ICE "agents" are being heckled, confronted, having to hear pots banged, having protesters yelling outside of the lavish hotel where they stay. AND UNARMED PROTESTERS ARE BEING KILLED BY ICE. F___. ICE.
Yes. Mockery & public humiliation doesn't affect true evil. Hate in the heart and a lack of empathy will win if we think mere mockery even matters. Mock ICE all you want; they are modeling a wildly anti-democratic pattern that won't stop with them.
If I were an IC agent I would bring my own food and a lunchbox. I’m sure there are a lot of restaurant people that would defecate or spit in their food. Our food supply in America is not very good and people get listeria, E. coli and salmonella all the time now. I’m not encouraging anybody to do that because it would be fundamentally wrong but it’s something that Putin does to his enemies. He poisons them with radioactive stuff that is colorless and tasteless and they end up dying a long and painful death from cancer.
Trump‘s boyfriend Putin uses a lot of poisons but his favored is polonium which is a radioactive substance.
Hitler and fluoride. Hitler had immense amounts of fluoride added to the water in Germany as a "control factor". Fluoride slows and "calms" people down. Drinking that water caused people to be laid back and not care. NOW I wonder if this is why the United States adds fluoride and a bunch of other chemicals to our water ??? And telling us that it's "anti cavitiy. Fluoride causes CANCER.
I don’t think that where I live the water is fluoridated. We filter the water. My concern where I live is there a lot of Canadian geese that land on the reservoirs and geese shit constantly all over the place. And some of the areas the drinking water coming out of the faucet isn’t not even portable. It has way too much chlorine as well.
I know that some people are opting for saltwater swimming pool Which does the same thing as chlorine as far as keeping the water Low in bacteria. I think the reason people can eat saltwater fish raw And can’t eat freshwater fish unless it’s cooked has to do with the salt. I’m not entirely sure.
Tom’s toothpaste doesn’t contain fluoride. I think where I live when I was a kid The water may have been fluoridated but I don’t think it calmed me down any.
Probably mentioned the theory regarding hops And beer used to Anesthetize the masses. Hoppy beers make me drowsy. 🥱
You'll laugh at this- we're having a huge blizzard. 8-18 inches supposedly ☃️⛄. So I took a moment off my activist activies to watch Kojak -Series 1- episode 17😆🤣
People who compare ICE to the Gestapo are making the wrong comparison. The more appropriate historical parallel is the SA (Sturmabteilung), the brown-shirted storm troopers who helped Hitler gain power with violence in the streets. They openly attacked Jews and others the way ICE attacks migrants (and citizens) today. They were chaos. Like ICE. Once they had served their purpose, they were disbanded.
The Gestapo - the SS secret police - that replaced the SA was far more highly organized and far less visible. They knew who they were targeting and were more likely to show up in the middle of the night than to tackle people on the streets. They used IBM punchcards rather than punches in the face to spread terror.
It is critically important to understand this analogy. Just as the SA laid the groundwork for the SS before it was abolished, ICE is laying the groundwork for something far more insidious and terrifying. Trump and his minions are going after voter registration data, tracking license numbers, and facial recognition to track their "enemies." They are using Palantir the way the Nazis used IBM punch cards.
ICE will go the way of the storm troopers. The greater danger is that they will be replaced by something far worse.
Glitter bombs would be funny, & I loved the hilarious responses to ICE in Portland, for example, but let's be clear w/ the young people looking to us right now & make clear that no comic humiliation or a silly Tik-Tok of an ICE agent falling on his butt matters against real hate. We have to take this more seriously than we want to. (Said respectfully !)
I do not disagree, but there is more to a voting public than just the young, as is borne out election after election. ICE agents are already expressing an unwillingness to be out in public; humiliation in public is the last thing a bully wants or can withstand. I would suggest playing circus music when they show up, loudly and often. Shaving cream pies, fart spray on their clothes, stink bombs, dog-shit-in-a-bag, and every other harmless juvenile prank the protester can come up with. If the government comes back with ANY escalation to these, they're finished. The tide is turning, time to pump it up.
No, man, I feel you & let me be clear that I think ALL of that delicious silliness should be strategically employed - yes, make it hard for Kristi & what's-his-name Bovino? to get a good MAGA photo-op out of it. Totally. My point is just that I know people who kind of think THAT is it. If we do that, the larger enterprise isn't still menacingly growing & the cruelty in the streets will most likely escalate according to plan. That is how you control a society, and the Stephen Miller & Russ V & Bannon are quietly working towards that, so I just don't want the average American media-consumer to confuse short-term (effective) public & photo-op humiliation (the PR war is important, always) with long-term sobriety about how this is most likely to go.
