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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30520 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Every White Male In Minnesota is now ICE

First I saw the video of a MSM Cameraman who was accused by a crowd of being ICE due to the car he drove. He himeslf was Anti-ICE and fine with opening his vehicle up and showing that all he had inside was camera equipment. The crowd was not mollified by this, their demands just grew more ridiculous. "Get another car! Rent a car!" They learned no lessons about stereotyping people based on their race and vehicle. It was the victim's fault for looking like the wrong type of person.

Then I saw the video of the tech workers sitting down for lunch together. One of the gentlemen was on an Anti-ICE Signal chat and saw a notification that was accusing him and his friends of being ICE. At first it seemed funny, but then the mob descended. And of course, despite this mob not having any badges, several of them covering up their faces, generally being a threatening bunch, these tech workers were expected to give out details about where they work, where they live, what their occupation is, their politics, etc. lest they face the wrath of the mob.

The videos are abundant once you start looking. The Tree Trimmer who has a caravan of Anti-ICE cars following them around, honking, for the crime of driving a work van with tinted windows. The tall white guy just walking by himself with a warm jacket.

The irony of it all is that this is what anti ICE groups are accusing ICE of doing. Going to places and harassing people based off of stereotypes without any legal authority to do so. Demanding evidence to prove that someone belongs here.

However, that's just not true. ICE goes after specific people who have a final order of dismissal from an Immigration judge. When they do so, they often find other illegal immigrants living in the same area or working at the same business, as that is the nature of these things. Oftentimes these people also have final orders of removal. And so it goes.

From January to October of last year, only 170 US citizens were detained by ICE as reported by ProPublica. Of those 170, many were arrested for interfering with ICE operations. Compare this with 234,211 removals (I don't have data on arrests or detentions, but I can assume the number of arrests/detentions is greater than removals. The "US Citizen arrest rate" is at most 0.07% of the ICE arrestees, probably much smaller due to fact that there are more detentions than removals.

In July 2025, during street arrests and similar activities, ICE arrested some 4,494 persons who had no criminal record and no final order of deportation. If ICE were just arresting people who looked different, this is the statistic that would show it. The vast majority of Black people (96%) and Hispanic people (79%) in this country are citizens, so, if a government dragnet arrests a bunch of Hispanic people just for their skin color, we would expect about four out of five of them to turn out to be U.S. citizens. The ratio would be even higher in this dataset, because we’re already excluding people with final orders of deportation.


Of the 4,494 immigration suspects arrested in July, 209 have been released (<5%). 30 won their cases and received some form of formal relief. The others were released without much detail, but it seems safe to assume that ICE realized that they were likely to win relief in some form and pre-emptively granted it themselves. Zero—I repeat, zero—of those arrested were U.S. citizens.

The narrative of, "ICE is just going to immigrant communities and asking to see papers and then arresting anyone who can't prove without a shadow of a doubt that they're here legally," does not hold up to scrutiny. But it seems like Anti-ICE people are assuming this is their playbook because it's what they would do, and are now doing.

The current atrocity going around X is that a mob stormed a church because the pastor had the same name as one of the higher-ups at ICE. They are not the same person.

Storming a church is a federal crime under the FACE act, a law passed in the mid-90s to protect abortion clinics from right wing activists, but which also protects religious services. If the disruption is forcible (as this was), it's a felony.

So to recap, these people are all catching felonies because they didn't bother to double check that the guy they were looking for didn't have the same name as somebody else.

Among the people in the group which stormed the church was Don Lemon, who was following them around to document their exploits.

Don Lemon getting sent to PMITA prison for breaking a law signed by Bill Clinton to protect abortion clinics wasn't on my 2026 bingo card but I'll take it.

The current atrocity going around X is that a mob stormed a church because the pastor had the same name as one of the higher-ups at ICE. They are not the same person.

This random site has pictures seeming to show that they are.

That makes prosecution more likely, I suppose.

Everyone in the justice system knows the FACE act was about abortion and the church part was a sop thrown to the right that was never intended to be used. I believe prior to Trump II it was never used for that. I don't think judges are going to be willing to apply the dead half of the law.

So, a little update, they are apparently not charging him under a law signed by Bill Clinton to protect abortion clinics, they're charging him, a black man, under a law named after the KKK, signed by Ulysses S. Grant to protect newly freed slaves, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I love this timeline.

It is nevertheless federal law.

It seems likely to me that that part of the law hasn't been used before simply because people up to now have largely had the decency to not storm churches as a form of protest. If this action is not prosecuted I don't see how this does not escalate into a tit-for-tat storming of mosques and such.

I (European) googled who Don Lemon is and conveniently a news article from the Hindustan Time had a short paragraph about Lemon, the FACE Act and a link to the video. The American soap opera truly has global appeal.

Will Don Lemon have 34 FELONIES!!!! on his record? 🤣

Better. Apparently he's being charged under the KKK act.

Well dash my wig, sometimes things fall out so wonderfully it's almost like the universe was steering them that way. Was he just doing "I'm a journalist, I'm reporting on this" or was he doing "Let me help document the Legal Observers peacefully protesting against the fascist bigots, since I too am part of La Résistance and wish to disseminate our goals to the wider public in order to encourage them to also peacefully protest"?

He was with the group before they went to the church and then when he went into the church he was weirdly aggressivly interviewing the pastor. "Don't you think Jesus would be understanding and love these folks [interrupting your church service and trying to chase your congregation home]?" He seemed to be involved with the planning. If it becomes a journalistic activity just because he has a camera when he's trying to force the pastor to give into the roudy mobs demands then whatever. A lot of people think he should have tipped off the police at least since he knew ahead of time this flagrant violation of the FACE act was going to take place.

Sounds like ol' Don there needs to be reminded of the whip made out of cords in the Temple.

ICE goes after specific people who have a final order of dismissal from an Immigration judge. When they do so, they often find other illegal immigrants living in the same area or working at the same business, as that is the nature of these things. Oftentimes these people also have final orders of removal. And so it goes.

While I have no first hand experience of ICEs operations, I am skeptical.

First, undocumented immigrants are, not to put too fine a point to it, undocumented. Oh, sure, you might catch and deport a few foreigners who overstayed their student visa, but generally the government is unlikely to have a complete list of all the people who illegally crossed the border and try their best to stay out of the governments databases.

Then, I have to say I am somewhat confused. I would assume that ICE would enforce deportation warrants nationwide. So why the focus of the cities which voted Harris?

In your opinion, when Vance announced that ICE would go 'door to door', what he meant was that they would politely ask around the neighborhood if anyone had seen a person on their wanted poster?

I mean, technically it is possible that Noem told her department:

The first and foremost priorities of this administration are the rule of law, due process and courtesy. You will only arrest persons for deportation on which you have positive ID and a warrant signed by a judge. If any unidentified person claims that they are a US citizen in English or Spanish, you will not detain them unless they are interfering with your duties. If this means that we only deport a tenth of the illegals we would deport under a more robust regime, that is the price of freedom.

Would this be in character for the Trump administration? Fuck no. Trump bombs whom he wants to bomb, invades whom he wants to invade. His administration lies boldly and blatantly, he wields the justice department as his personal cudgel to bash his enemies with while pardoning his allies (or people willing to pay him). He bombs shipwrecked sailors. How many Venezuelans died in his kidnapping operation, again? Who cares, nobody gives a shit about brown foreigners. What is holding him back from invading Greenland are not moral considerations, but merely strategic ones. When ICE shot Good, Noem wasted no time to transparently slander her as a domestic terrorist.

Last year he hired on a lot of new ICE agents, paying good money for a job with rather few requirements. Of course the MAGA militia cosplayers joined in droves, finally a salary and a badge for doing what they wanted to do for a decade. Do you think these will have procedural doubts about rounding up all the day laborers looking for work at Home Depot? "If it turns out one of them is a citizen, we just let him go, no big deal." To my knowledge, there is no rule that you can not deport someone if you had arrested them without sufficient probable cause.

Trump is aware that he was elected on a platform to deport illegals, and he is very willing to deliver on that. The people who care about snowflake topics like due process are not his voters. And these will cry Nazi no matter what he does, so there is point to playing nice for him. Most administrations would be embarrassed if the SCOTUS ruled 9-0 against them after they claimed that there was nothing to do about someone they had sadly deported to some foreign megaprison without due process "due to an administrative error". But most administrations also have voters who care about such things.

Of course, this extrapolation from my Gestalt impression (which is based significantly on what Trump actually says and does, not what the 'lying mainstream media' reports, btw) does not have to correspond to the truth, exactly. Perhaps Trump's ICE is keeping precisely in the same procedural bounds as Biden's ICE.

Still, in the fog of war, where any and all statements could be lies (perhaps all of the reports of Native Americans getting arrested as illegals are fake news, perhaps Noem had secret proofs that Good was planning a bomb attack, perhaps the Ayatollah has decided that the best way to deal with the protesters is to embrace human rights and due process), extrapolation of character is a useful heuristic (so Noem was likely talking out of her backside, the Mullah regime is likely cracking down on protests without any giving a damn about human rights, ICE is occasionally arresting a Native American for matching their target racial group, and the left might invent another of such incidents for anyone which happens).

So why the focus of the cities which voted Harris?

Like they say about robbing banks, because that's where the money is. Blue-voting cities are the ones with the most visible levels of "we're a sanctuary city! we have all these activist organisations for undocumented persons!" If I'm going to be looking for easy finding of illegal immigrants, where do you think I'll head to first? Tom Johnson's produce farm out in the boondocks (where indeed there's likely to be undocumented workers, same in meat processing plants, but it's also probably going to be tougher to identify/arrest them), or the George Floyd Memorial Centre and Legal Aid Provision for Persons of Irregularity?

When ICE shot Good, Noem wasted no time to transparently slander her as a domestic terrorist.

Gosh, how very reassuring it is to know that the people who created the category of "domestic terrorist" never, ever, used it to slander people! It's all a lie, yeah maybe sure something in the letter could be interpreted that way but really now, are you going to believe us or them?

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said that he couldn't even "imagine a circumstance" where "parents complaining" at a school board meeting would be "labeled as domestic terrorism." Yet, several Republicans have continued to falsely claim Garland called such parents "terrorists."

The nugget of truth behind the political spin is that a letter from the National School Boards Association to Garland last fall argued some violent threats against school officials "could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism" that would warrant the intervention of federal law enforcement. In his response, Garland directed his agency to review strategies to address violent threats and harassment against school boards, but he didn't use the NSBA's "terrorism" language, for which the group later apologized.

Was Good a domestic terrorist? Ask the people who created the term. I don't think it was useful then or now, but it's been put into use and you really can't complain if the tools you created to bash your enemies then get used in turn to bash you when your enemies get their hands on them. I think she was a damn fool who fucked around and found out, she didn't deserve to be killed, but neither did the ICE agent deserve to be put in that position by someone thinking she could larp as the Maquis and nothing would happen because she was one of the Good Guys fighting the fascist nazi tyrant's stormtroopers, and every movie assured her that bad things don't happen to the Good Guys fighting the nazi fascist stormtroopers.

I mean to me the biggest hole in her hagiography is that nobody to my knowledge has ever tried to explain how the wonderful mother who dropped her kid off at school on her birthday ended up in her car blocking traffic and accosted by ICE agents to the point where she is trying to drive away. She clearly put herself there for some reason, and did so understanding that something was going down. So where is she getting that information? Why did she think she personally needed to be there? Why did she think to block traffic?

I suspect she’s a part of some larger group, one that sees itself as “the resistance”. And I think this is the real story— that a lot of people on all sides of the political spectrum are being radicalized and weaponized by groups of political activists pushing fear porn and the idea of them as “the rebellion” as in Star Wars. And until the swamp of radicalization is drained, there’s always a reserve army of ideologically possessed people ready to act on that perception of reality they’ve been fed in their echo chambers. It’s hard to do because the groups are generally smart enough to stay just inside the lines of acceptability while heavily implying the things that would drive people to actually go do something about the “bad guys” of choice. That’s what the fascism narrative is about — every child over four knows Nazis are evil, and has heard the hagiography of those who “resisted” — often with the costs removed. Calling someone a Nazi in the post WW2 era is like telling a bunch of medieval peasants that someone or some group desecrated the host at the church. The point is to create the hatred and ultimately the violence while keeping their hands clean by not saying “attack those people”.

First, undocumented immigrants are, not to put too fine a point to it, undocumented.

This is one of those cases where euphemisms are confusing the issue. Minnesota is far from the southern border.

Most of these cases are going to be things like visa overstays, green card holders / visa holders who had their status pulled because of a conviction, asylum claimants who lost their case but never left. People who had TPS status pulled for some reason.

Obama and Biden had programs called "administrative closure" or "parole" where the deportation case was closed without actually granting them real legal status or deporting them.

