The people coming will be coming for a variety of reasons but it won't be to take the jobs of the uneducated Americans
It's fascism 101.
Sure. The rich (R) electorate gladly watch how the non-rich (R) electorate has taken the bait and is happy chasing after the newly othered.
They won't be happy if the non-rich republicans start taking their aim at lobbying, unfair tax-breaks for the rich, or any form of taxation that prevents them from keeping their ill-gotten wealth.
https://lacity.gov/highlights/curfew-announced-downtown-los-...
While the two parties fight about specific measures (as they always do), and don't trust one another at all, they both agree that extreme measures are appropriate in LA right now.
This discussion is about the situation in LA, and not just a generic partisan dispute we could read on any political discussion, right?
Before Trump intervened, LA has had worse Superbowl afterparties than the protest was at that time. This is all very much manufactured rage.
Consider that your news sources are really biased.
Here's a live feed, watch for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6S_OwCgKOU
I think your line of thinking might be either overly naïve, or maliciously turning a blind eye:
First, "both-sides"-ing, for lack of a better word, is — IMHO — a false equivalence that treats the current democratic transgressions of rights and freedoms from the alt-right government to, for example, democrat's normalizing that saying racist stuff is a faux-pas; i.e. some goons are actively harming humans and that isn't the same as racists being butt-hurt that they were banned from some site.
Second, in this particular case — where there is push back against fascists — trying to reduce the scope of the discussion is like trying to censor police-cam footage to just the split-second segments where the cops get scared and shoot, but that leaves out how the trigger-happy cop broke protocol, escalated the situation, and berated confusing orders at the victim. So, no... We need nuance and context.
I really hope people that find themselves what-abouting for fascists are able to escape whatever information bubble they find themselves in so that they may be able to stop willfully looking past other people's humanity before we all find each other on the wrong end of a power-tripping cop that won't even have to come up with a good lie to snuff our lives out.
it's the feds and the sheriffs and the police causing unrest, by intent and design.
LAPD are trained and regularly used for crowd control and protest dispersal. The guard isn’t. And for sure the Marines have no clue about policing.
I think LAPD is choosing a 1st amendment violation as the lesser failure than permitting any escalation involving the National Guard. That would quickly turn out badly for the guard, become a pretext for ever more violent authoritarianism in response.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1l88mhj/lap...
Old dead link: https://www.reddit.com/r/chaoticgood/comments/1l8ax0z/protes...
Remember, less lethal does not mean non-lethal and doesn't mean it can't cause enough damage to impact someone's quality of life forever.
From my point of view, this person was disobeying orders from police, which gives them the right to use force. Is a rubber bullet an appropriate amount of force? Probably not, but I don't see this video as a completely one sided interaction with one party being wrong.
The cameraperson or another bystander should have called 911, asked for ambulance (and maybe fire dept) to attend. In addition to medical care, that would at least get some higher degree of paperwork going from an accountability perspective.
State-sanctioned organized crime by white supremacist terrorists, that's the connection with Republicans. They pardoned the insurrectionists that violently captured the capital building and pay off murderers whose crimes achieve their political goals. It's mostly happening out in the open, brazenly. We're not rational machines, we're easily manipulated and it takes less energy to settle into beliefs others want us to have. "Flood the zone" works but reality is still happening.
Don't focus on words. Focus on actions. For example, the action of deploying the military on Americans does not make conditions better for us. Quite the contrary. The action of having a military parade for the president's birthday is expensive and doesn't benefit us. That money could be going to education, school lunches, Medicaid, building bridges, etc. But it isn't. it is only going to stroke the president's ego. Most of his actions, EO's, deals, bills, etc., fall into this category.
Leaving aside the equivalence of "protesting" with "rioting," the United States has robust Constitutional, common-law and statutory guardrails against the use of the military domestically. The US military cannot, absent an insurrection in which regular legal order cannot be maintained, be deployed against US residents. The use of the military in the past has been limited to what were deemed by federal and state officials full insurrections (e.g., the Whiskey Rebellion), or, in the civil rights era, in response to governors affirmatively refusing to enforce the law regarding an end to segregation and the integration of public institutions. In this case we have state and local officials explicitly stating that the factual predicates of an insurrection aren't being satisfied (the protests cover a few square blocks in a metropolitan area that by itself is larger than Lebanon or Kosovo, in a state larger than Japan or Sweden). While courts traditionally give deference to executive determinations of this sort, they aren't beyond judicial review, and this is (I would argue) clearly pretextual.
What we're seeing here, conversely, is an attempt to sidestep this clear principle through not-particularly-clever tricks and semantic gamesmanship; for example, mobilizing Marines to "protect federal property," but then DHS officially asking DOD to give active duty forces arrest power. This is clearly unconstitutional and illegal, but, as with much we've seen recently, the hope appears to be that if you change the facts on the ground quickly enough, the clear illegality of the actions can be ignored.
In addition, the federalization of a state National Guard against the will of the state is unprecedented; I don't know of any previous example of this happening. In the American system, even though the National Guard is a vestige of the old state militias, it's clear that the states are at least assumed to have plenary authority over their own forces absent an invasion or insurrection.
> Leaving aside the equivalence of "protesting" with "rioting,"
People are pushing back when rubber bullets and tear gas are being used, illegally.
U.S. citizens have a right to protest. This is baked into our constitution.
1. We have 5 or 6 branches of military. The important one here is the national guard, ones meant to aid Americans in emergency or crisis.
2. The other branches have huge limits on when the federal government can deploy them domestically The Posse Comitatus Act that came as a result of the US civil war covers this.so having marines being deployed is a huge overreach.
3. The vast majority of the time, the national guard is managed by the state Governor, and Gavin Newsom has explicitly opposed this decision. The federal government taking command of the national guard is an exploit of The Insurrection Act that's been going on for a while.
All thst context being given: Newsom is right. This isn't trying to establish order, this is a meticulous escalation on a conservative president in a liberal city to make a show of force. For reference, there's reportedly some 600 rioters and they sent out 2000 (now 4000) national guard and 709 marines. This is all without including the LAPD which is comprised of over 8000 officers.
The amount of money and resources spent on this is utter overkill. And part of the point. They want an excuse to call martial law so badly.
It's also quite possible they mean "Americans" in a general sense in that the Marines are not being turned loose on the American public. They are being focused on the rioters specifically.
Obligatory self-declaration since you and many others will probably jump to conclusions about my opinion (as for whatever reason, we seem incapable of nuance even to the point of understanding that not everything in life is completely black or white), even though I've said nothing of it until now: I think Trump's actions are grotesque, authoritarian, and fascist, and it really pisses me off.
If they are non-citizens, they are not american. Pretty cut and dry distinction. Nothing fascist about this.
> If they are non-citizens, they are not american.
Tell me where I said "most" in that sentence.
You guys have a stark division between the government employees and the not-government-employees. Isn't the US government "for the people, by the people"? Serious question. I'm not disputing what you said, rather I'm trying to understand it.
They are also effectively impossible to sue, so you'll probably never see any justice in the courts if they act unlawfully. Even if manage to get the lawsuit going they will play fuck-fuck games with jurisdiction until you lose (as I found out when trying to sue feds for stripping me naked, cavity searching me, and executing a fraudulent warrant on a fabricated dog alert -- no one would take my case because they had lost similar cases every time).
Yes but the news (in the US) is a fully for profit organizations most of which are owned by the right-wing folks. (i.e. Much of the newspapers, CNN, Fox News are run by boards that are right-leaning)
They are intentionally pushing a narrative that the family I have in the area believes is simply a very small number of incidents that are nowhere near as bad as what is presented.
> This does not look like the military being deployed on Americans, rather it looks like the military being deployed on rioters. Whether those rioters are Americans or illegal immigrants really doesn't matter for the purposes of reestablishing order.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/poss...
I suggest you stop looking at this through the lens of an Israeli and do some research on the US system of laws :)
Deploying the military "on rioters" and whether they are "Americans or illegals" is actually quite important. Using the military as a police force is illegal and the only real open legal question is if using it against "invaders" who are not here legally is technically allowed.
You are acting like these people are Hamas, when in reality, they are nowhere close to even 5% as dangerous.
As Americans, and people living in the USA, we are allowed to do this. It's a Constitutional protection.
Again, all of this is a distraction from what the prez is doing.
I don't feel particularly safe in the US with the government making lists of people like me based on the medication we are taking.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-05-02/...
Its not new, but the centralization of these datasets isn't making me feel like anything other than a target.
I think what we're running into is an issue many empires have run into in the past: once you scale things internationally people just don't get along. For some reason we thought computers and secular science changed that aspect of human nature (the same way Rome thought democracy and military doctrine did) and we're finding out once again people don't work that way.
They are similar enough that they are not actively being openly attacked even if hateful people exist.
See: The Israeli ITT agreeing with the American conservative position and making common cause. Etc.
That person would not have made those comments if he thought the American conservative position was jewish == other tribe == bad. Even if it is for a decent chunk of that population of conservatives which is why people I know are confused why they get asked if I'm jewish. Because they don't realize the person that they were talking to is a bigot going off my stereotypically jewish features.
> I think what we're running into is an issue many empires have run into in the past: once you scale things internationally people just don't get along. For some reason we thought computers and secular science changed that aspect of human nature (the same way Rome thought democracy and military doctrine did) and we're finding out once again people don't work that way.
No, that is buying into the framework the Conservatives use that globalism is the failure point.
This is not correct. The failure point is the number of gullible people who take things like waving foreign flags as reason enough to ignore the law.
*EDIT for the response below 'cause I'm lazy and don't feel like waiting and coming back*
No. You are arguing because 'everything fails eventually, failure is inevitable' but that isn't true in human lifetimes. Dozens of generations have existed in multiple empires without seeing the empire's end.
The fact gullible people eventually bring an Empire down just means, yes, thousand year empires do not exist but we've already had 3 generations live, grow old, and die entirely within the globalist period. So...for those people, it never ended.
You just want to be "right" without considering the other person's point of view as equally valid.
So, yes, technically just because something ends does not mean the end during a given lifetime is inevitable.
But yes, excluding misinformation and open deciet from the process of running a Democracy is theoretically the goal I would say. That requires none of the things you state because you seek to bait me into responding into "gotcha" extremist positions that have never been real or needed to achieve a goal.
Simply saying "You cannot intentionally lie and misrepresent a 1 square mile protest as a reason to break the law as the government who upholds the law" should not be a controversial position you feel the need to argue against, yet you do, like the Israeli above precisely because you've been lied to.
You're arguing my point for me. People are what people do and the fact that people do these things (and consistently do these things throughout history) means that these large scale international empires are impossible to maintain. The problem may very well be conservatives, so what do you do? Exclude them? Put them in concentration camps? Now you're back to agreeing with me again.
EDIT: (for your response)
They don't bring it down "eventually" this happens very quickly. It's been known since ancient times that this happens (ibn Khaldun wrote about these things for example.) The problem is that "conservatives" from different "tribes" look very different (this is obvious if you've spent time trying to understand politics in foreign countries) so once you deal with the majority conservative group you just end up with a new one from the plurality. It's not an eventually thing, it's a critical mass problem. The only way international states work is if there's a single majority that excludes outsiders (like the Arabs used to and sometimes still do for example.)
You are redefining terms to "win", m8.
Entire lifetimes within the safe confines of an empire is not anyone's definition of "very quickly" in English. Please educate yourself on what you are talking about and do better research.
There is no point in engaging in a one sided conversation with someone who is either being dishonest with himself or truly misunderstanding the topic in question to the point phrases are needed to be redefined to some absurd parameter measured in 60+ year spans as "very quickly".
Please understand you really should learn something on these topics rather than quoting stuff you clearly show a shallow understanding of that is unique to a certain political group and not even the intellectuals in that group would argue as you have.
*EDIT TO REPLY*
> I agree entire lifetimes would not be very quickly. I'm arguing once you have a plurality population these things tend to blow up within a generation.
?? but Americans were Christian white male conservatives as the majority during the generations in question and were arguably more conservative as even people like the Irish and Italian were "outside parties" like you view jews.
Are you arguing the American situation deteriorated multiple times in the 20th century (1900-2000) and somehow resurrected its Empire each time?
This is just a bizarre conversation at this point but I'm morbidly curious.
Btw, the official definition is 1890s to now for the American Empire as you are talking about. So...idk how you square it failing in the ??present day?? and later with multiple generations being born and dying during that time period.
M8, it is hilarious how easy conservatives trying to normalize that stuff in the wild is.
I was just curious since you were trying to play the "I am playing devil's advocate" card when you are clearly a card carrying conservative.
Look, idk how you are concluding this kind of craziness but it _is_ craziness from a fact based point of view. I'm only opposed to conservatives in the US for three reasons:
1) They are against my access to life saving medical care, potentially forcing me to flee the country to where I can afford it.
2) They are very comfortable courting anti-Jewish extremism in the US which is why I have to keep track of which bigoted asshole cares I'm jewish so I know who will try to knife me in the back professionally/personally.
3) They are less fiscally conservative (when it comes to the debt/deficit) than Democrats with their tax giveaways, guaranteeing the eventual failure of the United States financially. Similarly, their economic policies are sprinkling fairy dust and pray the long term consequences away.
As a supporter of Israel (the part that isn't hurting the cooperating palestianians anyway), a fiscal conservative, and so forth, it is bizarre to me I have no party in the United States but the Democratic Party to vote for.
Once again you argue my point for me. A place for everyone is a place for no one.
And you agree people like me should be removed from the country (even thought we are citizens) based on the kind of solutions the Nazis used before they moved on to camps.
10/10 glad the guy berating people for calling people fascists openly admits he is one.
EDIT:
Just noting for posterity, the guy agrees the above is correct in his current response but "wants to know what solution I have" as his only critique.
I'm done, no point in arguing with an admitted fascist/nazi adjacent type.
> How do you propose the problem is solved? Ban every kind of conservative from all the tribes you'd like to incorporate?
> That would still include you by the way since you'd like to conserve Israel. That's not a moral failure on your part that's just how people work and it's why international states can't work.
I'm just amazed how easy he took the bait to confession pipeline.
That would still include you by the way since you'd like to conserve Israel. That's not a moral failure on your part that's just how people work and it's why international states can't work.
EDIT: Regardless of how you feel about it your proposed policy has a clear contradiction. You can dislike it, you can call me a nazi for pointing it out, but if you don't have an answer to this then your idea simply isn't practical for everyone else to adopt.
You feel I should be exiled from my home country for the same reasons nazis were killing people when that planned failed. That isn't calling you a nazi, that is you being a nazi.
The fact you are in denial isn't my problem, I'm just glad you are dense enough to admit it to people.
EDIT:
It is hilarious the guy who ignored the point repeatedly now freaks out and calls me "emotional" about how _but I'm not a nazi_ when he agreed with Nazi talking points multiple times. When you agree with Nazi talking points but don't like the label, yeah buddy, you are a Nazi.
The only "emotion" I'm feeling is hilarity and how oblivious you are to your own talking points.
Think about things like agreeing people should be forced out due to medical conditions, etc. and obvious basic eugenics shit you agreed with earlier. And ask yourself, why am I suddenly panicking about this when it was fine a few posts ago?
Hint: It is because you know you lost the argument on you being a nazi. Maybe facts will make you realize your feelings are not facts. Maybe not, but it was worth a shot to try to make you see the way the world sees you.
> I really hope you to acknowledge this at least for your sake: your own ideology is not self consistent and ultimately excludes you regardless of what it means for everyone else.
You feel my right to buy reasonably priced (on a national crowd based level for my age) insurance is an ideology and that I should be exiled from my country because of it.
So yeah, buddy, that alone makes you a nazi. I don't need to point out the other talking points so you can't hide later from the truth when you get called out again because you didn't realize how many times you repeated you were a nazi in coded language.
> EDIT: I know it's hard, but you really need to focus and think clearly here, think carefully about the ideas themselves. If you don't things are only going to get worse for both of us.
Huh?
My ability to not die is something I need to think about?
Nice edit but it still points to you being a nazi if you think that is a true statement because my medical conditions make me unprofitable in a for-profit healthcare system.
The hilarious part is you really are just tripling and quadrupuling down on eugenics as a key part of your position. Which makes you a nazi. Congratulations! You win all the prizes!
> EDIT2: I feel like, for your sake, I should add that I stopped caring about how "the world sees me" long ago. I've been called a nazi just for living normally and peacefully with people around me, the word has no meaning to me any more. I'd encourage you to stop getting hung up on it and focus on the practical realities of today not things that happened in another country with other people a hundred years ago.
Yeah but you aren't being truthful here or you'd have stopped responding and trying to deflect the clear pro-nazi/eugenics statements in a public forum.
You can lie to yourself if you want but the truth is when you go to bed, you know deep down, you care. Or you'd have stopped this shit show when it was 50/50 you were a nazi. Instead you kept insisting you weren't while insisting you were right on the basis of eugenics among other reasons.
You didn't even have the sense to claim I wasn't right in calling you out for being pro-eugenics and pro-denial-of-care-for-minorities-to-force-exile. Because it is your belief system and too integral for you to refute until its pointed out to you repeatedly.
> EDIT3: I did acknowledge that. The problem is that insisting on what you're arguing for degenerates rapidly and is not practical. I even tried to steel man your position for you with the idea that maybe you could exclude conservatives (both from the original majority population and the eventual plurality) and pointed out how that would ultimately result in the same mass exile problem you're upset about.
How did you steel man position exactly? How is the fact the majority of the EU can deliver what I say is a critical and life threatening problem or the fact the US currently works that way (but the GOP consistently attacks it and has repeatedly failed by very thin margins to force me out of the country due to medical costs)?
You can lie to yourself all you want but I'm already on 6+ month waiting lists for basic care with private for-profit health insurance. I am better off _today with insurance_ on flying to Mexico or Malaysia or whatever for healthcare. And you want to make it worse for me. When the rest of the world doesn't have this problem. Somehow its magic to you and you insist its not a viable philosophy to have medical care for people like me.
Once again, not being pro-eugenics, is proven to work in the real world. You are a nazi. I'm done because you can't seem to deviate or defend your position in any rational sense beyond "My feelings tell me this isn't true"
All you have is ad hominem m8. It is hilarious as it is sad.
> I actually know people in two countries with public health care: Colombia and Canada. I've watched both of them use it. It's far worse than anything in the US (the way Colombia in particular treats immigrants IMO is absolutely horrifying.) But if you think you'll get better care in a place like that you should go ahead and see for yourself what it's like.
I've gotten medical care in Malaysia, Portugal, England, Germany, and so forth.
I got into these places with something as simple as a broken nose faster than I'd get through the line at any American hospital. And got better and cheaper care.
You can lie to people who don't have real world experience but not me, buddy. Good luck out there but all you seem to do is lie or use fellow conservatives as sources. I'm not sure which is worse.
The sad fact is, I'd actually want to vote for conservatives but just not US ones that are against my access to health care out of self preservation.
You seem to be convinced I'm some ideological foil to conservatives by saying you shouldn't be able to lie and propagandize. You should probably look inward and ask yourself why you need to lie to people to get through the day.
The sad fact is, outside of local ambulance service in places like Malaysia or Colombia, most of these places have private hospitals for a Westerner that is quite affordable. Yet somehow, just allow them to exist adjacent to public care never seems to cross a cosnervative's mind to admit such things exist. (Hint: They benefit from the same economy of scale as country-wide buying of medication and so forth. Combined with lower labor costs for similar nation-wide markets with guaranteed demand, it actually has been shown to lower costs but you wouldn't ever have researched real information to figure that out)
> That's a little wild to hear from someone who's called me a nazi half a dozen times and seemed to think that changed the validity of his argument.
You agree with Nazi talking points. There, does that make you happy?
>Malaysia They do, its called a golden visa buddy.
>England > No. They do not have a functioning public health service. I don't know much about the other two states but if you put England in that list it makes me question the validity of the rest of it.
Yeah, buddy, please unplug from conservative outlets.
>The sad fact is, outside of local ambulance service in places like Malaysia or Colombia, most of these places have private hospitals for a Westerner that is quite affordable.
> So you're in favor of private health care? I'm still not even sure why you've even brought all this up. Furthermore if you can afford private health care than why is public health care "a matter of self preservation?"
Are you not understanding I basically have to leave to have affordable access to emergency care if Project 2025 (or even the proposals that failed in 2016) gets their way?
Idk what hole you hide in but that has to contain some amazing powers of self-deception.
Good luck, I'm just done man. You can't be this oblivious without hiding in some conservative bubble that bans all dissent.
That's a little wild to hear from someone who's called me a nazi half a dozen times and seemed to think that changed the validity of his argument.
>Malaysia
I forgot Malaysia just lets anyone immigrate and call themselves Malaysian. It's crazy how accepting Asian countries are. They're all such a great example of how you can simultaneously have public health care and open borders.
>England
No. They do not have a functioning public health service. I don't know much about the other two states but if you put England in that list it makes me question the validity of the rest of it.
>The sad fact is, outside of local ambulance service in places like Malaysia or Colombia, most of these places have private hospitals for a Westerner that is quite affordable.
So you're in favor of private health care? I'm still not even sure why you've even brought all this up. Furthermore if you can afford private health care than why is public health care "a matter of self preservation?"
It's fine if you personally don't support more extreme actions. Time has shown again and again the most important thing civilians can do is to refuse to condemn other civilians who are acting in the same goals as you. We must focus on why everyone is acting in those goals: we have armed, masked men invading communities, who have made attempts at trafficking children, stolen away elderly women, detained citizens accused of no crime, and are being incredibly disruptive throughout the country.
I'm going to have to see a source for that one.
Removed children? Sure. Trafficked them? Prove it.
Stop trying to make it look like what it is not.
> it is important to keep the focus on Trump and the need for him to be deposed.
being causal for more Trumps to be elected.
This guy is not going to stop on his own. He's attuned to operating in a business context where there is some other singular entity who might back down when the damage from the chaos gets too high (or he backs down when the pain is too high for him, like with tariffs). But in a society based on individual liberty, backing down is not on the table until the whole society has been subjugated.
Longer term, if we actually manage to get through this to meaningful elections, one would hope that the abject failure of Trumpism would make enough of the electorate wary of more "strong" man fascists promising easy answers. This should have happened after his first term, but Trump's main skill is deflecting blame and Covid was one heck of an excuse.
And as far as underlying issues driving polarization and disconnect from reality, those are going to be there regardless of my statements.
I'd say we are at the point where the people who enabled the fascists just have to accept they were wrong and take their licks for the damage they've caused to our country. Similar to the bits of soul-searching that are going on amongst Democrats about the overbearing DEI groupthink. Will some small reconciliation grow into a trend and create a lasting deescalation, or do we have to continue working to actively reject the extremism? Let's worry about that when the mad king no longer has the reigns of power, lest good-faith attempts hold us back from getting to that state where any of this might matter.
Among other reasons, we got here because the government only seems to respond to big business and the oligarch class, but not the rest of us.
No. Torching cars is already a crime and the city and state were already restoring order. The kind of flag waved while a car is torched does not change the calculus. Critically, a US citizen does not cease to be a US citizen because they waved a foreign flag; we have free speech in the United States, and flag-waving is protected by the first amendment.
Also worth noting that none of this would have happened if the regime didn't deliberately provoke it in the first place.
Apparently LA agrees with this fundamentally American idea.
As for not being true, are the newspapers lying? Are those photographs fakes?
And "reestablishing order" is an obvious farce, because the Trump administration was deliberately provoking this conflict by sending in masked agents to abduct people and at least in one instance, running over a protestor. The administration has been consistently escalating the conflict, which is not something you do to "reestablish order", but it is absolutely a tactic of 20th century authoritarians to acquire emergency powers which they then use to prevent elections, jail political opponents, etc.
The funds for the "United States Army 250th Anniversary Parade" were allocated before President Trump was elected, during the Biden debacle. The fact that it falls on June 14th is what is called a "coincidence".
Be careful about blindly accepting propaganda as fact.
Um: "The Army’s 250th birthday celebration has been in the works for two years, Army officials said. But adding a parade was the Trump White House’s idea, so planning for that began only two months ago." (Emphasis added.)
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/06/politics/trump-military-parad...
I've never met someone so unlucky /s
That must take some crazy mental gymnastics...
As to your other points, most aren't coincidences, though some aren't real either.
You should read the post you're responding to. It clearly addresses this very question.
> though some aren't real either
I think you mean, "though I'm not familiar with some of those cases"--otherwise a citation is needed.
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-project-2025-first-100-da... 2. https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/5120168... 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cnyv9qNQSI
The date is exactly what was being discussed. I was responding to the mischaracterization of "a military parade for the president's birthday", which is factually inaccurate. Plus, the plan was made during Biden's term.
> I suppose it's just a coincidence that Trump is following project 2025, step by step, since day one
He's following Agenda 47, which was published on his campaign website. He stated he agreed with some of Project 2025, but not all of it.
It's unsurprising that some involved in writing Project 2025 are working for the Trump admin.
He's stated every stance you can on 2025. Heard of it, never heard of it, love it, hate it, etc.
https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+never+heard+of+2025&oq...
That was the president lying on a nationally televised debate, the purpose of which was to lay the groundwork for exporting poor people who were here legally.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
It's just a lie in service of fueling hatred toward the most poorest people in this country. Fascism 101.
Should Trump also relay blood libels against Jews?
It's usually about how the poor get Foo for free, which everyone else has to pay for, and also about how they misuse Foo for nefarious reasons. The commons then get riled up, either because "Hey, why do they get free housing when I have to spend tons of money?" or because of all the nefarious things they supposedly do.
Also: Food stamps can't buy alcohol (let alone drugs).
Explain how work requirements to qualify for Medicaid makes conditions better to ensure there are fewer poor people. Doesn't this just harm people who can't work due to disability, and practically ensure they will never get better enough to work and contribute to society?
Sure saves a lot of money for wealthy people though.
Business and removing jobs and being rewarded with tax breaks while American workers can't find anything. Whose fault is that?
There is about the same amount of money allotted to help states stand up new programs to validate these requirements as the federal cost of Trump's birthday party.
How does the government know whether any specific person is "able-bodied"?
> How does the government know whether any specific person is "able-bodied"?
Bonus points: we'll be able to remove people that should have had eligibility but failed to get the right paperwork in place. And we all know those who are severely disabled and unable to work are always excellent on filing their paperwork correctly and on-time and always make required meetings.
Yes. Yes it is.
Pray you never find yourself in a situation where you can't work anymore or rely on anyone. Because under Trump's, this means guaranteed death. In the richest country ever.
Trump, speaking to his nephew about their disabled son [1]: "Maybe you should just let him die"
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/24/trump-...
The phrases to look for are “infested” and “purge”. Some politicians consider low-income to be a character of a person or a group (all the way up to a nation). Those same politicians laud language from Hitler about infestations and metaphors of racial purity.
Even the most generous pro-government take on that passage would have him believing that the state should be separate from the church, so church doctrine should not be imposed through state decree.
"But muh roads and hospitals and police." Lol, that is covered by the ~0.5% of my salary I pay in property taxes and a little extra in use taxes and county and state sales tax. The federal portion, what do I get? Massive subsidies for people who stick their boot down my throat, military provocations that make us all far less safer, the worlds largest prison population (and near the top per capita). None of it makes sense -- the stuff that matters was achieved with the feds spending 2% of the gdp (and I might add, pretty much open immigration).
"Helping the poor" is one of the worst mistakes the USA ever undertook.
History shows we've historically been pretty shitty at doing that at an individual level.
> The federal portion, what do I get?
Ignoring FICA, a large chunk is debt servicing, public health, earned income tax credits, food assistance, SSI, science programs, global trade security, and more. Most isn't "people who stick their boot down [your] throat", unless you're someone looking to abuse workers or food production or happens to be outside in LA these days.
here's the correct indoctrination message
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/us/politics/trump-fox-int...
> Former President Donald J. Trump, in an interview broadcast Sunday, doubled down on his description of immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country, language that echoes Hitler.
> “Why do you use words like ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning of the blood’?” Howard Kurtz, the media critic and interviewer, asked on Fox News. “The press, as you know, immediately reacts to that by saying, ‘Well, that’s the kind of language that Hitler and Mussolini used.’”
> “Because our country is being poisoned,” Mr. Trump responded.
It is absolutely not. It is politics 101: you are the only one who can solve a problem.
War on Drugs, War on Terror.
It's no mistake that the War on Drugs and the War on Terror were both radical increases in authoritarian power, both of which were implemented by Republicans as part of right-wing approaches to addressing both perceived and real threats.
Yes, those are political objectives, but the entire point of calling them out as fascist is to distinguish them from other anti-fascist political objectives which seek to reduce or constrain the power of the state, or to strengthen human rights guaranteed by the state.
In between republican presidents there were also Democrat presidents and they did zero to put a stop to any of them. Zero. Using your logic above, both types of presidents are fascist in nature since they followed the same policies.
What I am saying is that when the state takes power from the people, it (almost) never gives it back. Just like with laws, repealing them is a gargantuan task and again, almost no will to do it. Taxes, they go up more then they ever go down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control...
That's led directly to the current mess because it taught people that the most important thing is to get into the country, regardless of legality, so you could be in place when the next amnesty came along.
We know how to stop illegal immigration--you put CEOs in jail for employing illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration stops dead.
"Illegal immigration" is simply a dogwhistle.
Commutation and Pardons under the current regime are signal about what behaviour will be forgiven, ignored, or even outright rewarded.
When they had their big press conference to announce the 900 arrests, reporters asked about plans to investigate the company based on the documentation found.
"That's not in the scope of our investigation. We do not have plans to do that at this time."
To no one's shock, they've never found time to do it since, either.
Undocumented immigrants are too important to the economy, to the tune of over 17.7 billion worth in 2005. (in Texas)
Instead they do things that look great (and check the most important box): border wall (that the US gov pays us for), security forces (that the US gov pays us for), mandating that the sheriffs work with fed agencies (that the US will reimburse them for). But passing a law that requires businesses use a free quick government service to check documents and a small agency to do random audits -- that's to too burdensome on the state's bottom line. Any one that thinks states like Texas actually wants to eliminate undocumented immigration at this point, has simply been hoodwinked.
[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...
People wouldn't have continued to come if Conservatives hadn't continued to employ and build business models around undocumented labor. Not addressing the root cause of the problem, employers willing to reward people for coming to the US, is the problem with the Reagan amnesty. Nothing else would have stopped immigration like stopping the reward for immigration would have. But conservatives are addicted to their bottom lines/business special interests and couldn't bring themselves to do what needed doing to stop what they term a 'foreign invasion'. At least the dems do it out of compassion and don't see it as an invasion. The conservatives just allowed the financing of what they see as a 'foreign invasion' for a small share of business special interest dollars.
Really shows the priority of some people here. It's clearly not getting a job.
That is a strange thing to think is to blame. I'll take a guess that you do not live in a (south) border state.
People were taught they could come into the country and (1) find work that (2) paid more than not having work -- when they got paid at all [0] and still less than US workers [1] and the state not only allows it but encourages it. Why? There continues to be a chronic shortage of construction workers to fill jobs. Our housing situation would be far worse if the GOP immigration stance was anything more than a dog and pony show. [2]
The state with the longest south border has refused to require businesses use the fed e-verify system to check work id's, everyone knows they use fake ids. It's not some scandal that Reagan or the "Dems" recently caused. It's simply just the way it always has been. Makes for great rage bait though.
But, we do appreciate all your federal tax dollars paying us to "get tough on immigration"!
Texas, again, failed to pass a bill aimed at conducting a "study of the economic, environmental and financial effects of illegal immigration on the state" -- just the cost mind you. The last study in 2006 found that they contributed more than they cost. Deporting the "estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants living in Texas in 2005 would have cost the state about $17.7 billion in GPD." [3] They have since refused to do another study. They know mass deporting immigrants would devastate the economy and growth.
For the undocumented that's been here awhile, it's just another day. Maybe they get unlucky and it's their turn to play a part in the "tough on immigration" hoax. They'll be back in a few days because the state and their employer needs them and no one will bat an eye when the cameras are off. Which is why we should be taking note of the extremes Trump is going to, there is something else to it; else his buddies in Texas would have passed those bills last month.
[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/16/undocumented-workers...
[1] https://www.fosterglobal.com/news/report_half_of_tx_construc... [pdf]
[2] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...
[3] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/06/texas-undocumented-i...
I'd suggest doing some light reading on the reliability and integrity of the sources you prefer to get your 'news' from.
Do you actually have any source to support your claim? I mean, MAGA nuts have been swearing for over a decade that there was a torrent of illegal immigrants arriving each day into the country, and that somehow democrats were to blame, but even after Trump's fascist push with it's forced deportations of everyone including US citizens without due process the numbers barely reached 100k. And now we're seeing Trump's ICE thugs mobilizing a small army of agents to assault Home Depot parking lots?
Where are all those illegal immigrants?
