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One person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. Always has been and always will be that way. The winning side when there is one usually gets to write the history of who was what.
Do you still feel pride in American anti-authoritarianism today or do you think the US may have turned out to be governed more like the UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand complete with trust in government run healthcare had it not succeeded in rebellion?
Important to remember all of these things when you are being introspective of an issue like the protests ongoing in Los Angelas and elsewhere.
Anyway it’s hard to resist authority when you can’t find parking for the local protest.
The exact amount of effect mask wearing had on the spread of COVID may be interesting to study, but probably the most significant factor is whether people were actually wearing masks (e.g., in America, they weren't, not really, but in Taiwan, we were).
There are diseases that primarily spread through droplets where mask are more effecting in addressing coughing and sneezing. COVID was initially thought to be such diseases, but was later found to primarily spread through virus aerosol. This is why the recommendations to address covid was significantly changed in the later part of the pandemic.
In order to address medical problems you got to use the right tool for the job. In the same way you do not use antibiotic to treat viruses, different masks are effective at different diseases. In order to filter respiratory aerosol viruses that remain airborne for a long period of time over extensive distances, you need the kind of masks that generally comes with their own air source. Indoor ventilation and avoiding crowded spaces demonstrated a much better result than cloth masks could ever perform.
If I recall correctly, at the onset of the covid pandemic the general guidance was to not rush to buy masks with the goal to prevent a supply crunch that would impact first-line responders.
This guidance was quickly switched to a global recommendation to wear masks so to prevent and slow down how the disease was spreading, so that healthcare services could respond to the demand.
This all happened in the first few weeks of the global pandemic.
The original CDC statement was something like "masks have not been shown to be effective for the general population". It was technically correct, but if you weren't reading defensively you'd come away with the impression they were stating a negative suggestion rather than the null suggestion (ie nothing). So despite being technically correct, most people would consider this a lie, especially if they were misled by it.
It was definitely a black mark on the CDC response - they should have been honest with people that there simply weren't enough respirators, delay the statement by a day if the healthcare system needed more time to destock Home Depot.
But how that statement gets dragged out as an example of the government being deliberately wrong, to imply that it must have been prudent to do the opposite of what they said is also terribly misguided.
It's preferable that we have the timeline in mind.
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd...
One key aspect of the initial guidances regarding facial masks were based on the assumption that covid was not easily transmissible, which was proven to be false. Once that fact was acknowledged, the whole world pivoted towards widespread adoption of masks and lockdowns to hinder spread.
> It was definitely a black mark on the CDC response (...)
To be fair, the initial criticism towards mask adoption were based on what little they knew then. As the pandemic progressed and observations in somewhat controlled environments started to trickle in, the focus shifted to prevent a supply crunch that affected first responders. I recall that there was also a period where health officials admitted masks were effectice, but regular people would only wear them wrong thus they wouldn't work, which was also dropped.
What matters to keep in mind is that this adaptation took place in a timespan of a couple of weeks at these start of the pandemic. Thus, it's not possible to use this to justify any anti-mask and anti-prevention militancy.
"masks have not been shown to be effective for the general population"
and something like:
"we do not know if masks are effective"
What was said was readily misinterpreted as "masks have ... been shown to [not] be effective for the general population", especially by a science-illiterate population reading with a non-individualist perspective. Whereas the second directly acknowledges the lack of understanding in an evolving situation.
Our common knowledge about how things should go or what recommendations are correct just does not apply. Nobody knew anything about anything. We had to figure everything out on the fly.
The result is that yes, we were often wrong and our guidelines were a moving target. This isn't like Polio or Measles - public health threats we understand. But, just because we changed our minds or were wrong doesn't mean anybody was lying. It means that we made mistakes.
And, doing super low-risk things like masking, even if we're not 100% sure it works, makes a lot of sense. Nobody dies from wearing a mask. So even if we think there's a chance it could save some lives, it makes absolute sense to recommend it. I mean, it's not surgery or medication.
