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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31674 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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ICE Needs Better Uniforms

Everyone's in favor of immigration enforcement until the masked goons in unmarked SUVs show up. Are a lot of these complaints pretextual? Sure. But it is hard to deny that ICE looks unprofessional. Law enforcement must command respect, or failing that, fear. Why are they in camo pants? Are they hunting illegals from covered positions with tranquilizer darts like deer? Such attire projects weakness. Our officers must be dignified, projecting the full power and majesty of the federal government, the greatest instituion God ever gave man.

There is an idea in the water supply that cool uniforms are fascism. People are far too afraid of ever doing anything that the Nazis might also have done. Still, aesthetics that conjure images of 1930s Germany are to be avoided (that means you Greg). I propose looking back even further for inspiration. 1914 was the last time regular armies in battle uniform looked cool. This sort of style would both pay homage to the heritage that the DHS Twitter account seems to think it is protecting, and project an aura of seriousness and respect.

Because it's 2026, I have created a small album of AI-generated concept art. Feel free to offer your own suggestions.

Your AI-generated images mostly make them look like patrolmen. Very nattily dressed patrolmen, but patrolmen nonetheless. Though the aiguillettes in the 3rd and 4th pictures are suggestive of general's aides de camp. I think, if you asked the average boots on the ground guy, especially the new ones, they'd prefer a badass special forces operator look.

They should look like patrolmen, is the point that was made several times. Being as close to regular cops as possible, in looks and methods, means they can do their job as close to cops in terms of optics and media heat as possible. At least, if their job is actually arresting and removing illegal immigrants, as opposed to farming media heat.

One question I've had throughout the ICE saga is why arresting illegals is even necessary. It seems like it would be easier to just cut off their access to American resources. For example, require employers, landlords, DMV, doctors, insurance providers, etc. to verify immigration status, and make a strong example of the first ones that don't. Then the country becomes like a desert to illegals and they just go home on their own. This would also hugely reduce the need for border security.

I guess part of the reason this isn't being done is that some of it would require changes to the law, which Trump can't implement on his own. But at least with employers, they're already legally obligated to check work authorization, so why isn't Trump just aggressively enforcing that law?

Is there a reason I'm missing why this kind of approach wouldn't work? Or, does Trump not really want to deport all illegals?

At least somewhat related: In 1994 Californians passed Proposition 187 which amended the California state constitution to deny some public services to illegal immigrants. Such as state college and non-emergency healthcare. It was immediately ruled unconstitutional by a federal court.

Some weak version of this was tried and ruled officially forbidden.

Hahaha. They can just get paid cash; it’s common enough in restaurants and construction even for citizens, and rent rooms in cash from landlords that don’t give a shit, and drive cautiously as beater #90000 that’s probably not going to pay his ticket so why bother stopping him.

It seems like it would be easier to just cut off their access to American resources. For example, require employers, landlords, DMV, doctors, insurance providers, etc. to verify immigration status, and make a strong example of the first ones that don't.

From the people who brought you "kids in cages" (yes, we know that was the guy before the previous guy, but shhhhh), now their follow-up hit "my dying five year old was turned away from the hospital under new draconian laws" and "diabetic abuela of six adorable grandkids has to have her legs amputated since nobody would treat her".

Enough of those sob stories, plus doctors claiming they cannot legally be forced not to treat the sick and needy, and this is why it won't work.

doctors

Not a fan of that. Doctors treat the sick. We'd do a garbage job of verifying immigration status.

Employers, landlords, DMV, all more doable and realistic.

Yeah, doctors are supposed to be neutral. If anyone wants to shove off this job onto hospitals, put it onto the administration. If they can harry people over insurance billing, they can harry them over immigration status.

Is there a reason I'm missing why this kind of approach wouldn't work?

There are statutes that prohibit discrimination on the basis of national origin, citizenship status, or race. Anything more rigorous than, “did the person check the box that says, ‘I am not an illegal alien,’” would, in the absence of a giant nationwide database containing a digital ID number for every citizen and legal alien in the country, be arguably illegal.

It seems like it would be easier to just cut off their access to American resources. For example, require employers, landlords, DMV, doctors, insurance providers, etc. to verify immigration status, and make a strong example of the first ones that don't.

So all we have to do is turn the country into a cashless totalitarian panopticon and turn everyone into an immigration agent, and then there's no need to actually go after illegal aliens directly.

That's always been their endgame hasn't it?

Excellent post! I’m taking notes. If I’m ever in need, nothing will distract the fash better than a discussion of what fit the boys on the street should be wearing.

Lol...what are the medals for?

I just added "higher ranking" to the prompt for that one because I wanted a slight variety of uniforms. In-universe I suppose we could imagine them as acheivement rewards such as quotas met or languages proficient in.

I was just thinking the other day how much ICE troops look like generic mobs from a Far Cry game. Of course so does Antifa. Maybe that's why my dander is up so high and my finger keeps twitching.

I believe this video changes everything and ICE is very much not shooting first. https://x.com/geiger_capital/status/2016640876865327169?s=46

So now the “execution” is a guy known by ICE for being violent with them. I am very much on the side of just shoot them but they have had an amazing amount of restraint on who to shoot.

Unless someone was holding on to these incidents being organic, rather than engineered by the protest organizers, I don't see how it changes much. They still made a mistake in the chaos of the situation.

Fairly obvious this was suicide by ice now

The dude was clearly looking for trouble, but I don't think it changes much about the shoot being justified.

I think this completely changes the incident.

  1. How often you fuck up I believe is a key metric. This is evidence that ICE has a lot of confrontations.
  2. We now know ICE knew he was dangerous and crazy. That’s important information for informing their state of mind and how jumpy they are with him being armed.

We now know ICE knew he was dangerous and crazy.

Did they? The DHS statement was that "DHS law enforcement has no record of this incident." A smashed-up DHS tail light, and a protestor with a broken rib, but apparently that's just another day ending in 'y' to everyone involved? Unless the first shooter happened to be one of the same officers from a week and a half before, by the time Pretti was killed he'd be just some guy to them again.

