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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33836 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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https://www.newsweek.com/video-appears-to-show-new-ice-shooting-in-minneapolis-11411971

Ice shooting round 2 has kicked off. Numerous rumors already flying around but will be a bit before we have facts I imagine.

EDIT: I've been asked to add some relevant points, I'll say: this comment has links to various angles: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405295?context=8#context This comment mentions the "Sig misfire" angle that I've seen a bit: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405451?context=8#context

Walz has activatedthe national guard: https://x.com/MnDPS_DPS/status/2012614253090619619 The NBA postponed the Minnesota/Golden State game tonight.

The video looks BAAAAD. Would like to see resident Trump supporters explain this one.

My view is as follows: mass migration poses a greater threat to America than any 20th century war we participated in. As a consequence, I’m fine with the same amount of casualties if it promotes a sealed border. Total WWII American casualties were ~1 million, so I would be fine with 1 million casualties if it seals the border. The military is fine with a certain number of deaths during training, which I think comes to around 400 training deaths annually, and the whole purpose of the military is so that foreigners do not invade us and replace us. I file these police shootings as akin to training deaths, in that they are operation accidents which are entirely expected and which deserve a brief “ah, unfortunate” before we move on to greater concerns like improving civilization and maximizing wellbeing. If what we want is a safe country, or a beautiful country, or a developed country, then in my opinion we don’t want endless migration from people who perform worse according to a variety of metrics. If you can’t accept deaths in the pursuit of deporting those who are statistically guaranteed to replace you (current trends continuing), then I don’t know how you can justify any war whatsoever. You might as well just disband the military completely at that point.

How it looks? We're way beyond that now. Competing narratives will emerge. Each side will believe it alone possesses the truth. I think the people below debating the facts of the case as informed by this frame of that video or whatever are wasting their time. The truth is not relevant.

Do you know what time it is? The left has threatened to prosecute those who have participated in the current administration, yes? Is this an environment conducive to a peaceful transition of power? Is it surprising to a student of history that in an environment as factional as ours that faction-affiliated armed groups (Antifa, ICE) have emerged? Are you shocked that each faction won't prosecute its loyal enforcers?

The progression we're now observing is an almost comically central example of how republics die. Maybe there will n an election in 2028. Maybe there won't be. No matter who wins, violence will escalate further. Cycles of retribution will turn. At some point soon, somebody's going to cross a Rubicon.

I am, I guess, a Trump supporter, in that I simply take for granted that the process of stasis has proceeded to the point of being irreversible and prefer a MAGA Caesar to an expertocrat one quite strongly. Perfectly understandable, given the way that the expertocrats treated me and mine.

But the ICE claim is that he was pulling a gun on them. This is, in the understanding of every police force ever, a perfectly normal and legitimate reason to use lethal force. We have some evidence for this claim even if it's hard to see- they recovered a gun(I doubt they're capable of planting a gun on someone while being observed- this sounds legitimately very hard) from him, there was a shot preceding ICE opening fire, and the ICE agents seem to be reacting as if it was a good shoot, not in a 'dude, what the hell' way. None of these datapoints are dispositive in themselves, but all of them point in the same direction.

But the ICE claim is that he was pulling a gun on them.

Are they actually claiming that? This was conspicuously absent in the initial statement, even though one would expect it to be there.

Resident partisan hack checking in (well sort of). I am making this comment in the spirit of “expressing a worldview” of “resident Trump supporters” as requested rather than to argue the point per se. But I do earnestly hold the following beliefs.

We (the right) now clearly understand that the purpose of this sort of protest is to create violent situations with “bad optics” for ICE or whatever other group. The protestors (from “our” point of view) want violence and want shootings, because they perceive this as a win condition.

We’re quite simply not going to give them the win anymore. They want death and violence, and are actively going out of their way to create situations that can cause escalation. That makes them, in my opinion which is shared by others with similar worldviews, the baddies. This guy was being a baddy, played a stupid game, and won a stupid prize.

I honestly haven’t watched the video and don’t care. We consider the instant replay era over. It really has no bearing whatsoever on the question of whether illegal immigrants should be deported.

That is the main reason these protests are not really succeeding. The only reason these situations are happening is because of the protestors (who we really consider at this point, insurrectionists who are committing federal crimes). “ICE needs to stop deporting illegal immigrants from Minnesota because some protestors are getting hurt.” There is literally zero logic to this statement.

