WandererintheWilderness
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User ID: 3496
What makes you think they will not just run away and not show up to their deportation? Saw off their monitor bracelets and go into hiding?
As I mentioned in another reply further down the chain, my ideal regime of policing would also be such that this just wouldn't be possible. There would always be a cop close enough that they can get notified as soon as a bracelet detects funny business, and zoom to its last recorded location before the alert.
In any event, you know, the ankle bracelets are only a shot in the dark. I don't claim they're the miracle cure-all. I only bring them up as an example of a middle-of-the-road policy that's neither maximally repressive nor maximally permissive with regards to what to do with illegals once detected. I just don't think "reliably expel illegal immigrants, without ruining their lives more than is necessary to do so" is an impossible ask for a well-run machinery of state in the modern world. There's gotta be a way, we just haven't found it yet, mostly for lack of looking (because the Left doesn't want the illegals expelled, and the Right wants to be cruel about it).
Well, no, but I don't believe abortion doctors are murderers, either. Or indeed that pro-lifers are just patriarchal oppressors obsessed with Controlling Women's Bodies™. That's not in question. It's just that inaccurately ascribing evil motives to the opposition is still the bread and butter of politics, and you don't meaningfully have freedom of speech if you start banning individual instances for being especially untrue or incendiary.
WandererintheWilderness
4d ago
This seems like a needlessly pedantic hill to die on. Substitute "Nazis" for "murderous white supremacists", or however you want to phrase the combination of immorality and ideology which Leftists are clearly pointing to when they call people "Nazis". But I don't think anyone is honestly confused about this. It's only technically wrong in the same sense that "Senator McExample is a fucking asshole" would be inaccurate insofar as McExample is not literally an ambulatory anus.
WandererintheWilderness
4d ago
Vandalizing unoccupied Teslas speaks ill of the culprits' maturity, but widespread tolerance for "heck yeah, let's mess up Bad Man supporters' stupid-looking hell-cars, that'll show them" does not make me despair of human nature in the same way "heck yeah, hang that father of three from a lamppost" would. Those seem to be in very different realms, and just because the former is disappointingly common, does not make me lose hope about the rarity of the latter sentiment.
WandererintheWilderness
4d ago
I very much did not say that addressing the problem "in any way" is "too much to ask". I was replying to your first comment, where you claimed that because the Left isn't reacting as violently as when they're tilting at racist windmills, they may as well not be doing anything at all. My point is that "address the problem as violently as they address supposed racism" (or even half as violently as that!) is a much higher bar than "address the problem in any way at all", and just because they aren't doing the former, doesn't prove they aren't doing the latter.
But also,
then at least spare me the farce of rolling up in the first place and asking what I expect the left to do.
that wasn't actually me. Different users altogether. Check the usernames.
WandererintheWilderness
4d ago
It's a massive improvement for the illegal alien, I find myself noticing.
Well, it's a massive improvement in terms of overall human flourishing, kindness and happiness, and therefore by my values, a massive improvement in the moral standing of the people doing the expelling.
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
That's a very strong point I hadn't considered in quite those terms.
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
That's a fair spin. I think some of my remaining discomfort with this state of affairs goes back to the sense that ICE's scary-goons stylings are escalating tensions - I feel like playing these sorts of games is how you get a low-trust, high-crime society where even people who obey the law don't really respect it. The word among the populace being "If you commit crimes you'll fall into the hands of a bunch of violent bastards" maybe mostly works as a brute-force way to deter crime if nothing else does, but it seems strictly inferior in terms of social stability and well-being, when compared to a society where the police are genuinely viewed as admirable, aspirational, pro-social figures the way firefighters are. Fight fire with fire and the world goes up in smoke, etc. etc. Building a climate of fear is inferior to building an actually orderly society.
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
You sneak, you edited your post! Two days or two weeks, that's a question of economics to me
Sorry! I have a recurring issue of looking at what I've just posted and suddenly getting a new idea. For what it's worth the duration isn't a crux for me, "two weeks" was a shot-in-the-dark example. I would still consider two days a massive improvement over "get in the van now".
No offense, but I get the feeling that you effectively want more immigration.
No, I want human beings to be as happy and comfortable as humanly possible. Open borders in a society that is not yet post-scarcity does not lead to that, therefore excess immigration must be stopped, but if we're going to regretfully turn people away we should try to be decent about it, because in an ideal world they should be able to stay if they want. Giving people time to collect their belongings and say goodbye to any acquaintances they might have made during their stay seems like basic decency.
