domain:npr.org
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1hr ago
Apparently there are only 6500 ICE agents in the entire country. Even paying them $200k / year would be $1.3B / year. That's $4 / year / US citizen. I would happily pay 10x, maybe even 50x that amount to live in an alternate reality where everything is the same except ICE does their job in a boring, effective, and professional manner.
themig
1hr ago
I doubt Ferdinand's life would have prevented the great war but his death was an immediate disaster for the serbs that caused many more of them to die
Yes. WW1 was not inevitable, in fact it was not inevitable even after the assassination. Even before the WW1 there was Agadin crisis of 1911 or Balkan wars of 1912-1913 and those were resolved peacefully. There was also constant shift in alliances and circumstances - such as Germany basically admitting that they lost the naval arms race with Britain which worked to lower the tensions.
The world before WW1 was highly complex and multipolar one, where each great power had multiple goals often with different opponents. In fact the tragedy of WW1 is that most nations stumbled into it due to various factors, especially the momentum of mobilization that made the clash inevitable. The events got out of hand and all sides of the conflict ended up with a situation that they did not want to see. If there was some other reason - even something in Balkans - that set out the conflict, it could end up with completely different results.
WandererintheWilderness
1hr ago
I think this is an unreasonable standard. Cleaning house is never going to involve the same enthusiasm as fighting the outgroup, even if it's a sincere effort.
WandererintheWilderness
2hr ago
Or the enforcement can also be ineffective, because grabbing them and putting them in a holding facility is Stormtrooper-ish, so letting them out with a court date gives them more opportunity to disappear again.
I think if I were Immigration Czar I would try a scheme with ankle monitors. ICE agents identify you as illegal, you get tagged and a reasonable timeline to put your affairs in order and leave the country. If that time elapses, or the monitor mysteriously turns off - then you get detained.
And also, there's the problem that ICE is also opposed to organized criminal elements, like human smugglers, that are aligned with cartels. Cartels are be perfectly willing and able to terrorize ICE agents and their families.
This is true but seems like a very good argument for separating ICE into two different corps, one that fights organized crime and one that enforces immigration laws. Outside of Trump's rhetorical interest in acting like all illegals are violent gang members, it doesn't seem especially rational for them to have both jobs, precisely because very different approaches and MOs are proportionate when dealing with one group vs the other.
Different vibe, but Madeline Albright introducing Clinton at a campaign event with "There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!" was also pretty disastrous, the less talked-about cousin to "basket of deplorables" in my eyes. It wasn't limited to single demographics, so hit broader.
I actually think the worst part of that ad (other than the bits that sound like an SNL skit) was casting a fat guy in a "I'm a man" ad, so it doesn't even work. Literally no man ever considers being that overweight to be particularly manly. If you're gonna pick a big dude, you have to pick at least a dude who has some muscles underneath. No offense intended to anyone, of course, I'm just talking about what people want to see in ads - obviously we have different standards for those, it's quite literally marketing 101. The poses are all wrong too, the gaunt old guy is very out of left field, and there's no suburban dad anywhere here, poor usage of beard stubble, and just guys giving off super-single vibes. It's just incompetent, holy yikes, even on top of the content.
Personally I think putting out cringey content is not as bad as actively alienating people. The I'm a Man ad is desperate, not aggressively shaming.
“write Anti-ICE messages”
Haha, this reminded me of the story where somebody was in charge of creating some company gift with print order of something like Microsoft in font Segoe UI. Needless to say, this was literally what got printed on the gift :D It ended up as highly sought after memorabilia for company veterans.
WandererintheWilderness
2hr ago
I agree with most of this, yes.
As I said elsewhere in the thread, I am leery of the "other tactics (even stochastically)" bit, which I think can too easily be used as a bludgeon against free speech expressing what the bludgeon-wielding side deems to be wrongthink. If it is appropriate for non-violent pro-life activists to refer to abortion doctors as murderers - and it must be appropriate, because that is their legitimate moral belief and freedom of speech means nothing if they cannot express it - then it must remain appropriate for non-violent pro-immigration extremists to refer to ICE agents as Nazis.
