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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   35309 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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General poll of opinions here, since I don't see much conversation about it - either because of news bubbles or general disinterest in discussing the ugly side of authoritarianism.

Main query: Are the blackbagging tactics of ICE a necessary evil, a dangerous overstep, or some nuanced in-between?

Genuinely, I don't have a steelman for blackbagging tactics. Right now, ICE is targeting a certain type of "undesirable", namely, allegedly undocumented illegal immigrants, and appear to have carte blanche to apprehend anyone who disrupts that process. But the hallmark of authoritarianism is to expand the definition of "undesirable" to include your political opponents - and if blackbagging undesirables is already palatable, then you can blackbag your political opponents. It's a matter of convenience that political enemies are already attempting to disrupt the blackbagging of undocumented illegal immigrants - it makes that leap that much easier were it to happen. How convenient as well that there's now an entire organizational apparatus gaining valuable experience in how to make people disappear on US soil? They may look like mall cops who are dressed for the paintball arena for now, but if they happened to get any of that DoD money...

Blackbagging by ICE seems to be an extrajudicial process by design, as a flex of the unitary executive theory that the judiciary exists only to serve the will of the executive. The judiciary is viewed as uncooperative and painted as obstructive, despite being intentionally hamstrung by the right wing of congress that has refused for several presidential terms to pass any immigration reform despite bipartisan efforts. One doesn't have to look very hard at all to find red tribe voices foaming at the mouth to declare enemies of the state: official mouthpieces of the current administration, senators, congresspeople. History rhymes, and I know enough of the current admin has read Carl Schmitt to recognize the paths that are available to them at this point if they happen to be hungry for power.

Ending query: Assuming (for the sake of this question) that the end goal of this administration is to establish a type of authoritarianism where people are kidnapped and disappeared because of vocal opposition to the regime, what should be the response by the opposition that would want to prevent that? History buffs, what are the best examples of countries barely recovering from the brink of authoritarianism?

Edit: I appreciate the responses, there was actually quite a bit of variety which was nice to read. I came away with a steelman (which I didn't have originally) which is that the theatrics of ICE is meant to intimidate illegal immigrants. In effect, it would seem like that would select for immigrants who are reckless and fearless (yikes), or immigrants who face such extreme danger in their home country that even Twitter videos of brown people being tackled by men in masks doesn't slow them down (these desperate people would probably be considered "authentic" refugees by most leftists, and not just "economic migrants").

Are the blackbagging tactics of ICE a necessary evil, a dangerous overstep, or some nuanced in-between?

My thoughts? I think think they're not "a necessary evil" only because they're insufficient. I think Neema Parvini has a point when he asks:

Tell me why the mayor of L.A. and Gavin Newsom aren’t arrested for aiding and abetting an insurrection against America? Why aren’t they arrested for treason, under the Insurrection Act?

and calls for the Democratic Party to be banned, and replaced with a left-wing party that isn't "mental":

And like I said, we're getting to the point where they just need to be banned. It's like, at what level of corruption, and at what level of stupidity, do you just say, look, this is not a viable party anymore. We need to just, like, ban it, and replace it with, you know— okay, it can still be leftist, but you at least have to be… you at least have to agree to basic things.

Like, one, America is an actual nation. Number two, the concept of having a passport and citizenship mean something. Being an American means something. Therefore, number three, different laws apply to foreigners, illegal immigrants, than to the native population. Number four, if people who are not native to America start burning things down, then you not only have to take action, you have to deport those people immediately. Number five, if foreign politicians like the President of Mexico starts cheering on, you know, effectively a kind of invasion into your country, you don't side with them, you side against them.

These are just basic, basic, basic kind of… I know there's no such thing as the social contract, right? But there's a tacit agreement between the rulers and the ruled in all societies that would agree to all of those things that I just said.

If you do not agree to that, you should not be allowed to be part of public life. You shouldn't be allowed to be an official if you don't agree to all those things I just said. These dickheads are meant to take an oath on the Bible. That they're meant to take an oath, you know, on the Constitution when they take office. This is treason. It shouldn't be allowed.

Like, one, America is an actual nation. Number two, the concept of having a passport and citizenship mean something. Being an American means something. Therefore, number three, different laws apply to foreigners, illegal immigrants, than to the native population. Number four, if people who are not native to America start burning things down, then you not only have to take action, you have to deport those people immediately. Number five, if foreign politicians like the President of Mexico starts cheering on, you know, effectively a kind of invasion into your country, you don't side with them, you side against them.

This is an extremely good breakdown! I mean yeah the total disregard for the law and the idea of a nation is just... insane. I don't understand it. I guess there's a justification that moral law is higher than secular law, which I agree with but like... you can't just ignore it as a politician.

EDIT: My other favorite quote from this video:

Of course you arrest the people in face masks! You don't just allow ninjas to roam around in the street!

Assuming (for the sake of this question) that the end goal of this administration is to establish a type of authoritarianism where people are kidnapped and disappeared because of vocal opposition to the regime, what should be the response by the opposition that would want to prevent that?

Maybe this is just my biased right-wing brain thinking, but my answer is the 2nd amendment. Government needs the ability to do violence, but it needs the people's overwhelming force to keep it aligned.

Private individuals should arm themselves. Officially, the opposition should expand private militia. If the government doesn't allow this, then the authoritarianism has already been established.

I will note that since mechanisation, you kinda need militia to have tanks and MANPADs in order to provide a credible deterrent to tyranny. This isn't a reductio ad absurdum; that's colourable. But that's where the goalposts are.

(I am armed up to the extent of the law in Victoria - i.e. I have a compound bow - but this isn't to FIGHT THE POWER. This is as a moderately-unlikely contingency in case of the police failing to control cannibal looter mobs subsequent to nuclear war. Cannibal looter mobs are much easier to fight off than SWAT.)

I would like to present one of ChatGPTs greatest works, it's also like chatGPT 3 or 3.5, so it's basically an archeological text at this point.

Shooty shooty pew pew pew!

Let’s all learn what guns can do!

Liberals in the USA

Love to nod their heads and say,

“You bought your guns from a store!

You can’t fight a civil war!

Fight the army, you will lose!

They have jets and tanks to use!”

That’s not where the story ends!

They have homes, and kids, and friends!

Tyrants threaten you with bombs?

Just remember: they have moms!

You can’t live inside your jet!

Can we find you? Yes, you bet!

You’d send soldiers and marines

Up against AR-15s?

They’re outnumbered ten to one.

That is why I need a gun.

Don’t forget, because it’s true:

Government is scared of you.

Posting a comment that is nothing but some poem ChatGPT came up with is not conversation.

It was a widely distributed meme when it came out, I didn't generate this. Fair enough though.

I thought it was relevant as it actually does a shockingly good job at illustrating why common folks with AR-15s can still exercise power, despite not having access to tanks or airplanes.

I'm also not kidding, as a Canadian who's always sneered at US gun culture/shootings, reading this a few years ago, especially the final line, "Government is scared of you" basically flipped me from "mildly pro gun but unbothered by new gun restrictions" to "profoundly anti-gun restrictions".

Government should be scared of us, and it's not scared enough these days.

I will note that since mechanisation, you kinda need militia to have tanks and MANPADs in order to provide a credible deterrent to tyranny.

What's your understanding of how the GWOT went? That's what it looks like when the American military goes up against a determined adversary armed primarily with small-arms and scrounged explosives.

Now, you might argue that America's heart wasn't really in it. Is their heart going to be more in it when it's their own homeland they're burning and shelling? Also, in the GWOT, America's military operated in a foreign land, while their entire support structure, industrial base, and their soldiers' friends and family were perfectly safe on the other side of an ocean. Try to picture how this goes when it's not just a soldier's fellow squaddies getting mortared in their barracks, but their kids' preschool.

This claim that government overthrow requires nation-state resources appears to be unkillable, and it will never cease to baffle me. There is approximately a zero percent chance that America as a going concern could survive a significant portion of its population concluding that they were being ruled by actual tyrants. Things would go so bad so fast it would make your head spin.

Now, you might argue that America's heart wasn't really in it. Is their heart going to be more in it when it's their own homeland they're burning and shelling?

"Outgroup vs. Fargroup" comes to mind here. Fighting a bunch of people on the other side of the world who you are somewhat sympathetic toward, versus fighting the useless, inbred, gap-toothed, room-temperature-IQ, religious fanatic, every -ist and -phobe, Klanazis that make up the hated enemy tribe?

Also, in the GWOT, America's military operated in a foreign land, while their entire support structure, industrial base, and their soldiers' friends and family were perfectly safe on the other side of an ocean.

Which means they had nothing to fear from giving up and going home. When "home" is where you're fighting, it's win-or-die, so the motivation is much stronger.

I don't remember where it was, but I remember a year or two ago reading an editorial online from a retired general, ostensibly about the possibility of civil war in the US (though he ultimately used it to lay out his — IMO ridiculous — position on counter-insurgency), where he gave this as one of the arguments as to why whichever side of a second civil war the military pics simply cannot lose — the US military, since the 20th century, has not been and cannot be defeated, the politicians have merely gotten tired and called it off; but since doing so in a civil war is suicide…

There is approximately a zero percent chance that America as a going concern could survive a significant portion of its population concluding that they were being ruled by actual tyrants. Things would go so bad so fast it would make your head spin.

It did once (twice?) before right? Sure a Civil War would be bad, but countries come out the other side all the time. If one side wins conclusively I see no reason why America wouldn't carry on. Both the US and the UK have had actual real civil wars and both survived (and thrived in fact!) as going concerns. The US is even to an extent the product of a Civil war (you call it Revolutionary, but you're still just fighting against people from the same nation at the time). I can see circumstances where that wouldn't happen of course, but it seems like setting the bar at zero percent is just ignoring history needlessly.

You can in fact kill large numbers of your civil war enemies, burn down their homes, conquer them and force them back into obedience for hundreds of years. You can in fact lose a Civil War, relinquish your former ruled areas and still be a going concern and then later become firm allies with the very nation formed from that Civil war with both of you still being going concerns.

The chance of any of that certainly isn't 100% but I don't think it's 0% either.

