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This is such a strange and off-putting read. It's like he's trying to paint a picture of a nation under siege, while constantly undermining his own narrative by sprinkling in bits about ordinary vacation activities. There's a dark authoritarian fog settling in Minneapolis, our country is in deep danger and I'm right in the middle of it...Oh the museums in Minneapolis are fantastic by the way, Jill and I go every time we visit! It's clear he doesn't actually know what's going on and doesn't actually feel any danger, but it feels right to join the protest and yell random slogans. Jill even got the herd to chant SHAME and it got on TV, +1 cool story to share back home! Is this guy just a mop and since his wife feels strongly about it he's obliged to at least pretend it's a big deal to him too? Is it a need to belong to something and an anti government protest in whatever form is good ol' proven reliable option for it?
Sounds like "I'm semi-retired and since we have a lot of spare time, we winter in Minneapolis because we have friends there. Last time we visited, there was protesting going on so we decided to change things up a bit and do some activism alongside our usual vacation routines". It really is treating it like tourism. For some reason this makes me think of Holiday in Cambodia by the Dead Kennedys.
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I’m not sure about your response, for a much more extreme example everything I’ve read about how people behave in wartime always surprises me about how people go on about their normal lives even while bombs fall around them. I remember reading some stories during the Syrian civil war which were like, yeah, we had to avoid those blocks because the rebels have control and the government forces are also over here, but we could take X street though and so after school we went to the theater. Or I also remember following the account of a pair of teenagers in Gaza who would make videos where they make talk about memes and jokes and then say by the way guys we arrived safe at the refugee camp and today we’re trying to find a little extra bread for our mother.
This obviously isn’t wartime in the US, just a clash that feels rather authoritarian to many. I’d give the guy his pass to talk about the museums and think the feds are getting a bit authoritarian at the same time, though.
That's people living there and having no option but to cope with what is going on. It's not the same as "so we flew in, stayed with friends on our usual annual visit, then there were these protests so we decided to tag along and do our Resisting Fascism in the morning, while we had the afternoon free for skiing, museum visits, foodie dining, and vinyl shopping".
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Him mixing in normal life activities in his narration is not what's making it off putting on it's own, it's the fact that he's trying to present his experience as exactly the examples you just brought up. It's an attempt at the slice of life narration about a person in (what he thinks are) adverse conditions, but in reality he's a middle aged/boomer good boy that is inconvenienced by self involvement into operation of completely lawful agents of the state.
This is exactly what he thought this would come off as when he was writing. Except he's not an unlucky Syrian or a Gazan who is thrown in the middle of a war that turns his life (and fate) upside down. Every struggle is entirely self imposed, there's no stray bullets or bombs flying around. He, at any time, can make it all end for himself by walking a block over. I'm not discrediting his opinion (although I'm not entirely sold on if he actually has one, or if he has to consult Jill before he can take a stance) about what's happening as a whole, I'm merely put off by his dramatic narration.
Yeah, the fact that he and Jill can drop the protests by travelling to a different part of the city and doing their 'here's our fun visitor schedule' means that this is not wartime Syria/Gaza/Belfast during the Troubles. That's the tourism part of it: "a few blocks from where we stayed X happened" but then across the city we went to the museum, had our dinner, went shopping, etc. They're not embroiled in anything and are going to where the "creeping authoritarianism" is by choice, and making it sound like "aw shucks, tweren't nothing, we wuz just doing what decent folx do!"
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Yeah, he has these melodramatic writing tics that undermine the gravity and solemnity he's trying to project:
Like, what? Playing tennis is your "life" and "happiness"? I don't even know what you're trying to convey here.
It’s that NPR/New Yorker slice of life tone. It’s part of the blue tribe sensemaking apparatus. If they were forced to describe things as the red tribe do, all action and import, they feel they’re betraying a vital part of themselves.
Next week, on This American Life, we take a look at the quiet life of Cell Block D in Rikers Island. Enjoy this early preview:
_Tuesday is canteen day. Always a bustle of activity then. My cellie (for the week I am visiting) is named Bullwhip. He's a white supremacist who murdered a latino woman and her child. He's got a rugged complexion and a strong gaze that reminds me of my grandfather. I'd spend summers on grandpa's farm as a child, working on spiceracks in his woodshop that never turned out quite level.
