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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   34979 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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Latest updates, now that it's spreading around official media outlets: a suspect is wanted, Vance Boelter. He has ties to Tim Walz and the greater Democratic Party. Still no released motive.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/14/democratic-lawmakers-minnesota-shot

A man masquerading as a police officer is shooting politicians in their homes. The why is debatable; the theories I see floating around have to do with these two Democrat's recent voting records, and breaking from Dem consensus to support the Republicans. I don't know if this is true, I didn't check their records -- I share only because it's what I heard.

The why is also, I think, insignificant. There are so many reasons to be violent in modern society, if you're not intrinsically against violence itself -- punishing defectors, rallying your side with a show of force, intimidating people and politicians on the margins. I don't care what specific social ill or rage drove this would-be assassin.

More interesting, to me, is that we're seeing assassinations and their attempts more and more. It seems that way to me, at least -- I'm going off vibes and a gut reckoning with the numbers, not a reasoned analysis. Maybe I'm entirely wrong! But the vibe I get is the willingness to use violence on one's enemies is becoming significantly more normalized by the day, and eventually, I suspect, we're going to hit a turning point where no one pretends they don't want the other side dead and we get to it.

I don't particularly want that end result, but I find it hard to argue against murderous force on principle. The arguments supporting it seem obviously correct; the protests against it seem sincere, well-meaning, and completely wrong.

It makes me think. We're materially better off than ever. We're spiritually dead. We have more freedom than ever. We're trapped in our heads like anxious prisons. We solved hunger, and crippled ourselves with food.

We don't build. We don't conquer. We prosper, sort of, the numbers on the charts go up and the useless shit is really cheap -- but the precious things are rarer than ever.

I dunno. Nobody died this time, I guess that's nice. And the future, rough beast that it is, continues to slouch toward Bethlehem.

edit: scratch that two died, I guess that's less nice. RIP.

I'll just link to the comment I made on @Dirty_DemSoc 's "WHY BOTHER" post. Since its relevant to the protests AND the assassinations.

Quote:

And yet we know that democratic elections don't completely avert violence, or else Mexico's most recent election wouldn't have been so damn bloody. Turns out that violence is also a way to influence outcomes in a democracy, when you don't expect the votes to go your way 'organically.' So there's a bit of a feedback loop.

Right now we're in a phase where a minority faction is fomenting chaos for want of being able to achieve their goals via electoral process.

In a sense, this is ALSO one faction that is demonstrating that it has motivated, competent shooters on its side, so if something real DID pop off they are at least capable of carrying out deadly violence. The capacity for this violence is no longer just theoretical.

Of course the basic motives will be more complex than that, but the goal of having mass protests is ALSO to demonstrate "we are numerous, we are organized, and we could turn violent if things don't change in our favor!"

But we had a spate of lefty-coded assassination/killing attempts going back at least to Trump's earshot, and THAT trend is a bit scarier because the people of his tribe either ignore it (tacitly approving, I'd say), line up in support like with Luigi, or actually denounce it and try to lower the temperature and root out the radicals among them who are willing to get froggy.

Anything other than the last option will mean MORE attempts going forward. I'm waiting with a TON of consternation for the first FPV drone-based assassination that succeeds.

PLEASE try lowering the temperature, Dems.

I mean that’s how power works. If you read ancient history really up until the late 19th century, violence was very much a part of the politics of the era. I don’t see why our era is different other than a fairly stable system in which power could and did change hands often enough to make all voices feel heard more or less. If that changes, or the elites leading the major factions believe that they will be disempowered for a long period of time, I think you’ll see a return to older and less civilized versions of politics in which shooting a political enemy is a viable way to force your way to a seat at the table.

Power games between the elite are how power is distributed in any society. If they can’t get there by peace, we’ll have wars.

I don’t see why our era is different other than a fairly stable system in which power could and did change hands often enough to make all voices feel heard more or less

That’s… a pretty big change actually. And fairly fundamental. It’s why at least to SOME extent Dems were justified in being a little freaked out by the noises Trump was making about elections. Because trust that your opponent will be forced to give you another chance to win is foundational to democracy as currently practiced.

And on the other side, why “The Emerging Demographic Majority” caused such a storm when it was published.

How far left are we drawing the line to get to this "minority faction"? If mainstream Dems, then I would argue that it is quite clearly not a minority and essentially equivalent with Republicans as the dominant political force. Presidential elections are won by a few percentage points at the widest margin, for example.

The democrats lost the popular vote for president and pretty clearly don't have the general support of the populace.

Trump had a bigger popular margin than in 2016, but my point is that it was still quite narrow, and this is basically true of all post-Clinton elections. For Dems or Reps to claim the other side to be a minority faction rather than one of two more or less evenly matched contenders seems wrong, and this was true four years ago too.

I think the red states are growing faster than blue the blue states, which given how close elections have been and how often the results follow the EC over the popular vote, that could be huge.

In a sense, this is ALSO one faction that is demonstrating that it has motivated, competent shooters on its side, so if something real DID pop off they are at least capable of carrying out deadly violence. The capacity for this violence is no longer just theoretical.

It's worth noting that nobody believes this though- I think my hunting club could wipe the floor with the entirety of antifa in an afternoon in an actual take-the-gloves-off civil unrest scenario, and the median American probably agrees with me. And that's leaving aside that my hunting club is not the entirety of red assets in a serious civil unrest scenario.

The modal outcome of some blue tribe mass-unrest enabled auspicious incident is 'the national guard just kills them all because it doesn't actually want to take orders from blue state governments trying to run interference'. I think both blue and red Americans are aware of this.

But your hunting club has norms, not to mention careers and families that they would potentially sacrifice if they had to go hot.