We also don’t consider them legitimate protestors. They don’t have a “right” to impede federal law enforcement from executing the legal and popular will simply because they lost an election in which they were fairly represented.

It was probably a good shoot if you slow it down to 10k frames per second. Like I said, we honestly don’t know or care.

That is the view of (at least my slice of) the overly online right currently.

The protestors (from “our” point of view) want violence and want shootings, because they perceive this as a win condition. We’re quite simply not going to give them the win anymore.

Is this a typo? ICE just killed a man. Seems like, if that's what they want, then you did in, fact, just give it to them.

"ICE needs to stop deporting illegal immigrants from Minnesota because some protestors are getting hurt"

No I don't think that's really the logic at all. The logic is that they perceive some injustice and protesting is the only tool in many of these people's toolbox.

Are actively going out of their way to create situations that can cause escalation. That makes them, in my opinion which is shared by others with similar worldviews, the baddies

Note that you will not hear the right say this about Kyle Rittenhouse, Proud Boys, the guys who killed Ahmaud Arbery, George Zimmerman, the deploymentment of national guard units for transparently political purposes, or any of Trump's intentionally inflammatory rhetoric over the last decade.

Thanks for the additional insight on the MAGA-right. It mostly demonstrates an inability to model the worldview of your opponents ("they want death and violence" lol), and a lack of objective standards for conduct.

  • -14

The people you mentioned for the most part were not fighting the state and its monopoly on violence. You could even make the argument that Rittenhouse, Zimmerman, and Arbery shooters were acting in alliance with state and helping the state deal with a temporary lack of resources.

There is a significant difference between standing guard outside a car dealership (Rittenhouse) and the tactics of anti-ICE protestors.

The latter is being actively physically violent, using cars as weapons, and moving as close to the line that justified lethal force as possible.

Lemmings on a cliff, pushing each other forward. The ones who survive get smoky, exciting Instagram reels and likes on blue sky. The ones who fall off are catching bullets. It's an acceptable cost to the group.

Is this a typo? ICE just killed a man. Seems like, if that's what they want, then you did in, fact, just give it to them.

I think the logic goes something like this:

"The protestors want violence because they believe the optics will win over neutrals and moderate rightists and thus result in the end of the protested behaviour. However, there are not many neutrals anymore, and the moderate rightists have hardened their hearts and no longer feel for the protestors. The protestors believe it's a win condition, but we and the world have adapted so that it no longer is one."

This is not my personal view. My opinion of the Blue Tribe protest apparatus is actually considerably lower; I think that probably over 50% of them do not actually have a solid picture of what their wincon looks like and how their actions will achieve it, and are merely protesting because protesting is cool within Blue Tribe circles. I think that any in the USA that do hold to the worldview Sulla described - and I'll admit there are some - are making a mistake, but not the mistake Sulla claims (there are still a lot of neutrals); I think the mistake is in assuming that there will be free, fair and competitive elections in 2028 in which the currently-constituted Democratic Party will have a chance but not a certainty of victory, which is required for the lean of neutrals to be relevant and to backchain into present actions of the Trump administration. Civil war and WWIII would both cause that assumption to be violated, violent protests increase the risk of both, and we're getting quite close to crunch time.

These are organized protests. It is possible, even likely, that the protestors on the ground are not trying to get themselves injured or killed to make ICE look bad, while the overall strategy developed by others who are safely ensconced in their ivory towers somewhere, and used to instruct the protestors on the ground, does have that as an intentional part.

From what I understand there is basically an entire playbook or script on nonviolent civil disobedience – people have figured out how to get their point across (and get the "cops arrest peaceful mom" pictures) while at the same time minimizing the odds that things turn actually violent by peacefully surrendering to the cops, not resisting arrest, possibly even notifying the police of their intentions ahead of time, etc.

I have not followed the protests in Minnesota closely but from what I have seen I do not think that playbook is being followed. Whether that's due to untrained "normies" turning out or the instructions of protest coordinators I do not know but if these are being coordinated (which does seem to be true to a significant degree) and the coordinators are deliberately choosing more escalatory tactics that's very telling in my mind.

