Comment by CMay

Comment by CMay 2 days ago

4 replies

> The number of ICE agents has more than doubled in one year (from 10,000 to 22,000). These new agents have not received proper training and many have been recruited from problematic backgrounds.

I don't know if their training is sufficient or not for the job they're actually tasked with, but it seems to not be resulting in dead people in every other city.

> Currently, there are 3000 ICE agents in Minneapolis alone. That is 5 times more people than Minneapolis own police roce! 13% of all ICE agents are currently deployed in a city that makes up 0.15% of the US population. The purpose is very clearly to terrorize a democratic city that resists ICE unlawful and inhumane practices.

Well, if the local police don't assist, you're going to end up with more ICE than other cities since some of them have to try to do the job of the police too. Sanctuary cities may also have a higher proportion of the people ICE is going after, so it would logically follow that more ICE resources may be needed there which could inflate the numbers twice.

> That's certainly not what happened. Stop kidding yourself.

Well, I did look into the George Floyd case. It was not a fair trial. If you care about fair trials, and you do like the word embarrassment, that trial was an embarrassment to all US courts. These Minneapolis protester deaths are the closest things we've seen since then as far as I know in terms of them being promoted in the public for manufacturing outrage for political gain. It's like activist organizations know Minneapolis is a particularly good place to farm this so they push harder there. It was so easy for them to incite riots and city burning, that's the kind of imagery you like to get pushed national if you're a resistance movement.

> If that is true, you're willfully uninformed. How can you even make any qualified statements about the Trump administration without knowing one of its most influential people?

I probably know of them, but not by name then if they're that influential. You're still missing the point that they aren't relevant here. Whoever they are and whatever DHS does, there are laws that exist that apply. There are officers and protesters in a video. An event took place. You don't need to know the current temperature on Mars in order to estimate whether a claim about the event is supported solely by the video evidence. You know this, because you're pushing back against people making claims about what's in the videos too. You're getting lost in the weeds here.

It's like saying, "look at Stephen Miller, that's how you know the video is proof it was murder!" or "look at Stephen Miller, that's how you can tell the officers had him fully and confidently restrained!". It is not logically supportable.

> How can you assess the credibility of the DHS without knowing the (very prominent) people who are in charge?

The George Floyd case was so bad, that what I'm saying is no matter what you think of DHS, they can surely do a better job than that. It's one of the worst cases of the execution of justice I can recall in my lifetime. Courts do sometimes get things wrong, but that was another level.

At the same time, I can understand the concern that if these protesters are fervently and emotionally anti-Trump then get killed by DHS, serious activists may feel uncomfortable that DHS is part of the executive branch which Trump has legal authority over. There have also been lies spread about complete legal immunity of Trump and him being a king which aren't reality, but if it contributes to distrust in the executive branch handling the case that's probably a legitimate issue of public trust. That element existed somewhat in the George Floyd case, because the local police department was part of the executive branch and people didn't trust the police, so the judicial branch took it. That is fine, except for how the courts handled it.

Either way, DOJ is involved with the case now.

> Don't worry, the Trump administration is doing all the heavy lifting here. We've reached a point where reality has surpassed the wildest satire. We can listen to Trumps speeches over here in Europe. We see what the administration is doing. There are no excuses!

Being European doesn't mean you can't have an opinion and it's not unique to you alone that you don't understand Trump, because most people don't understand Trump. I highly doubt you see what the administration is doing, because it's very rare.

There's the law, there's what they say, there's the action, there's the goal, there's what was achieved and then there's what achieving that actually produces as an effect. Most of what is occurring aligns with vanilla strategic national interests of the US that goes back many administrations. Maybe the surface level optics and culture are different, but make no mistake that this is just the US being the US.

In short, if you think it's not about China, its probably about China. If you think it's about Greenland, it's about China. If you think it's about ending NATO, it's about China. If you think it's about immigration, it's about China.

If you don't know what China has been doing and why they've been doing it. If you don't know the things Xi Jinping has been saying. If you don't know what China has been doing in the South China Sea, or in propping up dictatorships, etc. I highly recommend, whatever your political feelings are, you dig deep and spend a couple thousand hours just consuming information about China and the history of communism.

Almost everything we're doing in the US and around the world right now can be explained from that concern as an organizing principle. Trump is just an instrument of that.

spacechild1 a day ago

You're one of the rare people who understands Trump? (Yet you don't know who Stephen Miller his?) Give me a break! Your whitewashing of the Trump administration is mindboggling.

Stop pretending ICE and the whole administration is acting lawfully. Their disregard and contempt for the law is all too obvious. ICE is patrolling cities, breaking into homes without warrants, kidnapping people without due process and throwing them into internment camps with horrible inhumane conditions. People are rightfully angry for being terrorized.

I did not mention Stephen Miller because he is relevant for the shooting, but for the assessment of the DHS as a whole. If you have actual confidence in the DHS to lead an independent investigation of its own agents, considering the people in charge, you must be very naive.

Your country has taken a sudden and deep authoritarian turn and is right on its way into fascism. We've seen this in our own countries 90-100 years ago, it looks and sounds all too familiar. The past few months have already shown that the democratic system is in fact very fragile and can fall apart faster than people would have thought. Better wake up until it's too late!

  • CMay a day ago

    Set a reminder for yourself in 20 years to think back on these times. Not all of your thoughts about these times will be correct, because almost nobody is 100% correct about all of the things all of the time. Recall how sure the media was about this and that, but it never panned out. It will be illuminating.

    • spacechild1 a day ago

      Thanks, but luckily I can recognize authoritarianism and facism when they're happening. No need to wait 20 years. We're seeing similar tendencies all over Europe and your fucking government is supporting them.

      • CMay 20 hours ago

        Fascism isn't possible here without stealing control of education and other institutions in a bunch of states, but what Trump has been doing is increasing education freedom. A similar argument is made with socialism and communism. "Socialism is not communism!", but you can get to communism through socialism. It's just that, in the US to do that you have to control education and other institutions in numerous states simultaneously. Marxists did try that and it's why we've had the culture war here, but we've been pushing back.

        Fascists and communists also like to control language. It was Marxist movements trying to control language here and cancelling people, with widespread pressure campaigns to divide communities. Trump's unfiltered rhetoric drove them crazy and created space in the public sphere for people to speak their mind even if it wasn't politically correct. So Trump has also helped freedom of speech.

        There are several other issues like that which are being addressed. It's not that everyone thinks Trump is a beacon of morality and sanity, it's just that he's getting things done that are legitimately helping address the country's challenges at the moment in time we're in.

        Putting pressure on Venezuela and Iran with CIA, Mossad and the military has probably significantly delayed China's move on Taiwan. It may have even contributed to Xi Jinping's timing in arresting the last of his military high command which is unprecedented.

        We'll be ok here in the US and our behavior today is in line with some pretty traditional national strategy. We were in luxury mode for too long, so part of what is happening is we're playing catch-up, which tends to involve some rudeness and chaos.