US 2024 Presidential Election

[Hades]

Except that didn't happen. This man did not draw his weapon.

Of course, that hasn't stopped Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino from claiming "This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement". Because of course it looks like that to him- his enforcers are always in the right.

I think the big ''problem'' with this approach is that it makes violence against ICE more likely. Because Bovino says almost word for word that it doesn't matter whether someone protests ICE peacefully or violently. The end result will be the same, and that result will be ICE agents murdering the proterstors.

So what reason would the protesters have to remain peaceful if ICE made it clear that they don't accept this, and will treat it the same as a violent protest? And this in turn can then trigger fight or flight responses, since in any situation the ICE agent coming towards you might just decide randomly to murder you no matter how peaceful you were.

Though this is only a ''problem'' instead of a problem because this is likely the outcome ICE wants. They want violence on their own agents to Trump will have an excuse to abuse his power and enact the insurrection act. They seem actively striving to push the public to the breaking point so they can activate it.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

I've been telling you guys that there is no way the US would take over Greenland (unless Greenland actually wanted to be US territory). Ya'll worry about the dumbest shit that has no chance of happening.

Compared to Russia or China, they’d be better off under U.S. oversight for obvious reasons if it ever got to that.

 

[Hades]

Compared to Russia or China, they’d be better off under U.S. oversight for obvious reasons if it ever got to that.

Well the Russian state is completely barbaric in all incarnations so that's not really a high bar to clear. If a literal gun gets pressed to Greenland's head then sure, they'd be better off under even the far right US then they'd be with literally Mordor.

But it ever coming to such a choice is unacceptable. The only legitimate outcomes for Greenland are remaining with Denmark or independence.

 

[Satinavian]

Compared to Russia or China, they’d be better off under U.S. oversight for obvious reasons if it ever got to that.

Neither China nor Russia could get it, even if the US would not defend it. It is basically surrounded by harbors and airbases of Canada, Britain, Iceland and Norway. China has not the global power projection to anywhere near it. Russia is overextended in the Ukraine and couldn't defend supply lines to Greenland either even if it wasn't.

The Greenland question is not between US, Russia and China, it is between US, Denmark and Independence. And the US looks the least appealing to Greenlanders.

 

[Agema]

You get to circular logic this way very quickly.

However, as I have applied none of that logic, that point has no purpose.

If you already think everything is awful, regardless of legal standards or precedent,

This is just a straw man.

The law has loopholes, flaws, and grey areas. The law is not a perfect representation of morality or ideal society. The law is also mutable - and not necessarily in good ways. The law is only as good as what it does, so an appeal to the law can just be an appeal to follow the rules. It's a mantra for bootlickers.

My main objection is that you think the government works to keep Trump within the legal lines. This is a subtle but serious mischaracterisation.

I agree that at a certain level it does so, but out of inertia rather than intent. Ultimately, many individuals and organisational entities follow the law, particularly lower down. But the the closer to Trump you get, the more the government is overtly and intentionally working to do the will of the president, law or not. They then have the power, and pressure and reform the government to obey the president.

The Trump administration is based around enforcing the will of Trump. Trump even tells us all that his will should be obeyed. He has appointed minions because he trusts them to obey. Then then arrange their departments so that as many staff as possible obey. Indeed, Project 2025 clearly argued replacing civil servants with partisan agents, in other words to make departments more pliant to the president. Trump has agressively filled the courts with justices so they obey him. Again, judge Aileen Cannon almost certainly (legally!) sabotaged a criminal case against him from the bench, with the assistance of a rigged SCOTUS.

The administration is about bending the government to its will, law or not. More and more, civil servants that will not toe the line will be driven out and replaced by pliant ones (think agents and attorneys at the DoJ, inspector generals, medical and scientific experts at the DHHS). Thus institutions and organisations will be pressured, subverted, made more partisan. The (Trump-) Kennedy Centre may be trivial, but it's a great example. He's tried, and is still trying, to take over the Federal Reserve. Before your very eyes, in plain sight, the administration is busy assaulting the independence you think holds him in check at every level.

So no, the government is not working to keep Trump in legal lines.

And honestly, we've seen this many times over the last couple of decades, and the authoritarians make hay: Putin, Maduro, Orban, Erdogan. Some of those Trump obviously admires, and in the case of Orban (not only by Trump but the Republican Party generally) heavily feted. A democracy can be crippled or killed in about ten years, the USA is not magically immune. I think Trump is 'Orbanising' (or maybe worse 'Putinising') America, and it needs people to stand up and stop him. Although to be honest, everything you say in this forum makes me believe you would defend the Republican Party if deleted US democracy. There are others here who tend to put it much more bluntly.