How did nobody involved in that first incident decide to make an arrest or file a report? Apparently that rib was broken while Pretti was tackled and pinned by five agents, but the agents afterward "quickly released him at the scene". I get that arresting people involves paperwork and isn't nearly as fun as breaking bones, but it is the standard approved method for getting criminals off the streets! To touch back on the topic of the original post: if our officers are going to act like Freikorps, then to reflect that status their uniforms don't need to be better, they ought to be worse!

Who would prosecute the arrest and who would on the jury? I get a sense that it would be nearly impossible to get a conviction in Minnesota. This may just be me being paranoid but I feel like jury nullification would be an issue.

You're definitely not paranoid here. Anything done against federal officers would be a federal offense, so finding a prosecutor shouldn't be hard, but getting a fair jury might be trickier.

Even ending with jury nullification would probably be better than what actually happened, though. At least the arrests would get threats (whether to the officers' vehicles or to themselves, in hindsight) off the streets temporarily, and the optics of "Minnesotans think criminals should run free" would be much better for them than the optics of "DHS thinks due process is no substitute for violence". Plus, arrests come with arrest reports, which aren't nearly as good as bodycams but which are still less patchy than "we found some guy with a cell phone video a couple weeks later". Did DHS tackle this guy because they were pissed that he vandalized their car? Did he vandalize their car because he was pissed that he broke their rib, but there was some prior reason for the tackle?

Put this together with the claim from CNN that Pretti interfered with ICE chasing people, and it seems like this guy was trying to cause an incident, and eventually managed to find some officers who screwed up. Didn't work out so well for him, though I suppose being a martyr for the cause is an old and honorable position.

Not surprising. If let’s say any physical contact with ICE has a 0.1% chance to turn out deadly by accident, it is most likely that anyone that dies is someone who has rolled those dice many, many times. You see the same with ordinary deaths in police encounters like Floyd

Does Renee Good affect your thinking here? She had no habit of confrontation and got killed anyhow.

She had no habit of confrontation and got killed anyhow.

Seemingly she wasn't just "decided to turn up on spur of moment" either, though, see this in The Atlantic:

Instead, what they discovered in the frozen North was something different: a real resistance, broad and organized and overwhelmingly nonviolent, the kind of movement that emerges only under sustained attacks by an oppressive state. Tens of thousands of volunteers—at the very least—are risking their safety to defend their neighbors and their freedom. They aren’t looking for attention or likes on social media. Unless they are killed by federal agents, as Pretti and Renee Good were, other activists do not even necessarily know their names. Many use a handle or code name out of fear of government retaliation. Their concerns are justified: A number of people working as volunteers or observers told me that they had been trailed home by ICE agents, and some of their communications have already been infiltrated, screenshotted, and posted online, forcing them to use new text chains and code names. One urgent question among observers, as the videos of Pretti’s killing spread, was what his handle might have been.

...Finally, there are those most at risk of coming into violent contact with federal agents, a group that’s come to be popularly known as ICE Watch, although the designation is unofficial—as far as I can tell, you’re in ICE Watch if you watch ICE. These are the whistle-wielding pedestrians and drivers calling themselves “observers” or “commuters” who patrol for federal agents (usually identifiable by their SUVs with out-of-state plates) and alert the neighborhood to their presence. Pretti and Good, the two Minneapolis residents killed by federal agents, fit in this category.

...Most encounters with ICE end like that. But sometimes situations deteriorate—as with Good, who was killed while doing a version of what Green Bean and Cobalt were now doing. The task is stressful for the observers, who understand that even minor encounters can turn deadly.

I don't actually know that Good had no habit of confrontation. But it doesn't matter, because it was her error (trying to flee through Ross), not the agent's error, that got her killed.

It's still a 0.1% chance, meaning that she just got very unlucky. It could be argued that she was attempting to flee but did not realize an ICE agent was in the path of her vehicle, and I would describe that as being unlucky.

The best way to maximize your health and longevity is to not get into physical confrontations with ICE, or really any law enforcement agency for that matter. You are far more likely to lose the fight than the cop is.

The "somehow" here being her formal application for a Darwin Award. Her shooting was, if anything, more justified than Pretti's.

I believe this video changes everything and ICE is very much not shooting first.

It is a completely different day. Just because you know someone is a bad actor doesn't mean you get to execute them when you get a chance. I'm not sure normal folks ever thought the guy was a saint. But he is an American citizen and extrajudicial killings of disarmed and restrained protestors by CBP is a violation of all of our rights.

I am very much on the side of just shoot them

When righties whine about lefties cheering on Kirk's death, I'll point them to your comment.

So I guess I have to put a limiting factor. They are obstructing then you can just shoot them.

I'm sure lefties will also find a convenient limiting factor for escalation to death. Probably something like: "Acting like a Nazi" to justify their future extrajudicial killings. Swell...

Probably something like: "Acting like a Nazi" to justify their future extrajudicial killings.

Future?. The New York Times of course decried the shooting... of the murderer.

Just wait till its the Department of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Enforcement, and they are executing chuds on the street to applause. One can't decry the viciousness and hatefulness of ones foes if you are in the pigsty rolling in the same mud with them.

One can't decry the viciousness and hatefulness of ones foes if you are in the pigsty rolling in the same mud with them.

Certainly you can; antifa has been doing so for a very long time.

There is nothing holding your side back other than practical considerations. Reciprocity does not factor into it. Any time there is an argument like "What if we did it to you?", the answer is either "You would anyway" or "You already have". And usually it's both.

Yes and nobody who is politically aware and independent/moderate gives antifa any respect. We all know they are violent hypocritical thugs. The right won that moral high-ground. Now the right can throw away that hard fought and sacrificed hill for some cheap shots at the other side. On the mistaken belief that everyone is already on one side or the other. but it is frankly a very narrow black-and-white view of the world.

Being a knuckle dragging ape when it comes to politics might feel good but it is giving into the basest and worst impulses of humanity. Some of us want to aspire to a more evolved human species without such primordial tribal bickering. Returning to dunbar number-capped polities is not the goal.

