Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being a post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man. No one yet has guessed multiple people, or a scholar. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
I am fairly sure experimental heart surgery isn't conducted on children without their parent's informed consent, and a refusal to subject children to experimental heart surgery isn't a basis for taking children away from the parents.
Tracingwoodgrains also has a history of deliberate efforts to undercut the credibility or ability of political opponents to signal-boosting attestations of progressive political excesses, which includes things like the tesla stuff.
Tracing pushes back on a matter of success of tactics towards their preferred outcomes, not kind. Namely, when things are viewed as counter-productive to Tracing's preferences.
Yeah, in 2012, this would've been career-ending for everyone involved, but these are different times. Absolutely nothing comes of this.
Hm? Circa 2012 a leading candidate / political official's career was notably not ended over a significantly more egregious case, and the politician in question didn't even have original classification authority to declassify topics if she wanted to. It was in fact characterized as election interference to acknowledge investigations into the issue, even as non-prosecution agreements were used as preconditions for testimony on factors like destruction of evidence of the affair. And that was in an era where partisans confronting officials in the central seat of government, including elevators and bathrooms, was still considered legitimate protest.
As it turns out, if a political party wins the political argument that blatant security violations aren't disqualifying, they win the political argument that blatant security violations aren't disqualifying. Particularly if they later try and fail to selectively disqualify political opponents on lesser mishandlings, further weakening the premise of the prohibition.
At the end of the day, it benefits a nation greatly if it can make binding commitments about permanent residence being revoked only with due process.
Due process for being revoked also hinges on due process that does revoke, or deny, being honored and not undermined or circumvented willfully or publicly. Otherwise, there is no due process- there is only the binding commitments by those who are able to get away with not honoring commitments against those expected to be bound by them.
If you want a demos to be publicly on board with, say, refugee acceptance, then you need refugee criteria that are not transparently redefined and gamed to facilitate acceptance of people beyond the original concept of refugees. Similarly, if you want there to be public expectation of a judicial review of immigration cases, then there needs to be a basis for there to be an expectation of timely resolution and that migrants won't simply be let go and disappear into the interior. Absent a basis for public trust that the system would work properly, there is likely to be little political traction over concerns that the system won't work properly in other ways. It may be true, but it was already true.
This is not, to be clear, an endorsement. It is, however, an observation.
What we are seeing is a consequence of policy tools that can benefit a nation greatly being changed in ways that destroy public trust and legitimacy in said tools, often because said tools were used for partisan advantage or even abuse. The partisan utilization of said tools, often at the public advocacy of members of those very institutions due to ideological capture overriding professionalism, has led them to no longer being seen as great benefits for the nation as much as benefits to the partisans at the expense of their opponents. That things can benefit the partisans and the country alike has become outweighed by the desire to defy partisan impositions and the who-whom distinction of who has the power to get away with it.
This applies to other beneficial things as well. I think higher education is a good thing. But if you want cross-partisan support of public universities that employ talented foreign professors, then you need to maintain cross-partisan support. This is harder when public universities take open and consistently partisan stances on public issues and their own employment / admission processes. It becomes even harder when said partisans attempt to overtly and covertly circumvent unambiguous legal prohibitions to their partisan preferences. The demonstrated interest in such cases is not 'let's prioritize the public interest'- it is the preservation of partisan interest.
As partisan prioritization prevails, appeals to the broader nation grow weaker. 'Think of the good to the nation from tourism,' for example, will often fall flat if it comes a few years after tourist-centers were attempting to organize boycotts of other parts of the nation over ideological differences.
It might be 'beneficial' to have high public trust in public institutions, but trust does not follow the benefit of having trust. Trust follows from the actions. The more partisan the actions, the more partisan the trust, and thus subject to revocation / reversal with partisan changes.
Yes, this does mean things will get worse before they get better. This is an observation, not an endorsement. But it will not avoid getting worse / get better faster to simply respect an imposed a partisan preference system... particularly when the partisan coalition in question is not a social majority, but has/had conflated institutional capture with social persuasion.