Also apologies if something I didn't explain well made was ever implying that the only key to elections/voting public is the young. Good God no. It's way more complicated than that. But young people today mostly only know performative activism & protesting, not hard-core activism & protesting where you need to be trained in what to do & not do if apprehended, encountering police, what your rights are to assembly, how to prepare for tear gass -- all of it. Most middle-class-ish, privileged suburban young people today - God bless 'em, I have my own - just... don't know... real physical or societal danger. (They have dangers aplenty in other forms - internet, screen addiction, porn everywhere, depression/anxiety, etc.) But they need to know what their rights are and aren't when opposing oppression ... & they need to know what to do when their rights are flagrantly not acknowledged. Etc. Etc.
Last, from my perspective as a historian, the tide is most definitely not turning. Maybe I'm missing something tho? Happy to be educated. But in my decades of studying the histories of societal collapse, we are in a rapidly deteriorating situation that shows no signs of being intelligently stopped. Too much egregious, norms-busting behaviors are simply normalized. You don't come back from that quickly, sometimes at all. It is very, very difficult to restore decency when decency and brutality get normalized. It is profoundly difficult for a society to quickly reverse the damage when it increasingly tolerates less and less humane conditions, more & more dishonesty & disinformation, more & more false-reality-creating.
But again - damn I'd love to be wrong about all of this. I would love to have hope that the tide is turning. But I don't. Please feel free to help me with this! Thanks for the dialogue mate.
I have no doubt that they are not close to de-escalating. And yes, PR IS important, the current admin is certainly waging a war on that front, mostly to focus people away from Epstein, economy, and egregious behaviors relating to active theft from a government they are a part of. Polling even from Fox shows the growing unpopularity of almost all actions of this administration, including immigration policy, even among the right, excluding MAGA, who are lost.
As to the rights the youth are not so educated in - the suggestions I make are inclusive of said education: we have the right to protest, we have the right to gather in numbers, we have the right to speak out. All of these are under attack and it is time to fight back as we can.
Good thoughts. Yeah, I hear ya. I should probably be clearer and just state more plainly that based on decades of historical research it just my personal belief, which I hope is wrong, that even if we succeeded at getting this admin. to be widely hated across the board, even if it loses popularity & support from it's base, & it's supporters start abandoning it, I don't think it will matter b/c the admin. is quietly building the ability to make normal legal dissent a criminal act. And justices, if enough of them start getting assassinated, won't stand up against this. (Some brave ones might but just as in other totalitarian regimes, justices and public servants and other keepers of guardrails are incredibly easy to silence. Just threaten justices kids or kill family members of decent judges & this admin. doesn't need to care about public opinion at all. It is also very easy to create a pre-text to "post-pone" or even cancel legitimate elections.
None of that is hard to do if you don't experience remorse, you can't be shamed, and you have hate or lust for control in your heart.
It wouldnt' be hard to engineer a situation where elections just don't happen & the courts are terrorized into not doing anything about it.
I guess that's my concern.
This is what happens all the time in democracies that die. This is how you shut down otherwise reasonable people, moderates: just make life dangerous enough for people when they get political that they stop engaging in political dissent altogether. B/c the price is too high.
Again, I hope I'm wrong. And if I'm wrong, Cliff, I'll find ya & buy you a top shelf bottle of liquor, apologize on here for being over-reactive and eat my words happily.
I'm a little spicier than usual today....just got divorced yesterday after fighting over the divorce for 6 years 😅. On a lighter note (because I've been too serious lately), 👍🏻👏🏻🤣. FART SPRAY 💩💩💩💩😆👍🏻❤️. AWESOME idea Cliff... And dog crap in a bag- my kinda guy😆😅👍🏻❤️ .. My pet bird makes fart sounds when she comes in for a landing 🐦😇. I fall out laughing. My ex used to say "I don't see the humor in that"- which made me laugh even harder 😁
DAVID ! My dude, I'm gonna try again! (PART 1 of Message)
First point: I am so grateful for you. You are doing something profound & you never took your eye off the ball, calling out MAGA even after T's 1st administration was over. You've been so, so consistently disciplined about staying focused on exposing corruption & dishonesty for a long, long time now. You have kept a lot of us sane by retaining basic moral norms and calling out those who abandon them. You have informed us. Sometimes your tone has had a little snark element but truly far, far less than way too many talking heads out there Thank you for doing what you do.