EDIT: edited to be less curmudgeonly, I seem to only comment when I am grumpy enough get past my threshold against posting things online

More comments

I agree with most of what you wrote: the liberal complaints are indeed largely pretextual, and also uniforms still matter. Beyond what you said, I'd add that uniforms shape the behavior of the people wearing them—and I don't just mean psychologically. If you are wearing a bunch of armor, you are going to feel emboldened to start physical confrontations where you might otherwise not. If you have enormous utility pouches attached to your plate carrier, and they are are filled with several riot-size bottles of pepper spray, you might decide to use pepper spray all the time, including on the obnoxious blue-haired woman who is blocking you in with her Subura Forester, rather than rationing it for only the moments when you truly need it.

The psychological effects of uniforms on the wearer are real and important too, of course. A uniform communicates to the officer that is wearing it what kind of mission he is on, and what kind of behavior is expected. If you put him in a jumpable plate carrier and high cut ballistic helmet, you are essentially telling him he is a tier-1 door-kicker going into enemy territory for a high risk direct action raid—which is good if that is actually what you are doing, but less so if you are rounding up illegals at Home Depot.

Finally, uniforms also serve a recruiting function. And while I'll concede that handing out cool tactical gear with gigantic velcroed "FEDERAL AGENT" patches may work to boost numbers, it will also influence the type of recruit you get. The problem here is that if you advertise yourself—via your direct action urban raid uniforms—as the agency where you get to go out and smash heads, you will end up with a bunch of recruits who want to go out and smash heads.

To be clear, I don't think any of this is a major contributor to the problems we are seeing. Most CBP and ICE officers are professional and conduct themselves appropriately even in tactical gear. And as I said before, I agree that liberals would be complaining even if we dressed ICE like fancy-hotel bellhops ("You see! They don't even think the undocumented are human beings. They think they are luggage to be tossed out on the curb!"). At most, the current uniforms have a tiny negative effect. But then, when one wrongful shooting can derail the whole program, I think it is prudent to take every measure to reduce risks, and uniforms are an easy thing to change.

Those unis are insanely badass. Well done, sir.

I want to thank you for finally convincing me that there is no hope whatsoever.

No hope of what? And why?

Still, aesthetics that conjure images of 1930s Germany are to be avoided (that means you Greg).

I can squint and see where the comparisons are coming from, but Bovino's coat looks much more like an M1939 US Army wool overcoat (link is to reproduction) than any German historical examples I can find, which seem to all have different lapels and mostly aren't olive green. And WWII US army issue kit is as definitionally anti-fascist as you can get. This page has a picture of Japanese-American troops in the highly-decorated 442nd wearing these coats.

The U.S. military had (has??) great taste in coats.

Shout out to the Navy peacoats from the Korean War.

This page has a picture of Japanese-American troops in the highly-decorated 442nd wearing these coats.

It's kind of curious in this context that the US national eagle adorning the entrance of the Epinal American Cemetery, as pictured on that site, is an almost perfect copy of the Nazi imperial eagle. (The eagle decorating the entrance of the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Belgium, on the other hand, is pretty much a copy of the Nazi Party eagle. The difference is kindly explained on Wikipedia.)

That is certainly not the Partieadler, though there are stylistic similarities. The 90 degree difference in wing positioning is significant. The Epinal American Cemetery eagle certainly looks a lot like the Nazi version of the Reichsadler, though. Perhaps that was just the artistic style in vogue at the time and no one thought it looked particularly Nazi.

(The difference between the Partieadler and the Reichsadler is the Partieadler faces to its left and the Reichsadler faces to its right.)

The variant (if one can call it that) with the downward-pointing wings was certainly also in official use. (See this huge gallery from the Third Reich in Ruins site.) One example are the famous bronze eagles at the Luitpold Arena in Nuremberg. I have no idea what the heraldic/symbolic significance of this is, if any; I guess there were also practical considerations at play (cost, size, structural balance).

Aren't there also literal fasces in some of the US government buildings?

I think the problem tends to arise when people use these symbols and then also want to deport undesired races from their homeland.

Lincoln on his throne rests his hands on two fasces.

No axehead. And as we know, a fasces without an axe is just a faggot.

A fasces without the axe actually has a specific symbolic meaning in the Roman context- it was born inside the pomerium, the sacred ground in which blood could never be shed, by lictors bearing witness to the peaceable power of the magistrate in directing civic functions.

Indeed, but unlike these eagles, those predate the Italian fascist movement.

The ceiling painting in the Painted Hall in Greenwich, London is an allegorical depiction of the Hanoverians bringing the blessings of liberty to Europe and trampling Tyranny (as represented by Louis XIV) underfoot. The angels blessing him hold fasces, which was seen as a sign of ordered liberty at the time, by analogy with the Roman Republic. The docent who provided this explanation was not embarassed by it, although some of the other tourists were.

That looked to me like "standard army greatcoat"; my late father who was in the Irish Army had one like that (the brass buttons bring me back to my childhood when he'd get out the polish etc. to polish the buttons). So the whole "fascist Nazi uniform!!!" outcry had me rolling my eyes since clearly the people crying out had no idea what Army uniforms look like, current or historical, and get all their impressions from "this movie I saw where the German officer had a coat just like that".

This one is more modern than the one when I was a child, but it's the same type.

I suspect anything more uniform-like would be quickly pattern-matched to Nazi SS stuff

They could easily have uniforms that look like standard police uniforms, or the FBI gettup with the baseball cap and letter jacket.

Oh, definitely. "See? The stormtroopers aren't even pretending not to be fascist jackbooted thugs anymore!"

I suspect anything more uniform-like would be quickly pattern-matched to Nazi SS stuff

Yeah, I think that among the anti-ICE crowd, everything will be interpreted in a maximally uncharitable way. On top of that, it will be seen as a concession - an admission that ICE is worried about how it is perceived; and that the anti-ICE crowd has at least some degree of power over ICE.

In my experience, for Lefists, any kind of admission along these lines is like blood in the water. An institution which is worried about its image is a huge target.