There's just a lot of complexity in US immigration. Many, possibly most, of the "undocumented" are in fact highly documented with extensive paper trails.

People who had TPS status pulled for some reason.

Someone somewhere at an ICE field office is literally doing TPS reports. Hope they remember to use the new cover sheets.

There's just a lot of complexity in US immigration. Many, possibly most, of the "undocumented" are in fact highly documented with extensive paper trails.

Exactly. Actual honest to god 'carried into the country by a coyote or completely undetected and stayed completely off the radar' cases are rare especially above the Mexican border states.

Most of these cases are going to be things like visa overstays, green card holders / visa holders who had their status pulled because of a conviction, asylum claimants who lost their case but never left. People who had TPS status pulled for some reason.

Obama and Biden had programs called "administrative closure" or "parole" where the deportation case was closed without actually granting them real legal status or deporting them.

There's just a lot of complexity in US immigration. Many, possibly most, of the "undocumented" are in fact highly documented with extensive paper trails.

This sounds like the streetlight effect to me. The words "we deported X illegals" might sound good to Trump's electorate, but realistically they wanted him to start deporting the illegals "dat took deir jerbs", not random-ass schoolteachers that lost their green card over speeding 20 years ago. This will run out of this kind of low-hanging fruit quickly anyway.

Sooner or later ICE will have to go after more central examples of illegals: Joses in restaurants and hotels, on farms and construction sites. And you can do this only by raiding the place and detaining every worker until they or their employer can prove their legal status.

Sooner or later ICE will have to go after more central examples of illegals: Joses in restaurants and hotels, on farms and construction sites.

They won't. First of all, this would go against the demonstrated raison d'etre of ICE. Namely, their fascist tacticool LARP. You don't need guns, secret "police," and general military gear to go to a hotel to check the employee directory. The revealed preferences in actions and very real investment is the opposite of unsexy but effective work. Whatever ICE's real purpose is, it has something more to do with blowing millions of taxpayer money on making a spectacle, picking fights with Americans, or making armed citizen resistance against state violence ineffective (note for the confused in the audience, this would be pointless for real immigration enforcement).

Second, if they wanted to do this they would have already. Are their lots of farms and hotels using over the border illegal immigration in Minnesota? No, of course not. The cruelty is the point. The ICE LARP, in part, exists to channel useful idiots away from the real reasons of white demographic replacement with ostentatious displays of cruelty to brown people and symbolic acts against "the Left/Liberals" as a symbol of "something is being done" without obviously doing anything substantive. It exists to do the exact opposite of something substantive and effective.

"The right wing," as much as it is a real thing, exists to simp for and be useful tools to elite capital (and Jews) that benefit from cheap, therefore often third-world from low IQ areas, labor. To actually hurt the pocketbook of capital would go against the very funding base, closest thing it has to an intellectual base (who do you think is doing Heritage?), and purpose defining "the right" has - especially mainstream right. The capital holding elite would sooner perma close the American Republican party and just try to start a new one.

I think the Trump base just likes to feel like something's actually done, and both sides are happyish to dance around the cheap labor manufacturing/agricultural illegals in the South for as long as possible since there's too many competing interests. However stuff like the Somali fraud (Yes they're mostly legally in the country) is relatively easy optics for ICE to go after since it's very very very hard to defend their actions

However stuff like the Somali fraud (Yes they're mostly legally in the country) is relatively easy optics for ICE to go after since it's very very very hard to defend their actions

Except what can ICE to do them if they are legally in the country?

It appears that there are some Somali visa overstayers (thought that's not really impacting the core issue that much) but it functions to keep the issue alive in the public's minds.

Nothing yet. The trick will be to nail them on fraud, de naturalize , and then deport.

Sooner or later ICE will have to go after more central examples of illegals: Joses in restaurants and hotels, on farms and construction sites.

This is honestly the most baffling part of the american immigration system to me.

In Australia, we have a requirement for all workplaces to verify that a new hire has a right to work in the country. You provide your birth certificate or working visa, or other proof upon your first day at work while you're signing a document with your preferred bank account for your salary. This costs the employee and the business approximately zero overhead.

If a business is found to be hiring illegal immigrants, they are fined.

Sure. There are some dodgy businesses who hire undocumented cousins from India. But these businesses are tiny, and the problem is also tiny.

I just don't understand why the US doesn't implement this policy. Like all of the associated issues here would be solved over night.

I'm pretty sure you need to prove you're not an illegal immigrant to study or get a driver's licence here. Why is this not the solution for the States? It puts the pressure on businesses and is totally politically palatable.

Starting in 2015 California has been issuing driver's licenses to illegals. They also illegally issued 17000 commercial driver's licenses to illegals, according to the Federal Department of Transportation.

Suppose there is a Hotel X in Australia, and instead of hiring cleaning workers directly, they outsource to another company -- Dodgy Cleaning Services, Inc. Who is responsible for immigration compliance - the hotel or the cleaning service or both?

Or better yet, suppose an Australian family hires a contractor to make some improvements to their house. Who is responsible for immigration compliance? The homeowner or the contractor?

The contractor. This isn't a hard question.

The contractor. This isn't a hard question.

I don't think it's as simple a question as one might think. For example, in the United States there is a lot of precedent that with respect to some types of laws, the hotel is potentially responsible for compliance.

Anyway, assuming that compliance responsibility falls solely on the contractor, this seems like a straightforward workaround for immigration compliance. Instead of directly hiring illegals, use a dodgy contractor. If the dodgy contractor gets fined, they just close up shop and re-open under a new name somewhere else.

Combine this with the fact that the American economy is to a large extent dependent on the labor of illegal aliens, and it's easy to see how we can get into a situation where people get away breaking the rules.

To an extent I am speculating, but I am pretty sure that in the United States, things like going out to eat at a restaurant; hiring a crew to do yard work; or going on a week's vacation in Las Vegas would be very noticeably more expensive but for this kind of cheating.

The devil is in the enforcement, as ever.

If there's a huge problem with outsourcing illegal-intensive labor to Dodgy Contractor Inc, it's making things fairly simple: target all the dodgy staffing agencies. In theory like 99% of the work is already done to make it impossible to earn an income in this country without the government being aware of it. And that's what frustrates a lot of people about illegal immigration, even those who are pro-immigration: that the government doesn't use the information and powers that it has to enforce the laws that are on the books.

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Anyway, assuming that compliance responsibility falls solely on the contractor, this seems like a straightforward workaround for immigration compliance. Instead of directly hiring illegals, use a dodgy contractor. If the dodgy contractor gets fined, they just close up shop and re-open under a new name somewhere else.

You are just assuming things will happen in such a way as to make this whole thing complicated. Which, to be fair, it has happened in that way until basically now. But it doesn't have to. Like there is a workaround in your telling of events because the government creates one, which it doesn't have to. If you assume the government actually wants to accomplish its stated goals then this isn't really a conundrum. Just send the dodgy contractor to prison. Its not that hard.

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In Australia, we have a requirement for all workplaces to verify that a new hire has a right to work in the country. You provide your birth certificate or working visa, or other proof upon your first day at work while you're signing a document with your preferred bank account for your salary. This costs the employee and the business approximately zero overhead.

I just don't understand why the US doesn't implement this policy. Like all of the associated issues here would be solved over night.

Well, Russia is a heavily bureaucratized country, but companies still hire lots of illegals because they are cheaper. As long as you have cash or can convert the money on your account to cash plausibly legally, you can hire them. All it takes is the low probability of your company being raided.

Russia is also full of corruption, which helps.

I'm going to get another 20 replies saying "it's cheaper to hire illegals" and I understand that.

I'm saying that if you are pursuing a policy to remove all of the illegals from the country, rather than making ICE do it in possibly the least efficient way you could think of, it's easier to just do the workplace check. It's easily advertised as pro-American by a president like trump, who can push it as a policy to give jobs back to Americans.

It's not like Trump is worried about shaking up the stock market or pissing off lobby groups.

The problem isn’t wholly illegals. There are a whole group of people who on the merits are illegal but on procedure are here temporarily until their status is adjudicated. Then there are problems like the Somalis who are here legally but are just a drain. We need to cut off welfare without running afoul of the 14th.

Trust me, smart conservatives know. This is why many conservatives who actually care about immigration are pissed at Trump. If he simply mandated e-verify, and actually fined businesses who hired illegals, the illegal immigration problem would shape up quite quickly. And with a lot less partisan fanfare, likely.

It's deeply unfortunate that he failed to do so, and I don't have a great understanding of why.

Small business owners who employ illegals are the corest of the core constituency of the Republican party. Exploiting illegal labour requires entrepreneurial spirit, mild evil, and to be working in a sector that is already Republican-dominated (mostly farming or construction).

That's the huge problem which leaves both sides open to charges of hypocrisy: some sectors of the American economy are reliant on cheap, disposable labour. They can't/won't get the natives to do that anymore, so they need a constant flow of immigrants willing to take on hard, dirty, uncertain work. This is going back decades, my teen years were blighted by every local talent show where someone with a guitar did Deportees (a song from 1948 by Woody Guthrie).

The hypocrisy of the right about economic exploitation is easy to see, the hypocrisy of the left less so: but they are de facto defending the permanence of a serf class for manual labour in order to keep their nice lifestyle of abundance going.

The problem is you have to enforce immigration law consistently, nationwide. Otherwise the non-compliant businesses gain a substantial competitive advantage.

This is honestly the most baffling part of the american immigration system to me.

In Australia, we have a requirement for all workplaces to verify that a new hire has a right to work in the country. You provide your birth certificate or working visa, or other proof upon your first day at work while you're signing a document with your preferred bank account for your salary. This costs the employee and the business approximately zero overhead.

But it costs those Australian businesses collectively billions of dollars in (direct and indirect) labor costs. Hiring illegals would be significantly cheaper, after all. Which is why the Americans don't do work permit checks. Every push for legislation like that would be met with intense lobbying from employers in the stereotypical sectors (farming, construction, hotels, ect.).

But it certainly also helps that a faction of the blue tribe is also opposed to work permit checks, for different reasons.

But it costs those Australian businesses collectively billions of dollars in (direct and indirect) labor costs.

I obviously understand that's the situation. I'm saying it shouldn't be.

It solves 100% of the issues re: immigration conversation. Australia has a ruthless immigration policy, and far more immigrants per 100k than the USA, Germany or Britain. And we have far less politicised immigration conversation.

An Australian can reliably depend on virtually every man woman and child they meet to have either been thoroughly vetted by a government bureaucrat or a slob from accounting.

We have something like 30% of people in country born overseas (compared to less than 15% for German, UK and USA) but consistently poll pretty high for our happiness with immigration.

Yes, most of our immigrants are east asian, British or Kiwi, as opposed to African or Middle Easterners, but still.

If it costs businesses money to be forced to hire Australians, and wins back some social cohesion, it's just such an easy policy to pursue in my mind. American politics being dependent upon the random industry association lobbying some spineless boomer in the senate is so foreign to me.

"Stop hiring people who aren't supposed to be in the country" should be the short work of a year of policy making. If you're against it, you're against hiring Americans, right? If you're against it, you're funding illegal immigration. In another world the libs could even have pushed this policy to get back at the capitalists.

My understanding (perhaps wrong) is that Tony Abbott basically forced through hardline illegal immigration restrictions against huge protests from both sides of the isle right before immigration massively ramped up due to easy travel. The problem is that the numbers are so big in other countries, and the use of migrants so structural, that getting from America’s ‘default yes’ to Australia’s ‘default no’ is extremely difficult. Though IMO Trump should definitely do this.

If it costs businesses money to be forced to hire Australians, and wins back some social cohesion, it's just such an easy policy to pursue in my mind.

Maybe I'm just so much more black-pilled than you are. If you're changing something and "it costs businesses money" that automatically means not only is this not an "easy policy", it's going to be an uphill battle. No matter where you are, one of the political parties will be "pro business", and this party will fight you. Because this is actually important. There's actual money on the line. "Social cohesion", "anti immigration vibes", "campaign promises", ect. are all pretty much irrelevant once the wrong people lose money.

And if the same change also, at the same time, disadvantages minorities and/or people struggling with paper work, elements from the other side of the isle will also fight you.

Sooner or later ICE will have to go after more central examples of illegals: Joses in restaurants and hotels, on farms and construction sites.

It's possible that by that time the anti-ICE movement will have discredited itself so much that no one will care.

Or, that if the anti-ICE movement is in power, that they might be tempted to spend political capital to make them legal (such that they can't be targeted again as they have been this time). Which is arguably the revealed preference of the Trump admin anyway.

What good is retaining their illegal status, if enforcing it somehow "reveals the preference" for revoking it?