One of the underlying problems reflect a large-scale normalization of 'de-arrest' tactics, where protesters work to free arrestees or prevent police from detaining them. It started being used seriously in 2020, but in those contexts it was largely recognized as a legally risky maneuver only really available when protesters vastly outnumbered police. The recent protests have mainstreamed it thanks to political advocates claiming (afaict, wrongly) that ICE has no arrest powers involving any action by a US citizen, and local police being actively instructed to not support ICE in any way and that being interpreted (afaict, not wrongly) as permitting widespread violations of local laws so long as ICE are the targets.

So you get a lot of people doing things that look like directly impeding federal law at best, and more often look extremely dangerous, and convinced that they're totally in the free and clear.

What's interesting to me is that de-arresting someone is a crime (obviously) that can be made to stick if you catch the people doing the de-arresting, but conspiring to de-arrest someone is also presumably a crime, and given that the laws being enforced in this context are federal laws, I imagine there's a federal conspiracy statute that can be leveraged, possibly against the coordinators even if they aren't actually participating in the "de-arrests."

I wonder if part of the goal of running these ICE operations publicly is precisely to invite this sort of behavior and then roll up as many people as possible.

Interesting link, thank you for dropping it.

Note that you will not hear the right say this about Kyle Rittenhouse

You really want to start your list with the kid who was running away from the people who chased, and who didn't shoot first, and who didn't create the situation of the fiery but mostly peaceful protests in general that led to escalation?

Not a particularly good list in general, but that one in particular is a weak foot to start off on if you intend to leave off with contempt. However low you think the MAGA-right is, you are at eye level.

Kyle Rittenhouse was the guy who decided it would be a good idea to open carry at a protest, as if that would help anything. The results were predictable.

You might think thats justified behavior given the circumstances but so do most people who escalate. It's not very convincing in and of itself. If there's a thing that makes the left "the baddies" and the right not, it can't be because only the left ever "creates situations that cause escalation" because that's false.

However low you think the MAGA-right is, you are at eye level.

I'd agree to be less contemptuous if I saw anyone take their own side to task in this area.

  • -15

Kyle Rittenhouse was the guy who decided it would be a good idea to open carry at a protest, as if that would help anything. The results were predictable.

The results, and the protest, and the chase that led to his self defense, were also not situations he created, let alone went out of his ways to create.

I'd agree to be less contemptuous if I saw anyone take their own side to task in this area.

Then you haven't looked well enough, possibly because you are contemptuously looking down on people you are actually at the same level as.

Then you haven't looked well enough.

Incorrect. I lurk more than I post and the motte has been in a downward turn towards low effort partisan bickering. What you are describing is few and far between. I will trust my own judgment on this.

I'm not really attempting to "rise above" anyone. Im comporting myself in manner which is well within the standards of decorum here.

When's the last time you spent any time tone policing your tribal fellows? Or are you subjecting me to a selective demand for rigor?

  • -10

Kyle Rittenhouse was the guy who decided it would be a good idea to open carry at a protest, as if that would help anything. The results were predictable.

Open Carrying at a protest where there's another party that has ostensibly been committing violence and vandalism is probably more logical than open carrying when dealing solely with US law enforcement. Both in that Rittenhouse had a significantly greater likelihood of running into random unapproved violence and in that generally trying to escalate things with law enforcement as a civilian results in you losing spectacularly.

I believe Rittenhouse, functioning in a fundamentally more lawless setting, had a better justification for carrying a weapon than the people currently in Minneapolis who are bringing weapons whilst interfering with law enforcement operatives. I feel that for the latter category of individual the vast majority of cases where their weapons are going to impact events are going to be increasing the likelihood of shit escalating off the rails like this most recent shooting

Is this a typo? ICE just killed a man.

Has someone hit the reset button, and it's year zero again?

There were at least two armed attacks on ICE prior to that, they were just executed incompetently, and the only people that ended up dead were the illegal immigrants (at the hands of the shooter), and the shooters themselves.

Apparently someone also bit off an agent's finger.

Don't see that widely reported outside of Fox.

I'm sure when Snopes gets to this claim they'll say "PANTS ON FIRE" because it was only the distal phalanx (there's pics, and they're disgusting) and not the whole finger.

I wonder similarly about pants on fire if it gets reattached - I gotta imagine that they'd be very aggressive in um, reappropriating, but last I saw they had "suspects" so it might have gotten torn off and then thrown somewhere.

The finger end was recovered, that was in the pics. I don't know they attempted re-attachement.

I think that the question of whether the protests are succeeding will not really be answered until the results of this year and 2028's elections come in.