Masks are not very effective at preventing an uninfected person from contracting Covid when in proximity to someone infected with Covid. The masks do not form a seal around the mouth and nose, allowing significant amounts of air around the mask when breathing in, as well as not being able to prevent being infected through the eyes. They do provide some protection, including possibly reducing the severity of the infection if contracted while wearing the mask, but that is not their primary benefit.
Mask are effective at preventing the spread from an infected person (either asymptomatic or symptomatic) to others. Breathing out directly into a mask allows the material to catch and trap the majority of the virus carrying condensation, and what gets out around or through the mask is slowed down significantly, allowing the droplets to be pulled down by gravity before traveling as significant distance (or fog up your glasses). Especially when combined with social distancing, this is very effective at prevent the spread of the virus. This is the masks primary benefit and is effective when there is large scale adoption, so that people that have the virus but are not aware, don’t unknowingly pass it. Its effectiveness comes as an aggregate effect similar to herd immunity, rather than an individual effect, since the vast majority of transmission comes from people unaware they are carriers.
Mask come with risks. People tend to touch their face more while wearing masks, and contracting the virus by touching your face is a primary infection mode. People tend to relax other more effective protection methods when wearing a mask, both unconsciously and due to a false belief in the protective capabilities of a mask.
So, in March we had a situation where we were running a shortage of masks. We had people wearing masks (either homemade or surgical) because they believed the mask provided good protection from contracting the virus, which is not true, and may cause people to engage in risky behavior that would put them and others at more risk. We also didn’t have enough masks to be used for their actual benefit of “herd immunity”. The assessment was that non sick people wearing masks was likely to put the individual at greater risk, and deplete the resource from places it was needed, without providing a medical benefit to the individual greater than the risks. In March, the average non sick person should not be wearing a mask.
After several months, we had a situation where we did not have a shortage of masks. We had a situation where the public has been educated through awareness campaigns on how masks work, like the “My mask protects you. Your mask protects me” campaign, so people are less likely to use the masks incorrectly and put themselves and others at greater risk. The assessment is that high compliance of mask wearing will have a greater positive effect through “herd immunity” to outweigh the risks and tradeoffs. But make no mistake, the risks are still there. In that case, the average non sick person should be wearing a mask.
If you don’t understand the underlying medical complexities of the situation, it seems like they can’t both be true. And when an expert organization is trying to provide a clear, short, easy to understand list of recommendations from analyzing and evaluating all those data, they can’t go into to a 45 min presentation every time. Dr. Fauci even tried to add context in March. He talked about how the masks don’t provide protection in the way people think they do, how it can cause people to put themselves at greater risk, both through a false sense of protection and other behaviors like face touching, and how masks primarily protect you from infecting others, not the other way around. If you go back and look at his quotes at the time, he consistently tries to bring that additional context into it, but since it is a complex issue of competing risks and benefits, it’s hard to convey how masks can be good in some cases and bad in others.
> Dr. Fauci in March 2020. “When we get in a situation where we have enough masks, I believe there will be some very serious consideration about more broadening this recommendation of using masks. We're not there yet, but I think we're close to coming to some determination. Because if, in fact, a person who may or may not be infected wants to prevent infecting someone else, one of the best ways to do that is with a mask, so perhaps that's the way to go.” [1]
> And of course his 60 Minutes interview. “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”
[1] https://www.axios.com/anthony-fauci-masks-coronavirus-f77c30...
[0] https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/coronavirus/victor...
Comment two: "When Americans were “resisting authority” by not wearing masks... did you feel the same pride in anti-authority behavior then?"
Comment three: "Anybody get tear-gassed for not wearing a mask?"
Comment four: "Yes.... In Australia"
> grasping at straws
So stay at home orders and gathering bans [1] aren't authoritarian? Note, I am not asking if they were justified, or necessary (or perceived as such, given the information known at the time), but if they were authoritarian.
If someone argues a point poorly, that doesn't make the point itself invalid.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_governmen...
By all means, believe whatever you want. I doesn't bother me one bit.