The numbers cited by Republican scaremongers like Stephen Miller were probably inflated and derived from CBP border encounters, rather than on how many people were entering the country. But there does seem to have been a significant surge, partly thanks to new immigration programs that made it easier to entering the country while seeking asylum. Deportations seems to have remained high under Biden.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/briefing/us-immigration-s...
Sure, it couldn't possibly be anything else like inflation after COVID (which happened globally) that caused incumbents to lose around the world. No, Dems just needed to get this one thing right and they're to blame for Trump. Sure.
I'm pro Trump and have been for many years. I just don't think we would have won if the Dems hadn't handed us the victory. Thank you Democrats!
You are happy to agree with nonsensical statements, as long as they imply your side is winning, why?
How has Trump improved our lives and country in his first term?
And how is he improving our lives now?
Trying to understand how you as an HNer, who I’m assuming applies logical / critical thinking, considers facts and evidence as important, can vote for someone who a) is a convicted criminal b) absolutely not interested in improving our lives.
What’s the appeal?
I have no doubt these countries exist, but I'm deeply skeptical that they are imitable.
Not technically military, closer to National Guard.
Cuba, the PRC, North Korea, Russia...
Virtually every European country gives due process, even in illegal immigration cases. And probably more importantly, the US Constitution requires due process even for cases of illegal immigration.
> Obama deported hundreds of thousands without any legal hearings
But they had due process. He didn't round people up in the streets without the ability to contest government claims of illegal immigration.
However, in practice, if you're a citizen, it's pretty easy to prove it. You'll be carrying forms of state-issued ID and you'll have a paper trail that makes it obvious. There's rarely much ambiguity over whether a particular person is here legally or illegally, as much as some might like to pretend there is.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5366178/trump-deport-ja...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/21/nx-s1-5134924/trump-election-...
[1] https://apnews.com/article/marcelo-gomes-ice-massachusetts-a...
The UK certainly does.
The immigrants deported under Obama had due process.
You are just blatantly lying
A number of European countries have military or paramilitary forces used for law enforcement when it comes to things such as quelling riots. Here is an example.
Obeying illegal orders to attack American citizens on American soil is certainly something, but it isn't law enforcement.
If this were actually about law enforcement, we would have passed the bipartisan border protection / immigration bill that has been on the table for eons.
If it's a true story. Your comment history reads like conservative talking points fabricated by someone pretending to be black or pretending to care about black people. Specifically not like a black conservative.
> These adjacent communities get hit twice because migrant labor also decreases salaries for locals.
If the migrant labor is filling in labor gaps, then no, this is not true. Seems the evidence also disagrees: "Consistently, economists have found that an increase in immigration rates does not cause a drop in wages for U.S.-born workers" [1]
Please provide evidence that your statement is true even in any instance, let alone generally true. The economic impact of migrant labor is quite real, and positive, in terms of taxes and money spent back in the community.
[1]https://immigrationimpact.com/2024/07/09/immigrants-do-not-t...
Is there actually more real context missing here?
12million immigrants came into the country during the Biden administration. This type of load on the system does not go unnoticed. NYC for example was drastically transformed.
Why do you think it’s just a “perceived” problem?
They cannot handle it with the resources being given. This is true for the red states like Texas and what not, the social services we do have struggle to handle the load. But we're choosing to let these systems struggle. We could solve it if we chose to do so.
In 2020 our population was ~330 million people. Even if 12 million people immigrated to the United States, that's an influx of 3.6%. In reality its probably closer to 4 or so million, so really more like 1.2%. We're supposedly the wealthiest country on the planet with so much opportunity and freedom and yet we can't handle adding far less than 5% of the population as migrants in five years? If that's the case, we're probably the poorest country on the planet, not the wealthiest.
So sick of Americans empty-analysis and ignorance of externalities their society puts on others; overseas colleagues see it as white Taliban. They don't see people in streets over tariffs screwing up their lives, so they've started to tell their politicians Americans (as in the public) are not reliable actors. They don't realize it, but the American publics own credibility is shot, not just their politicians.
I have taken to cutting off friends and family and shit talking anyone in public that wants to socialize; do the politic work to put me on the hook for their healthcare, otherwise I refuse to bother with their existence. Withdrawing from people's lives is a forcing function for self reflection.
You all keep me off the hook caring you exist. I just have to help make line go up. Anything to do with you all as individuals is not my responsibility. That's the choice of the American people. I'm here to profit, not give a fuck you exist.
That's what my fellow Americans taught me through their feckless political effort. Illusory idea some invisible hand gives a shit based upon the gibberish from history they read by people who were wanking their literacy rather than inventing indoor plumbing.
And even then, we could choose to do something about that. We could do more to help people settle all across the US and be well supported to succeed. But we don't. So instead, we have people crowd the areas where we turn a blind eye to hiring illegal labor and have the social impacts concentrated there and then refuse to actually do anything to help those social costs.
But these are all things we choose to do. We could choose to do something else.
How do you decide who goes where? What stops them from moving back to the bigger cities? How to you limit demographic displacement?
The UK is doing this, and the US under Biden was trying at a smaller scale with Haitians in smaller towns. It doesn't work, and isn't so simple.
America is really struggling to support & enable a people, to create a social safety net. Opportunity is low. But often when immigrants come in from other places, they will put in enormous energy, that can bring some very sad towns back to life.
Once again, we're choosing to not have these social supports or social services. It's a choice. We could do it if we wanted, after all we're allegedly the wealthiest country on the planet but somehow can't seem to afford anything.
> How do you decide who goes where?
I'm not suggesting we force it to be a top-down forced decision. I'm often a pretty free-market and empowering people to make their own decisions kind of guy, when it makes sense. And sure, people will tend to cluster more in large cities, that happens even for non-migrants. But in the end, we're doing practically nothing to encourage people to spread out that social cost (or worse, encouraging for forcing the clustering), and that doing nothing is a choice. And then we're doing very little to support these places experiencing such large social costs, which is once again a decision.
All of this is stuff we could do differently, we just choose the status quo (or now choosing violence!) that doesn't work well for a lot of us. Sure seems to be making some people exceptionally wealthy though.
In the 1800s? No. You realize how much happened with the great expansion and all that? The population squeeze that happened from the civil war? I find it laughable you'd be arguing for the Native American tribes in the early 1800s. Once again, showing your racist ideology. Thanks for further confirming such a thing. America is for white Protestants only. Got it.
Thanks for confirming to you, me, a white Christian American is not welcome here and shouldn't have been here in the first place. Because I'm not really the right kind of white Christian.
They literally have an immigration schema, if you want permanent resident to citizen track, that requires immigrants to match the ethnic makeup of the country's citizens.
So you have all these white public housing advocates, talking about how great public housing is in Singapore, but they leave out that you have to have PR or citizenship to get it, and they've accomplished making all that possible by having like half their population non-citizens who pay taxes for housing they're ineligible to get and then the people living in the public houses are ethnically guaranteed non-replacement.
I find such things to be incredibly backwards and abhorrent. To think if you lucked out in some genomic lottery to be allowed to have extreme privilege in society, this sounds like a fucking nightmare
There are a lot of cool and neat things about Singapore but damn do a lot of things feel like the kind of things that keep me up at night.
But honestly, the modern GOP is closer to enforcing such requirements than any opposing party.
It's the happiest little police state in the world ;)
But as a quick take I think the land pressures of native Hawaiians is radically different than the land issues of white Christians in Texas. And it's not like there's any deeply historic religious connections to Arlington Texas to white Christians for a quick example is there? The worry if cultural elimination is probably radically different at a quick glance wouldn't you agree?
I'm generally for open or at least non-discriminatory immigration. A few sticking points
1) Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc. The first step here is to make ALL US nationals and citizens equal, before we can really even hope to start making immigrants equal. Given limited political capital this would be my #1 priority to burn that capital on.
2) Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration and pushes the populace heavily towards favoring middle age wealth foreigners -- that is basically europeans and white English speaking countries. We could probably make it a little less 'racist' if immigrants were forced to permanently disclaim any access to public funds.
3) Immigration is justified under human and properties rights, freedom to go wherever one is invited or has ownership, and basic human liberties. Immigration in practice in the US heavily relies on use of public facilities, which are paid for by the tax payers -- as property owners you would be violating their rights if US persons cannot control foreign access to the public properties they are forced to pay taxes for. i.e. there should be zero immigration controls whatsoever crossing from one ranch to the other on adjacent parts of the Mexican border, but when you use public resources you are now becoming a trespasser if the property owners don't consent.
You start off by declaring it's a fraudulent right but then spend hundreds of words arguing for a framework for your own fraudulent right
> Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration
One might then question the rest of their ideals about their morals and what Christ has charged us to do and wonder if racial stability is the standard or helping people is the standard. But I guess you've already decided on such a thing.
> Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc.
I'd say laws in island territories have vastly different concerns than laws on the mainland especially when considering land and cultural concerns. They have vastly different pressures, don't you agree? Like what were going to argue only white Protestants can own land in Montana? Pretty different circumstances here than a tiny island with religious circumstances.
The ethnic discrimination laws in America Samoa, and to a lesser extent Saipan (I think for them more about control, they have no problem with Chinese running roughshod operating all kinds of shady and illegal business, it is probably the most corrupt place in the US) are aimed towards stopping cultural elimination. The case is compelling for Samoa, the others are just naked racial discrimination as the local populace seems to have settled on the fact their culture has pretty much been eliminated as anything beyond a footnote and they're going to cash grab all they can out of the remains which I guess is just the usual American dream.
(Hawaii used to go even further, and racially discriminate in voting, but racial discrimination in voting was struck circa 2000 with dissent written by the now deceased racist Ruth Ginsburg in Rice v Cayetano. Not long after that 'non-'Hawaiians also finally got the right to equally run for office).
American Samoa is particularly aggressive about it, their government and IIRC even the feds strongly imply or command you can enter for 30 days as a tourist without further authorization, despite the fact that established case law and the American Samoa Bar training to internal lawyers teach that US citizens have the right to permanently settle and work in American Samoa. I did some research and could not find any case of a US citizen being 'deported' from the territory unless they were wanted for crimes elsewhere but they do their damnedest to make it sound like you can be.
No matter that previously you were pointing to places as small as Arlington Texas.
You don't actually care about eliminating these discriminatory policies. You just have your racist motives to apply it inequally.
And it really shows your ignorance too, acting like Arlington is some small place. There's tons of land around here in North Texas, ample for whoever to make a new story and new life. The people making up most of the population have only been here for like a hundred years, tops. Any kind of long historic claim to the land outside of Native American populations are a farce. This isn't true for small islands in the Pacific which probably have a vastly more complicated history.
But it sure shows your character that you bother to deeply look up such a legal basis for racist ideology. Good work broadcasting your hard work.
And yeah, I'm the racist for arguing anyone should have the ability to partake in American prosperity. Meanwhile you're the non-racist advocating for enforcing racial land rights across all the US. Got it.
So how about this: go fuck yourself, and your nauseating appeal to your ivory tower techie faux-academic attempt at guidelines. Nothing about me is 'equal' to this self righteous racist piece of human garbage, although I admit his behavior is the very best argument as to why his culture should rapidly be overshadowed in Texas.
This is only a place where people want to come to discuss things because we and others put effort into keeping it that way. If you're going to participate here, and if you're going to expect others to be held to a high standard, we need you to hold yourself to a high standard too.
your calcuation needs to account for ppl coming in on non immigrant visas too.
usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas.
Also, Trump approved for. Ore H1B Visas this year.
parent and gp comments are talking about "immigrants" . where do you see illegal immigrants ?
Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?
Are you saying 'immigrants' anywhere in this thread automatically implies 'illegal immigrant' . Thats really confusing to me.
> Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?
this is ridiculous twisting of my comment. I was just correcting record about population increase from immigration. population increase doesn't happen just from immigrant visas, ppl on non-immigrant visas stay in the country often for decades.
But sure, somewhere around 4-5 million illegal/undocumented immigrants, add another 10 million or so non-immigrant visas (which I agree, tend to have people end up staying for lots of other reasons), we're still somewhere around 15 million or so migrants with most of those having some kind of stable job lined up before they arrive. It's still less than 5% of the overall population increase with these migrants, but now a lot of these in this addition are largely economically self-sufficient from the get-go (those with work visas). You're not really changing my point at all.
In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?
Also, your claim of:
> usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas
is factually incorrect. The US issued around 11.5 million non-immigrant visas, of which 8.5 million were visitor visas. So not a total of 15 million visas and excluding the tourism its really about 3 million non-immigrant not-tourist visas.
> in 2024, in Fiscal Year 2024, we issued 11.5 million visas, and that’s a world record for us, breaking all previous records. Of these 8.5 million were visitor visas.
https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-s...
https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Annual...
There were 10,438,327 non immigrant visas. Out of which there were 5,902,426 b1/b2 and 29,286 B1.
looks like i din't count ppl with BCC in visitor visas.
> In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?
again, i didn't say this. i was just trying to correct the record. I honestly have no say in "how many is too many" . i have no idea how to even think about that to come up with a framewrok to answer that question
> Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people.
From ChatGPT:
> So, while 10–11 million CBP encounters is the most solid official figure, when you add gotaways, overstays, and parole entries, the total number of people likely entering without full authorization could reasonably be around 15–17 million during the Biden presidency.
We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. The video evidence is out there for everyone to see. News outlets that did not engage in hiding reality and promoting falsehoods had crews at the border every day for four years collecting video evidence of what was going on.
If you care about understanding the truth, go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around. You can also cross check with Homeland Security and other official sources. And, yes, you will find data that predates the Trump administration...so you can't blame bias. For example, if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.
If such a thing were being reported by multiple reputable sources, I’d be less inclined to roll my eyes at the preposterous idea.
You are living in an incomprehensible fantasy my friend. Good luck.
People died and permanently retired during the pandemic. It's possible the 10 million number represents a restored workforce; it's also possible it represents a changed workforce.
If the latter, that illegal immigration allowed the US to recover faster than it would have otherwise and the lesson from history is we're a stronger nation for easing immigration restrictions.
There is no question whatsoever that immigration, legal and done correctly, is a force for good. As a legal immigrant, it understand this very well.
In fact, I understand the entire process very well, including the illegal immigration part. You see, when I was six years old, my parents overstayed their tourist visa in the US. They were then told to leave and my entire family left. Two years later, after going through proper channels, we obtained permission to come to the US legally.
I truly do not understand how people twist themselves into a pretzel to justify illegal entry into a country. Actually, it is worse than that, the only country where they seem to think this is OK is the US. Every single person who is for illegal immigration in the US understands why you cannot just move to New Zealand, for example, to stay and work there without permission. They also understand New Zealand's points system for the selection of who is granted permanent residency. Not in the US. Of course not.
Proponents also say that not enough people are let in legally or that it is too slow. Two points to be made here. The entire planet wants to come to the US, so, yeah, it will take a couple of years (as it did for my family). Second, when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased. Doing so would exacerbate the problem. So, illegal immigration actually hinders changes and growth of the legal immigration system.
Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves. And, when they do include themselves, they don't lead by example and simply send more money than they owe to the government. Same with immigration. How?
I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.
Can we all stay in your home forever? You are welcome to come back from your vacation and share the home with us?
Of course not. Nobody of sound mind would accept such a situation.
How is breaking and entering into a country --any country-- justified and elevated to almost be a virtue?
While not a perfect analogy, of course, this does illustrate a fundamental idea: You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did. If the world worked that way we would all be walking around with a firearm strapped to our leg and blood would run down every street in the nation. Violating these fundamental rights is nothing less than destructive to society.
Yes, of course, and this is not contradictory. "American Exceptionalism" means different things to different people, but broadly speaking: as a nation built of immigrants, there's no particular "right" time to pull up the ladder and say "That's enough immigrants now." Most people who support this position (not all, but enough to be concerning), when you peel back the veneer, support it because they want America to be "A nation of X" and America facing the reality of more people with different world experiences threatens that goal. There's a reason the protests in Charlottesville turned from being about the history of the South to chants of "Blood and Soil."
Regardless of what the law says: the reality on the ground is the American economy is relying on the labor provided by the undocumented, and they are our friends and neighbors for years running. Sometimes, when a law bends too hard against what the people actually want, you ditch the law. A government fails to grasp that to its peril; hopefully, it only results in tea wasted in the harbor.
> when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased
Untrue; these are rules we make up for ourselves. Congress could set the number to zero tomorrow. Or infinity. It's entirely up to us.
> Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves
I think we'd have to agree to disagree. I, for instance, am in favor of raising taxes on myself and people in my tax bracket, as well as basically everyone above my tax bracket. No strong opinion on lower brackets. And I do send more than I owe to the government. And buy bonds.
Your meta-argument is "These people don't see the problems;" I think you are mistaken. People see the problems, they just think they're better handled with community service than with truncheons and planes to some other country.
> I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.
> Can we all stay in your home forever?
I mean, that's an argument about "squatter's rights," not immigration, but for what it's worth... yes? The law in many states does recognize your right to keep using the land if you develop it and it's de-facto abandoned. If I own so much land I can't use all of it and you find a better use for it, that's on me.
The nature of immigration is so divorced from this analogy as to make it worthless. Try this one instead: You come here, build a house, raise a family. Five years later, I come along and try to kick you out because you didn't cross an 'i' on some paperwork in 2019. Is this just, or should I leave you the heck alone because you're not hurting anyone?
> You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did
I'm sure you're not arguing "America should be returned to the Native Americans..." But that is the argument you are making here. Are you sure you mean it?
... FWIW, I'm sorry your parents were forced out. In an ideal world, that shouldn't have happened. That would have been, what, roundabouts the Reagan presidency? Reagan's administration set us on the path to where we are today by deciding a lot of laws on the books suddenly needed enforcement where little had happened. To all our detriment.
Well, time to exit this thread. The problem with HN having become a monoculture forum is that it is impossible to have conversations. I never downvote or flag anyone, particularly those who disagree with me. The same is not true on the other side, if you don't tow the line you get attacked, downvoted and flagged mercilessly until you shut your mouth. So, yeah, you win. Have a good day.
I appreciate seeing your vantage point on this topic. While we do not agree, It is helpful to see other people's takes.
Just in case you misinterpreted my story, I think it was 100% correct and proper for the US to ask my family to leave, apply for permission to come back legally and finally do so. My parents did not do the right thing by overstaying their visa and working. In other words, I do not agree that they should have been allowed to stay.
When they did obtain authorization they had to agree to not be a burden to US taxpayers for five years. I also agree with this.
Legal and orderly immigration is essential for societies to function. This is true everywhere on this planet.
Seeing immigrants and perceiving an increased in crime, and citing that they are related is post facto rationalization fallacy.
Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here. Oh.. people emigrate and die, so the accumulation of numbers is not valid nor does that handle double counting.
AFAIK a strong US economy generates around 250k jobs per month. Further, there were more jobs created under Biden than were lost during the pandemic.
I'd also suggest if this all were a big deal, illegal entry ought to be elevated from a civil infraction. It is more severe in the eyes of the law to drive 25 hour than it is to overstay a visa.
I didn't say they were and you have no clue if they are or are not. Even if you were personally there to demonstrate peacefully, no have no clue what forces are operating behind they scenes. And we know that part is true. One way to put it is that aspects of this is organized crime. They will eventually be discovered and held to pay for what they have done in a court of law.
> Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here
Not a logical fallacy, but the most incomprehensible development over the years is that somehow large numbers of people think it is OK for people to just pour into the US as they wish, no controls, no admission criteria, nothing. And yet, the same people understand that this is not acceptable anywhere else in the world.
Clearly there's nothing I can say to help people who are firmly chained inside the cave looking at shadows. The indoctrination is way too powerful. Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.
Perhaps this is your idea of what this country needs to become?
https://i.imgur.com/JcjpHKe.png
Not going to happen. No way.
Actually, it's the other way around.
The US southern border was very porous for most of its history. Around 1986, a combination of moral panic about Latino influence on the culture and concerns about drug trade enabled the Reagan administration and Congress to tighten immigration law into something approximating the structure we have today in terms of enforcement (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5049707/).
This backfired spectacularly. Let people bop back and forth to Tijuana, and they bop back and forth to Tijuana. Force them to struggle to cross the border, to declare nationality, start evicting them if they over-stay... And now they have reason to choose and to fight for the choice. The result of closing the border is undocumented immigration went up (secondary statistics strongly suggesting that this was actual immigration, not enforcement resulting from more tracking of undocumented immigrants).
Regardless of the law on paper, under-enforcement was the behavior of the land for nearly a century, and this new regime is an experiment that has strongly suggested the law was sourly anti-human to begin with.
(As a meta-comment on law: you're talking to a generation that watched the War on Drugs happen. Don't be surprised Americans have soured on the notion, in general, that law and morality are closely interlocked).
> Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.
I'd say it would take sound arguments. Meanwhile, your arguments are not sound. You did not address what I wrote. To rebut a 'guilt-by-association' criticism, you said "I didn't say they were [affiliated]". That confirms the criticism.
You did not address the post-facto rationalization criticism at all.
I also saw a person in a pokemon costume too. Until we can have some sound arguments and facts, it's very much a choose-your-own-adventure situation. Are we here to just yell at each other? I personally do think the country needs to maintain rule-of-law (with notable mention of the 1st amendment), and the full rule-of-law goes for everyone, police, protestors, and opportunists.
Not here to yell at you or anyone. Having lived in multiple cultures and countries across the world, I bring to the table a perspective that most Americans simply do not have. I have no clue if you are American, BTW. I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager. I have seen and lived the pain and misery leftist ideologies bring to populations first hand.
Any immigrant who has actually lived these realities cannot comprehend how it is that the US does not simply laugh these people off the stage. And, to be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all (despite the media pushing that narrative into people's brains day after day).
So, like I said, nothing I can say to you or anyone else, that much is obvious. There are things you learn about society and ideology that can only be learned from experience. Maybe the US needs to live through a leftist utopia for a period of time for everyone to come out smarter. That would be tragic, of course, but it might also be necessary. If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation I don't know what will.
Have a good one.
Rolling in the National Guard and Marines on a peaceful protest is, quite frankly, un-American. It's massive federal overreach that has led to violence in the past. Would be nice if the current administration knew its own history.
They were throwing molotov cocktails, rocks, scooters, mortar-like fireworks, bottles with urine and chemicals and who knows what else. They were destroying and looting stores and vandalizing everything in sight. I don't know how many Waymo cars they destroyed (it looked like five). Far from peaceful.
The moderate or peaceful majority is never the reason for enforcement actions. These are triggered by a militant and violent minority, some of whom are actually paid to cause disruption. So, you have a couple of choices. The first is to do nothing and just let it burn. We have seen that happen before. The second is to bring forward an overwhelming show of force to dissipate that violent element (and bring them to justice). That's what happened.
This is no different from control system theory. The ideal critically-damped feedback loop does not exist when dealing with mobs. Either you crank up the dampening early or you pay the consequences of doing it too late. We can't have entire business districts destroyed by thugs. You have to stop them as soon as possible. As it stands, these animals caused a massive amount of damage in just a couple of days.
Yesterday showed the contrast very well, there was a peaceful (truly, not the fake "peaceful" pushed by the media while shit is burning) protest that seemed to number in the thousands of people. Perfect. No problems. That only happened because thugs (the minority) learned within a day or two that they would suffer severe consequences for their actions.
Violence happened, but not to any scale that makes a military deployment on American soil in peacetime make sense.
Does this look like a riot justifying soldiers to you? https://kolektiva.social/@jonahgibberish/114663170166350434
> This is no different from control system theory.
Rolling out the Marines is turning the `I` knob, not the `D` knob. It's teaching protestors "if you're gonna show up, come armed to deal with soldiers." Incredibly dangerous in a country where that firepower is in so many private hands.
I don't know when we became a nation so cowardly that we have to point military firepower at our own citizens. When strangers are turning out into the streets to thwart federal enforcement, maybe the problem is the law not the criminals?
We are left in a very, very bad place when the media can't be relied on to tell the truth. But here we are..
I wish we could tell that to Trump.
>We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. T
Okay, and Biden deported more people than Trump's first term. Is that fact a joke too?
>go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around.
Okay, what am I looking for? The most recent news update was June 5th about building a wall in Arizona. I thought that 2016 narrative was over?
>if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.
And
>In Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, there were 271,484 individuals removed from the US by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). This number represents an increase of nearly 90% compared to the previous fiscal year. This data includes removals by ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).
Why are we acting like Biden did nothing?
Now that bureaucracy has been smashed in favor of autocracy, and we're suffering the other demented guy - not merely as a figurehead, but getting straight raw dogged by his rotting brain as he destroys what's left of our distributed economy with a national sales tax, orders the American military to attack American cities, and preps for a uuuuge North Korean style parade.
As Americans, we have a right to protest. That right does not go away when other people damage property, government property especially. Remember January 6, where there weren't even real ideals at stake but just a crowd riled up on fake news campaign propaganda that turned out to be utterly false?
When things do get out of hand, which is far beyond a few destroyed government vehicles, it is up to the local police forces to set the balance between restoring order and that still existing first amendment right to protest. Despite LAPD having been doing this just fine, Trump is illegally escalating the situation to look strong for the useful idiots still following him, to distract from his hissy fit with Musk, and most importantly to take the focus off his Big Ugly Deficit Spending Inflation Bill poised to bankrupt our country.
It seems like you need to have the realization that just because you've caught one tribe's media lying does not mean that you've found pure truth.
Typical. Diminish the other person by claiming that everything they say are talking points. In other words, they are mindless drones simply repeating what they are told. The minute you take that perspective the only thing you can believe is your own bullshit, because everything else is dismissed as talking points. Brilliant.
> It seems like you need to have the realization that just because you've caught one tribe's media lying does not mean that you've found pure truth.
I'll repeat what I said in another comment:
Having lived in multiple cultures and countries across the world, I bring to the table a perspective that most Americans simply do not have. I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager. I have seen and lived the economic and cultural destruction the left loves to use to control societies. They love the poor so much they multiply them. I have seen and lived the pain and misery leftist ideologies bring to populations first hand. No leftist society in history, anywhere, has elevated their population. Before you say China, that was done by the CCP grabbing onto external capitalist forces, without which they would still be an agrarian society.
To be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all (despite the media pushing that narrative into people's brains day after day).
Any immigrant who has actually lived these realities cannot comprehend how it is that the US does not simply laugh these people off the stage. Or, how it is that Americans are so easily duped by these professional manipulators.
There's nothing I can say to you or anyone else to have you see the reality that has been playing out, that much is obvious. There are things you learn about society and ideology that can only be learned from experience.
Maybe the US needs to live through a leftist utopia for a period of time for everyone to come out smarter. That would be tragic, of course, but it might also be necessary. If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation I don't know what will.
Have a good one.
Your comment was better before you edited it to have this. The criticism isn't of you personally, it's of using a cookie-cutter argument that sidesteps talking about the actual topic. Do you not see how it's a non-sequitur to talk about now-out-of-office Biden's mental incapacity as a response to Biden being mentioned as the nominal figurehead for a set of policies?
> I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager
Is the problem here not the military thugs and the lack of individual rights and freedoms, not whatever political narratives are being professed by the people ruling with the thugs?
> I have seen and lived the economic and cultural destruction the left loves to use to control societies
Why is it just "the left" ? Why not all authoritarians ? It seems to me that authoritarians will use any ideology as a backbone for driving hypocritical "do as I say" power.
> To be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all
This is the crux of your bait and switch, where you've heavily focused on how bad the power-descendant "leftists" could be, but now give a pass to the different flavor authoritarians that are currently attacking our society. By my own analysis of seemingly undisputed facts, we have or have had:
- Tariffs further destroying our economy, implemented and dialed back with seemingly no actual rationale or goals besides shaking down other countries for personal enrichment.
- Significant destruction of the US bureaucracy which had been somewhat constraining authoritarian power. The problem with bureaucratic authoritarianism wasn't the bureaucracy but rather the authoritarianism.
- Destruction of US scientific research capacity because the communities doing the research had the wrong politics. And for what remains, the implementation of a right-flavored Lysenkoism.
- American soldiers in an American city pointing guns at American citizens exercising their first amendment constitutional rights, against the express authority of that state's government.
- International isolation through alienation of our long-term allies by telling them we might side with their adversaries instead, or even outright attack them ourselves.
- A weaker Dollar based on political instability
- A massive deficit spending bill on the table, continuing the long trend of Republicans complaining about monetary inflation while actually being the worst offenders.
If and when "leftists" get back into power, all of these liberty-destroying trends will be gleefully embraced and expanded under the banner of leftism "fixing" what rightism did, just as they're currently being justified as rightism "fixing" what leftism did. In reality it's all just individual-liberty-destroying authoritarianism. What has changed is that you are now gleefully supporting it.
> If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation
How is this not just another cliche talking point? I've spent some time in LA a while ago. It wasn't for me - self absorbed, entitled, group-performative politics as a coping mechanism for societal problems. Affluenza where all the white people don't even know which end of a screwdriver to hold because they pay an immigrant underclass to do anything beyond changing a GU24. Oh, and you actually find yourself getting sick of sunny days because there is no damn weather. I could go on!
But "scare the shit" ? If you don't want to live in that culture and environment, don't go there? Despite my distaste, individual choice seems fine to me.
Trying to research this, I see examples like Denver and Chicago that have had struggles, anx did things like limit shelter stats to 72 hours. I found no examples though that were point blank: "we cannot handle this." Again, excluding mayor Adam's, perhaps you can help fill in the gaps with concrete examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?"
When you wrote "so they", I want to be sure that the 'they' refers to bus operators that were payed to drop off migrants in Chicago:
"The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help, but bus drivers are responding by dropping migrants off in Chicago suburbs at night." [1]
The '2 buses per day' needs context. That could very well be a simple ask to not send them all at once. Further, the buses we are talking about were meant to overload the target the cities. They were sent with no notice, no coordination, just dumping a couple hundred or more people off into a random place in a random city. The ask therefore of "don't send all buses just on the same day", instead spread it out so that the volunteer resources are not overwhelmed and have a chance to work with and place everyone. I don't want to belabor this too much further, but I strongly suspect the desire for 2 buses max was a lot more about load balancing than it was rate limiting.
My impression, Chicago was more like "do this orderly, we can handle it, just don't drop off a couple hundred people all at once in some random place without telling us."
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/01/06/1223287116/chicago-is-tighten...
load balance with what exactly ? there is only one server thats rate limiting. oh you mean other servers being border states that aren't allowed to do similar rate limiting?
you asked "examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?""
I gave you an example of exactly that but you say you "suspect" its not that. Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake. City spent 700M dollars to migrant housing, employing thousands of people in all sorts of roles. You think they are dependent on volunteers to man a bus intake point? That was all clearly a ruse. Migrant shelters were very unpopular with mayor's core constituency[1].
> do this orderly, we can handle it
It was not like that it was "we can only take 2 buses total per day any" It was clearly stated in city ordinance. Why are you twisting it into something else. Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.
I think you are being higly disingenuous here.
Edit: ok i see why from your other comments. You were making a statement not asking a question about cities not wanting migrants.
Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/05/11/south-shore-neighbor...
Sorry, I should have been more direct. I do not see your example is a verbatim, "we cannot handle this." Your example strikes me as a: "please don't dump everyone on us all at once without telling us first. Spread it out some, give us notice, and don't do it in the middle of the night so that the people who would help are available."
> Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake.
I'm just quoting the source, from the previously referenced [1]: "The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help."
> Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.
We agree there was a limit put in place. We have not yet established the intent was to rate limit vs any other plausible explanation. Even if load balancing were not the intent, that does not prove the intent was rate limiting.
OTOH, if we did know the total number of buses, then we could infer rate limiting. Notably if there are more than 14 buses/wk, then the 2 buses per day limit would be a rate limit. If it's 10 busses/wk, then a 2 bus/day max is not a rate limit beyond the 24 hour threshold, which is exactly load balancing.
> Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.
I appreciate that. I can understand that there would have been a tense mood. The way people were 'shipped' to Chicago seemed intended to put high stress on the community receiving them.
> I strongly suspect
> My impression
so i guess its just your interpretation against mine. prbly not productive to discuss this anymore.
anyways kind of boring done to death on internet a million times before :)
There were not 12 million immigrants entering during the Biden administration. Please provide balanced proof.
The only people in NY that claimed we couldn’t handle it were the Mayor who was trying to get out of his blatant corruption by appealing to Trump.
Funny how that seems to have ended magically as soon as Trump was elected.
We all point to Texas's education department as a laughing stock of results. But we expect Texas to bear a massive part of the burden of low income non-English migrants while using the same measuring stick to compare. And we act like this is fair. And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure! We should all do more to support these communities.
I do agree, it's largely a self inflicted problem. But things need to change to properly deal with the increase in those relying on public programs. They're underfunded, understaffed, and under supplied. We're not setting people up for success, and it shows.
It can't possibly be that hard to find Spanish speaking teachers in Texas.
When you can have 80% of the take home apay but have fewer parents issuing death threats while filling tacos at Taco Bell (and they pay for your community college to go elsewhere) it's no surprise teachers choose to go elsewhere.
