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Notes -
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.
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.
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:
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 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.
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.)
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.
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.
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