A year ago, anyone who predicted that an American city would be under what amounts to (para)military occupation would be accused of TDS.
Now, it's happening.
A year ago I would have found the line from Billy Jack "When policemen break the law, then there isn't any law. Just a fight for survival" to be overly simplistic.
Yep. That's really important. All of this really is worst case scenario from what people predicted when Trump took office. I remember on election day the way the Free Press guys were saying "it's fine, it'll all be fine" - like scoffing at anyone who was worried about creeping Fascism. I wrote a piece saying that Trump was basically Warren Harding - and would be like the first libertarian president - which hasn't held up so well. We're already deeply in uncharted territory - like two Kent States in a month and all for absolutely no good reason. As the unlicensed boxing cashier puts it to the hapless armed robbers in Snatch, "All bets are off."
The difference between Trump's first and second terms is like the difference between living with an abuser where the people around him try to talk him down and living with an abuser where the people around him are cheering him on.
Agreed, but the Free Press wasn’t predicting; they were guiding their audience into a slow descent into fascism by gaslighting their audience; justifying the unjustifiable, and making excuses for Trump’s most demonic policies: immigration.
As well as his most asinine policies: tariffs, but China will pay for it. And by the way, it’s not a tax, but a tool that will expand the economy briskly! 🤪
I take your point. I happen to like The Free Press and would tend to argue that they got so fixated on some (accurate) critiques of liberaldom that they blinded themselves to the greater evil. I was definitely a bit guilty of this as well at that time - although was trying to keep my eye on Trump.
Two deaths is a tragedy. So is refusal to cooperate with federal law, the WSJ had a recent editorial on the legality of detainers, warrants, et al, that are being used to detain or arrest. Both incidents are under investigation by the FBI, which is the appropriate organization considering the animosity of state and local governments. If agents broke the law I am confident they will be convicted.
The policies of the previous administration allowed 1 million or so people to enter as "getaways" and millions more as "Asylum" seekers. The crimes committed by those folks, including murders, sexual assault, etc. would not have been committed if the border was "secure" as the Homeland secretary so incredulously affirmed.
Let's let the process run itself out on the two tragedies. Let's protest peacefully and not confront ICE or CBP. Let's hope local police will be told to do their job and control the situation.
There's astonishingly little to agree with in anything you said. First of all, the process isn't "going to run itself out." DHS has made it more than clear the officers involved are never going to face any meaningful investigation or be open to prosecution in the appropriate jurisdiction. It's hopelessly naive to believe otherwise - and the playbook here is of course to encourage the public to "wait for the process to play out" while everything is gradually forgotten and nothing happens. Second, this isn't a "tragedy." These are 100% preventable executions of US citizens on US streets. The ICE/Border Patrol agents have no business being there. None of the responsible authorities asked them to be there. Their methods of operation are totally in defiance of all possible court orders - whether in the use of tear gas or the masks. This "both sidesism" assumes a proportionality that doesn't exist here. There is a huge difference between being on the borderline of something that's non-peaceful protest that would maybe warrant arrest or detention and being shot dead by agents of your own government. If you don't have it in you to be appalled by your fellow Americans being summarily killed by law enforcement, then you really are deeply drinking the Kool-Aid.
The details were left for later. The big picture was anti-illegal and pro-border control. I suppose segregation was really OK, because local authorities favored it.
The Constitution has a clause (Article VI, Clause 2) that provides for Federal Supremacy. The Constitution creates a nation (sometimes called the United States) with borders. Trump is enforcing those borders. Biden did not.
Did I mention that Biden and Cackles believed in racism which has already been rejected by the SCOTUS?
Actually the only difference between what happened from 1861 to 1865 and what is happening now is the number of weapons and deaths. While that is certainly a very major difference, it is one of instance only, not of kind.
Abraham Lincoln in the shortest and most telling speech in American political history noted that “now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure”. If the endurance of our nation is not at stake now, it never was. The nature of the battlefield itself is not the issue, only ‘the great task remaining before us’.
