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Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

cnn.com

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Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#331

Post by eldgfipo »

kpw94 wrote: post #302
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One fights the enemies of the state "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 pow…

> military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law. 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: Alg…

As a French, I'd argue we're a flawed democracy. Shame on us when we compare ourselves to Scandinavian countries.

Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#332

Post by rwyinuse »

It's funny how so many Americans claim having loose gunrights is necessary to guarantee a free state, and protection against a federal army. Now same people have elected a government that really tries its best to turn that free state into an authoritarian dictatorship, using American military as its tool.

We'll see how far Project 2025 will go within Trump's term. I'm not optimistic.

Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#333

Post by xp84 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #279
vasco wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not american but I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too. Funny that if it's so bad to deploy them, why is it OK to deploy them in other countries?

> I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too The governor of Louisiana requested federal help. Legally very different.

Most people here in CA who aren’t Democrats believe that Newsom is a partisan hack and that he and his policies are completely ineffective at keeping Californians safe from dangerous criminals, so his lack of requesting help is mostly being viewed as his typical “agenda over reality” orientation.

Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#334

Post by lordnacho »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #260
jxjnskkzxxhx wrote: post #223

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies 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.

> One fights the enemies of the state "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 pow…

Well I hate to disparage a large group of people, but how often have you spoken to an American who understands this type of social-legal history of the country, and values it?

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.

Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#335

Post by closewith »

forty wrote: post #319
kpw94 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law. 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: Alg…

Gendarmerie are simply policemen with a military status which give them some duty (like I think they cannot strike) and some benefits (earlier retirement) but they are still really a police force in reality. I don't think it would look good to send actual army to fight citizens, and I don't think the army would appreciate it either (it might have been done already, no idea)

That is not universally true. A Gendarmerie is literally a military force with law enforcement duties and many are exactly that.

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.

Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#336

Post by kubb »

Larrikin wrote: post #224

If illegal immigration is such a problem, why not fine businesses 5x salary for using the labor, for as long as it was used? There are a lot of systems in place to verify working status at this point. It eliminates any incentive to hire this cheaper labor willing to work for lower wages. The people coming will be coming for a variety of reasons but it won't be to take the jobs of the uneducated Americans

The Republican party is incentivized both to have illegal immigration, and to fight against illegal immigration.

They act accordingly to those incentives.

Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#337

Post by 4ggr0 »

timewizard wrote: post #330
motorest wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If illegal immigration is such a problem, why not fine businesses 5x salary for using the labor, for as long as it was used? 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…

> they inflamed society against that enemy 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.

Would you describe the US government as functional?

Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#338

Post by leereeves »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #310
drewcoo wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is Posse Comitatus. It's in place because enough people were fed up with federal troops being used to impose "law." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

It's also, notably, a legacy of Reconstruction. Put another way, we're dismantling infrastructure built to prevent civil war.

> a legacy of Reconstruction

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.

Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#339

Post by BrenBarn »

peterbecich wrote: post #311
notepad0x90 wrote: post #245

Politics aside, LA just can't seem to catch a break. Floods last year, fires earlier this year and now this. 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 f…

GOP and Dems have been nearly evenly matched for years in Congress now. There was no prospect of dramatic legal overhaul i.m.o., let alone any new Constitutional amendments. Graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...

And they're still nearly evenly matched and Trump is still doing what he's doing. The Democrats could have done all the same stuff Trump is doing, but for good instead of evil. The problem is that the Democrats are not willing to accept that the system is entirely broken, so they keep clinging to a belief in "institutions" that they think will somehow magically protect us, when in fact those institutions are destroying us.

Re: Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

#340

Post by watwut »

psalaun wrote: post #280
jxjnskkzxxhx wrote: post #223

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies 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've the feeling that during civil uprising in dictatorship or democracy, the police tends to serve and protect the hand that feeds them, rather than the oppressed people.)

Well, in the case of Third Reich, they decisively sided with Nazi. They were not hands that fed them, but they were what police (and military) liked.
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