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Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

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Re: Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

#411

Post by beepbooptheory »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #360
beepbooptheory wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we hear versions of this conceit a lot, but how does it play out? Like where exactly is this arbritrary power exercised in your mind? Where is the payout? In each discrete call out or critique? Is the world in your view just full of a million tyrants fighting for various fiefdoms, or is there just one collective bad faith actor here? How can you marry here both the overarching individualism which would make this…

It sounds like you're asking what is the scope of this sovereignty? In my experience, the scope is the establishment of a status hierarchy. We love to put ourselves in a privileged position. In most internet discussion, the status hierarchy extends throughout the duration of the encounter. In most Thanksgivings, the crazy uncle goes away at the end of the night, in marriages, it extends for the duration of the relati…

Yes gotcha. But just try to think it through carefully: does this really capture what is going on in these many instances? There is an implication here maybe that you have been on the short end of some interactions in the past, did you really feel subjugated by some abstract power then? Did it really seem like the person on the other end was getting some satisfaction, some giddy kickback from their "sovereignty"?

Does it not feel at least a little juvenile to think like this, if you look at it critically, maybe from a little more the outside than you seem to be? These kind of pat armchair psychologies that answer in one breath the phenomena of culture, of human interaction feel just extremely schoolyard to me... but I guess ymmv.

At the very least: its unfalsifiable; one could easily go the other way and say "people love to belong to a group, and being able to police another group's language/jokes/etc is the best mechanism for reinforcing their belonging".

To picture you and your smug interlocutor as ever placed in some asymmetric structure where they are the king and you are the pauper belies the staying power of these controversies, the clear struggle they manifest. You make it sound so much like there never even is a battle, just spontaneous winners and losers.

I don't want to come off as harsh, but what you are arguing for is the logic of a loser, in the technical sense. Its asserting a projection you/others have of perceived intellectual enemies as a kind social theory for everything. It dooms you to fatalism you just dont need to have! Humans, for better or worse have a capacity for much more complicated motives. You do not need to "Mean Girls" the entire world!

Re: Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

#412

Post by [deleted] »

FredPret wrote: post #387
mywittyname wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you still have way more freedom and specifically freedom of speech in the US than the rest of us Depends on who "you" are. There some some who are allowed to openly make tangible, if thinly veiled death threats to others without repercussions. Others can have their lives ruined over trivial things. The "you"s who are not granted as much freedom of speech are aware of it and only express themselves among trusted peo…

There is now an absolute fountain of criticism of the current administration, the USA itself, and the entire West coming from every demographic in the USA. This isn't a new thing or restricted to Trump. I don't see any mass arrests, chilling of media, or official propaganda making the rounds.

[deleted]

Re: Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

#413

Post by Izkata »

stego-tech wrote: post #193

All the bickering about the validity of this specific story and the “if you don’t like it don’t ever leave home to go anywhere ever” misses the crux of the issue that these articles are trying to raise: * Do we agree that a law enforcement arm of any country should be allowed to perform warrantless searches of electronic devices? * Do we find it acceptable that persons with critical views are denied entry to countrie…

> All the bickering about the validity of this specific story

I think you're looking at this point the wrong way around: If the people bringing these stories up had good examples, they should use those instead of these questionable ones. Using these stories instead makes it look like the US is doing a good job of not overreaching.

Re: Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

#414

Post by kube-system »

freeone3000 wrote: post #403
kube-system wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The adjective "armed" in my topmost comment wasn't a technicality, it was the entire point of the anecdote. Do you really think I was saying that the TSA never searches luggage? Obviously the TSA searches a lot of luggage, the thing they don't do is carry guns while doing so.

Right, they have to call the guy with a gun over. Is the problem the luggage search, as in, the invasion of privacy? The explicit threat of force in the absence of immediate compliance? The assumption of guilt for the general populace? The ever-present security state continually looking to oppress? Or is it “huh europe is weird they give their TSA agents guns instead of having the transport security and also airport…

It's just an anecdote. I wasn't trying to draw any philosophical conclusions from it.

Re: Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

#415

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

AdamN wrote: post #105
nelsonfigueroa wrote: post #26

Jeez...is the current administration that sensitive to criticism? I wonder if this comment will come back to haunt me some day.

This is really just the essence of bureaucracy - which is the problem with these rules that sounds fine if you don't think about the implementation of them. Trump himself probably wouldn't care (which is why he thinks these rules are fine - he knows what should be a jailable offense) but of course the bureaucracy needs to make rules that any of the thousands of border guards can follow. The outcome is a bullwhip effe…

What was he like when you spent time with him?

Re: Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

#416

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

airforce1 wrote: post #369

Surprised this story has not been flagged as it's essentially political flamebait - an uncorroborated, unverifiable account from a single person trashing the current US administration and causing everyone to pile on their hot takes and equally unverifiable and possibly embellished anecdotes.

Justifies the popular ideology here. Why would it need evidence or corroboration? The bubble has decided.

Re: Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

#417

Post by gruez »

guappa wrote: post #400
gruez wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Tourist jailed without trial for possessing political cartoon" Jail almost by definition means pretrial detention, so "jailed without trial" is a tautology.

Most people who are not from USA do not make any distinction between jail and prison. Nitpicking about the precise legal terminology is a bit pointless in this context.

It's not really nitpicking because any sort of pretrial detention is technically "jailed without trial", and pretrial detention isn't some sort of tool only used by fascist regimes. So far as I can tell, he was pulled aside for further questioning and ultimately refused entry, but the authorities didn't go out of their way to detain him for longer than necessary. No, I'm not excusing the government's behavior. Refusing someone entry for possessing a political cartoon is still bad, but "jailed without trial" is just inflammatory wording.

If some protester got arrested for protesting, the reasonable thing to do is to call it just that, not "protester jailed without trial for protesting".

Re: Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

#419

Post by smsm42 »

kube-system wrote: post #308
smsm42 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some inspection in practically every transport hub when I travel. While I traveled internationally the most strict was in Germany. I really don't mind a lot - there are good reasons to be careful - but they had guards in full military gear and with automatic weapons (usually it's handguns and plain uniforms) which looked pretty intimidating, and that was the only time I had to actually turn on my laptop to sh…

Yeah, of course most places inspect luggage, but here in the US luggage inspection is done mostly by staff who are not police/military.

There are many more armed services in the US than police/military. Dept. of Education has a SWAT team. Amtrak has armed force. US Park service has one. Really, there are so many of them.

Re: Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme

#420

Post by airforce1 »

mvdtnz wrote: post #409
airforce1 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...unless you run afoul of any of their many obscure laws, even unintentionally. I had a relative travel to Japan with his family. He's into locksport (watches Lock Picking Lawyer, etc). He had some lock picking paraphernalia on his person that he forgot about since he just carries it around 24/7 without thinking about it. Long story short, they were discovered in a metal detector at some point and Japanese security…

This doesn't seem like an "obscure" law to me. In fact if this is a hobby of yours I would expect you to understand that it's not legal in a number of places.

It was an honest mistake, especially for someone who rarely travels.

It could happen to anyone in a country where possessing lock picks is not a criminal act. For example, your sibling might get you some picks in credit card form factor one year for Christmas. You put them in your wallet and forget about them. You travel a bit within the USA and nobody cares. Then years later you travel to Japan and are whisked away to jail because of a thing you forgot about in your wallet. The Japanese don't understand why an innocent civilian would ever have such a thing; therefore you must be a nefarious criminal.

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