Practically every school district in Texas is facing a qualified teacher shortage.
Of course, the Trump admin has responded to this by deciding not to fund the TQP grant program, which in part trains and places teachers in high-need areas like STEM, special ed, and bilingual ed. This struggle is mostly a self-inflicted policy choice.
I'm saying we need to change our funding for education and protect workers rights. We need to crack down on those hiring illegal labor. I agree things need to change. I think the federal government should acknowledge we're being more impacted by immigration than many other states and help more with education and other social programs. I think it was a bad choice for us to not expand Medicaid back in the day and I think its bad we're talking about restricting it more. I'm probably not the person you're picturing in your mind, I'm going to go ride a bicycle to pick up my kids from school today and I've talked a few friends of mine out of buying a pickup truck.
> And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure!
I'm fully agreeing at least half the problem is within.
> Rounding people up and locking them up won’t solve the other self inflicted problems
I agree! I don't think a lot of what Texas is doing is good!
The Democrats, who love to lecture everybody about "protecting democracy", are attempting to sway voter demographics in their favor through illegal immigration. California used to be a Republican state till it was turned deep blue through immigration.
And one-party states produce the worst, most incompetent politicians, who rise to the top not through the battle of ideas, ability and accountability but through political favors and backroom deals.
Gavin Newsom is the perfect example of this.
If they're failing, they're failing extremely well. I wonder how we get some of that failure in my part of the country?
Remind me again why we want to kick immigrants out?
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/largest-joint-immigration-...
If I was a betting man, I'd handicap the number of paper-less workers he employs at his 3 golf clubs in Florida at 100. If we were to take into account the amount of work-permit-less laborers working on his golf courses nationwide, I'd say the number is over 200.
And even then, I'd bet my life on the over. Having played golf once at his club in Doral (shitty course, would never play again, even if my round was covered), I can safely assume ain't nobody mowing that course that can speak English passably, let alone are in this country working legally.
How proletarian of him to hire "normal" help. Lol.
Based on my limited experience with comparable clubs in the northeast I would have expected the properties to be run by (subcontracted) crews of "you pay extra because we speak english and have no face tats or felonies" type service personnel because that's what the old money wasp clientele expect.
I can also attest that some of the multigenerational "my great grandkids won't have to work a day in their lives" wealth types are some of the cheapest and stingiest people I've ever met, and most certainly don't care that the groundskeepers at their too-cool-for-school clubs in Westchester or The Hamptons or Greenwich speak zero english and aren't here legally. In fact, that's the expectation, because god forbid their club dues go up by a few hundred dollars a year (while they spend that same amount on a single dinner at the clubhouse).
Now, I get that "a few" isn't a trend but the effect is pretty observable. IDK if it's the customers really driving things or if the townies are simply more capable of excelling in such roles.
I've played tennis and golf all over Westchester County, all over Fairfield County, and in Long Island. On the golf side, yeah, it's townies. Same goes for pro shop, tennis assistants, pool staff, and sometimes, kitchen/snack bar staff. But the folks who mow the lawns, clean the locker rooms and toilets, water the greens? Hell no those aren't locals.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...
Remember folks, with this administration, hypocrisy is the point.
Omg, I’m in tears.
It’s an open “secret” in some industries that it’s trivially easy to hire illegal immigrants en masse through Florida-based “recruiters”.
If this somehow changes, some big R donors are going to be very upset.
I don’t know that that is true:
Florida: https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/100-undocumented-immigrant...
Texas: https://www.tpr.org/border-immigration/2025-06-05/ice-raids-...
California farm country: https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/01/kern-county-immigrati...
“This appears to be the first large-scale Border Patrol raid in California since the election of Donald Trump, coming just a day after Congress certified the election on January 6, in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency.”
It strains credulity somewhat to act as though ICE, whose purpose has always been immigration enforcement, only started enforcing immigration under Trump. I remember hearing about ICE/immigration raids for many decades now in California.
In any event I think the prior’s point was that the current admins’ zealous focus on immigration is mostly optics. The idea is to get California activists to juxtapose themselves on the evening news throwing bricks and Molotovs against clean cut patriotic young servicemen. The American electorate prefer marines to brick throwers, so it’s just easy politics. It’s been the go to gambit of the Trump team for most of his two terms. Immigration is a very popular issue with voters, but not with educated journalists who know most GOP donors like the Koch brothers are free market libertarians who want totally open boarders and therefore despite the voter concern, nothing meaningful will ever happen because immigration enforcement and reform will remain in essence a tool to whip up hysteria in the non-sophisticated. Immigration and deportation numbers don’t lie, and tell most of the story.
> President Trump spent much of his campaign vowing "mass deportations" of undocumented immigrants, and the first weeks of his term have been marked by public displays of immigration enforcement. It could pose a blow to multiple parts of the country's food supply chain, including the dairy industry, where more than half of the national workforce is undocumented.
* https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-undocumented-workers-suppo...
Increasing immigration is a good way to revitalize a stagnant economy. This is the great chasm between people's intuition of how national economies work and economists' understanding of how they work.
Then why is Canada's economy stagnating with all that emigration? When is that supposed economic boom coming?
The second issue is, if that economic boom is gonna trickle down to the Canadian working class or only to the top 1% of Canadian business and asset owning class while everyone else is left holding the bag?
Because we've been duped for decades with this uncontrolled immigration trickle down economic fallacy.
No wonder Canada's productivity is stagnant and on track for the lowest growth in the G7. Why invest in technology or productivity when you can just cry to the government for cheap, indentured labor?
Also, isn't it completely reckless to import a lot more people in a short timespan, without the necessary housing and infrastructure (doctors, nurses, teachers, etc) to support them in the first place?
It's definitely not the case now. Unemployment is way up. Which I suspect is a combination of factors (slowing economy & tariffs) not just immigration.
But yes, Canadian governments work for employers, not workers. Just like any other advanced capitalist country. There is an expectation that there's a "natural" unemployment rate in this country around 6%, and they freak out if it goes much lower than that.
In general, when regular people are complaining about inflation they're complaining about their groceries. When you hear businesses and governments concerned about inflation .. they mean they're stressed out because minimum wage employees are demanding some basic respect that employers feel they shouldn't have to provide...
Gun control, abortion, immigration (legal and illegal), taxation/gov’t spending, affirmative action (aka DEI), etc.
Trump is really good at pushing buttons and generating outrage though. Not unexpected for a reality TV show star.
How did the market going up lose her money?
The loss of potential gains?
Why do you assume that that doesn’t happen?
- Chicago (2014) https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/chicago-area-company-fined...
- Texas (2012) https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/2-companies-admit-hiring-i...
- Colorado (2025) https://www.cpr.org/2025/04/30/ice-fines-colorado-janitorial...
etc.
ACSI fined $2M for the same amount paid as wages to illegal labor. How much profit did they make from that? Sounds more like the cost of doing business than any real crushing fine.
Put the management of these companies in prison for ~~knowingly~~ recklessly hiring illegal labor. Make it likely they will be audited and caught. Make it easier to get a work permit That will solve a lot of illegal migration.
Also for tech jobs like software engineering? Or only for manual labor?
This current structure of immigration status being tied and sponsored to your current employer is pretty messed up though. It does a lot to artificially drive down wages even more, these people aren't free to choose where they work.
You just provide proof of why it doesn't happen in the very first link. 300k fine for 604 illegal for a repeat offender. That's essentially saying: The cost to hire illegals is too small not to do it.
They were fined less than $400 per undocumented person they hired, or about a week and a half pay at minimum wage. That just sounds like a reasonable fee to hire someone without having to pay minimum wage, healthcare, payroll taxes, etc. If you put aside ethics, that sounds like the smart business move.
[1] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/how-do-undocumented-immigr...
Why jump to these conspiracy notions about division and blatantly ignore the simplest and most obvious explanation.
Except these raids aren’t targeting that population. They’re going after the ones paying taxes. To the extent we have folks overburdening the system, it’s largely our native born (and refugees).
As of Saturday, it was about 118 arrests, 20 of which appeared to have been targeted towards dangerous people [1]. Otherwise, the locations of the raids have been employers, e.g. the garment warehouse [2] and Italian restaurant. I am assuming they aren’t working for free. (To my knowledge, no refugee centres have been raided as part of these actions in LA.)
[1] https://laist.com/news/criminal-justice/officials-name-12-ic...
[2] https://abc7.com/post/who-is-ice-arresting-in-socal-raids-7-...
So ... who is hurt and how badly are they hurt? Because when I see the amount of perfectly legal murder, robbery and torture happening in the U.S. [5] [6] [7] [8] I just don't understand what the big deal is. I guess it's whataboutism, but when we have limited resources, why are we using them for this specific problem? How bad is it compared to this other stuff?
[1] https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/undocumented-immigrant-o... (the feds took it down -- gee I wonder why -- but the facts are in the permalink)
[2] https://www.cato.org/blog/white-houses-misleading-error-ridd...
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7768760/
[4] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor#lega...
[5] https://www.techtarget.com/revcyclemanagement/feature/Breaki...
[6] https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-finds-civil-forfeitu...
[7] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/27/whistleblower-e...
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#United_States
https://nhjournal.com/as-illegal-immigrants-swamp-mas-emerge...
https://www.foxnews.com/us/migrant-arrested-broad-daylight-r...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/migrant-custody-person-interest-ra...
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/salvadoran-illegal-immig...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/haitian-migrant-accused...
> So ... who is hurt and how badly are they hurt?
Your answer: not many people, not nearly as many as our prisons-for-profit our healthcare-for-profit systems. Plenty of legals rape 13 year olds, hell a legal here in my home town cut open a mom to be and tried to kidnap her fetus.
So yeah your anecdata proves my suspicion. This illegal immigration crackdown is a false flag for racism and xenophobia. As long as people have feet they're going to move, and as long as people have brains, they're going to resent and fear that.
"Our domestic systems are broken and ruin more lives so anyone who opposes foreign criminals preying on our citizens is a racist." No. Some of us minorities appreciate law & order too.
Immigration enforcement is low-hanging fruit from a policy perspective IMO, with real, tangible positive impacts on the quality of life of the citizenry. Going after the monied class that benefits from the prisons-for-profit is a MUCH harder objective (but also absolutely necessary and SHOULD be done in conjunction with the street enforcement). I find nobody hates criminal immigrants quite like law-abiding immigrants; we end up stereotyped due to the actions of the high-profile idiots.
All that said, I find that many actions which would be "government doing its job" in other countries bring out the worst low-IQ racists in the US in support.
What makes the violent crimes high profile? I don't see anything done by illegal immigrants that isn't done at a higher rate by citizens, be it rape, murder, gang activity, you name it. It's a well documented fact (you can look it up yourself) that illegal immigrants in the U.S. have a lower crime rate than legal immigrants or citizens.
As far as tying cybersecurity to this, sure. The only safe network is one that its unplugged from the rest of the world. Problem is it's also a pretty useless network.
What is a low hanging fruit policy wise is clearly not so low-hanging from an execution perspective.
I oppose anybody preying on our citizens, not just foreigners. While there might be a political need to control immigration it ignores basic human nature, which has been around far longer than any political system.
We gotta stop calling people working hard manual jobs 7 days a week the scroungers and start calling the people working 0 days a week and collecting rent and passive income the scroungers - they are the real drain on society.
Coming as someone living in Texas - yes, it affects no one. It's always been an hallucination. We just attribute random things to "the illegals" when, in reality, they're not hurting anyone.
In fact, if you've ever been in Texas, you'd know this state is run by illegals. I drive around and I see homes being built out the wazoo and who's on the roof? Huh? Who is it? It's not white people.
I drive down 114 and they got 2 lanes closed for construction and I look over and what is working on the concrete? It's not white people. I stop by 7/11 to buy a coke and who checks me out?
People just don't like "illegals" because they're racist. That's the hard truth, the pill a lot of y'all don't want to swallow.
https://apnews.com/article/new-york-migrants-shelter-time-li...
> Ive talked to quite a few and theyve been incredibly happy to be here.
No you havent. 0/10 weak effort
>No you havent.
Neither have you. 0/10 weak effort.
Look, if you actually want to help marginalized groups, especially in their labor relations, you wouldn't be a Trumpie. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
If we're talking about improving lives for immigrants - newsflash! - the left are the only ones even entertaining that. If anything, this comment perfectly encapsulates why Republicans are so fucking stupid.
Deporting them back to their home country to reuinte them with their parents. Supporting the human trafficking of children isn't the flex you think it is.
>Really? That's what we're rolling with? Yeah, okay.
Disgusting that you openly support human trafficking.
>Look, if you actually want to help marginalized groups, especially in their labor relations, you wouldn't be a Trumpie.
Who said I'm a Trumpie? Not me.
>If we're talking about improving lives for immigrants - newsflash! - the left are the only ones even entertaining that.
Both sides make this exact claim, that they're improving the lives of immigrants. Considering immigrants have made large turns towards the right in the past few years, the numbers speak for themselves.
>If anything, this comment perfectly encapsulates why Republicans are so fucking stupid.
If anything, this comment perfectly encapsulates why Democrats are so fucking stupid.
It's not lost on me that Democrats are once again supporting trafficking in an underclass of exploited noncitizen workers for capitalism.
They act accordingly to those incentives.
They sometimes say that they want less illegal and more legal immigration.
Biden’s dementia isn’t an explanation here, that’s really mostly just political ammo.
It would seem most likely that the Marines were called strictly to protect federal buildings, facilities and agents. The problem I see is the latter category. I am personally fine with National Guard being used to protect people and infrastructure when appropriate and when confined to federal facilities, and I'm even fine with the use of military to protect federal facilities... however, the second active duty military engages civilians 'on the streets' we have martial law and that's a whole new can o worms with explosive possibilities for escalation.
Yes, there is.
> It would seem most likely that the Marines were called strictly to protect federal buildings, facilities and agents.
So, to engage civilians deemed a threat to federal buildings, facilities, and agents.
The distinction you are trying to draw does not exist, and is simply a very weak attempt to craft a mission that can be argued not to be using the military as a posse comitatus (even though it clearly is exactly that) for the sole purpose of reserving invoking the Insurrection Act until the aggressive use of federal forces has been successful in provoking a suitably dramatic incident.
It was a multi-million dollar if-statement that copied the expertise of the relevant law into a permanently legacy expert system.
Doing anything besides that would be illegal. But that also means there is no cross-referencing or vendor enforcement of fraud.
It did things like check if some tax-related status code was valid for the indicated home country of emigration. It didn’t do things like check against a national database for an SSN.
It basically punished people for filling out forms incorrectly or not being able to scan a document.
We didn’t get new regulations every quarter or ever. I dunno what the point was.
Edit: the everify step technically used personally identifiable information to contact a national database.
I guess my gripe is that I didn’t see how it could prevent fraud in any way a normal HR person wouldn’t have caught if it were to be caught. It’s a duplication of a process everyone was already doing.
can you elaborate on that?
centralized systems for identity are used all over the f world, and de-facto you have them in the US too (hello credit cards, hello driver licenses, hello... SIM card?)... they can be used as _tools_ by regimes with fascist tendencies, but their existence alone is quite neutral
ALL countries with functional governments NEED centralized identity systems to function (hello... IRS?), and they all get them even if you like to pretend they don't exist.
...why not just accept they are there, and focus on properly securing them from attacks, making them unalterable by corrupt officials (from simple checksumming and write-only permanent archives to full-on blockchain solutions), and preventing unrestricted access to them, all technically doable.
If you PRETEND you don't have a centralized identity system, don't you just leave all these problems unfixed and just go on with a broken system forever?
You need a local actor for all the things you mention.
Credit card? there's a bit that designate that the card was physically present on the transaction place. And nothing that identify the person (even the signature on the back is joke)
Drivers license? you pay the salary of hundreds of thousands of cops.
IRS? you actually proved my point even further: remember california urging everyone to claim they account/password asap because criminals were rushing and filling fake returns to collect checks instead? clear sign of a system that have no clue how to verify identity.
So, Who is pretending? Stop daydreaming that the technofascist lie of everyone being a verifiable number is real.
Even if we had a perfect e-verify system that magically guaranteed the result was accurate, it probably wouldn't make a difference. Not while it's use is "optional" in states like Texas.
If the US were more self-aware and honest it would expand existing guest worker programs and create new pathways for temp labor to work without obtaining citizenship the way Singapore and Middle Eastern countries do. They seem cruel but at least each side of the equation knows what it's getting and they can even visit home every year! But Americans' hubristic tendency is to look at a place like Singapore or some other new skyline in the middle east or Asia and declare smugly "borderline slaves built that."
As soon as you institute such a program businesses could get sued for illegal labor conditions, abuses of employees, sexual abuse of employees, violations of contract law, and more. Their expenses for imported labor would probably triple.
Would such businesses close as a result? Maybe a handful would but the real impact would be a huge drop in profits—also known as a greater share of profits going to workers.
FWIW, I bet the part of the population saying that is also the part opposed to the current immigration enforcement, namely liberals.
The whole working class/middle class divide was made up by the rich to get you to vote against your interests, and propped up by pick-mes who want to feel like they're better than someone.
The only way this would stabilize is if the government came in and subsidized and socialized farm work heavily and that would also never happen.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/31/634442195/wh...
Something along the lines of:
Now nobody is picking fruits, all the fruits die on the tree/vine, so there's none of that in the supermarket and those farms go bankrupt. Also, most of those who were paid to butcher the cattle are gone, but the cows are still there, costing the farmers money, so those farms go bankrupt. And then so do the feed suppliers for cattle farmers that don't ranch (or do but need extra feed besides the grass). But everyone still needs to eat, which means there's correspondingly more demand for the stuff which is heavily mechanised, so prices for that go way up, but because this is an instant supply shock the average person is still hungry no matter what the prices are, unless the humans start eating alfalfa en-masse.
please tell me that's not a typo /g
Good, working class salaries need to be high! We can't function as a society without all the people who dispose of our garbage, maintain our plumbing and water supply, grow our food, provide our electricity, and support our IT infrastructure.
Only one clarification: there is no difference between lower class, middle class and working class. White collar or blue collar, we are all collared.
The middle class construct is artificially invented so the owning class (people who don't have to work for their money) have something for the workers to aspire to. A software engineer with $300k/y is far closer wealth wise to a minimum wage worker in Mickey-D than they are to your Tim Cooks, Jeff Bezos and Adolf, pardon, Elon Musk.
In a Tesla, Prius or in a old Dodge, you are still stuck in traffic while they are flying with private jets.
How come the blame is not solely on the businesses willingly employing thousands of "illegal workers", not paying tax on them nor health benefits, and not even minimum wage, and in that way undercutting the value of blue collar labor?
It isn't remotely the problem or even in the same galaxy as needing this type of response.
The cause for the actions is racism. The protests are due to calling out racism and removing due process.
Anything else is denial or sophistry, that's the simple truth.
You're talking about the same country that had the "White Australia Policy" within living memory. "Are Australian immigration policies motivated by racism?" is unfortunately not a preposterous question at all.
Please inform me how the US under democrats has NOT had "strong border policy"? Do you know what Obama did more than any president before him? He rounded up immigrants, placed them in front of judges to give them due process, and shipped them out of the country if they did not have a legal right to be here.
Sure is funny how that is "weak border policy"
I never said that, but that's quite the strawman.
It would have been possible to reform the system, without deporting anyone the wrong color to a damn megaprison in a foreign country, or arresting people right at their court hearings, most who are here legally.
The way things are going, the protests are more than warranted, more than justified. As far as I'm concerned, anyone still defending a clear authoritarian is a traitor.
Your response is a straw man. Be better.
FWIW I don’t agree with OP in that there isn’t a single cause, but racism definitely plays a role.
And then "Anything else is denial" shows a myopic, closed minded viewpoint, suggesting any further discussion would be pointless. As is most internet chatter on this type of matter.
The person I was replying to refuted an argument that GP did not make. And one that was arguably weaker and more difficult to defend.
That’s my understanding of what the strawman fallacy is. What’s yours?
> But I think the problem is that "The cause for the action is racism" doesn't actually contain an argument at all.
Yeah this is an oversimplification and not really an actionable one. But there’s an argument buried in there and it’s not wrong. The current administration plays on existing racist and xenophobic undertones to drum up support. It’s all fear based rhetoric.
It is a well know open secret that not only do practically every large construction site employ illegal immigrants, but there is also a tier system for who do what job. The highest risk and longest hours are given to illegal immigrants. The next tier are those that work off the books, and then last we got those that operate legit as there need to be at least a few of those. This setup seemingly works, until there is an accident or the hiring firm suddenly refuse paying the illegal workers and the miserable details of the human slavery becomes news for a day.
In hindsight I suspect the answer was to file that form to amend the W-2, but this was before the internet so it would have been much harder to get answers.
They charges 4 low level managers with aiding illegal immigrants.
But I don't think the companies had to pay any fines or any owners face charges.
I saw them, worked with them, so don't tell me they all criminals or lazy. "Legal" or "illegal" is just a label we put on the same person, but person doesn't change.
It's non-working lazy criminals we want to push against. Oftentimes those who could get their *ss off the couch and emigrate are the most active.
Then businesses or even individuals could hire someone for an hour, a day or a year and pay them with no friction. And the check for eligibility would be automatic. Fees could be driven to very low levels by the fact that there is no creativity whatsoever in actually implementing the transfer.
But there’s a showstopping problem here: the US economy, especially agriculture, is highly dependent on employing people illegally. So a real solution to controlling illegal employment would also require the kind of immigration reform that actually allows useful immigration, and it would require a competently run nation database of employment eligibility, and good luck getting bipartisan consensus on that.
It is entirely possible to hire all the migrant agricultural workers one needs using it, but most farms just don't want to pay visa fees, transportation or housing on top of a prevailing wage.
Conspicuously nobody is checking agricultural businesses in red states.
Coincidence? Definitely not.
The Nazis leveraged hatred towards minorities as a wedge to force their totalitarian control over Germany's state and society. They built up a ficticious enemy within, they inflamed society against that enemy, and proceeded to promise they would eliminate that enemy if the were granted total control over everyone and everything.
It's no coincidence that Trump is targeting California to fabricate a crisis and rapidly escalate the issue he created himself, specially how he forced the unjustified and illegal deployment of national guard and the armed forces. The goal is clearly not illegal aliens standing next to Home Depots. The goal is to force a scenario where loyalists in the armed forces target any opposition. It's no coincidence Trump has been threatening the governor of California with prison for the crime of "running for elections" at the time he's announcing deploying armed forces in California without authorization or legal standing and against the will of the governor of California.
They blamed them for pre-existing social problems. I feel the important context was that the government had to be significantly dysfunctional for the Nazi party to even exist.
The military are now being used for police work, and the police are behaving like the military.
This mob are creeping towards KristallMethNacht.
But also, he doesn't need to be literally Hitler to be bad.
What I'm trying to say, or I guess repeat after you, is that fascism doesn't have to be Hitlerian to be fascism. Or in other words, at this point it's too late anyways.
We absolutely should start comparing and measuring now, because at the point where the comparisons match 100%, too much damage will have been done.
If I was religious I'd probably pray for the US, as I'm not I'm just shaking my head in astonishment.
I think that focusing on broad comparisons is not the best idea precisely because it's way too easy to deconstruct, and "X is literally Hitler" is such an overused political trope that most people stop listening right away regardless of how much truth there is to it. It's better to focus on the specific negative actions.
Well, yeah, PM’s (and the Chancellor in the German system at the time, and now, is a PM) are almost invariably appointed by the head of state after either a general election—or sometimes between them if an incumbent resigns or a vacancy occurs by other means—as the leader of the majority party (if any), the leader of the majority coalition (if there's no majority party but there is a majority coalition), or sometimes (and whether this is allowed and whether it makes a sooner next election than would otherwise be required varies) some minority party leader based on some combination of size of minority, support and opposition from other parties, and discretion of the head of state.
And, yes, Hitler was first appointed as the last and weakest kind, but that's still effectively winning the tiebreaker set out for an ambiguous electoral result, since it could only happen because no other party or coalition could form a legislative majority.
Is immigration a new hot topic in the US?
I mean, a few years ago the US government started wasting money building a wall on the US-Mexico border whose only purpose was propaganda and dog whistling.
And is it really necessary to point out the obvious parallels between the Nazi's "vital state" propaganda and Trump's "Canada as 51st state" and "Greenland is ours" rhetoric?
If they talk like Nazis and they goose-step like Nazis, what are they? I would ask if you'd start being concerned when they started rounding up random people off the streets, but apparently that's still not enough.
I mean, this is a guy who put out a press release about his own health where everyone could tell he was lying because it included his own height and they just found pictures of him standing next to other people who were supposed to be the same height or shorter.
The employers/government don't do this because the prices of existing goods depend on that cheap labor. Money printing (deficit spending) through the economy has created many chaotic distortions and as a result of currency debasement has pushed the profit margins down close to zero for many businesses concentrating them in few hands.
These businesses can continue functioning for a time thanks to money-printer loans they receive in the form of non-reserve based debt to a primary dealer, but that doesn't solve the issue that the price of good inputs and the amount of money that gets circulated through work in the economy is insufficient to purchase basic necessities (its sieving, which often happens before a deflationary collapse).
On top of this already floundering problem which we cannot address, we have a demographics problem. The old, infirm, and disabled outnumber the young who work. There is no way forward without replacement as the costs of the old far exceed the young, and the only means to do so is through taxing immigrants who come here to work.
On top of this, China wants to go to war to retake Taiwan, and so securing the border is a critical national security interest/threat.
Its called a debt trap, any historian can tell you about how this and other behaviors towards empire (hegemony) culminate in destructive cycles.
The baby boomers as a cohort largely caused this, and have been orchestrating it in leadership so that the consequences of their choices don't hit until after they die.
Then both liberals and conservatives accuse thrawa8387336 of being a member of the opposite group, due to how bad thrawa8387336's argument sounds.
Nothing GP wrote suggests that. Listing some realities and effects doesn't mean you approve of them.
Your analysis is simply off. The side pushing for worker and immigrant rights are not saying "please keep immigrants here so we can exploit them more".
The side that's trying to maintain a population of illegal immigrants and explains that this is necessarily because it is necessary to have a pool of workers willing to work for illegal wages.
Trump needed immigration to go unsolved in 2024 to have something to run on.
Liberals may make the point that removing millions of workers from the country would be bad for the economy, but you're being downright disingenuous if you suggest that is the primary reason people are upset about the raids and deportation.
you think tyson foods is paying ppl cash under the table?
No, it’s much better to go harass people who aren’t in republican circles. Us vs them. Round up some illegals, make some examples, stick it to the democrats (who loosened the borders and are complicit). Trump is strong, and finally cracking down on all of this illegal nonsense, hoo rah!!
It’s all theater, that’s what Trump is - a darn good showman. Some illegals will get deported, eventually some of his core will see him as the thug he is. We just need to ensure democrats have a viable candidate lined up…ideally a white southern man. Clearly the push to elect a woman isn’t working at this time - we’ve tried it twice and Americans vote Trump instead.
Also, I'll keep saying it: the cruelty is the point. And sadly the Stanford experiment shows that people will always oblige over the change to torture others if there's no consequences.
If you're implying that employers of illegal immigration are hard to find, it's really not. Any farmer who receives subsidies (which is most of them) has to submit all sorts of paper trails, and if they have both no employees and no fancy farm-automation equipment, then it's pretty easy to check if they have illegal immigrants.
Hell, a single surveillance drone during harvest season could do 90% of your work. Work you're already doing if you're looking for illegal immigrants. "Gee I have no idea why a bunch of illegal immigrants harvested all my fruit for free", yeah pull the other one.
That's not how it works in practice. They use someone else's SSN and proper withholdings so nobody's the wiser unless the owner of the SSN being used both gets audited and has some portion of their income bumped into another bracket, which is rare.
This does not eliminate illegal labor completely but significantly reduces it.
Second, I disagree. It's important to disincentivize both the supply and demand. Right now, employers of illegal immigrants suffer no negative consequences when caught... so they keep in doing it. Which means that these mass deportations are purely performative, and the next wave of immigrants will get the same jobs.
Once they get into the US they don't just live off of social services. What the US provides isn't nearly enough for that. So they end up working, their kids go to school, and those kids eventually have children who are US citizens. That's literally the concept that the United States of America was founded upon (after the genocide of the natives). That's the entire intent behind the US Constitution.
By letting people come to the US and stay in the US we're following the founding fathers playbook. It's the founding principal of the nation. That's how things are supposed to work.
Saying "Asylum _seekers_ come to the US to literally escape torture and death" is disingenuous.
it's so widely know im unsure if you're really oblivious or being sarcastic. sorry.
- Recall back to the old republican party of just 20 years ago, GW Bush wanted a guest worker program.
- Recall back to just a year and a half ago, a big bill was in congress to drastically ramp up employment laws and increase border funds - funny enough that was rejected. That rejection by the republican party _increased_ illegal immigration
- The deportation rate under BOTH Obama and Biden has been higher to date compared to the current (second) Trump administration.
So, if you want higher deportation and laws to increase border security - apparently we need to go back to the previous administration... The facts are seemingly all very topsy turvy compared to the narrative.
If you want something like this to work, federal agents need to do it.
The other was about the deportations, which the court said they need to serve deportees a notice of deportation before they are actually deported.
There is no ruling that says ICE can't go after them wherever they are and arrest them.
Doing the arrests? Sure. Intimidating protesters for partisan messaging while desecrating the honour of our armed forces? No.
The balance between State and Federal power is part of how the country works. You can’t just call in the military whenever States refuse to help you, which they aren’t obligated to do.
[1] “The clause relating to fugitive slaves is found in the national Constitution, and not in that of any State. It might well be deemed an unconstitutional exercise of the power of interpretation to insist that the States are bound to provide means to carry into effect the duties of the National Government nowhere delegated or entrusted to them by the Constitution.” Prigg v. Pennsylvania https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/41/539/
[2] “Congress may not simply ‘commandeer the legislative process of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.” Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-476
The only "they" doing arrests are ICE and the LAPD. The California National Guard isn't arresting anyone to my knowledge.
> local law enforcement did nothing to protect ICE from the mobs that try to set free illegals
Source? For literally any of this sentence.
LAPD/Sheriffs are doing vandalism related arrests including unlawful assembly.
CA guard is standing around federal properties. They normally don’t do arrests but they can and will do “detainments” until another agency can take over.
But the FBI is on site doing federal arrests (vandalism etc against a federal building is both a state and federal offense).
Not properly, they are hiding while wearing masks and not making it clear they are LEOs.
Not to mention arresting people here LEGALLY....
Yesterday I saw a pic claiming to be of local law enforcement keeping the protestors separated from ICE. It was shared by protestors very upset that ICE was being kept safe while ICE shot at the protestors with tear gas — but(!) I have no way to tell if that was even taken this week in LA or 10 years ago in a different continent, because even before GenAI, there's loads of cases where people share videos of something awful, but label it about something completely different and use it as evidence about that other thing.
The person you replied to is looking for evidence that "local law enforcement did nothing to protect ICE from the mobs that try to set free illegals" — it's really hard to show "did nothing" from any single clip.
Even absent GenAI being pretty good now, what kind of video do you think will actually demonstrate that (1) local law enforcement, (2) did nothing, not just in the area being filmed but even when the camera was off, (3) specifically that the mobs were trying to set free "illegals" rather than being very unhappy that unidentified armed people wearing masks were hauling away their local pizza maker who they'd known for a decade?
Doing a lot of work for you there.
And if illegals are such a problem, why do the Republicans toady up to the corporations that perpetuate and profit from it?
Looking at it from both sides, they are providing cheap labor to the bourgeois, taking a penance and it's agreed that it's okay, and now an outsider is coming in(trump and his administration) threatening that contract and they expect the state leaders to protect them, as they currently are with their inaction and posturing that everything is fine and safe until Trump opened his big mouth and showed force. The inaction and posturing not being effective, now they are out there punishing the elite for not protecting them by burning down the city they love, and love for them to work in, like slave labor.
Everyone knows this to be the case in LA, the argument is does ICE have the right to go in and mass-raid? I believe it does act in the interest of the state, but I also believe that no party has ever wanted to solve the issue of illegal but otherwise law-abiding people having a path to be legal, and that issue also should also be of great interest to the state.
Btw, nothing significant was "burned down" in 2020 either. Some shops hit by looters closed for a while and eventually reopened. Fairfax was hard hit by looting and if you went there today you would have no clue that anything happened.
The current events are primarily happening in an area that is full of state and federal government facilities, not really anyone's favorite spot. No looting either, there's nothing to loot. The demonstrators are burning Waymos and Bird scooters, better if it would not happen at all, but it's nobody's personal property.
Count how many gray posts are here and think what will happen when they will all leave. Not to mention that this site is Reddit v2.0 and have the same result and that is not coincidence.
> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
Where are they finding these actors? Why aren't the job advertisements ever leaked to the public? Why hasn't an investigative journalist gone undercover to get paid to protest?
