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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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Except you're doing the same thing you're accusing them of by assuming that all these people do, in fact, have criminal records and you're just being lied to about it. And the people who think otherwise are hopeless and won't believe you no matter what you tell them. This is the kind of mentality that I was talking about that causes elections to be lost. This conversation started by a comment I made where I listed the deportation policy as an example of a Trump policy that was at least somewhat unpopular and may be among the things that costs the Republicans votes. It was just one of a number of things, and we could be talking about any of them, really. I got comments from people who told me that this was exactly what they wanted him to do. Well, great, but you're not the only one voting. This particular discussion stems from a comment where someone tried to argue, in essence, that there were either no or very few normal, hardworking people who were being deported, and that they were all criminals. I don't think that that's true, but I'm ultimately not trying to litigate whether it's true or not. The important thing is that there is a perception that it's true, and it's not just a perception that's held among woke socialists who want open borders and wouldn't vote Republican if their lives depended on it; it's a perception that's also held among the kind of people who voted for Trump in 2024 but are uneasy with the conspicuous brutality with which ICE is carrying out it's business. I know some of these people. They exist. They decide elections. I beg your pardon if I'm wrong, but you're not one of those people. I doubt you're a few policy tweaks away from voting Democrat in the next election.

I fleshed this out a little in another comment, but the larger point I was trying to make was that wipeout elections tend to happen whenever the party in power ignores and makes excuses for obvious signs of trouble. Trump fans who all love Trump and all need Trump and think that everything Trump does is great and can't believe that anyone doesn't like Trump and that everyone is being unfair to Trump and the big bad media isn't given everyone the whole story, with which they'd understand how great Trump is aren't the people who are going to decide the next election. If that were the case, he would have won in 2020 and wouldn't be president now. Trump did not run away with the last election, even against a candidate as bad as Kamala Harris. When I rattle off a laundry list of things that are unpopular but that the Republican Party doesn't seem too concerned about addressing and the responses I get are that these things simply aren't problems you're making my point for me.

Except you're doing the same thing you're accusing them of by assuming that all these people do, in fact, have criminal records and you're just being lied to about it.

No, I believe they have no criminal records. It's just entirely irrelevant to whether they were proper targets of an immigration raid.

are uneasy with the conspicuous brutality with which ICE is carrying out it's business

What conspicuous brutality? The Rodney King arrest, THAT was conspicuous brutality. The ICE arrests look like normal arrests.