You're the one focusing on the specific arguments made, instead of the substance of the point being argued itself, and running away when faced with an argument you can't weasel out of.
Old mate was asking a stupid question - people care enough about the COVID restrictions to protest in every country they were bought in. Exactly how heated the protests get isn't really a factor and how unreasonable the police response gets isn't really a factor either. What is jeffbee's complaint supposed to be - COVID protesters in the US behaved too well for his liking? People only show they care about law and principle when they are physically threatening police? Maybe he wanted them to act like monkeys to show they were serious? Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. The literal one is yes. People were tear gassed. Move on to the next question.
Be realistic about why the groups in LA are getting tear-gassed or pepperball’d.
Lol no, not even close. One person was asked nicely to wear masks and lock down and offered massive PPP loans, the other is resisting federal storm troopers kidnapping people at their place of work who are being sent to overseas concentration camps with their constitutional right to due process being violated.
As someone who was wearing a mask, getting the vaccine, but living in a community full of those people, I thought they were dumb and harmful.
And I still admired the "don't tell me what to do" spirit because I have actual objective principles that go beyond what benefits me. And I made people angry arguing that the government was overreaching the law in what they could force people to do.
Because I'm not an authoritarian. Words mean things.
Not wearing a mask, not getting a vaccine in a global pandemic of a deadly airborne disease, and otherwise going out of your way to spread a deadly disease is not behavior of "resisting authority", it is the behavior of a death cult. This behavior may also shown by denying or ignoring climate change, cutting funding to health care, food assistance, child lunches, etc...
From an outsider's perspective, it's hard to see the people with a militant attitude against basic health and higiene measures as other than narcisist authoritarian fools, who believed their personal whims naturally took priority over anyone's interests and needs. There's a reason why they frequently resorted to attacking and outright assaulting anyone who dared not cater to their demands.
It's very hard to see these covid karens portrayed in the same light as the US founding father's revolutionaries or today's protesters.
I guess the point is to not be consistent or coherent with these remarks. The goal is cynicism. You see Trump's secret police kidnapping people off the streets in broad daylight and when people dare express concern or opposition then the cynical "but covid" remarks flow in to muddy the waters. No, your ICE agent throwing flashbangs into crowded restaurants while kidnapping US citizens is not Ruby Bridges. Why even pretend?
Personally, (and you can read through my post history if you'd like) I've been a staunch advocate of COVID-19 vaccines (and any vaccine really) and also of wearing masks as appropriate, but those who believed at the time that vaccine mandates were draconian government overreach literally believed they were freedom fighters just as much as those who are out in the streets of LA as the government comes down to do whatever it is that governments do about these various crises and concerns.
Neither group is or was fighting for a particularly worthy cause reminiscent of some conjured up spirit of the Founders. Enforce borders, get vaccines. Open borders, don't get vaccines. Yawn.
This is simply not true. At face value that's the literal claims the typical covid karens blurbed, but the common thread was always cynicism towards others in attempts to antagonize and outright assault anyone who didn't complied with their demands. Those who value personal freedom wouldn't assault passer-bys for using masks and practicing social distancing, nor would they single out service workers for the audacity of enforcing basic higiene and safety precautions.
I think you are having difficulty separating your personal opinion of those folks with assessing what they believed and how they acted. You can make the same argument about the rioters in Los Angelas today [1].
"Those who value XYZ wouldn't take ABC action"
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5340553-los-angeles...
It was argued that those opposed to mask wearing aren't anti-authoritarian because they went out of their way to attack people wearing masks, e.g. by trying to rip masks off their face (this happened to me personally twice in HEB lol).
Your point is that this isn't valid because that doesn't indicate their anti authoritarianism-ness or not, and your example is that at the LA protests, looting happened.
However, this doesn't work, because the incidence of looting in LA has nothing to do with the overall movement of ejecting ICE. There's crowds and chaos, and some people can thus take advantage of this to loot. It's not ideologically connected at all. Whereas in the mask example, it's a direct ideological and acting thread - the anti-maskers are personally attacking people for wearing masks.