Thank you, David. I have no sympathy for those ICE members hired by Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller who are unfit, unqualified thugs, lured by large sign-on bonuses, etc. My concern lies with those who are/were already actually hired by and serving police departments with an honest Immigration and Customs Enforcement program.
Loud speakers (megaphones) are very effective. They are protected free speech (local noise ordinances may restrict their use-- but that is a matter for local law enforcement).
Loud speakers interfere with agents' ability to communicate with each other or hear anything from their radios. It's also a way to get in their faces without getting too close.
"Those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws" —President Obama
Why the man with the best information and highest security clearance on earth said this:
Bloomberg: Headline: Venezuela's Violent Deaths Fall to 22-Year Low on Migration
Text: Venezuela's rate of violent deaths dropped to its lowest level in more than two decades following years of massive migration as both criminals and victims fled the nation's economic crisis. —Archived Source: https://archive.is/JOaY9
Let’s not sugar coat it. Ice is an illegal police force hell bent on hurting people and disappearing people. Doesn’t matter if you are an undocumented, documented, protected by law, or US citizen. They can and will break into your house, school, car. They will take you in parking lots, gas stations, restaurants. They will wait for you as you leave work, school, healthcare facilities. They will lure unsuspecting human beings and kidnap. They employ chemical agents on babies, children, in cars, in the faces of protesters. And… they will kill… and call you a fcking bitch. And then they will be tucked away out of reach from accountability by the regime. And then there are the detention centers, who evade oversight. CECOT… this is hell on earth. Only psychopaths condone this. That’s who is in control… psychopaths. Evil to the core… and so much more it’s disgusting, abhorrent. The lies and gaslighting…. Ice needs to be abolished, period.
Does the story end here? People are gathering in Minneapolis now for planned protests of ICE and are facing temperatures below 10o (the predicted “high”) to make a showing of public resistance against this illegitimate force. What courage! Nearly unimaginable endurance. Onward!
I always seem to be the outlier on issues. I see American press and Congressional priorities to be upside down rated in order of least important before important. Forget critical, too complex, like healthcare and the exploding national debt.
The killing of Ms Good is horrendous and needs to be prosecuted to the full extent. The real issue is an out of control DHS that has hired barbarians to use gestapo tactic to use fear to drive immigrants out of the country. If not stopped they may well becoming to our houses next.
Back to priorities, the bigger threat to the US are the Russians, Chinese and Iranians. Instead that takes a backseat to ICE raids, Epstein Files, Greenland and Venezuela. All these seem designed to take our eyes off the bigger ball and make it easy for the press to report. Ukrainians are freezing to death as we spoon feed support to them only by selling weapons to the Europeans to give it to them. Very little coverage in the press and not much in Congress.
While we need to rein in the abuses of ICE, the bigger threats are offshore. Iranians and Ukrainians have been screaming for help. Yet we focus on other issues that do not threaten our existence. Wake up America before it is too late and Chinese warships are pounding our shores.
Second point: there is something that worries me about - not just your posts, but a lot of anti-MAGA posts right now - & I wonder if you could give this some consideration? Post title/Headline almost always on a triumphal or winning note: "Trump plan BACKFIRES!" or "Trump HUMILIATED !" or "Trump LOSING Followers !" etc. DUDE. There are so many problems w/ this: the main one is that what 'backfiring' or 'humiliation' or 'losing' you want us to see in the MAGA-verse does not affect THEM at all. Trump & Co. aren't normal - they don't feel humiliated or shamed the way people do w/ a normal working moral compass.
And no amount of the public's "fear or backlash" may make a dent in the increasing degree of "politicized enforcement" we are likely to see; just being like, "HEY! You guys are bullies & we're not gonna take it anymore!" isn't going to help. We're past that.
So problem #1 is that when all of us anti-MAGA folks out here scan your post titles & feel a little better, a little hit of satisfaction, b/c "Trump HUMILIATED!", it takes us off our game, which is already incredibly weak. People who know how to resist? Generations of hardened Eastern Europeans who lived under the KGB. People who aren't soft? Ukrainians right now. Iranian citizens. People who have been brutalized for years & have had to figure out a way to keep resisting despite the fear.
Americans who need to feel good while drinking their morning latte b/c the news is "depressing"? That is some softness that I think we are way past being okay with.