I think the demonstrated WILLINGNESS to start killing is the factor we're seeing here.

Not clear that your hunting club would actually start killing unless REALLY pushed.

Sure, I don’t think my hunting club would be a factor in sustained civil unrest. But, like, 3%er groups and the like totally would.

PLEASE try lowering the temperature, Dems.

I agree, but let us also remember to pin some blame on Trump for doing the ICE raids as flamboyantly as possible.

Obama deported 410,000 people in 2012 and managed to avoid cameras far better.

I am convinced Trump wants liberals to overreact because it's the best campaign ad and the mobs are happy to take the bait.

Turning people away at the border might count as a deportataion in the stats, but it's not going to undo the 10 million illegals that Mayorkas let in.

Obama didn't do much for removing people in the interior of the country, and that's what I want to see. We're not going to get to the 50 million depirtataions we need, but I applaud the honest effort.

Not all deportations are the same. Turning someone back around the border counts as a deportation but is of a different kind.

Only Nixon could go to China and only Obama could do kids in cages without the left losing their shit.

Yes, black bag the illegals in the dead of night and try to suppress news coverage of the "dissappearances."

Quiet, stealthy operation.

Do you believe the left would sit quietly by for such tactics?

There's a huge gulf between that and what Trump is doing currently. Trump is making these raids as much a spectacle as possible.

Did we forget the Studio Ghibli rendition of the crying handcuffed deportee tweeted by the White House? What about videos captioned "ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight"?

He even has fucking Dr Phil accompanying raids now.

Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. Trump is signaling his political loyalties to those who elected him. The more publicized and controversial means that these are more costly signals. This means that his supporters will believe that his efforts are sincere.

And I'm suggesting that it wouldn't really matter.

The riots in 2020 were triggered by one guy dying under sketchy circumstances.

If Trump didn't give them am impetus, I think they'd find one.

It's not particularly surprising for Trump to run on a mass deportation platform... then make a big deal about fulfilling that promise.

The riots in 2020 were generated by preexisting real(if not exactly grounded in reality) grievances the black community- yes all of it- had with contemporary American governance. That's not the case for the 2025 protests.

The reason he's making a big deal of it is because he can't possibly hit the numbers we need. Best to seem to be effective if you can't actually accomplish everything you've promised.

The riots in 2020 were triggered by one guy dying under sketchy circumstances.

This seems like a spectacular failure to grasp the deep, unresolved tension in the US over how law enforcement conducts itself. There were anti-police protests in 2014 under Obama as well. You can't attribute these things to a single police murder.

then make a big deal about fulfilling that promise.

This is not making a big deal out of enforcement. It is ostentatious cruelty (one might even say the cruelty is the point :v).

You've also got things like ICE going after valid visa holders, calling immigrants "invaders", and the DHS declaring intent to "liberate" LA from the socialists.

The proximal cause of the 2020 riots was not a "deep, unresolved tension in the US over how law enforcement conducts itself".

The proximal cause of the 2020 riots was the widespread belief among Progressives that police kill large numbers of innocent Black men.

This belief was explicitly false, but became widespread among Progressives specifically because a large percentage of Journalists spent many years collaborating together to bias their reporting in a way calculated to create this impression, or in the parlance, "raise awareness". Widespread criticism of this practice was uniformly ignored.

And of course, the direct result of the riots was many thousands of additional Black people murdered by overwhelmingly Black criminals, as law enforcement broke down and the criminals ran rampant. This was the easily-predictable result of the riots, and it was in fact predicted in advance, by myself and many others. I observe that Blues, having been most vociferous in their support of the Black Lives Matter campaign when it was sparking riots based on a fictitious epidemic of Black murder, now studiously deploy the squid ink when the topic of the factual consequences of that campaign is raised. "Black Lives Matter" was a slogan to them, not anything resembling a principle.

calling immigrants "invaders"

The term seems appropriate.

and the DHS declaring intent to "liberate" LA from the socialists.

Despite what this poster and the average LA resident might think, Red Tribers are only de facto second-class citizens in Blue enclaves, not de jure. According to the actual laws in the actual law books, they are still entitled to the protections afforded by the law, and to having the laws enforced on those who break them.

So what's the deep, unresolved tension surrounding keeping noncitizens in the country?

Is there any reason other than "it helps us win elections?"

So what's the deep, unresolved tension surrounding keeping noncitizens in the country?

The competing interests and preferences of nativists, anti-nativists, employers, consumers, etc... combined with a deadlocked political system that effectively leaves immigration policy up to the caprices of executive discretion.

Is there any reason other than "it helps us win elections?"

What is that supposed to mean? Illegal immigrants can't vote, so the "importing voters" theory doesn't hold up so well, and their mere existence alienates the xenophobe vote, so it's hard to call it a winning electoral strategy. Even if you think they're wrong, you should probably take immigration advocates at their word when they offer humanitarian and economic justifications for supporting immigration.

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Yes. Some people believe the US is infinitely wealthy and we can afford to take in all of the downtrodden of the world fleeing poverty and oppression and the only reason you could be against this is because you're racist.

It does not compute that this could bankrupt the entitlements systems they are so fond of that are mostly paid out of high earner taxes. Or they believe money is magic and the classists are causing fake scarcity or whatever.

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I agree he has the odds stacked against him but I still think it adds nothing but combustibility to (e.g.) invite Dr Phil along on raids.

And I think he benefits from trolling the liberals so hard they start engaging in political violence.

I don't think there's a way for Trump to do ICE raids that is not responded to as if it were a maximally offensive, existential threat by his political opposites.

You think there's no way?

https://www.themotte.org/post/2154/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/335942?context=8#context

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.

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