Scapegoating immigrants for political polarization or the "loss of social cohesion" is especially nonsensical given the underrepresentation of immigrant groups in the most radical and extreme elements of the left and right. Most immigrants either want to "live and let live" and are totally disengaged from politics, or they try their best to assimilate into the majority culture around them -- they're not trying to steer the country in some crazy new direction.
All of the most polarizing ideologies in America cropped up between the 1960s and the 2010s. Indians, East Asians, and Mexicans deserve 0% of the blame for this.
AOC and Mamdani didn't start the push for socialism -- that was the Bernie bros, who were overwhelmingly white. It wasn't brown immigrants who started Critical Race Theory or popularized transgenderism.
To the extent that immigrants sometimes join extremist movements, they are "riding a wave" which was created by "Heritage Americans."
"If you think the United States needs less freedom-of-speech, more state regulation of the economy, more affirmative action, and more wealth redistribution, supporting Indian immigration is sensible... Quite apart from their ideological beliefs, Indians are often hostile towards white people... India itself is the world capital of ethnocentrism, with a caste system so strict that it has managed to maintain near-perfect endogamy for thousands of years."
I can't say I agree with Arctotherium on everything. I actually like most of the [very positively selected] Indian-Americans I have met. But ironically, I do find Arctotherium's extensive use of citations and data visualization to be more "Elite Human Capital" than Richard's handwavey polemics.
None of those things represent polarization or a lack of social cohesion. Two entirely different points here.
For example, Milei could be considered a polarizing and divisive figure, but according to Arctotherium, the juice is worth the squeeze.
Indians simply support safetyism, which is the opposite of polarization. They actually come bearing gifts of social cohesion. The real problem, then, is this obsession with social cohesion as an end unto itself.
White nationalists like to conflate social cohesion with ethnocentrism, but they are not the same thing.
All you have to do is open up X and you can see plenty of Indians essentially taunting Americans for being so stupid as to let them into the country. That's not good for social cohesion.
I'm not a blanket immigration skeptic. I concentrate my immigration skepticism on Somalis and Indians, since they exhibit the greatest degree of clannishness/ethnocentrism. I am concerned about an equilibrium shift where explicit inter-ethnic conflict becomes normalized to a much greater degree than it has already been. I don't want the US to look like India or Somalia in terms of inter-group relations. For example, it's estimated that up to two million may have died in the Partition of India.
I acknowledge that Latinos are most likely a stabilizing force in terms of inter-ethnic relations. In general, I think the immigration bar should be lower for individuals who can demonstrate mixed ethnicity, since they are already primed to live in a multicultural society. (Their ancestors chose to marry across ethnic lines, and they probably have some experience in navigating cultural differences across different branches of the family.)
What better proof of integration than the defense of others? America has never had a detailed monoculture - we have always maintained our unique cultural bits while also sublimating the general American 'oeuvre'.
The nativist faction tries so hard to deny this but its too self-evident, evidenced even by their choice of spouse. While Rufo et al. might try to fight the definition, America and American-ism will always remain a set of values. Our history isn't long nor isolated enough for it to be anything else.
"The best argument against Ross is not found in the video. It's that we all know the type of activist he was dealing with, and it's almost impossible to believe he'd believe she would have run him over if he had just taken a step to the side."
Legal self defense is pretty arcane, might be that the guy should walk for technical reasons. But is he a murderer in his heart? I'm pretty convinced of it.
The lady was basically Heather Cox Richardson. HCR might yell at you or get you fired but she's not going to run you over in her car.
Legal self-defense is actually pretty straightforward in principle:
- Do you have a reasonable fear of grave bodily harm or death, given the totality of the circumstances?
Cops get some extra benefit of considering it's their job to be in dangerous situations.
The activist lady clearly drove recklessly, proven by the fact she very much did clip the officer.
People want to pretend it was obvious in advance she wasn't going to hit the officer, but her intent is not the focus of the analysis. You'll mindread the officer and confidently assess he had murder in his heart--even though his life just got a lot worse for it, and every cop knows that--and believe that the activist lady wouldn't hurt a fly.
Testosterone, adrenaline and a bad temper can facilitate choices that you later regret, which goes for most murderers.
I hope you're right that things will go rough for him, but there's a good chance the administration successfully protects him and he makes a ton of GoFundMe money.
He reacted in like two seconds. As the activist lady accelerated towards him.
He's not going to face charges. But he doesn't get like "cool cop cred" for shooting an activist lady. If he's a murderous psychopath, then I guess he'll not care, but I doubt he is. (Otherwise why would this be his first lethal encounter in more than a decade of law enforcement.)
From the recording he made he called her a fucking bitch right after shooting her, I don't know how he'll look back on the event.
He'd also had a conversation with her already in which it would be clear to any reasonable person that she wasn't someone who would just try to run him over.
Ok. I'd like to think in a similar situation I'd be like "Oh shit, did I just kill someone? God I hope not."
