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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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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.