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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30591 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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And if you ask the HSE people responsible for those jobs what this risk of injury should be, they will say "zero"

And they will be wrong about that, because we live in a world where tradeoffs exist. I think this "if you knew a risk was nonzero but didn't eliminate the risk, you are culpable for anything that goes wrong" mentality drives a lot of the sickness of our civilization.

and do absolutely everything in their power to reduce it to that level in terms of procedures that they can identify/control

or at least enough to cover their asses, yes.

much higher than that of them dying of COVID

ICE agents are mostly young and in shape. Their risk of dying of COVID is pretty much zero. If we're spending any significant energy on trying to make sure ICE agents don't die of COVID (beyond "here's a vaccine, it's free under your benefits plan if you want it") we're being stupid and should stop. I expect vehicle collisions are at least 100x more dangerous to ICE agents than COVID, probably a lot more than that.

Considering that there are literally targeted hit attempts happening on ICE agents right now

To be clear, I do support coming down as hard as possible on anyone who tries to kill a law enforcement agent (including ICE) and any of their actual accomplices. But murder-suicides are just really hard to deal with and I don't think trying to come up with ways to disincentivize them is likely to be fruitful.

And they will be wrong about that

Yes -- but they run every workplace in the country, including ICE.

ICE agents are mostly young and in shape. Their risk of dying of COVID is pretty much zero.

Yes -- and we made them (and everyone else) wear masks all the time a few short years ago. Now they want to wear masks to mitigate a larger risk, and you are telling them "no I don't like the aesthetics of govt agents in masks"? Get outta here.

But murder-suicides are just really hard to deal with

The ambush attack at the ICE office a few weeks ago was not a murder suicide -- it was a targeted raid, and the the people doing it had a (fairly bad) plan for getting away with it.

Their risk of dying of COVID is pretty much zero. If we're spending any significant energy on trying to make sure ICE agents don't die of COVID we're being stupid and should stop.

Oh no, that's actually why they need the masks. Or at least, that's how it should be justified since the people who are anti-enforcing-immigration-law are also in large degree the people still worried about the uncommon cold.

cute

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