I have no particular admiration for the woman, and my guess is that she was kind of dumb and would be alive if she'd been smarter. But I also think it's likely that Ross is as guilty morally as most people doing time for third degree murder.
-- Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.
-- Firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles. Specifically, firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle ...
Not "murder in his heart." "Testosterone, adrenaline and a bad temper," while being stoked into a rage and encouraged to be violent - rewarded and celebrated for it.
Not cops as in, don't generalize from this rag-tag bunch of goons. Keep your "toxic masculinity" dog whistle. And some of them have been acting well beyond any of their legitimate "powers." I could list cases, but I'm done with your elite human duncery.
He was so fearful for his life that he had to pull out his cell phone, move it from one hand to the other to walk over to the honda, shoot her 3 times, follow the rolling car to curse her, filming it all with his cell phone.
Federal law enforcement is NOT SUBJECT TO STATE AND LOCAL STANDARDS FOR USE OF FORCE FOR FUCK'S SAKE. Actually I'm pretty fucking positive no law enforcement is in the course of their duty.
There is one fucking legal standard, which goes something like:
Given the totality of the circumstances, did the officer have a reasonable fear of great bodily harm or death?
Do you always find yourself this ignorant when discussing controversial topics?
How are these contradictory? A right-wing government pretends our nation is a hellscape of crime so they can justify their own political and civil repression.
Well, Richard who is usually quite reliable, seems convinced “that ICE has unleashed a reign of terror.” I don’t like ICE’s tactics, but I think this language is hyperbolic.
I think I basically agree with you, although I find it hard to see obstructing law enforcement as heroic unless you know they are arresting innocent people.
What surprises me is that you did not expect this when you supported Trump in the election? By all means the trade stuff was a surprise but this is basically his core campaign promise right?
It is heroic to obstruct law enforcement if law enforcement is breaking the Constitution or the law. Arbitrarily arresting people, illegally searching homes, beating protestors or even killing them... These are not actions that deserve deference. The patriotic thing to do is push back and insist that law enforcement follow the constitution and laws. That is what the founders would have done.
In the UK so not following closely - but if that is what appears to be happening in the case in front of me then I would agree. Maybe America is very different than I imagine, but in almost any country with due process rights my default would be that law enforcement have a legitimate reason for being there and that mistakes are corrected. That means that a pretty high bar is required for disagreement with a law to justify physical interference.
More interested in the the second part of the question for Richard though.
Solid breakdown of how enforcement quotas warp policy away from public safety goals. That 47% statistic on non-criminal detainees really undercuts the whole "catching miscreants" framing they're pushing. I've seen construction projects grind to a halt in my area after worksite raids, costs baloon, timelines get wrecked, but somehow that's suposed to be about making us safer. The bit about multiracial communites defending eachother feels right, saw this play out at a local 7-Eleven where regulars basically created a shield when agents showed up during morning rush.
"We’re told that ICE agents are simply “enforcing the law.” It is true that the federal government has the right to deport people in the country unlawfully. Yet this is a red herring, as we understand that there are many cases where, if government sought to fully enforce the law, it would produce chaos and repression. Under Covid restrictions, many businesses were lax in enforcing mask requirements, and it would have been crazy for authorities to go around trying to stamp out every instance of this. Or picture a police force trying to ticket every individual who went one mile over the speed limit."
No. Every country on earth has immigration laws. Allowing foreign nationals to immigrate here with no authorization, by sneaking into the country or overstaying tourists visas or abusing the asylum system, is not at all like letting dumb Covid restrictions slide or people one mile an hour over the speed limit. As we saw under Biden, it very quickly incentivizes millions more to come.
there were millions of illegal immigrants in the us for decades with no serious consequences. obama gave semi-official protection to those who arrived as children with no serious consequences. it was only a problem under biden. maintaining a stable level of illegal immigration does not require trying to carry out mass deportations it just requires taking border enforcememt a little bit seriously
Obama deported large numbers of people. As for the semi-official protection to those who arrived as children, I'd say it had the serious consequence of further eroding the integrity of the immigration system, among other things. Furthermore, things have changed even since then with respect to how easy it is to coordinate and share information. And with respect to the massive NGO infrastructure that has sprung up to help people game the system.
I'd agree that it isn't realistic to deport everyone here illegally. I don't have a great solution to offer. But to wave off the legitimacy of deporting unauthorized migrant is not right.
but going back to the analogy you're criticizing, nobody thinks we shouldn't prosecute *any* speeders. a lot of people go just above the limit and don't really hurt anyone, and the cost to society of trying to catch every single one would vastly outweigh the benefit of doing so
similarly, the argument wasn't that *no* illegal immigrants should be deported, just that it's crazy to take a zero-tolerance stance. most illegal immigrants are contributing positively to society, and cost (both in dollars and in liberties) of trying to deport ten or twenty million people would be extraordinary
Richard suggests "If someone is working, contributing to society, and hasn’t committed any crimes, then under any kind of humane and logical system, authorities would exercise discretion and leave them alone." So he is basically saying we should not deport anyone unless they've committed crimes. I take issue with that.
you're allowed to want to deport whoever you like. but you don't have to deport law-abiding, tax-paying illegals in order to prevent the sort of chaos that ensued the biden administration. under obama deportees were essentially all recent arrivals or criminals and that was fine. what matters is border security, which is very strong, and not letting people abuse the asylum process.