But that's only one part of your post, and really a whole other conversation from the core issue here.
Trying to make cops appear threatening in ways not directly related to spreading factual knowledge of "if you commit a crime they will inevitably arrest you; if you resist arrest they will reliably shoot you" will fall on a spectrum from gilding the lily to actively counterproductive.
Of course if there was widespread common knowledge that police officers will arrest you if you commit a crime, and shoot you if you fail to comply, criminals would rationally understand that it's in their best interest to simply come quietly, and individual police officers being scary and intimidating on an interpersonal level would be unnecessary.
But criminals, as a group, are not renowned for their rationality and forward planning skills. Criminals fall into two categories: those smart enough to correctly think they can commit a crime and get away with it, and those dumb enough to erroneously think they can do so. With few exceptions, criminals are an overwhelmingly stupid group, often mentally ill, disproportionately likely to suffer from alcohol- and/or drug-induced psychosis. Of course a rational person would understand it's in his best interest to put his hands up and come quietly - but then, a rational person also wouldn't have thought that squirting lemon juice on his face would be an effective countermeasure against CCTV cameras before robbing a bank. A rational person wouldn't have murdered his wife in a drunken rage in the first place.
So given that police officers spend a great deal of their time trying to force irrational, stupid people into compliance who don't understand the game theory you're describing, if they want to get them to comply, appealing to their rationality and common sense (or lack thereof) isn't going to cut it. This means that you need to appeal to their lizard brain through shouting and intimidation. This is true everywhere there are stupid, irrational criminals, not just the US.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2hr ago
I actually did get a really good laugh out of his most recent Trump parody, which makes me hate myself just a little bit for liking anything out of Newsom's stupid mouth, but yeah, it works.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2hr ago
One of the comments: "Dear Lord she makes Hillary look sincere". Ouch. Gave me a laugh though. It's actually crazy that you get to be that age and you still genuinely think that deploying the voice normally used for 5-year-old kids on 11-ish-year-old kids (or somewhere in there, I dunno) is a good idea. No. It's a terrible idea. That's exactly the age where you use the adult voice, they freaking love it, it's not even hard.
WandererintheWilderness
2hr ago
This doesn't seem to work on Mangione.
FistfullOfCrows
2hr ago
But are they going to ban hipoints.
FistfullOfCrows
2hr ago
It means you're about to have a bad time
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2hr ago
Just to correct the record (reference not intended), Biden only committed to picking a woman, not necessarily a Black woman. Two of the four on the shortlist were white. I know it's a punchier line to say, but it's not true.
Beyond that, it's true that passing over Kamala as the replacement would be a bad look, but that would be (not equally, but mostly) also true even if she were not. Vice Presidents are quite literally successors. And Biden in particular had bad personal feelings about not getting Obama's full support in the primary for 2016, so it seems extra unlikely that Biden would actually backstab Kamala in the same way, even on just a purely personal level (even if he was tempted).
WandererintheWilderness
2hr ago
But we were discussing the question of whether cops, in general, need to be at least somewhat scary and intimidating in order to be effective in their jobs, and you were quite explicitly arguing that they don't
I think what I meant to say is that I don't think there's a better royal road to being "scary and intimidating" in the necessary sense than simply reliably following through on threats when called to do so, thus creating common knowledge that police threats are credible. Trying to make cops appear threatening in ways not directly related to spreading factual knowledge of "if you commit a crime they will inevitably arrest you; if you resist arrest they will reliably shoot you" will fall on a spectrum from gilding the lily to actively counterproductive.
