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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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efforts to reduce the 'goon' surface vector by reducing police presence and proactivity

Well, that's not what I want. I would like more, but softer, policing. More local beat cops who know everyone by name, fewer Stormtroopers. I'll grant you that the mainstream Democratic messaging doesn't actively advocate for this, but for what it's worth, that's what I want; I don't think there's a binary switch between "defund the police" and "goons in balaclavas". (See also this post.)

You avoided the question regarding your own position.

What is practical about insinuating a standard global practice for police at risk of retaliation, by a law enforcement agency with a history even before the current administration of being subject to targeted attacks by international criminal groups and US domestic extremists, that is actively being targeted by doxing and harassment efforts after partisan media signal boosted social media apps for anonymously reporting and tracking ICE locations and movements to enable further actions, is 'leaning into' a Nazi accusation?

Your response of the practicality, please.

Well, that's not what I want. I would like more, but softer, policing.

Your desires are as irrelevant to the consequences of your proposed policies as they are irrelevant to the intended consequences of the partisans your are borrowing the arguments of.

More local beat cops who know everyone by name, fewer Stormtroopers.

Local beat cops in California are legally prohibited from conducting immigration enforcement by multiple legal obstacles, including accountability to the state of California whose politicians oppose enforcing immigration laws, and the policy engineering of that political leadership coalition to revoke that authority from even other, willing states.

Hence, your preferred policy would lead to less enforcement, and fewer actors legally authorized to enforce laws. This is, not coincidentally, the intent of the progressive anti-ICE coalition, for whom the 'stormtrooper' accusation is a useful lie to deflect blame for escalating tensions that are justified on the grounds of such lies.

That your preferred additional policy of demasking would make it even easier for malefactors to escalate targeting of those fewer authorized actors, thus creating a moral and pragmatic obligation on the part of those authorized actors to protect themselves, thus leading to further accusations of being totalitarian oppression used to advocate for even fewer people more easy to target, is a symbiotic feedbackloop coincidence.

I'll grant you that the mainstream Democratic messaging doesn't actively advocate for this, but for what it's worth, that's what I want; I don't think there's a binary switch between "defund the police" and "goons in balaclavas".

It is worth nothing when you perpetrate the false and accusatory framings that are used to justify the political violence of those who very much do advance such binary switches through political violence.

the 'stormtrooper' accusation is a useful lie

How is it a lie? They do in fact look like faceless Stormtroopers. You can argue that this is necessary, either because that's just how policing work or because the Left has left immigration enforcers no other options - but you can't argue it's a "lie". It's visibly just true, and several other people in the thread are in fact defending that yes, they are, but that's what you gotta do.

That your preferred additional policy of demasking would make it even easier for malefactors to escalate targetting of those fewer authorized actors,

I contend - as a matter of fact - that if ICE agents looked and acted like normal people instead of Stormtroopers, this would in fact lead to fewer attacks on them in the mid-to-long-term. There's a fringe of radicals who would still try to doxx/hurt/kill them, but they would look much worse in the eyes of the wider population than in the current status quo where the people they're fighting go around dressing and acting like supervillains. Violence against a normal-looking dude would seem shocking and generate more pushback.

There's a fringe of radicals who would still try to doxx/hurt/kill them, but they would look much worse in the eyes of the wider population than in the current status quo where the people they're fighting go around dressing and acting like supervillains.

I lost this kind of hope in the common left-liberal when otherwise-sane people with good careers started attacking random peoples' cars because of comments by the car manufacturer's CEO.

You're either overestimating the goodness of "normies" or underestimating the frequency of the fringe.

Vandalizing unoccupied Teslas speaks ill of the culprits' maturity, but widespread tolerance for "heck yeah, let's mess up Bad Man supporters' stupid-looking hell-cars, that'll show them" does not make me despair of human nature in the same way "heck yeah, hang that father of three from a lamppost" would. Those seem to be in very different realms, and just because the former is disappointingly common, does not make me lose hope about the rarity of the latter sentiment.

I think the route from one to the other is shorter than you do, and the allowance of calling one's enemies Nazis (or cockroaches) makes it shorter still.

It is an hallowed tradition in this country to call our political opponents mean names.

Then we should go back to calling each other hideous hermaphroditical characters

A father of two was just murdered for his political views. A none insignificant number of leftists cheered his murder. You have members of Congress saying murder bad but “long diatribe about how awful the decedent was” effectively saying “that this murder wasn’t that bad.”

