Time for a new stock ath!
I was right lmao
Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
51–60 of 63 posts
Re: Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would help if these fundamental disagreements were ever explained rather than just vaguely handwaved. Is this disagreement about whether governments should be subservient to the People, and the idea of Constitutional rights and the rule of law in general? Or is it more philosophical like the people who were killed are now in the afterlife so their deaths aren't really a big deal? Or is it less universal like the p…
For example, if citizens don't like a law enforcement policy, are they entitled to physically confront law enforcement to exercise a "heckler's veto" over the policy? And how should the predictable consequences of such confrontations be weighed against the state's legitimate interest in carrying out the law enforcement priorities of the democratically elected government? Similarly: Whether you think collateral risk i…
> if citizens don't like a law enforcement policy, are they entitled to physically confront law enforcement to exercise a "heckler's veto" over the policy?
This is still not a strong enough "fundamental disagreement" to explain it. In order for this to be load-bearing, it would have to be something more like whether a law enforcement officer should be able to dole out a punishment of summary execution in response to such actions, which was covered in the first possibility I listed about Constitutional rights.
If you were to openly champion this stance, then we could at least have a conversation! You could lay out your case for why it's time to go against some deep founding principles of this country, and at least we wouldn't be talking past one another! Whereas with weasel words like predictable consequences you're obscuring your fundamental political position.
> the urgency of the particular law enforcement mission
With this we're starting to get into the territory of "alternative facts", and it's disingenuous to call alternative facts a "fundamental disagreement" rather than say "disinformation".
There is no "urgency" here - this is a problem that has been growing for decades. That growth is completely stopped by different mechanisms (border security, visa security, and reforming asylum). Whether it takes two years or ten years to accomplish auditing the entire US population does not matter if there is really a political mandate here.
Narratives about Good's execution that start after her killer had already set up the pretext to execute her (in direct contradiction with ICE's own procedures, even!) fall in this same category.
> Civilians and officers are regularly killed when officers respond to domestic violence incidents. But hardly anybody argues we should stop responding to domestic violence calls because of that
Once again, I have not made an argument that the goal should be abandoned. It seems like you're just trying to go back to conflating the two separate issues rather than staying focused on criticism of the methods. And for what it's worth, clearly many people do criticize the methods of how police respond to calls.
> If we had, for example, a large-scale gun confiscation in this country, lots of civilians would get killed
My initial reaction was that you're trying to precipitate partisan strawmen here. But I would be arguing against the injustice of similar incidents happening under that as well! Also it makes for some quite tortured analogies - under the hypothetical, the pretext for executing Pretti would actually be bona fide illegal.
But on reflection, I think this might be a good way to illustrate the highly anti-American dynamics here. Perhaps not to you, as you were previously a Democrat and I don't think you've since adopted a strong 2A stance (correct me if I'm wrong), but to any actual conservatives who are still holding their nose at what the Republican party has now become. Let's imagine the partisan mirror image here:
Hillary Clinton is elected president, running on a central issue of gun control. She issues executive orders to the ATF/FBI to the effect that the 2A is to be interpreted as applying to only government-chartered militias, and summarily fires anyone who seems like they might resist her mandate. ATF declares that an unobtainable tax stamp is required for every firearm. ATF proceeds to create databases of suspected gun owners, pulling in in data from IRS about businesses, social media surveillance, transfer paperwork that had previously been legally off-limits, etc. Congress is silent, except for pushing through gobs of funding for ATF for its new operations. The Supreme Court is packed with Democrat partisans who might not agree with Clinton's methods, but agree that gun control has been an issue for a long time and are willing to let it ride by sandbagging any substantive cases. As one of their approaches, ATF goes house to house busting down doors in neighborhoods with a high concentration of suspected gun owners. When residents predictably respond by defending themselves in their homes from an unknown intruder, they are summarily executed. There is a whole political movement cheering this on, saying that it's right for those people to have died because they were "interfering with law enforcement".
Would this be at home in a Free society based around individual Liberty and the subservience of the government to the People?
