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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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So upfront, I basically think every illegal alien criminal has to go. Non-criminal illegal aliens I care less, but I do agree that it’s hard to make the case that they shouldn’t also go.

I object to the current DHS, CBP, ICE behavior on the basis of the collateral damage they seem to be ok inflicting on actual US citizens who aren’t even bothering them. One incident that hits pretty close to home for me since I’m a runner is this case in Chicago where a 70yr old white guy was driving back from his run club and found agents blocking his driveway with their cars. From what I’ve heard from friends in the area, the agents asked him once to back up, didn’t give him a chance to comply, and proceeded to drag him out of his car and kneel on his back, breaking 6 of his ribs. He was training to run the NYC marathon this past weekend, and this meant he had to miss the race. Months of work down the drain for pretty much no reason. You can find plenty of videos of it if you search.

Yeah this is one incident, but I keep seeing stuff like it. Stuff like agents pulling their gun on citizens for almost nothing, etc. Again, US citizens minding their own business. I’m sorry but my desire to have all illegal immigrants go does not outweigh my desire to not have a risk of being attacked in that manner by agents of the state. You might tell me to avoid seeking out trouble by following ICE around like some people do, but this guy was literally just trying to get into his own house. I’m chalking this up to extremely poor training due to the pace this admin feels they have to deport people at, and the resulting increase in headcount they’ve had to do. But I simply don’t think that behavior like this is what Trump voters voted for when they voted for immigration enforcement. Assaulting an old man who wasn’t even impeding their activities is in no way a necessary part of deporting illegals.

But I simply don’t think that behavior like this is what Trump voters voted for when they voted for immigration enforcement.

The high cost of removing immigrants is an argument against their admittance in the first place. I refuse to accept a ratchet, and so I assert that we simply can remove these people, and this is right and good, and that the costs are steep but worth it.

Ideally we wouldn't have old men with broken ribs. Ideally we wouldn't have tens of millions of hostile foreigners, either. The world isn't ideal.

I found a video that starts with the man already on the ground, bitching like a Karen, while an angry crowd crowds around the agents screaming hostilities.

I'm going to express a bit of skepticism that things played out the way your "friends in the area" say it did.

And just putting this out there, but these anti-ICE protestors are doing a lot to radicalize me. They come off as so delusionally self-righteous, so appallingly entitled, wreathed in such false bravery, that I think they nearly automatically discredit whatever cause they support as well as anyone who thinks they're the good guys. If you want to convince me that ICE are doing evil, muzzle these retards first.

I always find it mildly disconcerting when Americans (especially right wing Americans like the ones here), a people who's whole national mythos was "fuck the British, and fuck anyone else who tells us what to do" , who's contemporary culture is deeply shaped by concepts like "get the fuck off my lawn before I shoot you" and "fuck the government they shouldn't tell me what to do" go from that to:

"Erm, well actually it's fine when the immigration enforcement people break the ribs of a middle aged white man when he gets annoyed they're depriving him of access to his private property. If you didn't want the feds to hurt you, you should just let them do whatever they want to you and your things without question. Don't forget to tip!"

Like seriously one of the reasons the Dems are so lame is because they're pussies, the right is cool because they're not. But the second it's your team doing stupid shit you don't stand up, you hop in the cuck chair with a big smile on your face

Oh look this keeps happening:

https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will

I mean, Americans have a history of going "fuck the Feds, we're keeping our slaves, get off my lawn before I shoot you", which resulted in the only large-scale civil war in the nation's history. Could have gone either way, too.

Of course, the group currently keeping the slaves, and arguing that there should be more slaves, and doing anything they can to acquire and encourage more slaves has built their identity around "being the people who ended slavery". So they couldn't be slavers (or "oppressors" more generally) simply by defining their identity away from it.

Besides, what they're doing is only "illegal immigration" and that doesn't mean "growing a group of sub-citizens that have zero rights and is as such more or less wholly dependent on their massa's good graces to stay fed and clothed, and keeping them around because you only have to supply [a proxy for] those things"... right?

Then again, I'm sure the Confederate soldiers thought what they were doing was right too. Ironically, that is the one thing Blue cannot admit.

I'm not pro mass immigration at all, I'm quite unhappy with how it's been implemented, especially in the last decade across the West.