Get out of here with your reasonableness. We need force and violence for the cameras, and to push the limits, and to provoke just one or two of these woke, libtard, radical leftist, terrorist scum into doing something really stupid. So that we can REALLY put the hammer down.
Obama didn't have an congressional authorization to change immigration laws, and yet that was essentially what he did. That paved the way for Biden to essentially wave everyone in for three years.
Spare me. Orangefuhrer hasn't had Congressional authorization for 90% of his destructive, provocative fuckery And Obama wasn't a longtime fraud turned President/cryptogrifter, and Obama could speak without lying as readily as breathing.
I will forever be confused that people look at the first chart in this post and conclude that the problem is that the Biden administration wasn't willing to arrest immigrants.
I don't see how that isn't analogous to traffic laws or COVID restrictions. Every country has traffic laws and most countries had some kind of COVID policy. I'm sure that letting people drive one mile over the speed limit incentivizes some people to drive ten or twenty miles over the speed limit. Traffic accidents kill a ton of people. I expect COVID scofflaws ended up causing some lethal COVID infections.
I think the point is that if every day on your way to work in 2020, you had had to pass a goon squad of masked men, brandishing guns, tear-gassing people, ripping them out of their cars, and throwing them into unmarked vans for mask noncompliance, that would have created some other social problems that were at least as detrimental to the common good as Covid.
A classic example of "but if we don't have any illegal wetbacks who is going to pick my arugula"
Having sponsored hundreds of legal immigrants in my corporate life and marched with Cesar Chavez to end the exploitation of illegals who think they are above the law and depress farm worker wages, I am very tired of justifications of ignoring immigration laws by people who need cheap maids and lawn maintenance.
The Biden administration opened the southern border to flood the US with millions of non whites to speed up the reduction of the white population to below 50%.The overwhelming majority of those people were unvaccinated, at the same time as the native population was being hounded to take the jab. Trillions of dollars were printed that created a level of inflation that was not recorded in the official figures. Like all non whites those immigrants will always have the potential to benefit from civil rights legislation throughout their lifetimes.Collectively native blacks and Hispanics cost the US Trillions, while Asian businesses exploit the pro "minority" system to a much greater degree than blacks and Hispanics. White women are also endowed with minority status too which explains quite a lot.
Stephen Miller is trying to undo some of what the aforementioned Mayorkas did, but it will probably end up mostly performative.
Joe Biden spoke in 2015 at a White House summit about immigration and demographic change. He said, “An unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop… Folks like me who are Caucasian, of European descent, for the first time in 2017 we’ll be in an absolute minority in the United States of America… That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength.”
He was referencing projected demographic trends, not laying out a policy plan to engineer those trends, framing immigration and diversity as part of America’s identity and strength. He did not say he wanted to engineer immigration to make whites a minority as a deliberate goal.
The “absolute minority” comment echoed population projections expected around 2040–2050. His reference to 2017 was a verbal flub, a Joe-ism.
Biden was extremely excited during that 2015 speech being fully aware that the Democrats always welcomed non white immigrants as they voted disproportionately for his party.
I don't think I'm alone in viewing being president for 4 years as 10 to 15 million non white immigrants crossed the southern border as counting as intention!
"Note that the controversies that set off BLM riots usually began when law enforcement was responding to some kind of illegal behavior. "
Like interfering with police operations and resisting arrest?
You can't have a nation of laws where if you manage to get here that's the end of it.
I support a path to citizenship for cases of proven success. Politicians tried to get that done and never quite did.
America's demographic success was largely built off a two-level selection filter for the vast majority of immigrants:
- It was hard to get here.
- You had to pull yourself up by your bootstraps to stay.
In the last few decades, those selection filters were heavily watered down. If you care about elite human capital, you should care about immigrant quality.
“Hard to get here” varied sharply by era and group. Before the 1920s, legal barriers were low for Europeans. The obstacle was economic, and far from insurmountable for many.
"Bootstraps" understates collective and structural supports for many groups, going back to the late 19th century. For many immigrant success depended heavily on ethnic networks, mutual aid societies, urban political machines, homesteading policies, and later the GI Bill and public education. Individual effort mattered, but it's often operated within enabling institutions, going way back.
The tens of millions that came over in steerage were generally not "elite human capital."
Nearly 40-million 1820 through 1940. About 23-million 1880 to 1920. So elite ...