Problem #2 has everything to do w/ these headlines being the opposite of a public voice more like Timothy Snyder, who NEVER paints a positive picture when mature, hard-to-swallow losses & violations must be named & faced, not papered over w/ "but we're gonna be okay, guys!" vibes. We are not necessarily going to be okay. There are incredibly real, dark forces absolutely over-running norms and basic ethical standards every day & the Good Guys aren't winning b/c we don't control the lever of power. MAGA does. MAGA is in charge & taking apart the mechanisms by which we, as a society, are even able to fight back.
We are in trouble, & headlines that make people feel "hey, here's a positive spin on this awful moment" delays & delays & delays the - I'm sorry to say it but - the inner hardening that this moment requires. We need to prepare for things to get weird. We need to think strategically and not relax. Look, most of us have never had to function in a prolonged power outage in 21st century heavily tech-&-digital life conditions for longer than a week. Most of us don't have fireplaces anymore or live on wells or have landline telephones. We are not a society built for endurance any more -- we are dangerously soft.
So David. Please consider a change of tone. I understand that you need to stay afloat financially, and it's a subscriber-killer to be "negative" ; I understand the business model imperative to not lose subscribers through too much doom & gloom. But, from a historian's perspective, it just prolongs our needing to grow up & realize that this moment in U.S. history is completely unprecedented. [And yes, I have written about that last statement extensively elsewhere & am prepared to defend it].
So - I'm just saying - please consider using your considerable platform here to gently, non-sensationally just speak hard truths. You don't have to over-dramatize the danger, but just keep describing it as, in fact, danger. A comically chubby and ineffectual ICE agent filmed falling down or something doesn't mean that ICE - or the forces controlling it right now - is being defeated. They are being enabled and emboldened by the day. So maybe lose some subscribers, but speak a harder truth, to prepare minds to grow up & face coming hardship in these disturbingly unprecedented times. Take a page out of Timothy Snyder's communication playbook. His vibe is more "hey, my stuff isn't feel-good, but it's real, so if you're into that, keep subscribing."
I need that. Don't make me feel good, or make me feel a little less despairing over my morning coffee. Just find the balance between "we're all gonna die!" and "ha ha Trump did something incompetent again so guys we don't have to be too worried."
I know it sounds a little extreme but as the thinking goes, prepare for war so that you have a chance of protecting peace. David, people listen to you. If you lose subscribers by taking a more sober, less short-term triumphalist tone, in the long-run I think you will have done your readership a greater service.
Thanks for listening, my friend, and again thank you for standing strong for so long. We're grateful for you.
Agree, however you made your point about 1/3 way down. The best points made are those that make it brief and to the point. Writing a novel for a post defeats the point of making a point.
I share your angst and fully agree all the supposed HUMILIATION against Trump and Putin have done nothing to rein them in. I bet they love it as it says we got to you.
Rome 410, do have inside information on the minds of the Nazi ICE agents? I don't. Wasn't Pakman's point just that? Many people reading here are aware that the USA has slide into authoritarianism. Yes it is good to hear that the ICE thugs maybe struggling while I drink my coffee, as I don't drink lattes. Because I am horrified by what is going on in my country.
This is what happens when enforcement stops being about law and starts being about theater. You turn an agency into a costume, a badge into a prop, and suddenly no one trusts the actor wearing it.
Fear isn’t a mystery here. It’s the receipt for politicizing power and calling it order.
ICE "agents" are being heckled, confronted, having to hear pots banged, having protesters yelling outside of the lavish hotel where they stay. AND UNARMED PROTESTERS ARE BEING KILLED BY ICE. F___. ICE.
Yes. Mockery & public humiliation doesn't affect true evil. Hate in the heart and a lack of empathy will win if we think mere mockery even matters. Mock ICE all you want; they are modeling a wildly anti-democratic pattern that won't stop with them.
ICE pulled a handcuffed woman into a gross porta potty. To RAPE HER
https://youtube.com/shorts/uGeY9DiK-rU?si=9LDMicXujYYCQK1e
I'm not for ICE, but where's the proof of rape? The video isn't timed and there's no exiting the porta potty of either one.
If Americans bring the heat in many different forms they will melt the ICE.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/nerve-agents-poison-and-window-falls-a-list-of-putins-critics-that-have-been-attacked-or-killed/4623578/
If I were an IC agent I would bring my own food and a lunchbox. I’m sure there are a lot of restaurant people that would defecate or spit in their food. Our food supply in America is not very good and people get listeria, E. coli and salmonella all the time now. I’m not encouraging anybody to do that because it would be fundamentally wrong but it’s something that Putin does to his enemies. He poisons them with radioactive stuff that is colorless and tasteless and they end up dying a long and painful death from cancer.
