domain:experimental-history.com
phailyoor
8hr ago
Hmm interesting, I kind of beleived the story at first, but now I could see the entire thing being a lame hoax and entirely the figment of one person's imagination.
A woman claiming to be an immigration attorney contacted the family unsolicited a few days after Leon was arrested and claimed to know where he was, though she wouldn’t say where. On July 9, the woman called to say Leon had died in detention, offering scant details. The family has since been unable to reach her.
According to Nataly, a Chilean government contact of Leon’s brother was able to reach an official here who told him Leon had been taken to Minnesota, then to Guatemala.
Like come on, this is like saying a fairy came and told her where he was.
birb_cromble
8hr ago
I hadn't considered how Congress fit into all of this. Thanks for giving me something to ponder.
Mantergeistmann
8hr ago
No one says “shame on all doctors” or “shame on medicine as an institution” just because thousands of people die from medical errors yearly.
"I often say a great doctor kills more people than a great general." -- Gottfried Leibniz
Wohlfe
8hr ago
Based on my experience working in the government and large organizations, it's #4. Leadership is so far removed from where the work is actually done that intent and desire doesn't matter, you have to make clear updated rules and guidelines for the low-level managers and employees to follow. If I'm FDA reviewer #123456 and a vaccine approval comes across my desk, am I going to cover my ass and follow the official guidelines my bosses constantly tell me I have to follow to the letter, or stick my neck out and do what I assume RFK Jr. wants me to do?
This possibility (#2) is interesting because it makes me realize that I don't actually know what the stated purpose of agency officials is. Is their highest goal to serve the purpose of the agency, or the will of the electorate? Even if they claim one or the other, what processes do we have to ensure that's true?
I think the answer to that one is that the electorate, at some point, willed the agency into existence with a mission statement, and thus their job is to follow this mission statement, period, until the electorate amends the mission statement or closes the agency. In theory, of course, it shouldn't be up to government employees to do political analysis to try and figure out the electorate's wishes. Still, I think this arrangement gives them a lot of leeway, especially with a disfunctional legislative body that is unable to direct these agencies, at that point everyone kinda hopes for and turns a blind eye to agencies stretching their mission statement.
hanikrummihundursvin
8hr ago
Perhaps after the end of Trump, the USA will be in a position where it can apply for readmission to the human race...
I'm no fan of the USA, but considering the rest of the world, that statement is not serious.
roystgnr
8hr ago
Also, the music is much better IMO
The music in Frozen 2 is better
Am I taking crazy pills? "Non est disputandum" and all that, but still, really?
Frozen (1) was entirely supported by "Let It Go", which was so amazing (though the plot played it too straight in the end) that the flaws in the movie's plot and characterization were nothing compared to the zombie-apocalypse-level infectiousness of that song. I'm sure "Into the Unknown" managed most of the same technical feats of clever key modulation and whatever, but the lyrics and melody weren't nearly as interesting. For like a year afterward teachers were complaining that you couldn't put five kids in a room together without one of them starting to sing "Let It Go" and turning the whole group into an impromptu choir.
But even aside from the tentpole song? Frozen 2 had nothing as funny as "In Summer", and nothing as heartwrenching as "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?". I admit "Lost in the Woods" was impressively mature for a kids' movie, but I think "Love is an Open Door" would have been up there if only its irony had been a little less subtle. (of course, that time the plot managed to drive the irony in later, with a sledgehammer; modern Disney can show the problems with "love at first sight" more clearly than with "girl power leads to monologuing like a supervillain")
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
8hr ago
Right. No one says “shame on all doctors” or “shame on medicine as an institution” just because thousands of people die from medical errors yearly. Complicated centralized operations are bound to result in errors, especially in a country with a lot of stupid people. This is also just a general issue with importing stupid people into your country, and why it’s good to deport any who make it in. Imagine an operation like this, done by people with an even lower IQ?
Totalitarianit
8hr ago
I see. He benefits from liberal policy, champions it, but only insofar as it benefits his own kind.
But honestly, the fact that such a story is even believable speaks volumes about the situation on the ground
Please put this juvenile argument to bed, permanently. If something didn't happen, the fact that it could have is irrelevant.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
8hr ago
Although these types of retorts are exquisitely tempting, these are also exactly the sorts of reactions that Count is attempting to provoke, which he then parlays into accusations of bias and incivility.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
8hr ago
He is a beneficiary of the UK immigration policy, and therefore sees it as a smashing success.
I am a beneficiary of the UK immigration policy. I very much don't see it as a smashing success. Count makes us look bad, and even if he didn't, I have great distaste for people who bite the hand that feeds them.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8hr ago
Thank you for responding!
gattsuru
8hr ago
It's plausible, and I'll reserve judgement before making any specific assessments, but I'll point out some red flags beyond the Guatemalan denial:
She [Leon's wife] herself was kept in the building for 10 hours until relatives picked her up.