This is a great explanation of the predicament we find ourselves in.
Admittedly, I have had many days where I spent too much time in propaganda world and felt my own 'brain had been turned to mush by internet memes' and such, and I became convinced maybe we are really living in a (crime ridden) hellscape.... the anti-dote is reading, and getting out in our communities, of course.
Here's an interesting one I just read earlier today on incarceration rates re: immigrants vs native born Americans.
Something interesting to note: Texas is the only state that keeps records of the immigration statuses of those arrested and convicted of state-level crimes.
Blaming illegals for the loss of American jobs is fundamentally moronic if you spend even 2 seconds thinking about it rather than drowning your own thoughts out with ad nauseum repetitions of "Laken Riley."
Say the illegal labor keeps orange prices low, then that allows for a ton of businesses to thrive selling orange products like essential oils or juice or dried peels at scale, and that creates a fuckload white collar jobs in marketing/distribution and blue collar jobs in certificate-based machinery maintenance--nice jobs which almost exclusively only hire Americans for good wages and benefits. All that gets torpedoed the moment the price of oranges shoots up because MAGAs want Americans to pick them, contracting the orange market as a whole just so a small group of peckerwoods can get low skill, no benefit jobs they never wanted in the first place.
The MAGAs do not deserve to be enfranchised nor get any part of the ethnostate they pine for, because it will suck ass for both us and them if their underbaked retard ideas are manifested, whereas both we and they have everything to gain from them being disempowered.
Mass immigration objectively lowers social trust, even liberal academics like Robert Putnam have acknowledged this fact:
"But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam—famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000book on declining civic engagement—has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings"
There's a short-term "hunkering down" phase initially, but "Putnam says, however, that 'in the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits.'"
This doesn't refute my point, all that he's saying is that these (supposed) alternative benefits outweigh the harm of diminished social cohesion, which I seriously question.
Scapegoating immigrants for political polarization or the "loss of social cohesion" is especially nonsensical given the underrepresentation of immigrant groups in the most radical and extreme elements of the left and right. Most immigrants either want to "live and let live" and are totally disengaged from politics, or they try their best to assimilate into the majority culture around them -- they're not trying to steer the country in some crazy new direction.
All of the most polarizing ideologies in America cropped up between the 1960s and the 2010s. Indians, East Asians, and Mexicans deserve 0% of the blame for this.
AOC and Mamdani didn't start the push for socialism -- that was the Bernie bros, who were overwhelmingly white. It wasn't brown immigrants who started Critical Race Theory or popularized transgenderism.
To the extent that immigrants sometimes join extremist movements, they are "riding a wave" which was created by "Heritage Americans."
This post claims otherwise, perhaps you should write a rebuttal: https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/the-case-against-indian-immigration
"If you think the United States needs less freedom-of-speech, more state regulation of the economy, more affirmative action, and more wealth redistribution, supporting Indian immigration is sensible... Quite apart from their ideological beliefs, Indians are often hostile towards white people... India itself is the world capital of ethnocentrism, with a caste system so strict that it has managed to maintain near-perfect endogamy for thousands of years."
I can't say I agree with Arctotherium on everything. I actually like most of the [very positively selected] Indian-Americans I have met. But ironically, I do find Arctotherium's extensive use of citations and data visualization to be more "Elite Human Capital" than Richard's handwavey polemics.
None of those things represent polarization or a lack of social cohesion. Two entirely different points here.
For example, Milei could be considered a polarizing and divisive figure, but according to Arctotherium, the juice is worth the squeeze.
Indians simply support safetyism, which is the opposite of polarization. They actually come bearing gifts of social cohesion. The real problem, then, is this obsession with social cohesion as an end unto itself.
White nationalists like to conflate social cohesion with ethnocentrism, but they are not the same thing.
I suggest reading the entire "Ethnic Conflict" section in the post.
https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/the-case-against-indian-immigration?open=false#%C2%A7ethnic-conflict
All you have to do is open up X and you can see plenty of Indians essentially taunting Americans for being so stupid as to let them into the country. That's not good for social cohesion.
I'm not a blanket immigration skeptic. I concentrate my immigration skepticism on Somalis and Indians, since they exhibit the greatest degree of clannishness/ethnocentrism. I am concerned about an equilibrium shift where explicit inter-ethnic conflict becomes normalized to a much greater degree than it has already been. I don't want the US to look like India or Somalia in terms of inter-group relations. For example, it's estimated that up to two million may have died in the Partition of India.
I acknowledge that Latinos are most likely a stabilizing force in terms of inter-ethnic relations. In general, I think the immigration bar should be lower for individuals who can demonstrate mixed ethnicity, since they are already primed to live in a multicultural society. (Their ancestors chose to marry across ethnic lines, and they probably have some experience in navigating cultural differences across different branches of the family.)
Newsflash Jews ain't white
Better than white.