I think of this in Rawlsian and golden-rule terms - were I in the position of an illegal immigrant who's been discovered, I would acknowledge that exiling me is within the rights, and in the best interests, of the body politic, but I would still regard a few weeks' grace period to put my affairs in order as something to which I would feel entitled regardless as a human being, being that two weeks more or less are not imposing a meaningful economic burden on the country the way my continued lifelong presence might (while they make a great difference to my own happiness). If defectors abusing that grace period to escape make it impossible to extend this basic kindness to arrestees who cooperate, then we need a system to crack down and disincentivize such abuse, so as to be able to once again extend that basic kindness to people who cooperate.
As I said elsewhere in the thread my ideal mode of policing would involve a lot more low-scale police presence. The way I imagine it, as soon as something screwy is detected with someone's monitor, the nearest beat cop gets an alert and takes a look at the last known coordinates. Very different from "if you miss a court date then maybe possibly something gets done within seven business days".
I don't claim this system is foolproof, this isn't my job and it's only a sketch of an idea that I've kicked around in the back of my mind. But I'd be surprised if cleverer minds than me couldn't expand it into a functional system. I think there's a lot of untapped potential in this sort of system, due to the stigma associated with putting tags on minorities' bodies.
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
I think this is an unreasonable standard. Cleaning house is never going to involve the same enthusiasm as fighting the outgroup, even if it's a sincere effort.
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
Or the enforcement can also be ineffective, because grabbing them and putting them in a holding facility is Stormtrooper-ish, so letting them out with a court date gives them more opportunity to disappear again.
I think if I were Immigration Czar I would try a scheme with ankle monitors. ICE agents identify you as illegal, you get tagged and a reasonable timeline to put your affairs in order and leave the country. If that time elapses, or the monitor mysteriously turns off - then you get detained.
And also, there's the problem that ICE is also opposed to organized criminal elements, like human smugglers, that are aligned with cartels. Cartels are be perfectly willing and able to terrorize ICE agents and their families.
This is true but seems like a very good argument for separating ICE into two different corps, one that fights organized crime and one that enforces immigration laws. Outside of Trump's rhetorical interest in acting like all illegals are violent gang members, it doesn't seem especially rational for them to have both jobs, precisely because very different approaches and MOs are proportionate when dealing with one group vs the other.
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
I agree with most of this, yes.
As I said elsewhere in the thread, I am leery of the "other tactics (even stochastically)" bit, which I think can too easily be used as a bludgeon against free speech expressing what the bludgeon-wielding side deems to be wrongthink. If it is appropriate for non-violent pro-life activists to refer to abortion doctors as murderers - and it must be appropriate, because that is their legitimate moral belief and freedom of speech means nothing if they cannot express it - then it must remain appropriate for non-violent pro-immigration extremists to refer to ICE agents as Nazis.
But that's only one part of your post, and really a whole other conversation from the core issue here.
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
This doesn't seem to work on Mangione.
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
But we were discussing the question of whether cops, in general, need to be at least somewhat scary and intimidating in order to be effective in their jobs, and you were quite explicitly arguing that they don't
I think what I meant to say is that I don't think there's a better royal road to being "scary and intimidating" in the necessary sense than simply reliably following through on threats when called to do so, thus creating common knowledge that police threats are credible. Trying to make cops appear threatening in ways not directly related to spreading factual knowledge of "if you commit a crime they will inevitably arrest you; if you resist arrest they will reliably shoot you" will fall on a spectrum from gilding the lily to actively counterproductive.
(I will also add that I don't particularly object to big guns and bulletproof vests, per se. What I object to is law enforcement leaning into the image that they're trigger-happy and unaccountable, as the imagery of masked goons and unmarked vans does. Visible proof that you have real firepower to bring to bear as needed - I think that kind of "intimidation" can be very much appropriate. Notably the latter is about showing that lawful threats can and will be carried out if needed; while the former is about giving a menacing impression that if you cross these guys, you might end up on the receiving end of extrajudicial violence, so don't test our patience.)
Aside from your contention of a fact being a non-falsifiable hypothesis rather than a fact
Until demasking is attempted, so is the hypothesis that demasking would lead to further escalation of violence.
Because they are not Stormtroopers. They are not stormtroopers in the military context (ICE are not dressed as the origin of the term of trench stormers), or in the fascist context (ICE is not fulfilling a fascist police state supression role), or the in the young adult novel dystopian government context (the demand of which is exceeding the supply).
I am not saying that they "are" Stormtroopers, I am saying that they look like Stormtroopers - meant in its colloquial aesthetic sense of "identical, impersonal, threatening-looking armed goons". I think it is obviously true that they look like Stormtroopers, and fairly clear from Trump's own rhetoric and that of ICE supporters, that this is an aesthetic they deliberately cultivate as opposed to an innocent consequence of putting together optimally protective and effective uniforms. They want ICE to look intimidating. Are you really claiming that they don't?
