Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
No bio...
User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
8d ago
It does feel a little weird to me that this case is getting so much attention.
Because the case isn't about the case. It's about the limits of law enforcement in the US and what measures are justifiable in the name of immigration enforcement.
I feel like there's been a lot of big news this week
These are all largely tractionless issues. What is there to discuss about foreign policy? Nobody has any real expectation that Congress has the will to hold Trump accountable for overreaching his authority, and in the meantime it's just arguing about which of the Mad King's rantings are babble and which are dire warnings.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
8d ago
They could train their agents better, conduct themselves in a less escalatory fashion, stop attacking protestors, stop trying to intimidate people for mouthing off to them, not wear masks, prioritize targeted operations over open-ended sweeps, not racially profile people or violate the civil rights of citizens by detaining them on no grounds beyond their skin color...
Like, the conceit of Millerites is that illegal immigration constitutes this overwhelming problem that justifies extreme, unconstitutional measures and massive expense, but it just... doesn't. These sweeps are not preventing some dire outcome. They're satisfying the anxieties and appetites of thuggish nativists.
escalations by ICE officers are predictable, if unfortunate.
It's predictable in the sense that they're bottom of the barrel recruits with limited training working for an administration that tacitly endorses police brutality.
Minnesota has always been at the forefront of fighting reactionary forces in the US
To elaborate a little more, this strikes me as a problem with your perspective. Minnesota - and the Twin Cities in particular - have long been quite liberal for a midwestern state. The Twin Cities have a high rate of educational attainment, so while it's not distinctively woke, it's distinctively unfriendly to the thuggish conservatism of the Trump movement. Add in the Trump administration's desire to hurt perceived enemies, and it's not so unlikely that Minnesota pops up again and again.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
8d ago
A lot of Trumpists, heavily practiced in sanewashing Trump and accustomed to the institutional restraints on his behavior from his first term, have basically become incapable of processing negative attitudes towards Trump as anything other than TDS. It's all a joke/big talk/hardball. Until he actually does it, at which point of course he did it. He said he was going to. The fact that Trump says twenty insane things a week and only follows through on two gives enough cover to act like taking him seriously is ridiculous.
In particular, I suspect the Venezuela operation rattled observers far more than Trump supporters grasp. You don't have to like Maduro to feel anxious about Trump suddenly deciding that rapid, unilateral operations are cool at the same time that he revives talk of taking Greenland.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
8d ago
This leaves us with the question of what the point of the entire drama is if the goal is simply to establish more US bases in Greenland, since the US can already do that under existing agreements with Denmark. Is Trump so thug-brained that he needs to see such actions as taking something rather than exercising a pre-existing option?
No, Trump wants to be able to say the US owns Greenland, and his reasons for wanting that are almost certainly incredibly stupid and thug-brained.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
How does that not boil down to simply "the mob is right when it agrees with me over what laws are illegitimate"?
It can amount to that under sufficient dire circumstances. It doesn't have to boil down to that because no every instance of disobedience will take the form of mob violence.
I think the mistake you're making is thinking of support for "rule of law" as absolutist adherence to the letter of the law. This is a position that virtually no one holds and which is not practical in any event because laws are not code and require interpretation. When people say they support rule of law, it means they support an approach to governing that operates according to rules/procedures rather than the arbitrary judgment of individual leaders. It does not mean that they think any output of such a system is inherently legitimate.
I think people generally feel like they're obligated to follow laws even if they disagree with them
Disagreeing with a law is not the same thing as believing it is illegitimate. I disagree with my local zoning laws, but I accept that they're a legitimate extension the county government's authority (which in turn is legitimate because blah blah blah...). On the other hand, if the county government passed a law making it legal to sell your children's organs, I'd consider that illegitimate. Which is to say, I don't just disagree with it, I don't consider it morally valid or valid manifestation of governmental authority. That in turn justifies more extreme measures to oppose it than zoning laws.
Settling disagreements via voting is preferred, but for sufficiently high salience disagreements it's not going to be enough (especially if - as is the case in the US - the electoral system has contested legitimacy). Also, as I alluded up above and in the edit I made after you commented, this is often resolve in a different way: simply ignoring laws you don't like and trusting they won't be enforced or loudly complaining when they are.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
Whining about it strikes me as pathetic LARPing to some extent
The whole point is to whine about it. The purpose of civil disobedience is to shout "come and see the violence inherent in the system" to anyone who can hear. It is to wave the implications of the status quo in the faces of people who would rather not see it - to force authorities to make good on their threats of violence and ask fence-sitters whether keeping segregated lunch counters justified such actions.
What would the purpose of suffering in silence be?
Today the players are the same but the jerseys are flipped.
Identifying arguments as structurally similar is useful if you're studying how people argue, but it's not an especially insightful regarding object level disagreement. Certain patterns of argument frequently recur, but you can't substitute that observation for actually resolving the disagreement, because the substance of the disagreement is in the object level. The question of whether or not Ashli Babbitt was a traitor or a martyr depends almost entirely on whether or not you think the 2020 election was stolen*, not on whether or not you think it is legitimate to resist the government under at least some circumstances.