I'm just very very anti government force being applied retardedly and without extremely high standards for conduct and use of force

A libertarian nightwatchman state was off the table before I was born. If you build a boot and gleefully stomp on the faces of your opponents, you don't get to cry when the boot ends up on the other foot.

Alternatively, would you rather Trump just issued letters of marque and reprisal to citizens to hunt illegals and communists? Something tells me you'd flood the zone with tears over that, too.

Sorry forgot to respond

If you build a boot and gleefully stomp on the faces of your opponents, you don't get to cry when the boot ends up on the other foot.

I didn't build the boot? I'm also not a shitlib and have been deeply against wokism for basically my entire life.

I went to schools that were deeply immersed in grievance politics and "wokism" long before it was cool, and I found it stupid then, as I do now.

Alternatively, would you rather Trump just issued letters of marque and reprisal to citizens to hunt illegals and communists?

No, I just think that agents of the government exercising a monopoly on force should be held to extremely high standards, and relaxing those standards because they're "on your team" is stupid, because they very much are not on your team, even if your goals are aligned right now.

Well, there's our disagreement. I think they seem to be operating at a shockingly high standard. Vanishingly few bad arrests, and extremely reasonable uses of force when we don't just consider activist lies.

bitching like a Karen

muzzle these retards first

If your reaction to this is to make fun of a guy acting the way most people in his situation would act, and then express anger at the people protesting it instead of the federal agents actually doing it, you’ve lost me and most Americans, and you’re gonna see it at the ballot box.

First, you don't get to just assume what's happening there. What the agents are actually doing in that video is restraining a guy. There are countless examples of old, boomer libtards assaulting these officers because they are bad people with delusions of grandeur. Maybe the ICE actions against that guy were unprovoked and unreasonable, but you certainly don't get to just assume that.

Have you ever actually lost a fight or suffered serious physical pain? Most people, in that situation, act a certain way. They become irrational and agitated, stressed and panicked.

The guy in that video reminds me of a different video. I won't link it because it's quite upsetting, feel free to look it up. In the video, a couple confronts a male neighbor in the snow over some petty bullshit, the culmination of months of relentless Karen harassment, and the man, a single father of an extremely disabled child, finally loses it.

He goes back into his house, gets a gun, and opens fire on the couple, fatally injuring both of them. And the truly remarkable thing about the video is that while the couple is bleeding to death on the ground they are still ranting and screeching like the unholy avatar of Karen. Not "OMG, help, I'm in so much pain." But "I don't care if I'm dying, your brutally autistic son's wheelchair makes too much noise in the morning, and I'm going to report you to the HOA! Why haven't you shoveled your driveway?! You're a disgrace, no wonder your son is a retard!"

That's the energy that dude brings in the ICE video. He doesn't sound hurt, or even alarmed. He sounds like he's saying the magic words that make law enforcement the bad guys. He'll probably get to pop a Cialis and fuck an old hippie afterwards.

But I don't think you're correct about "most people". This crap comes from a special breed of entitled Main Characters and every bit of enabling just makes the world a worse place. Do you really want carefully clipped sections of those videos to be the new meta for what we see at the ballot box? Because there's about a million hours of body cam footage going the other way.

"I don't care if I'm dying, your brutally autistic son's wheelchair makes too much noise in the morning, and I'm going to report you to the HOA! Why haven't you shoveled your driveway?! You're a disgrace, no wonder your son is a retard!"

I don't recall this part of the altercation post the actual shooting starting. I assume you're talking about Jeffrey Spaide killing James and Lisa Goy.

Well, with that I had to go rewatch the video. (Obviously disturbing, people dying.) You are correct. The bit immediately after the first shooting where she's yelling "You fucker!" was much more involved in my memory. And the son being theirs instead of his... woof. Talk about misremembering important details!

Well, I suppose this is in line with eyewitness testimony being famously unreliable. I'd expect for video review the mind can also add/remove/compress the events in such unusual ways that it becomes a completely different story in memory.

Also a solid reminder to double-check sources. I actually thought about it, but decided that the video was quite unpleasant and I didn't want to rewatch it. I still could have found an article or transcript that might have helped.

In fact, that would make no sense. It's the Goys who were murdered and they were also the ones with the autistic son. Spaide shot himself but no last words after he pulled the trigger were recorded.