That attempt at moral blessing of the activities of some "anti-authority" behavior can be just as loosely applied to those who are protesting against other perceived anti-authority behavior regardless of whether you personally agree with their cause or not.
Getting lost in the muck of who exactly was violent when and whether that specific act of violence is ok because you happen to agree or disagree with the cause is a waste of time.
No they're not. Deporting illegal aliens is not "wildly" illegal.
The America I grew up in would call that "commie shit," I'm not sure if you grew up in the same America as me or what but I'm pretty sure that I have a better representative understanding of American values to know that officers throwing a tear gas canister into the restaurant I'm eating at and then asking me to "show my papers" is exactly the kind of Soviet-ass behavior that it's my American duty to protest.
I don't care about any justification, if what it requires to keep undocumented migrants out of restaurant kitchens is that cops get to kick down doors and ask people randomly for papers, I'll take the America with the 4th and 5th amendments and the undocumented migrants in the kitchen before I take the communist alternative you're offering.
Liberty or death, and in this case it's not even death, it's cheap good food.
>The America I grew up in would call that "commie shit,"
No they wouldn't have. The America I grew up in didn't have a political party that fetishized trafficking in the third-world into the US. That is "commie shit."
>I'm pretty sure that I have a better representative understanding of American values to know that officers throwing a tear gas canister into the restaurant I'm eating at and then asking me to "show my papers" is exactly the kind of Soviet-ass behavior that it's my American duty to protest.
Repeating false propaganda likely from Russian assets posting on reddit is Soviet-ass "commie shit."
>I don't care about any justification, if what it requires to keep undocumented migrants out of restaurant kitchens is that cops get to kick down doors and ask people randomly for papers, I'll take the America with the 4th and 5th amendments and the undocumented migrants in the kitchen before I take the communist alternative you're offering.
I don't care about any justification, if what it requires to keep illegal immigrant slaves out of restaurant kitchens is that cops get to kick down doors and ask people randomly for papers, I'll take the America with the 4th and 5th amendments and tear gassing rioters in before I take the communist alternative of importing slave labor you're offering.
Both of us can play this game. Flooding the West with illegal aliens is literal Soviet-era propaganda. Deporting them is democracy, as this is a country for the of the people, by the people, for the people
The People, historically, are immigrants. The facts back my argument.
15% of the population are immigrants since 1860.
Drops to 5% in the 60's to 80's, maybe that's the cause of your short-term understanding of American history, since in recent memory immigration was quite low (and thus begins the decline of American prosperity at the same time, interesting).
Increases back up to 15% in the late 2000's... right as we have historic increases in markers for prosperity (overlay the same chart against the stock market).
We are returning to the proper state of America, as the world's melting pot, and the most successful and prosperous nation on earth as a result.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...
Legal immigrants, that became citizens, historically. The facts back my argument.
>Drops to 5% in the 60's to 80's, maybe that's the cause of your short-term understanding of American history
Drops of illegal immigration to 5% or less in the 60's to 80's, maybe that's the cause of your short-term understanding of American history.
>since in recent memory immigration was quite low (and thus begins the decline of American prosperity at the same time, interesting).
Delusional take. America's prosperity skyrocketed during that timeframe, much more so than the past decade and a half of high illegal immigration.
>Increases back up to 15% in the late 2000's... right as we have historic increases in markers for prosperity (overlay the same chart against the stock market).
Stock market growth != real GDP growth. This exposes your poor understanding of the economy and immigration as a whole. Not to mention the Great Recession.
>We are returning to the proper state of America, as the world's melting pot, and the most successful and prosperous nation on earth as a result.
Ironically yes. Deporting illegal immigrants back to their home countries is the proper state. Democrats importing an underclass of less than legal humans is nothing new to the US.