So I don’t have the faith you do.

How is it a lie? They do in fact look like faceless Stormtroopers

No, Stormtroopers have a gruesome white helmet, and if you took off the helmet it wouldn't matter because they all have the same face.

I contend - as a matter of fact - that if ICE agents looked and acted like normal people instead of Stormtroopers, this would in fact lead to fewer attacks on them in the mid-to-long-term.

While I don't like the masking, I do not believe there is any convincing evidence for this claim.

Stormtroopers were not clones and they didn't look very gruesome imo.

You avoided the question regarding your own position, again.

What is practical about insinuating a standard global practice for police at risk of retaliation, by a law enforcement agency with a history even before the current administration of being subject to targeted attacks by international criminal groups and US domestic extremists, that is actively being targeted by doxing and harassment efforts after partisan media signal boosted social media apps for anonymously reporting and tracking ICE locations and movements to enable further actions, is 'leaning into' a Nazi accusation?

Your response of the practicality, please.

How is it a lie? They do in fact look like faceless Stormtroopers.

Because they are not Stormtroopers. They are not stormtroopers in the military context (ICE are not dressed as the origin of the term of trench stormers), or in the fascist context (ICE is not fulfilling a fascist police state supression role), or the in the young adult novel dystopian government context (the demand of which is exceeding the supply).

You can argue that this is necessary, either because that's just how policing work or because the Left has left immigration enforcers no other options - but you can't argue it's a "lie". It's visibly just true, and several other people in the thread are in fact defending that yes, they are, but that's what you gotta do.

It is visibly not true, since vision allows people to observe actions, and even reasons for actions. Visibility also allows the comparisons, and contrasts, with other ascetic representations of things of a category (the variety of what Stormtroopers might be, which is too broad to be encapsulated by ICE), and things that are not of a category (the global examples of face-obscuring wear of not-Stormtroopers, to which a Stormtrooper accusation would be a lie).

I contend - as a matter of fact - that if ICE agents looked and acted like normal people instead of Stormtroopers, this would in fact lead to fewer attacks on them in the mid-to-long-term.

Aside from your contention of a fact being a non-falsifiable hypothesis rather than a fact, this claim entails a notable omission of the 'short-to-medium' term, which is when law enforcement activity would occur. It has no attempt to address the relevant possible hypothesis second-order consequences of current political violence trajectories both for enforcement over the mid-to-long term (such as trends to non-enforcement from successful terrorism), or compensation efforts (which would be accused of being authoritarian abuses).

There's a fringe of radicals who would still try to doxx/hurt/kill them, but they would look much worse in the eyes of the wider population than in the current status quo where the people they're fighting go around dressing and acting like supervillains. Violence against a normal-looking dude would seem shocking and generate more pushback.

The wider population already support immigration enforcement and standard force protection measures for police. In turn, the current enforcement wave is the pushback for years of systemic non-enforcement, which did lead to predictable and predicted consequences both in terms if migrant crimes and ideological blind eyes to migrant perpetrators of crimes against normal-looking dudes (and dudets).

You are already in the context of the pushback. You, specifically, are opposing the pushback.

Aside from your contention of a fact being a non-falsifiable hypothesis rather than a fact

Until demasking is attempted, so is the hypothesis that demasking would lead to further escalation of violence.

Because they are not Stormtroopers. They are not stormtroopers in the military context (ICE are not dressed as the origin of the term of trench stormers), or in the fascist context (ICE is not fulfilling a fascist police state supression role), or the in the young adult novel dystopian government context (the demand of which is exceeding the supply).

I am not saying that they "are" Stormtroopers, I am saying that they look like Stormtroopers - meant in its colloquial aesthetic sense of "identical, impersonal, threatening-looking armed goons". I think it is obviously true that they look like Stormtroopers, and fairly clear from Trump's own rhetoric and that of ICE supporters, that this is an aesthetic they deliberately cultivate as opposed to an innocent consequence of putting together optimally protective and effective uniforms. They want ICE to look intimidating. Are you really claiming that they don't?

You are already in the context of the pushback. You, specifically, are opposing the pushback.

You are talking about pushback from the Right; I am talking about pushback from within the Left (which Mottizens have been the first to notice has been lacking).

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