Re: Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Immigrants pulling up the ladder after themselves is a time-honored American tradition. It's a complicated subject and has been weaponized by the Right, artfully so. If you actually cared about the law being followed you would be consistent in that -- meaning that the immigrants who were/are here who have been completely legal in that should have been protected by the law, but weren't. Likewise, you'd care that offic…
> Immigrants pulling up the ladder after themselves is a time-honored American tradition. Because it's rational. If you're from a dysfunctional country--sorry, I mean a "vibrant" and "rich" country--you don't want that following behind you. > what impact it's had to cause those people to flee. AKA, "you break it, you bought it". You assume those countries are worth fleeing because of exogenous factors that cannot fol…
> Because it's rational. If you're from a dysfunctional country--sorry, I mean a "vibrant" and "rich" country--you don't want that following behind you.
That makes zero logical sense on a couple levels.
1. There's no real difference between the immigrants in Wave A vs Wave B, except Wave A happened first. Same shithole country, just an ordering issue. "I've got mine, Jack!" is not a compelling claim.
2. People bring their experiences with them but doesn't mean that they then apply their history to the present of their new home. America is the shaper, culture brings some flavor.
The other thing you missed was the tribalism of my statement about the latter being pulled up. It really goes like this:
1. Immigrants from Shithole A come as a wave to America and are met with hostility and oppression but persevere and a generation later are established communities; Americans.
2. Immigrants from Shithole B come as a wave to American and are met with hostility and oppression from current population, including the A Shitholers, because it' now their country.
> Like with any law, immigration law is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, i.e. limiting the flow of immigrants and the effects thereof. It's like fishing licenses. You could stop illegal fishing just by mailing everyone a license, but the piece of paper is not the point.
You mean like the laws that we already have? Not perfect but they are there and there was was bipartisan legislation address issues and enhance border security. It was spiked so that it could become a partisan political football.
Again, immigration is broken, but could be fixed if the powers that be wanted it. Look at where most of those undocumented workers end up and take a guess at the political affiliation of those employers. It's not a coincidence.
Re: Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Immigrants pulling up the ladder after themselves is a time-honored American tradition. Because it's rational. If you're from a dysfunctional country--sorry, I mean a "vibrant" and "rich" country--you don't want that following behind you. > what impact it's had to cause those people to flee. AKA, "you break it, you bought it". You assume those countries are worth fleeing because of exogenous factors that cannot fol…
> Because it's rational. If you're from a dysfunctional country--sorry, I mean a "vibrant" and "rich" country--you don't want that following behind you. That makes zero logical sense on a couple levels. 1. There's no real difference between the immigrants in Wave A vs Wave B, except Wave A happened first. Same shithole country, just an ordering issue. "I've got mine, Jack!" is not a compelling claim. 2. People bring…
I'm going to try something different here. I'm going to respond to one of your points as I believe @rayiner would. Maybe showing him that I actually understand his argument might help him realize that every person arguing with him isn't a coming from some myopic partisan view. Or that it's possible to have read discussion about these topics, analyzed them on their own merits (not merely just rejecting based on progressive dogma), and still walked away not buying into them. Or perhaps even that my criticism of ICE isn't actually rooted in cloaked pro-immigration policy [0]
> 1. There's no real difference between the immigrants in Wave A vs Wave B, except Wave A happened first. Same shithole country, just an ordering issue. "I've got mine, Jack!" is not a compelling claim.
The argument is that the amount of immigration is too high and rate of assimilation is too low, and thus the larger quantity would affect the culture more than the lesser quantity. It is indeed a selfish argument for someone who was in wave A - and while this might invalidate it in your own worldview, that is not universal. So while it's not compelling for you, it is compelling for him (and others).
[0] I'm personally quite ambivalent on most immigration topics. Although I do believe strangling our educational and research institutions is an absolutely bone-headed move. But that has nothing to do with illegal immigration.
Re: Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no "Cuba problem" that needs to be solved.
How many cuban ex-pats do you know? I would say “not many”. Every cuban ex-pat I know (and thats quite a lot because I live in FL) will tell you there is a Cuba problem. They all still have family suffering under that regime.
Let me rephrase. The is no "Cuba problem" that the US needs to deal with any differently than it deals with/has dealt with the many other countries in the Americas that have/had people suffering under their regimes who had family in the US.
As far as Cuba in particular goes, the suffering there would be a lot less if the US would drop its 65+ year old embargo and let them trade like all the other repressive regimes it is indifferent to.
Re: Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many cuban ex-pats do you know? I would say “not many”. Every cuban ex-pat I know (and thats quite a lot because I live in FL) will tell you there is a Cuba problem. They all still have family suffering under that regime.