Thanks James. We haven't gotten to that place yet, but the division is about as bad as I can imagine it being - and that's all without their really being an underlying issue that everybody's fighting about (there's no present-day equivalent to the division over slavery). The country's tearing itself apart over, essentially, cultural markers.
While I appreciate your reply, ‘cultural markers’ doesn’t do the situation justice. What is at stake here are two almost diametrically opposed visions of America. While slavery itself is certainly not the issue anymore (although Donald Trump would clearly have felt right at home running a Tidewater plantation in the 1850’s), the idea that the country should be run by an elite oligarchy (a clear echo of the feeling of m many southern slave owners in the pre-war south) is very plain in the continuing comments of those behind Trump like Stephen Miller and in the actions of the billionaire supporters who lined up with Trump on Inauguration Day, several of whom have been buying up and controlling major media companies for some time now.
Is this a 'new thing'? No; Alexander Hamilton suggested something like during the Constitutional convention. It resurfaced with the complete connivance of the Supreme Court during the Gilded Age, bringing on the progressiveness of TR. It was and remains the force behind the opposition to the policies of the New Deal.
There will always be those who are very uncomfortable with the essential messiness and inefficiency of the democratic process and those (like a number of those who participated in the Constitutional Convention) who distrust the variable passions of the people. When that is combined with the great wealth of those seeking to control all three, as is the case now, that is a bit more than cultural markers.
You kind of made my point a little bit tbh. So the two sides are, on the one hand, an “elite oligarchy” and, on the other, tech billionaires lining up behind Trump. It kind of sounds like the same thing! - with both sides accusing one another of elitism/kleptocracy. I don’t really see the underlying issue here except, as I said, the cultural markers - and then our capacity to let ourselves to let ourselves get stupidly polarized.
One has to wonder why liberals are so hell-bent on importing masses of non-whites into their countries. This phenomenon is not new nor oonfined to the US.
Oikophobia:
An extreme and immoderate aversion to the sacred and the thwarting of the connection of the sacred to the culture of the West appears to be the underlying motif of oikophobia; and not the substitution of Hellenic Christianity by another coherent system of belief. The paradox of the oikophobe seems to be that any opposition directed at the theological and cultural tradition of the West is to be encouraged even if it is "significantly more parochial, exclusivist, patriarchal, and ethnocentric". (Mark Dooley, Roger Scruton: Philosopher on Dover Beach (Continuum 2009), p. 78.)
"One has to wonder why liberals are so hell-bent on importing masses of non-whites into their countries. This phenomenon is not new nor oonfined to the US.”
Actually one has to wonder how one could so fail to understand the promise of America, and how it might appear as a magnet to others.
I'd be curious to know how diverse your neighborhood is.
In ultra liberal DC, a house in Upper Caucasia (northwest quadrant) is twice as expensive as a similar house in middle class affirmative action Anacostia (southeast quadrant). If non-whites need whites for “opportunities” they cannot provide for themselves (in their own countries) isn't this by definition racism?
I fail to see what relevance that comment has. As to the suggestion that liberals are hell bent on importing masses of non- whites anywhere, that’s about as racist a comment as I can imagine.
Progressive SJWs are always on the side of the criminal. And anyone enforcing the law is automatically presumed to be a Nazi thug when any criminal, especially if black or engaged in obstruction of an officer, is killed. Perhaps Mr. Pretti was murdered, it's America after all. OTOH why do you bring a gun, and extra clips of ammo, to a potentially violent situation where your intent is to obstruct law enforcement and where the armed officers involved are very likely to be in a combat mentality?
We expect these officers to be perfect and to have no concern for their own lives. They are doing a difficult, dirty and dangerous job that many of them might not be enjoying very much and they are surrounded by mobs of abusive a violent people not to mention the potentially violent people they've come to detain. I know I'd start shooting at the ... I was going to say 'slightest provocation', but that's not quite right -- the provocation is constant, overwhelming and very deliberate. The SJWs look forward to deaths because martyrs advance the cause. Dozens of people are killed in America every day, but this death is the one that's going to lead the news for the next several weeks.
Bro, watch the video. He's completely prone on the ground when he's shot by federal agents. Whatever your politics are, that's the kind of thing you're supposed to get upset about.