Trump‘s boyfriend Putin uses a lot of poisons but his favored is polonium which is a radioactive substance.
Hitler and fluoride. Hitler had immense amounts of fluoride added to the water in Germany as a "control factor". Fluoride slows and "calms" people down. Drinking that water caused people to be laid back and not care. NOW I wonder if this is why the United States adds fluoride and a bunch of other chemicals to our water ??? And telling us that it's "anti cavitiy. Fluoride causes CANCER.
I don’t think that where I live the water is fluoridated. We filter the water. My concern where I live is there a lot of Canadian geese that land on the reservoirs and geese shit constantly all over the place. And some of the areas the drinking water coming out of the faucet isn’t not even portable. It has way too much chlorine as well.
I know that some people are opting for saltwater swimming pool Which does the same thing as chlorine as far as keeping the water Low in bacteria. I think the reason people can eat saltwater fish raw And can’t eat freshwater fish unless it’s cooked has to do with the salt. I’m not entirely sure.
Tom’s toothpaste doesn’t contain fluoride. I think where I live when I was a kid The water may have been fluoridated but I don’t think it calmed me down any.
Probably mentioned the theory regarding hops And beer used to Anesthetize the masses. Hoppy beers make me drowsy. 🥱
Yes Hound, ....my vodka makes me sleepy as well 😃. I choose Vodka over fluoride 👍🏻
Russians pronounce vodka wodka. When they drink too much wodka they womit.
When I hear people claiming that America has liberty injustice for all, I 🤮 vomit. Lies have that effect on me.
You'll laugh at this- we're having a huge blizzard. 8-18 inches supposedly ☃️⛄. So I took a moment off my activist activies to watch Kojak -Series 1- episode 17😆🤣
(episode of kojak was great🙂)
Hey Man!
People who compare ICE to the Gestapo are making the wrong comparison. The more appropriate historical parallel is the SA (Sturmabteilung), the brown-shirted storm troopers who helped Hitler gain power with violence in the streets. They openly attacked Jews and others the way ICE attacks migrants (and citizens) today. They were chaos. Like ICE. Once they had served their purpose, they were disbanded.
The Gestapo - the SS secret police - that replaced the SA was far more highly organized and far less visible. They knew who they were targeting and were more likely to show up in the middle of the night than to tackle people on the streets. They used IBM punchcards rather than punches in the face to spread terror.
It is critically important to understand this analogy. Just as the SA laid the groundwork for the SS before it was abolished, ICE is laying the groundwork for something far more insidious and terrifying. Trump and his minions are going after voter registration data, tracking license numbers, and facial recognition to track their "enemies." They are using Palantir the way the Nazis used IBM punch cards.
ICE will go the way of the storm troopers. The greater danger is that they will be replaced by something far worse.
I am so glad that I read what you wrote. I agree with you 💯. I just wish that more people understood this.
My man, we should be friends. Yes, this is what is real. Thank you.
I'm surprised at the lack of glitter bombs and dye packs in use against these thugs. Nothing beats arrogance like comic humiliation.
Glitter bombs would be funny, & I loved the hilarious responses to ICE in Portland, for example, but let's be clear w/ the young people looking to us right now & make clear that no comic humiliation or a silly Tik-Tok of an ICE agent falling on his butt matters against real hate. We have to take this more seriously than we want to. (Said respectfully !)
I do not disagree, but there is more to a voting public than just the young, as is borne out election after election. ICE agents are already expressing an unwillingness to be out in public; humiliation in public is the last thing a bully wants or can withstand. I would suggest playing circus music when they show up, loudly and often. Shaving cream pies, fart spray on their clothes, stink bombs, dog-shit-in-a-bag, and every other harmless juvenile prank the protester can come up with. If the government comes back with ANY escalation to these, they're finished. The tide is turning, time to pump it up.
No, man, I feel you & let me be clear that I think ALL of that delicious silliness should be strategically employed - yes, make it hard for Kristi & what's-his-name Bovino? to get a good MAGA photo-op out of it. Totally. My point is just that I know people who kind of think THAT is it. If we do that, the larger enterprise isn't still menacingly growing & the cruelty in the streets will most likely escalate according to plan. That is how you control a society, and the Stephen Miller & Russ V & Bannon are quietly working towards that, so I just don't want the average American media-consumer to confuse short-term (effective) public & photo-op humiliation (the PR war is important, always) with long-term sobriety about how this is most likely to go.
