredit whatever cause they support as well as anyone who thinks they're the good guys. If you want to convince me that ICE are doing evil, muzzle these retards first.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
9hr ago
I honestly don't believe you. If this were true, I would expect it to lead the national news. Every leftwing journalist in the country would be talking about it. We've had nine months of these stories being falsified or collapsing under scrutiny, to the point where I'm genuinely baffled at how on point ICE seems to be. Maybe we should just put Tom Homan in charge of the entire government.
But the grand total number of arrested and deported people so far is something in the ballpark of 500k. Many of those will not have been in super visible locations, so round that down further. The overwhelming majority of Americans (99%+) have never seen anyone getting loaded into an ICE van. The number of people who have watched with their real eyes as a "hardworker just trying to make a buck" gets picked up for deportation is probably something like 0.01% of Americans as a highball estimate.
If I seem to offer them impunity it's because I've been having this conversation for 9 months, and as best I can tell their error rate is between 1 and 3 orders of magnitude better than any other branch of the government.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
16hr ago
Only normie source on the first page of results. Damn. I knew that mainstream outlets reacted to Trump wins like vampires to a cross, but I'm still surprised by the dearth of coverage.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
Isn't Home Depot where they picked up the wife-beating, human-smuggling, child-exploiting gang member?
Is that the weed farm with the child slaves you're talking about?
But what's the ratio of Home Depot day laborers with no other legal problems to people who are criminals even aside from the border crossing? Do you know? Does it matter? Is the standard "your policies can never have a single instance of a sad optic and will never get any credit for any number of positive optic scenes"?
There's a reason you're not posting links to the ICE twitter feed going "Damn, Democrats. I'm so concerned about the optics of all these rapists you're going to the mats to protect."
Just so with every other issue. Troop deployments; are people seeing Stunning and Brave Activist Women denouncing tyranny, or are they seeing the charts with stunning drops in carjacking and murder rates?
Your point isn't wrong, but the real issue is that conservatives need better methods of dealing with suicidal empathy.
That may be a coup complete problem.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
it's a tough sell when you're rounding up hardworking people just trying to make a buck.
No one is seeing this. Functionally no one has ever seen anyone get rounded up by ICE at all. If you think that's a reasonable description of reality, then you're in a propaganda bubble. What they're seeing is context-free clips on Facebook and TikTok elaborated with straight up lies, posted by activist Karens who assault and harass federal law enforcement with near impunity due to their overwhelming privilege. OTOH, DHS and ICE don't ever shut up about the prior criminal convictions of the people they're deporting, but that doesn't go viral by abusing weaponized empathy.
Maybe some conservative billionaire needs to start shelling out a grand for every woman who posts a crying fictional sob story video about how she was raped by an illegal immigrant.
I too am skeptical of polls, but you ignore them at your own risk.
Not wrong, but I'm also super skeptical of this "Better stop doing that stuff you were just elected by promising to do because we've suddenly gotten better at narrative control!" line.
Like, yeah Sherril just won, but she did so while disavowing everything she'd ever said as a progressive, dumping a fortune into painting Citarelli as a tax-and-spend liberal and swearing to fight against her own Democrat economic policies.
Maybe ignore that at your own risk?
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
AIUI, he gained approval with Dem voted, lost more with independents, and came out with a net loss that was still enough to win the election.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
Tariffs. Aggressive immigration enforcement. Troop deployments to US cities. The George Santos pardon. Mass firings. The Epstein Files. Withholding grant money. Ending healthcare subsidies.
I'm skeptical about most of that list, but I don't really trust any polling at this point in a cycle. Most of the polling from before suggested that a straight majority of Americans wanted every illegal gone (and a supersupermajority for illegal + criminal history), but yes you can probably show some women pictures of a crying Guatemalan and they'll report not liking that. I'm not sure there's any takeaway beyond "Dems still have a hell of a propaganda machine".
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
But, Zohran has extended olive branches to the police & Jewish communities.
Why would you take that at face value? A politician "moderating" during a campaign is probably the least trustworthy speaker on Earth.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
I'm not going to say "Who?" because we don't actually encourage named call-outs just to start fights, but on the other hand, it's hard to see who you did have in mind.
I don't think this was ever going to start any fights. I left the address line open-ended so it might apply to anyone who thinks it might apply to them. I've had a number of conversations with people here over the last six months where they were very insistent that their norms-loving was very even and non-partisan, they're just unfortunately new enough to have never been recorded denouncing a violation from the left (or have ever heard of one, or been able to think of one when prompted).
This seemed like a really great opportunity for those people to build some credibility.
You just seem to be angry and hoping someone will step up to fight you.