Yeah, "Pussy, huh?" were the last words he uttered on tape. That and with the case where Buzz Aldrin punched Bart Sibrel sure reminds me not to insult anyone on their courage lest they suddenly find it. Though I'm sure any modicum of de-escalation at any point would have gone a long way for the Goys.

I mean this is equally speculation on your part that the guy is just some libtard of the type you describe. I don’t have much else to say on this other than that I agree the bodycam footage would be good to see and I hope it comes out, though I’m not optimistic that it will. I do acknowledge that often bodycam footage shows quite a different story than what media reports, so if that’s the case here it’s in ICE’s interest to release it.

Your example seems to prove the opposite of what you're trying to. If one of the possible reactions to obvious fatal injury is angrily ranting as if you haven't just been shot, then that makes the ICE video guy's ranting less indicative of whether he's actually hurt, not a proof that he wasn't.

Possible, but so unlikely that it's existence proof consists of a single video that went viral precisely because the reaction was so disturbingly inhuman.

It's about a million times more likely that the man being arrested by ICE was just not actually being subjected to "break six ribs" levels of force. Injured rib is a great fake injury because there's no casts or visible proof except occasionally clutching your chest in pain, but if you bend a bit and don't clutch your chest in pain then probably no one will notice. But if the story were true, it would be national news because the overwhelmingly left-leaning media would be thrilled to finally have a perfect example of ICE brutality, and the man would be sueing for damages.

Given that none of those things happened or seem to be happening, I stand by my prediction that the activists are full of shit on top of being horrible people.

Possible, but so unlikely that it's existence proof consists of a single video that went viral precisely because the reaction was so disturbingly inhuman.

You mean you've seen a single video. Personally, while I don't have a habit of watching liveleak and such, I've heard of the general phenomenon of people in a high-adrenaline situation failing to notice pain.

Cool. Any thoughts on any of the Bayesian evidence arguments?

Frankly, your naked contempt for the people being detained overshadows your Bayesian arguments. Quote:

If you want to convince me that ICE are doing evil, muzzle these retards first.

So clearly the Bayesianism is not really what's behind your arguments.

The image of 2025's ICE in the public mind (whether false or not) is clearly that they're a) incompetent randos, therefore unused to exercising power efficiently; b) will deport you if they grab you. In those circumstances, why wouldn't a sane person Karen up a storm and hopefully gain the support of nearby Samaritans to fend off the racist state thugs? That's what works and is actually your best option if you are facing semi-legal semi-competent state thugs who want to ship you off somewhere you do not want to go, as Ukrainians can attest.

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I actually don't act this way with authority figures. Even if their apprehension of me is unjust. Nor do most people I know.

Are we talking "traffic stop" unjust apprehension, or "barged into your home and put your face to the floor"?

Both. Because for better or worse, I have the intuitive sense that holding up the process is going to make things WORSE for me.

And I have at least one instance where being uber cooperative likely SAVED me from the worst that could happen - and I was absolutely guilty.

And I have at least one instance where being uber cooperative likely SAVED me from the worst that could happen - and I was absolutely guilty.

Alright. Tell us a story.

I object to the current DHS, CBP, ICE behavior on the basis of the collateral damage they seem to be ok inflicting on actual US citizens who aren’t even bothering them.

Is this actually happening, and if so, how often? Searching for your story I see a lot about a "shocking video" but the video i find, while it does show a man in running gear being arrested, shows nothing more than that and isn't shocking at all. All the "shocking" details seem to come from biased sources.

... So about 1 in 2 million American citizens? Are you genuinely concerned you'll be one of them? You weren't in the past year. I'll hazard a guess you also weren't struck by lightning in the past year and that is the more surprising fact (about 1/1,222,000 per year).

I'm actually shocked the number is so low; this isn't deportations, just detainment. I'm pretty sure the normal police have a much worse record of detaining innocents (though my attempts to look it up only give results about ICE, perhaps predictably).

If this number is accurate, it's just not a real problem: it's not going to happen to you and it's not going to happen to anyone you personally know. In fact, it happens just enough the media can make it seem like a common occurrence. The fact you're aware of it at all is the Chinese Robber Fallacy in action.

I'm not American, so no

I just think standing up (or massively expanding) a new militarized government force, one who also in this case likes to mask up, not uniform up, and generally act like aggressive retards is a massive self own. They're racking up a small, but growing resume of doing awful shit to American citizens which will only grow larger and more frequent as they expand.