To put it another way: liberals and conservatives both generally agree that you are obligated to obey legitimate laws and you are not obligated to obey illegitimate laws** (and, indeed, may be obligated not to obey - 'orders are orders' not being considered a good excuse for bad behavior). Observing this doesn't help you adjudicate the differences between cases, because you still need to make judgments about the specific details of the case.
In broad strokes it's clear neither side cares about democracy or rule of law per se
I don't think you can infer that from their actions. If you ask them, they will generally argue that their actions are upholding rule of law and democracy, and for the most part they mean it.
*one could conceivably argue that the shooting was unjustified and the insurrection was unjustified, but that seems to be a marginal position
**In reality, people ignore all sorts of laws all the time, including laws they don't really question the validity of (e.g. traffic laws), which also raises the secondary question of which laws are important enough to care about violations. One could think a law is legitimate, but the measures taken to enforce it are not
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
10d ago
I get the impression that a lot of Iran's badness is exaggerated by Western media. Is the current government of Iran illegitimate? If so, why?
If your country has colossal protests every few years that have to be repressed with significant bloodshed, you probably have an internal legitimacy problem.
It would be good for US geopolitical intrests for the current regime to fall. Does this somehow make angry mobs torching government buildings okay
No. The legitimacy of rebellion in Iran is not based on US interests.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
I'm still hoping someone will put out a longer video that shows the lead up. All the footage I've seen so far is the same couple of videos that all begin seconds before the shooting (granted, it's entirely possible that's just when people started recording).
People here seem to be taking it as a given that she was trying to block ICE vehicles, but the footage we have doesn't actually support that. There are ICE vehicles on either side of her, and we see another vehicle pull past her before the confrontation. It is inference, but it looks more to me like ICE boxed her in rather than vice versa.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
It seems to be that a large percentage (30%, 60%, 90%?) of gay men truly enjoy being deviant.
I'm sure there are some, but celebration of deviancy is often a reaction to being stigmatized. If you're an American homosexual older than ~30, you grew up in an environment where casual homophobia was virtually guaranteed even in fairly liberal environments. Much of the point of Pride was(/is) to be in-your-face in reaction to people telling you to stay in the closet (or die) because you were a moral abomination.
Many seem to lament the mainstreaming of gayness having taken a lot of the fun out of it.
See also: Taliban fighters complain about having to work in an office instead of waging jihad. There's always going to be some people for whom the struggle was a source of meaning and excitement. The normalization of homosexuality means less interest in flamboyantly transgressive behavior as a show of defiance and more PTA meetings.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
Short of physically apprehending them, what would you suggest doing to remove said illegal aliens?
"Physically apprehending them" covers a range of possibilities, and prominent does not include arresting, intimidating, or murdering US citizens. There's also pursuing legal changes that would make it vastly harder to employ illegal immigrants.
The first video has the car physically in their way
The first video has the car bracketed by ICE vehicles and has another vehicle passing in front of it. Strongly suggests ICE boxed her in, rather than vice versa (something they have done in the past as well, though last time the woman they shot survived).
As an aside: Noem labeling the victim a domestic terrorist is absolutely farcical and yet another example of the Trump administration's fundamentally authoritarian inclination.
edit:
"Yep, that sure is the language of the innocent." Comparisons to the Chicago shooting leap to mind, including the likelihood of DHS sabotaging evidence after lying about events.
Local police manage to do it just fine. You do investigation/surveillance and perform targeted arrests rather than grandiose sweeps with masked agents cosplaying as soldiers. (Of course, ICE does that in the most psychotic and inept way possible as well - see the Ozturk case)
Or, since we're talking about immigration enforcement specifically, you change the laws to make employing illegal immigrants virtually impossible. That will, of course, never happen, because it would mean holding the business gentry that run the GOP liable for something.
I go back to: the ostentatious thuggery is the point. ICE doesn't have to be filled with the semi-trained dregs of the Red Tribe, but it is. If you're anti-Trump, ICE is supposed to scare you. If you're pro-Trump, ICE is a steady source of cruelty porn.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
Yes, I spent a fair amount of time yesterday evening looking for longer, unedited footage that might clarify the origin of the confrontation.
So far I have hearsay or inference, frequently from people who openly endorse violence against protesters.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
The legal question is regrettably rather immaterial. The odds that a federal agent is going to be held accountable by the current (or any) administration is quite low, and doubly so for Steven Miller's specialest boys. However, Noem is currently asserting not merely that the shooting was legally justified but that the victim was actually a domestic terrorist attempting to murder ICE agents, which is very obviously false.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
The goal is to spike the cannons so that when the counterattack succeeds, the enemy will no longer be able to use those weapons. This will permanently tilt the board in the direction of preferred policies and against disfavored policies, even after the exposed salient is lost.