The protests are not stopping deportations. However, whether or not these shootings were justified, the optics are bad - and that may have important political consequences which might possibly stop deportations a couple of years from now.

Also, a minor note about:

The protestors (from “our” point of view) want violence and want shootings, because they perceive this as a win condition.

I agree that for the protestors this is a good strategy. If law enforcement full-out massacres a dozen or two protestors in a big shooting, this might be one of the best things that could possibly happen "for the cause" of the protestors. However, I don't think that any more than a tiny handful of protestors are actually driven by a desire to pursue this strategy. Some of the organizers might be, but even then I think it's a very rare motivation. I think most of them are genuinely just trying to interfere with ICE, to impede ICE activities. But they are in part following, because it is easier to do what has been done before, the well-worn tracks of decades of leftist tactics - and those tactics have evolved in part in order to create sympathetic media footage in which leftists have violence used against them.

That makes them, in my opinion which is shared by others with similar worldviews, the baddies. This guy was being a baddy, played a stupid game, and won a stupid prize.

Ok now consider if appealing to only people with the exact same worldview as you, up to just straight up killing people without care because they're a "baddie" in your eyes is going to be a great strategy for 2026 and 2028 elections.

I had a similar response. It’s hard to see anything in the video. But even if the officer technically made a mistake, there was enough confusion there (due to the hysterical protesters) that I believe he is blameless.

There is no situation where Trump admin should give a single inch on this. No situation where the man should be subject to the hostile MN government apparatus.

Federal agents cannot be prosecuted by the state for actions that occur during their duties. They can only be prosecuted at the federal level. He'll be fine, or at least safe from the MN government apparatus.

Federal agents cannot be prosecuted by the state for actions that occur during their duties.

Just out of curiosity, does that include traffic violations? (E. g., an ICE agent going through a red light at 60 mph in a 25 mph zone.)

understand that the purpose of this sort of protest is bad optics

Yeah, that's politics. Why are you surprised ? The adversary baits you, but do you need to bite ? The protests are getting more heated, because Trump is biting onto the bait.

The US is maximally polarized, but it has been for a while. The other party does everything it can to block their adversary. It's Mitch blocking Garland's confirmation. It's red governors banning blue city policies. It's business as usual.

In Canada, the farmers protests were clearly a conservative bait that Trudeau bit into, and it caused his downfall. The farmer's protest is another example of a political torpedo that would have brought Modi down in India. He avoided a few baits, primary among them was Sikhs replacing the Indian flag on the red fort. But no. No anti-protest rubber guns, no tear gas, nothing. He held his nerve, and IMO, it saved his govt. He eventually reformed the bill to involve state-by-state adoption and had to take an L. But, it could have been worse.

Look, as a kid, when I made fun of my sibling, he'd eventually snap and break something. I'd get punished for instigating, but he'd get a bigger punishment for giving in and breaking something (I promise we are very tight now, and I believe I have been a good brother on the balance). Point is, it doesn't matter what the bait is. The individual is still responsible for how they respond. Humans have an intuitive smell for this. Govts, laws or individuals, it doesn't matter. Biting onto to bait makes you a sucker. You may call them reasons, but the people will always view them as excuses.

The US is maximally polarized, but it has been for a while.

Maximal polarisation is the state wherein everyone's picked a side and will stick to it. This is rarely achieved even in civil wars, and is definitely well beyond the threshold at which one will start (notice that massacres of political enemies become an effective tactic for winning elections when there are few neutrals who will change sides against the perpetrator).

The USA is highly polarised. Not maximally.

You're right. I have a bad habit of using hyperbole to introduce the dynamism of speech into my writing. Been working on it.

It is highly polarized. And that's bad enough.

It is highly polarized. And that's bad enough.

Agreed.

You understand this thing where someone does something wrong which is ignored by authorities, then the person wronged responds, and then is punished by said authorities, is generally considered a failure mode, do you not?

I mean, you pretty much described the American school system-

ba dum tss

Yeah, that's politics. Why are you surprised ? The adversary baits you, but do you need to bite ? The protests are getting more heated, because Trump is biting onto the bait.

