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Comment by csto12 | Hacker News Reader

I think it’s important to take a second and reflect that in 2025 America we need an app like this at all.

This is very American, The Green Book guided Black travelers to safe businesses during Jim Crow. The Underground Railroad was literally an information network to help enslaved people reach freedom. During WWII, communities helped hide Japanese Americans from internment. LGBTQ+ people created networks to find safe spaces during decades of criminalization. Native communities have long shared information about safe passage and resources.

Reminders like these are strangely comforting to me. It tells me we've been through this and worse, and have come out intact or even better afterward.

Perfectly put. American as in the historic reality. Unamerican as in the marketing ideal.

Well said. A few days ago I made a response to a comment in a thread, where I laid out a list of some aspects of American Culture [1]. And, 2 of the BIG ones in the Beliefs category were, "fundamental distrust in government and a shared collective identity in those against it, free-speech absolutism"

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=HaZeust#44411990

Except they don't believe in free-speech absolutism. They say they do, but they obviously don't, because every time one of them gets in control of speech, they make it substantially less free.

They don't believe in fundamental distrust of government either, they're a little more forgiving of interpretation and purpose of policy when they're in charge - nonetheless, these virtues are in the American zeitgeist for better or for worse.

I'm wondering if the West Bank has such a guide to avoid settlers.

This to me isn’t comforting at all because what we’re seeing now is a regression. We haven’t dealt with a regression before.

I was going to write expletives. But lets rather reflect. When is this ICE stuff going to end?

Well, they just got like $170 Billion budget passed, so they've got plenty of money to stay busy for a while.

3x more than the Marine Corps, for those at home keeping score.

A military branch (either de facto or de jure) that exists for the majority purpose to directly target, round up, and imprison or deport individuals on U.S. soil - especially with a proven record of limiting due process - should have NEVER happened. I cannot stress enough, we're a few bad days - and more and more likely 1 executive action away - from at-scale "Tree of Liberty" stuff.

Over what timeframe and earmarked for what?

Let's figure out accurately what scale and scope of damage and harassment is coming.

Well, perhaps if there's a Democratic president in four years, and they aren't afraid to break laws as much as Trump does, they could abolish ICE by withholding Congressional funding, destroying it the way this administration destroyed USAID, and reorganize other agencies to pick up the slack, which is how it was before 2003, when ICE was established.

Past performance estimates future results, and it shows that while Democrats don't actively make things worse, they also don't actively make things better. This is illustrated in the "ratchet and pawl model.

When the Republicans are in power they move things rightwards. When the Democrats are in power they don't move things in either direction. The net effect is a move to the right, and you cannot influence that by voting, and the overall rate of movement depends on how often each party wins, which you can influence by voting.

The chance that a third party wins and moves things leftwards is zero.

I don’t believe we will have another free and fair election in this country.

I'm pessimistic about it, too.

Never? Both parties have voted to fund ICE always. Perhaps if one party or the other was entirely voted out and replaced?

When there aren't enough illegal aliens left to warrant it. If you think those people have a right to be there then campaign for that but meanwhile the government should not just give up the rule of law.

> ...but meanwhile the government should not just give up the rule of law.

Isn't due process a rule of law? How about laws against bribery?

The mission creep of the ICE Gestapo will eventually include deporting (forced disappearance and exiling) US citizens who don't agree with the cult^H^H^H^Hadministration.

Source?

Trump himself said he would like to deport citizens.

The self-unware irony...

Whenever I hear anything about the US in the last months it sounds like from a bad movie.

Trump always wanted to be in show business, not real estate. Now he runs the government like he's playing the role of Mafia boss on The Apprentice.

if this app is the "hmm" moment for anybody, god help us.

I mean you could definitely argue that from the other side as well.

“We should note that in 2025 we need an app to help people breaking the law avoid law enforcement”

You don't need the app.

Ice are the good guys

The left think evil is good and good if evil nowadays

Growing up reading cyberpunk, this is both expected and welcome.

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