What, exactly, is this claim? Was she arrested or detained for ten hours? Is she a citizen, and that's the only reason she wasn't deported herself? If she's a non-citizen, did they attempt to deport her? Those things are all possible, but the sentence would also be technically honest if she just didn't have a ride home.
Then, sometime after Leon was detained, a woman purporting to be an immigration lawyer called the family, claiming she could help – but did not disclose how she knew about the case, or where Leon was. On 9 July, according to Leon’s granddaughter, the same woman called them again, claiming Leon had died.
This is some incredibly precise phrasing. No one knows the first date this woman called, and the Guardian doesn't know what the claims were? Other sources say this was probably somewhere around 6/23ish, but don't expand on the claims. Three weeks ago, she called again, gave the family false information, and then no one knows her name or even if she's actually an immigration lawyer?
More critically, while Guatemala is one of the countries that has agreed to receive third-country deporations (albeit not of people from Chile), it is not a country that has (or is known to have) received Alien Enemies Act deportations. The time period from 6/20 to 7/3, the claimed range, was after both AARP v. Trump and Trump vs. JGG, which clearly established AEA deportations still had judicial review. And neither the Guardian nor other media I can find say he was deported under the AEA. Indeed, it's not clear how many, if any, LPRs have been deported under the AEA.
Any other deportation would require a (admittedly waiveable) hearing with an administrative law judge. It's possible that the Trump administration just fucked things up, or that the immigration judge involved was just rubber-stamping papers. Or for a more borderline (or scissory) example his LPR was revoked; unlike naturalization, green cards can be revoked for a pretty wide variety of reasons, some serious and some less so. But few of these answers give a result compatible with "Instead some power tripping ICE worker two grades above the rank of janitor decided to act as judge, jury and executioner and sent a vulnerable 82 year old man off to a country with which he has no links whatsoever."
And some of that other reporting gives other reasons to put your antenna up:
Perhaps that's just a reasonable reaction to what could well have been an extremely traumatic experience. Perhaps.
But honestly, the fact that such a story is even believable speaks volumes about the situation on the ground, five years ago this story would have been seen as too absurd for The Onion.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8hr ago
I genuinely can't.
I genuinely believe that you can. It's not about your experiences, it's about your insistence that your experiences are sufficiently bad to excuse inflammatory rhetoric, boo outgroup posts, writing like you actually do not want everyone to participate in the conversation, and so forth. Don't write angry posts! Don't write screeds! Don't come here to vent your spleen. This is a place for discussing the culture wars, not waging them. And yeah, we're kind of bad at making that happen. But we're trying, and I genuinely think that you can succeed, too, if you're willing to try.
At least two moderators have broadly recused themselves from even bothering to moderate you, because they are just fed up with your antics. I'm a much less active moderator than I used to be, but there's a very good chance that if you do get perma-banned, I am the one who is going to have to write the mod message. I don't want to write that message. At minimum, it's likely to require a bunch of effort I would rather put into writing things people enjoy reading instead.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you really just... cannot... open yourself to the possibility that you are in some way mistaken about your outgroup and the views you have developed as a result of your experiences. Or maybe you just can't stop yourself from expressing it in maximally vitriolic ways. But if that's right, then--for all your many quality contributions--maybe this space is, in the end, a poor fit. That's a possibility. But I will be sad about it, if so.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8hr ago
Honestly, this makes me think it is more likely to have happened - and there is some kind of mistaken identity at the source. Some guy messed up his own DOB or something (maybe he didn't have a known DOB, picked one when coming into the country, picked another one that was more significant later and didn't remember the one he used on his paperwork, IDK.) Maybe the government mixed up the files.
My prior is that people typically don't outright lie but rather twist the truth. It's a heck of a story to make up whole cloth. Stranger things have happened, so I wouldn't be too put out if it turned out to be someone's imaginary Grandpa. But Bureaucratic mistake seems more likely to me.
iprayiam3
8hr ago
It's neither of those things. Burdensome Count is not a leftwinger. He is a beneficiary of the UK immigration policy, and therefore sees it as a smashing success.
Imagine a socially conservative Mexican immigrant, sitting outside of a taco truck, with his friends and family after Catholic Mass, celebrating his life in what was 3 decades ago, a strongly Protestant community and condemning the disruption of a recent ICE raid. This guy might be very glad for the liberal immigration policies of the past few decades and distressed by the recent reversal, while still being otherwise more aligned with MAGA populism on most other issues.
daguerrean
8hr ago
- I have no reason to believe this. It may or may not be true but at this point it is not convincing me.
- Any sufficiently large-scale action is going to have a few mistakes, there will always be false positives. If we insisted on zero false positives the only solution would be to deport no one (or something approaching zero). Similar to how cops enforcing the law will periodically result in an innocent person being shot. It is unfortunate, and we should work to minimize mistakes but to some extent mistakes are a sign of things actually being done as opposed to total inaction. If we insist on 30 appeals for every person we will simply never be able to match the incoming rate of illegal immigrants.
oats_son
8hr ago
I found the video disturbing. Sometimes I have to recall how I felt watching that first video to give any credence to the other side at all, especially as it relates to the conviction of Derek Chauvin, whom I usually think should have been acquitted, but sometimes, the thought of that video pops up again and I think twice.