Then, I have to say I am somewhat confused. I would assume that ICE would enforce deportation warrants nationwide. So why the focus of the cities which voted Harris?

I find it difficult to believe that this question is being asked in good faith.

ICE is being deployed to so-called "sanctuary cities" like Minneapolis and NYC for the same reason federal troops were deployed to Alabama and not Idaho when it came time to enforce desegregation. A state that is already complying with federal law does not require federal troops to enforce compliance.

First, undocumented immigrants are, not to put too fine a point to it, undocumented.

Completely undocumented immigrants that entered the country secretly are actually a decent minority plus the whole sanctuary city setup means that there's a natural impulse to cluster into certain areas.

So why the focus of the cities which voted Harris?

Cities that voted Harris tend to be sanctuary cities. In sanctuary cities ICE has to do more work.

Oh, sure, you might catch and deport a few foreigners who overstayed their student visa, but generally the government is unlikely to have a complete list of all the people who illegally crossed the border and try their best to stay out of the governments databases.

I think the bulk of it is the backlog of individuals with final orders of removal that are still here.

To my knowledge, there is no rule that you can not deport someone if you had arrested them without sufficient probable cause.

This is actually being litigated right now. I suspect you are right about where the law end up.

That certainly is a narrative. Going to stick with the factual bit at the top:

First, undocumented immigrants are, not to put too fine a point to it, undocumented. Oh, sure, you might catch and deport a few foreigners who overstayed their student visa, but generally the government is unlikely to have a complete list of all the people who illegally crossed the border and try their best to stay out of the governments databases.

Many get put into databases once they are arrested for crimes inside the US. Others are caught on the border, start the process of removal proceedings, but are released on bond while their case goes through court. Congress explicitly gave ICE the power to revoke bond or parole, at any time, for any reason. Hope that helps!

Edit: I guess there was another factual claim there. ICE is not targeting sanctuary cities as punishment for voting blue. Most arrests take place in cooperative jurisdictions, like Texas, where 110 out of 100k non-citizens are arrested. In sanctuary Illinois, that number is 21 out of 100k. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2025/12/11/ice-jails-update/#:~:text=Impact%20of%20strategies%20to%20block,remain%20lower%20than%20other%20states. ICE arrests in cooperative jurisdictions are easy, they just show up to the jail and it's done. ICE arrests in non-cooperative jurisdictions make more noise and take more manpower.

Exactly. Enforcement in Blue Areas is noisier since the local power structures are trying to actively resist ICE participation, meaning that ICE needs more boots on the ground instead of just picking up those who are already collected.

Also people are conflating illegal immigration with 'coyote land border crossings', there's a ton of people who are just visa overstayers and originally entered reasonably.

From January to October of last year, only 170 US citizens were detained by ICE as reported by ProPublica. Of those 170, many were arrested for interfering with ICE operations. Compare this with 234,211 removals (I don't have data on arrests or detentions, but I can assume the number of arrests/detentions is greater than removals. The "US Citizen arrest rate" is at most 0.07% of the ICE arrestees, probably much smaller due to fact that there are more detentions than removals.

It's interesting that you preceded this little tidbit with examples of four non-ICE being accused of ICE. How many people accused of being ICE actually were ICE? If you're implying that a certain false positive rate is acceptable, at least show that the behavior you're complaining about is above that rate.

How many people accused of being ICE actually were ICE?

At most 2000 (i.e. every one of them), for an error rate of 0.2%. It's three times the rate just with those anecdotes.

Wait, there's only 2,000 ICE agents? Or just 2,000 in MN?

Just in Minnesota (mostly Minneapolis, AFAICT). They announced another thousand last I heard, but I don't know if they're there yet.

Are you accounting for repeated encounters? A person is presumably removed by ICE only once, while protesters repeatedly interact with ICE agents, allowing for multiple accusations of being a part of ICE.

The second encounter presumably follows from the first. If an officer was identified once then harassed a hundred times, I'd count that as one true positive.

But ICE is going to different neighborhoods. While I would expect repeat harassers/protestors for a given geographic region, I would also expect a lot of churn from people only sticking their necks our for their own neighborhood and local community. I find it extremely plausible that you will get multiple true positives here as a result.

The irony of you mentioning "equivocation" further down this thread, as any equivocation—to the extent that it eventually occurred—was initially enabled here when you made this comment and the false equivalence it contains. You discuss ICE and anti-ICE false positive rates as if they're different sides of the same coin, yet:

ICE false positive: ICE was wrong in incorrectly arresting someone.
ICE true positive: ICE was right in correctly arresting someone.
Anti-ICE false positive: They were wrong in harassing someone that had nothing to do with ICE.
Anti-ICE true positive: They were wrong in harassing an ICE officer off-duty or wrong in obstructing an ICE officer on-duty.

There's not a "positive" for which anti-ICE can be in the right. Furthermore, ICE is right X% of the time and wrong (100-X)% of the time, whereas anti-ICE is wrong 100% of the time.

You could take this even further:

Anti-(good-ICE)-true-positive: Protesters harassing ICE while they are conducting an operation lawfully

Anti-(bad-ICE)-true-positive: Protesters harassing ICE while they are conducting an operation unlawfully

Unless ICE has a 100% conduct-the-operation-lawfully rate, at least some of these will A(BI)TPs.

Anti-(bad-ICE)-true-positive: Protesters harassing ICE while they are conducting an operation unlawfully

That'd still be wrong of anti-ICE.

Whether an arrest is unlawful is decided in the courtroom, not by a mob. Resisting an unlawful arrest is generally unlawful in most states, including Minnesota. Even in states where resisting unlawful arrests is legal, the advice on attorney websites is to cooperate temporarily and if necessary, litigate later. An "unlawful" arrest may be more lawful than you think, and suspects often incur (more) crimes while resisting arrest. I imagine a similar principle applies to obstruction, if not more so due to the potentially greater numbers involved.

Absolutely agreed.

But it is also lawful to protest a police action without obstructing it. I’m sure there are examples of protests in Minnesota that are & aren’t.

There's not a "positive" for which anti-ICE can be in the right. Furthermore, ICE is right X% of the time and wrong (1-X%) of the time, whereas anti-ICE is wrong 100% of the time.

That's simply a value judgment that doesn't get us anywhere. Being anti-ICE is only "wrong" when the activity in furtherance of that position breaks the law. You may not like the fact that people are protesting, recording their activity, or warning the community of their presence, but all of these things are both legal and constitutionally protected.

That's simply a value judgment that doesn't get us anywhere. Being anti-ICE is only "wrong" when the activity in furtherance of that position breaks the law.

One of my values is that incorrect arrests are bad, although incorrect arrests are sometimes incurred in the "furtherance" of correct arrests, and there's a tradeoff between incorrect and correct arrests if one seeks correct arrests.

Another one of my values is that harassing people is bad, whether or not the person's occupation is law enforcement—if they're law enforcement, this especially goes while they're on duty. Perhaps your values differ on this front.

Either way, let’s play along and evaluate whether anti-ICE breaks the law in the "furtherance of [their] position" with the evidence that we have. I figured I'd take a look myself at Minnesota statutes given sometimes you might not have done your legal due diligence before commenting.

I was using "harassment" somewhat colloquially, but there's Subdivision 1. of Minnesota's Disorderly Conduct:

Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor:

Where (3) of Subdivision 1. is:

engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

I would say impeding the path of an individual or group of individuals, blowing loud whistles in front of them, following them and shouting things like "FUCK YOU NAZI," following them and blowing whistles at them and honking at them, would qualify as "noisy conduct" or "abusive language" that could be reasonably interpreted as an attempt to "arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others."

There's also statutes on harassment per se:

A person who commits any of the acts listed in paragraph (c) is guilty of a gross misdemeanor if the person, with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person:

(1) directly or indirectly, or through third parties, manifests a purpose or intent to injure the person, property, or rights of another by the commission of an unlawful act;

(2) follows, monitors, or pursues another, whether in person or through any available technological or other means;

Likewise, impeding the path of an individual or group of individuals, blowing loud whistles in front of them, following them and shouting things like 'FUCK YOU NAZI,' following them and blowing whistles at them and honking at them, could be reasonably interpreted as an attempt to "follow[] monitor[], or pursue[] another, whether in person or through any available technological or other mean... with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person." To intimidate would already qualify.

Then there's Obstruction. As (1) states:

(1) obstructs, hinders, or prevents the lawful execution of any legal process, civil or criminal, or apprehension of another on a charge or conviction of a criminal offense;

Once again, doing things such as the aforementioned "impeding the path of an individual or group of individuals, blowing loud whistles in front of them, following them and shouting things like ‘FUCK YOU NAZI,’ following them and blowing whistles at them and honking at them," would apply, much less hindering the lawful execution of any legal process by pathways such as driving your vehicle at them.

I would certainly feel hindered and obstructed at my job if a crowd showed up to do things including, but not limited to—blocking my path, surrounding me, and/or blowing whistles in my face.

The state legislature can pass all the laws they want, but their application is limited to the bounds of the Constitution. Impeding the path of law enforcement may rise to the level of obstruction depending on the specific circumstances, but blowing whistles and shouting insults are expressive activities that don't fall within any exception to the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has already addressed this directly, and since they've already ruled that Nazis marching through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors and members of the Westboro Baptist Church yelling insults during soldiers' funerals are protected speech, it's safe to say that people blowing whistles around ICE agents isn't going to cut it.

The state legislature can pass all the laws they want, but their application is limited to the bounds of the Constitution.

You may not like it, but unless the Supreme Court finds Minnesota’s Disorderly Conduct, Harassment, or Obstruction laws are in violation of the Constitution, Minnesota’s laws on those three fronts stand and are enforceable as such.

Fortunately, for leftist protestors who harass, obstruct, and create disorderly conduct—behaviors such as exhibited by the "mostly peaceful" protestors we saw in OP’s videos—they have many lawyers out there who are sympathetic and will carry water for their causes, including chief prosecutors who may or may not decide to prosecute.

The Supreme Court has already addressed this directly

And, to the extent the SC addressed “this” directly, it explicitly highlighted that behaviors, including but not limited to, those that fall under disorderly conduct or “fighting words” can still be punished:

Moreover, although speech might be prohibited if it consists of "fighting words" that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace, the ordinance in question is not limited to such expressions

We agree, however, that such conduct might constitutionally be punished under a properly tailored statute, such as a disorderly conduct statute that makes it unlawful to fail to disperse in response to a valid police order or to create a traffic hazard.

Appellant's contention that the ordinance's sweeping nature is both inevitable and essential to maintain public order is also without merit, since the ordinance is not narrowly tailored to prohibit only disorderly conduct or fighting words

Sounds awfully familiar with regard to the videos OP posted, as well as other videos of anti-ICE agitation. The Court’s main hangup was the word “interrupt” amidst the phrase:

in any manner oppose, molest, abuse or interrupt any policeman in the execution of his duty,' and thereby prohibits verbal interruptions of police officers.

The Court’s opinion specifically reinforced it was upheld that Colten’s conduct in Colten v. Kentucky did not fall under protected speech for disorderly conduct concerns:

(1) A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he…"

"(f) Congregates with other persons in a public place and refuses to comply with a lawful order of the police to disperse. . . ."

Again, sounds awfully familiar with regard to the videos OP posted, as well as other videos of anti-ICE agitation.

since they've already ruled that Nazis marching through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors and members of the Westboro Baptist Church yelling insults during soldiers' funerals are protected speech

Don’t know if you have a specific Court Opinion in mind with regard to purported ‘Nazis” and “Holocaust Survivors.” I did take a look for a bit as to what may constitute WBC activity nearby a military funeral and which incurred court rulings.

Insofar as you’d like to evoke something like WBC protesting near military funerals—only one popped up, the infamous case of Snyder v. Phelps. Where the WBC activists, not that these were prerequisites for anything:
1. Were 1,000 Feet Away
2. Did not disrupt the funeral’s activity
3. Ceased their activities prior to funeral
4. Were not seen or heard from the funeral site
5. Were not hindering the actions of LEO

it's safe to say that people blowing whistles around ICE agents isn't going to cut it.

It’s safe to say you don’t do your homework before commenting. It’s also safe to Notice your repeated attempts at minimizing what anti-ICE people were doing despite video evidence.

I realize that you're the lawyer and I'm not, but I didn't think that harassing people (as we see in these videos) is constitutionally protected.

As I said in another comment, if Nazis marching through the neighborhoods of Holocaust survivors and the Westboro Baptist Church harassing mourners during the funerals of soldiers is constitutionally protected, this certainly is.

What about Nazis accosting and mugging random passersby to foce them to show their arms to see if they have certain tattoos?

What about driving a truck outfitted with concert grade loudspeakers through a Jewish neighborhood blaring Hitler speeches?