I doubt if it ever really was true to the fullest extent ever. I do think that America did it better that most other counties on earth, but my view is that ‘Democracy’ as is generally practiced is a form of oligarchy, a sophisticated one at that, where common people have the illusion of choosing the laws and leaders they like. In a ‘democracy’ consent is manufactured (words borrowed from Noam Chomsky).
It used to be that every American was basically frontiersman or explorer that was pushing boundaries, but things settled down and now people are largely content and nestled in place.
Concentration of media has allowed conservative think tanks to shape people's values. Ten years ago [0], this meant all conservatives were getting marching orders from Fox News. Today, there is the illusion of choice among conservative media outlets (Fox News, X, Newsmax, etc.), but they all send the same message. Even traditionally more moderate outlets, like the WSJ, are being bought by the corporate class and shifting their message to the right.
0 - https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/political-...
4547 is just doing so at a much more rapid pace and using obscure laws that no one wanted to take the time to clean up.
I expect that if we get out of this the American populace will insist Congress tighten up its books and repeal and clarify some of its more obscure laws.
Thanks for the chuckle!
It's not so much as the philosophy is dead, but more that it's finally achieving it's goals. Anti authoritarianism is just a rhetoric device. Just like saying trans people shouldn't be allowed to use the bathroom is a rhetoric device for achieving the goal is forcing trans people out of existence, either by making their lives such hell that they take their own lives, or that they go back to the closet.
Not in the US. Modern conservatism in the US is tied to the individualistic self-reliance movement that rejects the concept of rulers at the top in favor of States' rights and local governance. It is classically liberal with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech.
You may be confusing it with conservativism in the UK/EU.
The current conservative movement is all in on monarchy, not what you are proposing. Look at Moldbug/Yarvin for their current philosophy.
Not at all, stop getting political commentary from reddit comments. Bush, Romney, McCain were all in the past two decades.
>The current conservative movement is all in on monarchy, not what you are proposing. Look at Moldbug/Yarvin for their current philosophy.
The current Republican party's platform follows classical liberalism: "Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech."[0]
You can argue that Trump isn't following that, but it is what the Republican party has incorporated into it's platform for decades.
>Moldbug/Yarvin
Basically a non-player who is oversold on reddit as having some outsized influence.
Notably none of the free market stuff is part of their current platform.
Yes, that is what I typed in my comment above.
>which is something the dominating political factions are highly against.
The current Republican party's platform follows classical liberalism: "Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech."[0]
You can argue that Trump isn't following that, but it is what the Republican party has incorporated into it's platform for decades.
Anytime something actually works, the first thing the establishment does is tell you they are on the right, or the left, or they're your enemy. No matter that Bundy actually was on the side of immigrants rights, and stood against Trump, nah all the people that have employed effective strategies are right wing or left wing loons who should be discarded.
The establishment has us all divided. The true enemy of the people is the unelected bureaucrats that snatch people off the street and impose ever changing demands with the power of law, all while bypassing constitutional rights.
Unfortunately this divide and conquer strategy is highly effective. Most 'sides' seem to think their guy will do better the next time and they are just protesting until the power can be used appropriately. The problem is that anybody's guy had the ability to do so in the first place.
Truly curious, what methods are you suggesting we use to keep our immigrant population tracked and controlled? If the immigrants aren't leaving after being asked nicely, what steps can we use other than force to remove them? Surely you don't believe unchecked immigration in our modern Nation is good? If you do, then how much is too much, at what number, and what if those immigrants still collected benefits of your tax dollars while not themselves paying into the system? What if they voted for someone you don't like?
You can't track and control only immigrants. Any such system would include tracking and controls of citizens, simply in order to sort them into the "not immigrant" category.
Hence all the "papers please".
(Not to mention the false positive problem!)
I don't like either of those alternatives, but those seem to be the only options that are being advocated at the moment. Is there a better option?
And if not, are you really content to advocate for one of those two options? (Either of those two options? Because personally, no, I am not willing to advocate for either one.)
