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That's why you can't have massive deportations without authoritarianism, even if they are supported by the majority. People go to the US for the better life that's just too of a empathetic reason for the public to not be sympathetic to them. Yes, this line of thinking logically leads to de facto open borders and hundreds of millions Africans and latinos going to US but that too second order for common folk.
Either that or public stops being empathetic to anybody but their tribe, but I don't think that's very likely in America.
I'm sure the public would be perfectly fine believing that nothing untoward is happening if the media was on the side of the ruling administration and either not talking about it or dutifully framing it and reminding normies that these are people who broke the law and are getting their comeuppance (however fitting that is to the facts).
That's unlikely to happen under a Republican administration for political reasons, but the idea that it's impossible to convince your run of the mill American to be indifferent to the fate of people with interests that conflict with theirs is farcical. Wars were begun and ended on much flimsier pretenses.
The question is whether you'd call that media manipulation authoritarianism or not. I think any serious analysis is past such qualifiers. Effecting unpopular causes with popular consequences is like the entire purpose of government. And people really want to be lied to about these things.
They want to think of themselves as empathetic whilst they launder the violence necessary to maintain society to the State. So the banality of evil has to happen, but off camera.
Kind of tangential, but whenever I hear people complaining that the media is reporting unfairly on Trump (which, to be fair, you are not saying), I want to play a very sad song for that guy on the world's tiniest violin. Trump made his first baby steps into politics by condemning the Central Park Five, and not surprising to anyone with the benefit of hindsight, he was full of shit when he did so. Decades later, he elected the fringe conspiracy theory of birtherism to make a foray into politics in earnest, followed notably by the denial of the 2020 election result. Even his White House press releases look like the ramblings of someone who has long lost contact with anything resembling objective truth. So if his political demise comes at a totally fabricated yellow press story of him fucking a male underage porcupine, I would call that poetic justice.
Now, I am a lot more sympathetic to both deontological and consequentialist arguments against twisting the truth to foil him. The deontological argument is basically that by adopting a Trumpian nihilist irreverence for what is true, the press is basically throwing overboard the most important quality which separated them from him. (Or at least part of it -- see SA on Bounded Distrust.) The consequentialist argument is that you can not out-bullshit the master bullshitter, and that the way to prevail against him is not to get dragged down to his level. (Not that I would call the spinning the MSM did on this story Trump level dishonesty, sure, they did spin it and selectively reported the facts to suit their agenda, but if this was instead a WH press release I would be fully prepared to later learn that Honduras is not a country and people do not have mothers because humans multiply through fission.)
And sure, from some cosmic perspective, Trump probably does not deserve to have lies told about him, in the same way that Billy the fucking Kid did not deserve to have his life snuffed out by a piece of lead.
Live by the media controversy, die by the media controversy?
I'm sure the man himself actually loves it. You never see him smirk as much as when he can call some journo "fake news". I find that whilst the most ridiculous lies are told about the man and he constantly complains about it, the way he frames the complaints tells another story. Trump is constantly doing "a little trolling (it's called [...] a little trolling)".
The far more legitimate complaint here is that the MSM should be, on their own terms, above falling for it. And yet since 2016 they've gleefully shoveled their credibility into a fire trying to claim the "Trump bump" to anchor their dying viewerships.
Not that I am making the complaint, I'm now securely convinced that journalists have always been dishonorable sellswords and should be treated as such. But that's what I imagine the frustration from people sentimental about the Cronkite era looks like.
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"It is not that 'cruelty is the point'- it is that the accusation of cruelty is no longer sufficiently deterring." - was a quality contribution nominee in the last quality post roundup, for what it's worth.
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You absolutely can.
Step 1 would be to have competent and diligent people in charge, making decently intelligent decisions about prioritization and being dedicated to followthrough.
Like, this lady was voluntarily showing up to periodic checkins with ICE. Seems like they could have easily given her 10 days to figure out what to do.
She had a removal order and was removed. She requested her child accompany her. That was granted.
ICE was as nice as is realistically possible to he aside from not deporting her. The "mean" part is to the child who is 2 years old and doesn't even know what being a citizen is. Also said child can come back to the US when they want to. Obviously that will be in the distant future because she probably can't articulate anything on that level at the moment.
Regarding these immigration stories that keep coming out, I feel like we are at, "Just let the terrorists win" levels at this point. That is the argument coming out of the media.
I dont want the terrorists to win. How do you propose to do so?
In this case tell her that we’re terminating the ISAP and she’s got till next week to depart.
She’s been showing up diligently to check-ins, she’s not the problem.
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People tried that. The ones calling themselves diligent and competent refuse to implement the policies they campaign on, and proceed to invest their political capital into foreign wars that aren't ran diligently or competently.
And if diligence and competence gets us Biden's border crisis, perhaps these words don't mean that much to begin with.
I don't suspect that it will go much better when substituting retarded and short-attention-spanned.
Why? The border crisis was solved overnight.
Indeed. What makes you think it's a durable solution?
Depends what you mean by "durable". I see no reason so far to believe that it will stop being effective, but if you're referring to the possibility of it being overturned by the next administration, that's certainly a choice they can make, but it's a choice that will unequivocally show that substituting the diligent and competent for the short-attention-spanned and retarded does work out better.
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