Forget about Nazis doing it and you'll have your answer. If they're using force or threat of force then it could be illegal. If they're merely asking then I'm not even goign to bother with an analysis of the First Amendment laws because, insofar as I'm aware, no state in the Union has laws that make it illegal to talk to strangers. For your second example, again, forget about the Jews and the Hitler speeches. If there is an applicable municipal noise ordinance and you can prove that the driver violated it, then they can be charged with the noise violation.

Those are easily distinguishable. Yes, if the anti ICE people went to the local ICE HQ and did those things, then it would clearly be protected speech.

However, if anti ICE follow ICE and try to alert illegals to I E presence to thwart ICE from apprehending illegal aliens, then the anti ICE protestors are now obstructing officers. The examples you gave are examples of people being obnoxious but had nothing to do with interfering with police work. So they prima facie don’t control.

Is it really constitutionally protected to warn a felon of the presence of the police? Like let's say Alice gets a phone alert that a white murderer who killed three black kids escaped from prison. Alice sides with the murder because she's a white supremacist. Alice later sees several police cruisers on a nearby street. Worried that her favorite convict is nearby and will be returned to prison, she starts blowing a whistle and making a ruckus to help the convict escape.

That is constitutionally protected speech?

Your scenario is a bit vague so I'll dress it up for you: If Alice feels strongly about the wrongness of the murderer's conviction and subsequent incarceration and she decides to engage in a boisterous on-woman protest on a street corner during which she yells words of encouragement for the fugitive and expresses hope that he will escape justice, then yes, she would be engaging in constitutionally-protected speech. As repugnant as one may find her views, opinions about the appropriateness of criminal convictions are a fairly common subject of public protest, and the fact that the police may find them distracting doesn't exempt them from constitutional protection. And even then, this case would still be somewhat stronger than what's going on with ICE, where the protestors don't even know the identities of the people ICE are looking for, or indeed if they're even looking for anyone (Renee Good was shot while ICE was returning to headquarters). They're just generalized warnings about law enforcement presence, and are as illegal as flashing your brights to warn a fellow motorist about a speed trap.

You seem to be missing the point that thy aren’t just protesting generally but doing so in ways to try to prevent ICE from doing their job. Your hypo is of Alice standing on a random corner.

Here Alice is following ICE and making noise for the express purpose of making it harder for ICE to conduct their legal duty of apprehending illegals / warning illegals so illegals can flee.

The activities are of a different nature from your hypo and caselaw.

Blowing a whistle is not necessarily constitutionally protected though, there can be reasonable restrictions on noise levels.

Regarding City of Houston v. Hill, striking down a law that is too broad does not mean that none of the activities included in the law could be constrained by law.

The behavior of these people does not seem constitutionally protected to me. They are, in a coordinated way, mobbing officers of the law in the process of enforcing the law for the purpose of helping people escape, in such a way that they are actually successful a lot of the time. https://tiktok.com/@raebaebae28/video/7596446605474057527?_r=1&_t=ZP-93BispJ7Wlb

I hope a case like this goes up to the Supreme Court so we can get a clear ruling on this.

It could potentially violate noise ordinances, yes. But the way the Minneapolis ordinance is worded makes it clear that it almost certainly doesn't violate the law there:

389.60. What constitutes violation. (a) Any activity, not expressly exempted by section 389.50 or this section which generates sound regardless of frequency that is more than ten (10) decibels (A scale) above the ambient noise level when measured within any dwelling unit (other than the one of sound source) in a condominium, townhouse, apartment house, multi-unit dwelling, single-family dwelling, or similar dwelling between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. All measurements applying to the above shall be made indoors with the doors closed, and within the dwelling.

(b) Any activity not expressly exempted by section 389.50 or this section which generates sound regardless of frequency that is more than five (5) decibels (A) scale above the ambient noise level when measured within any dwelling unit (other than the one of sound source) in a condominium, townhouse, apartment house, multi-unit dwelling, single-family dwelling or similar dwelling between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. All measurements applying to the above shall be made indoors with the doors closed, and within the dwelling.

There are obvious evidentiary problems here in that you have to know what the ambient noise level is and whether the sound exceeds it by the specified amount, but the problems go beyond ones of evidence; the statute is worded in such a way that there is no violation without a measurement. This could be a case of bad drafting, but if you look at noise ordinances generally they seem aimed at specific problems like noise emanating from point sources or adjacent apartments. They aren't really designed for intermittent loud noise coming from outside.

I hope a case like this goes up to the Supreme Court so we can get a clear ruling on this.

At least in the present situation there's no chance of that happening. Federal law requires that any interference with law enforcement be "forcible", and Minnesota caselaw does so as well. On the state side there are some limited exceptions, but warning people of police activity is specifically exempted. I can't speak for other states, but nobody in Minneapolis is able to be prosecuted for this.

But where is the line here? A lookout for a bank robbery is presumably an accessory to the crime, even though his only role is to use his constitutionally protected speech to alert the other robbers to the police.

A lookout for a gang is presumably an accessory to a crime if they whistle out as soon as a police officer comes onto gang territory, even if they don't know which specific crime the police officer is investigating. Or is that protected speech but the lookout for bank robbery isn't? What is the deciding factor?

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There's a review on the history of such speech in section 2(a) of this paper.

Ok, but the standard is Brandenburg and Brandenburg says you can't incite imminent lawless action. Evading the police is lawless action, and alerting criminals to police is inciting them to flee.

In your example Alice isn't inciting lawless action, the murderer is going to try to escape regardless. At best, she's aiding or facilitating it, which isn't squarely covered by Brandenburg.

If you care to read the section aptly titled The Existing Crime-Facilitating Speech Cases is a fairly comprehensive survey of cases on it.

Is a posted lookout for a robbery not committing a crime because them alerting the thieves is protected speech?

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Would you like to specify which case you think matches Alice's example? Because the ones that match most closely take my side, for instance:

Haig v. Agee concluded that an ex-CIA agent's "repeated disclosures of intelligence operations and names of intelligence personnel" were as constitutionally unprotected as "'the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops,"' at least when the disclosures were done for "the declared purpose of obstructing intelligence operations and the recruiting of intelligence personnel."'

and

Several federal circuit cases have held that speech that intentionally facilitates tax evasion, illegal immigration, drugmaking, and contract killing is constitutionally unprotected.

At most your source is saying there's a complex history of caselaw here and the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on this action specifically.

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Do you believe "warning a felon of police presence" is the best analogy for the average case of people warning illegal immigrants about ICE? Isn't unlawful presence a civil offense, and a first offense illegal entry into the US a federal misdemeanor, so nowhere near as bad as a felony from a legal standpoint?

If you compared it to another non-felony, like having the fines from an overdue library book going to collections, do you believe that warning your buddy that a debt collector is going to their house should not be allowed under the First Amendment? Even if you think such a warning is anti-social and breaks the social contract of paying fines or debts that you accrue, surely you can see that the choice of analogy biases the analysis here?

Unlawful entry is criminal, not civil, under 8 USC 1325 carrying a maximum prison sentence of up to six months on the first offense (higher on subsequent offenses). That makes it a Class B misdemeanor (18 USC 3559).

So misdemeanor, no probs right? Still way worse than a library fine, but less than a murder. But a significant number of people ICE targets are felons, as in having committed a crime inside the US which they have been found guilty of. And a significant number of those who are not are guilty of committing crimes in their home countries. ICE's method in Sanctuary Cities is largely to go to locations where released criminals are, arrest the criminal, and grab anyone else there who shouldn't be here.

Cato (a pretty hostile source) says:

The ICE data show that the share of immigrants detained after an ICE arrest who had criminal convictions has fallen in half since January from 62 percent of detainees to 31 percent in November.

Note they say convictions, many of those without convictions have pending criminal charges. And then, as they say in the headline, only 5% have violent convictions.

So let's take that smallest number, 5%. You only have a 5% chance each time you mob ICE of preventing a violent convicted felon from being deported. If you make a habit of it, say you interfere in 10 arrests, you have at least a 40% chance of having interfered in the arrest of a violent felon. Great work!

Edit: I changed it to "At least 40%" because from my understanding, ICE often targets violent felons, and then catches others unlawfully present. So this is kind of a floor, the likelihood of a violent felon being caught in any given raid is likely higher than 5%.

No. You can’t equivocate law enforcement with mob behavior. You’re trying to compare false positives with legitimate law enforcement with false positives in the disruption of said law enforcement.

I agree that certain false positive rates are acceptable when enforcing the law (up to but not past the point of conviction/sentencing at least). I disagree that certain false positive rates are acceptable when forming a mob. This is not hypocrisy.

But the problem isn't in the false positive rates, the problem is the methodology of accosting random people in public. I can point to official statistics about ICE to demonstrate that this is not their methodology. I do not have comparable statistics for Anti-ICE protestors, but I can point to them literally doing the methodology they accuse ICE of in broad daylight.

There's a degree of equivocation though. The worst thing the mobs you described did was mildly irritate people for periods lasting up to five minutes (if I'm being generous). The feect on one guy was that there was a parade of cars behind him honking, which happens to anyone who drives in rush hour on a daily basis. It's not nothing, but it isn't in the same league as being detained for a day or more. The acceptable false positive rate you're really looking for is the number of people who were accosted by ICE but weren't detained.

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The worst thing the mobs you described did was mildly irritate people for periods lasting up to five minutes

I have grown convinced in the last couple of weeks that one of the defining characteristics of being on the left is a total lack of a theory of mind.

Mildly irritated? I can think of a few ways that I would feel if I were surrounded by a mob directing hostilities at me, and I don't think "mildly irritated" would describe any of them. "Legitimately fearing for my personal safety" would probably be a much better description. That seems to be not only a reasonable thing to feel in that situation, but also, the actual intent of the people engaging in this behavior.

As a resident of the Minneapolis area these sorts of scenes are the reason I will not go into Minneapolis for the foreseeable future, simply because I would feel absolutely justified in drawing a firearm to defend myself, but the "jury of my peers" would consist entirely of people like you who apparently think that I'm only supposed to be "mildly irritated" that a group of angry people have surrounded me.

The acceptable false positive rate you're really looking for is the number of people who were accosted by ICE but weren't detained.

That would be closer to analogosity, but I don't think it quite reaches; someone hassled but not detained by ICE still has it worse, because of the implication.

"Because of the implication" cuts both ways. The mob is perfectly capable of attempting murder, just look at what happens to Jake Lang yesterday.

I agree that certain false positive rates are acceptable when enforcing the law (up to but not past the point of conviction/sentencing at least).

And past it too - in a lot of cases, we won't have definitive proof, and part of that means that we will occasionally put the wrong person in jail.

Yeah, but I'm slightly less ok with that. Not 100% less ok, just slightly and it isn't really necessary to the point if we're comparing false positives on detainees.

I agree that certain false positive rates are acceptable when enforcing the law (up to but not past the point of conviction/sentencing at least). I disagree that certain false positive rates are acceptable when forming a mob. This is not hypocrisy.

In that case it doesn't matter if the mob is harassing or assaulting ICE or non-ICE folks.

Which implies that the examples you gave are not relevant.

The examples I gave in the OP had nothing to do with a false positive rate. I'll repeat:

But the problem isn't in the false positive rates, the problem is the methodology of accosting random people in public. I can point to official statistics about ICE to demonstrate that this is not their methodology. I do not have comparable statistics for Anti-ICE protestors, but I can point to them literally doing the methodology they accuse ICE of in broad daylight.

You wrote:

The irony of it all is that this is what anti ICE groups are accusing ICE of doing. Going to places and harassing people based off of stereotypes without any legal authority to do so. Demanding evidence to prove that someone belongs here.

I'm sure ICE has done exactly this -- going to a place they suspect removable aliens to be present and demanding evidence.

I'm sure ICE has other operations where they target specific removable aliens on which they have prior information too.

Seems very similar unless you are really resting the justifiability argument cited.

Agreed. The same generosity however is not applied to ICE

I don't understand how any White man could support the left in this country. You can think what you want about healthcare, you can hate Donald Trump if you want, all that could be true and I still don't understand how you could support the left. The left has such open, naked hatred directed specifically at White men it just feels like self-preservation should kick in at some point and supersede the rest of your political preferences.

The left has a chance to do a funny and reclaim "It's Okay to Be White" from the nazis. Maybe add (red?) white and blue stripes to the diversity/rainbow flag. We'd need some black leaders to say it on tv and in churches. Then the workers united will bring about the socialist paradise.

Agreed.

I was thinking about Minnesota and this comment a day or two ago. It's part of a kind of memetic that I think of as "Stop making Scott Adams look like Nostradamus."

Scott Adams, Dilbert comic creator turned online politico commentator and, recently, dead, made some not PC comments in 2023.