I'm 90% convinced it was hot blooded murder. Lookit, I'm just being devil's advocate here. I'm a natural born law-and-order dolphin, I don't like riots and interference with cops or ICE or any such rubs me the wrong way. I'd like to give ICE the benefit of the doubt, but shit, sometimes you believe your lyin' eyes. What? They pumped 10 rounds into him? Ferkrissakes.
BUT ... it remains true that bringing a gun to an up close and personal effort to interfere with law enforcement ... people ... I was tempted to say 'thugs' -- is not a good idea. If you were an iceman, doing your job, surrounded by abusive and potentially violent protesters and you knew that some of them might be carrying weapons, you'd be in a very dangerous state of mind too. And if you found a gun on one of them you'd probably take it personal. I would. These folks should keep ten meters back from the officers for their own good health if nothing else. Eventually someone's going to shoot an iceman and then things are going to get ... interesting.
BTW, if It was up to me there'd be a city wide plebiscite: "Does Minneapolis want ICE here or not? Do we want our illegals or do we not?" If Minneapolis wants their illegals then they should get to keep them. Of course SJWs love everything criminal -- except when the cops do it -- but what about the ordinary citizen? But sure, if the city says: 'ICE out!' then ICE should bugger off. I'm glad I'm Canadian.
You are on the wrong side of history, Ray. Given the overt lies by this administration, how do you/we really know that Pretti had “additional ammo clips” or that the gun displayed is actually the one he carried legally. At this point, with more than enough evidence that the DJT administration is grift driven, contemptuous of the rule of law and completely indecent as humans, if you are writing in their support, you are not an American patriot, you are a cult follower who lacks critical thinking skills. Full stop.
I'm convinced the gun was planted on Pretti. If he had owned a gun and it was still at home, locked in a gun safe with his ammunition, Bovine would have still said, "he had a gun." Does that sound like a fully lawyered sentence to you?
It that turns out to be true, then some people should be going to jail for a long time. That would be putting a dead cat into the soup, would it not? Law And Order is one thing, but when the cops are the criminals, who's side are we supposed to take? You people are in deep trouble down there.
Good point. No, we don't really know very much at all. There is no lie that Trump and his followers wouldn't tell. OTOH very much the same goes for the other side. You can pick your poison as to who has more contempt for the law tho. At the very least this guy was interfering with an officer of the law doing his job, just like Mx. Good. Trump did get elected on exactly this platform plank, did he not? BTW some say that Obama actually deported more illegals per month than Trump -- tho of course Trump has to do things in the most goonish possible way.
Nope, not a patriot cuz I'm Canadian. We're a little more sane up here. Let's hope it all comes out in the wash. If it was in fact murder you'll not hear me trying to defend it. But as I said, bringing a gun to a deliberate altercation with ICE is not very smart even it it was technically legal. Mind, you don't often hear lefties invoking the sacred right to bear arms very often, do you? For this news cycle it's a progressive issue!
I am offended by this essay. The author seems to think Walz is somehow less credible because he respects deaf people. We all know that Trump makes fun of handicapped people. Somehow the author was trying to strike some balance where there is none to be struck.
Not trying to strike a balance. Just offering an analysis of what's going on. It's important to understand what's going on in the heads of the administration and the ICE agents - and what's happening is that they look at progressives and believe that progressives are essentially un-American, that their adoption of 'woke ideology,' etc, puts them outside the pale of political discourse. I certainly don't agree with that. But in my role as an observer of this situation, I am trying to understand their worldview.
For decades, at least since the Columbine shooting, the opponents of gun control have insisted that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to give citizens with the means resist tyranny. I guess the Blood and Soil right wingers have found a previously unknown exception to their interpretation.
A year ago, anyone who predicted that an American city would be under what amounts to (para)military occupation would be accused of TDS.
Now, it's happening.
A year ago I would have found the line from Billy Jack "When policemen break the law, then there isn't any law. Just a fight for survival" to be overly simplistic.
Now, not so much.