I would be shocked if anyone started an argument over this. I expect silence instead, which I absolutely plan to remember, gattsuru style, the next time certain people insist they are not just engaged in concern trolling.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
In the event you're thinking of me,
Nah, I know you and would have predicted you taking this stance. You're an actual reasonable person, Chris. I was thinking more of magicalkittycat and wanderinginthewilderness and a few others, newish accounts who get so deeply concerned about civility and norms violations from the right. In my discussions with them, they keep insisting that it's a general principle and they definitely apply it generally, even if they struggle to name a single example. Well, this is a perfect opportunity to build credibility on that topic, isn't it?
And yes, I do try to denounce, not "bullshit", but "actual psycho shit" from my own side. I think it's important to set those kinds of bounds.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
You're just objectively wrong. The person I said that to flatly said it felt threatening before they realized I was making a point.
Again, would you say that black people in the Jim Crow south were being unfair and irrational for feeling "threatened" by speech that fell short of being a specific, immediate, actionable threat from a specific person who was about to actually do it? Please be specific. Ignoring the question again will be considered an adverse answer.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
Well, at least this is a place of reason and decency. I'm sure the respectability centrists among us will pop in to drop some absolutely scathing denounciations of the Virgina Democrat party. I mean, if they didn't then that would be taken as Bayesian evidence that they never sincerely cared about respectability and standards and norms at all, and it was just pure arguments as soldiers and that they're morally more contemptible than men like Donald Trump or George Santos. So I'm sure they'll be by.
Any time now.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
It's almost like some people just constantly lie. Like their entire worldview is based on the notion that there's no such thing as objective truth, just competing power narratives.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
Don't worry. I'm sure all of our stalwart norms enjoyers will pop in to excoriate the Democrats for liking Jones even more after his comments came out.
The point is that there are implications to statements that go beyond their basic dictionary definition meaning. The fact that someone is choosing to explicitly say that carries weight, and informs the interpretation. You can make reasonable inferences about the character and beliefs of the person who chooses to go around saying that to aquaintences the day after a shocking murder.
Imagine a white man who, the day after the MLK assassination, went around loudly saying to all the neightbors "Well, sometimes things happen to people who won't stop running their mouths." Do you think that would be just some irrelevant banality that no black neighbors should use to further their understanding of the man in question?
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
I don't think that statement counts as a threat, even meant seriously, in a legally actionable sort of way. I do think it colors in the difference between "thinking ill of someone" and "celebrating a death". And I think when you're at the point of quibbling over how much approval of the assassination of a debate bro counts as "celebrating" then it is past time for you to have the "Are we the baddies" conversation.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
Is there no truth value in pointing out philosophical incoherence? Free pass on that, ends justify the means?
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
Still, and maybe this is just nitpicking, I think there is a difference between thinking he was a bad person (who the world is better off without) and celebrating his death. In your own account, you say they call him out for his right-wing positions, but these "impliciations" are dicier and usually requires some level of psychologisation of your interlocutor.
You are a bad person and the world would be better off if you were shot.
When you read that statement, does it feel like a calm acknowledgement of detached utilitarian calculus?
Or does it feel like a threat?
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
4d ago
"Don't assume consensus or enforce what you believe to be consensus."
This is basically how the rule is interpreted in practice. Don't assume your controversial, far-from-universal position is universal and then begin reasoning from there.
The examples you listed here:
"I think people should believe...", "I think many people believe...", "I observe people acting like..."
Are all totally fine because they're phrased as beliefs specific to the writer. In general, much more leeway is offered to statements hedged with "I think that..."
I think this is a straightforwardly good rule
Gets a lot of leeway.
This is a straightforwardly good rule
Gets more scrutiny
Given that all sane people know that this is a straightforwardly good rule
Veers into consensus-building.
And worse of all is when you're doing #3, but only by implication because you take consensus as so baked-in that it doesn't even appear to occur to you that some people might disagree.
The other side is constantly talking about the criminal records and unsavory behavior of the people they're deporting. That just doesn't make the news.
I'm not assuming. I've had this conversation a bunch of times, and found the anti-ICE people to be about as well-justified in their claims as when certain people go off about the Holocaust.
You do realize this is right off the back on you taking professional activist press statements at 100% face value, right?
This is the entire dispute. Optics is subjective. Optics is in the eye of the beholder. Optics is two movies seen on the same screen. Why do you take left-wing optics framing as an immutable fact of reality?
Did Albert Einstein recite the "then they came for the" poem and everyone clapped?
A "very real anxiety", wow. How many times has that happened to people you know? Are you similarly invested in very real anxieties about pretty white girls being raped and killed by illegal gang members?
My response, which you're missing and making for me, is that this is a problem entirely because of the "optics", which is a shorthand for "dedicated propaganda campaign". You are correct that the right does need to get better at that, but it would behoove you to notice the extent to which you're participating in said campaign.
More options
Context Copy link