They're nothing special. A bit of breathless hyper-noticing and juiced up with a Very Online Person kind of flair. Ho-hum, as far as it goes. But the media pounced and Scott took a lot of flak for it. Elon defended him, which is kind of cool, I guess. Everyone moved on.

And then, at the end of 2025, he turned out to be completely right, at least directionally. Roving gangs of private citizens are harassing people - well, white men - for just kinda sorta looking like ICE agents. Which, I guess, consists primarily in ... being a white male.

While I am firmly on the right, I've never liked Trump. He's economically illiterate, a populist Dixiecrat rather than a conservative, and has no actual worldview other than an interesting and admittedly successful (in some sense) set of boomer "vibes."

But he keeps not trying to kill me or brand me as the devil. Which puts him materially ahead of half of the country, and the leadership and majority of the democrat party. And yet, they keep being astounded that I don't want to get my membership card in the "Kill Everyone who is like TollBooth" club.

The left is made mostly of white people and I’ve never felt anything bad directed at me for being one

The left is made mostly of white people and I’ve never felt anything bad directed at me for being one

Your insensitivity doesn't make it not exist.

Nor does your hypersensitivity.

The vast majority of people are normal people.

The online world intensifies a tiny percentage of extreme perspectives and actions.

People on the right are very sensitive to picking these very specific types of bad vibes from social media and pushed to them from their algorithms and then attributing it to everyday reality. (Similar problem obviously exists on the left but focused on different issues).

The world is not that bad out here.

The argument that I should become more sensitive to online microagressions and less in tune with the actual social world I inhabit is unbecoming.

"Don't be hypersensitive"

"Most people are normal"

"Except all people on the right. Who are hypersensitive"

And, the parting morality shot - "Don't introduce data and ask me to review it, that would be ... unbecoming"

I'm not going to try to change your mind on anything. I'm only going to try to suggest that you read what you write before posting and ask yourself the question "am I making any arguments here or am I just kind of teasing my opponent?"

I meant that it was unbecoming for someone on the right to ask me become preoccupied with online micro aggressions as if those were representative of my day to day reality.

Nor does your hypersensitivity.

You don't need to be hypersensitive to understand that "As a white male, you are a member of a harmful group" is indeed something bad directed at you for being a white male.

The world is not that bad out here.

We've been through this since ~2014. No, it is not just a few college kids on Tumblr, or whatever.

I just know that I’ve lived my entire life at the epicenter of what you guys seem afraid of, the bluest parts of the country and among college campuses.

I’ve never had anybody say anything or act in any way which would leave me to believe they harbored anything at all towards me for being white, nor have I ever seen this directed at anybody else.

So what am I supposed to do? Cower in fear of something I’ve only seen in extreme online videos? Or just live my normal life with my normal friends and not give a damn about the obsessions of the hyper political terminally online types?

Even if I were concerned with that sort of thing it’s a wave that already had its crest and has been falling since like ‘21. Which holy shit was now 5 years ago, time is moving too fast man…

In the end, just because I believe that certain people are race obsessed losers (sorry, speaking generally here, applicable to both sides), that wouldn’t change my views on things like healthcare spending, environmental protection, the value of scientific research, international cooperation, etc.

Try to put yourself in the shoes of one of them. All your friends are SJers. Your girlfriend is an SJer. Your internet hangouts are explicitly controlled by SJ, or have filter-bubbled you to the same effect. You probably went to some form of tertiary education controlled by SJ. Your workplace may be controlled by SJ-HR.

If you jump the fence, you're jumping it with the metaphorical clothes on your back. This is not an easy thing to do. In fact, the outflow overestimates it, because a lot of those who do "leave" didn't actually choose it; SJ expelled them first, and that meant they actually started talking to the deplorables leading to an eventual flip. That was my trajectory, for instance.

The left has such open, naked hatred directed specifically at White men it just feels like self-preservation should kick in at some point and supersede the rest of your political preferences.

The hate directed from non-white leftists to their white patrons simply does not register as a threat, and this is because the left sees the white man as functionally invincible. On this point, they’re more correct than not: he is, as a matter of fact, very, very, powerful (more powerful than some on the right are willing to admit) and the gulf in capacity between himself and all non-asians makes their fear of him far more justified (on a group level) than his fear of them.

Nevertheless, he is not truly invincible. Individual whites can and have been harmed by racial reprisal, and the white man’s institutional power has been steadily eroded since the civil rights era, now being considerably weaker than it was before. Still, he rules the better part of the world (in more ways than one), and since the left sees that as fundamentally injust, there is plenty of work to do.

Still, he rules the better part of the world (in more ways than one)

Kind of?

White men do have 90%+ of the world's nuclear weapons and could theoretically subjugate the bulk of the world, extracting resources at will. Theoretically, there's military and technological supremacy over non-China. Certainly there's a fairly high standard of living.

But in actual fact, most large companies and government organizations in supposedly white-ruled countries seems to have a DEI policy that works against white men. In actual fact, the prevailing animus even in the US still seems to be anti white male. That is to say media, ads, television and video games seem to be lukewarm at best about white men, opposed at worst.

"It's OK to be white" as a slogan was treated as a serious, potentially terror-related, political crime. Maybe that's changed more recently?

White men may rule the world but they do not seem to rule their own countries, or at least rule in favour of themselves in the countries they supposedly rule. Control without accruing gains isn't true control I think. The loot flows from whites in Minnesota to blacks in Somalia, not the other way around. Supposedly white-run America enjoys overwhelming superiority in strength to Somalia but who is making gains here, who is really in control?

Military and economic strength is not as important as political strength, that pillar is the most important of all I think. When we study history, we seem to focus on the military and economic angles, the great leaders, innovations, organizing principles that seem to drive history. Or with the HBD crowd race is added to the mix. But it's political strength that is the most important factor, it's 'why' Rome could fight on after losing so many men to Hannibal but then lose their 'we will never lose' aura and fall to a force of Goths and Huns. Political strength is why Somalia stands above America in some respects, even though by any of the normal analytical frameworks we use the very notion is laughable.

I don't understand how any White man could support the left in this country.

Because I can Notice who is President of the United States and who is pseduonymously posting in tumblr so they don't get fired from their job at the coffee shop and make a rational assessment of who poses a greater threat to my freedom, well-being, and prosperity.

The left has such open, naked hatred directed specifically at White men it just feels like self-preservation should kick in at some point and supersede the rest of your political preferences.

YMMV, especially given that Republicans seem dead-set on killing their voters.

  • -15

Could you speak more plainly?

Republicans seem dead-set on killing their voters.

Would you, uh, care to expand upon that?

I do hear a lot of rhetoric about abolishing white people -- even 'kill all white men' -- but it's not coming from Republicans.

Would you, uh, care to expand upon that?

The Republican Party aggressively pushes policies which are inimical to the well-being and longevity of their voters. This includes pushing crank health theories (most prominently anti-vaccine sentiments), defunding rural healthcare, and weakening environmental protections.

I do hear a lot of rhetoric about abolishing white people -- even 'kill all white men' -- but it's not coming from Republicans.

Can you please point to the Democratic policies implementing plans to abolish white people and/or kill all white men?

It's probably some argument similar to opposition to free government services = killing poors. Otherwise idk what he means.

If so, the fact that the left now fulminates on pseudo-anonymous tumblr rather than spreading open anti-white, anti-male material on their employer's official blog and Slack channel would be more of a win for the Trumpian right than anything else IMO.

I also think that left-wing whites have an entirely unjustified confidence in their own future. Demographics are what they are. One day, as usual, the left will look at the ‘utopia’ they memed into existence and realise that it has no place for them.

One day the Trumpist Mottizens will make a serious attempt to explain why I should worry more about random people on social media than actual, elected government officials holding the highest offices in the country and making policy. But it's obviously not today.

One day, as usual, the left will look at the ‘utopia’ they memed into existence and realise that it has no place for them.

Possible, but probably not. The historical pattern has been that the inclusive, liberal parts of the US are prosperous and decent places to live while the white supremacist parts are shitholes.

Lots of white men hate white men too, in what is usually called "internalized racism" when discussing self-hating non-whites, "internalized misogyny" or "pick me" behavior when discussing insufficiently feminist women.

I doubt it's just white women carrying the torch here for white liberals. Some of these men think of themselves as one of the good ones or have White Savior complexes, while others are down for some self-flagellating. It's not even necessarily limited to leftists or liberals among white men.

The left has such open, naked hatred directed specifically at White men it just feels like self-preservation should kick in at some point and supersede the rest of your political preferences.

That, but obviously reversed, is basically what I've heard from a lot of my friends who aren't straight white men. And you could say "well, the difference is I'm right about how the Left feels whereas they're wrong about how the Right feels," or you can say "YesChad.jpg," but I feel like neither addresses the core issue of "everyone feels hated, probably in large part blamable on social media".

There is a certain annoying rationalist-ish tendency to notice meta-level patterns and thereby conclude that there is no truth, or that truth is irrelevant, that there is nothing but patterns and that all things that can be fit to the same pattern must be interchangeable. Of course the other side has an isomorphic complaint, but it is simple, they are wrong and I am right.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

What makes you think they are caused by a single core issue, rather than one side being right and the other wrong? Even children learns the simple tactic of pretending they were aggressed upon even though they know perfectly well they started shit. Why should we assume this is different?

Really adds a new dimension to the debate over whether handgun magazines should be limited to 10 rounds. How likely am I to be attacked by a group while walking down the street where I need more than 10 rounds? Apparently it's no longer in the realm of "absurdly improbable" but (anxious laughter) "statistically unlikely".

A second handgun is more reliable than a bigger mag anyway.

Remember, switching to your sidearm is faster than reloading. Or as Django put it, "I count two guns, nigga."

While one's mileage may vary when it comes to what "need" means and where the line between "absurdly improbable" and "statistically unlikely" lies, when you're attacked by a group you'd likely prefer more rounds than fewer. This was the case before, too.

As can be seen in the Rittenhouse experience, for example, it's not always the case that your attackers will disperse and flee once shots are fired, even if one or more of them have been struck. You may not be as good of a marksman as Rittenhouse; missing multiple, or the majority of, rounds amidst the chaos of being attacked is highly probable.

True. And indeed, at some point mag limits are moot. It becomes a question of whether you're a Virgin practicing lightning-fast mag changes vs. Chad just carrying multiple concealed handguns.

I'm discounting the wisdom of open carrying an AR-15 in public in Minneapolis since people seem unhinged enough right now to pick fights with you for having an AR-15 more than they would be too intimidated by the AR-15 to stay away from you.

It probably isn't a good idea for someone alone, but small groups running FONOPs might help.

Almost like this is precisely what the kind of person who wants those limits is afraid of. Guns naturally nullify strength in numbers.

chuckles_im_in_danger.jpg

Something like 1/4 to 1/3 of ICE agents are latino. By focusing on white men, anti-ICE SJWs are neglecting to respect the wholesome Diversity and Inclusiveness of ICE.

Sounds like the anti-ICE SJWs have an excuse to do what they’ve always wanted to do: Harass and bully white men using the safety of numbers as a shield.

From the perspective of anti-ICE SJWs, if white men don’t want to be mistaken as ICE, maybe they should consider having a more diverse friend group or reconsider going about their day alone without a woman or POC to vouch for them.

Plus, now white men might develop some Empathy for women and POC in understanding what it’s like having to live every day in fear. So harassing a group of white men, whether or not they’re ICE agents, is a Good Thing in leveling the playing field.

“If you’re not with us, then you’re against us,” as that one lady in the tech worker video helpfully explained. Silence is violence. No justice, no peace. White men don’t get to flaunt their privilege and blithely eat their lunches in public when POC can’t exist without fear of getting attacked, imprisoned, and/or deported by a racist, fascist torture regime.

“My friend was shocked,” Lee said. “He’s on the [anti-ICE] side politically. He lives nearby. He’s eaten there before. And suddenly he’s seeing messages saying we’re ICE.”

The software engineers — all white males dressed casually in sweatshirts and jackets — were soon confronted by protesters who surrounded the restaurant, shouting insults and blowing whistles in their ears as they attempted to leave, according to Lee.

Lee emphasized to Alpha News that the group’s political views were mixed, but said the encounter left some of them reconsidering their positions.

“One of us is pro-ICE, one anti-ICE, others on the fence,” he said. “After this, I think some of them are rethinking everything.”

Local man who supported leopards eating faces shocked as leopards eat his face, friend says.

Wrongthinkers should infiltrate anti-ICE Signal groups and call the anti-ICE SJWs upon random groups of white men. This would waste the time of the anti-ICE SJWs and let the anti-ICE SJWs do some recruiting for the side of wrongthinkers. This could also be a funny thing for University of Minnesota frat guys to do to friendily mess with rival fraternities. Frat guys vs. anti-ICE SJWs would make for an interesting crossover event, like two groups of characters from different continuities.