Yep. That's really important. All of this really is worst case scenario from what people predicted when Trump took office. I remember on election day the way the Free Press guys were saying "it's fine, it'll all be fine" - like scoffing at anyone who was worried about creeping Fascism. I wrote a piece saying that Trump was basically Warren Harding - and would be like the first libertarian president - which hasn't held up so well. We're already deeply in uncharted territory - like two Kent States in a month and all for absolutely no good reason. As the unlicensed boxing cashier puts it to the hapless armed robbers in Snatch, "All bets are off."
The difference between Trump's first and second terms is like the difference between living with an abuser where the people around him try to talk him down and living with an abuser where the people around him are cheering him on.
That's a pretty amazing line. Nicely put.
Agreed, but the Free Press wasn’t predicting; they were guiding their audience into a slow descent into fascism by gaslighting their audience; justifying the unjustifiable, and making excuses for Trump’s most demonic policies: immigration.
As well as his most asinine policies: tariffs, but China will pay for it. And by the way, it’s not a tax, but a tool that will expand the economy briskly! 🤪
I take your point. I happen to like The Free Press and would tend to argue that they got so fixated on some (accurate) critiques of liberaldom that they blinded themselves to the greater evil. I was definitely a bit guilty of this as well at that time - although was trying to keep my eye on Trump.
Fair enough, but they’ve metastasized from any semblance of objectivity to something different.
Maybe not all of their content, but enough to make a difference; and not in a good way…:)
Two deaths is a tragedy. So is refusal to cooperate with federal law, the WSJ had a recent editorial on the legality of detainers, warrants, et al, that are being used to detain or arrest. Both incidents are under investigation by the FBI, which is the appropriate organization considering the animosity of state and local governments. If agents broke the law I am confident they will be convicted.
The policies of the previous administration allowed 1 million or so people to enter as "getaways" and millions more as "Asylum" seekers. The crimes committed by those folks, including murders, sexual assault, etc. would not have been committed if the border was "secure" as the Homeland secretary so incredulously affirmed.
Let's let the process run itself out on the two tragedies. Let's protest peacefully and not confront ICE or CBP. Let's hope local police will be told to do their job and control the situation.
Both sides have a lot to be ashamed of here.
There's astonishingly little to agree with in anything you said. First of all, the process isn't "going to run itself out." DHS has made it more than clear the officers involved are never going to face any meaningful investigation or be open to prosecution in the appropriate jurisdiction. It's hopelessly naive to believe otherwise - and the playbook here is of course to encourage the public to "wait for the process to play out" while everything is gradually forgotten and nothing happens. Second, this isn't a "tragedy." These are 100% preventable executions of US citizens on US streets. The ICE/Border Patrol agents have no business being there. None of the responsible authorities asked them to be there. Their methods of operation are totally in defiance of all possible court orders - whether in the use of tear gas or the masks. This "both sidesism" assumes a proportionality that doesn't exist here. There is a huge difference between being on the borderline of something that's non-peaceful protest that would maybe warrant arrest or detention and being shot dead by agents of your own government. If you don't have it in you to be appalled by your fellow Americans being summarily killed by law enforcement, then you really are deeply drinking the Kool-Aid.
On 2024/11/5 the US had an election. The candidate that favored border control and deporting illegals won. The Open Borders candidate lost.
And...?
Was occupying US cities in defiance of local authority also on the ballot? Don't remember that one.
The details were left for later. The big picture was anti-illegal and pro-border control. I suppose segregation was really OK, because local authorities favored it.
I don’t how you could possibly believe in the Constitution and American values and approve of what is going on right now. Wake up!
The Constitution has a clause (Article VI, Clause 2) that provides for Federal Supremacy. The Constitution creates a nation (sometimes called the United States) with borders. Trump is enforcing those borders. Biden did not.
Did I mention that Biden and Cackles believed in racism which has already been rejected by the SCOTUS?
Actually the only difference between what happened from 1861 to 1865 and what is happening now is the number of weapons and deaths. While that is certainly a very major difference, it is one of instance only, not of kind.
Abraham Lincoln in the shortest and most telling speech in American political history noted that “now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure”. If the endurance of our nation is not at stake now, it never was. The nature of the battlefield itself is not the issue, only ‘the great task remaining before us’.