There is an important distinction between the current USA and the USA of 1860. Namely, one of these has eleven times the population of the other despite being mostly the same size (yeah, yeah, Alaska, but it's not exactly the breadbasket of the USA). The modern developed world has staggeringly-high, unprecedented population densities, and while some of that is from permanent knowledge gained, a lot more of it is from economic sophistication. A farmer of 1860 can make most of the stuff he needs - not all, but most, and his tools are at least pretty durable and repairable. A farmer of 2025 is using agricultural equipment manufactured in cities from mined minerals and fuelled with petroleum products from oil fields to spread mined/synthesised fertilisers, pesticides, and F1 hybrid seeds whose progeny aren't viable. Most of those things are produced hundreds of kilometres from his farm if not thousands, and many of them are well beyond his capacity to even repair let alone replace, and they make him more efficient.

Civil strife means things hundreds of kilometres away are not available to you anymore because there are enemies between you and them, and they can't get their inputs either. What we've built is a gleaming metropolis of elaborate, carefully-built crystal towers, not an indestructible pyramid. Guess what happens when your food production drops by 80% and you were only a moderate food exporter in percentage terms before this, and you also have difficulty importing food. Then consider what people will do in their desperation, and the resulting lasting damage to culture and society.

I am actually eliding a fair bit of stuff here because, um, some Mottizens want bad things to happen instead of good things.

(The extent of Australia's food surplus is such that with the standard abandonment of grain-fed livestock (which is super-inefficient in terms of food calories) we'd still clearly pull through if the music stopped. This is a special and highly-unusual privilege. The USA, despite being the biggest food exporter in the world in absolute terms, does not have that absurd cushion of safety.)

Sure, but that is not a 0% of pulling through as a going concern. The population could drop 80% as you point out and you can still be a going concern. The US might not be a super power any more and it might take a long road to recovery, but even what you are describing is not a zero percent chance of pulling through.

Depending exactly how a civil war breaks out and where the fighting is concentrated, the damage could be greater or lesser. It could be 3 states vs 20 with the rest sitting it out. There is simply no way that we can say 0% is the correct figure with something so nebulous.

see the comment here. This may be little more than a disagreement over semantics.

I did not say the population would drop 80%. I said food production would drop by 80% (though that's a rough estimate). There's give in a few places (the USA exports food and that would be redirected; grain-fed animals would be replaced by eating the grain; also, while Westerners do need more food than Third-Worlders to not die - because the body stunts from undernutrition, but that's not retroactive - we don't need quite as much food as we get) - just not 5x worth of give.

I think you also have a different opinion of what constitutes "a going concern" than FCfromSSC.

Is their heart going to be more in it when it's their own homeland they're burning and shelling?

Probably, yes. Civil wars do tend to have a lot of massacres because both sides consider the other to be traitors and not a legitimate state actor to whom the laws of war apply. Remember, "The Blue Tribe has performed some kind of very impressive act of alchemy, and transmuted all of its outgroup hatred to the Red Tribe." That's a lot of hatred, although perhaps still less than that which the Red Tribe has for the Blue.

On reflection - and you're right, I was kinda repeating old arguments without sufficient reflection - I was basically assuming "tyrant has first move, has the armed forces in lockstep, and is willing to wage Vernichtungskrieg", which is the worst-case scenario for the militia. I will note that you are, in fact, still talking about a lot more than small arms here; mortars are far, far more effective than small arms, and are not something the Blue Tribe is currently trying to take away from private citizens (I'm... pretty sure there's nowhere in the USA where random people can walk into a store and buy a mortar? Something something, Federal Firearms Licence? So then, a militia that has them is specifically either one with illegal stockpiles, one that's basically pulled a fast one on the tyrannous government regarding having such licences, or one with improvised mortars constructed after the start of hostilities when the term "legal" becomes meaningless). And even then, I don't think that's enough to win the war. The peace, yes, I'll vaguely allude to that being a fairly-likely win (if an extremely-Pyrrhic one). But not the war, not if the armed forces are united against you for reasons.

Some soldiers are going to have more sympathy for the people they're being told to bomb and shell than they would for Durka Durkas. This will cause reliability issues, of the sort where they don't want to fight, may sympathize with the enemy, and may even defect. Some soldiers are going to have less sympathy, because Y'all Qaeda/Soros-Funded Pedo Antifa killed their kids. This will also cause reliability issues, of the sort where they commit uncontrolled atrocities, which in turn remove the ability to control the intensity of the war. Both sorts of reliability issues make it very hard to return to a state of peace.

I do not think it really matters if a Tyrant tries to go full first-strike Vernichtungskrieg or if they play it like Platonic Lincoln and scrupulously attempt to maintain rule of law. People look at those two scenarios, and they imagine that there's a clear difference in the scale and character of the initial inputs, so obviously there should be a difference in the outputs, but the mistake they're making is in the assumption that the inputs are driving the process. If you have a forest dried out by six months of drought, it makes approximately zero difference if you start a fire with a cigarette butt or a flamethrower; two hours later, you will not be able to tell the difference between the resulting fires, because the exponential growth of energy-release will utterly eclipse any variance in the initiating inputs.

However it starts, whichever winner comes out the other side might possibly still call itself "the United States of America", maybe, but the likely scenario is a dirt-poor, fanatically-paranoid military dictatorship populated by heavily-armed, criminally-inclined murderers with severe PTSD, huddled in the dark, dreaming of electricity and clean water. And sure, "there are levels of survival we are willing to accept", but people should at least be clear-sighted about what they're walking into. It will not be clean. It will not be quick. It will in fact be the worst thing that ever happened to you and everyone you know and love, by far, and it will neither reverse itself nor end for the forseeable future.

I will note that you are, in fact, still talking about a lot more than small arms here; mortars are far, far more effective than small arms, and are not something the Blue Tribe is currently trying to take away from private citizens

I'm defining small arms as weapons you can build in your home and pack on your back. Mortars are absurdly easy to manufacture out of ubiquitous materials, and I think even the people nodding along with that sentence are still overestimating what "easy to manufacture" and "ubiquitous materials" requires; you do not even need metal. And again, our armed forces were united against the Taliban to a degree that is unlikely in a civil war here. It still wasn't enough.

But the hallmark of authoritarianism is to expand the definition of "undesirable" to include your political opponents -

What's it a hallmark of when the definition of "undesirable" excludes literal criminals, classified based on their criminality (not as an incidental feature like MLK)?

I agree with your concern over the lack of process (are those people actually illegal immigrants? Are we sure?), but the intended targets are appropriate targets for persecution.

I think that "a person who is in the US despite having no legal basis for being there" is as much a non-central example of a criminal as MLK is.

If the Trump administration only deported non-citizens without a residence after they had served a prison sentence -- i.e. the kind of people who are central examples of the criminal category -- I think most people would be okay with that (not the wokes, though).

However, the framing of "political opponents" by the parent poster is as misleading as "criminals" in most cases. The median deportee entered the US without any visa. I would consider this a purely civil matter. If an administration decides not to maximally enforce immigration law against them, that is not letting criminals roam free. However, if another administration then maximally enforces immigration law and deports them, that is also not bad per se.

But just as there have been cases where Trump has deported people after they served a criminal sentence for homicide, there have also been a few high-profile cases where his administration revoked the visa status of political opponents -- which turned them into illegals -- and then deported them. The latter is bad and they should feel bad.

However, this only applies to Trump opponents without a US passport, which means that most of Trump's domestic opposition is safe from that.

The median deportee entered the US without any visa. I would consider this a purely civil matter.

I believe this is incorrect. What you describe is a criminal matter (illegal entry). The median illegal immigrant has overstayed a legal visa, which is indeed solely a civil matter

What I'm okay with: Enforcing immigration laws, deporting illegal immigrants. I'm fine with "breaking up families", arresting people at their workplaces, and deporting parents of citizen children with them in tow.

What I'm not okay with: Masked men in plainclothes forcibly ushering people into unmarked vans. As long as they are unmasked and wearing uniforms, or unmasked, plainclothed and are obligated to give their full name and badge/ID upon request, I'd have no problem with it. Yes they may lose the intimidation factor, but it's a necessary trade-off compared to normalizing mask wearing thugs kidnapping people off the streets.

s long as they are unmasked and wearing uniforms, or unmasked, plainclothed and are obligated to give their full name and badge/ID upon request, I'd have no problem with it.

Riiiight, so they can be more easily doxed and their families threatened. Have the black bagging crew wear full face masks if they want, make it a uniform. I'm thinking the classic theater smiley/frowny face, but in black. Ooooh, and the ones who catch rapists and disappear them will wear white smiley masks.

Hell, I'm absolutely fine with ICE camping out children at school, then picking up their parents when they go to complain. Actually, have the teachers and administrative staff liable for knowingly having illegal children and illegal's children in their classes. Make it a felony, throw everyone involved in jail when an actual illegal immigrant child is caught attending school.

so they can be more easily doxed and their families threatened

So when they violate peoples' civil rights they can be identified and held legally accountable. The general public has an interest in government officers being identifiable and accountable for their actions. If people are threatening them (actually threatening them) for doing their jobs, there are laws for that already.

Nah, I don't want this kind of police organ to be personally identifiable by the usual suspects. Give them per operation badge ids, have a public website where the id can be checked such that they are "real" and not some random dude. Have a complaint box where you can put in text and video.

Riiiight, so they can be more easily doxed and their families threatened.

That's called terrorism and rebellion, and there are other ways of dealing with it. A state that hasn't at least partially failed doesn't need to hide from terrorists.

Just so I understand, are you saying that the Democratic Party of the United States is a criminal organisation which is sufficiently dangerous compared to, say, the Black Panthers or the Mafia that the US Department of Homeland Security (or Stasi, to use the original German) needs to break precedent and introduce the first secret police force in the history of the United States?

introduce the first secret police force in the history of the United States?

Certainly not. If nobody did it earlier, J. Edgar Hoover did it with parts of the FBI.

ICE might as well be secret police for all I care, I don't care which goon #47 is roughing up some illegal, as long as they have verifiable badges which can be looked up online i'm fine. (they don't need to be personally identifiable and can be rotated on an OP per OP basis.)

How, then, do you prevent the problem discussed elsewhere in this thread of random criminals impersonating ICE officers to cause mayhem with impunity?