But, you're the smart guy, right? We're all imbeciles because we don't want a ruling class of billionaire grifters to normalize the concept of extrajudicial kidnappings. My bad.
How can one argue that the police serve the people? They don't necessarily even serve local government. They get a lot of federal funding and equipment, and in riot-control mode their purpose is to brutalize protestors until people stop showing up.
I also find it rather grotesque to watch Newsom argue that state and local police are perfectly capable of handling (i.e. crippling) protestors by themselves and don't need any federal assistance to do so.
Longer vid: https://streamable.com/bc1sog
Still doesn't make it right.
https://www.twitch.tv/rhyzohm/clip/SmellyCourageousSardineTT...
Your linked video is in the background in my clip.
Goes all the way back to Rodney King.
But there was countless incidents that were not high profile that went completely unpunished. The purpose was to terrify protestors. If the police beat, abduct, maim, and injure protestors, and a year or two later, a half dozen get some light punishment, are you going to risk getting your eye shot out by a rubber bullet or your arm broken by a baton to protest the police next time?
[1] “Police here routinely embrace the violent crowd-control tactics … indiscriminately attacking protesters with tear gas, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, and other “less lethal” munitions. The bureau has been hit with two temporary restraining orders from federal judges: one rebuking the PPB for likely violations of protesters’ rights to free speech and against excessive force; the other ordering the PPB to stop arresting journalists and legal observers for documenting police clashes with protesters.” https://archive.ph/39lib
[2] “Donovan LaBella, 30, was peacefully protesting outside the federal courthouse in Portland on July 11, 2020, when a deputy U.S. Marshal fired a “less lethal” impact munition that struck LaBella in the face, causing brain damage.” https://www.opb.org/article/2024/11/20/portland-protester-do...
[3] “A Portland cop who chased down and beat a protest medic, in one of the most harrowing incidents of police violence from the city’s Black Lives Matter protests last year, will not face criminal charges.” https://archive.ph/6ErUo
[4] “[N]ot a single federal officer on the Portland streets at that time has been held individually accountable for alleged constitutional violations over claims brought by David and other protesters. In fact, courts have not had a chance to assess whether constitutional violations even occurred. That is thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court, which in a series of rulings has created an accountability-free environment in which federal officials interacting with the public on a daily basis…can violate people’s constitutional rights with impunity.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/portland-prot...
[5] https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-us...
[6] “the video shows Mr. Gugino stopping in front of the officers to talk, an officer yells “push him back” three times; one officer pushes his arm into Mr. Gugino’s chest, while another extends his baton toward him with both hands. Mr. Gugino flails backward, landing just out of range of the camera, with blood immediately leaking from his right ear… ‘These officers were simply following orders from Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia to clear the square’[John T. Evans, the president of the Buffalo police union]”. https://archive.ph/KYOIS
People have long argued for a national register of police officers who were terminated for cause, or resigned to avoid termination for cause.
Awesome.
Except, at last count, about 70-75% of the nation's police departments have forbidden its use in hiring decisions due to their collective bargaining agreement with police unions...
Consider the the separation of church and state. It's done so the government remains neutral in religious matters and does not favor or establish any religion. In reality, some churches are clearly favored. Or the review system in academia. Peer reviews are so that bullshit doesn't make it into published papers. Yet, bullshit and bias does make it into published papers.
This is just a system that is working somewhat well. With obvious, very large room for improvement. But the direction, separating military and police, is good. Just not enough.
"At stake is a fundamental component of the framework of US constitutional democracy. It begins with the principle, enshrined in law, that military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law.
Most fundamentally, the founders of the American republic understood very clearly that concentrated military power, loyal to a single man, could be used to achieve total control by that person. And they had a historical example in mind: Rome — a republic governed by the people and the Senate — was transformed into an empire ruled by an emperor as a result of the Roman army being turned against its citizens."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-06-09/trump-...
Although I know quite a lot of (what I consider) well-educated Americans, it is also the only country from which I regularly meet the type of person who doesn't care at all about how society works (also, technology, history, art, etc).
You'll probably find that HN-person is the kind of person who values this kind of argument, but HN-world is quite small.
On multiple occasions, I've met Americans who simply care about might-makes-right. It's skin-deep, as soon as you ask them why they support this or that policy, it's because they are powerful and the rest of the world is not. I've literally met Americans who thought their tax money allowed them to summon troops, more than once. (This ended up backfiring as it turns out, they did not know how to get US Marines to arrive, big shocker.)
The same kind of thinking seems to be prevalent internally. You can trample the law, because you can. You see it even in ordinary US-made popular media. What happens what a character gets in trouble with the law? Well, then of course it depends on who has the most money to hire the best lawyers.
In the current case, I suspect the government will just do whatever it wants and there will be no legal reckoning.
My read is that this is even further along in many places in Europe.
The nice thing about the HN Small World is that it can be efficiently searched.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_navigable_small_w...
This was supposedly a staunch conservative stance once upon a time. The last decade clearly shifted such mentality towards one not dissimilar to Russia. I guess the cold war never true ended.
Quite often, and the answer is not many. It's why I've returned to a frankly elitist worldview, because this seems to be a historical pattern when power is diffused too widely. The lesson of our age may be that the Chinese political system, which seeks to restrit political competition within a small, carefully-selected group, is fitter than the American experiment.
I'll additionally note that China has famously not handled some of its major protests well and uh, calls in the military.
Agreed. I'm saying if we're accepting this as precedent, a Presidential republic is not a stable system. We either reject the military being called in to quell protests. Or we accept it as precedent and revise our system of government to remove that power from the madness of crowds.
Seems like it's just cultural norms all the way down. If people want to take advantage of the system, they can break these norms while pretending to be what they used to be.
serious question: are Countries such as Italy, France etc not a democracy?
All of them are, verbatim from wikipedia, "a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population.". Ditto for spain Guardia Civil, and many of the countries listed in that same wiki page: Algeria, Netherlands, Poland, Argentina, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Chile, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, ...
The spanish Guardia Civil is a very good example of a police force tied too deeply with the military. In 1981 some parts of the force attempted an actual coup, with one guy entering the parliament and shooting in the air (or ceiling).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_attempt
The continuity of the Guardia Civil after Franco's dictatorship is one of many vestiges that has not been removed due to fears of creating an instability leading to some coup and a reversal to fascism. IMHO this may have been justified the years immediately after Franco's death, but should have been addressed at some point. See the 1981 coup as for why "appeasing" the oppressors usually doesn't work out, or even works out for the oppressors.
Their logo even today still contains a fasces[1] shield, which as been added during the Franco regime.
In my experience they don't act at all like normal cops, and sometimes can be in conflict with them. The only interactions I ever hear of with citizens is if they beat the shit out of someone. You're not going to be going to them for a lost phone or a cat in a tree.
But they absolutely will do traffic police on highways, intervene to reason with a loud neighbor, etc. They'll also routinely show up during large protests in big cities.
The "big-gun carrying" Gendarmerie is a special unit, the GIGN, probably akin to US' SWAT teams. They'll intervene when "very dangerous" people are involved, think hostage situations or the like. "Regular police" also has a similar outfit.
The unit I was confusing with the Gendarmerie as a whole was the Mobile Gendarmerie, whose role is more similar to the the Guardia Civil and Carabinieri.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Gendarmerie
I wouldn't have included GIGN, since I they appear to be much smaller and have a more "special”/"tactical" role.
I'll also note that the the Gendarmerie don't appear to be sending a team to the AWC (the olympics of smashing through the ceiling and shooting you in your bed) in two weeks, whereas the Guardia Civil and Carabinieri will. This may be a geopolitical thing though.
Seeing Gens D'Armes on the street was somewhat common. The Gens D'Armes are akin to 'heavy' police and are a show of force. The Gens D'Armes were pretty common to see in the subways, airports, and/or just on patrol. They were Gens D'Armes stations in the city just how there were also regular police stations. Gens D'Armes patrols were a bit distinct from other police patrols, almost always larger groups, around 5 to 7 people with long-guns and plate carriers. Meanwhile regular police had much lighter weapons, no body armor, and very rarely were in groups of more than 2 or 3.
However, regular police now wear bulletproof vests, too, even when randomly patrolling the streets. Since some years ago, we now have "municipal police", basically police which answer to the mayor [0], as opposed to the state, with somewhat fewer powers. But even they walk around with bullet-proof vests.
---
[0] In France, "the police" usually means "Police Nationale", which answers to the Prefect, who represents the State in the local Jurisdiction (département) – they are not elected, but appointed by the Interior Ministry. The "Municial police" answers to the City, but they're not allowed to conduct all the operations that the National Police do. The City means the Mayor, who's elected by the local population.
I've only seen that when they show up as support for or operating in a similar role as CRS† (crowd control, security for major events) which indeed would be Gendarmerie Mobile but that's a far cry from the range of operational responsibilities of Gendarmerie as a whole.
Turns out this is probably what city dwellers in France would only see of Gendarmerie, because Police Nationale and Municipale (city) typically have much more presence in cities than countryside, and the other way around for Gendarmerie.
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnies_Républicaines_de_Sé...
In the Netherlands, the Royal Marechaussee are literal soldiers who perform military police duties and also many civilian policing duties, but all of them are soldiers first.
The second part is a huge differentiator from "normal" military. A police force even if administratively under the military has one crucial differentiator: their daily duties and training revolve almost exclusively around policing civilians from the same country. Military training and tactics are overwhelmingly aimed at dealing with foreign enemy combatants, mainly other military forces.
The methods give away the intentions and expected outcome. The US already has a very "militarized" police force. You send actual military only if you want to inflict the maximum amount of damage, and with that threat overwhelmingly scare the country into compliance.
That is the part that is not universally true. There are plenty of Gendarmeries who are soldiers first, with combat training and ethos, who also perform policing duties, the Marechaussee included.
Fair enough, but Wikipedia confirms that they all have civilian law enforcement and police duties so clearly their training, tactics, and experience revolve heavily around dealing with civilians.
I'll still take that over "soldiers only", even more with US's very active military where the soldiers routinely see active combat. Both the theory and practice shapes their "soldier vs. enemy combatant" world view. That's a hammer if I've ever seen one.
* when used domestically, it's under the Minister of Justice and Security
* there's also no Dutch equivalent of the U.S. presidency with unilateral executive control over the military
I'd argue this kind of danger is something you get more in presidential systems. Not that we all shouldn't be wary of military forces within our civilian populations.
So I don't think your comment makes any sense, at least in Portugal.
In any case, I hope you agree my description of the GNR was accurate in substance.
Other countries can do that if they want. It may or may not be a threat to them. But in the US, it's absolutely a threat to democracy, because it's already the executive deploying the military against the law.
They are, but not in the the "framework of US constitutional democracy." A system for which we have more evidence of stability than either of Italy or France's modern republics. (Note, too, les gendarmes' heritage: imperial France. Also, gendarmes aren't usually deployed overseas. They are, in a sense, more similar to the FBI than the U.S. Marines.)
1- the territorial split between gendarmerie/police within the French territory
2- the fact the gendarmes for police work report to the Ministry of Defense.
If one had to design the police system from crash, they would likely merge police and gendarmes for police work.
The split is nonsense today.
IMO as Chilean, it's a pretty bad thing democratically, for both historical (dictatorship) and more recent reasons. Still, there is a clear difference between when the police with deep ties to the army enforce the law and when actual troops do it.
While copper Gutiérrez and grunt Herrera both technically have the rank of corporal, one mostly writes tickets, deals with noise complaints, and has riot training, while the other only knows how to march and shoot an assault rifle.
The actually important thing is that this is testing the waters. Trump will use the troops for flimsier and flimsier reasons.
NOTE: Chilean police are semi-routinely brutal; this is not an endorsement.
Its always been this way.
Its no surprise that some government systems more strongly appeal.
The problem here is you've taken the last part as the whole.
There were plenty of thugs as you say that have no social inhibition and get imprisoned. But there are numerous others that got along well enough and covered for each other they kept themselves away from punishment. There were cruel bullies in my school while committing vicious acts had enough of a following they could depend on them to blame the victims as the entity that started the fight. This type of person is well suited for the thin blue line.
The ones that are smart behave well enough to graduate, and then go work as police, ICE, prison guards etc. Basically anywhere you can beat people and get away with it because "qualified immunity" or "the camera suddenly turned off right then" or...
I've been a part of a local right-wing militia several years ago. Out of ~20 people involved, we had two active cops and one retired. And the stories they told made it abundantly clear that most of their PD (Seattle) is like-minded.
So when push comes to shove, they will absolutely be on the side of the feds if Trump goes all in.
It’s not just that the military has become both, the police have too. Arming your police to the level of US police is just crazy.
Crowd control is pretty much the opposite of modern warfare, with large number of troops marching shoulder to shoulder forming shield walls, even having supporting cavalry.
Probably very specific, but I was in two non-US militaries and all combat corps were trained in Aid to the Civil Power, including public order, and were regularly refreshed.
Quite the opposite. It was passed in 1878 because of the backlash against Reconstruction, shortly after federal troops were withdrawn from the South in 1877, and was intended to prevent something like Reconstruction from happening again.
You're right. Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest it was a product of Reconstruction. It was absolutely part of the process of post-civil war renormalisation.
> /4 So “cover me” to the LAPD means “if someone pops up with a gun and shoots at me, shoot at them.” Apparently to the Marines it means “lay down a curtain of suppressive fire using your rifles.” Hilarity ensued.
https://bsky.app/profile/kenwhite.bsky.social/post/3lr2w7wo3...
Is that supposed to be a surprise to someone? What do you think "cover fire" is?
So yeah in conclusion, I don't really understand the point you're trying to make.
Read it in the sense of "I told my toddler they can't have ice cream three times a day and apparently that makes me a meanie".
It's called that because it's how you cover people.
If you ask someone to darn your sock, and they do, will you complain "hey, I didn't say 'darning needle'"?
A cop saying “cover me” is asking for something the marine might call overwatch.
I think you’d already kinda lost this? Cops seem to mostly serve themselves?
Wait, don't you mean that "the people become the enemies of the state"? Or did I miss some jab at immigrants?
Commander William Adama: Yeah, but I'm not going to be your policeman. There's a reason why you separate military and the police. One fights the enemy of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
I was a member of an infantry battalion once tasked with doing policing in a foreign country. Let me just say that the outcome was exactly what you’d expect. We were very effective at responding with overwhelming force to attacks by an insurgency but pretty ineffective at keeping the peace.
I don't think you were, since all US COIN operations in living memory have been abject failures.
I never said we were effective at counterinsurgency ops
That said, what the current administration is doing is almost like they're following a manual other countries followed on their road to nationalistic decline and all the right people in places of power seem to know this. I wonder if they're ready for it? My observation is that the previous administration had four years to pass laws and measures based on trump's first four years and they didn't, which tells me there is really no stopping what is to come.
The planned decline of America won't be like other countries because of post-WW2 "super power" repositioning of country and it's critical role in global trade, communications and finance. All of humanity might suffer, at least that's my fear.
On the other hand, I like to think that if things turn sour and gruesome very fast, the American public might react to that well enough to make a u-turn.
I'm in LA right now. If I didn't read the news I wouldn't know anything is up.
There's definitely amenities that can be done to make LA walkable regardless, but I understand that nature did not intent for this settlement to be human friendly.
It wouldn't, you'd need to change the food industry for that to happen.
However I don't really like walking everywhere or taking public transportation so LA is the perfect city for me because it has many municipal places I can park my car and then walk around.
Let me explain LA to you since you clearly don't understand it.
LA is a combination of many smaller cities. Each one, on it's own is a small micro city with everything you would expect. You can live in Santa Monica, Pasadena, Burbank, Sherman oaks, West Hollywood, Ktown, Beverly Hills, Sawtelle, etc. each one of those places has a very vibrant and walkable area with cute shops and restaurants and easy public transportation. If you live in those places you don't necessarily need a car.
The problem with LA is that you might want to go from one of these places to another and the walk would take a very long time because LA county is bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island. But you can walk it if you want.
LA is currently the only city in North America building new subway lines. And is doing so rapidly.
That is demonstrably false. As I type this comment I can hear the sounds of excavators digging out a station for a new subway line in Toronto.
> However I don't really like walking everywhere
Hint: If you don't like walking, then your city is not walkable. In actually walkable places, everyone likes to walk because it's so much better.
Downtown is walkable. Hollywood is walkable. Echo Park is walkable. Pasadena is walkable. Santa Monica is walkable. Long Beach is walkable. Culver City is walkable. Bevery Hills is walkable. Glendale is walkable. Burbank is walkable.
In the same way that Everest is walkable. None are walkable cities by any reasonable definition.
Making a walkable LA would mean making a much smaller urban area (or series of much smaller) with much higher population density and ideally rewilding most of the LA metro area. It is functionally impossible in the current political environment.
It's stupid that I even have to point out a few things. Like that I was born in Europe, have been to Germany and Japan, and lived near NYC for a time so I probably know better than some European about my own city.
At least my definition of walkable does not mean "you can technically walk there" it means "if you live here you will not want nor need to use your car"
But LA has a great many neighborhoods that are very walkable, and it has public transportation connecting all those walkable neighborhoods.
And in response to your spurious claims about Santa Monica: the entirety of the city of Santa Monica is just as walkable as the cities of London and Paris, and definitely more walkable than the outlying neighborhoods like Versailles.
Downtown Los Angeles is also very walkable, and there are tourists who make that walk every day.
You and I have different definitions of walkable.
The walkability of cities is linked to increased happiness in people, so there actually is merit to saying that it is objectively good. Walkability encourages you to literally walk past large amounts of people, local businesses and plenty of outdoor activities that you have the opportunity to take part in.
Graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...
Republicans get primaried for supporting Dems.
This creates the reality which is sold in their information and news networks. Dems always have bad bills, and see - no Republican is supporting it.
Yup. We let the pointers take precedence to the point that that they don't actually point at anything, we just like how they look.
Better than party discipline would be more effective intra-party debate, discussion, consensus processes etc. It's probably slower than line enforcement tho'.
Why? If we had a couple more Manchins and Sinemas right now, you know what we'd have? A majority.
One, we did a lot with one Manchin and one Sinema. (To the degree the former had concerns, it was well-founded ones over the inflationary effects of the Inflation Reduction Act.)
Two, not doing anything beats the status quo. A weak majority would be a check on the executive. We’re paying the price for ideological purism.
Simplifying: Congress was never meant to be deadlocked on simple party lines. It was always meant to have people figuring out ways to work together, even at the expense of the party, but in favor of their constituents.
If you cannot accept an idea because it was brought forward by a political competitor, you lack the necessary detachment to make good decisions.
Sometimes party discipline is sensible for political pragmatism, but in all other cases democracy is the better solution. It should be handled with care.
Partisanship is only something to be concerned with when you're dealing with functioning political parties. In America, I think the bare minimum for a political party should be that it believes in the ideals of America: a government by and for the people.
MAGA is not that, it's an explicit rejection of the ideals of the American revolution. Fundamentally they have a vision for America run by a king who has absolute authority over state, congress, and the judicial system.
There's no meeting of the minds that can be had with such a perspective, our forefathers figured that out and started the American Revolution over it.
Democrats could not do it. If they had done it, they would be as bad as Trump is now.
You make it sound like "our democracy was never perfect, so obviously we always just had a mad emperor all along"...
It's like, if you built a bridge to carry 10,000 tons because you need it to carry 10,000 tons, and then it turns out it's starting to fall apart under 5,000 tons, it doesn't make sense to me to say that you should just fix it so it securely holds 5,000 tons, or if it breaks just restore it to hold 5,000 tons. You need to rebuild it so it can do what you need it to do.
This is still not a noce analogy because tearing down a bridge is just expensive (and maybe unnecessary). Tearing down a political system isn't something you can "just do". Most people don't seem to want that and as long as that's the case it won't happen.
US citizens still enjoy vastly more rights, protection and political participation than most people in most countries. If you tear the system down, quite likely what you get will be even worse. Gradual change can be for the worse but also for the better, there's ample historical precedent for both. There's still a lot of ways this could go.
Most people, as usual, are apathetic and don't care as long as it doesn't affect them.
For those that do: it seems that that's exactly what they want to do. Hence 2016 pushing a supposed anti-establishment Trump (an obvious mistake, but no one ver said the people made well informed decisions). It's a shame the DNC spent the last 3 elections rejecting such a sentiment.
The irony is that Trump is doing the exact opposite, tearing down those "surface-level" operations without doing anything to improve the foundations ---and in fact causing major cracks in those foundations, thus making it even more necessary to replace them.
America hasn't actually come that far.
And I think it's even simpler than that. the only bipartisan point is that both sides are bought out by corporate interests. Many reps are not looking out for their constituents.
A lot of people have decided that what Trump is doing is good. A lot have decided that it is evil. It is not so clear cut.
Yeah, the decline of the British Empire is starting to look sedate and well-managed compared to this.
I'm sure because the USA was there to pick up any slack that Britain dropped, in a way that China is not doing with the USA.
Suffer compared to what? That's the alternative? Number 1 stays number 1?
The world works in peaks and troughs, swings and roundabouts. What goes up must come down. Time marches on, change happens. This comes with suffering, but is also the definition of progress.
Nothing is the best forever, and the one's at the top who don't acknowledge that are the ones with the hardest fall ahead. That applies to complacent SV leadership as much as it applies to the average American citizen.
I can't fault this way of thinking about the world: change is inevitable, you have to roll with it. If I accept it though, the idea of "planned decline of America" is interesting to think about. If you're at the top, decline is inevitable, it's the only direction. What's the only thing you can do to mitigate the pain of the inevitable? Try plan to work with it. Not sure how I feel about this way of thinking, it feels pragmatic if nothing else.
Decline is not inevitable. others like China can rise, there could be multiple successful and wealthy countries. heck, even in a decline, america can become like germany instead of like venezuela. the decline you're thinking of is a lot nicer than what I'm thinking of I think.
Preventing a decline requires established institutions to function as designed. America is not declining because it's like the roman empire, it is declining because the corporate ruling class are strangling the nation for short term profits. It isn't "we the corporations of america" it is "we the people". They've assaulted the foundation of the wealthiest most powerful empire in history and it is collapsing as a result.
I think you don't understand what I'm saying because you said e.g. "others like China can rise" - my point is China has already risen, and fallen, and risen and will continue to do so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ages_of_China. Just like the US will. And the troughs will be tragic compared to the peaks.
This is what long term empires do. They rise and fall and rise and fall, and that rises and falls include wars, famine, disease outbreak, advances in war, science, tech, health etc.
I feel civilised societies have said exactly what you've said since the dawn of man "we're civilized, we've moved beyond incivility now" when in reality, they were just in one of the many times where their society just so happened to be leading the way.
Sorry, because I know you don't believe this, and you want to believe "we the people" can stop change this natural cycling, but it's a feature of relativity. Ultimately, you're saying the same thing optimists have been saying for millenia, and here we are, war, hunger, famine is all still happening. Same stuff we've been doing for millenia, just with fancier tech.
What I'm saying is while you're right in that the pattern is likely to repeat with America, it doesn't have to. We are humans, we are capable of learning from history. Not only that, the amount of technology progression and destructive capability of humans has changed drastically within the past century. Lots of things are happening right now that break from historical patterns. Also consider the number of people like you that hold that opinion, your preemptive surrender is equivalent to a confirmation bias. In other words, your prophecy is self-fulfilling because of the number of people that believe in it.
If so many people like you understand history and the variables involved, is it impossible to change course? If you knew lightning will strike you tomorrow, would you not attempt to stay indoors?
Look at the US, we're all calling our country an empire but what empire in history has behaved like the US? the soft-power approach of the US is what I mean as well as using a real-time-connected global commerce/financial market where everyone relies on the US.
Rome fell, but no one depended on Rome when it failed. China has fallen many times but the world didn't depend on Chinese currency or military like it does with the US.
What is more constant than empires falling is people at a macro level acting in their best interest. Even China would prefer the US to have a healthy consumer market until it has it's own regional consumer market that can displace the US. China doesn't want to replace the US navy's fleet in policing the seas and it won't get Europe's trust like the US when it comes to the RMB to displace the dollar.
It's not that i don't want to believe (although I don't) the US will fall, it's just that those prediction have too many assumptions. When China,Rome and other empires were falling, there was no internet or wide spread mass education. Or even things like widespread democracy (a democratic empire?? lol).
I don't think anyone anticipated how nutbag crazy things would get and the Dems didn't have the House or Senate to pass these laws anyway. Additionally the SCOTUS ruling made the president a king.
Reminds me of the old joke about California's 4 seasons: Earthquake, fire, riots, and drought.
Not really. The choice between her and 45 should have been clear as day. She might have not been everybody's first choice, but she was more than qualified, more than competent, especially given the alternative. It shouldn't have even been a question, at all. But with how rampant misinformation is and how rare critical thinking is, here we are.
Biden insisted on running for a second term, against earlier promises, and failed to build up a strong successor during his first term. The Dems were in a very difficult position. Biden and his inner circle are the ones to blame here. What a historic fuck up!
I was very confident in Biden's win because in PA where I live, he had very strong support in my community, which is working class white men. Harris lost all that support. My feeling is that Biden would have lost NC, GA, NV, NM, but he would have won PA, MI, and WI, and therefore the election.
I guess we'll never know either way. But one thing we do know is that changing candidates last minute has never worked, and that track record remains undefeated. After Biden decided to stay in, the only wrong move was to replace him.
And Elon Musk, former presidential vizir. There's clearly power in Twitter, but it leans right as well.
Things could have been much different.
However much you think that did or didn't cross the line from "fortification" to fraud isn't the point. The point is that if they hadn't done so much of it, Trump would have won the election (in the electoral college, which is what matters), and he would be a footnote now, after spending his second term building a few more miles of border wall and probably not a lot else.
[1] https://time.com/magazine/us/5936018/february-15th-2021-vol-...
Maybe bc americans WON'T and SHOULDN'T settle for a decline - they should violently rebel against this mindset and claw they way UPWARDS - there's more room for more growth, even if you lose #1 status and have to settle for #2 for a while you can still catch up etc.
It's good that at least the US and China are NOT infected with this degrowth and "cyclical history" mindvirus that seems to be doing the rounds in Europe and elsewhere... keep being a bastion of endless progress brothers, fight the good fight! There's a whole light cone to eat/infect (if not for us the for the successors we'll build)! Whoop, whoop!
Jokes aside though, most of the open world we live in today owes its existence to ideas, mindsets, $$$ and tech exported from the US, and I'm sure there's way more cool stuff to come from you once you properly clean up the parasitic individuals and institutions that have infected your society. Purge on and keep growing, fight for a deservedly big chunk of the Dyson sphere and beyond!
The signs are there, that this is global situation before WW1 or WW2 - status quo has to change, balance of power has to change - USA does not want to start to implement any of those changes and those who are way smarter than me think that USA should stay away from epicenter of anything and join for the spoils only part.
Most things of real interest do not tbh. The point should be to learn how to play infinite games. Sure, there's hard-to-impossible prices to pay, and/or to force others into paying. But what if it can be made to work, won't any price be worth it for that... ?
The epicenter is where the fun is at, even if the price might be sacrificing things of value for your average population and some unquantifiable measure of fluff like national-identity or whatever people imagine it's real nowadays.
I'm an unashamed globalist, but would rather have a "world village" with the US (despite that US being maybe quite different from what most gen-pop wants) at its heart :P Imagine all the people...
Afterwards, and from the outside, it looks and sounds like ... well read some history about attempts to 'restore proper order'. The outcome and progression is entirely and sadly predictable.
It's been about 80 years since WWII. Are we doomed to repeat this on an 80 year cycle, when the last generation who went through this passes from the scene?
So - maybe not doomed to an 80 year cycle, as life expectancy changes, and/or as cultural memory changes due to more/better records.
But in broad strokes... yes.
Have fun reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
The current US generation didn't go to a full blown war; and the US did little infighting in the previous decade (that requires mass mobilization). Think about it this way: Trump wants to lower the interest rate and ease monetary policy in good times. Putin maintain high rates despite him having a full blown war. Trump has never experienced hyper-inflation but Putin did.
How extensive is the violence of the protests? I saw some images shared of cars that were burned, maybe some buildings damaged. But also lots of images from other protests from previous years. Are the images of the same 3 cars and storefronts or many? Trump says the riots are out of control, Newsom says the protests are largely peaceful.
A basic claude search suggests the overall level of violence is moderate, and smaller than many recent protests [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ef220c3d-c6d9-4b4b-bb3f-2...)
How much of a strain do undocumented immigrants place on the US? You can answer this question from a financial and criminal point of view. From the point of view of crime, Trump and ICE are parading every violent undocumented immigrant they can, but that is not statistics. Do undocumented immigrants account for a significant portion of violent crime in the country?
Studies overwhelmingly show that undocumented immigrants are significantly less violent than the general population [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/a92623b8-5c02-4c3a-84ae-f...)
From a financial point of view, what resources are undocumented immigrants straining, and is it to a significant degree?
The economic picture is much more nuanced. On the cost side, a criticized study (FAIR) reported the cost at about $182bn annually (this is likely an over-estimate). For comparison, undocumented immigrants pay about $100bn in taxes, boost the GDP, and create jobs. Mass deportation is estimated to cost $315Bn.
Studies show that the impact on wages is small.
The biggest cost factor ($78bn but estimates vary) seems to be K-12 education, and that is mostly born by states. [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/29f10fcf-c8a7-4655-979f-b...).
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/a-look-back-on-2021-ri...
As recently as last year a Waymo stopped at a stop sign and then accelerated directly towards me in a crosswalk.
These vehicles aren't ready and have already injured people. Lighting them on fire seems a valid defense strategy since the government's unwilling to intervene to protect its citizens.
Any mode of transportation will cause injuries, especially since other humans are on the road. So just saying "Waymos have already injured people" is kind of a meaningless comment. I do think the type of accidents matter as much as the number of incidents. For example, the video that went viral recently of a self-driving Tesla randomly making a dramatic left turn into a tree on a rural road (possibly because it misinterpreted a shadow in the road) is not a mistake a human would have made.
This is speculative. Waymos hit people too.
I agree that pedestrian infrastructure in the USA is sorely lacking. The proven solution that worked in other countries is to take measures to reduce the number of cars on the road, not try to replace every driver with a computer that can only be trained by putting stupider computers on the road first to experiment on the population.
Public transit. A subway moves literally millions more people than car infrastructure can with significantly fewer injuries - basically 0 if the platforms are built with doors or gates. Busses and cable cars, driven by professional drivers, have far lower incidence per capita of injury as well.
- "Waymo drove through a red light (while being driven by a human)"
- "Waymo involved in a hit and run (it recorded a hit and run by a human using it's cameras)"
- "Waymo was involved in a multi-car accident (while it was stopped with other stopped cars)".
Maybe Cruise is worse, maybe it's unlucky. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-16/woman-ge...
I understand that what I'm basically saying is that, if Cruise, Waymo, etc, want to develop self driving cars, they need to basically figure out a way to do so without testing in live environments against a non-consenting population. I understand that for you, you're down, and it's frustrating to hear that someone who might be your neighbor not wanting that means you don't get self driving cars.
I don't have a solution for this annoying aspect of democracy, other than to try to convince you that I'm not crazy for not wanting self driving cars at all - really, truly, it's just not the path we need to go down, we should be getting rid of cars almost entirely in cities and switching to public transit, with private vehicles driven entirely by professional drivers.
I chased up the old email. First, apologies, it was a Cruise driverless car, not Waymo.
I informed them of the incident, and here was their response, about 24 hours after my email to them:
> Copy of CUSTOMER SUCCESS (2)
> Hi Caleb,
> I'm sorry to hear you experienced this. At Cruise we take safety very seriously and this is not the experience we’d like you to have. This issue is being escalated to the appropriate team to be looked into further. Your input is greatly appreciated as we grow our ride-hail service, We appreciate your assistance.
> Best Regards,
> Jamilla
> Cruise Support
I never heard back from them again. The incident was on sep 4, 2023, at just about exactly 4pm, in San Francisco around potrero hill, perhaps Mariposa street. The vehicle was named "Bruschetta," I believe I saw that on the back or something.
From the first Claude link:
> Damage remains far below 2020 George Floyd protest levels
Ugh. Is this the bar now?
Aside from quantifications, I see the disagreement largely on the qualitative/philosophical/ideological (tribal) side. An inverse of the Jan 6th insurrection (which also caused much less damage than the George Floyd riots, and much less than now in LA, so was it ok in retrospect?). But the damage was not in property, but that the state and its laws itself was attacked. The sides are just now switched again between left/right: the former shout rule of law, the latter want resistance/insurrection.
I think the question is - why is the national guard and the military being sent to CA without the governor's consent?
Part of the justification for this from the administration is that the riots are out of control, are posing an immediate risk of violence and property damage. Based on what I've found of the actual violence and damage being done, this justification does not hold up, as the violence and property damage are lower than previous protests in which there didn't seem to be a need for interference.