You mean the Ethiopian jews don't you.
My favorite might be the Spartan Hebrews.
https://greekreporter.com/2024/08/03/jews-spartans-related/
why do you follow Richard Hanania?
Why do you call jews white?
Why are you proud to associate with the impoverished socialist hellhole of Europe?
What better proof of integration than the defense of others? America has never had a detailed monoculture - we have always maintained our unique cultural bits while also sublimating the general American 'oeuvre'.
The nativist faction tries so hard to deny this but its too self-evident, evidenced even by their choice of spouse. While Rufo et al. might try to fight the definition, America and American-ism will always remain a set of values. Our history isn't long nor isolated enough for it to be anything else.
Great take from Noam the comedy cellar guy:
"The best argument against Ross is not found in the video. It's that we all know the type of activist he was dealing with, and it's almost impossible to believe he'd believe she would have run him over if he had just taken a step to the side."
Legal self defense is pretty arcane, might be that the guy should walk for technical reasons. But is he a murderer in his heart? I'm pretty convinced of it.
The lady was basically Heather Cox Richardson. HCR might yell at you or get you fired but she's not going to run you over in her car.
Legal self-defense is actually pretty straightforward in principle:
- Do you have a reasonable fear of grave bodily harm or death, given the totality of the circumstances?
Cops get some extra benefit of considering it's their job to be in dangerous situations.
The activist lady clearly drove recklessly, proven by the fact she very much did clip the officer.
People want to pretend it was obvious in advance she wasn't going to hit the officer, but her intent is not the focus of the analysis. You'll mindread the officer and confidently assess he had murder in his heart--even though his life just got a lot worse for it, and every cop knows that--and believe that the activist lady wouldn't hurt a fly.
Testosterone, adrenaline and a bad temper can facilitate choices that you later regret, which goes for most murderers.
I hope you're right that things will go rough for him, but there's a good chance the administration successfully protects him and he makes a ton of GoFundMe money.
He reacted in like two seconds. As the activist lady accelerated towards him.
He's not going to face charges. But he doesn't get like "cool cop cred" for shooting an activist lady. If he's a murderous psychopath, then I guess he'll not care, but I doubt he is. (Otherwise why would this be his first lethal encounter in more than a decade of law enforcement.)
From the recording he made he called her a fucking bitch right after shooting her, I don't know how he'll look back on the event.
He'd also had a conversation with her already in which it would be clear to any reasonable person that she wasn't someone who would just try to run him over.
I'd be pissed too.
The FACT THAT SHE THEN HIT HIM WITH THE FUCKING CAR WAS SURPRISING WAS IT NOT????????????????????
Seriously what the fuck is wrong with you people?
"I'm not even mad bro" but I'm sure as hell gonna drive recklessly towards you as I resist arrest in a couple of seconds!
The dumb activist lady chose this retarded life path in the same way someone who sees a snake and decides to step on it gets bit.
Do NOT interfere with police operations.
Do NOT resist arrest.
Do NOT drive your vehicle towards a cop.
And you won't get shot or get called a fucking bitch.
Not unhinged enough. Take another hit from your meth pipe.
Ok. I'd like to think in a similar situation I'd be like "Oh shit, did I just kill someone? God I hope not."
I have no particular admiration for the woman, and my guess is that she was kind of dumb and would be alive if she'd been smarter. But I also think it's likely that Ross is as guilty morally as most people doing time for third degree murder.
The DOJ deadly force policy (still) - https://www.justice.gov/jm/1-16000-department-justice-policy-use-force
-- Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.
-- Firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles. Specifically, firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle ...
And so on ..
Why? Gee, I wonder.
Not "murder in his heart." "Testosterone, adrenaline and a bad temper," while being stoked into a rage and encouraged to be violent - rewarded and celebrated for it.
If cops are full of toxic masculinity, then the obvious thing would be to stay away from them.
Wrong. Not cops. These ice goons sent out to do this shit.
There's been over a dozen of these ICE shootings, and hundreds of plainly wrongful arrests and "detentions."
We get it. They're feeding you - gobble, gobble
ICE very much employs federal law enforcement officers that have arrest powers.
Elite human capital should know basic facts like that.
Not cops as in, don't generalize from this rag-tag bunch of goons. Keep your "toxic masculinity" dog whistle. And some of them have been acting well beyond any of their legitimate "powers." I could list cases, but I'm done with your elite human duncery.
Officers on the law enforcement subreddit say you are not supposed to stand in front of a car like that:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLE/comments/1q6q6bc/minneapolis_incident_thread_jan_7_2026/
These ICE guys need better training.
He wasn't standing in front of the vehicle until she moved it.
You can criticize his tactics. You can criticize him for looking at his phone while he recorded.
But he very much almost got run over by an activist lady resisting arrest.