Dean
Flairless
7d ago
If it wasn't gross incompetence, and I personally will not rule that out, then this is the motive I'd expect. Even if you take this as sincere incompetence, then the similar sincerity of Euroskepticism in the chat is as much / more concerning than the use of the chat.
It's bad. Really bad. So bad that quoting it would reveal how bad it is.
It's just seething resentment disguised as righteous outrage, gratuitous profanity shot though every paragraph, bragging about his wife, and never any admission that what Trump is doing makes sense* for him.
On the other hand, the title really is appropriate for it.
There are literally thousands of years of human governance to pick from, but I will confess being curious which four under which government you think are most relevant for judging Donald Trump's inclination to disappearing people.
And yet, your own quote- that you provided to show intent- also demonstrated both an acknowledgement and a non-intent to merely deport regardless of legality, let alone american citizens who are political dissidents.
If you want to insist that half of your own provided evidence of intent is a lie, but that we should use the other half as sincere unvarnished truth in isolation, feel free to go ahead. But the original charge that you responded to the response of was-
You could imagine the Trump administration just disappearing people they find annoying.
Notice how the accusation of what is imagined / forewarned / supposed to be at stake, and why, is moving just a little here? How the bailey was 'disappearing political annoyances,' and how we are shifting to 'wrongly depart American citizens?'
And how you are conflating different cases, with different legal contexts, and thus different due process requirements, in the process?
There are many types of illegal things, of which I am fairly sure you would concede are neither equivalent to or predictive of other illegal things. I am also fairly sure you would even concede that Biden did some illegal things as well. I am not convinced you would take them as evidence of specific accusations of willingness to disappear political annoyances... and Biden actually was part of (at least) two administrations that targeted political opponents.
My position is that you are still crying wolf, and replacing 'racist' with 'fascist.'
Dean
Flairless
8d ago
Which would seem to indicate Trump's willingness is conditional on legality, not merely annoyance. And legal deportations are typically not considered just disappearing people.
You could imagine the Trump administration just disappearing people they find annoying.
We could also imagine Trump wearing just a tutu, which would also be unseemly. Is there any particular reason to substantiate imagination?
Dean
Flairless
8d ago
Secondly, What are these 'chores' and how is there a debate about whether it was work or not? How does ICE even know that said 'chores' even happened?
Given how 'chores' were equated to labor, emotional and otherwise, and thus unfair/uncompensated wage disparities in past media epicycles, I am unclear if I am supposed to be upset that that this does or does not conflict with a worker visa on grounds of work.
Dean
Flairless
8d ago
Appreciated, though it was something of a new year's resolution to try and post less about it this year.
Dean
Flairless
8d ago
Does anyone know, or have access to information about how many Federal employees have been furloughed?
The amount matters less than the distribution. Some departments (Education, USAID) are getting hit far, far, far, far more than others. Even in others, cuts are often occurring more at the new-employee level more than the old-employee level, where alternate tactics- such as the early-retirement offers- are being used.
The key point is to look to the employee's relevant secretary. Since DOGE's reigning-in from the 'all employees say what you did' email, the Secretaries appear to have been given primacy in deciding how to approach their workforce.
Dean
Flairless
8d ago
Might want to specify which claims you're counting as counts, since there are more than two involved.
Would recommend a followup in 4 months regardless, though I don't think we have an iRemindMe feature here.
Your youtuber doesn't seem to have addressed the relevant question of 'what makes this time different than the last failed predictions of Trump the warmonger?'
This list of supporting arguments is not new. Most of them applied to the previous Trump term as well. Setting aside the selection and framing biases in them, why should predictions that Trump is going to invade countries now supposed to be treated more credibly than previous predictions that Trump was going to invade countries? Particularly since one of the greatest points of diplomatic contention between Trump, the Europeans, and even the Trudeau government, has been a lack of interest in military expenditures?