The rule of law is a different argument. What is the rule of law that is being undermined? I think here too you can have an argument about the operations that ICE is conducting, are they lawful - given that they are being conducted in sanctuary cities? Who has jurisdiction in this case? Is the administration lawful in sending in the national guard without the consent of the governor? What about the military? Newsom is now suing Trump over deploying the marines and the national guard despite his wishes, so there is a claim that such actions were unlawful.
Based on my brief research into this, ICE was operating in an unconstitutional way and making many procedural violations. City Sancutary status is lawful and has been upheld in the court of law. Newsom's challenge of Trump's deployment of the National Guard also held up in court. [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/99a64b2d-e3b6-4d37-956f-c...)
When you say that "the law is being attacked" in this case, what do you mean?
Some see a Mexican invasion as the protesters are carrying flags of Mexico. Not sure why they’d expect that to garner support.
Some see violence against police / military
Some see poor people being abused by people in power.
Some see violence against powerless people
Some see actors staging fake protests (see thread for proof that some people see this)
Some see political posturing
What happened was that people took clips of events in specific cities at specific times and then tried to extrapolate that out. When, in reality, most protests had no violence. Meanwhile, police were shooting rubber bullets at people while the people were just standing there.
Even now, with these "riots", most of the clips I'm seeing are actually from BLM protests years ago. Does anybody know this? Is anybody fact-checking anything? Apparently not. But, for gullible authoritarians that's all it takes. Show them a picture of a car on fire and their mind will hop and skip out of their ear.
In many cases, “events” performed by people later (or concurrently, but to too little attention) unmasked as white supremacist provocateurs aiming to discredit the BLM protests and/or provoke violent racial conflict, not the actual BLM protestors.
And let's not even mention the reason behind it all: ICE's torture center, and the multiple raids they carry in the city, to abduct legal immigrants.
As the media also ignores police brutality, reporters being shot at, and how outright illegal this whole deployment is. You can't have it both ways.
His posts were always insightful and it is indeed sad that he is no longer with us.
If they have orders to fire, then there will be no court, they just have to fill out an after-action report detailing what happened.
As you can see, the charges are quite serious, which can exceed 3 days stuck in house per instance of illegal homicide.
If the civilian court wants to make an example out of the military member they can opt to keep the case in their court. This can happen if the crime was egregious or there are some other circumstances. Plus, any additional civil suit brought by a victim or their family will always be a civilian lawsuit.
There are times where things are different- in particular, there are times in which something is only a crime in one system but not the other. You can be court-martialled for failing to follow orders, but this is not a civilian crime.
In terms of shooting a civilian, it probably depends on the circumstances. If the Marine was given an order to shoot and had some legitimate feeling reason to do so in the moment, the military would probably do their best to protect the marine, but it would probably be a civilian court trying them (the military won’t take a case if they don’t intend to follow through). Note that for this to be the case, there is probably now an officer who gave an illegal order and the officer would probably be tried for a crime. But there are conceivable ways in which a marine can shoot someone under lawful orders and not really have done anything wrong- self defense is the likely scenario. If a protestor starts shooting a gun toward a marine then they will get return fire.
If the marine were to disregard his orders and shoot someone because he’s trigger happy, then the military is probably going to ask to take the case, throw him in prison for life while demoting him down to E1 (the lowest rank), and generally ruin his life as much as they can. They really crack down on this kind of thing because they rely on discipline to make things work. Marines are generally trained to do as they are told, no matter how much it sucks. And marines that don’t do as they’re told get examples made out of them so that everyone else knows to follow orders.
At least that’s what would have happened in the past, but with the current president who knows how it would turn out. Because the state may choose not to let the case go- the president can pardon a federal/military crime, but not state crimes. So California might keep the case because then the president couldn’t let him off easy.
Hard to believe? That's exactly what they're relying on: they think people are too stupid to believe there's an actual radical white-supremacist Christian Theocratic movement working to destroy the United States. It's the biggest known internal existential threat of the last 150 years and our corporate media and political environment has resulted in conditions that have enabled it to manifest nearly unchallenged.
Who are these "primary operatives" who became "high-level officials"?
> Hard to believe? That's exactly what they're relying on
Is this a QAnon quote or an original?
Kind of like shooting reporters with rubber bullets.
This is a dire situation and I'm not sure how this country crawls back out of this authoritarian slide, but we've got to somehow.
(But to your point, anything >0% is pretty horrible.)
If not, 35% approval is perfectly fine if that includes most of the police and the military.
What's stopping them to do enough fuckery between now and 2028 to "win" the GOP the election in 2028 (or even 2026), and to stop Trump from joining the ranks of despots that keep getting reelected like Putin and Erdogan? Or JD Vance can be his Medvedev.
To use a horrible analogy, a lot of times women don't even admit to themselves that they've been raped, because accepting that means accepting a horrific label. The USA is in the middle of getting raped, and so far the response has been to mostly freeze up and take it, not wanting to fight, because that is scary and can get you hurt even more. (Well, at least for the majority of the country there isn't a real fightback yet...).
And you’re absolutely right about the denial. It manifests as the “nothing ever happens” meme.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...
>In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote and 65.3% (or 154 million people) voted according to new voting and registration tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Moreover, due to the electoral college and Senate and gerrymandering of House districts, the majority is hardly needed for attain power. I bet that even in other societies, throughout time, roughly a third of the population will not react to what one of the other thirds is doing (even if they claim they don't approve in polls).
Again, if you insist on talking about "35% of people in the US" rather than "35% of voters", then fine, but I think it's a weird way to talk about it. We don't know what the people who didn't vote thought about the candidates. Voting is the way that we find that out!
When were talking about adhering to a dangerous status quo, the conversation makes sense. A status quo of boring beauracracy can be defendable. A status quo of fascism, much less so. Thars why conversations in 2025 are like this.
Even then:remember Trump still had a 40% approval rating after all this.
Of that, let’s call it a flat 51% voted for Trump. That means that about half of 65%, or roughly 32.5% of American citizens support Trump, and by extension, likely this policy move.
So yes, it actually is more than you need to win elections.
But typically people are talking about percentages of voters with statistics like this.
After the National Guard shot a few kids for literally no reason (nobody had ever been given orders to fire), they told the student standing around "Disperse or we will shoot again"
This has never been a problem for the party of Roger Stone who literally has a large back tattoo of Nixon and is one of the primary reasons we had Bush Jr as president even though Al Gore won the votes when the count was allowed to finish
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-d... ("Former Pentagon chief Esper says Trump asked about shooting protesters")
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tiananmen-... ("Resurfaced Trump interview about Tiananmen Square massacre shows what he thinks of protests")
* We value human life over property
* We only empower police to use lethal force to prevent that person from taking a life.
Seems you’d like to change this? Enough’s enough, steal a TV and you die on the spot?
Obama deported millions with relatively little pushback. Because he did not deny anyone due process.
Everybody has a requirement for due process. It's the only constitutional way to prove someone is an illegal alien, or overstayed their welcome, or has a history.
You cannot "enforce existing immigration laws" by ignoring due process, because they are a requirement of existing immigration laws
If this is action you agree with, just say so. But the books do not support this.
What if police attack a peaceful protest--say trampling a lone person with horses (https://www.newsweek.com/la-protestor-stomped-police-horseba...) or shooting a reporter standing by herself (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/reporter-los-angeles-protests-r...)? Is there an assault-rifle shaped solution to this kind of anarchy?
>explicitly to prevent the government from enforcing laws that the protestors don't like.
100+ policemen died on Jan 6th. What's the body count here?
Wikipedia says as much, since the government itself took down their page:
>Within 36 hours, five people died: one was shot by the Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes, including a police officer who died of a stroke a day after being assaulted by rioters and collapsing at the Capitol.[d][34][45] Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.[35] Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million.[46]
Officer Sicknick (the cop who died of a stroke the next day) was pepper-sprayed by rioters, but not physically assaulted in a way which might cause a stroke. He did not collapse at the capital on Jan 6, but at 10PM the following day (your confusion on this point is understandable, given that the Wiki article deceptively implies that he collapsed on Jan 6). His autopsy found that his death was due to "natural causes".
The gaslighting around Jan 6 is really outrageous.
"Not physically assaulted in a way which might cause a stroke" - you're right, I can imagine no way in which hitting someone in the head multiple times with a fire extinguisher might cause a hemorrhagic stroke, a literal bleed in the brain. Versus a spontaneous stroke, which at his age would affect 0.03% of the population to even occur, let alone be actively fatal, especially when the person was already in the hospital being monitored for the injuries TO THEIR HEAD.
That's the absolute risk for a 42-year-old individual having a stroke in the US in that year, a 1 in 1.2M risk that it happened in the 24 hours following that.
Poor Officer Sicknick, had the shit beat out of him and then suffered a 1 in a million "unrelated" stroke in the same 24 hours!
> His autopsy found that his death was due to "natural causes".
I love that you leave out the next fucking sentence, that even if you are playing pedant, still says this: "that the events that transpired on January 6 played a role in his death".
Piss off with the gaslighting bullshit. Yes, the Capitol Police issued a statement... as little more than damage control.
[0]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brian-sicknick-fire-exting...
edit: and remember, it was a net positive for conservatives in the end.
You either support somewhat violent protests, regardless of topic, expecting that law enforcement and civilians will handle it amongst themselves, or you are authoritarian and demand that the federal government intervene with the US Armed Forces the moment someone throws a rock at a cop car.
This is an abomination, and anyone who supports the deployment of troops in my opinion lacks the values I thought were universal in this country.
(To support this action by Trump is to say you don't support the second amendment, on the grounds that the people should never have the power to subvert the state).
I really hated when Fox news would say things like this and I hate it when individuals do. It makes it impossible for us to communicate.
Just because the other side doesn't share your values doesn't mean they have none. You might say their values are evil. That's a different discussion, but they're rarely just reacting blindly.
I'm saying they lack the values I grew up believing were universal in this country.
No, they do not even get to claim order any more. This situation is being escalated by Trump in order to have a raging crisis for him to attack and drive even more division. Just like he did to the 2A/BLM protests, just like he did with the election lies culminating in the J6 protests, just like he did with his appalling anti-leadership throughout Covid. Trump doesn't possess the skills to actually tackle problems. His only real skill is slithering away from blame after he creates chaos and destruction. The fascists' only real value is now naked autocratic "strong" man authoritarianism. And the only reason they're still clinging to caring about the law is to assuage their own egos that the suffering they're reveling in is somehow justified.
They are bad people.
It makes me feel sick as a programmer knowing how many people on this board that values "hacker" anti authoritarianism and curiosity would have the government send the military to shoot their own citizens
But yeah, some cars getting destroyed is terrible.
I mean, surely you're not so stupid to legitimately believe the marines are being sent in for "control", right? We all, left, right, and center, understand what this is. Trump news-casting. It's an attempt to make the situation worse for clicks and views, for sensationalism. And it's working quite well!
Even if you think these riots are riots and that they're the bad guys and yadda yadda yadda... okay and why are we sending in the marines to cause more destruction? What's the link there buddy? Do you just want to watch the world burn? Because, honestly, that's kind of fucked up.
Hmm... I don't think the second amendment gives you that right... That's called treason.
Watching this unfold here is reminding me strongly of the Ghorman plotline in Andor S2: "You need a resistance you can count on to do the wrong thing at the right time."
We have some 9000 LAPD and we have sports game upsets with worse destruction than this. This was not only illegal but unnecessary.
But the fact that LA and cities like it accept a high level of lawlessness and destruction of property as "normal" already casts doubt on their willingness or ability to handle the situation.
Their recent track record is not good when it comes to law and order, and people living there deserve to not live in danger or fear of mob destruction.
You should seriously self-examine your thought process here as to why you're more upset about buildings than families and lives. It probably has a lot to do with what media and online content you consume.
Given these facts, can you justify moving America towards more of a police state (and abdicating more of our liberties) because of... why?
Ironically, we had protests yesterday, the police came out in huge numbers and as far as I can tell everything was peaceful. The protesters got their protest and the rest of us got to keep our lives and property.
I've also heard of not a single instance of protestors breaking into private homes to harm people there.
Sorry to be so skeptical but your experience is apparently singularly novel.
As for police keeping protests peaceful, my experience is the complete opposite - protests are peaceful, and then the cops show up and start pushing people around, or their undercover officers try to kick things off by throwing things or shoving people. American cops escalate.
In a situation like that eventually either mobs or federal law enforcement need to get involved. Of those two choices, maybe you prefer the former. Many people prefer the latter though.
That's the reason why people are protesting. If you wanna provide evidence about "your city", be specific, because places like Portland, Seattle, Austin, SF, NYC, Boston, and more are doing just fine.
I don't have a problem with the protesting. I do have a problem with violence and law breaking, regardless of who's carrying it out.
Further, peaceful protest has been happening vis-à-vis constituents contacting their representatives - and also congregating in the streets - in the months leading up to this.
You're on the wrong side of this, plain and simple.
The galaxy is watching.
The Ghorman massacre in the recently aired season 2 of Star Wars Andor is the playbook version of this.
I don't think the US is there yet, but the direction seems about right. As you say, step by step.
Andor was great. I really enjoyed it. It's the AI robots you should really worry about.
It’s usually too much for people to contemplate that things are going to end.
Or worse, it’s bad faith, and it’s shared to lull people into accepting the change.
One of the clear things is that the right side of the political sphere is no longer constrained to narratives that have accurate correspondence to reality.
Even if this blows over, there will be something else, and then something else - and some superficially plausible rationale that contradicts previous positions.
And people who’ve seen this before will point it out - but people in the hall of mirrors will be stuck dealing with whatever is being reflected around them.
It’s genuinely cognitively hard to reason past such things, especially if reasoning past them is done alone - because then you are now stuck feeling like you are outside of your group - worse, you might have to join the people you were angry with.
This is one reason it takes a long time (months, years) to travel this distance - you can’t mentally switch allegiances and world views in a moment. There’s too many interconnected beliefs, actions - neurons.
But for people who’ve seen this before, it’s pretty clear cut.
Another problem is that these processes have a feedback loop. I don't like feeding that loop.
But yes, time will tell. I do agree certain things are normalized which probably shouldn't, but the system has some degree of robustness.
The proper thing for the left to do, IMO, is to present a clear and believable alternative. That also helps with the question of "join the people you were angry with". If the left doesn't understand why people are angry then they can't present this alternative. Standing on a hypothetical box in a hypothetical public square and yelling "the end is nigh" is not political discourse. The left also doesn't get to choose the laws it likes, just like the right doesn't, illegal immigration, as the term hints, illegal. Rioting and destroying things is also illegal. The only way a dictator can take over the US given all the checks and balances is when it seems that's the best alternative to enough people.
The Governor requested federal help. Legally different.
I edited this post because riots implies they weren't burning down their own neighborhoods because they didn't actually own anything there and had not been prevented from owning anything. Certain groups love to post the actually affected Korean store owners, but it's a gross one minority group was pitted against another to prove racism was ok in retrospect to cause the conflict.
You need electoral reform post haste - but I do not seed even a start to that discussion, so I think you are hosed. Might not be Dictator Trump, but maybe Vance or some other guy who succeeds in this game.
And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't. The democrats are too slow to recognize the problem and even if they eventually do, there are no majorities to change the system. And finally: Democracy needs at least two parties - democrats cannot be expected to keep branches of the government forever. You need a sane and democratic second party. Republicans ain't it - but the current system gives them success, so why change?!
We tossed that all aside in the 1930s via threatening to pack the Supreme court. Federal powers are now everything because interstate commerce is now everything and without a functional 10A and with delegation to executive agencies POTUS approaches God level.
Democracies are vulnerable to "authoritarian takeover" has been known and understood for 2500 years.
> The position has too much power, is easily abused and there are not enough checks on that position.
In most parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister is much more powerful than the US President. This is particularly the case since the PM is PM by virtue of his party having the legislative majority.
> And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't.
A better argument would be that this isn't a partisan issue. The last President declared a Constitutional Amendment by fiat and attempted to do (good) things like student loan relief with blatantly illegal authoritarian methods due to the perpetual Congressional gridlock.
This is a grave misunderstanding. A legislative majority isn't a static historical fact like Trump's electoral majority, it's dynamic - those are identifiable people not just a statistic.
Liz Truss was the UK's Prime Minister for less than two months. What changed in two months? Probably most of the idiots who actually voted for her didn't change their minds, but that doesn't matter, her fellow Tory MPs feared the worst from the outset and were proven correct. If she hadn't left she'd have been kicked out, she's known to have actually asked if there's some way she can cling on and been told basically "No" because there isn't.
Ultimately, if they can't get rid of her any other way, her backbench only needs to affirm a simple motion, "That This House Has No Confidence In His Majesty's Government" and it's all over. It would never come to that, but that's the backstop.
We see PMs easily enacting massive legislative reforms and even Constitutional changes that are nigh impossible in the US, that was not a particularly controversial statement.
I'm responding to this part separately because it's a very different issue. The existence of "superior law" in the form of a written constitution, is very silly. There need be only a single law, the law of the land - and the legislature must be able to change it - and only them, otherwise why have a legislature at all?
These are only man's laws, they're no different than the laws of Football ("soccer") for example, they are not facts about the world like Mother Nature's Laws - and so to hold some of these laws superior to others is a waste of everybody's time. The resulting paralysis in the US is not something to be praised, it's just another rusted joint, a lost degree of flexibility and so a point of weakness.
In reality, the supposed "impossible" constitutional changes in the US simply enable learned helplessness. Democratic representatives weep that alas much as they wish otherwise they "cannot" fix obvious problems because change is "impossible" and then of course somebody who actually does want to change things just does and says (as we might expect remembering these are only man's laws) if you don't like it too fucking bad.
The legislature can change the US Constitution. The federal Congress proposes an amendment with a 2/3rds yes-vote, then it must be ratified by legislatures of 3/4ths of the states.
The reason to make some laws harder to change than others is to protect civil rights. In the US, it is very difficult to legally infringe on the right to free speech, for example. In the UK, it is simply a matter of a majority vote in Parliament.
> Democratic representatives weep that alas much as they wish otherwise they "cannot" fix obvious problems because change is "impossible" and then of course somebody who actually does want to change things just does and says (as we might expect remembering these are only man's laws) if you don't like it too fucking bad.
Passing Constitutional amendments is perfectly feasible and has been done many times. It just can't be done without majority political support and the will to do so. They've been passed and "repealed" before, with Prohibition, for example.
A lot of kvetching in the US system (on both sides) comes from people whose ideas are simply not very popular and would like to change the rules so they win. In a democratic society, you need majorities of the population to agree. For larger changes, you preferable want larger majorities.
I don't know about UK but in Australia we need a Referendum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Australia) to change the constitution and those have been historically extremely difficult to pass (only 8/45). The PM absolutely cannot alter the Constitution.
In contrast the Westminster Parliament routinely disposes of Prime Ministers who lose its confidence, it's already happened once in my lifetime and it's not some multi-week procedure in which there's some performance of a judicial process, just a simple question: Does this Government retain the Confidence of the House?
Margaret Thatcher decided on this course of action on a Monday, on Wednesday morning she rose to say, "Mr. Speaker, I beg to move, 'That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government.'" and by the next morning the Callaghan minority government had fallen.
The problem wasn't the Crown, that's the big takeaway. Giving the same power to a guy who doesn't have a hat doesn't fix the problem. You need to hold this much power in commission, that's the lesson that gave us the present British arrangement - the Lord High Treasurer was much too powerful, so his power was given to a commission, today its First Lord though not nearly as powerful as the Lord Treasurer, is too powerful, that's the Prime Minister you gestured at - the formal office is "First Lord of the Treasury", with the Chancellor being Second Lord, and the whips taking subsidiary parts of the commission. If you ask me we should further re-divide this power.
But just giving all that power to one man (and in the US it has always been a man) is even worse. The US President has powers that a King had, which made sense in the 18th century but stands out today - that's why Trump can corruptly pardon people for example.
You seem fixated on the practical process of removing one from power, which is of course irrelevant as long as their party backs them, which is the actual threat in both cases. In either case, if the legislature does not back them, they can be removed from power with little issue.
I see in a sibling comment you think this is actually a weakness of the US system...apparently the PM radically changing all the laws, norms, and unwritten constitution of his country is "not powerful", while the US President typically fighting a battle to get one single major piece of legislation through in his career is unitarian dictatorship?
> , the US nation building projects stopped doing this themselves because it doesn't work, the United States itself is just a slower decay, it's not an exception.
The US nation building projects felt that parliamentary democracies were easier to control, as direct election of Presidential executives sometimes leads to democracies electing leaders who are able to carry out policies that violate US interests.
EDIT: It was US President George H. W. Bush ...
I agree that Trump is unlikely to turn into a dictator. But Caesar wasn't Rome's last dictator. And he wasn't the first to march on Rome.
Precedents are being set. Regardless of your views on illegal immigration, what's going on should be concerning because eventually someone with strong views you don't agree with will be in power, and if they can just arrest members of Congress, openly defy courts, ship ideological opponents to Guantanamo and send Marines into states they don't like, we're all going to be poorer for it. (If this shit stands, I'd argue the next Democrat in the White House should go FDR on the system.)
Now it seems like the republicans are trying to speed-run to a point where there won’t ever be another Democrat to worry about.
The simpler explanation is they're bad at long-term planning. Most of Trump's Cabinet and advisors are, essentially, influencers after all.
We probably need to work on a Project 2026 and Project 2028 document set. Plans to use these newly-unlocked powers to reform how power is distributed in America, force forward long-overdue projects being resisted by vocal minorities and secure our republic from its tendency towards electoral fetishism.
LA has had the marines sent in to stop riots in the past so this isn't exactly a new thing.
For reference, Euromaidan involved the death of over a hundred protesters before the government finally collapsed.
The people of the US may be inured to violence. They aren't inured to violence from their own military, though.
The Wikipedia article on the shootings doesn't mention the word "brick" once. It also says:
"While on the practice field, the guardsmen generally faced the parking lot, about 100 yards (91 m) away. At one point, the guardsmen formed a loose huddle and appeared to be talking to one another. They had cleared the protesters from the Commons area, and many students had left.
Some students who had retreated beyond the practice field fence obtained rocks and possibly other objects with which they again began pelting the guardsmen. The number of rock throwers is unknown, with estimates of 10–50 throwers. According to an FBI assessment, rock-throwing peaked at this point. Tear gas was again fired at crowds at multiple locations."
So there were rocks being thrown at National Guard members who were ALREADY teargassing the boxed in group AND had knelt and aimed weapons.
Somehow you extrapolate that to average people going about their day and randomly taking a brick to the head... huh.
From an outsider's view, everything looks so performative and fabricated to be consumed by a tv target audience. I mean, if there is so much illegal immigration in the US, is it the most effective use of resources to target a TV cliche that would gather a residual number of people?
I think the whole point of these stupid stunts is to mobilize the base and distract critics. Your random redneck racist might feel strongly about the Hollywood caricature of Mexicans wearing sombreros at a Home Depot parking lot, but the truth of the matter is that Trump is mobilizing the US armed forces against a governor's will while threatening him with imprisonment.
They is doing lots and lots of heavy lifting here. At the same time things are very confusing, because it seems like your fellow American is out for blood in a manner that shows no humanity.
Your fellow American on the right is plugged into a Matrix that traffics in its own narratives and can now freely manufacture or amplify its own fringe facts and narratives.
They are actually fighting very hard for the soul of america - as they see it. Virtuous efforts to stop the villainy and stupidity of the venomous yet weak liberals, leftists and democrats.
There’s a system in place to manufacture narratives, the closest analogy would be wrestling - except the President doesn’t treat it as fiction, he acts as if it’s real.
And since you can make and sell narratives incredibly quickly, while facts and analysis are days of effort - well, you have a structural change to the market place of ideas.
It happens everywhere in democracies now. See Brexit - entirely predictable. Yet completely unable to “sell” the known and clear problems to a majority of the citizenry.
Same with tariffs.
There’s a floor to people’s capability in navigating our current information environments - and partisan groups of experts are happy to use it to their advantage.
The problem began empirically with conservative positions, but the efficacy of the technique has now created its own political force.
The image the Trump administration conveys goes way beyond targeted hate. They appear to be replaying the Nazi playbook of persecuting minorities as a strategy to wedge in totalitarian control over a nation and society. Illegal immigrants just so happen to be the path of least resistance in the US.
So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.
Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the U.S., according to people familiar with the meeting.
Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-...
I think this makes it even scarier. This means the goal is clearly not establishing sound policy, but to output propaganda that is designed to be easily consumed by TV audiences. It is beyond reality because it is not designed to make sense, it is designed to make sense to TV consumers by feeding on the context they get from their TV tropes. The Mexicans hanging around in Home Depots is a TV cliche that's recognized by people living wel beyond any Home Depot.
The best is Trump crowing about historically low unemployment numbers, and then peddling hysteria about illegals "taking American jobs." None of his degenerate followers care that this argument is stupid, and calls them stupid.
Now it's been papered over with other excuses, like the mythical "fentanyl" that's pouring in from Canada.
For example, you are deporting labor. Ostensibly Because of fairness and justice - they are in the country illegally. Ergo they should go.
No one should be above the law.
This has zip to do with gangs and criminality though.
But why this process ? Why not punish people who are employing them ?
This is more efficient and even more just. People are employing workers they know are here illegally and undercutting minimum wage.
Or why not raise minimum wage so more people will be willing to work those jobs ?
People act on incentives - and america is a country with a concentration of some of the hardest working and smartest people in the world.
It has a tradition of valuing this and converting those strengths into its own.
Now I have enough of a background in econ, business and politics to see through the narratives.
I also know you can’t sell all those interventions, not the least because none of these address the issue of gangs and criminality and eating pets.
Which brings us to the issue that your rationale, the ones which are debated online - are downstream from whatever controversy and theory that’s going to show up as soon as a new distraction is needed.
I mean, just Take a look at your original question,
“Leave the hardest working and deport the lazy ones ?”
America is built on immigration of the hardest working, most driven people from across the globe.
America is a machine for hardworking people to move ahead. That’s its promise.
And this is the question its citizens are unironically asking.
As I said, many ways to skin a cat.
People follow incentives, so why not punish people who are paying for the labor? Arrests for employing them?
Its an economic system, theres 2 way incentives.
The process used, depends on what problem you are solving.
As it stands, employers can pretend ignorance and as long as they were not really stupid, put putting things in writing or personally arranging for the trafficking, they can likely get away with it. There’s no reason I can think of why we shouldn’t change that.
So, you know, maybe they could try to do what they said they'd do for once?
They said they'd target violent criminals, but they didn't say they wouldn't target non violent criminals as well. People who heard that were wishcasting.
Whether or not they are a "priority" is semantics. If you hear them explain it, they're all defacto criminals for being undocumented, and therefore equally culpable as a murder or a rapist in matters of deportation.
The crime they're concerned about over all others is illegal immigration. According to them, an illegal immigrant who has done nothing else wrong deserves to be deported just as much as rapist illegal immigrant.
Whether it’s good public policy is neither here nor there, so long as our Leader is right.
My understanding of the protests is they're primarily against the removal of illegal immigrants and as Trump has taken control of (?) some state elements that has become a contentious point, but wasn't to begin with.
Normally I'd read up more before discussing with people, but the news article seem pretty blurry on the primary intentions of the protesters and what specifically they are against.
Indiscriminate rounding up. We are seeing citizens detained. Families separated. Fear, which is clearly the point.
One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kill-l-police-attacked-fireworks-...
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said "you had people who were...attacking police officers, deputy sheriffs and causing a lot of destruction."
The 101 Freeway shut down Sunday evening two times due to protesters on an overpass throwing rocks, debris, and firecrackers at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles.
Footage on Sunday from the CBS News Los Angeles helicopter showed that multiple windows of the police headquarters had been shattered as well.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/downtown-la-protests...
Once the state sets its eyes on enemies, it doesn't stop adding to that list.
Use of the tools and techniques in place right now will continue to be used, and against "legal" citizens.
I worry how we turn the corner. I don't like what history says.
That has happened to me. Some of them did real heinous shit and deserve prison for the rest of their lives. And some I disagree with the laws they were charged for.
HN not beating the allegations of sheltered, gated community, out-of-touch kids going straight into white collar life.
This was always a well-understood risk though.
This is why the 4th amendment exists. It is my favorite amendment. I wish people would take it more seriously.
So many homeless here have zero identification.
They are basically just going after people who are too brown and even ending up grabbing people who are just here on vacation, legally.
https://theconversation.com/ice-has-broad-power-to-detain-an...
I agree that in practice there is some kind of loophole: ICE gets a "warrant" for someone that by definition has no ID, so there is no point in identifying a detainee - the immigration court will do that, later. Effectively, they seem to get away with snatching people off the street that vaguely may resemble any "warrant" they have.
Rocks / debris came after tear gas.
The news has been startling in its mis-coverage.
Firey but mostly peaceful protests are happening all over again. No, burning down cities is not peaceful. After just a few days, at least five officers, several journalists, and we don't know how many rioters have been injured so far. We don't yet have estimates of property damage, but tens of millions would be conservative. Similar riots have resulted in hundreds of millions in damages.
When the right does this, we call it what it is: violent riots. We acknowledge it's wrong to attempt to prevent the government carrying out its the duties it was democratically elected to carry out. We should hold that standard to the left as well. These rioters are anti-democratic.
What you, and other's, need to understand is that the police have absolutely no mechanism to de-escalate anything. It's a concept completely foreign to American policing. As soon as the police are involved, the situation deteriorates rapidly.
For instance, almost all (95%+) of the BLM protests were completely peaceful. No violence or property damage. You wouldn't get that impression from the news. But, of the ones that did turn violent, every time the violence BEGAN with police overstepping. Pushing protestors, or shooting them, or throwing gas. And then, obviously, the situation deteriorates.
You can say, rightly, there's a car on fire. You can also say the police shot at a journalist.
"burning down cities" would however be incorrect, as the person who literally lives here I can tell you that it is not happening.
Your effort to overstate might have derailed your own reality.
Don't know about you, but I could never throw a brick at anyone. I couldn't and wouldn't put a mask on and head out with the intent to burn cars, throw rocks, loot, and cause criminal damage. That is the opposite of "largely peaceful."
The LAPD chief stated it's "out of control." Your attempt to imply tear gas was used on peaceful protesters doesn't fit the evidence. Many of the rioters are highly organised with supply runs of masks, fireworks and projectiles. I'm not sure what your agenda is but "accuracy" doesn't seem to be it.
There's a lot of people in LA with the skills and equipment to rapidly organize like this; got to see it in person during the Occupy protests, when a tiny village popped up around City Hall - complete with power and internet infrastructure; medical, porta-potties, meals, workshops and seminars... it was pretty impressive!
It's also worth noting the insanity that is July 4th in Los Angeles, so there being a lot of fireworks is uhhh... really, really not weird for LA? We usually get increasing amounts (in size and frequency) of illegal firework "shows" all throughout June.
Lastly - there's also a big difference between "out of our [LADP's] control" and "out of control" - that's (AFAIK) actually the norm for effective protests. A large protest that's under the LAPD's control is generally a "demonstration" instead (see the women's marches).
There's a lot of videos of the contrary - LAPD pelted with rocks by aggressive mobs who are there to fight against "nazi scum" or fight for "stolen land" as they wave every other flag than American.
I suspect the usual media chicanery - everyone reporting the story that their viewers want to hear.
Anyway. My point was that I could not do this. If I was asked to fire teargas at a crowd who were protesting kidnapping people off the streets and taking them to concentration camps, I could not do that. I would refuse that order.
You're posting misinformation. Tear gas is deployed when mobs surge in direct violation of orders not to, or to control violence and criminality by large crowds. Your attempt to frame it as "cops attacking peaceful onlookers" is in conflict with the evidence available.
Aljazeera is pretty good with unbiased coverage, and it doesn't lay the blame one way or the other [0]. It just says "(LAPD) declared the area an unlawful assembly, deployed tear gas, issued tactical alerts and made several arrests."
I would still read that as the cops fired first.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/11/how-the-los-angeles...
Given the mountain of evidence of criminal damage, we can assume the declaration came after evaluating the scale of criminal behavior. Reading that as "cops fired first" sounds like cognitive bias.
Freedom of expression isn't immune from ridicule or condemnation. In one NYC anti-ICE protest they're chanting "From Mexico to Gaza, globalize the intifada". You can argue that's freedom of expression, as is burning the US flag and other dopey unhelpful actions.
Most of those same cops are staffing PDs today, so they will behave exactly as they did back then. Nobody sane should give them any benefit of doubt.
You obviously disagree with it, but that doesn't mean it's not protected.
But some people hang around after it's ended and then the sun goes down and the protest is actually over and the police try to get people to leave. Then it's a people Vs police confrontation that may escalate. Then it's a riot. Usually these deescalate and the police have training in how to do that.
It's not the protests that is violent it's what happens after the protest finishes. Riots by definition are out of control!