You are already in the context of the pushback. You, specifically, are opposing the pushback.
You are talking about pushback from the Right; I am talking about pushback from within the Left (which Mottizens have been the first to notice has been lacking).
I kinda feel like I'm being motte-and-baileyed here. (I'm not accusing you of doing it on purpose, I just think we're deep enough in the weeds that we're losing sight of the goalposts.)
When we got onto the topic of whether cops need to be "intimidating", we were debating the usefulness of things like balaclavas and the imperious, short-tempered, bully-like demeanor that cops typically adopt when dealing with suspects. You now seem to be redefining "intimidating" such that by definition, a cop who can make a credible threat of following through on a threat of violence is "intimidating". Which, fair enough, but in that sense it's trivially true that they need to be "intimidating"; that's not the question. The question is what traits and behaviors make cops' threats seem believable, and whether that necessarily includes dressing up like Stormtroopers or a generally unpleasant attitude. I don't think it does.
"well, golly gosh, you've gotten yourself into a right pickle haven't you? Why don't you drop the weapon and come down with me to the station and we'll talk about this? But if you don't want to, that's alright with me too." Does that sound like a police officer who would be effective at fighting crime?
Well, no. But one who remains level-headed - who points the gun and without flinching, delivers the "you're under arrest. I don't want to hurt you, I will if I have to" spiel - seems like a better incarnation of justice, a better keeper of the peace, than one who cultivates the image of a capricious, violent bully. Not even just because that's better for the wrongfully-accused innocent. Consider that where black criminals are concerned, the perception is that cops won't give you a fair shake and will look for any excuse to beat you up or worse, however you behave. I think this incentivizes fight-or-flight over cooperation, while if cops took greater care to cultivate the image of reasonable authority figures who'll play fair if you play fair, petty criminals might be more inclined to surrender peacefully.
This description, you'll note, is not true of police officers, who are only marginally less vulnerable to harm than anyone else
It's not true of individual cops, but it's true of The State. Again, cops in my view should come across as gears in a machinery of justice which is transparent, reliable, and inescapable. You should know that shooting a police officer to escape is pointless, not because that particular cop is invulnerable, but because another cop will just get you instead one housing block away. (Though also because that cop will shoot you if he can and you give him reason to. Again, I just don't think that "hair-trigger-tempered bully" vs "ineffectual pussy" is a binary. There are other options here. Would it sound completely ridiculous to say I want cops to be chivalrous?)
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
There is the possibility that revealing all their identities would lead to mass attack
Yes, it's a possibility. But like you, I find it less likely as an outcome than de-escalation. It is at the very least an uncertain practical question on which reasonable minds can disagree. By contrast, lots of Mottizens seem to take for granted that obviously demasking would lead to a spate of assassinations, and anyone who advocates it must secretly desire such an escalation - which I think is just farcical, boomer Democratic congressmen aren't secretly salivating for actual civil war even if some hotheads on Bluesky do.
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
the 'stormtrooper' accusation is a useful lie
How is it a lie? They do in fact look like faceless Stormtroopers. You can argue that this is necessary, either because that's just how policing work or because the Left has left immigration enforcers no other options - but you can't argue it's a "lie". It's visibly just true, and several other people in the thread are in fact defending that yes, they are, but that's what you gotta do.
That your preferred additional policy of demasking would make it even easier for malefactors to escalate targetting of those fewer authorized actors,
I contend - as a matter of fact - that if ICE agents looked and acted like normal people instead of Stormtroopers, this would in fact lead to fewer attacks on them in the mid-to-long-term. There's a fringe of radicals who would still try to doxx/hurt/kill them, but they would look much worse in the eyes of the wider population than in the current status quo where the people they're fighting go around dressing and acting like supervillains. Violence against a normal-looking dude would seem shocking and generate more pushback.
But at the end of the day, there's no way around the trade-off. Police officers fight crime, which means they have to be intimidating to violent criminals
I disagree that there's no way around this so-called trade-off. You constantly equivocate between intimidation and actual effectivenesss. But the fact that police officers fight crime simply means that police officers have to be effective at fighting crime. Intimidation doesn't have to come into it. Even if you insist on viewing deterrence as a major role of the police, the promise of swift and reliable response to wrongdoing - leading to arrest and sentencing - could provide that all on its own, without the cops needing to individually come across as scary mofos who'll beat you to a pulp at their own discretion. If you know he's indestructible and omniscient, Superman can deter crime just as well as Batman.