 

[Agema]

The Greenland question is not between US, Russia and China, it is between US, Denmark and Independence. And the US looks the least appealing to Greenlanders.

If it would make sense for any other country to own Greenland, it would probably be Canada.

Although frankly, Canada will be next on the hitlist after Greenland. Something something security something getting in the way of us travelling to Greenland and Alaska easily.

 

[Agema]

Of course, that hasn't stopped Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino from claiming "This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement". Because of course it looks like that to him- his enforcers are always in the right.

The authorities - government, politicians and police - have done their media training and know the value of getting the message out there first.

Firstly, people who pay little attention will probably take the loud and superficial message, and never really rethink it. Plus, an existing belief tends to have a privilege in our minds: we'll tend to support an existing belief over a new one even when the new is more objectively defensible.

This is why, time after time, they very quickly get out there and just say what suits them: there's a huge PR advantage to be gained, no meaningful penalty for lying, and they do not have moral qualms about slandering dead people. (They don't have moral qualms about slandering the living either, but they might have legal qualms.)

 

[Silvanus]

Spoiler: Content warning, high-resolution video of the shooting

This is the clearest perspective I found. At 10-12s, you can see the officer in grey pull Alex Pretti's gun out of its holster. Other videos from the other side of the street have shown him walking away with Pretti's gun in his hand.

The other officer fires the first shot into Pretti's back at 14s, and he then continues to fire-- 10 shots total-- from 14-20s.

So, Pretti was not holding the gun, at any point. Earlier video shows he has one hand holding his phone, and the other is palm-open in the air, when he approaches the officers and the woman they pushed. He is wrestled to the ground, pepper-sprayed, and hit in the face with the pepper-spray can, before the above video. He never removes the gun-- it is taken by the officer in grey, 2 seconds before he is shot 10 times.

Kristi Noem unambiguously lied about this.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Kristi Noem unambiguously lied about this.

Because it's a narrative. "Evil liberal terrorist defeated by our heroes in ICE" is what they want to implant into the minds of Trump supporters, so that when ICE starts killing more protesters, it's seen as "terrorists getting what they deserve".

 

[tstorm823]

He has appointed minions because he trusts them to obey. Then then arrange their departments so that as many staff as possible obey. Indeed, Project 2025 clearly argued replacing civil servants with partisan agents, in other words to make departments more pliant to the president. Trump has aggressively filled the courts with justices so they obey him. Again, judge Aileen Cannon almost certainly (legally!) sabotaged a criminal case against him from the bench, with the assistance of a rigged SCOTUS.

To a certain extent, that has been the status quo for almost a century, and historically before that. Democrats once packed everything with political appointees, and Republicans had to create laws disallowing many politically based appointments. But then Democrats reshaped the whole government with the New Deal, and have had a near monopoly on the bureaucracy ever since. It was expanded under the Great Society, and later abused by the Obama Administration, but it's been the case for a very long time that the civil servants have been loyal to only one of the parties. Twice, a Republican has won 49 out of 50 states in the election, and in both cases, DC was a complete blowout for the Democrat. Like, 1984 Raegan won 49 states, and the 50th state (his opponent's home state) he lost by 0.28%, while DC went 85% to Mondale. Even in your wildest nightmares, you can't imagine Trump getting 85% Republicans running DC.

The counterbalancing factor of this, for the majority of that period, is that the two major parties in the US are not traditionally strictly bound to any specific political position. In this moment, as in many others in the past, the Republican Party is effectively the conservative party, but that isn't always the case, the Progressive Era was a largely Republican effort. Similarly, the Democrats are progressive, but they definitely weren't on many occasions, as far back as the civil war or as recently as the Clinton administration. And if you want to go into specific ideologies, there's never been party consensus about almost anything. With the very vague boundary between parties, with membership often defined more by local prevalence than by beliefs, it wasn't so deep an issue that one party had all the civil servants because it had myriad viewpoints and could keep itself in check.

Project 2025 exists because that doesn't work in this moment. The nationalization of politics, where people care more about DC than their local governments, is more to blame than any particular movement or party, but we no longer have the scenario where the parties each have competing factions internally. There's not a conservative wing of the Democrats, there's like 10 members willing to fill that role, and that's among elected representatives, who are from diverse places and have different views. The civil servants are assuredly more united ideologically than the elected politicians. And with a culture that you can see play out online, where people are subjected to purity tests and questions of loyalty on every political issue, there's not going to be any internal pushback in one-party rule anymore. Trump in his first term could barely do anything because he was getting constant pushback on even the most reasonable things, and I don't think that's limited to Trump, I don't think the 90:10 bureaucracy is suddenly going to be cool if it's a Rubio presidency instead. I think that era is over, and if we want a self-correcting balance in the government, there needs to be some rebalancing.