Also apologies if something I didn't explain well made was ever implying that the only key to elections/voting public is the young. Good God no. It's way more complicated than that. But young people today mostly only know performative activism & protesting, not hard-core activism & protesting where you need to be trained in what to do & not do if apprehended, encountering police, what your rights are to assembly, how to prepare for tear gass -- all of it. Most middle-class-ish, privileged suburban young people today - God bless 'em, I have my own - just... don't know... real physical or societal danger. (They have dangers aplenty in other forms - internet, screen addiction, porn everywhere, depression/anxiety, etc.) But they need to know what their rights are and aren't when opposing oppression ... & they need to know what to do when their rights are flagrantly not acknowledged. Etc. Etc.
Last, from my perspective as a historian, the tide is most definitely not turning. Maybe I'm missing something tho? Happy to be educated. But in my decades of studying the histories of societal collapse, we are in a rapidly deteriorating situation that shows no signs of being intelligently stopped. Too much egregious, norms-busting behaviors are simply normalized. You don't come back from that quickly, sometimes at all. It is very, very difficult to restore decency when decency and brutality get normalized. It is profoundly difficult for a society to quickly reverse the damage when it increasingly tolerates less and less humane conditions, more & more dishonesty & disinformation, more & more false-reality-creating.
But again - damn I'd love to be wrong about all of this. I would love to have hope that the tide is turning. But I don't. Please feel free to help me with this! Thanks for the dialogue mate.
I have no doubt that they are not close to de-escalating. And yes, PR IS important, the current admin is certainly waging a war on that front, mostly to focus people away from Epstein, economy, and egregious behaviors relating to active theft from a government they are a part of. Polling even from Fox shows the growing unpopularity of almost all actions of this administration, including immigration policy, even among the right, excluding MAGA, who are lost.
As to the rights the youth are not so educated in - the suggestions I make are inclusive of said education: we have the right to protest, we have the right to gather in numbers, we have the right to speak out. All of these are under attack and it is time to fight back as we can.
Good thoughts. Yeah, I hear ya. I should probably be clearer and just state more plainly that based on decades of historical research it just my personal belief, which I hope is wrong, that even if we succeeded at getting this admin. to be widely hated across the board, even if it loses popularity & support from it's base, & it's supporters start abandoning it, I don't think it will matter b/c the admin. is quietly building the ability to make normal legal dissent a criminal act. And justices, if enough of them start getting assassinated, won't stand up against this. (Some brave ones might but just as in other totalitarian regimes, justices and public servants and other keepers of guardrails are incredibly easy to silence. Just threaten justices kids or kill family members of decent judges & this admin. doesn't need to care about public opinion at all. It is also very easy to create a pre-text to "post-pone" or even cancel legitimate elections.
None of that is hard to do if you don't experience remorse, you can't be shamed, and you have hate or lust for control in your heart.
It wouldnt' be hard to engineer a situation where elections just don't happen & the courts are terrorized into not doing anything about it.
I guess that's my concern.
This is what happens all the time in democracies that die. This is how you shut down otherwise reasonable people, moderates: just make life dangerous enough for people when they get political that they stop engaging in political dissent altogether. B/c the price is too high.
Again, I hope I'm wrong. And if I'm wrong, Cliff, I'll find ya & buy you a top shelf bottle of liquor, apologize on here for being over-reactive and eat my words happily.
I'm a little spicier than usual today....just got divorced yesterday after fighting over the divorce for 6 years 😅. On a lighter note (because I've been too serious lately), 👍🏻👏🏻🤣. FART SPRAY 💩💩💩💩😆👍🏻❤️. AWESOME idea Cliff... And dog crap in a bag- my kinda guy😆😅👍🏻❤️ .. My pet bird makes fart sounds when she comes in for a landing 🐦😇. I fall out laughing. My ex used to say "I don't see the humor in that"- which made me laugh even harder 😁
I really want to see people humiliating these thugs in every way possible.
On a lighter note: from experience, divorce gets better over time. They're not worth your peace of mind or sense of humor.
