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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33190 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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Has anyone done the napkin math on how safe it is to be apprehended by ICE? I think it’s 30k ICE agents and only 1-2 people shot with questions of justification this year. It’s likely that on a per-hourly basis you are safer being around an ICE agent than you are around the most criminally-prone young male demographic, or walking around certain cities at night.

A similar thought experiment: Who would you rather babysit your kid for a week—a randomly selected ICE agent or a randomly selected Somali migrant?

“White police officer” is coded extremely low status in Progressive America, and I can’t imagine anything near the same response if the officer was a Somali woman (!!!).

While I also can't imagine there'd be anything near the same response, the Somali woman would still get some blowback for being a pick-me and Uncle Tom.

Were it the case that everything is so instinctual, is there any way that ICE can short-circuit the instincts at play here? Maybe they can paint images of empathy on their car (cute animals, maternal colors, mothers protecting their young). Or better yet, like the Ancient Greeks with their apotropaic magic imagery, they can paint a Medusa’s head on their car, except the Medusa is actually an image of a strong disabled black woman in a same sex relationship.

Or the ICE car version of a "pride missile."

A randomly selected Somali migrant is more likely to be a woman.

A similar thought experiment: Who would you rather babysit your kid for a week—a randomly selected ICE agent or a randomly selected Somali migrant?

Do I get to participate in the latter's subsidies?

Yes. You get to pay for them.

Who would you rather babysit your kid for a week—a randomly selected ICE agent or a randomly selected Somali migrant?

I'd have a lot more recourse if the migrant tried any funny business.... (This reasoning was also given by some women who chose the bear.)

What recourse would you have against the Somali migrant that you wouldn't against the ICE agent? In the role of baby-sitter, the ICE agent has no special privileges above those of a normal citizen. The most likely offenses a baby-sitter would commit would be state offenses, and it is well established that local law enforcement is not particularly supportive of ICE atm, so it seems unlikely LEO camaraderie will benefit them.

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