Dean
Flairless
10d ago
The lack of detail is less confusing than the lack of attribution. I'm not critiquing the moderating decision on sock puppets who troll, but the mod-end comments comes across as a discussion which uses nothing but pronouns with an insinuated but unclear subject.
Which, in other contexts, would (appropriately) come with a prompt to speak clearly for others to understand.
Dean
Flairless
10d ago
Which one of the chronic returnees is this person again?
I know we have a / a few chronic returnees, but I've long since forgotten/conflated the original strains. It's reached a point where it's receiving a callout it's no longer clear who is being referred to.
Dean
Flairless
10d ago
For comparison, see, for example from 19th century, war of 1870. War ended with great victory for Germans, great humiliation for French. France lost two provinces, lots of cash and honor.
What happened afterwards? Peace. Bad feelings remained, but diplomatic relations were restored, French could travel to Germany and vice versa, no walls and barbed wire on the borders. Not thinkable today.
...well, that's certainly one reading of the war that did more than anything else to set up two world wars and the repeated future ethnic cleansings of Germans.
Do We Live In the Dankest Timeline?
Or
Is the United States Going to (Re)Join the British Commonwealth?
(Probably not, but this is funny.)
Earlier this month, @hydroacetylene gave a flattering compliment about how if he ever lucked into power, he'd consider me for an advisor. However, I deferred at the time and now must formally defer in favor of another Motte poster, who has a geopolitical creativity I would never have thought of despite dropping their hints in ways that only most perfidious minds of Albion could make appear unserious at the time.
Specifically-
@FiveHourMarathon, care to explain how you convinced King Charles that all he had to do was just ask Trump to join the British Commonwealth?
Because according to Trump... Sounds Good!
More seriously(?), emerging reporting of the hour(s) is that Trump has pre-empted (via his Truth Social, no less) a planned-but-not-yet-extended invitation by the British government to bring the US into a voluntary association agreement with the Commonwealth of Nations, aka the British Commonwealth, aka the post-British empire talking club.
As a geopolitical unit, the British Commonwealth... isn't? The wiki page summarizes obligations as-
Member states have no legal obligations to one another, though some have institutional links to other Commonwealth nations. Commonwealth citizenship affords benefits in some member countries, particularly in the United Kingdom, and Commonwealth countries are represented to one another by high commissions rather than embassies. The Commonwealth Charter defines their shared values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law,[12] as promoted by the quadrennial Commonwealth Games.
A no-obligation talking club isn't the worst thing in international politics. It offers a channel to communicate, nice summit opportunities, and engagement opportunities. Not much, but not nothing either.
So... why now?
The Independent speculates-
Having America joining the Commonwealth, even as an associate member, could be a way for Charles to smooth over tensions between Washington, London and Ottawa that have erupted over Trump’s frequently-stated desire to make Canada — a Commonwealth founding member and one of the 15 nations that still counts the King as head of state — the 51st American state rather than the fully independent nation it has been since the 1982 Canadian constitution removed the country’s vestigial legal dependence on the British parliament.
Would Commonwealth-association defuse the trade war? Probably not.
But it will be a heck of a funny if the British government tries to run with this opportunity(?) of a generation.
It will also be funny to watch how European (social) media covers this story, if it goes anywhere. A significant policy effort by the Europeans of late has been to try and get the current Labour government more and more involved with EU projects vis-a-vis US engagements. This is... not necessarily a reversal, but at the same time anything that lets the UK play the US of the EU (or vice versa) complicates efforts at reversing British disentanglement from the EU that followed Brexit.
Plus, the memes will be funny.
I imagine some British foreign policy experts (cough @FiveHourMarathon cough) have an interesting weekend ahead of them from this Trump tweet-leak.
Truly, there is a Hlynka-shaped hole in the Motte's discourse.
That doesn't mean a ban should be reversed just for that, and I'm fairly sure he'd respect that reasoning, but it is amusing.
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