Thanks James. We haven't gotten to that place yet, but the division is about as bad as I can imagine it being - and that's all without their really being an underlying issue that everybody's fighting about (there's no present-day equivalent to the division over slavery). The country's tearing itself apart over, essentially, cultural markers.
While I appreciate your reply, ‘cultural markers’ doesn’t do the situation justice. What is at stake here are two almost diametrically opposed visions of America. While slavery itself is certainly not the issue anymore (although Donald Trump would clearly have felt right at home running a Tidewater plantation in the 1850’s), the idea that the country should be run by an elite oligarchy (a clear echo of the feeling of m many southern slave owners in the pre-war south) is very plain in the continuing comments of those behind Trump like Stephen Miller and in the actions of the billionaire supporters who lined up with Trump on Inauguration Day, several of whom have been buying up and controlling major media companies for some time now.
Is this a 'new thing'? No; Alexander Hamilton suggested something like during the Constitutional convention. It resurfaced with the complete connivance of the Supreme Court during the Gilded Age, bringing on the progressiveness of TR. It was and remains the force behind the opposition to the policies of the New Deal.
There will always be those who are very uncomfortable with the essential messiness and inefficiency of the democratic process and those (like a number of those who participated in the Constitutional Convention) who distrust the variable passions of the people. When that is combined with the great wealth of those seeking to control all three, as is the case now, that is a bit more than cultural markers.
You kind of made my point a little bit tbh. So the two sides are, on the one hand, an “elite oligarchy” and, on the other, tech billionaires lining up behind Trump. It kind of sounds like the same thing! - with both sides accusing one another of elitism/kleptocracy. I don’t really see the underlying issue here except, as I said, the cultural markers - and then our capacity to let ourselves to let ourselves get stupidly polarized.
I meant the two as one. I didn’t mention those of us who continue to support our Republic as opposing that one as I thought it a given. My error.
The "great task" meaning the Great Replacement?
Oh please.
One has to wonder why liberals are so hell-bent on importing masses of non-whites into their countries. This phenomenon is not new nor oonfined to the US.
Oikophobia:
An extreme and immoderate aversion to the sacred and the thwarting of the connection of the sacred to the culture of the West appears to be the underlying motif of oikophobia; and not the substitution of Hellenic Christianity by another coherent system of belief. The paradox of the oikophobe seems to be that any opposition directed at the theological and cultural tradition of the West is to be encouraged even if it is "significantly more parochial, exclusivist, patriarchal, and ethnocentric". (Mark Dooley, Roger Scruton: Philosopher on Dover Beach (Continuum 2009), p. 78.)
"One has to wonder why liberals are so hell-bent on importing masses of non-whites into their countries. This phenomenon is not new nor oonfined to the US.”
Actually one has to wonder how one could so fail to understand the promise of America, and how it might appear as a magnet to others.
I'd be curious to know how diverse your neighborhood is.
In ultra liberal DC, a house in Upper Caucasia (northwest quadrant) is twice as expensive as a similar house in middle class affirmative action Anacostia (southeast quadrant). If non-whites need whites for “opportunities” they cannot provide for themselves (in their own countries) isn't this by definition racism?
I fail to see what relevance that comment has. As to the suggestion that liberals are hell bent on importing masses of non- whites anywhere, that’s about as racist a comment as I can imagine.
Progressive SJWs are always on the side of the criminal. And anyone enforcing the law is automatically presumed to be a Nazi thug when any criminal, especially if black or engaged in obstruction of an officer, is killed. Perhaps Mr. Pretti was murdered, it's America after all. OTOH why do you bring a gun, and extra clips of ammo, to a potentially violent situation where your intent is to obstruct law enforcement and where the armed officers involved are very likely to be in a combat mentality?
We expect these officers to be perfect and to have no concern for their own lives. They are doing a difficult, dirty and dangerous job that many of them might not be enjoying very much and they are surrounded by mobs of abusive a violent people not to mention the potentially violent people they've come to detain. I know I'd start shooting at the ... I was going to say 'slightest provocation', but that's not quite right -- the provocation is constant, overwhelming and very deliberate. The SJWs look forward to deaths because martyrs advance the cause. Dozens of people are killed in America every day, but this death is the one that's going to lead the news for the next several weeks.