Solution: ICE agents must wear an absolutely obnoxiously visible hat. Anyone else wearing this hat is subject to massive minimum fines and prison sentences, no plea bargains allowed. The regular uniformed police receive a bounty of $50,000 dollars for each person they (correctly) arrest who is wearing one of those hats and is not part of ICE, and all ICE agents must carry some sort of badge/ID that they must provide the uniformed police on request to prove they are ICE.

Boom. ICE is very easily idenfitifiable and verifiable, while being anonymous, and the police have a massive incentive and simple way to ensure it isn't abused by other parties.

Plus you’re bringing back obnoxiously large hats, the loss of which is directly related to the decline of our civilization.

Make bicornes great again!

Young Thug the 3rd esquire running from obnoxiously hated 5-0 in his latest hit STRAIGHT OUTA AZTLAN

Sensible, but that means no plain-clothes operations.

Make 'em collapsible hats, and follow the rules of Naval Warfare: it's fine to be deceptive up until the final moment of the operation/arrest, at which point you must put your hat on immediately beforehand. Failure to do so will, again, automatically lead to harsh penalties so there's no "oh, well, in the heat of the moment I forgot".

Edit: Especially in a situation where they're putting on masks: if you have time to put on a mask, you have time to put on your Official Hat of Authority.

Main query: Are the blackbagging tactics of ICE a necessary evil, a dangerous overstep, or some nuanced in-between?

It's stupid theatrics. A lazy google shows they've deported approx. 200,000 people in six months, at approx. $17,000ish a pop.

If we assume 12 million illegal immigrants (range I saw was 11-13), that's a cool 30 years at the current rate with a cost of $200.6 billion (not including 30 years of inflation). You could obviously hire more people to speed it up, and maybe that would result in the same (or lower) per deportation cost from economies of scale, etc. Although as you picked the low hanging fruit immigrants, the remaining ones would probably get savvier so unlikely but whatever.

Instead, you could crack down massively on American business owners who I'd like to remind the crowd, GIVE THE IMMIGRANTS MONEY EVERY WEEK IN EXCHANGE FOR LABOR, ALLOWING THEM TO STAY IN YOUR COUNTRY. I truly don't understand how everyone hates immigrants and not also the traitorous Americans who enable them??

Just implement e-verify, it's that easy. Crack down HARD on a few businesses who you catch skirting this (you can even do it in California to whip up the base) and the illegal immigrants will deport themselves once they run out of money and can't get a new job. You could even set up free busses back to Mexico or something.

Once you show businesses you're not fucking around they'll wise up quick. Or even better, their debt and equity financiers will do it for you. Every bank credit risk department is going to start looking really closely at your hiring practices if you want a loan for your farm, because they don't want to risk you going bankrupt when Uncle Sam eviscerates your business for hiring illegal immigrants. There's also way less businesses than illegals, and they're all registered with multiple government bodies, so this is less legwork too.

The fact they're cracking down on a relative handful of illegal immigrants instead of the much higher leverage option of the people who give them money should tell you what the priorities are here. Illegal immigrants are responding to their incentives, which are "come to America, get a job, make way more than you did at home". So take away the job...

If they were serious about this, they'd make everyone use the solution they already invented, e-verify.

I'm not saying you don't need ICE, there will be people who won't leave. But if you don't fix the system of incentives that makes them come here you're not actually serious.

See also, Trump literally said they weren't going to enforce it for farm and hotel labour. "We're super serious about illegal immigration guys but shucks the hotel lobbyists made some great points..." Farms at least feed people, but hotels? Lmao, they're just not serious people.

I truly don't understand how everyone hates immigrants and not also the traitorous Americans who enable them??

The business gentry is the heart of the GOP and has zero interest in immigration enforcement via cracking down on employers. Enough politicians are uninterested in dealing with political fallout from the economic shock of rapidly expelling ten million workers. The average nativist voter doesn't think about this that hard.

Truthfully, that was kind of a rhetorical question because I believe in and fully agree with everything you just said.

So does something like half of MAGA, which makes it kind of awkward for this entire argument.

Don't totally follow you here

A significant portion of MAGA agrees that the issue with enforcing immigration restrictions are business attempting to cut costs. It's not a direct contradiction if his argument, there are several factions in the GOP, but the tension between them does make it a bit awkward for the theory that "the heart of the GOP" has zero interest in immigration enforcement. Vivek found out the hard way that it's not so simple.

Ohhhh, gotcha

If we assume 12 million illegal immigrants (range I saw was 11-13), that's a cool 30 years at the current rate with a cost of $200.6 billion (not including 30 years of inflation).

Yes, but overt deportations are not the only thing happening. During the same period, there is evidence that sizeable self-deportation, most likely in the hundreds of thousands of individuals, has occurred.

Saying "evidence" and then linking the New York Post is maybe not the most credible way of doing that.

That article did link to better articles, although both of them didn't link or substantiate their underlying data

In a year or two we'll know who's telling the truth on this

See also, Trump literally said they weren't going to enforce it for farm and hotel labour.

That has been reversed now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/06/16/trump-farms-hotels-immigration-raids/

snip snap snip snap

  • -11

What do you mean by this?

Just a reference to the office

They have all three branches of government and a favorable supreme court. Trump owns the party and can make all the senators and congressmen fall in line. It would be so easy to pass legislation to massively increase state capacity for audits, deportations, expedited court hearings, etc. Well, it would be easy, if the administration had any competency to work with.

But the purpose of this presidency is impotent lashing out at perceived enemies. It's all theatre and grievance politics. There's no intention of executing proper statecraft, of actually doing things. The best you can hope for is wonton destruction. That's what you get when you elect a conman.

So in one sense, no, it isn't necessary -- if they were comptent. But given they aren't, it's the only option they have.

They have all three branches of government

The majority in the House is less than 10, and there are a lot of clowns in the GOP caucus who can and gleefully will screw everything up on their pet issue du jour.

The Tea-Party/MAGA Right isn't trying to expand state capacity because a significant portion of the Tea-Party/MAGA right is opposed to expanding state capacity on general principle.

Why would the "don't tread on me" crowd vote to buy the "We will tread" crowd new boots?

As i tried to explain to Anti-populist down thread, the Republicans don't want to change existing laws they want to enforce them.

The "don't tread on me" crowd is already dead and irrelevant, as if they weren't already 10 years ago.

Laws are tools for power. You don't just get one of them and say "ah, we're done, now let's just enforce it and call it a day." Did liberals stop once they got the Civil Rights Act of of 1957 passed? Civil Rights Act of 1960? Civil Rights Act of 1964? Did they call it a day then? No. Of course not. They packed courts with sympathetic judges and universities with sympathetic admins. They even got Republicans to sign off on amendments.

If you want to win, you keep passing more and more laws that get you more power until you get as much of what you want as you can get. You tear up as many enemy laws as possible. You do all of that and you do everything else you can too. Propaganda, persuasion, institutional capture. Enforcing laws you like, ignoring ones you don't. This is politics.

What you don't do is piss and shit yourself and then have a cry when that doesn't do anything.

If you want your state to do things, you need state capacity. That is reality. You might not want that, but the average MAGA voter has a laundry list of things they want their Daddy to do to their enemies.

They've been weirdly successful for a crowd that's supposed to have been "dead and irrelevant" for close to a decade.

Yes, the popular narrative amongst blue and grey tribers is that the Tea Party was killed and eaten by "establishment" republicans and that the populists are stupid for even trying, but the last 12 years of electoral results, cabinet nominations, etc... tell a different story. If anything the opposite is the case, the establishment as represented by people like Bush, Cheney, Romney, French, Brooks, Et Al. have been utterly routed. They have been exiled to the wilderness while Tea-Party luminaries are getting to dictate national policy

You seem to be conflating the Tea Party and MAGA. They're not the same thing. Plenty of people were involved in both movements. That's just politics.

MAGA doesn't care about deficits. They're about to sign a $2.6T omnibus bill. Take a guess how much of that is going towards capacity for deportations.

The latter grew out of the former. Fact remains that the old "establishment republicans" who shared the left's views on technocratic corporatism have been soundly defeated and the populists are getting to set the agenda.

The populists are leery of expanding state capacity because they are well aware that the deep-state/priestly-caste hate them and will immediately turn that state capacity against the populists the moment a Democrat is back in the oval office. This is why the first order of buisiness was to attack the deep-state/priestly-caste's suppply lines. USAID, the MSM, Academia, etc... theory being that if you break the Democrats' ability to support the rabble-rousers and the rabble will disperse themselves.

If we decided immigration policy based on what aesthetically looked good to liberals, we'd have open borders.

I'm reminded of the meme of 'Top Twelve Images That Will Make You Go Fuck Having Borders And Laws', roughly paraphrased, with a picture of a crying brown crudely drawn in fake news article. If you give into emotional blackmail, then every illegal will cry and sob as they're yanked to the border. No one ever goes 'it's a fair cop, guv' and gamely goes back to South America with a cheeky, roguish grin. We're not playing cops and robbers. This is real life.

What you are getting now is the compromise between open borders and putting up guards on the Berlin Wall and ordering them to shoot to kill.

And if you do immigration policy based on what aesthetically looks good to right-wing voters, you get ICE!

Spending maximum money for minimum results, but the clips on TV go hard

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minimum results

Border encounters have plummeted to near zero. The results are enormous.

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters

They have, continuing a trend that started over a year ago

but the clips on TV go hard

They do go hard. The optics matter to people who aren't educated. Which demographic is the least educated? It's illegal immigrants. Check out the plummeting border encounters if you need evidence of the impact of TV clips and rhetoric.

The educated lib class takes a lot of pride in their knowledge of stats and trends. So much so that they forget that other people believe what they see in front of them, and not numbers on a screen or piece of paper.

Border encounters have been plummeting since December 2023 (or, as they call it, dec fy2024): https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters

In that link, what period of time has the starkest drop by percentage?

The period starting December 2024. The problem is, the clips on TV couldn't have started in December 2024, nor could they have had much of an effect even in January 2025 on account of Trump being sworn in on the 17th of that month.

Now, perhaps you will claim that it was in fact the threat of the Trump presidency that caused numbers to drop even faster than they were already dropping. Perhaps, but that's not the claim you made and the claim I'm arguing against.