The ideal police force, IMO, should aspire to work like a magic spell that teleports you before a judge as soon as you commit a crime. The process should be smooth, it should be quick, but it should be inescapable. Simple as that. The punishment that deters crime is what happens after you are brought before the judge and found guilty; the process that gets you to that point should be as painless as possible, for the sake of the innocent-until-proven-guilty.
(Before someone brings it up, I am aware that we're currently far away from this system partly because judges are too soft, not just because cops are too tough. This certainly needs to be fixed at both ends of the process. But the current vicious cycle, where cops get ever tougher to make up the deterrence deficit from slap-on-the-wrist-prone courts, while courts get softer and softer because how can you not sympathize with criminals abused by such needlessly violent cops?, has to be stopped.)
efforts to reduce the 'goon' surface vector by reducing police presence and proactivity
Well, that's not what I want. I would like more, but softer, policing. More local beat cops who know everyone by name, fewer Stormtroopers. I'll grant you that the mainstream Democratic messaging doesn't actively advocate for this, but for what it's worth, that's what I want; I don't think there's a binary switch between "defund the police" and "goons in balaclavas". (See also this post.)
WandererintheWilderness
5d ago
The "accountable" is only part of it. The main part of it, as I said, is that the masked look (and ICE's overall vibe) is clearly meant to be threatening, and we would like the government to cool it with the scary goons immediately. If it was just a matter of protecting agents' identities there would be many ways for them to present themselves that didn't make them look like video game mooks. Unfortunately, Trump thinks having scary-looking Stormtroopers looks badass.
In the usual utilitarian way - "as humanly possible" includes making trade-offs for the greater good, where we'll sometimes deny Bob what would make him happy because it would involve unacceptable discomfort to Alice. (In Thought Experiment Land you can consequently imagine a utility monster who can only derive pleasure from hurting other people, and who tragically can never be allowed to be happy in a just society; but in the real world, even seriously twisted people are capable of getting their kicks some other way than their preferred vice, and very few preferences for illegal things are truly fixed in a way that can't be satisfied by e.g. roleplay, so the question doesn't really arise.)
If we're talking about a post-scarcity USA in particular, where somehow the States have unlimited resources but the rest of the Earth hasn't caught up, then yes, you'd have a moral imperative to have open borders. I don't value the preservation of the local culture at zero, but human beings' lives come first. That's not a very likely scenario, although it's a morally instructive one and what I had in mind when I said that "in an ideal world" we would be able to take in all economic refugees. (Much as "in an ideal world" where I'm a trillionaire I would be able to give ten thousand bucks to every homeless person I meet without sacrificing an inch of my personal comfort and safety. This is, obviously, a casual, non-rigorous usage of "ideal world", since of course in a truly ideal world there wouldn't be homeless people in the first place.)
In an actually ideal, truly post-scarcity world… well, who knows? Such a world would have such fundamentally different dynamics from ours that I'd be surprised if we keep the same political system at all, never mind the specifics of immigration law. For one thing, if resource shortage is no longer a concern worldwide, is there even much demand for immigration to the US? Somehow I don't think people would be lining up by the million to flock to America and get minimum-wage jobs if they had guaranteed food, housing and healthcare back home. In that scenario, maybe the amount of people who want to move to the US per year shrinks to such an extent that concerns about alterations to the culture become negligible, and at that point it would be churlish to create artificial hurdles out of chauvinism.
Still, conceivably demand remains high and damage to the local culture per marginal immigrant remains constant, even if conditions back home are no worse for the would-be immigrants than in the US by objective metrics. At that point, certainly it would be morally acceptable to decide we want completely closed borders to preserve the "local culture". I don't really know which way I'd vote, but I would be fine with my fellow citizens voting purely based on personal preference and I would respect the outcome of that vote, whatever it may be. Weighing whether we'd rather preserve our local culture than allow safe, healthy, affluent foreigners maximal freedom of movement is a totally different question from the current state of affairs. Maybe the US splinters, with some states being open-borders and others not. I think it might well happen at an even smaller scale, with whole counties becoming vast gated communities some of which are outsider-hostile and others not. That seems like maybe the stablest equilibrium for Utopia.
But then again, would Americans be found to in fact care that much about immigrants' effect on "the local culture" in a world where "immigrants" aren't synonymous with "criminal underclass"? Where they aren't "taking our jobs"? How about if the native population is now immortal and at no danger of actually being demographically replaced? After all, a post-scarcity world is realistically a post-singularity one as well. And what are we even talking about at this point? It's unknown unknowns all the way down.
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