I dont think this is true. The nature of these riots makes it impossible for ICE agents to utilize public roads without provoking violence. If ICE does anything other than a complete withdrawal, these incidents will continue to happen, and they will continue to escalate into deadly use of force scenarios. We were actually getting close to the same point in the Chicago area a few months ago, but then some backroom deal was struck with the Johnson, Pritzker, and Homan (which they will all deny happened, but clearly did) and now random people aren't tailing ICE vehicles, ICE facilities aren't under siege as CPD watches paint cans fly at officers heads, and ICE aren't picking abuelas up out of taco stands, but they are being allowed to casually pick people up from the jails even though they aren't being officially "notified" when ICE warrants pop.

This. The problem here is Tim Walz.

Point is, it doesn't matter what the bait is. The individual is still responsible for how they respond.

See also: any sports flag for unsportsman like conduct. It's almost always the retaliation the refs notice and flag, not the instigation.

It's not about biting. It's about not backing down, because just packing up and going home is even worse then what's happening now. A surrender like that will only make the next round of protesting 10x bigger.

Trump and ICE didn't do anything in response to the protests except keep trying to do their jobs. The enemy forced this by making simply running a country impossible.

You may call them reasons, but the people will always view them as excuses.

I second this almost completely.

As soon as I heard the whistling that was going on - I mean, what are we doing?

I want ICE to deport illegals … if you want to protest that than ok but you can’t stop this - it’s what I voted for!

Unfortunately they aren’t going after the business owners so it’s mostly optics but good damn at least they’re doing something about an issue.

Let’s see if I can walk the streets at night in the cities within my lifetime like you can in Poland.

Perhaps it was unjustified, and if so, so what? Any sufficiently large scale operation will have things go wrong, especially when you have large numbers of people that are trying to harass, antagonize and violently obstruct things. Chernobyl happened, does this mean nuclear power is evil or forever forbidden? Car accidents happen and vehicular manslaughter happens, does this mean we should abandon cars? I'm not very moved by an individual incident, especially when the victim appears to have gotten into a violent confrontation with ICE, resisting arrest, while carrying a gun, that's Darwin Award territory.

My reaction would be, let's investigate this properly and perhaps prosecute the agents involved. But this should in no way cause us to pause ICE operations and is in fact a very good reason for the media to stop agitpropping retarded leftists into getting into violent confrontations with ICE.

Edit: For the record, after reviewing all the angles, I can say that the shooting appears to be unjustified. I don't think he reached for his weapon and I don't think it accidentally discharged, I think an ICE agent just basically executed him by shooting him in the back then shooting him a few more times when he attempted to stand. That said, this is an extremely predictable outcome of having a gun in your waistband when choosing to physically confront ICE and resist arrest.

Chernobyl happened, does this mean nuclear power is evil or forever forbidden?

No, but we recognized that there is such a thing as a nuclear plant that's been built too haphazardly. Just like Trump's expansion of ICE.

Note, ICE was still deporting about 60% of the current amount of people during Biden's terms. They mostly dressed in official clothing (vs plain clothes), avoided masks and avoided overt display of large weapons. the criticisms of ICE have to do with the 2025 avatar of it. Not the institution that existed before.

Car accidents happen and vehicular manslaughter happens

To be fair, I am very anti-car, pro-transit and pro self-driving cars. I say this begrudgingly, because I love engineering cars and consider them the pinnacle of late-20th century art. But, fast cars should be driven on the track, not the road. Until recently, banning cars was impractical. But the US has been extremely reckless in tolerating a 3-4x higher automobile death rate than other developed nations.

while carrying a gun

What's wrong with carrying a gun in a public place in Minnesota ? Isn't are American LEO not trained to handle situations with gun-owners peacefully ?

What's wrong with carrying a gun in a public place in Minnesota ? Isn't are American LEO not trained to handle situations with gun-owners peacefully ?

Peaceful gun owners, yes. Not ones who enter into a rugby scrum with officers.

Carrying a gun while peacefully protesting is something that American LEOs are generally trained to deal with, because outside of DC and NYC it is legal and at least common enough to need training for. Carrying a gun while interrupting police operations is a very serious crime that they are trained to deal with as a threat. Same thing as how you can carry a gun on your belt but absolutely not in your hand. It's a different brightline than the rest of the developed world has settled on, but it is a brightline nonetheless.

If you plan on committing a crime to act as a human shield, do so unarmed. Don't break the law while you're breaking the law. One crime at a time and all that.

Comparing Biden ICE is missing the point — Biden’s ICE could be “professional” since blue states weren’t actively trying to resist the feds.