Any uniform that codes “strength” and “beauty” will increase the ire of the protesters. Instead, they should enrobe in the sacred insignia of the protesters’ own culture, the pride flag colors. The media will have a difficult time propagating imagery from events because it will necessarily harm their own cause by associating the most unique in-group “cues” with aversive stimuli. ICE needs to employ a cadre of beautiful black women, not unlike Gaddafi’s Amazonian Guard, all draped in rainbow flag drip, all holding large images of Gavin Newsom and playing loud audio recordings of Newsom’s voice. The moment they step out of the rainbow-colored van to announce “this is white racism” and “a black woman is speaking” is the moment President Trump unleashes the trve discombobulator technology upon the world. Photographers will be paired with each unit to take photographs of any protester who dares assault a black woman.

This would be "Pride Missile": Uniform Edition. There's also likely some fan art of Renly Baratheon's Rainbow Guard out there that one could use for inspo.

You've suggested something along those lines a few times now and I can't tell whether you're serious. This sounds like something that would never work except on literal cavemen.

This sounds like something that would never work except on literal cavemen.

Literal cavemen had survival instincts and invented tools. Don't insult them by association with modern protestors.

Also just think of the rationalizations for why suddenly the rainbow flag (ooo has to be the updated version) is bad. Thinkpiece writers would melt under such heat.

I’m half-serious and half-joking. This is how most people have their implicit attitudes changed IMO and there’s research to back it up. The reason you can hold a picture of Stalin and say you’re a Stalinist to normal person in America, and they will just laugh at you, whereas if you do the same with Hitler they will have an immediate negative reaction, isn’t because of some reasoning or knowledge on their behalf, but because only of these stimuli has been consistently conditioned to produce terror and other aversive responses (cf my first link). I think this was largely behind the anti-police shift of 2015-2021, as there was very little reasoned logic for their aversion, but very much a conditioned logic for their behavior. Tens of thousands chanting ACAB and putting it in their bio because the conditioning machine media would incessantly pair “police CS” to “aversion US” hundreds of times, thousands of times perhaps on social media, whereas studies show that you only need a few dozen for a noticeable increase in aversion? I’d prefer if we go back to 19th century Lincoln-Douglas discourse culture and minimize propaganda as much as possible, but until then you have to reply to it in kind. (Factual discourse is where? Here? Maybe a couple subreddits? Destiny livestreams, barely? Some elite university dining halls? The future is miserable)

Anything to sully the image of that hideous flag is an improvement in my book.

Do not insult the flag of Cusco

It's the one with chevrons that's really an eyesore.

I've made a similar suggestion before, but I would pattern-match to modern police uniforms to avoid any possibility of confusion or being called a LARPer/reenactor. Field agents apprehending illegals from unmarked cars can still wear hunting gear, but as soon as whistleblowing "concerned citizens" appear, a car in a police livery with a light bar and "DHS POLICE" across the doors should arrive with the officers wearing eight-point caps and midnight blue uniforms with badges to insist that this all looks like a violation of the federal law and we would like you to take a ride with us.

Or wear an FBI style uniform, with a baseball cap and windbreaker with the logo and acronym emblazoned on it in bright contrasting colours.

The operation in Minneapolis is a joint ICE/CBP operation. (I think the CBP element is part of the Border Patrol, but I might be wrong on this point). CBP have a cop-like blue working uniform that would be completely appropriate for this operation, although it is mostly used by CBP Field Operations. Border Patrol still use the green paramilitary-style uniforms that they used before integration into CBP, which are not ideal for urban policing but are a lot better than the grey cammo I am seeing on my TV screen.

If I was trying to make Minneapolis look like dispassionate law enforcement then I would put ICE and Border Patrol in matching uniforms similar to the CBP Field Ops uniform but with the appropriate agency badges. Call it the "urban operational duty" uniform to distinguish it from the existing green Border Patrol "rough duty" uniform that they wear when patrolling the actual border. But if, as I suspect given what MAGA Twitter wants to see, part of the point is to look like a paramilitary operation against the blue tribe, then the grey cammo makes better social media copy.

These details don't matter. ICE wearing a blue uniform isn't going to diminish the screeching and whistling by so much as tenth of a decibel.

The point isn't to change the way the outrage machine responds. The main point is to change the way normies encountering ICE/CBP in the street respond. The secondary point (which I agree probably won't work) is to change the way normies who watch the viral videos respond.

At the margin, does the Trump administration want Minneapolis wine moms to feel like an unpopular law is being enforced in their city, or does he want them to feel like a defeated people resisting a successful belligerent occupation? I don't know, but I think the question is important.

The main point is to change the way normies encountering ICE/CBP in the street respond.

To first order there are no normies encountering ICE/CBP in the street.

The real problem is the masks. Very easy for the outrage publicity machine to churn out innumerable variations on "if they're legit, why are they masked? what are they hiding?" etc. online content.

But on the other hand, with my own two eyes I have read a post online about "here's a list of ICE agents that were doxxed, wouldn't it be just awful if people showed up at their home address to give these fascists what-for on account of their nazi actions, simply terrible, just sayin'!"

So I too would not like to have my face be easily identifiable off a photo snapped by a "concerned citizen observer" and shared around the mob of church invaders. Hence, masks.

But on the other hand, with my own two eyes I have read a post online about "here's a list of ICE agents that were doxxed, wouldn't it be just awful if people showed up at their home address to give these fascists what-for on account of their nazi actions, simply terrible, just sayin'!"

On the third hand, wouldn't it be kinda easy to arrest and lock up any "activists" who come up to disrupt/vandalize/attempt unspecified whatever on ICE agents home address? No longer protesting at that point.

Wearing masks as a safety measure (as opposed to cheap stromtrooper intimidation measure) signals a lack of confidence in state capacity to protect its agents. Federal agents acting like they are scared of Antifa is kinda Antifa's mission statement and raison d'etre.

It is still public perceptions game, not war, so it is preferable fight so that onlookers see you have skin in the game and win, not go full munchkin stacking defensive bonuses.

On the third hand, wouldn't it be kinda easy to arrest and lock up any "activists" who come up to disrupt/vandalize/attempt unspecified whatever on ICE agents home address? No longer protesting at that point.