(I will also add that I don't particularly object to big guns and bulletproof vests, per se. What I object to is law enforcement leaning into the image that they're trigger-happy and unaccountable, as the imagery of masked goons and unmarked vans does. Visible proof that you have real firepower to bring to bear as needed - I think that kind of "intimidation" can be very much appropriate. Notably the latter is about showing that lawful threats can and will be carried out if needed; while the former is about giving a menacing impression that if you cross these guys, you might end up on the receiving end of extrajudicial violence, so don't test our patience.)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2hr ago
I always felt, and said so loudly at the time, that just like you say if you're in a losing position you might as well try a trick play or a Hail Mary pass. It felt like an obvious mistake to bet on anti-Trump sentiment alone. Biden didn't beat Trump's re-election because he was someone other than Trump (or Clinton) - he won because people thought he seemed at least a halfway decent bet, even if nothing too special. The wrong lessons were learned... again. Crazy.
Pete did pretty decent at Surrounded even though that's not perfectly representative. The funny thing is, though, that his worst answers were always about something specific to Harris: 14:14, an undecided voter said that her debate performance was shit, and asked Pete about if her character is so good, why didn't it come through? 31:22ish, another one asked why Harris said something about censoring social media if it contained misinformation as an attack on free speech (although very, very interesting: Pete called the Trump TV license campaign trail threat out as not just a free speech threat but a real threat, not just a Trumpian bluff. This was 10 months ago; he was 100% correct). Still, Harris feels like a millstone around the campaign's neck in most of these questions, and that's not good considering she was the campaign.
And most painful, 37:17, a voter outright says it.
Why can't Kamala answer some of these questions that you're able to answer? ...Why? [most of the people in the circle start clapping] And it's an oversimplification of a concept, but I feel like when I listen to her, I don't get, it's almost jumping back to character. When you talk, back when you were running, I hear genuine interest and feelings in your voice, I know what you want and know that when you say something you really mean what you're saying. I don't ever really get that sense, there were some times in the debate with Kamala where I got a sense of that, but uh, since then, especially with some of the not so great - you know the town hall and the CNN stuff... I don't know. I dunno.
Damning. Pete responds with some (true) stuff about how, ok she's a sitting VP, she's paranoid about the media jumping on a gotcha line. Then he says, well, people have their strengths and weaknesses, and she'd be a good president - which is straight up conceding the point about her bad communication, if you look past the tact. But people can tell. That voter sure did. People just say these things, it's not like they hide it, the Harris campaign really should have known this was an issue. Anyways, I think Pete would do just fine on campaign if he's the one driving the bus, I think you're a little too down on the communication, even if it's not, admittedly, an effusive personal charm kind of thing. If there's one thing holding Pete back, it's probably that he feels the need to try and appease the Democrat sacred cow talking points at times, which would be less the case if you're behind the wheel.
FtttG
2hr ago
And as I said in one of my previous comments, how threatening and intimidating a police officer needs to be is heavily dependent on the community being policed, the concentration of criminals within that community, what kind of crimes said criminals are committing and how violent said criminals are. It would be overkill for a cop in the Hamptons to walk around with a bulletproof vest and an AR-15, but if some stockbroker shoots his wife in their summer home in a drunken rage, when a police officer shows up, he must be intimidating enough that the stockbroker agrees to come quietly. But when you're dealing with MS-13, a violent gang who feel no qualms about beheading their enemies with machetes, one guy in a squad car with a Beretta isn't going to cut it - yes, you actually do need facemasks, assault rifles and a "generally unpleasant attitude". Nothing else is likely to be effective.
Now, is the nature of the problem ICE is ostensibly addressing closer to the former scenario or the latter? I don't know, probably the former - maybe they really can enforce immigration law with Berettas and a smile. But we were discussing the question of whether cops, in general, need to be at least somewhat scary and intimidating in order to be effective in their jobs, and you were quite explicitly arguing that they don't. That's the point I was addressing, not the question of how intimidating ICE specifically needs to be in order to be effective.
Aside from your contention of a fact being a non-falsifiable hypothesis rather than a fact
Until demasking is attempted, so is the hypothesis that demasking would lead to further escalation of violence.