Biden's ICE left all these aliens with final deportation orders and multiple felonies in place. That's not so professional. What's left of the libertarian in me is opposed to current immigration controls, but getting rid of felons I'm wholeheartedly for.

I’ve become convinced that libertarianism works but not for all societies and especially not for democracies with open borders.

Yeah, if you have a libertarian democracy with open borders, you have no defense against your libertarianism being voted away by the new arrivals who just want to pry up the surface of your gold-paved streets.

The question isn’t what’s wrong with carrying a gun in Minnesota - you’re muddying the water attempting to ask it.

especially when the victim appears to have gotten into a violent confrontation with ICE, resisting arrest, while carrying a gun, that's Darwin Award territory.

It’s putting it all together that’s insane.

Fair.

Still think Darwin award behavior isn't reason enough to be shot. The average person is not very bright. The system should be built with an assumption of dysfunctional behavior from randos.

True but if people are going to en-masse make a habit of maximally interfering with police operations whilst armed it's going to increase the likelihood of something spiralling out of control.

I mean, dysfunctional behavior while carrying a gun is, well, FAFO territory. And don't need to be anti-second amendment to think that.

Exactly. My take on the Minneapolis protestors conspicuously arming themselves a few days ago was more 'Well this is going to increase the chance that something stupid escalates way harder than it should' versus the protestors actually accomplishing their aims through being armed.

The system should be built with an assumption of dysfunctional behavior from randos.

It is, but it isn't perfect.

Yeah, basically the goal is to ethnically cleanse the country, and if you resist the agents it’s their right to kill you

  • -30

ICE, which is about 30% Hispanic, thinks they're going to ethnically cleanse the country by killing white people? Man, they must be really dumb.

Seems like pretty much a fact that much of the anti-immigrant right wants America to be a nation of whites, or at least a white majority. NYTreader said as much explicitly elsewhere in the thread.

So I don't know what point you're making. Also lots of ice agents probably are dumb yeah.

Always fun to check in on this place from time to time to see how far it's descended. I'm grateful at least /r/SlateStarCodex and most other rat-adjacent places are still sane.

  • -21

Still better than Reddit, or X, or shudder bluesky.

I hate this place more than anywhere else on the Internet, except all the other places.

The quality keep going down. But I don't know any alternative

If we actually have fallen so far we are what you made us, as was predicted:

My Id On Defensiveness

There’s a term in psychoanalysis, “projective identification”. It means accusing someone of being something, in a way that actually turns them into that thing. For example, if you keep accusing your (perfectly innocent) partner of always being angry and suspicious of you, eventually your partner’s going to get tired of this and become angry, and maybe suspicious that something is up.

Declaring a group toxic has much the same effect. The average group has everyone from well-connected reasonable establishment members to average Joes to horrifying loonies. Once the group starts losing prestige, it’s the establishment members who are the first to bail; they need to protect their establishment credentials, and being part of a toxic group no longer fits that bill. The average Joes are now isolated, holding an opinion with no support among experts and trend-setters, so they slowly become uncomfortable and flake away as well. Now there are just the horrifying loonies, who, freed from the stabilizing influence of the upper orders, are able to up their game and be even loonier and more horrifying. Whatever accusation was leveled against the group to begin with is now almost certainly true.

This is just condoning being low agency and having low commitment to objectivity.

Im generally sympathetic to people with low agency but let's not act like it righteous in any way

  • -12

What is the high agency response? Building a new website after being driven from two consecutive communities seems pretty high agency. Is the high agency response silencing the bad speak?

you have to learn to ignore the noise. There are good discussions on here. The rhetoric has gotten heated the last few weeks. Most times, it's less .... heartless.

Personally, I find 2026's /r/SSC to be full of wannabe Mensa types. The internet is dead. a healthy dose of diverse echo-chambers is the next best thing.

modern rssc is boring. ACX open threads are better than ssc but you have to deal with substack comment system. the schism is on life support.

For better or worse, at least this place has some activity and some (if fewer than ideal) interesting conversations.

It hasn't descended, pointing at the crazy insane partisan hobo on the street is no more indicative of the local communities culture than an indictment of what is considered mainstream.

I’ve been reading SSC for - a decade now?

This is the cultural thread … not every rat should be a progressive cog.

I want UBI and free healthcare / university and basically agree with the poster on this matter.