Well, that depends, doesn't it? Innocent protesters unintentionally cross over when technically they shouldn't do so, evil stormtrooper ICE agents move robotically to drive back said innocent protesters:

Whipple is what we call this standing protest, the ominous structure across the street, and the social-justice-oriented Episcopal bishop for whom the building was named long before it was filled with Minnesotans snatched from the street. An SUV squeals out of the complex. “Oh!” says a woman next to me. “That was a happy Nazi!” Our boots scrape against the ice. A woman walks around with a box of disposable hand warmers before placing it next to a growing collection of other boxes — granola bars, water, almonds. All of us stare in the direction of a parking lot just past a chain-link fence, through which we can see many cars and the occasional agent. Sometimes a robot voice comes from that direction. “This is the federal protective service,” the voice will say. “Get off federal property and stop obstructing.” The man with the dog puts his hand to his ear performatively. “What’s that?” he says. “Hmmm?”

…There are three, then six, then 30 agents outside the federal building, across the street from the protesters, head to toe in black — vests, face shields, helmets, batons, tear-gas launchers, pepper-ball guns, sidearms. Protesters are supposed to stay off the street in front of the Whipple Building, but sometimes they step into the street. What you feel about what happens next will depend on what you believe to be the proper response to this violation of social order. The agents cross the street and keep walking, an undifferentiated mass of black except at their center, where Border Patrol boss Greg Bovino has chosen to draw attention to himself in a black scarf and long dark greatcoat.

…The agents come all at once with a kind of mechanical sameness. The jeers from this side grow louder: “TRAITOR! FUCK ICE!” They shove protesters onto a snow-covered patch of dry grass; others trip trying to back up. “FUCK YOU! SHAME ON YOU!” An agent forces a fallen protester back down and slips on the curb. Somewhere in the mêlée a photographer has a knee pressed into his back.

They's just drivin' out the hostile invaders, hoss:

The night I arrive in the city I hear that a man has been shot and make my way to the scene in North Minneapolis after dark, walking toward flashing police lights, stopping occasionally to turn away and let the burn of tear gas clear from my eyes. It is loud — helicopters, whistles, the pop of flash-bangs — and the crowd is young, though at least one woman pushes a walker toward the police tape. A man in Crocs and no coat has his arms crossed inside his hoodie; his sleeves hang limp. Another man lies facedown in the middle of the street; he looks dead, but I’m told he is just trying to create a barrier. Friends find one another and hug.

For a long while, neighbors, perhaps 50 of them, yell at the empty street, across the police tape, toward flashing cars in the distance. A line of agents approaches slowly, and the vibe shifts hard. There are nine of them, armed, in helmets and masks and boots and gloves. They stand silent and still behind the tape.

Later, ICE agents will come at us from two directions, surprising the crowd, taking back the sidewalk, rendering the air unbreathable. They will drop more flash-bangs and deploy a tear-gas canister in the direction of an SUV full of children on their way back from a basketball game; a 6-month-old in the car will, according to his mother, lose consciousness and be hospitalized.

…But it is this moment on the street that summons a pulse of adrenaline each time I call it back. These people aren’t settled in for a long stretch of action; there are no boxes of hand warmers. These are neighbors carrying phones and bike helmets, breathing warm clouds of air into the cold when they might otherwise be at home placing dinner plates in the dishwasher. When the agents walk toward us, when the void behind the police tape is replaced with a line of masked, armed men in vests, the crowd unleashes an extraordinary level of invective. It is a chorus of jeers that rises and falls with its own internal rhythm. A woman yells with her entire body, “GO BACK TO TEXAS MOTHERFUCKERS. WE HATE YOU. GO HOME. FUCKING GO BACK TO PRISON WHERE YOU FUCKING BELONG. NAZI. WE HATE YOU. TRAITOR! GET OUT!” The crowd rides this river of catharsis. A white woman in a beanie points as she yells, each statement crisp and cold: “ICE ATTACKS PREGNANT WOMEN.” A white man points both his middle fingers and releases a teeth-baring yell, and it seems as if he were drawing a current from the pavement straight out of his mouth. “YOU LITTLE BITCH,” yells a Black woman. Against the wail of distant whistles, the crowd passes from one character to another and comes together: “SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.”

The impulse to drive hostile invaders from your home lives in your body in a place too deep to name. I finally bought a gas mask. You should get one too.

Obviously, the masks are there to protect the officers against the deadly COVID-19.

Yeah, the "protestors" have convinced me that the masks are indeed a good idea, even with the bad PR.

I would take that bet if I could find any way to formalize it.

I'd prefer a traditional approach.

/images/17696155778930314.webp

Come on, it should at least be one of the Reagan westerns.

Ice agents don't normally wear uniforms at all, they're detectives not beat cops. They wear suits until it's time for a raid at which point the sportscoats come off and the plate-carriers go on. Note how everyone but the man with the breaching ram is wearing sneakers and khakis. Under normal circumstances the ICE agents wouldn't be the ones stacking up on the door at all, it would be uniformed local or state police accompanied by a plains-clothed agent but Walz, Frey, Elllison, Et Al. explicitly ruled that option out so we get this instead.

Now DHS does have it's own equivalent of uniformed patrol cops that they theoretically could deploy, but as you yourself illustrated, a lot of people on the blue team either don't know enough or they don't care enough to distinguish between a Nazi uniform and a US Army uniform.

Ice agents don't normally wear uniforms at all, they're detectives not beat cops. They wear suits until it's time for a raid at which point the sportscoats come off and the plate-carriers go on. Note how everyone but the man with the breaching ram is wearing sneakers and khakis.

Your point almost tracks. But who wears sportscoats with khakis and sneakers? Looks more the "civvies" they wear under the plate-carriers are tacticool, not suits.

As menswear appreciator, I like the idea of government officials wearing button-down shirts, neatly pressed trousers and brogued leather shoes everywhere. (Add a fedora and they would give serious prohibition agent vibes?) However, I think it is mostly the masks.