Some protestors would claim that the violence is orchestrated by the police. There has been some evidence of that in some places of the world. Mostly it's a riot of violent people, criminals, kids usually, who are thrilled by the violence and chaos and hatred. Mob mentality creates a mob.
they shot a bunch of people, and the feds took it pretty hands off. if anything, the protestors arent being nearly violent enough to get soft hands from the government. if they were out there with automatic weapons and actively shooting at the cops and guard, theyd be left right alone, and the road would be shut down for a couple months
I trust this is true. But the comment would be stronger with a source.
A combined 42 arrests were made by the Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the LAPD said early Monday. Alleged crimes included attempted murder, looting, arson, failure to disperse, assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and other offenses.
is one source, others may have more or less detail. It supports arrests being made wrt looting, not the assertion that most of the looters were arrested.
Note that Trump's DoD did not seem to be in a hurry to deploy the National Guard on 6th January, despite multiple requests to do so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_response_to_th...
My understanding is that the National Guard are being deployed because ICE is being impeded from carrying out their operations. If California were allowed to constructively block the Federal government from carrying out policy of democratically elected administrations, that would be effectively a declaration of secession. Hundreds of years of precedent has made it clear that states are subordinate to the Federal government.
The California government are not blocking the Federal government from carrying out ICE raids. If you believe otherwise, please show the evidence that Trump has presented.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzdkzpQRaAM
And you know what? They were justified.
So less violence towards law enforcement and insurrection than January 6th. Action the President endorsed in January by issuing pardons.
Honestly, if a Democrat were to match Trump's energy, they'd be promising pardons to protesters who damaged ICE property or torched a Trump property. They're not. In part because they're rudderless. But also because they're still gripped by the notion that we're not in the midst of a coup.
If Trump wanted to match Democrat energy he would declare the LA riots an insurrection and devote 40% of the FBI to identifying, rounding up, and imprisoning all of the protestors.
The Marines aren’t enforcing squat. That’s on ICE and the LAPD, the only ones doing the arresting.
> he would declare the LA riots an insurrection and devote 40% of the FBI to identifying, rounding up, and imprisoning all of the protestors
If they broke into a federal building? Absolutely.
You’re the one hyperventilating about a “coup”; do you care to clarify what you actually meant by that or should I just write it off as a paranoid delusion?
Safe? When manned by actors known to shoot journalists in the head with “less lethal” weapons?
ADS operators would be exposed to more than the standard maximum permissible exposure (MPE) limits for RF energy, and military use requires an exception to these exposure limits
According to Wired, the ADS has been rejected for fielding in Iraq due to Pentagon fears that it would be regarded as an instrument of torture
Seems to have problems on both ends.
The national guard and the marines are not trained in crowd control. They are trained in combat situations. They have no role to play here, at best they just make people angry, at worse could perpetuate a massacre.
It stems from leadership - and current leadership wants them to be like that. So, they will become like that.
Even the British Army, generally regarded for professionalism, make a lot of jokes about how unintelligent and trigger happy the average squaddie is.
Man I’m obviously not saying they have perfect discipline, I’m saying you clearly cannot compare them to a nation dealing with an ACTIVE CIVIL WAR.
One day he’s being driven in Germany and a cyclist is keeping pace with them. Officer tells the driver to “fuck him off,” meaning to drive away really quickly. The squaddie mishears this as “knock him off,” and promptly swerves into the rider.
Granted this was British but, as I pointed out, we’re pretty highly regarded for professionalism. So, do I think US troops are any brighter or more ethical? If ordered to shoot, will a significant number say “sir, no sir!”
No, I don’t think either of those things are true.
I already addressed this with my comments on American troops lighting up British tanks during Iraq.
> and with no civil war and a strongly enforced set of national laws
Er… have you read the news? The first part of the quote is a concern of many commentators and the second part of your comment is a fucking bad joke given your President has ignored multiple laws and judicial rulings, including sending the marines into LA without the permission of the governor!
No, you didn’t lol. You showed how American soldiers could shoot at some other military members who were in a tank. I gotta say, if you think I care even half as much about any random Brit more than any American, you’re crazy.
Also, are you under the impression that a random soldier going on a killing spree against innocent Americans would be treated the same as the President playing legal games, albeit ones with very serious consequences?
Just because you don’t like getting schooled doesn’t change the fact that you were.
> Also, are you under the impression that a random soldier going on a killing spree against innocent Americans would be treated the same as the President playing legal games, albeit ones with very serious consequences?
A president that pardoned murderers from January 6th? A president that said there were good people in a group of neonazi rioters? A president that sent those military people in there against the legal restrictions on sending the military in? A president that fired all people in the chain of command who would say “no?”
Yes, I think it’ll be treated differently, just not the same way you will.
> A president that pardoned murderers from January 6th? A president that said there were good people in a group of neonazi rioters? A president that
Yes? Why do you think this is a gotcha? I already said they were games with serious consequences. Are you ok dude?
This really feels like one of those
”””conversations””” where the other person is in fact arguing against someone else, and I’m just a proxy for whatever you’re actually mad about.
I suspect many commenters on HN would also have bridges to sell you, seeing as they’re from around the world, and countries where similar statements were made.
The statement is one thing. Reality is different, even with the best intentions, things get messy, and then the media and information firestorm that follows leaves scars that fester for decades.
You’d be lucky if it doesn’t lead to new infections and new wounds.
Which is why self inflicted wounds are so absurd, especially from nations that have the expertise to know better.
But - expertise is expensive, and entertainment and narrative vitality is the currency we traffic in.
A currency that pushes the costs of clean up and figuring out what happened to the future, if you are lucky to have any committees to look at it all.
We all need a news system that isn’t competing with engagement.
You think any individual marine will follow their conscience and step in if they see an abuse of power by authority?
Governor Wilson called up the National Guard, actually; subsequently, at Governor Wilson's request, and coordinating planning with both the Governor and Mayor Bradley of LA, President Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Guard, and called up the Marines, and deployed the federal and federalized forces (including, also, federal law enforcement) in close cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement to restore order.
That is very different from the situation presently.
The fact that the Guard can be actively federalized, rather than sent home to prevent jt from being used against the Federal government, demonstrates that the situations are wildly dissimilar.
(It is also not legally similar as Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act, which is the only thing that allows using the US military use to enforce the law, whether restricted to doing so in the neighborhood of civilian federal infrastructure and personnel or not.)
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5428352/johnson-nationa...
After invoking the Insurrection Act, correct.
> So is your issue state sovereignty?
In part, but more specifically, my issues are both the substantive issues of policy and the relevant federal law.
The latter is simpler: 10 USC § 12406, which Trump has relied exclusively on in federalizing the Guard, explictly does not (unlike the Insurrection Act, which allows federalizing any part of the universal militia, including but not limited to the Guard when its conditions are met) allow bypassing the Governor. And no provision of law, absent the Insurrection Act, allows deploying regular federal forces, with or without the Governor, for any civilian enforcement mission, however limited.
It is not just Trump. he represents what conservatives, republicans and their voters are. And this is enabled by consistent pretension that Trump is an secretly opposed aberration. No, he is admired both publicly and secretly.
Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires deploying the Marines.
The riots got worse after they were deployed. Obviously. They're being deployed because we have a drunk for SecDef, a basket case in Stephen Miller and flagging illegal-immigrant arrest numbers that are making Homan look incompetent. So we get theatrics. Sort of like the tariffs.
> The Insurrection Act of 1807 [...] empowers the president [...] to nationally deploy the U.S. military [...] in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder [...]
They are being deployed on American soil for their force projection.
Will a useful idiot throwing a rock at a federal building be sufficient casus belli for the latter?
I have zero problem with deporting people that are here illegally. I have plenty of problems with how it's currently being done.
Can you expand on this? If you are referring to the AEA, as far as I know that’s not what is being used in LA.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-...
Well in a Freudian way this statement could be interpreted to exactly mean that what ICE is doing is illegal.
The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions. They do not declare themselves, do not present their civil warrant, do not produce identification, and subsequently frequently do not follow laws, regulation, or the constitutional requirements of due process.
There is no reason that their neighbors, family, and friends need to be happy with what’s happening. They are afforded protection in our society to be angry and disclaim the government without fear of persecution or prosecution. When they’re then persecuted and prosecuted for doing that, people are pissed by the injustice. Then when their governments responsible is to fly in the military, you should expect an explosive situation.
Indeed it seems pretty clear the explosive situation was premeditated and planned - using armored vehicles and riot armored police to invade immigrant neighborhoods and abduct service workers and day laborers in broad daylight when a simple standard ICE operation was clearly designed to provoke strong response in those neighborhoods. Everything after that has been pretty deductively arrived at to create this precise situation. Even the language of insurrection and rebellion - laughably absurd claims for even a riot - which hadn’t happened until the national guard were deployed - are carefully chosen words to provide pretext for what comes next.
I desperate miss the states rights individual freedoms libertarian leaning republicans. They would never have done these things.
Also that they’re going after many people who are actually attempting to comply with the law, because those are the easiest to find. Meanwhile tens of millions of undocumented immigrants are still here, and the lesson they’re being taught is don’t trust the legal process, stay under the radar. In the end the Trump administration is unlikely to make a large dent in the undocumented population - they certainly haven’t so far. It’s mostly theater. They’ll just end up discovering how unintended consequences work.
That doesn't include the hundreds of students legally here on student visas.
And of course, if ICE is going to deport people in the country illegally: it's well establish by now that Musk and Melania violated the terms of their nonresident visas when they first came to the U.S., rendering their U.S. citizenship null and void (Musk worked in violation of his student visa; Melania both worked in violation of her tourist visa and overstayed her visa by several years; if she hadn't married Trump she would have been deported and banned from the U.S. for 10 years).
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Note that this affords the freedom to relocate within, leave, and return to one’s country, not the freedom to enter into other countries in violation of their immigration laws.
As it turns out when you send a force trained only to kill and subjugate, that's what they do. A few guardsman stood down but most did not.
The governor of Louisiana requested federal help. Legally very different.
Most people don't understand why we have the system of laws that we do. Most Americans couldn't design a stable republic the way our founders did. (Most of their contemporaries couldn't either.)
Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires calling in the Marines. Nothing about this situation makes their deployment in Los Angeles legal. Performative hackery is practiced by both sides. Desecrating the honour of our armed forces used to be bipartisan, but I guess that's no longer the case.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Seppo
tl;dr: it’s rhyming slang, Yank (USA person who may/may not also be one of the two Australian stereotypes of Americans, the other one being Texans) rhymes with (septic) tank, shortened to the euphemism used by OP
I think this is kind of an interesting point, because you mention Asian people, but "American" isn't a race. To certain readings, racism is prejudice plus power. In this setup, America is a hegemon establishment power. To dismiss someone or their views just because they're from the US doesn't sound nice, and I don't see how using the term would improve the tenor or tempo of the discussion, but as you surely know, cheekiness is a common trait of Australians. That's why I brought it up, as it's well and good and arguably just to be direct and to the point about not using that kind of talk on HN, because that's what your mod hat is for. I acknowledge and respect that you're doing what you're supposed to do. I simply wanted to gently acknowledge that whatever point that they were making, however poorly it might be phrased, was part and parcel to the derision that you're speaking of. I don't know if it's a very interesting or compelling point when stripped of its emotional language, but our words perhaps say more about ourselves than that which we speak of. I think it's good to be clear about what it is that is bad, not simply that it is bad.
You know better than I what is bad posting for HN, as what might be within the norms of acceptable speech down under would make many English-speaking people blush. I think the post was more heat than light myself, but if they'd said it any other way, we wouldn't be having this interaction, which is arguably what HN is for, interacting with each other in a way that encourages curiosity about the topic and about each other.
Then again, most people aren't super curious about HN metacommentary, so I better wrap this up. Appreciate the context.
If tone policing limits the Overton Window of acceptable speech because it is not sufficiently positive, that becomes a kind of expectation for self-censorship, which is contrary to the HN guidelines which promote curious, free expression. Negative expressions can inflame the passions and can be antithetical to building a healthy community, but if the only acceptable negative expressions must be clinical in tone at worst, many legitimate expressions of content will be disqualified due to unauthorized discontent.
Thanks for the reference, by the way. I should collect a list of them. My current favorite is in my bio on here.
The Insurrection Act authorizes the president to deploy
military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion
or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations.
The statute implements Congress’s authority under the Constitution
to "provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of
the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."
It is the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act,
under which federal military forces are generally barred
from participating in civilian law enforcement activities.
This is the heaviest hammer in the toolbox. Deploying it against citizens he doesn't like because he resents their message is a historical display of bad character and is profoundly unethical in a way that the harshest adjectives struggle to reflect.
I’d cite my source, but can’t find it. I also can’t find anything saying he is invoking it.
Do you have any specific source?
Edit: I’ve found several sources that make It clear the Insurrection Act had not been invoked.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/09/politics/insurrection-act-tru... - “Trump officials quietly discuss moves in LA that avoid invoking Insurrection Act, but it’s not off the table”
Republicans would have to lose a lot of seats for it to happen. Or, Trump would do something beyond the pale for the GOP. Hard to imagine what would make them change their minds on it. Probably not thousands of dead protesters.
> Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.
It seems like Trump has not invoked the insurrection act but instead it’s all under a different federal law. Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor, has a write up [2] on Title 10 vs the Insurrection Act and some possible concerns. He posted this about the National guard but given the military release states they are being deployed to assist the nation guard under title 10 it still seems relevant. To quote the TL;DR of his post:
> The TL;DR here is that Trump has not (yet) invoked the Insurrection Act, which means that the 2000 additional troops that will soon be brought to bear will not be allowed to engage in ordinary law enforcement activities without violating a different law—the Posse Comitatus Act. All that these troops will be able to do is provide a form of force protection and other logistical support for ICE personnel. Whether that, in turn, leads to further escalation is the bigger issue (and, indeed, may be the very purpose of their deployment). But at least as I’m writing this, we’re not there yet.
[1] https://www.northcom.mil/Newsroom/Press-Releases/Article/421...
[2] https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/156-federalizing-the-californ...
They're proud of their heritage, and its the reason why they are being targeted.
Besides, there are also fully legal immigrants being deported.
This, along with bullish economic policies to get them to capitulate to demands of US-homed multinationals (along with plenty of their own internal problems like everywhere else), has caused a problem that has now come home to roost.
It wasn't their fault, they were just born in the wrong country. If they can make it here to work and build a better life for themselves, great. Pay taxes. Get ID'd. Done.
Papiere bitte
This is how a free country turns slowly into a place where you need to carry a passport to take out the garbage bin in the morning.
There's nothing in the text that suggests it is appropriate to preemptively deploy US military in response to protests, not even because the administration deems protestors to be enemies.
Narratives in support of preemptively deploying the military against protesters are all crafted justifications, each built after the act has been decided on.
What's left to for apologists to do is to choose whether to own the methods and intentions or mirror the administration's disingeniousness.
Would blockading federal offices not qualify under the third condition?
> (3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States;
That said, California should have been on top of this situation. It looks like Newsom is willing to sacrifice the safety of his citizens in an attempt to score political points.
WTF? How was this justified?
Well, I'm not so sure about that last part anymore.
Or to quote Serbian president's freudian slip (from just two days ago): "Every living soul in Kosjerić [small town that held municipal elections] came out to vote against us, but we still managed to win."
It is fucking bullshit how a country can spend decades building up its democratic institutions and all it takes is one opportunist to get elected once to undo it all and solidify himself into power for the next 15ish years. And then after they finally leave, you have to start all over again from scratch.
When it comes to consequences of such things, they take time to ramp up (during which time people are usually dismissive of any warnings). The trick is to get out of the country before it's too late.
Turns out it's all BS. Unless it already deteriorated, and no it has not deteriorated in most of the world, votes do count and you live with the outcome which may include the eventual reality of vites stop counting. It's very weird, I can't form an opinion if its a psyop or just how the societies work.
The same steps, in the same direction, the competitive authoritarian[0] playbook was clearly in full play, during the first term Trump started to openly attack the free press, subjugate some democratic institutions, etc. but guardrails were still holding, some GOP Congress people could pushback, the VP wasn't entirely in the cult, the cabinet had some level-headed people.
Now in the second term there is nothing holding back, not the Congress nor Senate, not the Judiciary, not the cabinet, not the elites, not the press, and seemingly the people aren't able at all to comprehend and pushback on how authoritarian it all is.
The plan trudges along, crisis will keep being fabricated so Trump's grip on power increases, this one in LA is definitely going to be used to salami slice more and more power into the Executive, under the veil of "homeland security".
You're entering a new phase of Trump's authoritarianism, Americans, and there doesn't seem to have any power actually powerful enough to fight back.
Of course, from a practical sense this does not seem possible, since the current US military, which a tyrant president would have direct control over, would be infinitely more powerful than a revolutionary group.
At the same time it feels pretty hopeless, even more when I noticed downvotes coming to my comment right after the day rose in the USA without any rebuttal, you're among people who actually support this and do not realise the path it's verging towards.
And then 2010-2025 happened, we saw what the revenge was.
Trump coming back feels very similar to this.
Project 2025 is just a collection of methods they used in E-Europe before. On one hand one could read and learn from history. On the other hand... It's a manual on how to do things, in case you wanna build a system like those in E-Europe.
> In his first speech as PM, he promised drastic measures to stop the negative spiral of the Hungarian economy, and to ease the burden of the international crisis. He also stated that he would remain in power until he had the solid majority of Parliament behind his austerity package, but will stay no longer than a year.
> The new cabinet formed on 29 May 2010. Bajnai was succeeded by Viktor Orbán. After that he retired from politics and returned to business life.
Funnily, Gyurcsany was removed after a leaked recording on which he said "we have fucked it up. Not just a bit, but much." [1] It's amazing that after 17 years, when Orban's huge lies and corruption is proven, people are fine with that, but when a former clown PM was complaining to his party members that "we should've done better", half the country was in riot.
[1]: In English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%90sz%C3%B6d_speech
The "real" problem was that they had too many (Russia-influenced / supported?) ex-communists and some of them were doing corrupt business in the 100k USD range; Of course this is already forgotten, Orban's friends' 100M+ USD ranging businesses seem to be fine with the voters. Not to mention Orban's and the foreign minister's regular visit to Putin.
Relevant search keywords: "Hungary Orban" + any of the following: "stadium", "castle", "rich meszaros", "corruption"
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Hungarian_parliamentary_e...
Here's hoping this is purely an optics play and they are only there to waste money and incite nationalism. Because if this escalates in any way and the US military turns on Americans, its hard to understate how bad things could get.
If it was ever true, it hasn't been true for a long time.
There used to be (and probably still is) a saying in the US military that goes something like "Folks who can't hack it in the military wash out and become cops.".
The military is not at all configured to be an effective long-term occupying force, but its personnel are trained to be soldiers [0] and peacekeepers. (While I'm absolutely certain that one can find examples of psychos that should have been detected and discharged earlier, that's true of any sufficiently-large organization. Finding every malicious person is a task that's next to impossible.)
Anyway, in a high-pressure, chaotic situation, I'd rather come up on a random member of the US military [1] than a random cop any day of the week.
[0] Yes, this does mean that they damage, destroy, injure, and kill when required.
[1] Whether active duty, reservist, or honorably discharged.
I live in a very red state (North Idaho). They don't need to send ICE here. The sheriffs are all cooperating and lending county facilities to hold immigrants. It is safe to say the entire sheriffs department is basically a branch of ICE at this point. They have been targeting I-90 and US-95 heavily and running plates on every car along with a helicopter that basically just goes back and forth all day.
There is very little immigrant presence here (illegal or otherwise) but they have been catching work crews at random (usually under the premise of suspicious vehicle/behavior).
Spokane has been having CBP and ICE raids as well. Quite a few make the local news. Just doesn't get the attention like the larger cities do. Quite a bit of roundups going on out by Yakima and Tri-Cities, WA too. Which is part of why they are using county jails to hold people.
YMMV.
Now ask yourself why Trump is sending a group (who are explicitly prohibited from making arrests) whose entire mission is war to the 2nd biggest city in the country? It's for the same reason those Marines carry guns.
As I've seen others remark, LA gets far worse whenever the Dodgers or Lakers win a championship. It is not a war zone, warriors are not needed. But clearly they are desired.
They don't deserve any benefit of the doubt at this point. Ask yourself what the MAGA reaction would've been to troops being deployed to their riot at the Capitol.
You realize that this is all happening in a very small part of LA, which is an absolutely enormous metropolitan area with more than 10 million residents. The cars being torched are Waymos (which have been happily recording video that is turned over to authorities at request, instead of by warrant -- this action will keep them out of the protest zones) and no businesses are being harmed. The ones being violent are in uniform (even LAPD is saying that protesters are peaceful and those who are violent are people who are frequently violent and showed up for the fight, which is telling on themselves more than a bit).
For 99% of Angelenos, this weekend could have been business as usual if they chose to ignore the federal threats to their neighbors. Millions went to farmers markets, kids birthday parties, church, and all of the other regular weekend activities. The city has not been invaded by anyone other than feds, it is not a war zone, it's not even close to a riot. You are being lied to and manipulated if you believe any of that.
And this week, many residents who have the privilege of doing so are standing in line to barricade the entrance to schools that are hosting graduation ceremonies, so abuelas can celebrate the end of elementary school without being terrified of being kidnapped by men in masks. This is how the community protects its own, and a lot of other places could learn from that if they gave a shit.
In LA, the guys standing outside of Home Depot are the kind of guys that a woman would feel safe telling that they're carrying cash, invite them into their car, and bring them to their house... alone. These are not dangers to anyone.
LAPD and especially LASD, on the other hand, aren't the kind of guys who are safe alone with their own wives.
Waymo's jaguars are well insured -- this does not harm Alphabet in any meaningful way (and certainly not in the "Your neighbor's small business" context that was the context of the post). They shouldn't have been in the area (the taxis weren't), and they absolutely shouldn't be helping law enforcement quite so voluntarily with their video surveillance.
If you want LA to go back to "normal", get ICE, USMC and the federalized guard out of there. They are the problem. Your tax dollars are paying for this charade, and if nothing else, you should be pissed about that.
> get ICE, USMC and the federalized guard out of there
nope. They’re gonna stay until the job is done. Sorry you’re outgunned here.
Sorry, this ship has sailed.
For those who don’t know the reference: This quote is from a journalist who tries to make a protest with a few billion dollars private property set on fire (BLM), pass a peaceful, with fire as the decorum of the journalist. It ignited the moods because the speech was obviously contradicted by the background, highlighting that journalists invert reality and are missioned for propaganda (by whom, nobody knows).
And then “the People” voted for Trump. It’s probable there is massive support for the current deployment of forces. The protestors themselves probably aren’t the real target of this episode, it’s probably rather about highlighting the lack of will and complacency of the Californian structures in establishing order.
It’s dangerous to have the military do it. The Founding Fathers knew this.
And the protestors aren't the problem; the problem are the looters using the protestors as cover. The looters mostly belong to the retail theft gangs that have been plaguing stores across the country (even in red states) since COVID.
No, it’s not crazy but for an unusually large portion of the populace it makes you a racist.
Ditto for any suggestion that immigration law be enforced.
I thought only German Nazi soldiers were incapable of having morality and ability to decide, and were only capable of following orders.
In the end, it will come down to SNCOs and NCOs to make the decision because the Marines try to push down "battlefield" decisions to as close to the action as possible. Of any service, I expect your average Marine to be able to make independent decisions in the moment. That may or may not be a good thing.
EDIT: That said, I concur with my sibling comment that decisions are very much pushed down to the NCO/SNCO on the ground, and I expect that those young Sergeants might actually have more sense and restraint than the O-5s and O-6s (battalion and regiment commanders). Also, military demographics are changing....I bet (but can't confirm with hard data right now) that there is a substantial growth in Hispanics in the combat arms compared to ~30 years ago. I had a female Corporal working for me once who's hometown was Sinaloa (yes, cartel Sinaloa). I think even normally "eager to engage the enemy" Marines will be more restrained about escalating to violence against their own demographics.
But also, armed insurrection is in fact one of the legitimate rationales for deploying the military.
They think this is a problem only for blue collar workers, that they cannot empathize with.
2. Even if it WAS 1 billion people or whatever - why is that bad? The magic question you can never answer.
Is it bad because "white genocide"? Is it bad because jobs? Is it bad because those people are criminals? What's the threat here?
Because, from where I'm standing, these people don't hurt anything. In fact, they're very productive members of society! They work hard, harder than fucking lazy fat white Americans, I'll tell you that. They're modest. They're kind. They don't commit crimes because they're scared shitless of being deported. So what's the problem?
>What amount should we allow to be destroyed before we take steps to protect taxpayer property?
What steps, what assets are being destroyed, why are they being destroyed? These are all relevant questions in answering that. If a small minority of protesters destroy one cop car, I wouldn’t say the response should be to arrest anyone protesting anywhere in the city, if that’s more your question.
Everyone’s okay with peaceful protests, but they should call in the national guard and prosecute people for violence. You might hate Trump, but in my previous experience, it’s the residents of the most liberal districts that suffer all the consequences of this nonsense.
I don’t still live there. Honestly, it convinced me right or wrong that the only reason I’m able to live in the city was because the police are there to sort of enforce the laws and that there is a certain percentage of the population that will steal everything as soon as they think there is an opportunity. Compare that to the suburbs where you could leave valuables out in your yard and no one would take them convinced me that I would rather raise a family in a stable mostly crime free environment.
>shattered windows
Yeah, I could see most of the first floor windows being broken
>destroyed groceries and pharmacies
Wait virtually every, and a total loss? I’m skeptical.
>stole lots from businesses
Sure, I don’t doubt it, though how widespread this was across cities is worth asking.
>vandalized
Don’t doubt this at all.
>lit police cars on fire
Sure, yeah, but how much does that add up to? A few cars per city wouldn’t be much in the grand scheme.
Here’s some indicator of damages. 1500 damaged businesses in Minneapolis alone: https://www.newsweek.com/businesses-year-after-floyd-1596610
And typical estimates are a couple billion in insurance claims (I think nationally?)
Are you just arguing about if it’s “a lot” or not. Thats entirely subjective and not worth debating.
They didn't make any such claim. They were explaining the consequences they experienced as a result of the BLM riots.
Edit:
Fwiw, the governor probably shouldn’t have waited for permission. A white man encroaching on the city run by a black woman at the height of Freddie Gray, tough spot to be in.
> where the mayor of the city said that she was going to allow, give protesters room to destroy and wasn't going to stop them.
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/hogan-says-defunding-police-wors...
They burn the small business of honest working people.
Glad to see Trump learned his lesson from the first time.
Of the 2000 national guard deployed, only 300 have actually been operationalized.
There was hardly any looting or rioting. Certainly not more than could be handled locally. Trump is doing this to deliberately escalate the situation.
> LA had plenty of local police to handle the scale of the protests before
sure, and why didn't they do it this time? I suspect for the same reason: both Bass and Newsom want to escalate the situation as well. And when both sides want escalation that's what we get. My 2c.
It's hilarious to me that we even have the cultural understanding of a sports riot, and it's assumed that it's just not that bad. Just people having a good time, burning up a car and smashing businesses to celebrate (mourn) their team's victory (defeat).
Is that supposed to be funny? Because in a super dry sort of way it's hilarious as a concept.
Was literally everything destroyed, no, but I've got photographs of small businesses boarded up with they already looted everything, please don't loot again. There was devastation throughout the city.
After everything happened, national guard trucks showed up and guarded the devastation. If you drive out to the wealthy burbs, it's like nothing happened. They devastated one of the most liberal parts of America. Congrats.
[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/6/61/Victoria_Nula...
"Prior to the emergence of Kievan Rus' in the 9th century, most of the area north of the Black Sea was primarily populated by eastern Slavic tribes."
Likewise Lithuania was a union of Baltic tribes.
Later Lithuania grabbed the territory of Kievan Rus' when it was greatly weakened by the Mongol invasion.[0]
"The grand duchy expanded to include large portions of the former Kievan Rus' and other neighbouring states, including what is now Belarus, Lithuania, most of Ukraine as well as parts of Latvia, Moldova, Poland and Russia."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Kievan_Rus%...
In this case the US is treating them with batons and rubber bullets.
The cops escalated every situation they arrived at.
The cops and ICE escalated an otherwise peaceful situation.
Agitators unrelated to protests have been known to kick shit up, such as during black lives matter protests when white supremacists would break windows. https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-helped-ignite-george-floyd-rio...
Anyway, if the cops weren't there, there'd be no fires. Ergo the cops shouldn't be there. Seems like a pretty simple algebra to me.
The "just submit" ideology that people seem to be touting demonstrates a lack of understanding of American psychology. The country was founded on revolution against a despot, that's the core American value. You can't deal with a population like that by sending in storm troopers, that will obviously just escalate the situation.
The government needs to be realistic about the situation and seek alternative measures if their goal is to deport the neighbors of people who love the 2nd amendment. Perhaps they could simply give up on that goal, that's what I would advise.
I think you're misunderstanding the audience. The Trump administration is not trying to convince or even deter these protesters, all of this is theater for middle America at home watching this on TV. It's a battle for their votes based on who wins the propaganda war by looking less reasonable on the news.
What can they do to guard then?
Hyped antagonism between both sides on purpose. Check.
Remember Ghorman
Burning the city? Check Incopetent mayor not doing its job? check Incopetent governor watching the caos unfold? Check.
"We made the story. We shaped it. We blew it up. We decided when it was over. With the right ideas planted in the right markets, in the right sequence, we can now weaponize this galactic opinion." ―Dee Shambo[1]
Now that the people that believe in QAnon are in power, they have 100x resources to spread disinformation. When conspiracy theorist are the ones in power, is it really a conspiracy anymore? It is policy.
Do you think just stating what is happening is a conspiracy?
Is the situation not being inflamed? Are troops not moving in? Do you think these aren't happening? I'm curious because I'm always a little unclear if conspiracy people think things aren't actually happening, like this is fake video or something?
If you want to manufacture a wholesale lie like this, at least make it believable. I know it's hard to grapple with the fact that America elected a pedophile and convicted rapist as it's president, but you'll need more than tough words to blame it on Israel.
Well he didn't expose him did he? You fell into a trap of cognitive dissonance.
What Musk said was, "[Trump] is in the Epstein files." While this is already well known, what we don't know and what wasn't said was to what _degree_ Trump is in them. Musk is well-known for falsely accusing people he's upset with of being a pedo. Yet he didn't go that far this time. If Trump was in any compromising situation in the Epstein files we would have known about it already. The Democrats and intelligence community would not have needed the fake dossier, fake hooker allegations, Russian collosion hoax, or any of their other tricks.
Seems to be some kind of tradition to send Marines every 33 years to LA.
Trump deploys National Guard as Los Angeles protests against immigration agents (105 points, 2 days ago, 50 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44214230
The National Guard Deployment in LA Is a Threat to Democracy (15 points, 7 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44230137
(Although you'd think 2000 National Guard troops would be enough without the 700 Marines)
The President can of course dispatch the military for domestic law enforcement, but to do so he needs to establish a legal exception, like the Insurrection Act. That hasn't happened yet.
[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/poss...
The USA is a dictatorship now, the trump cult has won. Let's hope it crumbles fast.
> Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.
To surpass that, the president must declare an insurrection. But he’s done no such thing, since such a claim is nakedly indefensible.
(This justification of course only applies to the national guard. The federal armed forces have even stronger guardrails.)
We may be smart techies but the arguments here about politics seem awfully reductive. We're out of our lane on most of this. What's with all the hate here?
The commentary here feels like its sliding it's way towards Reddit. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe it's accidental, or maybe it's on purpose?
Hoping not to lose my faith in the quality of discourse on this website.
You either think sending the military to break up protests against the wishes of the governor and mayor and against the bounds of the constituion is a problem, or you are insane.
When ICE wears masks and whisks people off the street and sends them to overseas torture camps without warning or due process, you are either opposed or insane.
There's honestly no room for nuance on this. We're reaching the point where Trump is sending the military to enforce his unconstitutional actions. Things are awful right now and are about to get so much worse.
To be clear- if you support what's happening here: you are a bad person. i genuinely hate you.
This is the kind of political reductionism I was referring to. It's not OK to "genuinely hate" a person (or group of people) you've never even met, based on a single binary opinion you hold.. that's some serious "othering" going on. People aren't so black and white.
If your comment was meant as sarcasm I don't get it.
And idk, but I'm just saying what I feel. I don't think its unique to this forum, more just what's going on in society.
The issues happening are not the type of thing where we can agree to disagre. There isn't a middle road. The ideologies behind it are based on hate and fear and greed. America's not going to be a democracy much longer and friends of mine are in life threatening danger.
I could not be friends with someone who supported this IRL or online.
You are saying what you feel, but what do you think?
> The ideologies behind it are based on hate and fear and greed.
Organizations across the political spectrum manipulating the emotions of the populace is exactly how we got to this massively fragmented culture where people feel it's appropriate to hate their fellow citizens.
If you think being mad at that is me being manipulated I don't know what to tell you.