On a totally unrelated note, can you imagine how much worse things like this could get if the US adopts Universal Basic Income? Suddenly every midwit in the country, every marginal person, every post-wall cat lady on SSRIs simultaneously has (1) lots of free time; and (2) a desperate need to do something that feels remotely meaningful.

Aristotle talks about this in the Politics. He argues that, when it comes to paying citizens to take part in politics, the worst outcome is when the state pays for participation in such a way that those without productive work to do or assets to supervise have unlimited time to engage in politics, but the productive citizens are distracted from politics by their private concerns. This seems to me an obvious failure mode of UBI, even if most recipients just become consoomer-addicts.

This seems to me an obvious failure mode of UBI

But that's already here: anything the government pays for (or mandates employers/society at large pay for) that doesn't have a mandate for results, or UBJs (universal basic job) for short, enable this.

This is the reason the education-managerial complex is the way that it is; it exists because the people without productive work to do (as in, 1950s housewives) got bored and demanded it be created. This is why the workers of those jobs oppose any measure of standards (and those that are imposed are gamed into uselessness re: graduation rates), and the people who actually try tend to find themselves behind the political power curve (this failure mode is fractal).

The defense of UBI is that it allows you to send these people home with the intent of imposing standards on the jobs they were pretending to do- but zoom out and you find yourself/your society's productive efforts captured again by people who have nothing but time to try and rent-seek/insert themselves into every space they aren't welcome, so it's probably a wash on balance.

And inb4 "but the 19th Amendment enabled this, just repeal it", it really didn't; that was simply an expression of the law changing to reflect the conditions on the ground at the time (the bored women at the time had enough men on-side to enforce it). The 19th Amendment comes after the 18th Amendment.

Yes, absolutely, though there are more central cases than education. This is why boomers schizo out over "paid protestors", because they can't realize that it's one level of abstraction up for that: many of the people protesting have jobs, but NGO or whatever jobs which pay them for make-work while demanding they hold the type of politics which would get them out protesting.

because they can't realize that it's one level of abstraction up for that

Their salary (social security/OAS/your local equivalent thereof) depends on them not realizing.

My suspicion is that all the folks with a predisposition to form pro-illegal-immigrant mobs are already unemployed, so UBI wouldn’t actually free up any more of them.

My suspicion is that all the folks with a predisposition to form pro-illegal-immigrant mobs are already unemployed,

I would have to disagree with this. I regularly meet employed people who are nasty and aggressive and narcissistic and would love an excuse to harass other human beings while feeling morally superior in doing so.

OK, that’s fair evidence to the contrary. I guess my countersupposition would be that if you’re enough of a conformist normie to hold down a job you’re also enough of a conformist normie that your psyche recoils at the prospect of engaging in meatspace anti-regime violence. I’ve met plenty of employed keyboard warriors who make all the noises that they want to bash the fash, not many employed actual warriors who’d really go do it.

I have two relatives that are passionately anti-ICE and I have found only a limited amount of reasoning in the maintenance of their viewpoint. They have no interest in discussing the possible consequences of high amounts of low IQ migrants on society, how deterrence theory factors into the desire to deport those who arrived as a child, the longterm impact of demographic change, or the actual statistical risk that ICE poses in regards to unjustified use of force. They are stuck on ideological “flashbulb memories” from the media and thoroughly convinced that ICE = totalitarianism = no freedom = very bad = they will come for the women next (and other such statements of catastrophe). I speculate that the motivations behind some of the protesting has a purely psychological etiology: excitement from a sense of purpose + externalizing the problems which plague one’s own life. Toward this latter point, I am reminded of the externalization in Ecclesiastes, where the worries about the breakdown of the human body are writ large symbolically onto the body-politic:

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way

Spoiler in case you wish to decipher the metaphors yourself: (The grinders being the teeth, the window’s being the eyes, and so forth.)

Consider the poignant interview from the No King’s Protest: “I'm just so scared. I'm 74 years old. I worry about everything. I just, I just am so scared and upset, and I don't - I don't understand why people voted for this person." Fear, worry, confusion, alienation — is this really all Trump’s doing? Or instead, are these found in one’s own life, and there is a pressing need for communal catharsis, however artificial, which is so difficult to find in our secular and atomized age? A possibility.

I speculate that the motivations behind some of the protesting has a purely psychological etiology: excitement from a sense of purpose + externalizing the problems which plague one’s own life.

I think this is a significant factor. You probably get to feel like a superhero responding to an alert somewhere in the city and hopping onto your rented e-bike like the Batmobile. Then there is the whole psychological aspect of just getting to scream at ICE for as long as you want, any insults you can imagine. In a way it strikes me like a form of those "Scream Clubs" you see in leftist cities, just like the dark/evil version of them. I never understood the appeal of those scream clubs to begin with, but they seem very popular among women. Like the woman pictured in the article basically matches my mental model of what someone screaming at ICE would look like perfectly.

they seem very popular among women

If it is the case that everything traces to Ev Psych, then the “environment” of the progressive woman is torturous: your tribe has been deposed from power and the enemy tribe now rules over your old territory (he is “not my President”); their warriors now invade the dwellings to snatch away the little ones (Guatemalans and Ecuadorians short in stature whom she has been made to identify with as tribal equals — they cook the communal meals in the longhouse). The evolutionarily-correct response to this is to literally scream and stress all the men in the vicinity. Someone should do a survey to see whether political radicalization among women is negatively correlated to whether their husbands are rich / tall / strong / possessing abundant acreage, as these things would lead to a primal sense of safety and security. It is obviously lower in religious women who believe in a strong and mighty God, paternalistic and providing, who exacts vengeance against enemies in time. (Where are all the stressed out Somali women? They are psychologically buffered against this.)

your tribe has been deposed from power and the enemy tribe now rules over your old territory

Or more like the enemy tribe has recently had some minor successes in reclaiming some territory that your tribe long ago captured, but the enemy tribe is still far from deposing your tribe from power or ruling over your territory as a whole.

Since the ev. psych. playbook of women, when their tribe is defeated and conquered, would be to shrug and submit to the conquerors.

The evolutionarily-correct response to this is to literally scream and stress all the men in the vicinity.

It reminds me of the trope associated with street fight videos, where uninvolved women can be commonly heard screaming. Men engaged in combat; women most affected.

In a way it strikes me like a form of those "Scream Clubs" you see in leftist cities, just like the dark/evil version of them. I never understood the appeal of those scream clubs to begin with, but they seem very popular among women

I dunno, it reminds me of Rage Yoga, which I feel was more popular with men. And I can certainly understand the appeal of "exercise coupled with getting some good hearty shouting in". Sometimes you just want to be that guy from the Highlander: The One meme, ya know?

But what if you end up as that Tom Hanks-looking cowboy screamer in the sky instead?

I wonder when anti-ICE groups will start attacking each other, in the spirit of the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front.

Does this count? https://x.com/i/status/2012649035673350540

Why would it? They attacked him because they thought he was an ICE supporter for wearing hunting (rather than military) camo.

Because it seems he was in their protest group, just didn't get the memo that they don't wear camo on Saturdays or whatever the line is now. Maybe you can expand what your comment meant because I took it as a general, how long before they eat their own?

I mean how long before an anti-ICE group attacks another anti-ICE group for doing anti-ICE activities all wrong? And they consider the other anti-ICE group just as bad as (if not worse than) ICE.

But it seems like Anti-ICE people are assuming this is their playbook because it's what they would do, and are now doing.

This is still too much of a mistake theory frame. The anti-ICE people don't care what ICEs playbook is. They oppose ICE and will do and say anything that they think helps their cause. They stubbornly deny the agent who shot Renee Good was hit by her car. They made up an Allentown grandfather. They post all sorts of stories, often claiming they're backed up by video... but the video doesn't back them up. Or they post videos which aren't even of ICE agents, such as this one. Yeah, that looks bad -- but those aren't ICE agents, those are Mobile, Alabama sheriff's deputies, and that particular incident isn't even an immigration arrest. And those filming likely KNEW those were sheriff's deputies because they (unlike the camera) could have seen what was written on the side of the police vehicle.

I don't know if they're anti-ICE because they're pro-open-borders or (more likely) they're just anti-Trump, but they're definitely by-any-means-necessary full conflict theory people.

This is still too much of a mistake theory frame. The anti-ICE people don't care what ICEs playbook is. They oppose ICE and will do and say anything that they think helps their cause

But is it really helpful to their cause to (apparently) give everyone the impression that they are a bunch of unhinged lunatics?

It reminds me of a (in my opinion) fascinating video made by William Pierce (the late neo-Nazi). It's only about 4 minutes but well worth watching in my opinion.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mu4-RRhs9aM

The red guards don't, uh, care very much if they make the revolution look bad, because the revolution cannot be criticized. It doesn't occur to them that not everyone thinks this way.

But is it really helpful to their cause to (apparently) give everyone the impression that they are a bunch of unhinged lunatics?

Wait, are you talking about anti-ICE people or ICE officers?

But is it really helpful to their cause to (apparently) give everyone the impression that they are a bunch of unhinged lunatics?

Not "everyone" gets this impression because only sketchy right-wing sources like AlphaNews report it. You won't see it on the mainstream media, not even the local Fox affiliate (which appears to be fully anti-ICE).

Note on that Reddit thread of the Mobile Sheriff's deputies, not one person even questioned whether those WERE ICE agents. Probably because the mods would ban anyone who did.

The Pogroms Will Continue Until We All Get Along

This is some good old fashioned culture warring. Happy New Year, y'all.

This clip has been popping up on twitter recently, most likely because Elon Musk re-tweeted it.

It's a doozy. I'm probably in too deep in AI land, but I thought for a moment it may have been a very well done deepfake. The cliches are just too juicy:

  • Calling for a focused investigation to various Republican personalities ex post facto after an (assumed) 2026-2028 Democratic sweep of house, senate, and white house. This is the pogrom vibe.
  • Over use of the term "accountability" which is not only grating, but an open code word for punishment / retribution.
  • Packing the Supreme Court.

A little Wiki background on the host here turns up the clown world dial even more. This is an atheist progressive white woman who has a podcast with a title that is synonymous with exasperation. She's been wanting to speak to the manager since before it was cool. The Wiki entry concludes with a Hasan Piker endorsement. Hashtag resistance, hashtag StayWoke.

I thought both left and right were starting to slip into a post-post-liberal dichotomy. Gen Z conservatism was figuring out how long is was going to stay in its Nick Fuentes giga-irony phase before figuring out how to TradLife it up but with good vibes. Gen Z liberalism was establishing a pansexual polycule, ordering designer embryos, microdosing, and flirting with anti-semitism. Yas Queen, Globalize the Intifada.

Turning down my own sarcasm, this appears to be like a kind of resistance-within-the-resistance of severly disaffected former Obama style liberals / progressives who have decided to go full Provisional IRA. It isn't the weirdo terminally online language of Gen-Z etc, but a hyper violent rhetorical style of a group that feels they are the besieged templars of the Final Stand against The Big Bad. I didn't think this was, well, real. I thought the "Karen" archetype was mostly a lot of bad looks on very bad days for otherwise milquetoast suburban ladies. Mostly, I felt sympathy.

But these folks seem serious! If this is TollBooth losing some of his childlike wonder of the world, so be it.

this appears to be like a kind of resistance-within-the-resistance of severely disaffected former Obama style liberals / progressives who have decided to go full Provisional IRA.

Please. This means they're not the Provos*, they're the Continuity IRA, as distinct from the Real IRA, another split-off grouping who were/are more effective or at least have survived longer (allegedly they got the nickname the Cokes because, like Coca-Cola, they were The Real Thing). I think the blow your whistle types are more prone to the splitting and lack of effectiveness of the Continuity than the Real.

*Genealogy equivalents: If the traditional Democratic party is the Official IRA/Sinn Féin, the Obama liberals were the Provisional IRA/Sinn Féin, the progressives/DSA affiliates were the INLA/IRSP and offshoots, the SJW wing of that were the Real IRA and the ICE ICE baby lot are the Continuity. Fissioning like an amoeba on Ritalin seems to be a hallmark of Marxist-Leninist groups.

Awesome comment. Thanks for the actual info and the great writing stemming from a single phrase in my original post. THis is why I keep coming back to the motte.

Thank you, I will cherish this kind word the next time I manage to get myself smacked down by the mods (no, Amadan, I'm not saying I'm deliberately going to do this, don't get twitchy just yet!) 😁

"Lock her up!" was a big part of Trump's platform in 2016. I'm not sure why some random podcaster saying this is particularly interesting, You can find thousands of podcasters saying every politician you can think of should be locked up for one reason or another. I think there is a sentiment among liberals that democrats need to start playing dirtier, because the republicans continually reap the benefits of defecting from norms. Merrick Garland being a prime example of that, and why there is talk of packing the courts as revenge.