Getting rid of masks would be a good move. You would not need to back off with actual operations, but normielooksmaxxing would look like a change of policy.

Looks more the "civvies" they wear under the plate-carriers are tacticool,

Good sir, a they are too much of a grab-bag of awkward shapes to appeal to the rule of cool. They are tactitacky if anything.

I actually agree with this pretty strongly. I wrote the other day that I think part of why people object so strongly to ICE is just the aesthetics of their uniforms. I also heard (anecdotally) a lawyer say that he would never, ever wear a black suit to a jury trial- it has a huge biasing effect on people.

I thought that police traditionally used blue for this very reason? It's a color that conveys the right mix of authority and calm. I have no idea why they insist on wearing black- are they trying to sneak around in the dark like ninjas? But even ninjas wore blue!

I also heard (anecdotally) a lawyer say that he would never, ever wear a black suit to a jury trial- it has a huge biasing effect on people.

People who wear suits a lot, like bankers or lawyers, tend to overestimate how much laypeople notice even basic characteristics of their suits. If you have a light tie and shirt on most laypeople won’t pickup on distinguishing whether your suit is black, navy, or charcoal. This goes doubly so in jury trials, where lighting can sometimes be poor and the jury seated a bit away from where the lawyers are sitting/standing.

There was a documentary about a banker who paid meticulous attention to the details of his suits and those of his acquaintances, but his interest largely went unshared by others. I believe the banker’s name was Marcus Halberstram or something.

It would be interesting to see real data on this! I think it would effect people more than normal when they're stuck in a small room with you for weeks and forced to focus their attention on you. Over time, little things start to add up.

IDK man, last time I got jury duty I noticed the defense lawyer in pinstripes and it made him seem super shady.

I heard one lawyer say he would always wear his double-breasted pinstriped suit when he had a meeting with one of his... more infamous clients. The vibe immediately made them trust him more.

I thought that police traditionally used blue for this very reason? It's a color that conveys the right mix of authority and calm.

I read somewhere that it descends from the Metropolitan Police in London, because Sir Robert Peel wanted to distinguish them from the Army, whose uniforms at the time were red.

British police uniforms are a very dark blue, to the point where they look black in dim light. It is a sufficiently from standard US police uniforms that I think the "Union Army surplus" theory is more plausible.

I always heard in the US it was due to the huge surplus of Union Army uniform elements after the end of the Civil War when professional police forces were getting organized.

Yeah, and the red uniforms were (alledgedly?) to distinguish them from the clouds of gunpowder smoke. Makes sense at that time but... there's a good reason soldiers don't wear bright red uniforms anymore. Colors matter!

To note, the (very successful)French line infantry wore straight white, which in field conditions just looks like gunpowder smoke. Line infantry wears a cote that makes it obvious what team they're on, for coordination purposes(the entire point is having a recognized formation that you can get into and reform quickly). Hence why most armies used blue- easy to recognize- and the confederates used tan(which also blends into gunpowder smoke) while taking favorable casualty ratios. It's supposed to distinguish them from the enemy army, not the surrounds- as tech improved, armies stayed further apart, and the instrumental value of hiding became more important, so they started to use colours that would blend in with the surrounds- initially khaki rather than camo.

Ugh, just because ICE agents wear what makes them feel confident and comfortable doesn’t give anyone else the right to judge and shame them. They wear their outfits for themselves, not for you and your Gaze. They can celebrate their bodies how they like. Their clothing; their choice.

ICE agents could wear distinct, regal uniforms and leftists would shriek that they look like Nazis, LARPers, black ops paramilitary. ICE agents could wear something more casual and leftists would shriek that they look like LARPers, black ops paramilitary, and Nazis.

Suppose I were anti-ICE and believed ICE are Nazis. Given how well German WWII soldiers and their Hugo Boss uniforms were received by women in occupied lands such as France, I wouldn’t want to give ICE any ideas as to outfitmaxxing.

Sloot, sarcasm is unbecoming.

@Quantumfreakonomics, that's not an excuse to start sneering...or to drag in other users.

@RococoBasilica, same goes for you, in turn.

Fair. On the other hand, truth is usually seen as an adequate defense against defamation charges.

It’s not a question of defamation. We are aware of SS’s opinions. It’s more about arguing to understand vs. arguing to win. Mocking a position as predictable tends towards the latter.

See the other responses to Sloot for how fast that goes off the rails.

SS is the gishiest galloper that ever hopped on a propaganda pony. He does not argue in good faith. Prove him wrong after an exhausting bout of obfuscation, misdirection, evasion, and feigned ignorance and he will spout the same lie again a week later. With him, many have tried and failed to argue to understand. It's not a very effective tactic against a dedicated evangelist that continuously violates the spirit of this forum. Mockery is pretty much the only arrow left in the quiver.

I am continually impressed by your ability to write the exact same comment every single time regardless of the subject matter, a talent you share with @SecureSignals.

Actually, now that I type it out, I'm curious what his take would be.

Actually, now that I type it out, I'm curious what his take would be.

In a discussion about ICE uniforms? He'll probably manage to slot some Holocaust denialism in there.

Yes, they need better uniforms, they need more funding and equipment, they need more numbers and while they are at it they need to roll through American cities and pick up vagrants and put them in humanitarian facilities away from society. There's a lot of things they should do but we can't because it genuinely is Nazi-adjacent, and being Nazi-adjacent is the worst thing in the world because of the Gas Chamber story. That's really it, it's a historical myth that disarms us from self-protection because if we engage in that to any real degree it's evil because of the Holocaust.

If they did have better uniforms it would just provoke more violent resistance. Looking like DEA-lite is probably the best balance given the real-world constraints, obviously it is not ideal. But yeah, they are knocking on doors to find and deport people, just like the Nazis did. That is an accurate comparison, but that isn't an indictment on their mission as much as it is an indictment our finely-tuned sensitivities we have been culturally trained with our entire lives. That is the major obstacle.

Rounding up vagrants is I think a task that citizens' militias / vigilante groups are best suited for.