Bullwhip leads me out of our cell with a friendly, "get your shit, faggot" to urge me on to the day. "Lead on", I think. Maybe this will be like one of my childhood summer adventures. When we get in line for canteen, a member of the Piru Crips steps on Bullwhips foot. I can't quite make out if its accidental, intentional as to make a point, or the kind of juvenile horseplay that is common in locker rooms. As I puzzle over this, Bullwhip gouges out the man's eyes. His shrieks of pain bounce of the concrete walls as the Correctional Officers - "screws" my fellow inmates call them - charge the scene. Bullwhip, covered in the other man's blood, keeps shouting "That's what you get, frog! That's what you fucking get!" while I lie prone and try to keep from tearing up due to the pepperspray that's been deployed.
Or ... am I misty eyed because maybe, just maybe, I can hear the bullfrogs from Grandpa's farm once again."_
slow clap
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He doesn't talk about the why. Perhaps he truly believes it is self evident. 'I was just on holiday and then the nazis came, so I became the resistance.'
Something that stuck out for me was the 'only arresting the worst of the worst 5-year-olds'. The father abandoned the 5 year old to abscond from ICE. The author pretends that ICE is killing people randomly, arresting the innocent (including children) and otherwise being horrible people.
People really believe this? Its truly 2 movies, 1 screen.
Peace will eventually come. Reality always wins.
Sounds like the pilot episode of Star Trek: Starfleet High (I mean Academy) where Principal Captain Chancellor Girlboss (I mean Nahla Ake) threw a strop and resigned from Starfleet after doing the big, bad thing of separating a lickle boy from his mommykins. (Said lickle boy later turns up as Moody Teen Male Lead at the Academy).
Of course, this was because Mommy was working with a pirate, then grassed on him and thought she had cut a deal with the authorities for a lesser sentence. Oopsie! Turns out that in the commission of their crime, they killed a guy. That makes Mommy an accomplice to murder, which means the deal is out the window and she has to - gasp! the inhumanity! the horror! - serve time in a rehabilitation camp. Lickle kiddo will be taken in as a ward of the Federation.
This is so horrible and traumatising to all involved that Captain Girlboss quits, as I said. Because what were the options, here? Send lickle boy to space Club Fed with Mommy? Yeah, I don't think so. Then Mommy should have been set free because, uh, she has a kid? That seems to be the attitude here.
It is cruel and heartless to separate parent and child, and equally cruel and heartless to send innocent little kiddies to jail, so it's a get-out-of-jail-free card if you commit a crime and have a kid. And that's how it should be. Hence the snideness about arresting five year olds.
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ICE (and CBP - Minneapolis is a joint operation) is arresting every illegal immigrant who comes to its attention, including schoolchildren. They have said they are doing this, the media say they are doing this, and supporters of the operation (including on this forum) say they should be doing this.
The argument about whether it is possible to be out of legal immigration status innocently has been done to death, but if you think the answer is "Yes" then ICE are absolutely rounding up innocents, and this is what the core MAGA vote want. The claim that Trump-era immigration enforcement is focussed on "the worst of the worst" is a lie for the benefit of low-information normies. MAGA think ICE are deporting them all and this is good, Minnesota Nice thinks ICE are deporting them all and this is bad. So mocking the "worst of the worst" lie is an entirely normal thing to do.
Think of the five year olds! It is a nice emotional appeal, but what does it actually mean?
My take on children who are not legally present is that they will either have a illegally present parent or their parents are in another country. It is a pretty weird edge case for one to have a legally present parent but somehow be illegally present themselves. If that is the case, then I 100% would prefer they become naturalized themselves over deportation.
If their parents are in another country, they were effectively kidnapped. They should be recovered and sent back to their parents.
If their parents are not legally present and have a final order of removal, then the child should also be deported with their parent. The fate of staying in the US and going into the foster system is not superior to keeping the child with their parents.
If the child was sent to stay with legally present relatives by their parents in another country, I still think it's better to send them back to their parents. How do we know that both parents consented to this? Otherwise we have to investigate a lot of domestic situations in other countries, which each might have their own custody laws, it's simpler and more ethical to send them back to their parents.
Ideally we would have a lot more family detention centers that look more like kindergartens than Alcatraz. We need a place to put kids and their guardians in a monitored and controlled way while we determine if they are even related to the people bringing them over the border. That would be my ideal. But deporting fewer five year olds seems like an odd goal when actually thought through.
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Certainly ICE is not rounding up innocents. They've mistakenly detained at least a few innocents who (following the activist playbook) refused to identify themselves, but those innocents were released when identified. The illegal immigrants they've arrested, detained and/or deported may not have committed any crimes, but they were not innocent -- they were unlawfully present in the United States, and had orders of removal against them. Arresting them is ICE's job.
And, quite a few of these detained immigrants are also, in fact, serious criminals.
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