I think further, if you support the government creating yet another group of goons who get to fuck people up, detain them without rights or due process, and above all, operate in an environment of "eh whatever, shit happens" then you are a cuck.

You might feel fine about it, but make no mistake, you're sitting in the chair

A similar number of children have been receiving trans medicine and surgery and this forum has been absolutely livid. Seems like every user with children expressed genuine fear of their kids being transed. It is quite fair to be livid about similarly miniscule numbers of detained citizens, especially when the supporters of ICE indicate that they want the numbers to increase.

I'm not sure I'd say 'similar;' 5700 over 4 years (1425 a year) out of not all American citizens but only the 73 million American children is nearly 40 times more common!

But sure, I at least am willing to bite the bullet and say that neither of these are real problems. Could they become problems if they become vastly more common? Sure. ... But realistically, is that going to happen? Given, as you implicitly agree, these events are so rare an order of magnitude isn't nearly enough to elevate them to a substantial risk, ICE is going to have to massively accelerate operations before this becomes something genuinely worth worrying about. I'd personally put the floor for even considering a given risk at around 1/50,000 per year -- your odds of dying in a car crash in a given year are about ten times that, all-cause mortality for a 30-year-old 100 times that -- and it's got a long way to go to get there.

Actually, given the current ratio of detained citizens to deported non-citizens (about 170/500,000), they're going to run out of people to deport well before crossing that threshold; well before even breaking 5700. Their error rate could get much worse, I suppose? Well, again, I'm surprised it's as low as it is now, so that definitely seems plausible. Still, it's an enormous gap.

A detained citizen is inconvenienced for a couple of days and many of them were very literally asking for it. A transed kid has their endocrine system skull-fucked forever because people they trusted lied to them.

One of these things is 4-6 orders of magnitude worse than the other.

I think policies should also have a "needless stupidity" modifier.

Some things are bad implementations of policies that are at least somewhat necessary. Some things are just needlessly stupid and never needed to happen and that makes them more egregious because of what they imply about our systems.

It is quite fair to be livid about similarly miniscule numbers

The thing is I've been told that it's not, and I never saw you step in before. Can I count on you saying something the next time someone uses this argument?

Anyway, sure, give these people some restitution. Unlike transgender care, this is actually reversible.

The thing is I've been told that it's not, and I never saw you step in before.

I didn't have a precedent to refer to before.

Can I count on you saying something the next time someone uses this argument?

Only if it actually becomes a commonplace bipartisan argument. Otherwise I'll follow the example of other users and keep only using it when it's my side suffering the miniscule excesses.

I didn't have a precedent to refer to before.

How exactly did you run into this forum being absolutely livid about the small number of kids being transed without seeing the "come on, it's just a tiny percentage of people affected"?

Only if it actually becomes a commonplace bipartisan argument.

I literally just agreed with you, what more do you want?

How exactly did you run into this forum being absolutely livid about the small number of kids being transed without seeing the "come on, it's just a tiny percentage of people affected"?

I did see it, I mean I noticed no precedent of the "come on, it's just a tiny percentage" people having had their own tiny percentage they visibly cared about a lot.

I literally just agreed with you, what more do you want?

First, I don't recall you agreeing with me when it was about the tiny number of transed kids. Second, you appear to be one of the three principled autistically-consistent-argument-appliers among seven zillion culture warriors, so unilateral disarmament is not in my interest.

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"Detained". So, comprehensive examples of "detained" that have come up in the stories I've seen and that we've discussed here.

  1. Retired vet who was working security at the weed farm that used illegal child labor. Was held for a few days.

  2. The guy who was technically born in the US, then his mom took him back to Mexico to raise him in a remote village that didn't even speak Spanish. Guy snuck back over the border with his actually illegal friends and got stopped by them in Florida. Was held for a few days while the authorities figured out what Aztec language he spoke and confirmed his identity.

And in general, 170 out of 500k is an arror rate of 0.00034. Can you name another government function with an error rate that low?

As I said in my other comment, I'm not against ICE at all, I think that agents of the government exercising a monopoly on force should be held to extremely high standards, and relaxing those standards because they're "on your team" is stupid, because they very much are not on your team, even if your goals are aligned right now.