She wasn’t under arrest
Officers told her to move her vehicle and she did
She literally did not “clip the officer” who was not struck by the car at all
Also it's more complicated than you say because of factors like the duty to retreat, which is highly relevant here.
Dear god in heaven.
Police officers IN PARTICULAR have no duty to retreat.
In most of the US, no one has a duty to retreat before engaging in self defense.
He was so fearful for his life that he had to pull out his cell phone, move it from one hand to the other to walk over to the honda, shoot her 3 times, follow the rolling car to curse her, filming it all with his cell phone.
Huh I should have double checked that, I would not have expected MN to be a stand your ground state.
Federal law enforcement is NOT SUBJECT TO STATE AND LOCAL STANDARDS FOR USE OF FORCE FOR FUCK'S SAKE. Actually I'm pretty fucking positive no law enforcement is in the course of their duty.
There is one fucking legal standard, which goes something like:
Given the totality of the circumstances, did the officer have a reasonable fear of great bodily harm or death?
Do you always find yourself this ignorant when discussing controversial topics?
Federal law enforcement standards do require officers not to step in front of cars though
Which is it Richard?
THIS: “ … the killing of Renée Goode has come to symbolize the reign of terror that ICE has unleashed across American cities”
OR THIS: “… people whose brains have been turned to mush by Internet memes are convinced they’re living in a hellscape …” ?
How are these contradictory? A right-wing government pretends our nation is a hellscape of crime so they can justify their own political and civil repression.
Well, Richard who is usually quite reliable, seems convinced “that ICE has unleashed a reign of terror.” I don’t like ICE’s tactics, but I think this language is hyperbolic.
I think I basically agree with you, although I find it hard to see obstructing law enforcement as heroic unless you know they are arresting innocent people.
What surprises me is that you did not expect this when you supported Trump in the election? By all means the trade stuff was a surprise but this is basically his core campaign promise right?
It is heroic to obstruct law enforcement if law enforcement is breaking the Constitution or the law. Arbitrarily arresting people, illegally searching homes, beating protestors or even killing them... These are not actions that deserve deference. The patriotic thing to do is push back and insist that law enforcement follow the constitution and laws. That is what the founders would have done.
In the UK so not following closely - but if that is what appears to be happening in the case in front of me then I would agree. Maybe America is very different than I imagine, but in almost any country with due process rights my default would be that law enforcement have a legitimate reason for being there and that mistakes are corrected. That means that a pretty high bar is required for disagreement with a law to justify physical interference.
More interested in the the second part of the question for Richard though.
Solid breakdown of how enforcement quotas warp policy away from public safety goals. That 47% statistic on non-criminal detainees really undercuts the whole "catching miscreants" framing they're pushing. I've seen construction projects grind to a halt in my area after worksite raids, costs baloon, timelines get wrecked, but somehow that's suposed to be about making us safer. The bit about multiracial communites defending eachother feels right, saw this play out at a local 7-Eleven where regulars basically created a shield when agents showed up during morning rush.
None of this facilitates "public safety." Often, the opposite.
"We’re told that ICE agents are simply “enforcing the law.” It is true that the federal government has the right to deport people in the country unlawfully. Yet this is a red herring, as we understand that there are many cases where, if government sought to fully enforce the law, it would produce chaos and repression. Under Covid restrictions, many businesses were lax in enforcing mask requirements, and it would have been crazy for authorities to go around trying to stamp out every instance of this. Or picture a police force trying to ticket every individual who went one mile over the speed limit."
No. Every country on earth has immigration laws. Allowing foreign nationals to immigrate here with no authorization, by sneaking into the country or overstaying tourists visas or abusing the asylum system, is not at all like letting dumb Covid restrictions slide or people one mile an hour over the speed limit. As we saw under Biden, it very quickly incentivizes millions more to come.
there were millions of illegal immigrants in the us for decades with no serious consequences. obama gave semi-official protection to those who arrived as children with no serious consequences. it was only a problem under biden. maintaining a stable level of illegal immigration does not require trying to carry out mass deportations it just requires taking border enforcememt a little bit seriously
About 750K people have been granted DACA status. About 550K during the first few years.
The "mass deportation" frenzy is authoritarian excess / red meat. So much drama and violence.
Obama deported large numbers of people. As for the semi-official protection to those who arrived as children, I'd say it had the serious consequence of further eroding the integrity of the immigration system, among other things. Furthermore, things have changed even since then with respect to how easy it is to coordinate and share information. And with respect to the massive NGO infrastructure that has sprung up to help people game the system.