Let me rephrase. The is no "Cuba problem" that the US needs to deal with any differently than it deals with/has dealt with the many other countries in the Americas that have/had people suffering under their regimes who had family in the US. As far as Cuba in particular goes, the suffering there would be a lot less if the US would drop its 65+ year old embargo and let them trade like all the other repressive regimes i…
Most of them don't have a history of direct hostility towards the US and specifically having the willingness to allow a US foe to use their proximity to plant tactical weapons to threaten the US.
Bit of a difference…
Re: Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because it's rational. If you're from a dysfunctional country--sorry, I mean a "vibrant" and "rich" country--you don't want that following behind you. That makes zero logical sense on a couple levels. 1. There's no real difference between the immigrants in Wave A vs Wave B, except Wave A happened first. Same shithole country, just an ordering issue. "I've got mine, Jack!" is not a compelling claim. 2. People bring…
I'm going to try something different here. I'm going to respond to one of your points as I believe @rayiner would. Maybe showing him that I actually understand his argument might help him realize that every person arguing with him isn't a coming from some myopic partisan view. Or that it's possible to have read discussion about these topics, analyzed them on their own merits (not merely just rejecting based on progre…
Nobody is saying that volume is not an issue -- he's arguing from talking points not facts.
While they have just enough plausible deniability, the current anti-immigration takes it to a more fervent level: they want to export all the immigrants that are not white, and not just that, those that are not Christian.
Everyone of us here is an immigrant or descended from immigrants and, and the failure to recognize that is a literal moral failing.
And of course there remains the unexamined aspect of the US culpability in creating the conditions causing people to flee and seek safe harbor....
Edit: and on cultural assimilation my point stands: first born immigrants (which I believe includes Rayiner himself) assimilate by design because of human tribal needs. Their parents will always be tied to the old world but they're going to do what they can to fit in.
Re: Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would help if these fundamental disagreements were ever explained rather than just vaguely handwaved. Is this disagreement about whether governments should be subservient to the People, and the idea of Constitutional rights and the rule of law in general? Or is it more philosophical like the people who were killed are now in the afterlife so their deaths aren't really a big deal? Or is it less universal like the p…
For example, if citizens don't like a law enforcement policy, are they entitled to physically confront law enforcement to exercise a "heckler's veto" over the policy? And how should the predictable consequences of such confrontations be weighed against the state's legitimate interest in carrying out the law enforcement priorities of the democratically elected government? Similarly: Whether you think collateral risk i…
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Re: Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was actually surprised about that in the other direction. Police consistently poll in the top 3 most trusted organizations in the country. I would have thought ICE would get the benefit of that sentiment. But in the Harvard-Harris polling above, police are +39 net favorability, while ICE is -6. The lower polling on ICE is odd because, as a policy issue, deporting all illegal immigrants (not just ones who have commi…
For starters they mainly don't. The whole reason TV personality leadership is en vogue is because most people don't actually think through the implications of what they're buying into. I sure wish they did! But also, it's quite straightforward to envision a different ICE carrying out its goal slower, more deliberately, with transparency and legal accountability. There's zero need for them to operate as a masked terro…
ICE existed before before Trump and under Obama and Biden was doing the work ICE is intended to do.
But under Trump it's been different in several different ways:
1. Encouraged aggressive and lawless behavior by its agents with a promise of zero accountability for their behavior (or lawlessness)
2. A quota system designed to incentive detaining anybody at any cost for any reason
3. Disregard for due process and the legal system -- arresting and detaining people when they show up for immigration hearings *following the legal process fully*
4. Killing innocent US citizens.
5. Detaining US citizens.
6. Enhanced "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride" where they take detainees to another state and then release them there
Pro tip: any policies that are designed to welcome or even encourage harm to those that it applies to are inherently evil. The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats it's most vulnerable members, and ICE as it exists today is a shameful stain on our country.
Re: Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me rephrase. The is no "Cuba problem" that the US needs to deal with any differently than it deals with/has dealt with the many other countries in the Americas that have/had people suffering under their regimes who had family in the US. As far as Cuba in particular goes, the suffering there would be a lot less if the US would drop its 65+ year old embargo and let them trade like all the other repressive regimes i…
Most of them don't have a history of direct hostility towards the US and specifically having the willingness to allow a US foe to use their proximity to plant tactical weapons to threaten the US. Bit of a difference…
That was in 1962, nearly 44 years ago, and it was after the US had tried to invade Cuba.