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ICE is deporting lots of people. Other people are recording it, opposing it, even offering bounties on ICE officers.
I have noticed a pattern where there is a horrible story that comes out. Blue tribe passes around the horrible story. There was the "black babies zip tied" story. The "deported US citizen with cancer" story. So on and so forth.
The Red Tribe waits for the Department of Homeland Security X account to post a rebuttal, and then that becomes the Red Tribe story. See for example:
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1986198635466358989
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1986438229373944199
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1986086507271106982
My question is mostly, is it normal for the Red Tribe to believe the "official story" over their "lying eyes?" In the past I had seen the reverse. Official government accounts were scrutinized, eye witness accounts and video evidence were taken in higher regard.
For example, the Rittenhouse affair had Red Tribe internet sleuths piecing together video evidence of Rittenhouse's activities and movements for the hours leading up to the shootings. Within 48 hours they knew more than the prosecution's attorneys knew over a year later.
I'm not casting doubt on the DHS Official X Intern's ability to give it to us straight. I'm just trying to understand the epistemology that makes this all work. Is it Red Tribe to actually trust the government now? Just certain parts of the government?
The Department of Homeland Securty is obviously biased in favor of themselves, but just like the media lying, you'd expect any factual statements they make to be correct. If they say that the guy has been previously arrested for assault, then you can bet that the guy has actually been previously arrested for assault. If that was a lie, then first of all the left would pounce on that and tell everyone that it's a lie, and second, the DHS would know this and not lie in the first place. If it's truthful, the left would be silent about it.
If the DHS had instead posted "Chicago residents say the man had been arrested for assault" you would be right to be skeptical.
Except we recently had a government that literally lied on the facts - the Hunter Biden Laptop story is one such situation.
I suppose it's a "Government can only lie on the facts when they have a favorable media environment?"
I'm honestly trying to figure out for myself why I trust the DHS accounts when I would typically try to verify the information in other ways.
You probably shouldn't. However, I have tried to verify some of these other ways (though only those available to a keyboard warrior, I'm not doing investigative reporting). Most of them are basically inconclusive; there are atrocities claimed that have no evidence for them, and DHS says the situation is some other way which also cannot be confirmed. Very often the "atrocity" side is making highly emotive claims that aren't even really atrocities if you turn on your brain for a second or so -- for instance, it's not an atrocity that they're arresting illegal aliens outside a car wash when they don't have a warrant to search inside. It's not an atrocity for them to detain illegal aliens with no criminal record. It's not even an atrocity for them to temporarily detain US citizens who get in the way when they're doing a raid, though this may be justified or not depending on the details (which are not available). It's certainly not an atrocity to drive an arrestee's car away with the arrestee's toddler child in the car -- what are they going to do, leave the kid alone? It's not an atrocity to chase a suspect who then runs into a daycare, nor to arrest the suspect there. But all these claims are presented with a spin that makes them sound like accusations of misconduct, and that makes me mistrust those sources.
Then there's the claims that really are bad -- for instance, the runner with the six broken ribs, supposedly backed up by a "shocking" video. But the "shocking" video just shows the runner after he's been arrested. We not only don't know if he did anything to deserve arrest, we have no idea if he's actually got "six broken ribs". All we have is stories repeating claims made by activists as if they are true. The fact that the video is claimed/implied to have the shocking details but does not works against their credibility. And if I was to believe that kind of thing, I'd have to believe that DHS deported an Allentown grandfather from Chile to Guatemala when he went in to get his green card renewed, a story that made The Guardian among other places, and from thence here. As you may recall, the gentleman named had passed away -- in Santiago -- in 2019. DHSs response to this story while it was happening was basically "¿Qué? ¿Quién?", until they said they'd found records and the guy had been to the US only once, on visa waiver, without incident, some years ago.
So, if you don't trust the government much it's fair to view DHSs statements with skepticism. But the statements from the other side should, IMO, be viewed with far more skepticism, due to their record. That works out to at least tentatively believing DHS when there's no good evidence either way.
Of course, if the police department of Kenosha had made a statement after the Rittenhouse incident that Rittenhouse had unlawfully crossed state lines with a rifle and shot three black men without provocation, I suspect most of Red Tribe would believe them at least at first. They really are generally credulous of law enforcement, with some exceptions (ATF and FBI in particular)
I'm not even convinced of this. Things like "this man is wanted for assault" and "was wielding a hammer and threw rocks" are things that could be verified. Maybe not immediately, but they can.
Of course, this factor is probably more important. The anti-immigrant side of these stories is obviously mostly or all spin even without having to decide whether the government was lying.
By the time they can be verified, everyone's forgotten about that story and the next several atrocities have been claimed.
A lie can get halfway round el mundo before the truth can get its pantalones on
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