Because they are not Stormtroopers. They are not stormtroopers in the military context (ICE are not dressed as the origin of the term of trench stormers), or in the fascist context (ICE is not fulfilling a fascist police state supression role), or the in the young adult novel dystopian government context (the demand of which is exceeding the supply).
I am not saying that they "are" Stormtroopers, I am saying that they look like Stormtroopers - meant in its colloquial aesthetic sense of "identical, impersonal, threatening-looking armed goons". I think it is obviously true that they look like Stormtroopers, and fairly clear from Trump's own rhetoric and that of ICE supporters, that this is an aesthetic they deliberately cultivate as opposed to an innocent consequence of putting together optimally protective and effective uniforms. They want ICE to look intimidating. Are you really claiming that they don't?
You are already in the context of the pushback. You, specifically, are opposing the pushback.
You are talking about pushback from the Right; I am talking about pushback from within the Left (which Mottizens have been the first to notice has been lacking).
I kinda feel like I'm being motte-and-baileyed here. (I'm not accusing you of doing it on purpose, I just think we're deep enough in the weeds that we're losing sight of the goalposts.)
When we got onto the topic of whether cops need to be "intimidating", we were debating the usefulness of things like balaclavas and the imperious, short-tempered, bully-like demeanor that cops typically adopt when dealing with suspects. You now seem to be redefining "intimidating" such that by definition, a cop who can make a credible threat of following through on a threat of violence is "intimidating". Which, fair enough, but in that sense it's trivially true that they need to be "intimidating"; that's not the question. The question is what traits and behaviors make cops' threats seem believable, and whether that necessarily includes dressing up like Stormtroopers or a generally unpleasant attitude. I don't think it does.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3hr ago
I really want Pete to run, because he's clearly a smart guy - so I'm curious if we can finally prove that voters actually don't want someone too smart in the role (or plain don't like smart people). Cases like Al Gore and, hell, you know, even: Dukakis, Kerry, maybe Hillary, Gingrich, Romney, etc. Although Pete seems like he is slightly better at being relatable, he also has a kind of too-clean vibe that might make people unsettled. Voters actually do want a human-feeling flaw or two. The anti-intellectualism is a strong thesis but if Pete ran and lost I think I might finally be able to conclude that it's a rule, not just a trend.
In that sense, Vance vs Buttigieg would be extra fantastic TV. Would love to see that debate, actually.
Corvos
3hr ago
If the risks are higher than people are willing to deal with for the $50k / year we pay ICE agents, we should first try paying more
The thing is that you need lots of ICE agents to deal with all the illegal immigration. Making them so expensive that there aren’t enough of them to scale to immigration is effectively an amnesty by the back door.
FtttG
3hr ago
But one who remains level-headed - who points the gun and without flinching, delivers the "you're under arrest. I don't want to hurt you, I will if I have to" spiel
But, once again, a police officer who can point his gun at someone and say "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to" is already at least a standard deviation more scary and intimidating than the average person. The "I will if I have to" part of the threat must seem credible - it must be spoken by someone who seems like the kind of person who actually will do what they say if their conditions aren't met. And while a law-abiding citizen might be more easily fooled - if the threat doesn't come off as credible to a hardened criminal who is himself no stranger to violence (and hence is intimately familiar with the difference between people who are actually willing to do violence and those who aren't), then it's useless. If hardened criminals don't consider police officers a credible threat, you might as well not bother having a police force at all.
All of this means that, once again, even a police officer who is polite and courteous and who clearly views violence as a matter of last resort must be found intimidating by hardened criminals to have any hope of doing his job properly. If a police officer says "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to", and a hardened criminal doesn't believe that he'll follow through on the threat, the hardened criminal will ignore the instructions. If hardened criminals, collectively, don't believe that police officers will collectively follow through on their threats, hardened criminals will ignore the police and act with impunity. I'm sorry, but this trade-off is unavoidable.
How much of a hand did the Russians have in bringing about WW1?
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