  1. You can’t see the hands or arms of the decedent. It looks either good nor bad. More facts are required.

  2. Even if LEO did something bad, the benefits of removing thousands of illegal immigrants is worth it. Probably saves American lives in the aggregate.

  3. LEO are under immense stress. Listen to the start of the video. Multiply that day by day. These protestors are nuts.

The argument against it is pretty easy and clear. You can remove thousands of illegal immigrants without this chaotic clusterfuck the Trump admin has unleashed on Minneapolis. It's a cliche at this point, but Obama deported illegal immigrants at twice the pace of Donald Trump. And he did so while managing not to kill any American citizens.

And he did so while managing not to kill any American citizens.

Technically untrue in a darkly funny way (an ICE agent shot his supervisor and was subsequently shot and killed by another ICE agent).

The Obama administration did detain and possibly wrongfully deport American citizens, as well.

The intra-ICE shooting happened in 2013.

Yes; Obama was President in 2013.

But that line of argument basically goes 'the left can veto any right immigration policy enforcement with a heckler's veto', because they'll never cooperate with the right, ever, even when they lose elections.

The left won't cooperate with the right? They passed an immigration reform act the summer before the 2024 election and Donald Trump torpedoed it. This was a commonsense reform that Trump knew would harm him politically, so he cynically (politically effectively) killed the bill. The right would rather use immigration as their bogeyman than do anything real to prevent it.

What do you think a sanctuary city is?

They passed an immigration reform act the summer before the 2024 election and Donald Trump torpedoed it.

The act in question would still allow significant illegal immigration. Also, it was perfectly in their power to do something about it without an act of congress, and they refused to, thus proving they never wanted to stop it to begin with.

  1. Your basic facts are wrong. Turnarounds aren’t the same as deporting. Obama didn’t actually deport people in meaningful numbers where deportations mean people living in the U.S. illegally.

  2. Blue states weren’t going to obstruct Obama in the same way if he tried to remove illegals living in the States.

So your premises are wrong. I do think there is a better way of doing this though — cut off funding to illegals, e verify, and offer free ticket + cash to leave

Fine, even if you wanted to consider these numbers "tricks" (which I do not concede), use George W Bush as an example. Was ICE killing American citizens during his years? How people can justify this sort of violence for immigration enforcement is imbecilic.

  • -11

Why don’t you concede? Are you arguing factually I am wrong? Or are you arguing categorically a turn around at the border is the same thing?

Also W was much more immigrant friendly with much fewer illegals to deal with (with states that weren’t as ideologically opposed to the feds).

I put most of the blame for the killings on the imbeciles who are trying to thwart ICE from doing their legal job.

Were people acting like lunatics to protest ICE during the Bush era?

Do you understand how cause and effect works?

ICE agents swarm American cities. --> American citizens begin peaceful protesting. --> ICE agents shoot and kill American citizens.

I recommend leaving your news bubble and not taking the most egregious social media videos of protests as representative of the millions of people in the streets.

More comments

Obama deported illegal immigrants at twice the pace of Donald Trump.

No, he did not. His admin changed the metrics and counted turnbacks at the border as deportations to juice his stats. Why this idiotic talking point refuses to die is beyond me.

Fine, even if you wanted to consider these numbers "tricks" (which I do not concede), use George W Bush as an example. Was ICE killing American citizens during his years? How people can justify this sort of violence for immigration enforcement is imbecilic.

  • -13

I’d tolerate thousands dead for immigrant enforcement. We are going to be piling up bodies if the left doesn’t begin to accept the rights monopoly on violence.

Is the left willing to die for migrants more than the right is killing to kill for migrants? The calculus of the state is, for now, bafflingly still on 'migrants can to kill US citizens and we will defend the migrant', a brake on tensions while pressurecooking animus. What happens if the state says "fuck it, you guys settle it how you want."

More comments

Damn. Well there you go.

"See! Democrats could care about the border and be humane about it! You republicans just love brown people suffering! Wait what do you mean Abbott is bussing them to my suburb? Biden said the border was secure, its just 2 million migrants camping in Eagle Pass, Texas is big why don't they stay there"

And, notably, Eagle Pass doesn't have any higher of a standard of living than the towns on the Mexican side of the border(once you take local cost of living into account- northern Mexico is the nice developed part). The migrants got on the busses voluntarily because they wanted to go to the big cities with higher wages.

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