There's a very large difference between "lock her up" and "lock them all up and be grateful we aren't having them all industrially executed". Particularly when the "her" in question is someone who has been accused of criminal offenses for decades at that point - note that Trump didn't call to lock up Harris. The irony is that Hilary and Bill Clinton might be closer to jail now after being held in contempt over their refusal to testify regarding Jeffrey Epstein.

"lock her up" was a presidential candidate. I am not sure who is saying "lock them all up and be grateful we aren't having them all industrially executed" (the SJ left is generally not too fond of gas chambers, I think). If it is Newsom, I will grant you that it is worse.

I am sure that some politician somewhere is saying that a Democrat administration will be going over the conduct of Trump's ICE with a very fine toothed comb, and prosecute any agents who violated any departmental regulations which were on the books at the time.

I do not see this as particularly bad. Trump is running the DoJ as a weapon against his enemies, so turnabout would be fair. Sadly, I am also convinced that it won't be happening. Having federal agents who enforce your ideas with impunity is useful to any administration, and establishing a precedent of them getting persecuted by subsequent administrations would end this. This is also why we will not see a court martial over the bombing of shipwrecked sailors.

I am sure that some politician somewhere is saying that a Democrat administration will be going over the conduct of Trump's ICE with a very fine toothed comb, and prosecute any agents who violated any departmental regulations which were on the books at the time.

With the same creative and novel legal theories they used against Trump, I'm sure. Going to be amazing watching the gerontocratic Dems "discover" that enforcing laws they themselves wrote and passed decades ago is domestic terrorism or something.

The most prominent example I'm aware of is Hakeem Jeffries calling ICE a lawless organization engaged in state violence, and vaguely threatening to prosecute them in what very much looks like an attempt to intimidate federal agents.

I haven't seen anything that extreme from real '28 Democrat contenders, but let me ask you this. Remember the clip about giving free healthcare to illegal aliens, where every single Dem candidate raised their hand? Imagine the following question: "If you win the 2028 election, will you commit to prosecuting the fascist Trump administration and it's supporters to a level comparable to the Nuremburg trials?"

Which 2028 Dem candidates do you think would say "no"?

Having federal agents who enforce your ideas with impunity is useful to any administration, and establishing a precedent of them getting persecuted by subsequent administrations would end this.

Which is exactly why I would expect the Dems to throw anything at the wall to force out, if not jail, every fed and ICE agents who supported Trump.

I do not see this as particularly bad. Trump is running the DoJ as a weapon against his enemies, so turnabout would be fair.

If turnabout is fair, then what he's doing right now is fair, and any retaliation would just be a new aggression.

The way I see it, the Obama administration weaponized the DoJ to harm Trump. Biden (or whomever was calling the shots) certainly leaned on the DoJ to make sure that the J6 crowd was prosecuted harshly, without the leniency afforded to BLM rioters.

In his 2nd term, Trump doubled down on the politicization of the DoJ. Blanket pardons for all J6, withdrawing the security clearances of law firms who had offended him by representing his opponents (at least until they kissed his ring), starting an investigation into Good's wife (but not in the shooting), pardoning one Latin American president who was convicted of drug trafficking while at the same time kidnapping another one on likely much flimsier evidence of the same, pardoning people who bribed him by buying his shitcoin, etc pp.

I think that the politicization of the DoJ is bad no matter who is in charge, and I will grant you that the Dems started the circle, but clearly Trump drove it to new heights.

Are we just gonna skip over how Trump ended up with a mugshot being taken, and "muh 34 felonies"? If you're including pardons, why ignore Biden's signoff pardoning Faucci, his son, and a bunch of other people for anything they could have possibly been charged with, before any accusation was even made?

I think that the politicization of the DoJ is bad no matter who is in charge, and I will grant you that the Dems started the circle, but clearly Trump drove it to new heights.

That's a reasonable position, but I don't know if you can derive "turnabout is fair play" from it.

Indeed. The only reasonable conclusion is that everyone of consequence is driven by an inescapable desire for totality. Side with whoever ends with you on top, or accustom yourself to your position beneath the iron heel of history.

And may the best at executing justice win.

I'm not sure why some random podcaster saying this is particularly interesting

Not saying this is the case here, but randos can easily turn out to be more representative of a movement than official leadership. For example, for years people here were saying that "social justice" / woke is not representative of the mainstream left, even though it took over pretty much the entirety of the movement, the corporate sector and the government. Many were even denying it even exists as a coherent ideology right up until Trump won for a second time, and they switched to declaring it dead.

Not saying this is the case here, but randos can easily turn out to be more representative of a movement than official leadership.

Well I think what can happen is that people within the movement start competing with each other to see who is the most extreme. And I can easily see social media exacerbating this problem.

"Lock her up!" was a big part of Trump's platform in 2016. I'm not sure why some random podcaster saying this is particularly interesting,

Yeah this pretty much sums up the whole thing for me.

progressives who have decided to go full Provisional IRA

I wonder how far the Provos would have gotten if they had been made up entirely of middle aged women with not a single military aged male to be found.

Talk to Bernadette Devlin about that 😁 Or for paramilitary activity, the Price sisters.

There is something very interesting going on with middle-aged White women, you see it with the hosts of this podcast and with all the recent ICE protests too. Obviously, I get middle-aged women being the moralizing demographic of Christian moms protesting video games, but recently White women seem to be radicalized with a degree of violence that is unfamiliar and shocking to me. Now, they aren't going out and committing mass shootings but they seem to have an open bloodthirst that seems very uncharacteristic. Anyone have any theories what is happening here?

Edit: The fact that Jennifer Welch is a divorced divorce attorney probably puts her in the 99th percentile for hatred towards men.

Are the more radical or less afraid of the consequences? Historically this demographic would have been meeker than they wish to be because they would be afraid of the consequences. Starting a fight as a 45 year old mom is a bad idea. Violence is rarely worth it as a high risk high reward strategy for fit young men. Women would have been too afraid of getting hurt.

These demonstrators learned especially through BLM that their behaviour has no consequences. They are not used to being in an environment where actions have physical consequences. They are used to screeching and the world babying them.

The fact that Jennifer Welch is a divorced divorce attorney probably puts her in the 99th percentile for hatred towards men.

I'm willing to give divorce attorneys a pass on pretty much anything. Back in April I was having a really bad day at work. I was appearing for a Zoom deposition and instead of doing it at a hotel Plaintiff's counsel thought it was a good idea for an old guy with limited technical ability to do it from his home without assistance. He lived in the middle of nowhere. And there had just been major storms in the area. The whole thing was delayed due to technical difficulties beginning about 15 minutes in, and every time we tried to continue with questioning some other issue would occur. After several hours of this the court reporter had a "technical expert" call in and try to walk the guy through some process. This woman had a high, whiny voice and talked to the guy like he was in kindergarten. I was about at the end of my rope, it was 1 pm, and the guy had answered about ten questions so far.

I went into the kitchen to get coffee and the wisened old of-counsel in my office asked me how I was doing. I told him that I probably died in a car wreck on the way to work and was actually in hell, and proceeded to tell him about my shitty morning. He said "Just look on the bright side: You could be practicing family law. And you'd have to carry a gun." That pretty much stopped me cold and I vowed that I wouldn't get too annoyed by minor professional inconveniences anymore.

I would add that I interned for a family law judge in law school, which judge handled child custody, and it's nothing I have any desire to get within a mile of.

I heard horror stories from my own divorce attorney (who I came to know socially as well). She never said anything about fearing harm from an aggrieved party, but the job does seem to involve having to deal with people who are going through the worst thing in their lives, which brings out the absolute worst in themselves as human beings. Things like a divorcing couple burning through $30k in billable hours fighting over a $1500 table that neither of them actually wants - they just want to hurt the other person.

It sounded like a ringside seat for the lowest tier of reality TV, except you're responsible for one of the malevolent idiots on the show.

Jennifer Welch is a divorced divorce attorney

That seems to be her co-host, Angie Sullivan. Welch is (was?) an interior designer. Both are divorced, though.

"By 2025, Welch scaled down her job as an interior designer and Sullivan had left her job as a divorce attorney in order to focus on the podcast."

Anyone have any theories what is happening here?

Internet outrage is inherently futile. You can doomscroll through endless provocation, but no short form video is ever going to give your ape brain the catharsis it wants. That's why these same women go on Scream Retreats and post videos of themselves having unhinged meltdowns. And that's why they spiral into more and more extreme rhetoric (and eventually, action) - because no amount of performative fury spewed into a screen ever actually scratches that itch. Combine that with a total lack of experience with real violence, and the end result is this nonsense.

One of the notable things about the MN shooting was how hard people went giving Good the benefit of the doubt. Even most people who think it was a justifiable shooting presume she couldn't have really had a murderous intent. I doubt that's a valid presumption. We don't have info about her media habits, but given who she was associated with and what she was doing, it seems very plausible that she was mainlining deranged homicidal ideation towards ICE agents, in the form of videos and posts from women and soyboys who think of the situation as something between a Marvel movie and a 7 year old daydreaming about fighting off bandits.

Why not run the ICE agent over? They're basically Nazi Death Eaters. None of the videos in which some septum-pierced crazy person loomed at the camera while calling for the deaths of federal agents ever raised the possibility that they were people, or might leave a real corpse. They're basically CGI robot aliens that don't even bleed.

I presume she fantasized about using lethal violence and ICE agents, and that she would realize those fantasies if given sufficient permission structure by society. She surely held a general malice towards ICE, as presumably most ICE agents do towards these types of protesters. I still think it unlikely that she meant to drive into him at that moment. I doubt she was capable of the 3d spatial awareness necessary to clip him just enough to hurt but not seriously injure. Mostly I think it was woman driver not correctly perceiving how big her vehicle was and how it would accelerate on a slippery road.

and that she would realize those fantasies if given sufficient permission structure by society.

The permission structure is here. She went to an openly advertised training session to learn about how to ram ICE agents with her car. Approximately zero people on her side condemn her for hitting an ICE agent, and approximately 100% of them would have openly feted her if she killed him. The only Democrat I am aware of who is calling this behavior/mentality a bad thing is John Fetterman, who is so unpopular with his party that he ought to flip teams if he wants a shot at being reelected.

as presumably most ICE agents do towards these types of protesters.

No, massive difference in "type" of malice. In video after video, the attitude I see from ICE towards these protestors is the same attitude a retail worker has towards Karens. They are annoying fucking bitches, and sometimes they escalate things into genuinely stressful situations, but you mostly just want them to go the fuck away. And if they did go away, they would transmute from "target of malice" to "amusing work anecdote" about an hour later.

And the ICE attitude is actually even less extreme than that. Part of what makes the retail worker so molten furious is how powerless they feel. Conversely, the ICE agents are allowed to sass back and if things escalate enough, forcibly arrest the entitled assholes.

I still think it unlikely that she meant to drive into him at that moment. I doubt she was capable of the 3d spatial awareness necessary to clip him just enough to hurt but not seriously injure. Mostly I think it was woman driver not correctly perceiving how big her vehicle was and how it would accelerate on a slippery road.

Sounds like women drivers who put themselves in stressful situations are inherently a threat to the public.

She went to an openly advertised training session to learn about how to ram ICE agents with her car.

Do you have a source for this? It's the first I've heard of it.

NY Post.

link

I didn't see anything in this article to corroborate your specific claim. Per the article:

ICE Watch and adjacent groups can also turn confrontational — with numerous instances of activists ramming agents with their cars in the past.

“[Renee Good] was trained against these ICE agents — what to do, what not to do, it’s a very thorough training,” Leesa said.

“To listen to commands, to know your rights, to whistle when you see an ICE agent,” she added.

The article does not say that Renee Good received training in 'how to ram ICE agents with her car', merely that she had received training from ICE Watch. The article does seem to imply that Good's training involved ramming, but recall how "The Media Very Rarely Lies" -- the NY Post isn't stating it as fact, but merely pushing that interpretation by how it arranges true facts, in the same way that left-leaning outfits did their best to slander Rittenhouse without directly lying about the facts of the case.

She went to an openly advertised training session to learn about how to ram ICE agents with her car.

Presumably it was advertised as less escalatory than that, as a fig leaf if nothing else?

Now, they aren't going out and committing mass shootings but they seem to have an open bloodthirst that seems very uncharacteristic. Anyone have any theories what is happening here?

Retvrn to ancient tradition of Germanic Screeching Women.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3ullteTvPiw

I’ve never actually read a kulak post before, rather I only vaguely recall his posting and people sneering at him here.

That was actually a pretty good read though. A little long, but a decent bit of humor and some novel ideas.