If you ever find yourself thinking something is 4D chess, just remember: it's never 4D chess. If someone is acting crazy and stupid, it's almost certainly because they're crazy and stupid.
As I noted in a different comment, Marco Rubio is trying to run a more-or-less normal conservative foreign policy, which is not consistent with a strategy of deliberate sabotage. If you want to, e.g. build an anti-China coalition, you need to not piss off everyone you want to join the coalition. Conversely, if you wanted to signal that the US is crazy and unreliable, excluding everybody sane and reputable would be an important part of that. You wouldn't pick Rubio as SoS. You'd find another bellicose lackey like Hegseth or Patel. It's conceivable that Rubio was imposed on Trump behind the scenes, or that they feel the need to include someone who isn't a complete fool/lunatic, but considering the way Trump has completely whipped the GOP in other respects, that seems unlikely.
Instead you've got a three(ish) way split between the normiecons trying to run something approximating a real foreign policy, far-right authoritarians who think they're waging civilizational warfare, and a mad king who loves grandstanding and has the preferences of the last person to talk to him. The closest I think you get to the sabotage angle is that I suspect people in the far-right camp think the US stands to benefit from a collapse of the global order - that might makes right and it is better to be king of the Americas than primus inter pares of the free world. But that's not a policy of sabotage, it's just doing the stuff you want to do.
The federal government is, for a lawyer or researcher or engineer, no longer a reliable partner.
Much like with the Hmong, the Kurds, and countless other one-time allies hung out to dry by the United States, you don't work with the US government because it's reliable. You work with the USG because there isn't an alternative. It doesn't matter that the USG is erratic, it's still signing most of the checks. This is especially true for specialists who work in fields that are of limited interested in private employers, or who prefer public service.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
This woman used her vehicle to impede ICE officers
If people have evidence of this, they should present it. So far, I've seen people assume this out of instinctive deferrence to authority, but I haven't seen it substantiated (and, again, given ICE's history of lying to justify their undisciplined and aggressive behavior, I see no reason to trust them).
It is legal for the federal government to enforce immigration and borders.
This is the slippery slope I mentioned, where "we require certain authority to do our job" becomes "we can do whatever we claim is necessary." ICE has a specific job that doesn't really them to send out masked goons like this.
I find it fairly unlikely ICE agents thought they had a real reason to try and detain her, rather than thinking they were going to put an obnoxious protestor in their place. And why not? There's no way they're going to be held accountable. Just loudly proclaim you bagged a domestic terrorist.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
Today's case makes it clear to me if this exact situation from 2019 was re-played but it was an ICE agent instead of a police resource officer it would be seen as a murder by every Democrat.
There's an obvious point here where ordinary cops have a real job maintaining public order, whereas nothing about what ICE does requires them to act the way they do other than the appetite for ostentatious thuggery.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
Personally, I find accosting and murdering innocent people and then calling them domestic terrorists to be anti-social and anti-civic, and it ought to be possible to crack down on it in some fashion. Maybe if law enforcement suffered consequences more often for abusing their power, it would happen less often.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
I don't think that clearly shows that at all, and other close-up footage makes it pretty clear that any contact was incidental at most (the guy who was allegedly injured is clearly fine).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
I pretty clearly spell out what I think happened in the second paragraph of my post.
It appears she had parked her car perpendicularly on a small road, presumably to block or otherwise obstruct ICE activity
She is doing a piss-poor job, then, because another car passes in front of her shortly before ICE agents approach her. It looks more to me like she got stopped in the middle of a three point turn.
I have a strong suspicion that ICE deliberately hemmed her in, given that there are ICE vehicles on either side of her. Likely doing the thing they often do where they stop and harass people for observing them. Only this time, the observer panicked and so did ICE.
However there was an agent on the hood of her car that she certainly did hit.
Where? The agent in front of her was some ways off and she unambiguously turns away from him.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
13d ago
The claim that the victim was trying to run an agent over is not only not true, video footage clearly shows that it isn't. That won't stop DHS from lying (again) and claiming that ICE agents were victims instead of perpetrators (again). It's thoroughly unclear why they were trying to stop this woman in the first place, and given ICE's pattern of lying, I have zero confidence in their testimony (see also: Chicago)
The slippery slope for me
The slippery slope here is one we've already slid down: "law enforcement needs certain authority to do their job" has become "law enforcement can do whatever they want if it's allegedly part of their job and it's a spin of the roulette wheel whether they'll ever face consequences." The best you can realistically hope for is an order telling them to stop violating your rights, which is of limited utility when you're dead. Maybe you'll get lucky and there will be earth-shattering protests, but more likely the taxpayers will get stuck footing the bill while nothing of consequence results for the actual perpetrators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/ice-apprehension-of-us-citizens-derided-as-kavanaugh-stops
https://ij.org/client/leonardo-garcia-venegas/
You're welcome. (I'm sure you'll have some explanation for how explicit racial profiling isn't racial profiling)
More options
Context Copy link