Something shattered after 9/11 and especially after Occupy Wall Street, where Americans went from vigorous disagreement over policy implementations despite a common culture (Monday Night Football and apple pie, etc...) to constantly "othering" what should be an in-group identity and painting people as evil incarnate.
But this is such blantant, needless, willful cruelty.
Gleeful, even.
I've talked to someone with opinions like yours IRL before and one thing we disagreed on is that he was unable to name a single person that he considered to be 'evil'. Do you feel the same way?
Who went out of their way to enable what they were doing because they liked having a strongman?
I don't think there's any satisfying explanation for people who would do that other than:
- They live in a perceived reality that is vastly different and incompatible with mine. (Ie. insane. Or stupid if you prefer.)
Imagine people seeing those videos and deciding everyone executed were so awful that they deserved their fate and the narcosicario were heroes for administering justice. Or don't believe they're real and that the videos must have been staged or overblown.
- They see what's happening and understand it and approve anyways because they genuinely like seeing people suffer, or greedily think that the victim's suffering will improve their own life. (Ie. evil).
- Some mix of the two
I see that all the time online, actually. I think there are a lot of broken-brained, hurt people in the world, who don't know how to channel their emotions in productive manner. I don't think cheerleading sadist edgelords are evil. Actions speak louder than words / anonymous shit-talkers on gore sites.
> Who went out of their way to enable what they were doing because they liked having a strongman?
There's a big difference between "liking a strongman" and flaying people alive. Consider asking "what is the utility people are getting from the strongman?"
> - They live in a perceived reality that is vastly different and incompatible with mine.
To an extent this hits at why many people consider multiculturalism a failure. Are the people that you consider incompatible able to carry on life within their moral framework?
> Imagine people seeing those videos and deciding everyone executed were so awful that they deserved their fate and the narcosicario were heroes for administering justice.
Actually that sometimes happens. The infamous "Ghost Rider" video features a guy getting his face melted off. The backstory, though, is the victim in that video is a rival cartel sicario who threatened to burn alive the daughter of some other cartel boss. I suppose a minority of cartels still have an honor system where they don't go around murdering children....well, this guy got captured and they didn't take too kindly to the threats he had made, so they gave him the exact punishment he was promising to inflict on a child.
I have no sympathy for him, he got what he deserved. That's an outlier case and overall I consider sicarios of all stripes some of the worst humans on the planet....but in Mexico they somehow have some "Robin Hood" appeal in some communities, from what little I've read.
They just found a "loophole" around the Convention Against Torture [1]. And before that have been simply ignoring judges who have brought it up. They are reopening Guantanamo Bay to be used as a detention center. Beyond a shadow of any doubt these people are being tortured.
The people they're sending are given no due process. There is no trial. And not that illegal immigrants deserve torture but some of the people they're sending are not even illegal immigrants [2].
This is indiscriminat wanton gleeful torturous violence by unidentified masked goons against people whose only crime was wanting the same standard of life we happened to be born into (if even: some committed no crime at all and without trials we may never know)
> Actions speak louder than words / anonymous shit-talkers on gore sites.
In this case at least, the supporters actions directly lead to whats happening and they continue to support it and take actions to make sure it keeps happening.
> To an extent this hits at why many people consider multiculturalism a failure. Are the people that you consider incompatible able to carry on life within their moral framework?
I think it should be the goal of all goodly people to treat everyone as humans with dignity and ensure that the type of people who are incapable of believing that way are never allowed to taste power. I'm indifferent to multiculturalism and I hope that neoconservative culture is stomped out with extreme prejudice, much like was tried with Nazi culture.
1. https://www.vox.com/scotus/416163/trump-supreme-court-deport...
2. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ice-admits-administrative-er...
Colonial Outcasts on YT regularly makes the point that "Techniques of Imperialism used against The Colonies eventually rebounds back domestically in the form of fascism". Snatching people and sending them to questionable countries for imprisonment/intel extraction/torture is what the CIA was doing in conjunction with the help of the Assad regime(!!!).
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/comment-when-assads-horr...
> I think it should be the goal of all goodly people to treat everyone as humans with dignity and ensure that the type of people who are incapable of believing that way are never allowed to taste power.
I can agree with this sentiment, but:
"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." -- Kosh, Babylon 5
It's why I displaced to Asia, where I'm supporting high trust, reasonably well-functioning societies, and can minimize my contributions to either America's domestic insanity or America's material support (intel, munitions, diplomatic cover, etc.) for the Gaza genocide. I'm trying to distance myself from shitbag regimes for a few more years until my retirement, and then reduce my family's relationship with The West to only being a source of hopefully-ancillary passive income thereafter.
(Should have been obvious :p, you have been lovely to talk to)
Its horrific what the CIA has done and continues to do. So many of the world's evils can directly be traced back to them. And the colonisation project as a whole of course.
I also agree that its very unlikely we will be able to work our way out of a system that nobody can comprehend and seems to have evolved to trap and perpetuate itself.
Penelope Scott describes it beautifully in https://penelopescott.substack.com/p/what-does-mysteries-for... imo.
But I stand by that there seems to be some percentage of the world that takes pleasure in the suffering of others and the knowledge that they have something others lack. And their influence has made things much harder for everyone.
I still feel like I have the right to be frustrated and the people who seem to be deluded as to what's actually happening, and scornful of those who actively aid & abet the crimes against humanity going on around us.
For myself, I carry no stocks as it aligns myself with the corporations and investors who are a huge factor in our evil. I refuse to work for big tech or anywhere where the user is the product. I go to protests despite the futility of it. Probably I should move, like you, or find other ways to do more.
I don't fault people for drawing a different line on what's reasonable and practical to do in a society designed to make ethical behavior impossible.
I still take flights despite it killing the environment, pay taxes to the US despite it mainly going to genocide, eat meat, buy consumer products made with slave labor, hoard wealth past the worldwide median. So I know I'm on shakey ground.
But the people actively opposed and working against peace movements I can't find any love in my heart for.
It absofuckingloutely is. Child rapists. All rapists. Wife beaters. And on and on.
Actually there is a very long list of people that I have no interest in spending a single second with.
If a person thinks having heavily armed masked men who refuse to show ID whisking people off the streets with no due process is OK, then that person does not deserve to live in a civilized democracy, and should remove themselves so they are subject to the living hell of uncertainty.
In fact, I feel like HN is much worse about promoting echo chamber behavior than Reddit, due to the visibility differences between a comment being downvoted/flagged dead, as opposed to merely being greyed out and collapsed.
If you haven't noticed it before now, it's because the incentive structure is weighed heavily in favor of the echo chamber. Those who engage in good faith eventually get tired of their comments being hidden by an unaccountable mob and leave - and to be clear, I am speaking in the past tense, as in this has already happened to HN several times over.
I mean, Gavin Newsom just did a long interview from a "crisis center" where he did exactly that, today. And plenty of Democratic politicians also speak against violent protests whenever they occur.
But unless you actually pay pretty close attention to what Democratic politicians actually say, you won't hear these statements. Fox doesn't cover Democratic politicians speaking against violence. And frankly, if there's a 99.9% peaceful protest with one burning car, the media will devote 80% of their coverage to the burning car, and maybe a few sentences to politicians saying the burning car is bad. The media is unfortunately interested in spectacle and entertainment.
I pay more attention than average to what politicians of both parties say, and it's kind of hilarious how often I hear "Why didn't so-and-so say X?" (uh, they do every week or two), or "I never believed so-and-so would do Y" (uh, they literally promised Y on the campaign trail). I don't know how to fix this.
Trump: We must have law and order. Immigration laws must be enforced. We will not tolerate riots or destruction.
Protesters: The government shouldn't detain people who are in the country illegally. We should ignore federal laws we don't agree with. If we disagree with federal agents who are enforcing existing laws, we should impede them, attack them, and destroy property to lash out.
This is not an endorsement of Trump, as he's clearly milking this situation to squeeze Newsom. This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal to everyone outside California. Until the left takes a logically defensible position on illegal immigration, they will continue to be vulnerable to Trump's theater on this and he will continue to bludgeon them with it in elections.
Trump's political superpower is his ability to take a base position that is entirely reasonable and agreeable to most people ("The US must enforce its federal immigration laws"), then use inflammatory rhetoric and legal boundary testing to whip his opposition into undisciplined, emotional overreactions that leave them in a worse political position than him. He has been absurdly successful in using this tactic since 2015.
Well, unless it's done in furtherance of our agenda and against Congress...
>This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal
What's fascinating with current US politics and media is how these two sentences can be constructed in same sentence in an attempt to come off as "see I'm smart and media literate, I can see the full picture!" while literally the first sentence of your comment shows that that's not the case.
The media repeating "Democrats are far left" long enough and it have penetrated your head. There's probably pandering to far left in democratic party I assume, but it have been magnified to a reality altering level by media so that's now believed as the core, while same thing happening on the far-right & Republican party.
Both side must be truly be thinking like you, I assume. "I see the full picture, I'm smart" while parroting a distortion only required to be repeated for years.
If everyone could put their phone down, touch some grass, take a road trip to the opposite political isle maybe this distortion could've been avoided.
So we're in a situation where the democratic party is utterly failing to actually implement any of the good or popular left policies that would help the masses, even the pretty moderate ones, but is pushing incredibly unpopular extreme left policies that don't actually help the citizenry. In that context it's honestly a very reasonable thing for someone on the right to point to the dems call the party far left. And yet for those of us that want these policies for the people, the dems appear right-leaning. Very odd how this has worked out, but both are true in a way.
I think the reason behind this is mainly due to them being controlled by their corporate donors who dictate focusing on the unpopular policies which are cheaper for the corporations to contend with. Universal healthcare would be a huge blow to corporate control in this country, as right now healthcare is tied to employment and that gives large corporate employers incredibly excessive power.
You've swallowed a lot of right-wing propaganda about the Democratic Party. Do you really thing Democrats are "pro-illegal immigration"? The rest of these tendentious mischaracterizations take some tedious and likely fruitless effort to debunk, but just think about that phrase. Do you think any party is in favor of illegal immigration? How would that work anyway? Parties try to pass laws. The best you could find is that some party favors immigration policies you would prefer be illegal.
Democrats are against violating laws to deport people here legally or following the legal, prescribed process for adjudicating their status. Republicans are okay with breaking the law to chuck people out of the country. That produces a different result, but "illegal" is on the wrong side of the balance there for your argument.
You're not in a great position to tell Democrats what to say and do if you're clearly ignoring what they say and do and believing the lies other people feed you about them.
I do. Demonstrably so. The Biden administration admitted between 8-20 million illegal immigrants into the country, depending on the estimate used. Even at the low end, this is the highest ever in the history of the country. More than any other administration. They made all kinds of excuses. They claimed they needed new laws. Trump solved it almost overnight. [https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...] The Democrats lied. They didn't need more laws. They wanted things the way they were. They chose to permit the situation and allow it to devolve like that.
Now almost every Democrat representative is resolutely opposed to deporting illegal immigrants. There is simply no other way to interpret this than they are in fact pro illegal immigration.
Frankly i think you're exactly the person who is part of the problem here, proudly prejudiced, not very well informed despite thinking you know better than everyone.
> Do you think any party is in favor of illegal immigration? How would that work anyway? Parties try to pass laws. The best you could find is that some party favors immigration policies you would prefer be illegal.
This kind of reads like it's written by AI or something but either way it's irrational on such a fundamental level that i don't really know what to make of it. Obviously a ruling power in a country can be in favor of something illegal and take action to increase illegality on purpose. That's what you are saying trump is doing, so you don't even disagree with yourself. Where did you think the huge numbers of illegal immigrants came from while under democratic leadership, did they materialize independently? No, they promoted illegality.
It wasn't in my post but just in case you aren't an AI, the democratic party is pro illegal immigration for relatively straightforward reasons. their large corporate donors like having a large cheap underclass of workers to exploit and abuse. Illegal immigrants are much less likely to cause problems at work and are likely to work harder because they are at a much higher risk. If you're a CEO you can bet it's better to hire people you know will never unionize, you can exploit easily and won't file any workplace safety complaints. You can even commit wage theft with abandon, what are they going to do about it? There's also other secondary effects like creating a large amount of illegality overloads the courts and generally creates chaos which can be easy to exploit.
I've also seen the argument that the dems hope to swing demographics to secure the vote but i'm not so sure about that one, especially considering how hard legal voting immigrants are swinging against the democratic party for all of my prior mentioned reasons. I feel like if you were actually in touch with the legal immigrant population you would understand this a lot better.
I'm in favor of large scale legal immigration so people get full workplace rights and aren't easy to take advantage of. Duh. Creating an underclass of workers with less rights to keep corpo rat profits rising is bad. The democratic party has done the opposite, this is fact. Not really sure what else there is to say, all your smoke isn't worth much.
And i do think the dem's longer term plan was something stupid like "bring in infinite illegal immigrants to create a problem" and then "we will sell the solution and make them all citizens!" and that went ass up with their own hubris exploding in their face. Either way that's evil shit.
In either case, thank you for the insight. It didn't give me any additional insight and while you call it one dimensional, I only see an expansion of the same idea I shared: both sides use culture war to smear each other (and as a lazy cop-out to game the media attention for coverage and votes). Most people have heard of AOC, Bernie, and Elizabeth Warren's. Even Ted Cruz & RFK JR (pre election). Surely when congress is 400+ and senate is 100+ people, those names don't represent ALL of the intricate factions of the two parties?
Yet we all act like they somehow are the representative of the opposite. To me you're just saying the same thing, but relieving any responsibility of the parrots, and putting it solely on corporate and self interested politician.
If those culture wars win votes, I think putting the sole responsibility that way is just an convenient excuse for everyone to play along the system and shout at each other.
I guess to the people shouting at each other, my comment might have come off as "touting my horn". I'm from the outside, I don't have any high horse or stakes in this but I understand the confusion
"Too many people are saying, "It's terrible that innocent black men died, but this property destruction has to stop!"
when they should be saying, "It's terrible that there is property destruction, but the death of innocent black men has to stop!"."
The punishment for no crime in the US is state-sanctioned public execution.
Remind us all what crime he was convicted of. A $20 bill was alleged by a shop clerk to be counterfeit. There is no evidence either that it was, or that it was known to be counterfeit.
> He then resisted a lawful arrest. His death was entirely self inflicted.
Hard to self-inflict murder. "It wasn't murder!" - if his death was due solely to his alleged actions, and not due to excessive and inappropriate force by the police involved, then an officer would not have been charged with and convicted of second-degree murder. Nor would prosecutors not only charge the police involved, but move to increase charges and sentencing requests due to the "unnecessary and particularly excessive cruelty being inflicted upon [Floyd] by the officers". Weird.
We should be clear, protesting is not illegal. It's protected first amendment speech. There is activity at protests that is illegal, and should be punished, but that's not protesting and lumping them together puts a chilling effect on.
Everyone says this but no one means it. Governments just declare an area offlimits, or they declare a curfew or one of hundreds of ways they use to make protesters illegal. Ultimately, protests are only legal inside a small cube where no one can see, and thus the protesters have no effect.
Protesting is illegal. People should protest anyway because it is stupid that protesting is illegal.
I've seen lots of pictures of protestors waving Mexican flags, and of the burning Waymos, etc. My guess is these are a very small percentage of protestors, but it makes for great TV, and Trump gets to say that he's "protecting America against violent foreign invaders". And I can imagine many people watching this and agreeing with him - I mean, I consider myself quite liberal, but waving a Mexican flag at these events just makes me think you can fuck right off with that bullshit.
It's a great example IMO of how Trump deliberately sows division and escalates whenever possible in order to use people's fear to consolidate power. It's basically Autocracy 101.
I'm confused, you consider yourself quite liberal but you think it's bullshit for Mexicans in the US to celebrate their heritage?
I recently naturalized as a US citizen. It took ~15 years (permanent residency + citizenship). That was after spending a decade (multiple programs) here as a student. No one should suffer and live in fear in an ideal world. At the same time, it is galling to see the left support illegal immigration because (a) someone "contributes" to the economy, (b) they are paying taxes (how is this known by anyone except the payer and the IRS?), (c) they are good people.
The reaction of my extreme-left wing friends is to say "well, you got to come here. They deserve the same opportunity." I am the first one to admit I have had some advantages. At the same time, every legal immigrant goes through a relatively rigorous process. Any whiff of a criminal record has the potential to derail the process, as should be the case. Just apply the law equally to everyone. That's one of the promises of our constitution. I mean this both for liberals and conservatives. If a law is unjust, we have mechanisms in place to overturn them. But to ignore the law is a long-term danger to this country. This is one of the reasons there is a lot of support for this type of action. It is borne out of frustration. Lastly, the idea that people supporting deportation are racists is an easy cop-out to not have to explain how we got to the current state (saying this as a non-white person although I also disagree with the left's assertion that only white people can be racist).
What is your explanation? I suspect that it's something along the lines of: "people waving foreign flags are signaling their intention to invade the US", but that you don't want to say it overtly because it's obviously a racist talking point from right-wing media.
No it's not. They just like slavery. If it was about states rights they wouldn't support sending in the military.
What I find shocking about comments like yours is the reminder that propaganda works. Someone in the republican party decided "guys, advocating for slavery openly doesn't go over well, let's tell them it's actually about states rights", and loads of people actually believed it.
I'm not in support of administration or MAGA.
But, to be pedantic, you can be for states' rights, but against states overstepping Federal powers.
Immigration is, currently, a Federal power.
Who is and is not a citizen is not a state's decision.
Just because you're in favor of state's rights (I am), does not mean you think every single issue should be a state's issue.
Maybe you'd like each state to fund their own SS and Medicare. But that's not how it is. And it's unlikely to ever happen.
It was the Democratic party that historically supported slavery and opposed the civil rights movement. The "states rights" euphemism was invented by the Democratic party not the Republican party.
And as one might not realize given the rhetoric, border crossings in 2024 plummeted (although not reaching pre-pandemic levels) thanks to increased arrests on the US side of the border and more efforts from Mexico to control the flow of refugees.
Have you thought about why trump's voterbase includes so many legal immigrants? immigrants who put in the immense effort to come here properly are tired of people sneaking into the country and the democratic party conflating legal and illegal immigrants and acting like the two groups are the same.
I have thought about what Trump got a lot of legal immigrant votes. I believe it's because a) he lied, playing on fear in order to get people to think he could save them from a non-existent threat and b) people didn't think he was going to do what he promised to do.
Ileana Garcia, Florida State Senator and co-founder of Latinos for Trump, just said "This is not what we voted for." She's wrong -- it was very clear to me during the campaign that Stephen Miller's goal was exactly what we're seeing now. However, I am fundamentally sympathetic to people who were fooled.
Uh, no? I was replying to someone who brought up slavery and i pointed out if something is similar, importing in a large underclass of exploitable cheap labor is certainly similar. Illegal immigration is not a form of slavery, not sure where you got that, but when we're already in the realm of absurd analogies it's definitely more similar by comparison.
Come on now.
There's no need to give legitimacy to the lie.
> Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
To fill in the negative side of authorities, Trump cannot use the mobilized Marines to enforce US laws (aka act in a law enforcement capacity).
As you said, they are restricted to protecting federal buildings and federal agents.
After the first Gulf War they sent us to Greensboro, NC to march in some parade and no one argued against that either because we weren't being used in any law enforcement capacity. Honestly, if we were there for 'riot control' I doubt they would have given us such a warm welcome.
No one is bringing people in, the flags being waved aren't all Mexican and the Mexican flags are a variety of different sizes and the LA local community, including its ~3.5 million residents of Mexican ethnicity, has quite a few Mexican flags of all shapes and sizes without needing any people or flags brought in from outside.
> Isn't that the very place they are trying to stay out of and wouldn't a Mexican flag imply an invasion from Mexico?
Mexican flags are a common symbol of pride in and solidarity with the community of Mexican ethnicity, rather than serving as agents of Mexico-the-republic, just as Confederate flags are a common symbol of pride in the White racist community, rather than serving as agents of the long-defunct putative regime.
> It feel like I am watching a movie produced by really lazy script writers.
Yeah, well, I won't comment on the “really lazy” part, but unless you are present watching it with your own eyes, you absolutely are watching something packaged for you as propaganda: everything you are seeing is edited to present a narrative by the people presenting it.
That much I can agree with for sure. I've watched media that align left, center, right along with YT influencers that align left center and right. Each spin their own yarn. One would think they are all looking at different events but I can see what they are looking at.
They are arguing there's an insurrenction in California.
The argument seems to be more of a no-confidence move because the Californians can't keep order. They'll presumably treat the wording seriously but I think the "form of rebellion" is more a jab at the people who keep harping on about insurrections. Looks like a bad argument from any angle I can think of (they aren't invited and there isn't an actual rebellion to put down).
Whenever...the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States; the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to ... execute those laws.
A very interesting article about this situation from a Georgetown law professor was posted somewhere deep in this discussion and is well worth reading.
The professor is strongly opposed to the deployment, and calls it "dangerous" and "pernicious" among other things. Nonetheless, he "thinks the federal government has both the constitutional and statutory authority to override local and state governments when it comes to law and order" and that "this [clause] is better understood as a purely administrative provision than it is as giving a substantive veto to the governor."
https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/156-federalizing-the-californ...
In an interview with All Things Considered host Juana Summers, Newsom said the mobilization order was not done with communication to or approval by his office. [1]
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5428342/per-california-...
A statement like "The government is scrambling to justify an unnecessary escalation, driven solely by a president who has praised violent authoritarian leaders, by labeling it an 'insurrection.' When asked for evidence, officials mocked reporters and threatened to exclude them from future briefings." offers verifiable context and reflects the serious threat posed by a leader who appears intent on pushing the country toward chaos.
I personally believe that especially on a forum such as this, it’s fine to expose the administrations claims to daylight and let them be examined and criticized and even mocked.
> The authority for the President to use the military in cases of insurrection comes primarily from the Insurrection Act, codified in 10 U.S. Code §§ 251-255. This act provides the statutory exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act.
> When unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce federal laws in any state by ordinary judicial proceedings. (10 U.S.C. § 252)
> When an insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy in a state hinders the execution of state and federal laws, depriving people of their constitutional rights, and the state authorities are unable, fail, or refuse to protect those rights. (10 U.S.C. § 253)
> When an insurrection opposes or obstructs the execution of U.S. laws or impedes the course of justice under those laws. (10 U.S.C. § 253)
The last time this Act was used was in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots and it withstood all legal contests. This time around it is a stated intent of these rioters to specifically obstruct federal law enforcement efforts. That's their stated goal which they are very consistent and very loud about in interviews. This clearly satisfies the criteria for the Insurrection Act.
I understand that this is a concerning action, but the law is black and white. If the U.S. and Congress and the House didn't want Presidents to have this power, the country has had more than 200 years to amend it.
Kind of like using the Insurrection Act to suspend habeas corpus and then threatening judges if they dare to question its legality?
> This time around it is a stated intent of these rioters to specifically obstruct federal law enforcement efforts.
Or, one might argue, "petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
The President does not have a legal right to suspend habeas corpus. Only Congress.
> Or, one might argue, "petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
No, a petition is a piece of paper or in verb form, lobbying politicians. Burning down cities and attacking officers does not fall under the definition.
I would say that mass groups of people gathering on the streets protesting the same cause is a form of "lobbying politicians".
> Burning down cities and attacking officers does not fall under the definition.
Sure, if that's what is actually occurring. AFAICT they are mostly peaceful protests with a couple of examples of limited unlawful behavior but that's what the news is showing because burning cop cars make for good ratings.
It's not like the people of LA don't know how to put on a proper riot or anything...
> Is there an official definition?
> the law is black and white.
>> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
People can say whatever they want. Only violent actions qualify as insurrection.
We have seen what happens to the traitors flying the Confederate flag.
They are listened to, cuddled, and pardoned.
But is not. Invasions are military offensives involving combatants of a geopolitical entity [1].
If this is an invasion, every rally in which a Confederate flag is waived is a rebellion. Also, § 4 concludes with "and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." The Constitution is very clear about the scope of executive military power within the United States because they weren't illiterate and knew how Rome's republics fell [2].
Hell, even when Hamilton argued for federal control of militias, he underscored that its risk "to the liberties of the people" was mitigated by the fact that the states "have the SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE APPOINTMENT OF THE OFFICERS," emphasis his [3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion
and God forbid if the English team crashes out early...or worse, ends up winning.
For sake of argument, let's grant this.
"A first-time illegal entry is a federal misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $250 and a maximum jail sentence of six months" [1]. Assaulting a federal police officer carries a maximum jail sentence of 5 [2] to ten years [3].
The first category, petty misdemeanors, includes things like DUIs, cyberbullying and vandalism [4]. It also, conveniently, doesn't require a jury trial [5]. Based on your standard, if a tourist is caught driving under the influence, or is suspected of cyberbullying or vandalism, it triggers the threshold upon which, if any violence of any kind is suspected in their vicinity, troops can be deployed against American citizens. (And then they get no jury trial.) Because I will love to see that precedent explored the next time the far right whips up an election-denial conspiracy.
[1] https://legalclarity.org/18-u-s-c-1325-illegal-entry-and-its...
[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/111
[3] https://medvinlaw.com/federal-assault-on-law-enforcement-pen...
[4] https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/classes-of-mi...
[5] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-6/p...
There are no invaders attacking my family.
My people is all of humanity and I don't believe any race or nationality should be favored over or considered better than another. There are no (space) alien invaders attacking my people.
My territory is this Spaceship Earth, a speck of dust in a giant uncaring universe, and I share it with all known life in the universe. There is no other life known, and therefore no invaders.
I do have children. I do love my family. I did have a stable, happy childhood. My ethnicity is extremely irrelevant and I'm offended you'd ask.
I'm not particularly incensed about illegal immigration either way. I think ICE could be more humane. But they're ultimately executing the nation's laws.
What Trump is doing with California's National Guard and the Marines is orthogonal to what he's using to justify it. (The Marines aren't arresting illegal immigrants. They've been deployed against protesters. Mostly Americans.)
To the extent I believe there is a risk from illegal immigrants, it's principally in the risk from cartel violence leaking into America. These sort of theatrics undermine that law-enforcement prerogative by focussing on quantity [1] over quality.
> My instinct is to annihilate them in defence of myself, my family, my people, and our territory
I'm much more concerned about someone with those instincts than I am about nonviolent people. (As would have been our founders.)
[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/immigration-ice-deportation...
but people who are in country illegally are not domestic.
"The Clause uses the term 'domestic violence' in the now-archaic sense of '[i]nsurrection or unlawful force fomented from within a country,” and not the modern usage meaning violence between romantic partners or within a household" [1][2].
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-4/sec...
Is the fact that someone is present in the country illegally more likely to be presented as evidence that that person doesn't count as a source of insurrection "from within the country", or as evidence that the person isn't beating his wife?
The point is domestic isn't qualifying violence, it's referring to a particular category of threat.
> the fact that someone is present in the country illegally
Illegal immigrants aren't "from within [the] country."
The people who are from within the United States are protesting. Mostly peacefully. They're the ones the Marines are being deployed against.
But that is the way TiredOfLife presented it. He says that people who are illegally present don't fall into that category. You respond that he shouldn't be talking about wife beaters. Where did that come from?
(Also, of course, "domestic" is qualifying "violence". It's just doing it in Merriam-Webster's sense 2 rather than sense 3.)
The term domestic violence cannot be decomposed into domestic and violence. It's a term of art referring to "[i]nsurrection or unlawful force fomented from within a country."
> of course, "domestic" is qualifying "violence"
No, it's not. It would be like arguing that a law that talks about the United States of America doesn't apply if the states aren't united at the time of its application. (It's even stupider, since this is not only a term of art, but an archaic one as well. Decomposing it is akin to using the modern definition for domestic violence to interpret that text.)
This is such a tabloid and uneducated take. These are riots or unrest, not an invasion. An invasion is a military offensive by a nation-state or global entity. If this was in fact an invasion, the US should invoke NATO article 5.
If that's the bar, then I'm wondering how you'd classify the J6 mob? Remember, the president explicitly pardoned each and every J6 protester who was duly convicted in a court of law by a jury so at best there are some extreme double standards being applied.
No, it doesn't.
What country is using what army to invade USA?
But it just makes me so sad. I think I ought to delete my account. Every time anything US politics-y comes up, especially the supreme court, the comments are filled with such horrible takes. It makes me feel like, if this is the sort of world the people here want and its so different from what I hope for, what common ground do we have.
Why should I care about, idk retrocomputers or WASM OSes etc. if its just to be part of a group that's like this.
Idk, same sort of angst about doing anything on a computer these days. I get embarrassed telling people what I do. People in general seem to hate programmers and the more I go on the more I think they're right.
Idk blehjj, just in a bad mood sorry for ranting. Thanks for the comment, honestly
Take it as an opportunity to engage in calm debate. I've learned a lot from reading the comments around these stories.
If it starts incensing you, hide the story. (They tend to get flagged off the front page fairly regularly. Something I used to condone until Silicon Valley started showing its authoritarian tendencies.)
At some point people need to understand that this is just completely ahistorical and incredibly naive. It feels more like a cop-out to never take a stand for anything. I respect the exasperated outburst of the GP, at least it shows that there is some kind of backbone that will hurt when reading all this bullshit gaslighting.
There's not even a hint in the last 20 years - on both this site and the internet in general - that "calm debate" has done anything to stop fascists from gaslighting every step of the way. Despite their claims to the contrary, they aren't even looking for a debate.
Instead they just get the platform they so actively always wanted and are defended by the tone police to spread their bs, and the more influence they get the looser some people's already frail backbone get. They won't stop. Don't expect it. Don't wait for it.
We may be talking past each other. I'm not arguing for a general vibe. Just a productive approach to online discussion about politics. It's very unlikely you're going to change someone's mind about partisan politics on this forum. What's more likely is you're going to get some combination of enraged and developed in your thinking about what's going on. So I'm saying to focus, online, on that latter part. Learning. Discussing. All of it calmly, so you can strategise.
That way, when you manifest that anger in the real world, you can do so strategically. Effectively.
But there's absolutely zero success so far - in fact the opposite? You're only stroking your own ego.
You’ve read through all of the comments on this article and found absolutely nothing your can learn from?
10 years ago I'd be laughed out of the room suggesting what reactionary bullshit is going on today, turn back to today, tech at large has just enthusiastically adjusted to the reactionary shift, so it was predictably just hot air all along. Basically, unless your particular wallet has a boot-mark on it, or a suggestion of an upcoming one, people just don't care enough at this place.
I'm pretty sure you were aware of this but cite the Posse Comitatus Act to make it sound like what Trump is doing is illegal.
You can absolutely argue that what he's doing is unnecessary, disproportional, evil, provocative, etc, but it's not illegal.
Super unclear.
Governor Wallace of Alabama was overtly rejecting a court order to desegregate. There was a law passed by the Congress. A U.S. court making an order. And the U.S. President enforcing it, including with the military. Wallace was defying the U.S., not just President Eisenhower.
The facts and circumstances here are different. The immigration laws being enforced are clear. But the Marines aren't being deployed against illegal immigrants, they're being deployed against mostly-American protesters. There have been zero court actions specific to these protests. This is being entirely done by the President. Moreover, neither Newsom nor Bass are interfering with ICE. So it's a bit ridiculous to compare a former Confederate state's governor personally blocking a U.S. court decision to mostly-peaceful protesters (and where not, being processed by local and state law enforcement) exercising their Constutional rights to speech and assembly while ICE continues to do what it does relatively unimpeded.
Without invoking it, it just is not relevant here.
This is where I find the extremely lawful mindset idiotic. Laws try to encode good behaviour, but can't define it.
None of this is legally established.
The only way to go after them (given the current SCOTUS, who made the ruling above), is impeachment. And for that, the president has to do something so bad that 67 senators are willing to find the president guilty.
The only check on presidential power that seems to exist is the impeachment process
Yes. Abrego Garcia is back in America, isn’t he?
By our courts. That is the difference between the President defying the courts to disappear a suspect and due process.
Then you're empowering the President to detain someone solely on suspicion of being a noncitizen. Which will be mighty convenient for a future President when someone says or does something they don't like. (Irrespective of whether they are or are not a citizen.)
Also, these Marines are being deployed against American citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble and speak. Whenever the bill comes in, it will easily have costed many orders of magnitude more than the cost of even a death-row inmate.
You're describing expedited removal, a power enacted by the IIRIRA of 1996 [1].
It only applies to those who "make no claim to lawful permanent resident status, and do not seek asylum or express a fear of persecution." It requires specific procedures be followed that are absolutely not being followed by ICE right now.
Broad immunity for official acts, and absolute immunity for core Constitutional powers. Nothing about "all charges" or self or preëmptive pardons.
> the current court seems very sympathetic to the unitary executive theory
UET concerns itself with how much power the President has to exercise executive power [1]. Not the boundaries of executive power per se.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#Termi...
True. But the kicker is that the president has an effective Carte Blanche to determine what is an official act.
I think this is where the interpretation of the ruling is wrong: common reading is that it gave the president more power.