 

[tstorm823]

Kristi Noem unambiguously lied about this.

Yes, of course, bad shoot, shouldn't have happened... but since you are pathologically incapable of not overstating your case, it is worth noting, Kristi Noem did not unambiguously lie about this. The dishonesty is quite certainly implied and ambiguous.

 

[Silvanus]

Yes, of course, bad shoot, shouldn't have happened...

Your genuine concern is palpable. /s

but since you are pathologically incapable of not overstating your case, it is worth noting, Kristi Noem did not unambiguously lie about this. The dishonesty is quite certainly implied and ambiguous.

Kristi Noem: "The officers attempted to disarm this individual but the armed suspect reacted violently. Fearing for his life and the lives of the officers around him, an officer fired defensive shots".

Greg Bovino: The agent "attempted to disarm the individual but he violently resisted"; "Fearing for his life... a Border Patrol agent fired defensive shots".

These are fucking lies, not ambiguities.

 

[Hades]

Yes, of course, bad shoot, shouldn't have happened.

The problem of course being that ICE and the Trump administration seem unwilling or even just incapable of saying this
''Whoops! Shouldn't have happened! Maybe we put too much oil on the fire and will rethink our approach towards the public to prevent this''

Instead its always the victim that needs to be slandered.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Yes, of course, bad shoot, shouldn't have happened... but since you are pathologically incapable of not overstating your case, it is worth noting, Kristi Noem did not unambiguously lie about this. The dishonesty is quite certainly implied and ambiguous.

You looked at this situation and your first- and only- thought was "this is another opportunity for me to score points in an argument!"

 

[bluegate]

'Murca Baby!



See how full of fear the guy on the right is.

 

[Hades]

Again it should be worth pointing out that if the US public had done its duty none of this would have happened. Minneapolis wouldn't be under siege and the four people killed by ICE would still be alive.

ICE is currently under the control of a woman who proudly boasted about how she murdered her puppy and her goat, and what a rush that gave her. Wouldn't it occur to the public that a person like this should be kept away from power at all cost? And that perhaps her agents killing citizens might be a logical end point for putting such a person in power?

And that's not even going into the orange elephant in the room. Everything about this was easily foreseen and even easier to prevent. All that was required was for the electorate not to stubbornly insist on sleepwalking into something they knew would end up as a far right regime.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

See how full of fear the guy on the right is.

"This man is preventing me from expressing my masculinity by abusing a woman. He has to die or I will look weak."

 

[tstorm823]

Your genuine concern is palpable. /s

Kristi Noem: "The officers attempted to disarm this individual but the armed suspect reacted violently. Fearing for his life and the lives of the officers around him, an officer fired defensive shots".

Greg Bovino: The agent "attempted to disarm the individual but he violently resisted"; "Fearing for his life... a Border Patrol agent fired defensive shots".

These are fucking lies, not ambiguities.

Did they attempt to disarm him? Yes (and succeeded).
Did he react violently? Yes, he was trying to fight them off of him (though outnumbered with very little chance of escape).
Was the officer afraid for their lives? Possibly (state of mind is always going to be a bit ambiguous).

It's dishonest, it's manipulative, but none of it is unambiguously false.

You looked at this situation and your first- and only- thought was "this is another opportunity for me to score points in an argument!"

No, you're thinking of yourself. Don't worry, I saw your post on the last page, I know that you were so delighted by this event, you couldn't even wait for me to make a comment. As I said recently, you really do love having more martyrs.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Did he react violently? Yes, he was trying to fight them off of him (though outnumbered with very little chance of escape).

No, he didn't. In the video he has both hands up when he's tackled by the ICE agents and they start beating him.

 

[Silvanus]

Did they attempt to disarm him? Yes (and succeeded).
Did he react violently? Yes, he was trying to fight them off of him (though outnumbered with very little chance of escape).
Was the officer afraid for their lives? Possibly (state of mind is always going to be a bit ambiguous).

It's dishonest, it's manipulative, but none of it is unambiguously false.

Tell me that you genuinely believe those were ambiguously "defensive shots", and I will call that a lie. You know they were not.

You know they were not, but your sole concern here is the honour of the government spokespeople that slandered the man killed. You couldn't give less of a shit when someone posing no risk to anyone, on the ground, restrained and without a weapon, is shot 11 times by your government's agents, and then those agents are let off and lauded by the party you support. Don't insult anyone's intelligence with future comments about the sanctity of life; you have no respect for it.