If you don't check papers (or an equivalent), you automatically don't control immigrants at all once they're in your borders. To control them requires everyone has an ID, because otherwise some immigrant who doesn't want to have ID for whatever reason can just say "of course I don't have papers, only immigrants have papers and I'm not an immigrant".
The entire point of papers is to determine if someone is or isn't in some category (including but not limited to "immigrant").
What you can do is automate ID checks. So long as you don't mind your ID being tested at random, and the way that such systems have a tendency to randomly fail and deport people who were actually allowed to remain.
It’s purely about terrorizing people and expanding the power of ICE. Citizens and non-citizens.
Acting like showing ID to an immigration official is some unprecedented intrusion is absurd. Fly domestically, shop at Costco, or buy a 6 pack of beer and you’ll end up showing more “papers” than a typical interaction with Customs/ICE, assuming you’re not illegal.
I can't not interact with law enforcement, which is why we have things like the Fourth Amendment to protect us in those non-consensual scenarios.
If I answer "yep, I'm a citizen", and ICE says at one of the internal checkpoints "well we don't believe you, prove it", what now?
If ICE doesn’t have probable cause to believe you’re an alien, you’re free to go.
Things could be different based on state-level stop and identify statutes when interacting with state LEO.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-ice-detained-c...
"In 2017, Stevens began studying cases like Watson’s, combing through court records for instances of ICE detainees being released after the government acknowledged they were citizens. She connected with dozens, including many who had been deported before the government could correct its error, and who got in touch with her from other countries. 'This is happening all the time,' she says. In her study, she found that, on average, U.S. citizens detained by ICE spent 180 days behind bars. Deportation is always a real possibility. At a mass removal hearing she attended, Stevens remembers the judge declaring that all 50 defendants would be deported; as the bailiff cleared the room, a man stood up and shouted, 'I thought I’d have a chance to speak to a judge!'"
"It took years, but eventually the BIA, even with the naturalization papers in front of them, denied his request for a stay, concluding the government could deport him. The court’s argument was arcane: It maintained that Watson couldn’t prove his father had custody of him when he was naturalized."
"A court would eventually rule that Watson had been wrongfully imprisoned. But the statute of limitations to sue the government began the day he got locked in ICE detention; it had passed by the time he was released."
Legal immigrants to America for over a century accepted and complied with these legal processes, many of which were even more burdensome or discriminatory (quotas, Chinese Exclusion Act, Immigration Act of 1924, etc).
It's unamerican to undermine a core tenant of the US's national sovereignty: the "sovereign right of States to determine their national migration policy", by arguing that unregulated, irregular migration is the norm and that any action to enforce immigration law is unthinkable.
For basically the entire first 80% of our history, the most the federal government would do in regards to immigration was write down someone's name and nationality, then send them on their way. You're right that in the early 1900s, there were finally some restrictions passed, but by that point the national fabric of America was already sewn, and even those restrictions only applied to specific countries. Right up to the modern era, millions and millions of people have been moving to the USA, and only very, very recently has there been an extremely formalized process, or efforts to go out of the way to deport people that aren't committing actual crimes (overstaying visas is a modern thing, and isn't the kind of crime I'm talking about) (and before you get on me about breaking the law making someone a criminal, lemme know how many times you've driven over the speed limit, and whether you verify your turn signals, headlights, and brakelights work every time you operate a motor vehicle).
I grant you that the government is often at odds at our values, such as with the Chinese exclusion act or when they put Japanese in internment camps, but the American culture has been pro-immigration and pro-refugee for our whole history. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses..." No way in hell bureaucracy is more important to us than that value.
American conservative media are really good at repainting history, so they seem to have convinced some people such as yourself that American sovereignty is predicated upon a tightly controlled and monitored border, but that's basically the opposite of the truth of our history. My guess is that the conservatives need scapegoats to distract from the collapse of the living conditions of the working class from the true reasons (higher concentration of wealth) and so they've picked immigrants this time, a typical target. What genuinely surprises me is that people on hacker news, who I consider typically more media-savvy than the average person, are falling for this as well.
