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Throwing in a quick post because I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed here (unless I missed it!), Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago sets up "ICE-free zones" in Chicago.
This comes on the heels of Trump sending in the national guard after Chicago PD apparently wouldn't help ICE agents under attack. I haven't read all the stuff about this scenario, but on the surface level it seems pretty bad, I have to say.
There's a video clip where that mayor is saying that Republicans want a "redo of the Civil War," amongst other incredibly inflammatory things. The Governor of Illinois is apparently backing the mayor up.
This refusal to help ICE and even outright claim that you're fighting a war with them I mean... I suppose Democrats have been doing it for a while. This seems... bad. I mean sure you can sugarcoat it and point to legal statues and such, but fundamentally if the local governments of these places are going to agitate so directly against the President, I can't blame Trump for sending in the national guard.
Obviously with the two party system we have a line and such, but man, it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war. Not the social media fear-obsessed "civil war" people have been saying has already started, but real national guard vs. local pd or state military type open warfare. I just don't understand going this far, unless the Mayor of Chicago thinks that he can get away with it and Trump will back down.
Even then, brinksmanship of this type seems totally insane!
I suppose Newsom in CA has been doing it too, now that I mention it. Sigh. I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.
Everyone throws oil into the fire and kicks mud around. From one perspective:
The government is deploying the military because of civil violations. Other types of civil violations involve running a red light, building a deck without a permit, accidentally spilling a small amount of pollutants, filing your taxes late (this is closest), letting your dog roam unleashed. If they are merely enforcing the current law, why in this manner? Does or should the military repel down helicopters to clear entire buildings and check everyone's tax documents on the presumption of guilt? Why is it doing differently here? If the law is wrong, why are they not changing regulations etc.?
From another perspective, sure, mass immigration is a threat against Western civilization and the other side hates patriots. But again, why are they not changing the laws to deal with this more thoroughly and why is all effort directed towards more pious coreligionists instead of Muslims or Hindus or Jews etc.?
From my own perspective, I have little idea what anyone's actually doing. It all seems like incompetence or self-sabotage, randomly flailing around with no coherence. I don't think anyone benefits besides China and goldbugs.
Because it has been established that blues ignore laws they dislike or find inconvenient, and that this is one such law. There is no reason to believe that making illegal immigration double-illegal will result in Blues actually enforcing laws they don't want to enforce and perceive great advantage in not enforcing. This is an invitation to waste political capital on "process" that has already been subverted.
From where I stand, the main difference between blue and red seems to be that one generally does not like to deport illegals, and the other is only deporting illegals in sectors where it will not wreck the economic sector of their constituents.
Also, prosecutorial discretion is basically the name of the game of Trump's DoJ. Why waste taxpayer money on prosecuting crypto traders when it is so much more lucrative to make them just buy Trump's shitcoins and see their legal trouble evaporate?
The idea that it is imperative to enforce any law on the book seems silly. Sure, I would prefer if laws just got struck (ideally automatically unless the legislature re-ups them) when they fell out of use, because selective enforcement is a tool of the tyrant, but it if a law is bad then it is better to ignore it than to enforce it.
The US had sodomy laws in force until the SC put an end to them in 2003 (and are still kept on the books by 12 states, including your usual suspects). Blasphemy laws remain on the books in six states, also unenforceable
I may be going out on a limb here, but from the context of Lawrence, it does not sound like even Texas had a big Butt Sex Prevention Task Force in 1998. My guess it that GWB mostly did exactly what you accuse the blues of doing: not enforcing a law which he found not to be politically relevant to enforce.
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Is your claim that Reds generally are unconcerned about Muslim or Hindu illegal immigration? That would be a surprising take, given a number of past incidents.
Most effort is being directed toward South and Central American illegal immigrants because these are by far the most numerous cohort of illegal immigrants, also generally the poorest, and at least arguably the most criminal.
My own opinion is that they should openly state their position and attempt to modify the laws to fit it (or at least draft laws they would like). I see no reason why they couldn't act at the same time. (Really, what incompetence would limit the entire administration to only doing 1 thing at a time?) If all civilization is truly at stake, I don't see why they should restrict themselves to laws beholden to their enemies. So again, why are they attacking Christians first?
We did that decades ago. We passed laws, and stopped laws we did not want from being passed. We won the legal argument fair and square. Only, it turns out that the legal argument doesn't matter because the other side, broadly speaking, is willing to ignore or actively subvert the law sufficiently to preclude all enforcement. There is no reason to believe that passing additional laws will force Blues to actually respect them.
Did you miss this part?
Considerable effort has been expended against Muslim and Hindu migration as well, but it is the southern border that represents the core of the problem. What part of this is confusing?
I don't believe hardworking Christians represent a civilizational threat. So clearly the current administration aren't Christian nationalists like the supporters I know and see. But I don't know what they actually are or what the purpose of such measures are.
I'm also confused by the legalism (caring if they are legal or not) mixed with antilegalism (why bother trying to change the laws).
Most illegals are nominally Christian, but they’re not really more religious on average than Americans.
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