The problem is, the clips on TV couldn't have started in December 2024

I'm with you on this part. Pushback in Congress started in January of 2024, but before that Ron DeSantis orchestrated the Martha's Vineyard publicity stunt all the way back in 2022. Outlets like CBS News were documenting record high daily crossings in May of 2023. After that, local reps and officials started making public demands for federal action shortly after. It was a gradual accumulation of outrage from the right and the undeniable reality of a border crisis that even left leaning outlets couldn't ignore.

nor could they have had much of an effect even in January 2025 on account of Trump being sworn in on the 17th of that month.

I'm not with you on this part, and I will indeed claim that it was in fact the threat of the Trump presidency that caused numbers to drop even faster. The Democrats trying to get the border bill through in 2024 affected groups from an optics standpoint. For the immigrants, it showed Democrats might do something about the border. For undecided moderates, it showed that Democrats were willing to come to the table about the border issue.

All of these things had an impact on illegal immigration from an optics or "TV clip" standpoint, but the most impactful were the "TV clips" showing that Donald Trump was elected president. As far as that not being the "claim I made" I might be misunderstanding what you're saying.

but the most impactful were the "TV clips" showing that Donald Trump was elected president.

Come on. @fmac was obviously talking about clips of ICE raids, not of Trump getting sworn in.

More comments

I wrote this in a longer comment but to be clear I'm not saying ICE or splashy deportations are totally useless. Optics and messaging do matter.

My thesis is that they scale poorly, and the fact the government is prioritizing "high optics low scale" options and ignoring "lower optics high scale" options means they won't make a substantial dent in the 11-13 million illegals in your country.

And the fact they aren't simultaneously using all available options for maximum effectiveness means it's a safe bet they don't really want to fix this as much as they say they do.

It is a safe bet. My response to this is to double down on the optics. I'm mostly onboard with anything the Trump admin does between actually following through with their threats and doing a full scale crackdown all the way to them crafting a convincing illusion (for the uneducated) of mass deportations that drastically decreases illegal immigration and pressures current illegals to fly under the radar, but secretly allows a decent number of them to work because it brings us back to a happy medium from an economic standpoint. There are drawbacks no matter what though. A full crackdown that deports as many people as possible will have immediate negative effects on the economy, but would probably be worth it in the long run. On the other hand, a convincing illusion for illegals and MAGAs keeps border crossings low, maintains the economy in the short-term, but falls into the low scale effect you talk about and it doesn't really help us in the future.

Any scenario in this spectrum is preferable to whatever the Democratic party does with the "No human is illegal" optics they try to portray, which I find to be far more detrimental to our society.

The cruelty is the point, illegals know this is a dog and ponny show and as soon as the dems get a man back in office it's going to be game on again. My only concern is Trump will not be able to change that outlook, to make the country unappealing as possible for illegal immigration.

I think "bring the hammer down on the companies" accomplishes this

If in 4 years, the Dems come back to power and open the immigration flood gates, but the jobs immigrants used to do are now done by Americans, people will lose their fucking minds over the direct connection between immigrants and job losses.

Right now this is more subtle because of you replace an illegal Mexican farm hand with an illegal Guatemalan farm hand, no one bats an eye. If you replace an American farm with with a Guatemalan farm hand, the American can go on fox news and tank the Democratic polling

Honestly, if they weren’t doing that, I don’t think you’d see the blowback. It’s easy to hate things that look and sound like stuff that happens in the movies. If you slam-tackle people in public, throw flashbangs into diners during dinner rush, and so on, you get blowback.

I’m not sure what the end goal actually is here. Is he going to go full president Joker? Very Smart People on the left say so. But then again, if that’s true, those same people are behaving very strangely. They’re attending rallies they pre-register for by giving their full name (50501 does this), filming the entire thing, posting symbols on social media, etc. they also show up in full cosplay — Gilead Girls, Leia, various anime characters. I just, if they’re thinking that Trump is going to mass arrest opposition, they’re not only doing everything possible to make sure they’re on the list, but fighting back in ways that simply don’t make any sense. You think Trump wants to arrest the opposition, so you register in advance, apply with the local police (which likely means giving contact information). When you get there, you stand on sidewalks with signs, dressed as children’s TV and movie characters? I can’t imagine anyone would have thought any of it in other states with the threat of authoritarian takeover. I’m sure the people who protested the Nazis did so for a couple of hours on weekends while dressed as characters from Wizard of Oz or Popeye. So either it’s true that Trump is going Joker and we just happen to have an opposition composed entirely of people who stopped maturing at like 8 years old (in which case, we’re going that way), or the whole thing is a combination of Oppression Fetishized, and being used to drum up support and donations.

As I said I don’t have any special insight into this sort of thing. If the end is to take over and disappear Americans, I don’t know what would look different. On the other hand if that’s not the end goal, it would look the same. I would say it’s maybe 30-40% it escalates.

they’re not only doing everything possible to make sure they’re on the list, but fighting back in ways that simply don’t make any sense

The goal is to make it impossible to enact the disappear-protesters step of the plan by having too many protesters on the list, most of whom are manifestly not worth the bother of disappearing. The harmlessness of the protests is the point, both in and of itself (in that it'll make a regime that tries to make them out to be dangerous rioters look ridiculous) and because it makes them an attractive position for more and more people to join.

I mean im not sure that works. I’m sure that you’re not going to literally disappear everyone who went to a protest where 50501 is present, however the data gleaned from such events would be extremely useful to bad actors if they wanted to make things interesting.

First, running the list and public profiles of attendees is a treasure trove of information that can be weaponized against them. For example, I can look for common elements in those profiles. Perhaps an interest in art, a type of music, favorite TV shows, etc. I can then use that data to find other people with that profile who are not yet protesting but might. I can perhaps check these names against other databases. Any unpaid parking tickets? Anyone looking for a job I can flag in a background check? I don’t need to go after all of them or even most of them. I can probably get better bang for the buck by targeting random people who are perhaps really well connected on social media. If I arrest 50, but they post about the experience online, and those posts, because of the number of followers goes fairly viral, I can probably discourage people from protesting without having to really waste time and energy trying to brute force the thing.

The beauty of AI in this case is that I can use big data to control people in ways that are pretty invisible until they punish rule breakers. If I can make it hard to get an apartment, or a job, or for you or you kids to get into a good college, I don’t need to body slam you and throw you in jail, I can just reward the good ones with prestige and easier life while punishing the bad by withholding privileges. If protesting means that the only jobs you can get are at Wendy’s, I don’t even need to make it illegal. People won’t do it because they don’t want to get stuck working at Wendy’s and living with cockroaches in a squatter apartment with 6 roommates.

This is true if we're talking about a smart, tech-aware dictator. But your original post wasn't talking about people who expect a smart tech-driven dictatorship. It was talking about people who expect Trump to go President Joker and round up all his enemies in unmarked vans. I think the recent protestors' behavior follows a rational strategy within that framework - whose likelihood relative to "Trump continues to be more bark than bite" or "Trump becomes a smart dictator" is, of course, questionable, but that, again, wasn't the question.

or the whole thing is a combination of Oppression Fetishized, and being used to drum up support and donations.

'Follow the money' has been sound advice for generations for deciphering contexts for a reason.

As I said I don’t have any special insight into this sort of thing. If the end is to take over and disappear Americans, I don’t know what would look different.

Media controls, which really means internet controls, which really means social media control.

When states turn to disappearance campaigns, one of the key points is that people, well, disappear. Lose track of them. No one can find them for long, long periods of time. And part of this is that you prevent media from being to follow up- and that the media that try, also disappear. No official, reputable media reports on them, and the absence is what is conspicuous. You can't hide that people disappear, and to a degree you don't want to, but the tactice works by the ambiguity. The ambiguity is provided by the media not providing answers.

The current administration has been more notable for reducing the levers of influence over media reporting than in building the influence apparatus. When Trump feuded with Reuters (or was it AP) over the Gulf of America renaming, his retaliation was to... kick the reporting organization out of the press pool. Access is what is typically used as the influence vector of a government over a reporter / organization, since access in controlled circumstances is what gives the ability to build ties / leverage over others. Separation is distance is a decrease in influence.

Similarly, the Trump administration very quickly took direct steps to dismantle the sort of media-influence apparatus that the Biden administration supported. Trump and Rubio very, very quickly distanced the US- and by distanced I mean shut down the parts of the State Department participating in it- government-supported-by-proxy media-rating and fact-checker-black-lists that were used to support, and penalize, media groups based on their reliability.

If the end was to take over and disappear Americans, this is the sort of institutional capacity you would want to coopt, not dismantle.

You would use the government hand to apply aggressive fact checking to purge the political hyperbolics as misinformation, purge the old regime's supporters from the institution, and then use the misinformation pretext to aggressively go after anyone claiming the government was disappearing Americans. Part of this would be by staging a few false positives- for example, conduct to prompt a social media storm that could be proven false- and then use the false-coverage to start administering sanctions/punishments on misinformation grounds.

Dismantling a tool that could be used for a nefarious purpose isn't proof that a nefarious purpose won't occur, but it's about as good as one can get from inference. Especially given the rather elaborate preparation kabuki sets the Trump administration has demonstrated to date, such as the whole DOGE saga and how it started with the USAID takedown. There was a heck of a lot of choreographing in that, which is about as good an indication of prepatory planning, and the sort of policy-cognizant planning that would recognize tools for a crackdown campaign.

Dismantling a tool that could be used for a nefarious purpose isn't proof that a nefarious purpose won't occur, but it's about as good as one can get from inference. Especially given the rather elaborate preparation kabuki sets the Trump administration has demonstrated to date, such as the whole DOGE saga and how it started with the USAID takedown. There was a heck of a lot of choreographing in that, which is about as good an indication of prepatory planning, and the sort of policy-cognizant planning that would recognize tools for a crackdown campaign.

Except because of the makeup of the whole apparatus, it couldn't be used by Trump or the right. It was a left-only set up from the beginning.

The deportation LARPing events are stupid wastes of political capital meant to appease fools like Catturd that want to watch a few dozen immigrants be manhandled by armored goonsquads on Twitter and Fox News. This is the type of crap that made Dems freak out when they won the presidency and do defacto open borders via loophole. With the current bent now the public will have even more reasons to associate any enforcement of immigration laws with authoritarianism. It's just a dumb, unforced error by Republicans who are listening to their sectarian cheerleaders instead of trying to be strategic with their approach.

