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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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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?

wearing just a tutu,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_von_H%C3%BClsen-Haeseler

During a formal evening function, (General) von Hülsen-Haeseler appeared dressed in the pink tutu and rose wreath of a ballerina, dancing for (Kaiser Wilhelm II) and his assembled guests. ... the general bowed, collapsed and was pronounced dead after hasty medical attention

Because the history of government shows that when it has the powers to disappear people, it tends to use those powers against those most annoying rather than those it was intended to disappear.

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.

To be clear, I don’t think Trump is particularly likely to start disappearing journalists to an el Salvadoran gulag, and wouldn’t particularly mind it if that was where it ended. But establishing this as a power of the president will likely end with democrats doing it to people I do care about.

Maybe general distrust of government and (healthy?) paranoia that once a government has some capability, it will eventually find a way to use it in evil ways. I'm sure all five principled libertarians that exist in the world have been doing that kind of thing long before Trump, so it's not like it's unprecedented.

Is your argument that dispensing with due process is fine because Trump has only rendered bad people to an El Salvadoran prison AFAWK?

My position is that you are still crying wolf, and replacing 'racist' with 'fascist.'

Stronger thanks to your expectation that that a story in which Trump is not dispensing of due process should provide a bayesian update that Trump is dispensing of due process.

Particularly given the form of delivery is the common TDS failure mode on the taking Trump seriously versus literally divide, which has been an archetypical form of crying wolf about Trump intents for a decade.

Wait what. If you don't think due process was already dispensed with in the first batch of people who were deported directly to a foreign prison without judicial review I'm not sure what continuing to exchange information here will accomplish.

Your confusion is probably because you are strawmanning an argument I did not make, while conflating different lines of argument, while trying to cite an article as evidence I should reconsider my position even though the article consists of insinuating a charge that the text acknowledges has not happened.

Which is to say, it cries wolf.

I am sure if you continue to push more information of Donald Trump not deporting american citizens without due process you will continue to accomplish more cries of wolf.

Well, According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio El Salvadore President Bukele has offered to hold American Citizens. From a BBC article quoting Trump on the deal:

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he would embrace the idea but questioned its legality.

"If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat," he said during an executive order signing ceremony in the Oval Office. "I don't know if we do or not.

"We're looking at that right now, but we could make deals where we'd get these animals out of our country."

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.

Given the many unlawful actions the Trump admin has already taken I see no reason to treat his legality concerns as anything more than a fig leaf.

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.

Ok, but in this specific case the US government defied a court order to deport people. It is also the government's stated position in that lawsuit that their authority to declare someone a deportable alien enemy under the AEA is unreviewable by a court. "We are allowed to deport anyone we declare a deportable alien under the AEA and no one is allowed to say otherwise" is a recipe for government deportation of American citizens without any due process. They've even got a country lined up to deport them to!

No the government complied with the order. The judge wrote an order different than what he wanted.

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?