I am continually impressed by your ability to write the exact same comment every single time regardless of the subject matter

I would be impressed if you’d be able to identify such an “exact same comment every single time regardless of the subject matter,” but to the extent you flail and fail I’d be amused.

To be clear, I wasn’t attacking you. I simply find it amusing.

You only post about how women are terrible. Even on a discussion about men doing law enforcement you manage write a comment mocking women.

The word misogynist is horrendously overused, but in your case I think it is fitting. Fear hating women is the mindkiller.

@Sloot has his schtick, sure, but his posts are mostly well written, often humorous, and, IMHO, do bring up excellent points even if I disagree with them and if they're sometimes too "on the nose."

But in this specific instance, I actually want to double down on my support for @Sloot.

Dispersed, grassroots social phenomena tend to have (at least) two levels of causality. There's something proximate, obvious, and discrete at the surface. That's usually where they get their name. George Floyd protests were about, ostensibly, George Floyd. Occupy Wall Street was about the feeling of financial industry excess post 2008 recession. The OG Civil Rights marches in the 60's were about ending what was then codified and explicit racial discrimination.

The second level is a broader and more amorphous manifestation of long building social change that has now reached a critical mass. George Floyd was about COVID, Trump Bad!, and the 2020 election. This actually made it kind of unique as it was not the culmination of a multi-year development (or, to be generous, only about a 4 year development during the first Trump admin). I believe it is safe to say the extraordinary circumstances of COVID are what created it.

Occupy Wall Street is a better example; this was a movement born of the slow motion economic displacement following trade liberalization in the 1980-1990s (NAFTA, China / Korea / Japan). It wasn't all about 2008. OWS even shifted and changed into the Tea Party and is now still the spiritual ancestor of MAGA style economic populism.

The 1960s Civil Rights movement is the poster child. After decades of Jim Crow, the socio-economic reality in the majority of the US made the codified racism of the South no longer tenable. This wasn't all about Rosa Parks trying to improve her commute or a couple of kids in Kansas wanting to enter the transfer portal switch schools. The Civil Rights movement's success and enduring place in the American consciousness as The Right and True Righteous Cause is evidence of its long developing scale - and, perhaps, its lack of actual success six decades after the fact (that's for a different post).

So what does this have to do with @Sloot hating women?

The subtext of the Minneapolis ICE protests is feminist LARPing finally smashing into the wall of hard reality.

We're in anywhere between decade 4 to 6 of this. This being modern American / Western feminism as a loosely defined social phenomenon. Colleges are now significantly majority female. Women have occupied every major leadership position (political, corporate, and beyond) with the exception of President (which would've been claimed as well if Hillary Clinton hadn't been the worst candidate in history). Millenial women out earn millenial men at the median. All of this female success has been great! Except for TFR, family formation, and general happiness. But, like, whatever. The Future is Female and all that.

What's happening in Minneapolis, now, is evidence that the nth-wave feminism of today has out kicked its coverage. Smashing glass ceilings and hanging tough with the boys is all well and good, but literally conspiring to disobey laws and obstruct law enforcement has real and immediate consequences. Maybe Wonderwoman didn't get that promotion at work because of actual sexism - she can keep the struggle going however she likes because she's alive, healthy, and, gosh darn it, ready to kick some patriarchal ass!

But when Wonderwoman decides that the best way to deal with a toxically masculine man in her way is to hit him with her car she can't keep the struggle going because he might respond with his own lethal force. When Wonderwoman decides to clap back at a flashbang, she might never be able to clap at all after that.

I'm being a little flippant here as an ode-to-@Sloot, but my point is real; the feminist "movement" as far as it a cohesive one and not just a vibes based mentality, has broken containment and exited reality. It is now responsible for women putting themselves into highly dangerous physical situations with potentially lethal immediate impact but under the guise of fun-and-safe "girl power" vibes. That's an irresponsible ideology. They're choosing the bear to signal how much of a girlboss they are and then are shocked, shocked, when the bear rips off their face.

@Sloot's injection of female revealed preferences in relation to military / police sartorial choices isn't him contorting his "womenz bad" theme into the conversation. This topic actually demands that we look beneath the surface level "ICE vs commies" narrative to figure out the much larger scale social phenomena at work. I believe that the phenomena is a long running social change - feminism - metastasizing into a view of the world that is divorced from reality. Human brains don't do well with cognitive dissonance. And the data shows this.

Liberal women are fighting a battle between their identity-ideology and reality. In continuing to lost that battle, it's not just a matter of ill-advised hair colors, tattoos, and a surfeit of feline companies. It is now immediate death or maiming because of an injection of self into horribly dangerous and easily avoidable situations.

You only post about how women are terrible.

As I mentioned similarly elsewhere, the beauty about remarks such as this is it takes only one counterexample to disprove. You had time to write a short bitchy comment; you had time to first quickly do some ctrl + f'ing to see whether such (a) counterexample(s) might exist (in this thread or others) before hitting "comment."

However, insofar that my comments about women live rent-free in people's heads such as yours, sounds like they're pretty high ROI and I should make them more frequently.

Even on a discussion about men doing law enforcement

You curiously omit that the discussion is specifically about the uniforms these men wear while doing law enforcement—men who are often ironically or unironically compared to Nazis. Nazis were even mentioned in OP.

When prompted by such a discussion, it's not difficult to Notice that:

  1. Lipstick feminists as a contingent are quite vocal in being anti-ICE
  2. Lipstick feminists as a contingent have been quite vocal over the years that people (RE: women) shouldn't be judged for what they wear or be told what to wear

And that 1) and 2) can be humorously combined. Further adding to the humor is if one has the background recollection of how fetching girls and young women of occupied countries found German soldiers and their uniforms. The following portion of my comment now also doubles as a response to @HereAndGone2.

Examples such as Sisters in the Resistance indeed recount how girls and young women thought the German uniforms—and the soldiers contained within them—looked cool and good… and then some. In reflecting upon the first few days of the German invasion, Charles de Gaulle’s niece sounded almost disappointed that the German “young war gods” didn’t take any prisoners:

The next day, smartly uniformed ‘young war gods’ arrived by motorcycle in the town where we had spent the night, but they did not stop long enough to take prisoners.