And just because I loves ya's: https://cliffsongs.substack.com/p/bugs-meets-the-ice-patrol
DAVID ! My dude, I'm gonna try again! (PART 1 of Message)
First point: I am so grateful for you. You are doing something profound & you never took your eye off the ball, calling out MAGA even after T's 1st administration was over. You've been so, so consistently disciplined about staying focused on exposing corruption & dishonesty for a long, long time now. You have kept a lot of us sane by retaining basic moral norms and calling out those who abandon them. You have informed us. Sometimes your tone has had a little snark element but truly far, far less than way too many talking heads out there Thank you for doing what you do.
Okay - now PART 2 of Message, next :)
It’s going to be heading towards -20 F in Minneapolis/St. Paul this weekend.
If protesters REALLY want to combat ICE, they’ll start throwing brine-filled balloons on ICE agents.
Brine is liquid down to - 7F. Cold water will get someone wet, but cold brine is FAR colder than regular water.
I LOVE love love that!!!!👍🏻❤️
Thank you, David. I have no sympathy for those ICE members hired by Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller who are unfit, unqualified thugs, lured by large sign-on bonuses, etc. My concern lies with those who are/were already actually hired by and serving police departments with an honest Immigration and Customs Enforcement program.
Loud speakers (megaphones) are very effective. They are protected free speech (local noise ordinances may restrict their use-- but that is a matter for local law enforcement).
Loud speakers interfere with agents' ability to communicate with each other or hear anything from their radios. It's also a way to get in their faces without getting too close.
Then hey- let's hear it for loudspeakers!! Let's DO IT👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻. I'm all for it ❤️
How to fix this, David:
Obama's policy and dire warning on immigration
"Those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws" —President Obama
Why the man with the best information and highest security clearance on earth said this:
Bloomberg: Headline: Venezuela's Violent Deaths Fall to 22-Year Low on Migration
Text: Venezuela's rate of violent deaths dropped to its lowest level in more than two decades following years of massive migration as both criminals and victims fled the nation's economic crisis. —Archived Source: https://archive.is/JOaY9
Let’s not sugar coat it. Ice is an illegal police force hell bent on hurting people and disappearing people. Doesn’t matter if you are an undocumented, documented, protected by law, or US citizen. They can and will break into your house, school, car. They will take you in parking lots, gas stations, restaurants. They will wait for you as you leave work, school, healthcare facilities. They will lure unsuspecting human beings and kidnap. They employ chemical agents on babies, children, in cars, in the faces of protesters. And… they will kill… and call you a fcking bitch. And then they will be tucked away out of reach from accountability by the regime. And then there are the detention centers, who evade oversight. CECOT… this is hell on earth. Only psychopaths condone this. That’s who is in control… psychopaths. Evil to the core… and so much more it’s disgusting, abhorrent. The lies and gaslighting…. Ice needs to be abolished, period.
Does the story end here? People are gathering in Minneapolis now for planned protests of ICE and are facing temperatures below 10o (the predicted “high”) to make a showing of public resistance against this illegitimate force. What courage! Nearly unimaginable endurance. Onward!
But yet not too afraid to unmask and present warrants and abide by the laws.
I always seem to be the outlier on issues. I see American press and Congressional priorities to be upside down rated in order of least important before important. Forget critical, too complex, like healthcare and the exploding national debt.
The killing of Ms Good is horrendous and needs to be prosecuted to the full extent. The real issue is an out of control DHS that has hired barbarians to use gestapo tactic to use fear to drive immigrants out of the country. If not stopped they may well becoming to our houses next.
Back to priorities, the bigger threat to the US are the Russians, Chinese and Iranians. Instead that takes a backseat to ICE raids, Epstein Files, Greenland and Venezuela. All these seem designed to take our eyes off the bigger ball and make it easy for the press to report. Ukrainians are freezing to death as we spoon feed support to them only by selling weapons to the Europeans to give it to them. Very little coverage in the press and not much in Congress.
While we need to rein in the abuses of ICE, the bigger threats are offshore. Iranians and Ukrainians have been screaming for help. Yet we focus on other issues that do not threaten our existence. Wake up America before it is too late and Chinese warships are pounding our shores.
Yo, Joe Tye, below, is dead right. And knowledge & training in actual practice of history matters. Folks make sure & read his comment. Thanks.
DAVID! (PART 2 of Message)
Second point: there is something that worries me about - not just your posts, but a lot of anti-MAGA posts right now - & I wonder if you could give this some consideration? Post title/Headline almost always on a triumphal or winning note: "Trump plan BACKFIRES!" or "Trump HUMILIATED !" or "Trump LOSING Followers !" etc. DUDE. There are so many problems w/ this: the main one is that what 'backfiring' or 'humiliation' or 'losing' you want us to see in the MAGA-verse does not affect THEM at all. Trump & Co. aren't normal - they don't feel humiliated or shamed the way people do w/ a normal working moral compass.