If MAGA actually wanted to deal with immigration, they'd first take the R trifecta and pass comprehensive immigration reform like the old Lankford bill, but an even tougher version. Close the loopholes and make it harder for Dem presidents to not enforce the law. Have more of their executive orders get shredded in the courts like DAPA did during Obama's tenure, and like a lot of Trump's EOs always do. This at least does something to prevent the problem from getting worse, and is the lowest rung on the totem pole in terms of political capital required.

Then, if Republicans want to remove the illegals already here, go after the employers that hire them. Break the incentive structure that acts as a magnet to illegal immigrants in the first place. This will cause economic pain and will take a lot more political capital, but is better than hurling immigrants out one-by-one. Note that I don't really think this is actually a good idea, at least for throwing out the entire illegal population as there are a lot of jobs Americans genuinely don't want to do for illegal-tier prices. I'd go after some of the legal immigrants instead, mainly the H1B scourge that's drenched in fraud and that's actually hurting the employment prospects of Americans for good jobs.

Here we go again with cheerleading Biden's poison pilled bill for the millionth time. Sure, maybe we need some kind of immigration bill, but that one wasn't it, it's dead, and maybe you can just stop talking about it.

Many posters here have brought up legitimate concerns with the old bill, which you have ignored every time. Amd every chance you get you want to shill that bill like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Like all those arguments about it never happened.

You are misinformed, the MAGA/Tea-Party Right isn't looking to change existing law, they're looking to enforce the existing laws.

Trying to "make it harder for Dem presidents to not enforce the law" by changing the law is charitably a fool's errand, and less charitably completely asinine. What is supposed to stop a future Democratic president from just not enforcing the law against not enforcing the law?

No, the real way you make it harder for Democratic presidents to not enforce the law is by setting the precedent now that such behavior will come with harsh consequences.

I don't see how "consequences" is the right model here. The current administration (and future ones with the same goal) would enforce immigration law regardless of what Democrats do in power.

Unless harsh consequences is actually a thought experiment/answering the question? Do you have any ideas for harsh consequences?

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.

Or maybe administrations should not try to bind their successors by extralegal means, because the fact that it is difficult is a feature not a bug.

I don't agree that the Trump administration is engaged in unusual thuggishness, but whether they are or they aren't, they shouldn't.

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.

Close the loopholes and make it harder for Dem presidents to not enforce the law. Have more of their executive orders get shredded in the courts like DAPA did during Obama's tenure, and like a lot of Trump's EOs always do.

I don't think this is possible, either in principle or in practice. The president has wide discretion not to enforce laws for a variety of reasons. And federal judges, who are routinely blue tribe even when right-leaning, will mostly be looking for reasons to allow a Democratic or neocon Republican president to skip out on his side of the bargain.

We've tried things like this before, and the pro-illegal-immigration factions have successfully defected at the first opportunity. I don't see any reason for optimism that the compromise will be honored in an even more divided country.

The president has wide discretion

They have wide discretion because most of the INA is subject to "may" clauses instead of "shall" clauses right now. Also, R's are looking to have a durable advantage on court appointments due to Dem weakness in the Senate. The idea that R's auto-lose every court case is just not correct.

We've tried things like this before

I don't see any reason for optimism that the compromise

What things have we tried like this before? And why are you talking about a compromise? R's have a trifecta, and immigration is an animating issue, AND Dems are (or were, before the deportation nonsense started) on the back foot on this topic in public opinion. This would be a diktat, not a negotiation.

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Also, R's are looking to have a durable advantage on court appointments due to Dem weakness in the Senate. The idea that R's auto-lose every court case is just not correct.

You would think so, but it seems that Rs are not as "good" at picking judges as Ds. Taking SCOTUS, from the lens of pure partisan power politics, the Ds have appointed 3 judges, the Rs 6. The Ds judges vote together, at higher rates. The Rs judges are split. 3 vote together, at high but less high rates as the Ds vote. Then there are 3 more moderate, more swing votes from the Rs. So the Ds are great at picking judges that advance the cause, the Rs have a mixed bag.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-court-justice-math-00152188

I can't find the graph, but lower court judge appointments follow this as well. Ds overwhelmingly go for liberal judges, Rs were pretty evenly split. A lot likely due to Rs having lower capacity to draw from though is my guess.

If you want to strictly go into the weeds, a Dem president could probably "legally" just choose not to patrol 90% of the border and just send the agents to sit around somewhere else.

And I bet if that was the only way to let illegals in, they would do it.

Sounds like a great way for them to get smoked in elections

Biden did something similar, and he did get smoked in the election. Doesn't seem like any Democrats learned any lesson from that except do it even harder next time.

They have wide discretion because most of the INA is subject to "may" clauses instead of "shall" clauses right now.

And this guy has been told, repeatedly, that the very specific law he claims has "may" clauses had "shall" clauses, already; that there was a massive court case over it, and it didn't do jack or shit.

Forget it, Hieronymus. It's Ben__Garrison.

I never seen somoeone get under your skin quite so much.

I understand the frustration, but you don't need the explicit hostility to make your point. Even if your every word was coated in pure sugar, it would be hard not to reach the same conclusion as you did.

The Antipopulist is literally the nerd emoji who goes around saying, 'if we replace all the MAY with SHALL, that TOTALLY restores the legitimacy of the system. This won't be worked around by motivated reasoning! The open-borders advocates will take their ball and go home and the government will enforce the laws as intended!'

I refuse to accept it, on this face, to believe that someone could be stupid enough to argue this. Or that he would believe us stupid enough to believe it. It is totally pedantic, almost surreal. This will not happen. It has never happened. No one has given up on a cause because of the wording of a law. And all of it is a moot point, because, and let me shout it loud so that the people in the back can hear...

IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW WELL A LAW IS WRITTEN IF THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF ENFORCING IT DECLINE TO DO SO.

OBVIOUSLY.

The hostility is deserved.

The Antipopulist is literally the nerd emoji who goes around saying, 'if we replace all the MAY with SHALL, that TOTALLY restores the legitimacy of the system.

Yes, I know. My point is that Gattsuru can, and does, show that irrespective of the hostility he exhibits, and therefore the hostility is unnecessary, and only drags the quality of the discourse down.

Blackbagging by ICE seems to be an extrajudicial process by design

You need to clarify what you are talking about. Are you talking about arrests of individuals who already have a final order of removal or order revoking a lawful visa against them? Are you talking about arrests of individuals based on probable cause that they are in the country illegally? A secret third thing? Immigration law is very complex and, yes, mostly delegated by act of Congress to the administrative branch through administrative adjudication, and discussing it based on vague generalities actively obscures more than it enlightens.

I think you should read some of the co-commenter responses to get a better idea about what most people thought of when I mentioned "ICE" and "blackbagging" in the year of our Lord 2025, June. I don't think I was being particularly vague.

Are the blackbagging tactics of ICE a necessary evil, a dangerous overstep, or some nuanced in-between?

Assuming we're simply referring to "blackbagging" as forcefully and publicly initiating the detention of illegal aliens for their removal, they are a necessary good. I want the illegal aliens removed, but it would be even better if they simply noticed that they're unwelcome and left of their own accord. To that end, this process should be carried out openly, publicly, and with no undue kindness.

Forcefully and publicly initiating the detention of illegal aliens for their removal is not a novel tactic: raids on businesses (but no accountability for the business owners) has always been an ICE tactic. That new-new is everything that's actually being complained about: masks, no badges, no warrants presented, no cooperation with the judiciary (yet), no oversight by congress (yet), no transparency with the public beyond "Rah Rah go-get-em" and "Enemies of America"-rhetoric by Noem and Leavitt.

The arresting of illegal immigrants bothers me not at all. And there is actually a point to making the arrests seem maximally scary, namely than illegal immigrants are not morons and are too numerous to deport all of them. But a scary deportation regime makes the act of illegally immigrating seem like a worse value proposition for those currently not in the US who are considering hopping the border, much as Biden's aggressively pro-immigrant stance made it seem like a good deal. Even if both administrations are actually deporting similar numbers they will have much different rates of new offenders.

All that said, I do not like the idea of the ICE agents being masked, it makes it too easy for bad actors to pretend to be cops. That erodes social trust in a way I find unnecessary and concerning. Their actual actions seem fine though.

I put this in my edit, but your comment stood out to me:

I appreciate the responses, there was actually quite a bit of variety which was nice to read. I came away with a steelman (which I didn't have originally) which is that the theatrics of ICE is meant to intimidate illegal immigrants.

What are your thoughts on the selective pressure this will have for illegal immigrants? My first thoughts were that it would select for:

  • immigrants who are reckless and fearless (or motivated by lots of money, e.g. coyotes) - basically, criminals
  • immigrants who face such extreme danger in their home country that even Twitter videos of brown people being tackled by men in masks doesn't slow them down - these desperate people would probably be considered "authentic" refugees by most leftists, and not just "economic migrants"

Probably a general success, then, because "economic migrant" is probably the lowest position on even the left's list of "immigrants who should move to the front of the line".

In this case I think "selecting for criminals and actual refugees" is 100% upside.

In the case of criminals, they were coming anyway under a more gentle/permissive structure. Some economic migrants are discouraged, some smaller number of criminals are also discouraged, but no one is being encouraged to come who wasn't coming before. So even if the population of illegals is worse, there is no new damage (new criminal migrants relative to status quo ante).

And a population of illegals which is all cartel members and actual refugees is much easier to police. Without a bunch of bogus asylum claims the legit ones are easier to work through, and without a large population of otherwise unobjectionable illegals for the really bad apples to blend into authorities can more easily find them and will not have as much pushback from liberals worried about the damage to the less objectionable population that no longer exists.

I think agents of the state should have to identify themselves as agents of the state when going about the business of the state. And the particular agents doing the state's business need to be identifiable after the fact to the people they interacted with for accountability reasons. I don't think this an insane thing to say? Maybe I am just too radically libertarian. There are just a whole[1] pile[2] of articles[3] discussing the phenomenon of people impersonating ICE officers to commit other crimes. It turns out a standard like "if someone claims to be from ICE you gotta do what they say, even if they refuse to provide identification or evidence, on pain of committing another federal crime" is a standard that is open to abuse!

On the more general topic I think black bagging is a lot harder in a world where ~everyone has a video camera in their pocket. All the Dem politicians detentions or arrests I'm aware of had contemporaneous video within minutes of them occurring. Even in cases of AEA-related deportation attempts the news has gotten out in hours or less.