Obviously, it didn't justify any of the rioting, though. That was an insane year.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
8hr ago
"The fact that I would believe bad things about my enemies proves they're bad" is an UR example of a horrendously bad faith argument. This post was more worthy of a ban than the original.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8hr ago
That's not how you get a reputation. This is a reputation economy. If you contribute valuable things to it, that will increase your credibility. What is valuable in this reputation economy? Lots of stuff! Insight, novelty, effort. Original research, eloquence, reasoned argumentation. Steelmanning, deep dives, critical self-reflection. And yes--the beating heart of this space is the Culture War thread, where we discuss the culture wars--but, at our best, refrain from waging them.
We also have quiet lurkers! If that's more your jam, that's fine. Even there, you can contribute through meta-moderation and user reports.
What we don't need is more people trying to characterize this space, to place it within the culture wars rather than to keep it outside of them. We don't need more accusing mods of thumbing the scales one way or another, complaining that there are too many bad posters, too many bad comments, too much left wing content, too much right wing content, whatever--we already have entirely too much of that. The best--often the only--thing you can do to make this place better, is to write good posts.
To be blunt: I am skeptical that you "FoundViaTwitter." Right now I would guess at about 30% odds that "you" are a Turok alt. You don't write as if you are unfamiliar with this space; you write as if you are someone who has already been banned previously. But I've been wrong about this sort of thing before, and quite possibly I'm wrong now, so instead I'm trying to treat you like a new user who just found this space.
We welcome your effort, insight, etc. on whatever topics you care to write about, provided you do so within the spirit of the foundation and the intention of the rules that support it. We are less interested in having yet more off-base aspersions cast on the mod team or the site.
iprayiam3
8hr ago
That's not what I meant, Im not even that frequent a commenter here these days.
Just defending that the moderation policy isn't really along a left/right divide.
I'd say rather, it's biased against arguments that amount to 'You are moral monster and cannot be tolerated'. This was, at least online, pretty strongly associated with the progressive advance over the last decade, so I thikn reaction against this gets pattern matched to reaction against leftism.
But 3 recent moderation debates have been around:
Alexader Turok: sneering contempt for populist conservatives, from a viewpoint within the general 'right', but a libertarian/EHC perspective.
Burdensome Count: moral outrage against American nationalism from a globalist, EHC perspective, though socially somewhat conservative
Contra Whinning Coil: somebody flaming out because Whinning Coil was allowed to express racist views.
The third was kind of liberal adjacent? But more like centrist disgust at racialist remarks. All three kerfuffles though, were not about left/right, but about reacting to an argument that amounts to 'how dare they!'
To be super clear, I also flamed out of here several years ago, because I too hold some how dare they views. I don't agree with the general philosophical aims of theMotte, and think it is founded in self-destructive tolerance-maxxing. I do not agree with the axiomatic viewpoints that found the philosophy of the motte and it;s moderation.
But I simply defend that it's not left-vs-right.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
8hr ago
Who is "our", Kemosabe? Didn't you show up in the West basically yesterday?
DTulpa
9hr ago
Oh, don't misunderstand me. I was being rather suggestive with that post, pointing out that "the fact that I COULD believe it" is really, really terrible guidepost.
I didnt believe Jussie either - my only failing being the extent of my disbelief not going far enough. I was prepared to say drug deal/prostitution gone wrong. Performative self-lynching wasn't on the menu.
I think that for theguardian, such a story might simply be too good to risk ruining it with a fact check.
On the other hand, nothing in it seems implausible given my knowledge of the Trump administration. The only thing mildly surprising is that there is no allegation of excessive violence during the arrest.
The goons of ICE are likely working on a quota basis. Trump wants that many people deported per months, he does not care who it is. They know that Trump does not give a rats ass about following proper procedure, that guy had his mob try to stop the certification of an election before, and has shown a great willingness to pardon any deeds done by his side in the culture war.
If the courts overturn the deportation decision, that is still a win for Trump, because he can paint himself as following campaign promises to the best of his ability while being hampered by the cuddly justice system.
Deporting armed gang members who might prefer death to spending the rest of their life imprisoned without judgement in some hell in El Salvador is obviously a dangerous occupation. But luckily there are plenty of harmless immigrants which you can deport instead, and they will count just as much for statistical purposes.
Because of the CW, there is also zero consideration to the individual's case. Either you are MAGA and support all deportations, or your are left-wing and support none. The moderate position that deporting someone who came to the US age 15 and has served multiple sentences for assault is fine but that deporting an elderly man without a criminal record is bad is not shared by either side, because both see it as a slippery slope towards their enemies position.
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