And no amount of the public's "fear or backlash" may make a dent in the increasing degree of "politicized enforcement" we are likely to see; just being like, "HEY! You guys are bullies & we're not gonna take it anymore!" isn't going to help. We're past that.
So problem #1 is that when all of us anti-MAGA folks out here scan your post titles & feel a little better, a little hit of satisfaction, b/c "Trump HUMILIATED!", it takes us off our game, which is already incredibly weak. People who know how to resist? Generations of hardened Eastern Europeans who lived under the KGB. People who aren't soft? Ukrainians right now. Iranian citizens. People who have been brutalized for years & have had to figure out a way to keep resisting despite the fear.
Americans who need to feel good while drinking their morning latte b/c the news is "depressing"? That is some softness that I think we are way past being okay with.
Problem #2 has everything to do w/ these headlines being the opposite of a public voice more like Timothy Snyder, who NEVER paints a positive picture when mature, hard-to-swallow losses & violations must be named & faced, not papered over w/ "but we're gonna be okay, guys!" vibes. We are not necessarily going to be okay. There are incredibly real, dark forces absolutely over-running norms and basic ethical standards every day & the Good Guys aren't winning b/c we don't control the lever of power. MAGA does. MAGA is in charge & taking apart the mechanisms by which we, as a society, are even able to fight back.
We are in trouble, & headlines that make people feel "hey, here's a positive spin on this awful moment" delays & delays & delays the - I'm sorry to say it but - the inner hardening that this moment requires. We need to prepare for things to get weird. We need to think strategically and not relax. Look, most of us have never had to function in a prolonged power outage in 21st century heavily tech-&-digital life conditions for longer than a week. Most of us don't have fireplaces anymore or live on wells or have landline telephones. We are not a society built for endurance any more -- we are dangerously soft.
So David. Please consider a change of tone. I understand that you need to stay afloat financially, and it's a subscriber-killer to be "negative" ; I understand the business model imperative to not lose subscribers through too much doom & gloom. But, from a historian's perspective, it just prolongs our needing to grow up & realize that this moment in U.S. history is completely unprecedented. [And yes, I have written about that last statement extensively elsewhere & am prepared to defend it].
So - I'm just saying - please consider using your considerable platform here to gently, non-sensationally just speak hard truths. You don't have to over-dramatize the danger, but just keep describing it as, in fact, danger. A comically chubby and ineffectual ICE agent filmed falling down or something doesn't mean that ICE - or the forces controlling it right now - is being defeated. They are being enabled and emboldened by the day. So maybe lose some subscribers, but speak a harder truth, to prepare minds to grow up & face coming hardship in these disturbingly unprecedented times. Take a page out of Timothy Snyder's communication playbook. His vibe is more "hey, my stuff isn't feel-good, but it's real, so if you're into that, keep subscribing."
I need that. Don't make me feel good, or make me feel a little less despairing over my morning coffee. Just find the balance between "we're all gonna die!" and "ha ha Trump did something incompetent again so guys we don't have to be too worried."
I know it sounds a little extreme but as the thinking goes, prepare for war so that you have a chance of protecting peace. David, people listen to you. If you lose subscribers by taking a more sober, less short-term triumphalist tone, in the long-run I think you will have done your readership a greater service.
Thanks for listening, my friend, and again thank you for standing strong for so long. We're grateful for you.
Agree, however you made your point about 1/3 way down. The best points made are those that make it brief and to the point. Writing a novel for a post defeats the point of making a point.
I share your angst and fully agree all the supposed HUMILIATION against Trump and Putin have done nothing to rein them in. I bet they love it as it says we got to you.
Rome 410, do have inside information on the minds of the Nazi ICE agents? I don't. Wasn't Pakman's point just that? Many people reading here are aware that the USA has slide into authoritarianism. Yes it is good to hear that the ICE thugs maybe struggling while I drink my coffee, as I don't drink lattes. Because I am horrified by what is going on in my country.
Every content creator wants us to subscribe to their Substack. I’d go broke if I had to do that!
This is what happens when enforcement stops being about law and starts being about theater. You turn an agency into a costume, a badge into a prop, and suddenly no one trusts the actor wearing it.
Fear isn’t a mystery here. It’s the receipt for politicizing power and calling it order.