Anyway maybe take a quick scan of the wikipedia article to get a better understanding of our history in relation to immigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_to_the_...
If you want to go back to a pre-1900s American system and return to that national fabric, sure! Repeal the NFA and free our 2nd amendment. Repeal the income tax and welfare state, and go back to funding the government via tariffs and excise taxes (the liberal media sure convinced some people tariffs were an anathema to America, right?).
Your idealized “America the melting pot” thrived on the basis of people actually working for what they had, both immigrant and 3rd generation American; rather than sitting around drawing Social Security, disability, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, WIC,TANF, EITC, and housing assistance. I think you’re on to something!
"Show me your papers" is not something I think most Americans think is acceptable to be asked of them.
Do you think all Americans are just running around bartering for corn with bullets? Showing ID when engaging in modern society has become common - except when voting, of course, oddly enough :P
It's not just sovereign citizens asserting their rights to not identify themselves out of turn to a cop. You're right that cops in America are becoming increasingly authoritarian and trying to intimidate people into giving up their rights, but check out any youtube channel that's essentially just a reuploader for full cop chest cam videos, and almost every encounter with a cop has people pushing back on unlawful search and seizure.
Anyway, your examples are all not exactly good faith, since we were discussing random "show me your papers" stops, which is what ICE has started doing. Needing to prove you have a legal right to drive is relatively uncontroversial. As for showing your passport at a random DHS stop, I've refused every time (over 20 times, I'm a Texan), and everyone I know does as well, and we're certainly not sovereign citizens. "I'm an American citizen, thank you." On my way. They're completely used to it so I know we aren't outliers.
> even ID when swiping a credit card at Walmart.
I've never had to do this lol, not sure what this is about, but again irrelevant when discussing government overreach.
> Do you think all Americans are just running around bartering for corn with bullets?
Ok, this might be a rural American thing, but, yes, many people are basically doing this. Maybe this is just a Texan thing but there's whole ass grey market economies around this.
IDK man maybe we just roll in different circles, maybe it's a redneck thing, but my perception of American values is hot rodding cars so as to escape the cops, not welcoming federal agents into your city to deport your neighbor that watches your kid when you gotta run to the post office real quick, just cause of some frivolous bullshit paperwork.
In an advanced society where citizens are tracked, and receive the benefits of that tracking, why is it somehow okay for others to not be yet to reap the benefits? Why should others immigrate the 'proper way' if one can simply walk across? I can wait until anyone here who defends the lawlessness of the past ways answers.
Instead of letting the economy do the work, simply enforce the laws we already have on the books. Don't let employers employ non-verified citizens.
The problem is that a common sense solution solves the problem and removes a platform for politicians to yell about and continue to do nothing over.
Step one: enforce labor laws. Step two, watch the system drain itself. Step three, look to naturalize and or remove those left behind.
Not really a theoretical, but either way, I would love it if the current admins were making an impassioned plea to answer the questions your asking, and working with Congress to get the laws changed. I think we desperately need to have that discussion. As it stands they’re not, they’re just appealing to emotion with arguments like “they’re eating your cats and dogs”, and forcefully bypassing due process.
- the US has a history dealing very harshly with whoever goes (or is perceived to be) against the federal government
- I do not understand why would anyone be pro illegals and go against their country to support them
The world is going bonkers.
America isn't a town square that the world is somehow entitled to inhabit. It's a country with borders and laws.
As recently as 30 years ago the pragmatic class understood this. I’m not sure where reality will take us now.
It seems to me that the most that can legally be done is to require the feds to actually follow due process. (But I thought different yesterday, and I may think different tomorrow...)
If a state or local government reckons that their material support for federal activities is limited to a certain extent, that is well within that state's purview.
Actively hindering is a whole additional step, though. I'm pretty sure at least some cities crossed it.
(How actively? Not to the point of arresting or shooting at ICE agents, but still further than "not helping". And if you're going to ask for references, I can't give them. This is my impression of several "sanctuary cities", but I can't point to a concrete incident.)