I'd agree that it isn't realistic to deport everyone here illegally. I don't have a great solution to offer. But to wave off the legitimacy of deporting unauthorized migrant is not right.
but going back to the analogy you're criticizing, nobody thinks we shouldn't prosecute *any* speeders. a lot of people go just above the limit and don't really hurt anyone, and the cost to society of trying to catch every single one would vastly outweigh the benefit of doing so
similarly, the argument wasn't that *no* illegal immigrants should be deported, just that it's crazy to take a zero-tolerance stance. most illegal immigrants are contributing positively to society, and cost (both in dollars and in liberties) of trying to deport ten or twenty million people would be extraordinary
Richard suggests "If someone is working, contributing to society, and hasn’t committed any crimes, then under any kind of humane and logical system, authorities would exercise discretion and leave them alone." So he is basically saying we should not deport anyone unless they've committed crimes. I take issue with that.
you're allowed to want to deport whoever you like. but you don't have to deport law-abiding, tax-paying illegals in order to prevent the sort of chaos that ensued the biden administration. under obama deportees were essentially all recent arrivals or criminals and that was fine. what matters is border security, which is very strong, and not letting people abuse the asylum process.
Get out of here with your reasonableness. We need force and violence for the cameras, and to push the limits, and to provoke just one or two of these woke, libtard, radical leftist, terrorist scum into doing something really stupid. So that we can REALLY put the hammer down.
No, he isn't, false dichotomy guy. And what's going on now is a far cry from lawful, orderly deportation.
That is literally what he says in the quote.
Hardly "erosion" with <750K in US population, most well integrated. Humane.
Obama didn't have an congressional authorization to change immigration laws, and yet that was essentially what he did. That paved the way for Biden to essentially wave everyone in for three years.
Spare me. Orangefuhrer hasn't had Congressional authorization for 90% of his destructive, provocative fuckery And Obama wasn't a longtime fraud turned President/cryptogrifter, and Obama could speak without lying as readily as breathing.
Too funny. Tell us about Congressional authorization. Then tell us about "weaponizing" the DOJ.
Always the best hypocrisy, like the world has never seen before ...
To build on this, the very fact that immigration law wasn't being enforced much is why we have Trump as president, again.
As recently as 2008, Dems would talk about enforcing immigration law as common sense. Now that's evil.
Exactly.
Fash-yearning 69 is kinda hot.
I will forever be confused that people look at the first chart in this post and conclude that the problem is that the Biden administration wasn't willing to arrest immigrants.
I don't see how that isn't analogous to traffic laws or COVID restrictions. Every country has traffic laws and most countries had some kind of COVID policy. I'm sure that letting people drive one mile over the speed limit incentivizes some people to drive ten or twenty miles over the speed limit. Traffic accidents kill a ton of people. I expect COVID scofflaws ended up causing some lethal COVID infections.
I think the point is that if every day on your way to work in 2020, you had had to pass a goon squad of masked men, brandishing guns, tear-gassing people, ripping them out of their cars, and throwing them into unmarked vans for mask noncompliance, that would have created some other social problems that were at least as detrimental to the common good as Covid.
A classic example of "but if we don't have any illegal wetbacks who is going to pick my arugula"
Having sponsored hundreds of legal immigrants in my corporate life and marched with Cesar Chavez to end the exploitation of illegals who think they are above the law and depress farm worker wages, I am very tired of justifications of ignoring immigration laws by people who need cheap maids and lawn maintenance.
Contributing to society?
Who believes that the people who sneak into the country are paying taxes at the legal rate let alone the rate at which they are taking from society?
They obviously aren't.
They don't sneak in and then start filing taxes. The people who employ them don't pay the payroll tax for these people.
Wages are suppressed for citizens and legal immigrants.
Yes, this is a problem.
I am better off paying more for my blueberries than I am bearing the cost of illegal immigration.
The Biden administration opened the southern border to flood the US with millions of non whites to speed up the reduction of the white population to below 50%.The overwhelming majority of those people were unvaccinated, at the same time as the native population was being hounded to take the jab. Trillions of dollars were printed that created a level of inflation that was not recorded in the official figures. Like all non whites those immigrants will always have the potential to benefit from civil rights legislation throughout their lifetimes.Collectively native blacks and Hispanics cost the US Trillions, while Asian businesses exploit the pro "minority" system to a much greater degree than blacks and Hispanics. White women are also endowed with minority status too which explains quite a lot.
Stephen Miller is trying to undo some of what the aforementioned Mayorkas did, but it will probably end up mostly performative.
You sound fashy. Your kind will never be welcome in polite society. Btw tell RFK that vaccines are good
That's all you can respond with. Pathetic. Epstein Island was part of polite society too so I wouldn't really be bothered about being unwelcome in it
Really fashy. Not just authoritarian. Kudos for ticking off so many fascism criteria with your parroted taking points diatribe.
Fash us another one.
You can't deal with the reality. Eric Kaufmann has already chronicled this
It was brief and accurate.
You have claimed that Biden did these things intentionally to dilute the white population. Any evidence for that?
As part of the Obama administration he said that non stop immigration of non whites was going to make an absolute minority of his kind.
Failed again, "European."
Joe Biden spoke in 2015 at a White House summit about immigration and demographic change. He said, “An unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop… Folks like me who are Caucasian, of European descent, for the first time in 2017 we’ll be in an absolute minority in the United States of America… That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength.”