I suspect it's a sign that an era is coming to a close. Usually, women have other men who would do the dirty work for them. If they feel that they have to do it themselves, something is probably collapsing.

I don't think it's a sign of collapse, feminism has had its share of radical rhetoric for decades now and that hasn't slowed it down. The more worrying explanation is that it's just a sign of a more general radicalisation, and if even seemingly normal women are willing to get locked up or shot for their cause that's all the more moral sanction for the men in that group to take it further.

It's not a rigorous historical point but I would think an exhausted radical movement looks something more like nationalism in Northern Ireland just before the fighting stopped, where the women are marching for an end to the violence and only a few stubborn men remain committed to it.

I am not sure this is really very surprising, to be honest. I'm not sure I can put it better than Kipling:

Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise. Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

but

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.

One could go a bit further and speculate that the arrangement Kipling describes:

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her

Has broken down and been washed away, particularly as the older Christian gender norms Kipling was familiar with have increasingly been forgotten, and commensurate with this breakdown we might expect to see ever stronger evidence that "the female of the species is more deadly than the male."

Now that one of their own has been killed they want others to commit bloodshed on their behalf?

But the "one of their own" in question was acting in an absolutely unhinged, uncharacteristic of women with children, manner, which got her killed in the first place.

Who cares? She was of the tribe and was killed by one not of the tribe. Thus, in fact, she was not unhinged. She was stunning and brave. If she acted uncharacteristic, no doubt she was forced to by the barbarity other tribe. Truly the other tribe's perfidy knows no bounds, but needs must.

There's something to this. Death was meant to be suffered by the others. The Karen class as never meant to endure the ultimate consequences of their actions. No wonder so the post-shooting protests were so virulent. The group that makes up the majority of progressive organisers has finally been attacked.

This is actually a reasonably common position among left-wing intellectuals. They look at the evidence from the last 10 years, particularly Donald Trump winning two out of three presidential elections, and conclude that America simply is not ready for democracy. Sometimes they come out and say it outright. The proposed solution is usually somewhere between Reconstruction and Denazification.

I've seen it said that nobody (or vanishingly few) truly wants a democracy, they simply want a tyrant who's on their side.

The radical left has always thought this. It’s why communist states are always democracies except that various groups of people can’t vote because they’re reactionaries and of course the party has to approve every candidate to make sure no counterrevolutionaries slip through against the will of the people, obviously.

always democracies

Sometimes they're people's democratic republics, because they're definitely reaffirming, and not protesting.

Vaush isn't a left-wing intellectual he's a left-wing lolcow.

Nobody who isn't willing to become a lolcow has the fortitude to be a public intellectual.

I thought both left and right were starting to slip into a post-post-liberal dichotomy. I thought the "Karen" archetype was mostly a lot of bad looks on very bad days for otherwise milquetoast suburban ladies.

So first, labels.

Karens are, above all else, hyper-establishment. They tend to be the less morally developed individuals of their group with the time to take that out on everyone else. Take the perennial reasons liberals claim this about conservatives- "they're just not at the proper state of moral development, and have never been".

And I agree with this assertion- Karens tend to be Kohlberg 3 and 4s. 5s and 6s are generally too morally developed to be Karens, though they retain the ability and vocabulary to Karen out as needed.

What Karen uses to justify herself varies based on what the establishment is. When that establishment is the Christian Right, they're good Christian women; when that establishment is racist, they're protesting bussing; when that establishment is "men should beat their wives", they're the ones justifying that to their daughters; when that establishment is "spare the rod spoil the child", they're beating that evil left-handedness out of you; when that establishment is "kill the X", they're the ones telling the machetes where to go; when that establishment is "cut your daughter's clit off", they're the ones holding 'em down. But they always use the Establishment as justification [1].

I thought both left and right were starting to slip into a post-post-liberal dichotomy.

They kind of are, but what the two sides are going to be is kind of indeterminate, because much as the definition of "liberal" and "conservative" are in flux, so too is the economic model of the world in transition from the mid 20th century (where physical labor was the limiting factor in economic growth) into the 21st (where time is the limiting factor- modern high tech manufacturing doesn't actually require huge amounts of capital or physical labor, but require decades to spin up, software development requires no capital and no physical labor, standard manufacturing requires some capital but little physical labor due to automation). It might legitimately not matter what they think if their ability to exercise political power is compromised so severely that the middle class is erased entirely (it won't really look like that, but elections mattering less and less, and splitting across 51/49 lines, is what this looks like- countries with a larger middle class will still feel the need to jail opponents though, which is why France and the US have done that [publicly], though that failed in the US' case).

Gen Z conservatism was figuring out how long is was going to stay in its Nick Fuentes giga-irony phase before figuring out how to TradLife it up but with good vibes. Gen Z liberalism was establishing a pansexual polycule, ordering designer embryos, microdosing, and flirting with anti-semitism.

But the important part here is that, for the most part, the Gen Zs tend to leave each other alone. Gen Z "liberalism" votes Establishment, and Gen Z "conservatism" votes Reform, mostly out of convenience- but Gen Z liberals are not natively Establishment any more than Gen Z conservatives are Reform, that's just how it shakes out right now. Gen Z UBI vs. Boomer DEI (Gen Y is split across gender and property-owning lines; women and owners want DEI, all others want UBI if they don't have a job, or are anti-DEI if they do).

but a hyper violent rhetorical style of a group that feels they are the besieged templars of the Final Stand against The Big Bad.

This is what Caesar's assassins said to themselves. It didn't work out very well for them, and I don't expect this will. Perhaps noteworthy is that both groups were in their 40s- and if you have something to lose from the establishment turning against you, that's when you're going to act (before that, you're flexible enough to make it out OK; after that, you already have one foot in the grave).

[1] The stereotype is female for a reason- men can do this, but for evopsych reasons, men at Kohlberg 4 are typically just the executors of Karen's will. They'll knit the ghost costumes/burkas/Hugo Boss uniforms but they leave the actual enforcement of obscenity-banning, cross-burning, witch-hunting, and clit-cutting to the men. (For evopsych reasons, it's useful to humanity for women to pretend to be less blameworthy, even if they're all Greta Bösel inside.)

Ok, we've seen what the institutional left in the US trying to target the right looks like before. It was... the Biden admin. Not Biden personally, he was sundowning for most of it. But figures like Ron Klain and Merrick Garland are pretty core to the DNC apparatus- if 'democrats take the gloves off' has a face, it's one we've seen. Their attempt at internal repression was largely a fizzle. They lost a domestic hard power confrontation before they were even halfway through!

One thing to remember about democrats vs republicans is that- not for every case of right vs left, but for this one- their failure modes are different. It's optimate vs populare, in the original meaning of the term- how they derive their sense of internal legitimacy, of deserving to win. The democrats are representing the class that should be in charge, simple as. The republicans are representing the thoughts we all have but which the experts won't entertain, simple as. Republicans thus have an internal telotic pressure to move and then take the gloves all the way off. Democrats have an internal telotic pressure to focus group and study the issue until they can issue new regulations.

Now, the process of stasis is well advanced in the American republic, but it's important to remember that optimate choleric lashout to enshrine the mos maiorum virtually never works, and the next attempt at Sulla won't work either. Progressive elites talking out loud are quite open about their views that the mos maiorum of democracy is progressive institutionalism, damn the voters. It's been published all over The Atlantic. The unwritten constitution, in their view, is a set of values. A set I'm sure we've all seen before, which puts self expression- especially over gender and sexuality- above ancient rights. They'll lash out, impotently, it will fizzle, and the backlash will enthrone the caudillo. All this has happened before, and it will happen again. As a matter of fact I wouldn't rule out that Trump is that caudillo and Biden was the Sulla. Stasis can't be stopped at this juncture.

To be fair, Garland got savaged for not being quick enough, or plentiful enough, with the prosecutions. So for the progs, you can very easily, very quickly, slip from Hero of the People to Counter-Revolutionary Wrecker Running Dog. As, I suppose, we've seen before with Communist states.

(Okay, that linked article wasn't very savage in the savaging, but I did see online calls for heads on spikes, as it were).

Ok, we've seen what the institutional left in the US trying to target the right looks like before. It was... the Biden admin. Not Biden personally, he was sundowning for most of it. But figures like Ron Klain and Merrick Garland are pretty core to the DNC apparatus- if 'democrats take the gloves off' has a face, it's one we've seen.

That's a wild take. Biden and Garland were pretty explicit about not targeting the right and slow-walking any legal action and a pretty common sentiment on the left (or maybe just the far-left? certainly not the NYT-wing of the "left" mainstream media) is to be upset at them for that.

Taking them at their word is pretty wild considering we literally have FBI memos noting that there are no non-ideological reasons for targeting the people they've been sicked on. That's what the 'FBI targeting traditional Catholics' memos were about- the agents mostly wondering why they were supposed to be doing this, considering they're infiltrating people who are not white supremacists, dislike white supremacists, and have no affinity for terrorism. Or considering the novel theories like the Doug Mackey prosecution.

Let's flip this- the right wing twitterati is frustrated with Trump for being too moderate with his priorities, slow walking immigration enforcement, etc. Is that, uh, objectively correct?

the right wing twitterati is frustrated with Trump for being too moderate with his priorities, slow walking immigration enforcement, etc. Is that, uh, objectively correct?

It's not quite the same, but, yes, I'd consider the claim that Trump was taking immigration enforcement seriously to be only slightly less absurd. The Trump administration is very interested in the theater of immigration enforcement, but has repeatedly avoided or backed down from doing anything actually effective. It's clear they don't actually believe in the goal (likely because it would be bad for the profits of their funders) and merely want theater for their base. That said, this is one, among many, areas where the theater of the Trump administration is itself at least somewhat advancing the long-term goal of destroying the cultural concept of the US being welcoming to immigrants.

He's certainly being not right wing enough on gun control.

How so? Trump's Big Beautiful Bill was going to give the gun lobby the biggest win in a generation, before that provision sank in congress. Trump has done virtually nothing else about the question.

His administration seems to be on the anti-gun side of United States v. Hemani, though it's on the pro-gun side for Wolford v. Lopez.

or maybe just the far-left?

Definitely not just the far left. Highly engaged people across the range of the left were increasingly steamed over the fact that Garland was slow-rolling prosecution trying to maintain propriety (failing to grasp that there was literally nothing he could do to convince Trumpists of his bona fides).

Garland never convinced anyone beyond partisans of his bona fides because they were not capable of being established. He spent tons of political capital exaggerating J6 and pursuing extremely long sentences often with novel legal theories (many of which has to be struck down on appeal for being facially absurd). Then he went all in on novel legal theories to go after an ex president. There was no good faith to establish.

So, how big or significant is this group? "Got quote-tweeted by the outgroup and caused a wave of outrage" is not a good measure of relevance, and all Wikipedia has to offer is that it once got nominated for some award (that I haven't heard of). It's not like the other side doesn't have self-published clickwhores who fantasize about political violence to give their audience warm fuzzies.

So, how big or significant is this group?

I would guess it's not that big or significant. But I do get the sense that within the Democratic party, there is a growing contingent of people who feel pretty strongly that their coalition must seize power By Any Means Necessary, which includes defecting from various norms. (e.g. 9 Justices on the Supreme Court). Of course, part of the problem is that there are a lot of people on the other side of the aisle with similar sentiments.

If both sides feel that they must "fight fire with fire," it's easy to envision the situation spinning out of control.

Well, whether it is actually growing is what is yet to be established.

If both sides feel that they must "fight fire with fire," it's easy to envision the situation spinning out of control.

It sure is easy, but that just sounds like an indictment of us here. This community and its predecessors have been in the business of Envisioning various happenings of the sort for as long as we have been around. The lesson to learn for the internet culture war commentator is that the sheeple can remain asleep for longer than you can remain solvent (in testosterone needed to be excited for a paroxysm of political violence).

Well, whether it is actually growing is what is yet to be established.

Agreed, I am just going by my general impressions. For example, after Trump left office, there was a ferocious lawfare campaign launched against him. I don't recall seeing anything like that ever before. Ideally there should be polls done at regular intervals over many years. For example, Democratic voters could be asked, every year, questions like this:

Do you think that the former Republican president should be investigated and held accountable for any crimes he committed while in office?

Based on my impressions, I think it's pretty likely that the percentage saying "yes" to this question will have risen significantly over the last 20 years.

It sure is easy, but that just sounds like an indictment of us here.

That may be, but I don't think it changes my analysis.

You might be reading too much into this. One of the hosts is a divorce attorney. Female divorce attorneys have been the most rabid Karens since before the term ever existed. They are the epitome of angry radicalization. Trying to use one as the bellwether for a movement is probably not accurate.

The Hasan Piker to Morning Mimosa pipeline


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