This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A hecklers veto being used against federal law enforcement being used to provoke and punish a city. There's no defense of Minneapolis of all place to be crawling with immigration agents.
The defense is pretty simple:
Immigration on a massive scale impacts the country as a whole due to many factors, but one of the biggest is how congressional seats are apportioned and how our birthright citizenship works. Minnesota cannot just press the defect button and rake in the political rewards.
This defense is a bit thin since you can use it to justify an uncapped amount of federal agents as long as there's non-zero illegal immigrants in Minneapolis, which applies to basically every American city.
A much more reasonable defense is that they are doing it as a punitive expedition to make Minneapolis an example so other sanctuary cities start to less resistant to federal authority on immigration. However, it is still a punitive expedition. And after these shootings, it has clearly failed, because I don't see how it will be effective at persuading other liberal strongholds to cooperate with ICE rather than digging in their heels and be even more resistant.
Yes, I could justify an uncapped amount of federal agents to enforce very popular and longstanding bipartisan federal law. The only restraining principle is the expense.
The most reasonable defense is that this is what it takes to capture only a tiny percentage per capita of people who do not have permission to be here compared with cooperative jurisdictions. Just because jurisdictions are non-cooperative does not give them the right to defect from the country's laws.
Edit: And before you come at me saying ICE is suddenly unpopular in polls immediately after the shooting of Good and relentless negative news coverage, a majority of Americans still want more deportations.
I probably want illegal Somalis to be deported. However, I do not want illegal Somalis deported if the only way to do this is spend crazy amounts of money on an agency that seemingly cannot stop escalating encounters with protestors into shootings that leave US citizens dead. Further, I am very unconvinced that ICE's current incarnation would be very effective at its job (deporting illegal immigrants, ideally prioritizing bad actors) in the absence of active protestors. This really seems like a failed project staffed by and led by incompetent people. The correct move is to clean house and start over, prioritizing optics; most of all, don't shoot people!
There are functionally no illegal Somalis. Perhaps they shouldn't have been granted legal status but they were.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes and that is the key here isn't it? There's no infinite amount of federal agents available, and there's clearly diminishing returns dependent on the amount of illegal immigrants actually in the city and the number of federal agents present. Add on the current volatile circumstances, I hardly think this is the most efficient strategy if your goal is to maximize deportations. I would expect any good defense to actually address the part that Minneapolis is singled out compared to the other cities, which was the main point of the comment you initially replied to.
Does it matter to this conversation that deportations in the abstract is popular? The whole point is how they are being done. If the administration maintains their current tactics and ICE continues to shoot a US citizen every couple of weeks, would you say it would improve their electoral chances or lessen them?
There are no infinite amount of federal agents, but it is possible that surging to one city for a few months, then another city, and so on might be the best strategy. Or by refusing to back down in Minnesota, the feds are showing the other sanctuary cities that resistance is futile. Minneapolis is a good starter city - medium size, possibly fewer organized international gangs, a good place to develop new tactics.
ICE will not continue to shoot a US Citizen every few weeks because either the states will capitulate and the peace will be kept or the states will not capitulate and the Federal government will step in even more until the peace is kept. As far as electoral chances, what is the point of electing more GOP if they don't enforce immigration laws? This is the biggest issue they ran on.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link