He was referencing projected demographic trends, not laying out a policy plan to engineer those trends, framing immigration and diversity as part of America’s identity and strength. He did not say he wanted to engineer immigration to make whites a minority as a deliberate goal.
The “absolute minority” comment echoed population projections expected around 2040–2050. His reference to 2017 was a verbal flub, a Joe-ism.
Biden was extremely excited during that 2015 speech being fully aware that the Democrats always welcomed non white immigrants as they voted disproportionately for his party.
I don't think I'm alone in viewing being president for 4 years as 10 to 15 million non white immigrants crossed the southern border as counting as intention!
He was "extremely excited?" Sure thing. Not alone? What shithole country are you even in?
You gotta give praise to Trump for the 4 Covid vaccines that miraculously appeared within a year of his operation warp speed speech so.
Quite possibly a perfect opinion article on this subject.
"Note that the controversies that set off BLM riots usually began when law enforcement was responding to some kind of illegal behavior. "
Like interfering with police operations and resisting arrest?
You can't have a nation of laws where if you manage to get here that's the end of it.
I support a path to citizenship for cases of proven success. Politicians tried to get that done and never quite did.
America's demographic success was largely built off a two-level selection filter for the vast majority of immigrants:
- It was hard to get here.
- You had to pull yourself up by your bootstraps to stay.
In the last few decades, those selection filters were heavily watered down. If you care about elite human capital, you should care about immigrant quality.
“Hard to get here” varied sharply by era and group. Before the 1920s, legal barriers were low for Europeans. The obstacle was economic, and far from insurmountable for many.
"Bootstraps" understates collective and structural supports for many groups, going back to the late 19th century. For many immigrant success depended heavily on ethnic networks, mutual aid societies, urban political machines, homesteading policies, and later the GI Bill and public education. Individual effort mattered, but it's often operated within enabling institutions, going way back.
The tens of millions that came over in steerage were generally not "elite human capital."
Nearly 40-million 1820 through 1940. About 23-million 1880 to 1920. So elite ...
Was it harder than the last few decades?
Obviously.
And, well, if you want to get into the particulars on the average human capital of immigrants then it looked a lot better back then.
Obviously modern transportation and the welfare system make it easier.
Who would even contest that.
For one, if an illegal immigrant has a kid, boom they're getting benefits for the kid, at a minimum.
For another, https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/more-states-are-providing-fully-state-funded-health-coverage-to-some-individuals-regardless-of-immigration-status/#:~:text=News%20Release-,More%20States%20Are%20Providing%20Fully%20State%2DFunded%20Health%20Coverage%20to,eligible%20for%20Medicaid%20or%20CHIP.
This is a great explanation of the predicament we find ourselves in.
Admittedly, I have had many days where I spent too much time in propaganda world and felt my own 'brain had been turned to mush by internet memes' and such, and I became convinced maybe we are really living in a (crime ridden) hellscape.... the anti-dote is reading, and getting out in our communities, of course.
Here's an interesting one I just read earlier today on incarceration rates re: immigrants vs native born Americans.
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-incarceration-rates-2010-2023#conclusion
Something interesting to note: Texas is the only state that keeps records of the immigration statuses of those arrested and convicted of state-level crimes.
Blaming illegals for the loss of American jobs is fundamentally moronic if you spend even 2 seconds thinking about it rather than drowning your own thoughts out with ad nauseum repetitions of "Laken Riley."
Say the illegal labor keeps orange prices low, then that allows for a ton of businesses to thrive selling orange products like essential oils or juice or dried peels at scale, and that creates a fuckload white collar jobs in marketing/distribution and blue collar jobs in certificate-based machinery maintenance--nice jobs which almost exclusively only hire Americans for good wages and benefits. All that gets torpedoed the moment the price of oranges shoots up because MAGAs want Americans to pick them, contracting the orange market as a whole just so a small group of peckerwoods can get low skill, no benefit jobs they never wanted in the first place.
The MAGAs do not deserve to be enfranchised nor get any part of the ethnostate they pine for, because it will suck ass for both us and them if their underbaked retard ideas are manifested, whereas both we and they have everything to gain from them being disempowered.
Mass immigration objectively lowers social trust, even liberal academics like Robert Putnam have acknowledged this fact:
"But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam—famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000book on declining civic engagement—has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings"
There's a short-term "hunkering down" phase initially, but "Putnam says, however, that 'in the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits.'"
You've discredited yourself, again.
This doesn't refute my point, all that he's saying is that these (supposed) alternative benefits outweigh the harm of diminished social cohesion, which I seriously question.
Your argument? You cherry picked a couple of sentences from ""Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam." Dishonest "appeal to authority."
Again, another non-response to my comment.
He addressed your contention, and pointed out your deception.
Thank you, Richard, for this article.