Bro, watch the video. He's completely prone on the ground when he's shot by federal agents. Whatever your politics are, that's the kind of thing you're supposed to get upset about.
I'm 90% convinced it was hot blooded murder. Lookit, I'm just being devil's advocate here. I'm a natural born law-and-order dolphin, I don't like riots and interference with cops or ICE or any such rubs me the wrong way. I'd like to give ICE the benefit of the doubt, but shit, sometimes you believe your lyin' eyes. What? They pumped 10 rounds into him? Ferkrissakes.
BUT ... it remains true that bringing a gun to an up close and personal effort to interfere with law enforcement ... people ... I was tempted to say 'thugs' -- is not a good idea. If you were an iceman, doing your job, surrounded by abusive and potentially violent protesters and you knew that some of them might be carrying weapons, you'd be in a very dangerous state of mind too. And if you found a gun on one of them you'd probably take it personal. I would. These folks should keep ten meters back from the officers for their own good health if nothing else. Eventually someone's going to shoot an iceman and then things are going to get ... interesting.
BTW, if It was up to me there'd be a city wide plebiscite: "Does Minneapolis want ICE here or not? Do we want our illegals or do we not?" If Minneapolis wants their illegals then they should get to keep them. Of course SJWs love everything criminal -- except when the cops do it -- but what about the ordinary citizen? But sure, if the city says: 'ICE out!' then ICE should bugger off. I'm glad I'm Canadian.
You are on the wrong side of history, Ray. Given the overt lies by this administration, how do you/we really know that Pretti had “additional ammo clips” or that the gun displayed is actually the one he carried legally. At this point, with more than enough evidence that the DJT administration is grift driven, contemptuous of the rule of law and completely indecent as humans, if you are writing in their support, you are not an American patriot, you are a cult follower who lacks critical thinking skills. Full stop.
I'm convinced the gun was planted on Pretti. If he had owned a gun and it was still at home, locked in a gun safe with his ammunition, Bovine would have still said, "he had a gun." Does that sound like a fully lawyered sentence to you?
> I'm convinced the gun was planted on Pretti.
It that turns out to be true, then some people should be going to jail for a long time. That would be putting a dead cat into the soup, would it not? Law And Order is one thing, but when the cops are the criminals, who's side are we supposed to take? You people are in deep trouble down there.
Good point. No, we don't really know very much at all. There is no lie that Trump and his followers wouldn't tell. OTOH very much the same goes for the other side. You can pick your poison as to who has more contempt for the law tho. At the very least this guy was interfering with an officer of the law doing his job, just like Mx. Good. Trump did get elected on exactly this platform plank, did he not? BTW some say that Obama actually deported more illegals per month than Trump -- tho of course Trump has to do things in the most goonish possible way.
Nope, not a patriot cuz I'm Canadian. We're a little more sane up here. Let's hope it all comes out in the wash. If it was in fact murder you'll not hear me trying to defend it. But as I said, bringing a gun to a deliberate altercation with ICE is not very smart even it it was technically legal. Mind, you don't often hear lefties invoking the sacred right to bear arms very often, do you? For this news cycle it's a progressive issue!
I am offended by this essay. The author seems to think Walz is somehow less credible because he respects deaf people. We all know that Trump makes fun of handicapped people. Somehow the author was trying to strike some balance where there is none to be struck.
Not trying to strike a balance. Just offering an analysis of what's going on. It's important to understand what's going on in the heads of the administration and the ICE agents - and what's happening is that they look at progressives and believe that progressives are essentially un-American, that their adoption of 'woke ideology,' etc, puts them outside the pale of political discourse. I certainly don't agree with that. But in my role as an observer of this situation, I am trying to understand their worldview.
Homeland Security is an oxymoron
For decades, at least since the Columbine shooting, the opponents of gun control have insisted that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to give citizens with the means resist tyranny. I guess the Blood and Soil right wingers have found a previously unknown exception to their interpretation.