My radical proposal is the judiciary should have their own police force, independent of the executive, for the purpose of enforcing their orders.

Right now, ICE is targeting a certain type of "undesirable", namely, allegedly undocumented illegal immigrants, and appear to have carte blanche to apprehend anyone who disrupts that process.

Apprehending illegal immigrants is squarely within ICE's statutory mission. Apprehending anyone who disrupts their activities is SOP for law enforcement.

You really set me up for a "Just following orders" response here after I already invoked Carl Schmitt.

'Right now, Metro Homicide is targeting a certain type of "undesirable", namely, alleged murderers, and appears to have carte blanche to apprehend anyone who disrupts that process.'

Before you invoke "just following orders", you need to establish that some atrocity was actually being committed. If your objection is that immigration agents are targeting alleged illegal immigrants for apprehension and that they arrest people who interfere with that, you haven't.

Main query: Are the blackbagging tactics of ICE a necessary evil, a dangerous overstep, or some nuanced in-between?

Main answer: None of the above. The ICE tactics you describe are not blackbagging by standards that would have been applied outside of Trump.

Ending query: Assuming (for the sake of this question) that the end goal of this administration is to establish a type of authoritarianism where people are kidnapped and disappeared because of vocal opposition to the regime, what should be the response by the opposition that would want to prevent that?

Touching grass and recognizing that if you have to assume for the sake of argument that the outgroup is uber-boo, then you are admitting that the outgroup is not, in fact, uber-boo.

If the outgroup was uber-boo, you would not need to assume the conclusion for the sake of the argument, nor would you need to change standards to invoke pejoratives. Instead, there are years of precedent in of people not being disappeared for vocal opposition to the regime.

Conversely, acting on a false consensus that the outgroup is uber-boo, and then taking actions that merit a corresponding response in even a non-boo context, will instead be viewed as confirmation bias that the outgroup is uber-boo. Thus self-justifying more actions that do warrant detention from even non-boo actors.

These detentions, in turn, would be prevented by not perpetuating false perceptions that the outgroup is uber-boo meriting detention-worthy opposition.

I can tell by the lack of responses that this comment didn't really resonate with anyone else either.

Is this just "Nothing ever happens, stop overreacting" in more words?

I can tell by the lack of responses that this comment didn't really resonate with anyone else either.

Looks at OP vote count of -10 at time of writing.

Looks at response vote count of +29 at same time.

Raises eyebrow

It's been awhile since I last saw someone try and pull a 'no one agrees with you' bandwagon fallacy from a nearly 40 vote deficit and from negative resonance.

Is this just "Nothing ever happens, stop overreacting" in more words?

No, it is 'words have meanings, and making false accusations don't make them true.'

False accusations can, however, push people towards motivated reasoning sillyness where they confuse the justified response to their sillyness as tyranny.

Putting everything else aside, flexing your upvote count on someone is profoundly cringe

Especially as this site has a pretty strong ideological bias, and like literally every website with voting, voting is 100% indicative of in-group/out-group agreement/disagreement and is largely unrelated to comment quality

I agree, which is why I didn't raise the issue or make an argument based off it. Eliot did, and did so as part of a wave of next-day response posts to dismiss objectors. The 'I can tell your post didn't resonate with anyone else' only works as a dismissal if a lack of 'resonance' is indicative of quality.

I am quite happy to agree that voting is tangential to quality. I also agree with you that it is 100% indicative of agreement/disagreement. An exceptionally high degree of agreement is the evidence of 'resonance' that makes eliot's attempted engagement flex, well, eyebrow worthy.

After all, if there's one thing more cringe than a dude-bro conspicuously flexing how they can pick up heavy weights, it is someone trying to do the same with light weights. It is all of the same arrogance, but none of the capacity.

"Nothing ever happens" is a completely valid sentiment, more valid than all the proclamations of all the academic experts combined, in fact. Also, people don't chime in with "I agree" comments over here. People only responds in agreement, when a comment is exceedingly insightful, otherwise they tend to respond with disagreements, which you can observe in this very instance.

I agree

What do ICE, the Black and Tans, and the Mongol Horde have in common? They're something you unleash on subjects who refuse to be governed by the gentle hand of civilian administration. If you play nice and pay tribute you get the diplomat or the local policeman. If you refuse you get soldiers instead. Are they a dangerous overstep? Yes, deliberately so. They're also unjust, rapacious, and cruel. They're intolerable in a civilized society. That's the point. They're supposed to be intolerable. Unable to tolerate them, the regime's enemies are then supposed to surrender.

When this force is unleashed, the offer is always the same: "I'll pull back my murderous thugs when you start treating my civilian administrators with respect appropriate to the power of my regime. You know the baton-carrying constable has no power over you, but I order you to behave like he holds your life in his hands. You know this arrogant nobleman claiming to speak for the Khan only has a few bodyguards at his disposal, but I order you to pretend he has the power to destroy you with a wave of his hand. If you refuse to accept my power when I rule with a light hand, I'll rule with an iron fist. If you refuse to obey my constable or pay tribute to my diplomat, I'll send in the troops to extract your loyalty by force."

Surely ICE deporting people is actually just normal? And everyone's overreacting because everyone's emotional setpoint has adjusted to the last administration.

Isn't "martial law" the US-equivalent of your list here?

The Black and Tans are known, among other things, for failing to do exactly the thing they were intended to do.

In the sense that they eventually we got some semblance of coherent resistance to them? Not sure how that refutes the comparison to the Mongol Horde.

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.

I appreciate the response. I had figured that your perspective existed among the perspectives on this forum (I've seen ~ "illegal immigration is the most existential threat the US faces" expressed).

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.

given this place has always been more disaffected liberals than anything else

I think I probably fall into that bucket but it's funny because I've been turbo posting here for a week due to an injury keeping me indoors and I absolutely feel like my political/etc views are a minority

Maybe this is a recent development, but this place strikes me as rather* right wing with a strong pro-natalist/Christian lean

As politely as I can, "this place is a den of right-wing iniquity" has been a standard cry of more left-leaning posters here since we were still on Reddit, and it's never, not even once, been born out by surveys, group composition, self-professed identities, etc., etc.

People who aren't familiar with the right simply have such a low threshold for right-wing sentiment that any being allowed codes as a flood.

Hey man, I'm not complaining, just observing. I didn't realize this was a common trope here, although that makes sense, /r/stupidpol has been hyperventilating about a right-wing takeover for nearly a decade which has never happened.

My only thought is that I feel like my takes garner more disagreement than agreement (which is why I am here), and none of the disagreement is because my takes aren't progressive enough.

I've actually been trying to expose myself to more right wing thinking. Partially because the left has been pushing me away, partially because I am so bored of echo chambers that agree with me, and finally because it forces me to challenge my ideas, which is good for my brain.

I haven't been around long enough to see any group surveys. My observation is purely vibes.

But you inspired me, so I did a really quick """analysis""" of all (18 at the time of writing) the first-level replies to the ICE question, and this is what I found:

Pro ICE comments: 44% (8/18) comments, with 47% (128/271) of the net upvotes

Middle/I couldn't confidently tell their stance on ICE's current actions comments: 39% (7), with 44% of the net upvotes

Anti ICE comments: 16% (3), with 9% of the net upvotes.

This tracks with my vibes, although is obviously not very comprehensive or rigorous. I note that my impression hanging out here is right-leaning comments do much better than left-leaning ones on average, and it feels independent of comment quality.

Edit, this was weak: You yourself got +15 upvotes saying things that I thought were quite uncool, and very right coded. I was with you for the first half, but "The more pain and terror inflicted in the process" and "I want the fascistcore club music as a squad of red-visored faceless commandos mow down the rioters waving Mexican flags." are things I think should get you disqualified from being taken seriously on the topic. I don't mean that as a personal attack (I'm sure you're a kind person to your friends and loved ones, etc) but holy shit dude, what the fuck? The fact that anyone (let alone a voting majority) agreed with you is a pretty clear demonstration of ideological lean here. If you posted this on reddit (obviously quite left leaning) you'd be at -100 and probably banned to boot.

I should also add, I do understand your anger and frustration, the recent mass-migration into Canada has been deeply upsetting and black-pilling for me. I am not here to debate your opinion on ICE or immigration, I don't care if our beliefs differ.

You yourself got +15 upvotes saying things that I thought were quite uncool, and very right coded.

I know "they were asking for it" is a cliche of an awful thing to say, but I have to point out: you literally were [edit: the top comment literally was] asking for it, and @Hadad was wise enough to remind everyone of that in his first sentence of that comment. The line between a debate and an opinion poll is a bit of a blurry one on a forum, but I think it's clear enough that the distinction matters. If he'd presented those sentiments as if they were supposed to be a persuasive argument, I'd absolutely have downvoted them, but giving an honest (and bookended by caveats!) expression of his sentiments in response to an explicit query for general sentiments was fine. I still couldn't bring myself to upvote it, sorry @Hadad, but half of the point of this place is seeing what people say when they're not being squelched, and avoiding the squelching is important for that.

I'd say your own [the] top comment's vote score (currently +18 -24) would be more clearly deserving of complaint (except that that would go over even more poorly, as "people can't downvote me [us]!" always does). There are problems with your [the] comment that should have been fixed, but I could surely find comments here that had bigger problems but got a pass because they were right-leaning rather than (in context) left-leaning.

Follow up question now that I can see vote breakdowns, which comment are you referring to with the +18 -24? I assume you mean my response to the ICE question that starts with "It's stupid theatrics."?

I am seeing that as net +21 (+30 -9), is there vote fuzzing or something?

More comments

Fair point on opinion vs debate. I did not consider that support for his comment could be both "I am glad you shared an opinion" or "I agree with your opinion".

Asking for what? Or, what was I asking for?

I tried to caveat my comment with "this is the vibe I get" and not "I am confidently saying I know the demographic of this community"

I did not realize you can see the upvote/downvote breakdown, thanks for that.

I really cannot emphasize how much I don't care about internet points lol. Anyone who complains about their downvotes, or brags about their upvotes should be bullied. This website doesn't even have a karma score (thank god) and I think would be better if it removed votes all together. A forum with threaded comments that can only be sorted by new is the ideal design, in my opinion.

