Hadad
1hr ago
You're quite welcome! I don't know how popular my take would be here, given this place has always been more disaffected liberals than anything else, but I'd say it's rather common among the modern right -- there's too much history on the subject for anyone to believe the rules matter.
Hadad
4hr ago
I agree, it'd be great if they didn't. Unfortunately, we've had multiple administrations fill the nation with illegals, who contribute to the electoral power of the very administrations that do this, and they then dodge (with help) the legal means of deporting them.
It'd be lovely if I could make Democrats stop, but I can't. So instead, I'm going for the fixes that are actually possible.
Hadad
4hr ago
The harsh consequences are the terror, pain, and distress of the deportation process, ideally aggravated as much as possible by willful right-wing executives. This is what I referred to in my other post as the "psychic wound" -- make being an illegal in the US as traumatic as possible, and many of them will self-deport, while others, not yet in the US, will be scared of the danger and not come at all.
There is no meaningful way for the state to bind its descendants. Laws can be changed or ignored. Personnel will change. Short of a constitutional amendment -- which ain't happening, and even if it did, could theoretically happen again after that to undo it -- there is no way to stop the next admin from fucking everything you did up.
So solutions must be outside the usual bounds of law and state capacity. The solution is to create something that outlasts any one administration. Memories of horror and pain are one such option -- generational wounds, enduring long after Trump's out of office and the next Democrat is once again promising infinity immigration with no brakes and permanent amnesty.
Hadad
17hr ago
There's absolutely nothing extreme about supporting brutalizing rioters, especially ones rioting in support of criminals. This is an extremely mainstream right-wing preference. All lives splatter, Antifa getting beat, etc., etc -- there's no love lost for agents of entropy. It'd take quite the bubble to think otherwise.
Hadad
20hr ago
I'll keep that in mind the next time Chris wordily tells me to fuck off, but no promises.
Hadad
20hr ago
The only heat is coming from Chris. You needn't worry about me fighting with him; I already told him to hush.
Hadad
21hr 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
22hr 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
23hr 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
2d 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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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
4d 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.
Why is this hard? If anything, their consistency should reinforce your belief in their integrity.
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