Textually, whether it does or doesn't entirely turns on the definition of an "official act" which the Supreme Court very notably left for lower courts to determine on a case by case basis.
>> The immunity [for official acts] the Court has recognized therefore extends to the “outer perimeter” of the President’s official responsibilities, covering actions so long as they are “not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority.” Blassingame v. Trump, 87 F. 4th 1, 13 (CADC).
Including in Trump v United States, which was still ongoing at the time Trump won reelection.
>> On Trump’s view, the alleged conduct [of contacting state and other election officials] qualifies as official because it was undertaken to ensure the integrity and proper administration of the federal election. As the Government sees it, however, Trump can point to no plausible source of authority enabling the President to take such actions. Determining whose characterization may be correct, and with respect to which conduct, requires a fact-specific analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations. The Court accordingly remands to the District Court to determine in the first instance whether Trump’s conduct in this area qualifies as official or unofficial.
>> Whether the communications alleged in the indictment involve official conduct may depend on the content and context of each. This necessarily factbound analysis is best performed initially by the District Court. The Court therefore remands to the District Court to determine in the first instance whether this alleged conduct is official or unofficial. [...] Unlike Trump’s alleged interactions with the Justice Department, this alleged conduct cannot be neatly categorized as falling within a particular Presidential function. The necessary analysis is instead fact specific, requiring assessment of numerous alleged interactions with a wide variety of state officials and private persons.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf p5+, p24
Since it was dismissed without prejudice, it's entirely possible a subsequent Department of Justice reopens it and proceeds with the District Court fact finding the Supreme Court directed.
Trump v. United States was decided with respect to "a federal case that was ultimately dismissed by federal district court judge" [1]. It was about the limits of U.S. executive power. Not "every DA in the country."
- In the summer of 2020, as Trump privately fumed over nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, White House aides drafted a proclamation to send thousands of active-duty U.S. troops into the streets.
- Trump ultimately was talked down by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, but he has publicly expressed regret over not acting more forcefully.
- Top Trump allies, including architects of the far-right roadmap "Project 2025," have at various points called for using the Insurrection Act to secure the border, preempt Inauguration Day protests, and even subvert the 2020 election.
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/10/los-angeles-protests-trump-...
What happens in these coming months defines a major historical event for the USA, which sets it's course for the coming century.
It may become a country which is directly hostile to you. If you are American and are ignoring this, then it is no different to getting mad your family is wanting to talk about the raging kitchen fire that is unaddressed and escalating because "so what, the stove top has fire sometimes, it's a gas heater, that's normal" which, sure, would be right, but right now the entire wall is ablaze.
You cannot ignore this one, even those of us in other countries cannot ignore this one, as we have to reconsider our alliance with a country that reasonably one can assume is in the middle of falling to a fascist regime.
This is NOT run of the mill politics. This is genuinely about the collective future of the Anglosphere.
So, you willingly and intentionally honed-in on the 1% you don't like... just so you can complain? I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think that's normal behavior.
And it's even topical here - this surveillance industry that grew out of many tech startups is itself at ground zero of this fascist takeover, both boosting extremist disinformation to drive "engagement" and also creating a crop of newly-minted elites with the audacity to kick over the whole apple cart of our American way of life.
I don't love the phrasing of inferiors, but at least evil certainly applies. (Well thought out, well informed) Politics is a duty not a luxury.
The Republicans are rubbing their hands together and cackling every time one of you claims "everything is political" or "politics is a duty" because it just helps them win elections.
The only effect of any protest vote is to tell your friends. Hasan had a lot of friends. Arab communities in Michigan had a lot of friends. Never-never Trumpers had a lot of friends.
I personally believe that a personal political strategy should have a conscientious goal, cognizant of the effects of its action.
There’s no separate moral universe where you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side.
A voter should weigh the value of their statement vs the value of voting for the lesser evil. In a state like mine, where the results of the next three presidential elections could be predicted with accuracy today, a statement seems to have more value to me; if I lived in a battleground state, it would be different. I have often voted in presidential primaries where the candidate was already selected; again, I value my vote for the lesser evil much less than a statement.
Harris was an authoritarian, but not an autocrat. People got sick of ever-growing bureaucratic authoritarianism, but made the mistake of thinking the problem was the bureaucracy rather than the authoritarianism. So now the bureaucracy has been smashed and we are left with autocratic authoritarianism.
Its been comical watching broken systems fall over themselves to accommodate trump while people pretend that they just need to vote for people who will maintain the broken systems instead of abusing them.
If you didnt spend the last 12 years tearing down your broken system and replacing it, you support all this bs. Eventually someone was going to get past the election, into the cockpit of the machine and press all these fucking buttons.
Not only did americans vote for the chimpanzee twice, they never got rid of all the buttons.
"Elections have consequences" you guys are meant to be the demonstration of how an armed populace responds to tyranny. But until I see you guys actually do anything about it, its just proof that more american values are completely worthless.
Enjoy the fall.
However, enforcement of immigration laws has been one of the biggest parts of his election platform, if not the central part(build the wall, etc).
I imagine his voters are happy to see some action being taken.
The protestors could really do with some better optics, destroying property and waving foreign flags is just going to increase approval for military action.
If the protestors had instead marched peacefully with American flags, it would have been a much better PR win.
If you pay attention, you will notice that immigration policies have nothing to do with what's happening in the US, and at most they are a pretext.
The Trump administration is rounding up and transfering people, including US citizens, to prisons in third world countries they have no connection with. They are doing this without due process or legal basis. They have attacked and threatened judges who can and did opposed these actions. Lately the Trump administration is even threatening elected officials, including governors, with imprisonment.
Now you are witnessing the Trump administration illegally mobilizing both a state's national guard and the armed forces against its own citizens.
At one point anyone has to ask themselves if this is really about immigration at all.
Then this would be a great time for him to start following them.
Many of his actions this year have been in violation of immigration laws. Incredibly brazen violation of them, in fact.
News flash. The opposition is always going to say something like this to set an impossible bar for the protestors. This type of thinking undermines all protests, protects the status quo, and basically boils down to victim blaming.
Not to mention you can always have false flag operatives undermining a movement.
It's true that the opposition will say that even the best most peaceful protest is bad. But sometimes people broadly will agree with them, and other times they won't, and that depends on what's actually going on.
There are issues worth rioting over. Maybe you don't feel that illegal immigration is one of them, but you should at least understand the logic of a protest, and why sometimes becoming violent is necessary to accomplish anything.
Trump is purposely manufacturing a crisis because he knows his opposition is taking a losing position. Polls have been very clear that voters want the government to enforce immigration laws. Maybe not in Los Angeles, but nationally, the left is taking the losing side of this issue.
The idea is absolutely farcical. Plus, we know for sure that these raids have taken people mistakenly.
It's extra bad when the government's official position is that they can't get someone back from the foreign prison they're sent to. The threat to all citizens is clear; that's why they're resisting. "The left" may lose in the mainstream media but it's clearly the correct side of history.
It’s clear since the election - Trump administration will use violence without any due process. Sort of Catch-22.
If you resist the indiscriminate purge of what Trump considers “illegal immigrants”[0] - military will be called to suppress the protests with some sort of never ending “emergency situation” established giving him full dictatorial powers.
Or he will just do the purges without resistance and achieve same goals.
“Protest voters” and democratic leadership have a lot to think about right now.
[0] lets not forget that you can be a US citizen and you can still be purged
This has been done for decades and has very established standard operating procedures. Do you think immigration raids started with Trump? This has been going on since the 1950s and there is established legal basis and agency procedures specifying exactly what the agents can and can't do, along with repeatable methods for verifying identity and legal status.
Was this incident following an established procedure?
The destruction happens in the blink of an eye.
Rebuilding takes a lifetime.
Take his budget proposal for example. It explicitly called for the complete de-funding of TRIO programs. I have worked with multiple TRIO programs at multiple institutions over the years. While I am hopeful that the congress will institute funding for them, but the damage is done. People who have worked for these programs for decades are leaving, because of the uncertainty. These are career professionals who have helped THOUSANDS of kids make a better future. Further, TRIO programs are historically an entry into higher education for first-generation and low-income students not just in terms of being served by the programs, but also being employed by them. Every TRIO program I've worked with has been staffed by low-income first-generation folks. Without this entry into higher education, we will lose these voices in postsecondary education. People start with TRIO then move into hard dollars and off of grants, spreading their experiences across a campus.
The damage is done and we'll be feeling it for longer than my children will be alive.
Subsequently, the thing that really caused my immediate family (hardcore republican) to turn off of Trump was actually his most recent budget proposal and the hearings associated with it. They saw that he was cutting programs that help rural areas more than urban areas and feel betrayed. It takes everything I have in my to not just say "I told you so".
Finally - and completely disconnected, if you want to know how full of shit this administration is - The Secretary of Education said out loud that the (1)TRIO programs were out-of-date, that (2)schools needed to find other ways to recruit students, and that (3)there was no way to measure their success.
(1) TRIO has decades of research supporting their most effective models, and is a thought leader in student support and success for at-risk youth. The current trend of "pathways in higher education" that is sweeping the US is literally just a TRIO model.
(2) TRIO programs are explicitly banned from being used as recruiting tools for their host institutions if they are hosted by a college/university. It is illegal.
(3) TRIO programs submit an annual performance report with multiple measures of success. Any inability by ED to find proof of TRIO effectiveness is because they are incompetent in analyzing the data, not because the data doesn't exist.
In a democracy people can vote for the Devil him self, and the Devil him self would become the president, but there are institutions which prevent him from instituting his demonic policies.
Elections have consequences, but if those consequences are the loss of rights, then you never lived in a democracy to begin with.
So I guess these folks who live in a "real democracy" according to you just have the good government fairy swoop in when the people vote in a dictator.
At the end of the day, a democracy is just people, all the way down. It doesn't matter what laws you've written down, what courts you have, what procedures you've developed. If enough people stop believing in the enforcement of those laws, or court orders, or governmental norms, there is no deus ex machina.
Both Italy and Argentina elected a pretty dictatorial rulers, but neither successfully removed any civil rights from their citizens as a result, as the democratic institutions mobilized an effective resistance.
As a comparison to the USA, in a healthy democracy, the protests we are seeing in LA would not be spontaneous and organically arise from normal everyday people, but they would be called for and organized by unions, civil rights organizations, opposition parties, etc.
EDIT: Thinking about this further, the lack of participation from unions, human rights organizations, opposition parties, etc. during the anti-ICE protests, is much more common in unambiguous dictatorships like Russia or Iran.
Self-coups are a thing, and the best person to subvert a democracy is one who already wields considerable power within one. History is replit, unless you're doing the no-true-scottsman shuffle on the topic of democracy - if so, carry on.
I don’t think our analogy is valid. A car is just a car, and the concept of a car has not changed since its invention. The modern democracy has been constantly evolving from its inception (I’m sure democratic societies existed even before ancient Athens), but nobody would consider a democracy from the 1800s a democracy if it existed today. Heck even USA would not pass until the civil rights era of the 1960s.
Let’s say someone is genociding, and the election opponent says “I want to also genocide, but harder and smarter.” Your moral obligation is stronger against the incumbent?
Is it because the incumbent is already complicit and the other guy might not be as bad? I don’t understand the moral logic of the possible absolutism here.
Shouldn’t the imperative be to reduce suffering? How does getting the lesser evil out of office help the situation?
Any jackass can say anything. What matters is what they actually have done.
Never reward incorrect action.
Push for a solution to the housing crisis.
Good luck with that.
Will the Marines merely deploy harsh language?
Nice try.
I asked a question and you answered, it was not a "gotcha". However I have asked other people (in person) over the past few days who do support the pardons and Jan 6 and also support deploying the military against civilians in CA now. Glad to know you're consistent in your views, sad to know you can't tell a question from a "gotcha".
It is if the majority want it to be done.
Democracy does not mean the majority gets whatever it wants. Part of being a democracy is protecting the rights of the minority.
Yes, it does. By definition democracy is doing whatever the majority wants to do.
>protecting the rights of the minority
Under democracy the minority opinion can be ignored. Rights only need to be protected if the majority wants. And the majority can decide what is and isn't considered a right.
Then you no longer have a democracy.
Originally from the Dept. of State: https://www.principlesofdemocracy.org/majority
So you are trying to say that a democracy that is unable to find a global maxima is not a functional democracy? I would disagree and say that a democracy moving towards a local maxima is still functional.
"The majority" changes the Commander in Chief, who in turn can be held liable for violating constitutional democracy if they abuse discretionary powers (see: Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon).
Doesn't LA have a police department?
What did the LA governor had to say about it?
Is that so? What did he had to say about it? As I understand it, the LA governor is adamant in how illegally mobilizing both the national guard and the armed forces is being used to fabricate a crisis.
Finally, the American people fights for democracy, after centuries of oppresion. /s
Tame is good.
The administration wants the protests to turn into a flashpoint so they can send in more military control.
Lighting things on fire and launching fireworks is enough to create the tipping point. Don't encourage this stuff.
https://theonion.com/protesters-urged-not-to-give-trump-admi...
The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors. The worst possible thing for a protest movement to do is scaring the masses, since then they will flock to the state for "protection" and give the state carte blanche to get the situation under control.
For all the work that MLK and his coalition did to practice nonviolence and to appear respectable, they were always disliked by the majority of the public. Being liked by the public is not a prerequisite to getting results. If you focus too much on respectibility, the impact of what you can do decreases until it hits YouGov petition levels.
This doesn't just work by getting the public on your side. It works by showing that you are not repressed by fear. Fear is how facists rule, so showing others they don't need to fear, that they can decide not to fear, that is the real threat to authority.
That means they will abuse you to make others fear. When that happens, you need it to trigger outrage as widely as possible.
Being annoying can be quite beneficial to a protest. It brings attention and forces people to think about you. There is a point after which it turns people off, and becomes a net negative, but you usually have to be very annoying for that to happen.
Being scary is entirely different thing though. When people are afraid they tend to become closed off to new ideas, and look to strong leaders. You absolutely don't want that in a protest.
> The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
I think the ultimate point of a protest is to reach the ordinary people who aren't part of a movement. Movements succede and fail not by how much they convince the die hard supporters, but by how much they convinced average uninvolved people.
The problem with your opinion is that it leaves out the fact that one side is deeply involved in ensuring this escalation takes place, either in fact or in appearance only.
So regardless of what protestors are doing, or even who infiltrated protests to inflame and escalate events, the Trump administration is hell bent on having these protests escalate.
So a tipping point is required. ideally you engineer it to more likely tip the right way. But doing nothing because otherwise it might reinforce the status quo, will guarantee the status quo.
Horribly, this means one of the best possible outcomes is an unprovoked massacre by these Marines, ordered by Trump.
I've seen a number of people on social media thanking others for neutralising tear gas, so it's definitely happening. Maybe just not evenly distributed.
I tell my friends that we need to look to Hong Kong and France in case the protests move to Texas.
Such "protests" would be much rarer and shorter in Texas.
edit: I got throttled, as is the case on HN when things get "active". Here is my response to koolba:
---
At a head? Sure.
Do I think police can get rough and "in it" with civilians without live fire and without the use of the US Military? Yes.
Do I think, when a sufficient bloc of a city rebels against its law enforcement, then maybe the law enforcement should reconsider what they're enforcing? Also yes.
I disagree with the premise that the State is always right and that their monopoly on violence is absolute.
We celebrate the US revolution and revolutions across the world when governments act illegally and against the will of the people, violating civil rights.
I would not support firing into a crowd of people because of minor property damage.
So you are saying, guy throws rock. Now he has no rock. He should be shot despite having no rock?
So you are saying, police riot gear is useless against rocks?
I'm not suggesting they police should just blindly open fire on the crowd. But if you are in a crowd that turns violent and starts attacking the police, I think it's reasonable to expect some collateral damage in whatever their response is going to be.
> So you are saying, guy throws rock. Now he has no rock. He should be shot despite having no rock?
Yes. Or are you suggesting that if a guy shoots a gun and misses, then we should we wait for him to reload too? If the guy does not drop down on all fours and assume the position, I think it's reasonable for police to shoot someone throwing rocks at them.
> So you are saying, police riot gear is useless against rocks?
I doubt it's some invincible force field. They could still get hurt. And the police are there not just for their own safety. They are there to protect everybody. If someone is throwing rocks it could hit non police as well.
I do find it incredible the lengths people will go to argue in favor of violence to defend law breakers.
I'm arguing against disproportionate and escalatory violence. Police in other countries somehow deal with rock throwing without shooting.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/QDz1WVUHim4
Def worth watching with people and sharing. Very inspiring <3
Why it's low effort: You claim things are out of control for the police. You don't explain why, or how this is different from previous situations when marines were not needed. It just reads as a +1 post.
Ironically, those people were right about that aspect.
Lefties go "constitution is outdated, you can't beat tanks with rifles, therefore having guns is useless". Reality isn't that black and white tho. If your faction has the most guns you might not even have to use them.
And it's "though," FYI.
And, it’s also naive to think that all the protesters are on the same side. Instigators are from either no side and the other side.
During the George Floyd protests I was walking home and witnessed agitators turn a peaceful protest violent within minutes. There were at most 10 of them out of a crowd of 500. When I got home, the news described the protest as being a violent one.
You and a lot of people here need to look more critically at what you are seeing online and in the news.
That way when agitators show up they can be seen as visually different and distinct.
As soon as your protest interferes with other people, like blocking a road, it's no longer a protest, it's a riot.
Ironically, the two places they don't want to move to.
It sure isn't Republicans rioting because their candidate is enacting one of the cornerstones of his platform.
It's democrats.
During CHAZ/CHOP in seattle, I lived across town, if I didn't watch the news I wouldn't have known anything was happening. My GF lived within two blocks of the 'zone', it didn't effect her one bit. In fact it was a bit of a party atmosphere in the area with all the painting of street murals and all. Eventually some kids decided to agitate the situation by stealing a car (i think that's what the final determination was) and tear assing all over (like literally off roading into the park in and around occupied tents). This riled up the 2nd amendment types who declared themselves the CHOP/CHAZ police and they shot the kids. It was tragic and it sullied the whole situation.
To watch the national news you would have thought that all of seattle was on literal fire and there were roving gangs all over the city. Don't trust the broadcast media narrative of these situations.
I would support them doing this with 100% peaceful protests and even with no protests at all.
And if you disagree, we can play it out. I will slap you in the face, till you agree with me. And if you stop me before, you're a fascist.
The effect then is to inflame outrage on both sides, and now we are basically headed to BLM 2.0. Trump seems to have actually planned this out well (use the military to stoke outrage, and a protest in one LA neighborhood becomes a nationwide riot so he has an excuse to cancel the midterms?).
> All you have to do for all of this to stop is stop rioting. But we both know you won't.
All you have to do is stop beating your wife, but we both know you won't! Seriously, the loaded question fallacy is as old as Athens itself.
You've recently complained in another thread that HN is biased against the ideological position you represent. This is not how we moderate HN. We actively want the HN audience and discussions to represent the full ideological spectrum and for HN to be a uniquely good place for people of different ideological perspectives to discuss difficult topics and learn from each other. But that can't happen when people comment in this inflammatory style.
If you want to parcipate on HN, please do your part to make it a place for healthy discussion between people with different perspectives. Please heed these guidelines in particular:
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From my perspective, all it would take to manipulate you would be for a cop or agitator to set a car on fire and broadcast the picture blaming protestors.
So then what happens, in your preferred world? It would seem like if you got your way, that would be the end of the first amendment. Anytime anyone stands up to protest, police can just set a single car on fire, and based on your statement, you would want the protest to end at that point. Correct me if I'm wrong, but how does the first amendment survive in your utopia? Or is it not meant to?
Obviously, such a narrative is very boring. So we don't see it. In reality, though, the damage is quite small. Similar to BLM in the past, in which almost all protests saw no damage at all.
And, elephant in the room - there's a 0% chance that the fucking marines are going to de-escalate anything. You think Trump wants less violence, less destruction? No, he wants MORE of it.
Yeah, we all know how violent lefties are. They're djaying right now, the horror!
> It's not the police that started it.
Sure, but the police escalated it because that's all they know what to do.
The worst thing to do for a protest is send in the police. Because they're going to antagonize people, shoot rubber bullets, throw tear gas, and then suddenly you're on the news.
During the BLM protests there was footage out the wazoo of people literally sitting there or just walking and then having rubber bullets shot at them. Sometimes while they were actually on their knees.
I am unsure as to the accuracy of such claims. Some people have been thrown in jail in Europe for making these claims.
Its like in France, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants get pissed off due to their better-studying peers driving bmw around while they work a kebab shop (or their football team loses), so they torch 1000 cars and shops in suburbs.
You get attacked? You either attack back, disperse or do something similar. You don't start attacking other people's lives just to vent off being pissed off.
I didn't claim that it did. I think it's important to recognize the complete chain of escalation here by acknowledging those who performed the first violent acts. Without that first violence, none of this happens.
Said no with a clear head ever.
I explicitly did not suggest that:
> There were, and are, many other options available to the government that would not have lead to this escalation & violence.
Citation needed.
Okay, fine. You still haven't provide any evidence to back this up.
And 1226 covers apprehension and detention: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?hl=false&edition=prelim&...
> Obama deported people at a higher rate than even Trump is now, and no riots happened.
It isn’t a spontaneous riot; it’s a coordinated attempt to ‘resist’ the administration, with elected Democrats and blue-aligned media constantly fanning the flames. We saw the same playbook five years ago.
As a non-US, was that Jan 6th, you're talking about, or is there something else you're referring to that i could look up?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/group-50-people-shoplif...
Bringing in the military was necessary.
Somewhere in the 19 million people in the Southland, a car is burnt in anger or celebration every weekend. Lakers parades are famously family unfriendly.
Businesses are robbed daily and violently.
I mean, there was a huge deal about the trains for a while [0] and nothing happened with the LAPD+ for a long time let alone the USMC.
LAPD+ cops are assaulted every week with God knows what.
That's what 19 million people are like. That mass of people sees a lot of low-probability events, by pure math.
Honestly, what's going on is that Donny watches Fox a lot. Fox is a media business, if it bleeds, it leads. Fox also is reeling from the Dominion lawsuits and two competitors barking up their tree. They have to push for ratings. Donny doesn't know this, he just sees what everyone else is seeing on Fox.
Hence this whole autopen thing that no one else outside of the Fox bubble has a clue about.
Donny sees the story, rants about it in front of confused cameras, then Fox has to double down on it and Donny rants again. It's a oroboros of bad research and news junkies.
So with these LA riots (blink and there's another), you get Fox seeing if it bleeds, it leads. Then Donny fritzes on it, then he's sending in the USMC without food or water, because, duh. Then they report on that, and he'll be sending in a whole regiment (5000 marines) by the end of the week, then a battalion (1200 marines, because these words have no meaning to him).
Look, there is no plan with Donny, he's just reacting to whatever he last experienced. It is super clear from all the evidence about the very leaky administration that they are just reacting to things as they come at them. Again, there is no plan. And yes, that is somehow worse than some conspiracy to make the US an autocracy.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/14/economy/la-freight-railroad-t...
EDIT: I want to extend this idea about Donny having mashed potato brains a bit further. SInce the whole admin is just reacting to things by overexertion, that means that anyone trying to counter them (and that's like nearly everyone else on Earth) has it made in the shade. You let them swing, then just keep up the pressure after every blow. They crack, we've already seen this in the trade stuff (TACO), in the Greenland/Panama/Canada thing, in the signalgate thing, in the Kilmar thing, etc. All you have to do is just not let go of it. They get bored of it, because Fox's viewers get bored of it, so Fox switches the programming, and so the admin does too. They declare victory, and walk away.
If you want to steer the next admin, go grab the $20/mo Claude subscription, work with it for about a month, and make 'Project 2027' out of it. Make sure to me all macho about it too, the more silver screen and 1980s bicep movie images, the better. Use lots of quotes that mean mostly nothing, but sound good. Really, most boomer FB pages are already there. Copy the project 2025 boilerplate formatting.
Then, look, these guys are just like bulls with rings in their nose. They'll google about for about 30 seconds and just go on the first hit there. Make sure your project 2027 is the first hit for the SEO words you think they'll use.
You can put pretty much whatever you want in that. Why? Because no one else is doing this. If you are willing to put up with the smell, you can make a lot of change for the post-midterms admin. These guys are morons, yes, but above that, they are lazy
As a result, we have people like Trump and Musk, both narcissists and sociopaths, at the White House.
Growing up, I dreamed about going to US, but was born on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. As I got older and visited the country, it somewhat cooled my dreamed (Europe progressed dramatically in the meantime).
And now I feel a bit nostalgic and disoriented to be honest - what I once regarded as the country with the highest standards of ethics, integrity and rule of law, is unfortunately proving once again that no empire lasts forever. Of course it's a bit too soon as the US is still a superpower, but it definitely feels like the tide turned and really quickly.
What happened immediately before Trump started sending in armed groups to the streets of Los Angeles was Trump getting credibly accused by Elon Musk of associating with Jeffrey Epstein.
So the correct title here is "Marines deployed to LA in response to Trump's association with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein being widely discussed on Twitter".
This allows people to correctly infer cause and effect, and most importantly, intent.
We'll see how far Project 2025 will go within Trump's term. I'm not optimistic.
If that kind of talk worries you, consider how much uglier it will be when the good people of LA form unregulated militias instead. Do you really want to see Ruby Ridge 2: Rooftop Korean boogaloo?
We are to depend on our trusted local law enforcement to protect us, as well as our valiant governors who will assuredly call up local guards to do the same. Examples of brave, novel Democratic resistance to Trump abound these days. There's no need to worry!
Most of our GWOT veterans tend to despise the Republican Party for what should be obvious reasons. Chicago famously has no guns too, am I right? The cognitive dissonance is honestly astounding.
Honestly though, guns really only go so far. They’re useful for making yourself more trouble to fuck with than you’re worth to cowardly paramilitary thugs. They’d rather go abduct first graders and unarmed adults in the final stages of becoming US citizens, than risk suddenly finding out they’re in the middle of Ruby Ridge 2. Guns are more of a self defense tool. Ukraine and Iran have proven in recent years that drones are far more useful to an insurgency than guns. That constant hum, like a swarm of bees, constantly threatening a slow and painful death, destroys the enemy’s will to live, never mind fight. You see videos of Russian orcs just sitting there, almost catatonic, as the drone finally puts them out of their misery.
P.s. China never deployed the military in the Hong Kong insurrection.
The last time we got a "C" (70%) was December 2001. That probably means something regarding what this poll is measuring.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. "
But then again, how are people protesting ICE doing their literal job? The other side of the coin is that anyone can come into the united states and live here. Which is an unsustainable policy.
I don't have the answers here, but i pray the violence stops.
You are probably posting from your Californian gated communities, afraid to lose your Mexican gardener, Venezuelan housemaid, Philippina babysitter, or your Cuban pool boy.
I also see people who just want to live a normal life being kidnapped.
I also see judgement without fair trial.
I see hate becoming the main driving factor in a country I used to love for being so welcoming.
Also, you seem to forget that your food and housing and many other parts of your country are also depending on foreign labor. If Trump deports as many immigrants as he wants to (he can't and won't), the US will have a massive labor crisis.
We can bury our heads all we want, but this seems like a constitutional crisis to me. Said another way, hiw many signs do we have to ignore before we call it one?
This is convenient for Trump, because anything he says that people get riled up about ends up discrediting them as ridiculous, because the reality ends up being less surprising. In the US you can only be president so long as you remain within an operable window of reasonability, which Trump remains within despite his character.
Now, does that mean you just ignore the rhetoric and stop paying attention to let it normalize in your mind so that when something actually bad happens it can just feel like a minor iteration rather than a shocking leap? No. That said, the rhetoric is the rhetoric and the reality is the reality.
Trump also said to lock Hillary up, yet that never happened. Sure, you shouldn't have to be a constitutional lawyer or understand entirely how the country works to get a decent sense for what's really happening, but ideally high quality journalists help fill that role to contextualize important events, grounding viewers in reality. The problem is that people get so much of their news from entertainment comedy shows and emotional opinion shows now rather than actual boring (good boring) journalistic media. It becomes celebrity clickbait.
I agree that most of it is theater, for now. Some things have moved into reality, though. Ignoring judges orders. Sending US citizens to foreign jails. Going after media companies and extorting millions. Going after law firms and extorting millions. Before he did those things, they were just like all the other crazy things he said. Now, they're part of our reality.
Same thing with Gaza becoming some kind of glorious lavish supermall. Same thing with the Ukraine and Russia peace deals. This is just how he is.
It has extra upsides and downsides when used in politics at this level, to be fair.
Can you give an example of a bona fide constitutional crisis?
A constitutional crisis would be if an entire generation of Americans across a majority of states were educated to hate the constitution. It would be if the military only served the president rather than the constitution, but in reality the military serves the constitution first and foremost and operates across many states. It would be if the supreme court was getting filled with judges that do not believe in the spirit of the constitution.
If someone does something that is actually against the constitution, it's not necessarily a crisis so long as it doesn't set a precedent to ignore the application of the constitution there in an unrecoverable momentum kind of way. That said, what Trump is doing here is neither against the constitution or even unprecedented.
Media kept calling it an insurrection which made no sense to me, and even the FBI determined that it wasn't an insurrection.
Just because a process like that is interrupted, does not mean the process does not happen. Regardless of interruption, the process continues by law.
That entire building could have been nuked and the country would still go on just fine, with presidential elections and new presidents. I mean that absolutely literally, just so you know the US is not like some country you can just walk into the court house and take over. The US doesn't work that way.
Now that said, there is the parallel matter of whether Trump could run for a 3rd term. Well, there is precedent since we have had a 3 term president before during war time. If China attacks Taiwan and we get dragged into a war, I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility. Nobody has the taste for a forever president though.
If I looked around me and saw lots of people wanting some kind of one-party one-leader system for decades then I might be concerned, but I see that nowhere.
Actual constitutional crisis as more than a phrasing used for emphasis is a high bar.
I don't understand how. You're saying the President could literally murder the entire Congress, and things would just go on fine? Who would ever run for Congress after that, knowing that if they ever defied the President he could murder them without repercussions?
> If I looked around me and saw lots of people wanting some kind of one-party one-leader system for decades then I might be concerned,
Are you saying there can only be a constitutional crisis if it's popular and endemic to disagree with the constitution? If that's the case, how can we ever stop a constitutional crisis from happening if you can only recognize it after it's set in?
That's not what I said. Even then, if the president nuked congress they wouldn't be president anymore. Kind of self defeating. Also, the president doesn't control the nukes, the military controls the nukes and the military serves the constitution.
> Are you saying there can only be a constitutional crisis if it's popular and endemic to disagree with the constitution? If that's the case, how can we ever stop a constitutional crisis from happening if you can only recognize it after it's set in?
Fortunately it takes time to poison people against their own country, so we measure these things and react.
> That entire building could have been nuked and the country would still go on just fine, with presidential elections and new presidents.
So you mean if some other country nuked Congress.
But that's not what I'm getting at. What I'm asking you is: what if the President of the United States, in some way shape or form aims to kill Congress. If he succeeds, is that a constitutional crisis?
> Fortunately it takes time to poison people against their own country, so we measure these things and react.
I would say this has easily been happening over the past 10 years. Don't you think that on the road toward a constitutional crisis, a lot of people would point out the inflection points along the way, as they've been doing? But you seem to be dismissing them as hyperbolic, rather then heeding their warnings.
It depends on what happens afterwards. It's not necessarily a constitutional crisis. If the president was then jailed and new congress members were voted in, then no. It would basically be an isolated event with the constitution continuing to operate the way it should.
> I would say this has easily been happening over the past 10 years. Don't you think that on the road toward a constitutional crisis, a lot of people would point out the inflection points along the way, as they've been doing? But you seem to be dismissing them as hyperbolic, rather then heeding their warnings.
So, there has been a rise in Marxism under different names, some taught to college students. There has also been steady increase in rhetorical temperature over the past 30+ years. The sort of recipe ingredients for discontent have been increasing since the 1970s oil situation, but maybe delayed by technology and cheap goods from China. Then China and technology increasingly became part of the problem rather than the solution.
Hyper-individualism making strong community formation a little harder. Less civic involvement, the decline of civics in schools. Demographic imbalances don't help, housing supply limitations too.
So, some things are more an expected increase in frustration from many dynamics. Others are things we can react to, or resolve. It's not the first time the US has faced some of these issues and come out of them alright, so it's a bit premature to call it a constitutional crisis.
In other ways, we just have to tighten up our ship to prepare for a potential war with China as deterrence. Part of the reason more powers were given to presidents with congressional oversight is out of acceptance that congress can be too slow. Especially now, congress is so bogged down right when we need to be able to take decisive action.
In that sense, it wouldn't be strange in the context we're entering for the US to lean towards more sharper, action oriented usage of power that people can label as authoritarian all they want. Those powers can be taken back by congress or denied by the supreme court if necessary, unless they are constitutional in which case separation of powers comes into play.