Back when I was active on reddit, I made new accounts a few times a year and one of the main reasons for that was to never get attached to a karma score.

There are problems with your comment that should have been fixed

Always open to feedback

More comments

You yourself got +15 upvotes saying things that I thought were quite uncool, and very right coded. I was with you for the first half, but "The more pain and terror inflicted in the process" and "I want the fascistcore club music as a squad of red-visored faceless commandos mow down the rioters waving Mexican flags." are things I think should get you disqualified from being taken seriously on the topic. I don't mean that as a personal attack (I'm sure you're a kind person to your friends and loved ones, etc) but holy shit dude, what the fuck? The fact that anyone (let alone a voting majority) agreed with you is a pretty clear demonstration of ideological lean here. If you posted this on reddit (obviously quite left leaning) you'd be at -100 and probably banned to boot.

No offense taken, much like how you'll not be offended by the obvious retort coming up: your disapproval genuinely means nothing to me. You're right that Reddit would not allow this, as Reddit only supports violent fantasizing when it's directed toward the right. Replace "criminals and illegals" with "law-abiding Republican voters", and they'll foam at the mouth in support.

And yes, I got fifteen upvotes. I expressed myself plainly, took a hard stance, and stood by it. You can do similar! You'll find great success if you use the right tone and style. These sorts of posts, where you passively complain and snip at people, will almost always encourage a pile-on. Nobody likes snivelers.

Lastly, I'd strongly encourage you to not mistake "lack of progressives" with "abundance of right-wing". Almost everyone here hates progressives and progressivism. That's why they're disaffected liberals.

Again I'm really not whining, I didn't come here expecting it to be a "agrees with me" paradise.

It seems to me like right-leaning ideas are more popular here, which I took a stab at demonstrating. There's also at least enough right-leaning support here to go +15 while espousing violent right-leaning thoughts. If you were at +1, I'd assume ideological balance in the group, if you were at -15, there would clearly more left-leaning voters clicking than right-leaning.

your disapproval genuinely means nothing to me

I expect nothing less! No offense taken :)

I post because I like to hear myself speak, and I like bickering. If I wanted approval for my ideas I'd be on reddit, which I am not. Have a great day!

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: there is simply no good faith left at all in my heart. my political opponents, and they will never operate in good faith. There is no negotiation in existential conflict. There is only the will and the power to act.

'You see Charlie, these liberals are trying to assassinate my character. And I can't change their mind. I won't change my mind, because I don't have to. Because I'm an American. I won't change my mind on anything, regardless of the facts that are set out before me. I'm dug in. And I'll never change.' For your viewing pleasure - one of my favorite clips, and not even for that quote.

Every time I read one of these pathetic tough guy screeds, my first thought is to laugh at the absolute lack of self-awareness. 'Reee, my outgroup is full of animals who would never compromise or act in good faith! This justifies me never acting in good faith either. I can't wait for my fellow citizens to get mown down by the stasi for disagreeing with me!'

My second thought is to reply, 'Say it louder, and into the microphone, please.' Seriously. Go hop on Fox News and give an interview about how you want to shoot protestors and cruelty is the point and God praise Donald Trump. Write your angry, impotent screeds and spread them as widely as possible - under your real name if you can. There's really nothing better for democratic electoral odds than platforming people like you.

Or, and I hold little hope for a week-old-probably-troll account, you could dig yourself out of your sad little internet radicalization hole and stop holding so much hate in your heart. I guarantee your life would be better for it.

Reee, my outgroup is full of animals who would never compromise or act in good faith! This justifies me never acting in good faith either.

Except we did have a compromise that legalized 3 million illegal aliens and their progeny forever, which was the 4th time we had legalized illegal immigrants living in the US. So no I don't think that the other side of immigration is doing anything in good faith.

So no I don't think that the other side of immigration is doing anything in good faith.

As evidence that your outgroup is acting in bad faith, you bring up legislation from 40 years ago. 2/3rds of those voters are probably dead, while the majority of voters today (myself included) weren't alive or were far too young to vote for your compromise. Your imagined voter who supported amnesty in the 80s knowing that we'd be in the situation we are today as part of some dastardly bad-faith plan to bring in more illegal immigrants is nonexistent.

"But Chris!" you say, scurrying back to your bailey, "I didn't mean voters today are acting in bad faith because of legislation from 40 years ago, I'm saying they push compromises in bad faith knowing that they're meaningless and we'll be back where we started 40 years from now! How could you not parse that from my two sentence effortpost that I worked on meticulously to avoid any ambiguity?"

To which I say, you aren't offering any evidence that these compromises are offered in bad faith, you're pretending to read the minds of your outgroup and ascribe the worst possible impulses to them. I believe that the majority of Americans support a middle path, flanked by people like the one I replied to and open borders folks. Biden, the media, and a majority of voters all knew the administration had a problem with immigration leading up to the election which is why they tried to craft a compromise to address it. You won't get a mea culpa, but it was pretty obvious throughout the summer that the status quo was unsustainable.

As evidence that your outgroup is acting in bad faith, you bring up legislation from 40 years ago. 2/3rds of those voters are probably dead, while the majority of voters today (myself included) weren't alive or were far too young to vote for your compromise. Your imagined voter who supported amnesty in the 80s knowing that we'd be in the situation we are today as part of some dastardly bad-faith plan to bring in more illegal immigrants is nonexistent.

If the offer is the same offer that empirically failed to hold 40 years ago offered by the party that has been continuously failing to uphold it this whole time then offering it unamended is bad faith or the people offering it are either stupid or think the people they're offering it to are stupid. I actually do think that an amnesty with safeguards to ensure enforcement is our only real option. But the deal is effectively the amnesty side gets amnesty and the immigration hawks get nothing they weren't already entitled to from the previous agreement. You need to pass like an amendment level of tying future governments to the mast to credibly offer this solution.

As evidence that your outgroup is acting in bad faith, you bring up legislation from 40 years ago. 2/3rds of those voters are probably dead

40 years isn't that long in the scheme of politics. It's merely long enough for Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell to have voted for the 1986 amnesty earlier in their careers. Three of the four were either President or their respective party's leader in the Senate six months ago and nothing in the 40 years that followed Simpson-Mazzoli suggests that any of those had an ideological change of heart.

The best evidence that they aren't operating in good faith is the rules that everyone is angry Trump is enforcing were supposed to be the thing that my side got in exchange for the 1986 amnesty that mostly havent been enforced for those 40 years.

To which I say, you aren't offering any evidence that these compromises are offered in bad faith, you're pretending to read the minds of your outgroup and ascribe the worst possible impulses to them.

I feel there's kind of a false dichotomy/definition debate going on here.

Let's talk about Newcomb's Paradox. There is and stubbornly remains some class of people who think the solution to the problem is to intend to one-box, but then to become a two-boxer after Omega has made its prediction. This solution is fatally flawed because, to misquote Minority Report, "Omega doesn't care what you intend to do. Only what you will do". If one will "become" a two-boxer before the decision is made, then one already is a two-boxer, because the definition of a two-boxer is "one who will pick both boxes", not "one who currently thinks he will pick both boxes". If I am programming Omega, and I want to make Omega as reliable as possible, I should count such people as two-boxers because they will two-box; their false consciousness of being a one-boxer, no matter how sincerely believed, is not actually relevant.

(I went looking for the exchange I had with one of these people, but I couldn't find it.)

The shape of the excluded third option should now be pretty clear. There exists a class of people who'll sincerely make a compromise, and then change their minds later. When talking about your ingroup, the natural tendency is to count these people as "good faith", because they believe what they say and you sympathise with them. When talking about your outgroup, the natural tendency is to count these people as "bad faith" because the natural context of analysing your outgroup is wanting to know whether deals will be kept or not.

Hence, under their definitions, "deals have not been kept in the past" is evidence of bad faith, because "your outgroup doesn't care what you intend to do. Only what your movement will do". It's not totally-irrefutable evidence - movements change, and not all deals are created equal - but it's relevant. Moreover, I think modelling social justice as unable to keep its bargains is actually fairly justified, because of two reasons:

  1. Social justice is leaderless. Committees are bad at keeping their bargains absent specific effort, because committees tend to include people who wanted to reject the bargain, and turnover might lead to those people gaining control of the committee at some point (and "you should respect a bargain you never agreed to, because others in your movement did over your objection" is a much-tougher sell than "you should respect a bargain you agreed to"*).

  2. Social justice is not very interested in keeping historical norms. "Dead old white men", and so forth. So that tough sell is even tougher.

I get that it's really awkward to respond to the claim "you can't make a believable compromise, because you will change your mind and/or others in your movement will overrule you". I sympathise. Unfortunately, that doesn't always mean it's false.

*I'm reminded of the exchange at the end of the TNG episode "The Pegasus":

PICARD: In the Treaty of Algeron the Federation specifically agreed not to develop cloaking technology.

PRESSMAN: And that treaty is the biggest mistake we ever made! It's kept us from exploiting a vital area of defence.

PICARD: That treaty has kept us in peace for sixty years, and as a Starfleet officer, you're supposed to uphold it.

It's very, very easy to be a Pressman. There are probably still circumstances where I'd be a Pressman, despite having assimilated Ratsphere cautions against it.

There is and stubbornly remains some class of people who think the solution to the problem is to intend to one-box, but then to become a two-boxer after Omega has made its prediction.

I do think that strat works for Kavka's toxin puzzle, though. I don’t know about other people, but I am entirely capable of entertaining a single, limited, stupid thought for a moment, without simultaneously considering higher-level contradicting thoughts.

Yes, this is a clear distinction between the two problems. Kavka's billionaire does care about what you intend to do, not only (or even at all) what you will do.

Hence, under their definitions, "deals have not been kept in the past" is evidence of bad faith

It's evidence of bad faith on the part of the Dems of 40 years ago. I think @Chrisprattalpharaptr 's point re: "legislation from 40 years ago" is that the people at issue are dead (or at any rate no longer relevant), and you can't read the minds of people today based on dirty tricks pulled - consciously or otherwise - by their geriatric forebears half a century prior, even if the current scions are nominally waving the same flag.