A female historian described her “vivid memories” of the “superb [] angels of death” from the day the Germans invaded, specifically highlighting the black and skull-and-crossbones:

It was extraordinary. They entered our garden; just like that. They seemed to belong to another race. It was a Panzer division. The soldiers were very tall—almost six feet—and dressed entirely in black with skull-and-crossbones insignias. They were superb, like angels of death—completely different from our friends, our comrades, from all that we knew.

Find you a girl who looks at you the way French girls and young women looked at German soldiers. Modern day 5’11” guys punching the air rn that girls used to consider 5’11” to be “very tall.”

Check out how happy this French girl looks donning a Nazi coat and hat (unclear if she has anything on under the coat). I’m gonna tell my kids this was Sabrina Carpenter and this was Gal Gadot.

In the article from which these photos came, it is claimed that DESPITE…

more than two million Frenchmen being held in prisoner-of-war camps, the birth rate boomed in 1942 with an estimated 200,000 children born to Franco-German couples.

“Horizontal collaborators” was the amusing term-of-art for French women who, well, collaborated horizontally with German soldiers.

Romance novels featuring local European women and occupying German WWII soldiers is like an entire subgenre in itself. As Sisters observed, being “the victors” made/makes the Germans “seductive” to women, combined with being “smartly uniformed ‘young war gods’” and “tall, blonde ‘angels of death.’”

Dang, my radar must be busted. I never picked up on that, I just thought he was stating an undeniable fact: them uniforms were indeed cool. I'm no fashionista, but they looked good. Someone in an earlier comment said black had negative associations, but on the other hand think of Coco Chanel and the little black dress. Black is also sophisticated and elegant:

The SS uniform
Shiny black boots, a black jacket over black trousers, and a bright red band with a swastika on the arm. On the cap, below the German eagle, sits a silver skull. The SS uniform was designed to impress, and it still does so today.

Apparently Boss did not design them:

By the third quarter of 1932, the all-black SS uniform was designed by SS members Karl Diebitsch (artist) and Walter Heck (graphic designer). The Hugo Boss company was one of the companies that produced these black uniforms for the SS. By 1938, the firm was focused on producing Wehrmacht uniforms and later also uniforms for the Waffen-SS.

I should mention that the black uniforms and the silver death's head badges originate from Brunswick during the Napoleonic Wars.

Which seem to have inspired the Millais painting The Black Brunswicker.

Let a military have much input into its own insignia, and it will inevitably include skulls. Badges, pins, emblems, flags, or the literal bleached bones of the vanquished, they will be there.

Probably less now than in the past precisely because of the Nazi use.

I still can’t believe this is a real insignia from 2013.

More comments

I'd say he made a good attempt at humor and correctly summed up what the argument of lipstick feminists would be if it was a uniformed organization mainly consisting of women that'd be the one criticized for its looks.

Also, I'm somewhat of a misogynist myself, but I'd ask you to differentiate "women" from "lipstick feminists".

It is a bit funny that the response to 'Your idea wouldn't work due to automatic naysaying by ideological opponents' is to complain about ideological opponents automatically naysaying OP's idea

It's not the exact same comment, but they are all projections into our reality of the platonic ideal woman-mocking comment that you channel.

It's not the exact same comment, but they are all projections into our reality of the platonic ideal woman-mocking comment that you channel.

He has been doing this non-stop on some handle of another for at least 10 years

It's a bit unsportsmanlike to dare someone to find a pattern in your posts while having private mode turned on to frustrate any attempt to systematically look through those posts.

Nothing unsportmanslike about keeping your dribble while someone attempts a reach-in.

I’ve had private mode on the majority of time I’ve been registered here; never turned it off after turning it on initially. If one can make claims about my comment history without the most convenient way to “systematically look through” it, one can back it up too likewise.

Come to think of it, so far the greatest unsportsmanlike conduct I’ve seen in this chain is your drive-by attempt at shaming and moving the goalposts from “exact same comment every single time regardless of the subject matter” to “pattern in your posts,” like a spectator heckling from the stands or a journalist looking to shit-stir while feigning indifference.

If one can make claims about my comment history without the most convenient way to “systematically look through” it, one can back it up too likewise.

It's much easier to remember posts than the URLs of those posts, and theMotte doesn't allow searching for multi-word quotes or for filtering a search by a private-mode user.

drive-by

TBQH, most of my posts are on subthreads that showed up on the volunteer page; browsing theMotte is tedious. In this case, @Quantumfreakonomics' post got reported.

moving the goalposts

exact same comment every single time regardless of the subject matter

would be a

pattern in your posts

but the latter is notably shorter and I'm habitually concise.

I tried to check whether his accusation was hyperbolic, as it was relevant to rating his post and to whether I ought to chide him for it (example of me crawling up someone's arse over hyperbole within the last few days, in case you think I'm fabricating). But I hit your privacy block, and I'm not about to chide someone for hyperbole until I'm sure it is hyperbole (hypercorrection is a pet peeve of mine). And, well, hitting that block itself seemed extremely-relevant to your challenge, so here we are.

Part of my intent was to give you the opportunity to give QF a fair attempt, as I figured you may have had it on and forgotten about it. Another part of it was, admittedly, to ensure that anybody reading did not overupdate on QF being unable to provide evidence under present conditions.

Part of my intent was to give you the opportunity to give QF a fair attempt

Oh, how noble of you, to give me such a most generous opportunity.

Another part of it was, admittedly, to ensure that anybody reading did not overupdate on QF being unable to provide evidence under present conditions.

Again, the initial claim was made under present conditions—the same ones that have existed for years—so inability to follow-up on that claim under the same past and present conditions is no excuse. The status quo is already the fair attempt.

For a claim such as “exact same comment every single time regardless of the subject matter,” it only takes one counterexample to dismantle. Who knows, there may even exist multiple counterexamples just in this week’s or last week’s CWR or FF threads. Shouldn’t be hard to find given the apparent relative ease by which to remember posts.

New Jersey State Troopers.

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