I guess the question becomes whether you can meaningfully talk about "a movement" behaving in bad faith in the sense you describe. I guess you can gloss the internal turnover as just what it looks like when "the movement" "changes its mind", and still analogize to the bad Newcomb solution. But I don't think it creates much light to try to talk about "bad faith" when describing the external behavior of a movement without any reference to the conscious experiences of anybody in the movement, whether sincere or otherwise.

people at issue are dead (or at any rate no longer relevant)

From upthread, just in case you missed it:

Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell to have voted for the 1986 amnesty earlier in their careers

Also

you can't read the minds of people today based on dirty tricks pulled - consciously or otherwise - by their geriatric forebears half a century prior, even if the current scions are nominally waving the same flag.

Does that mean we can put any discussion of reparation to rest too because there's no such thing as group responsibility for past sins so long as you run the clock long enough?

Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell to have voted for the 1986 amnesty earlier in their careers

I did mention the "geriatric forebears"! Three out of these four people are in their 80s. The sole exception is a sprightly 74. These are no longer the people on whose trustworthiness the party's long- or even mid-term trustworthiness depends. They will be dead or in care homes long before they get the chance to recant on any deals made in the 2020s. This is what I meant by "no longer relevant".

Does that mean we can put any discussion of reparation to rest too because there's no such thing as group responsibility for past sins so long as you run the clock long enough?

Well, that doesn't follow. I wasn't talking about holding the son accountable for the sins of the father, but about the pragmatic question of whether the son is or isn't committing the same sins as his father today. The thread was discussing Republicans' ability to trust Democrats as a practical issue - that's not the same thing as granting that Democrats may be sincere today, but refusing to negotiate as punishment for past defections.

All of which said, yes, I do in fact believe there's no such things as group responsibility for the sins of past generations, and that "reparations" are a bad idea. (If some groups today are more disadvantaged than others, they should receive help proportionate to the extent to which they are disadvantaged. But there's no reason the distant descendants of their oppressors should be uniquely responsible for providing that help, and it shouldn't be regarded as something "owed" to the disadvantaged descendants of the oppressed, except insofar as all citizens are collectively responsible for the welfare of all other citizens - which applies just as well to someone whose family was ruined by a freak meteor crash twenty years ago as by slavery or segregation. I really dislike the justice-based/"punitive" framing.)

I'd think that if the movement has changed enough that the bad faith from 40 years ago isn't relevant, then people in the present-day movement who are acting in good faith would say "I admit that happened 40 years ago, but we no longer want to do that." If they don't say that, then either they are acting in bad faith today or they have to appease people in the movement who are acting in bad faith today.

Ideally they should also add "... and here's what we're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again". But they haven't even gotten to the first step of admitting that it's a concern.

But I don't think it creates much light to try to talk about "bad faith" when describing the external behavior of a movement without any reference to the conscious experiences of anybody in the movement, whether sincere or otherwise.

From within the movement, it sure doesn't feel like it. I did say that it only counts by the outgroup-definition of bad faith, and called it a "third option".

From without, as someone who wants to know ideal behaviour for dealing with the group, the game-theoretic incentives are identical: "don't make deals with things that aren't going to honour those deals". For the outgroup, the rest is gravy; this question of "will X honour deals" is 99% of what it wants to know, because it determines whether it should make terms (and avoid a needless civil war) or fight (and avoid exploitation). That answer rests solely on the result, not the process. The rest is interesting anthropological information, but they're your outgroup; it's not like you matter to them as people and they don't care about all of the same things as you.

They've already demonstrated bad faith by maliciously not enforcing the law in just the prior administration. We would need some kind of signal that they were serious about departing from this practice, or any statutory promises about future enforcement are worthless.

The right-wing in this case need not be emotionally attached to the language of "good-faith." Put simply, if today's movement quacks like yesterday's movement, then it's yesterday's movement. Today's movement must distinguish themselves from yesterday's movement if they wish the right-wing to compromise with them. An unwillingness to distinguish themselves is an admission that they are, in fact, yesterday's movement. Personally, I think "good-faith" is simply the name given to this concept, since as a show of good faith is the standard English phrase for what I am calling "distinguish."

I'll quote @gattsuru here:

... the Obama administration issued thousands of work permits under DAPA after the Fifth Circuit [entered an] injunction [blocking the practice], and then said oops. A further hundred thousand reprieves were granted after the Obama administration swore before the court and in written submissions that they would not act on the memo while the court was ruling on the preliminary injunction to start with. During appeals the Obama administration held that it could offer whatever individualized discretion it wanted, so long as no one made those decisions because of the DAPA rule. Nor was this problem specific to DAPA. The Obama admin repeatedly refused to follow both statutory requirements and court orders mandating notice to a state for settling refugees, up to and including directing state charities to not tell state authorities.

To say nothing of how the Biden administration twisted and turned to do anything possible to refrain from enforcing the actual law on the border.

The left has a track record of breaking the law and ignoring court decisions in order to keep the border open, then trying to hide the ball under obfuscatory administratrivia.

Reee, my outgroup is full of animals who would never compromise or act in good faith! This justifies me never acting in good faith either.

This can in fact be true, though I would recommend a slower pace of escalation than him even then. How would you know when it is true?

Given he was clearly going for maximal heat and outrage, I can't rap you too hard for responding with naked contempt and personal attacks , but this was still naked contempt and personal attacks. When someone posts a "pathetic tough guy screed" of course there is a desire to knock him down a peg, but people are actually allowed to post with hearts full of malice, and while I don't love the sentiment, I'd honestly be stretching to say @Hadad broke the rules and you didn't.

You do realize that by moderating @Chrisprattalpharaptr while defending @Hadad from push-back you are saying that want more posters like @Hadad (who by your own admission is going for heat over light) and fewer posters like @Chrisprattalpharaptr.

In short you are choosing to incentivise heat over light.

Not sure. This seems like a fairly evident instance of moderating the post and not the poster. Hadad's was rule-compliant even if it was bad, whereas Chris' contained a personal attack and thus broke a rule even if it correctly identified Hadad's post as bad. Pretty much just like Amadan's modpost said. If this actually encourages Hadad (and/or others) to post more screeds and discourages Chris (and/or others) from arguing against them, then...well, that's not good either, of course, but it's by no means certain that that will even be the effect. Whereas ignoring the rules to play favorites with this or that poster just throws the foundations of the motte out of the window, which is certain to have negative consequences for everyone.

Pushback is fine. Address the lack of light and not your personal feelings about the poster.

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.

Object all you want. "I hate my enemies and want them to suffer" may indeed be a sincere statement. It's also clearly meant to generate heat.

"I hate my enemies and want them to suffer" is true, but not what I said.

"I hate my enemies and want them to suffer" is true, but not what I said.

Really?

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.

And it's not even that I disagree with you on the object level. Just - it looks a lot like you did indeed say that.

And it's not even that I disagree with you on the object level. Just - it looks a lot like you did indeed say that.

There is an entire post you had to excise to quote one specific line. Perhaps you could look at the entire thing, and not reduce my message to a single statement!

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My second thought is to reply, 'Say it louder, and into the microphone, please.' Seriously. Go hop on Fox News and give an interview about how you want to shoot protestors and cruelty is the point and God praise Donald Trump. Write your angry, impotent screeds and spread them as widely as possible - under your real name if you can. There's really nothing better for democratic electoral odds than platforming people like you.

I think he might just get accused of trying to copy Asmongold, who appears to have become one of the most popular streamers & youtubers right now with pretty similar commentary (maybe not quite as violent of fantasy, but in that similar direction). And rather than the democrats wanting to smugly signal boost it, they are in a panic over how to counter that popularity.

It's true, although if Asmongold hops on the stage at the RNC and says "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" to thunderous applause then is deplatforming really the answer to our problems?

Hence the panic, because deplatforming just looks desperate and villainous. So it comes down to a bet about what is truly more popular/populist, for whether you'd want to signal boost it or not. And I'd suppose that it's actually pretty likely that a majority of people watching minneapolis and LA protestors trying to impede ICE/FBI/DHS might be fantasizing about an even more aggressive response by the cops like OP. It's at least pretty popular among young normie dudes.

If you're saying that @Hadad's confessed opinion in detailed written motte-form is probably so extreme that it would turn people off, I still wouldn't bet on that.

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.

Every time I read one of these pathetic tough guy screeds, my first thought is to laugh at the absolute lack of self-awareness. 'Reee, my outgroup is full of animals who would never compromise or act in good faith! This justifies me never acting in good faith either.

Cool. Tell me about some relevant instances of your outgroup acting in good faith.

Happy to, conditional on:

  1. You bothering to write more than lazy, snarky, single sentence replies to minimize the asymmetry of effort between us.
  2. Define outgroup.
  3. Define good faith.
  • -10

Sounds like a not happy to, then.

Yeah, I knew asking Jiro to be arsed to write more than two sentences was a pretty monumental ask. You shouldn't be so pessimistic though! Hope springs eternal and all that.

  • -12

Sounds like a still not happy to, then.

Good faith doesn't require such petty sneers.

Good faith doesn't require such petty sneers.

Indeed. I can forgive you for this one instance, though.

  • -12
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Untwist your panties, Janet.

Given that your OP was pretty heated and begging for heat in return , I still dinged @Chrisprattalpharaptr for taking the bait. Now you're egging him on. You wrote a nice spicy hot take; do not try to turn this whole thread into mutual raspberries.

The only heat is coming from Chris. You needn't worry about me fighting with him; I already told him to hush.

This is not helping, and you aren't clever by adding a behind the back shot at him in reply to me.

To be abundantly clear, it is not your place to tell other people to hush.

I'll keep that in mind the next time Chris wordily tells me to fuck off, but no promises.

I modded him for wordily telling you to fuck off. I'm telling you to let mods handle it and do not respond in kind.

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what should be the response by the opposition that would want to prevent that

well, easy answer would be "stop sabotaging deportation of people who immigrated illegally" though for deeply open border people who consider nearly any deportation as unacceptable it is nonstarter

despite being intentionally hamstrung by the right wing of congress that has refused for several presidential terms to pass any immigration reform despite bipartisan efforts

how bipartisan they were? Is "bipartisan" used here in meaning "one republican voted for"? Or some deeper support?

and AFAIK left wing in turn sabotaged orderly deportations or blocking them at border (and yes, border walls can work if maintained properly)

History buffs, what are the best examples of countries barely recovering from the brink of authoritarianism?

South Korea just did it

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