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Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests
280 sapphicsnail 358 6/9/2025, 10:21:09 PM cnn.com ↗
"At stake is a fundamental component of the framework of US constitutional democracy. It begins with the principle, enshrined in law, that military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law.
Most fundamentally, the founders of the American republic understood very clearly that concentrated military power, loyal to a single man, could be used to achieve total control by that person. And they had a historical example in mind: Rome — a republic governed by the people and the Senate — was transformed into an empire ruled by an emperor as a result of the Roman army being turned against its citizens."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-06-09/trump-...
serious question: are Countries such as Italy, France etc not a democracy?
All of them are, verbatim from wikipedia, "a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population.". Ditto for spain Guardia Civil, and many of the countries listed in that same wiki page: Algeria, Netherlands, Poland, Argentina, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Chile, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie
They are, but not in the the "framework of US constitutional democracy." A system for which we have more evidence of stability than either of Italy or France's modern republics. (Note, too, les gendarmes' heritage: imperial France. Also, gendarmes aren't usually deployed overseas. They are, in a sense, more similar to the FBI than the U.S. Marines.)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sz2QN8_VvoM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
The people coming will be coming for a variety of reasons but it won't be to take the jobs of the uneducated Americans
The Nazis leveraged hatred towards minorities as a wedge to force their totalitarian control over Germany's state and society. They built up a ficticious enemy within, they inflamed society against that enemy, and proceeded to promise they would eliminate that enemy if the were granted total control over everyone and everything.
It's no coincidence that Trump is targeting California to fabricate a crisis and rapidly escalate the issue he created himself, specially how he forced the unjustified and illegal deployment of national guard and the armed forces. The goal is clearly not illegal aliens standing next to Home Depots. The goal is to force a scenario where loyalists in the armed forces target any opposition. It's no coincidence Trump has been threatening the governor of California with prison for the crime of "running for elections" at the time he's announcing deploying armed forces in California without authorization or legal standing and against the will of the governor of California.
It was a multi-million dollar if-statement that copied the expertise of the relevant law into a permanently legacy expert system.
Doing anything besides that would be illegal. But that also means there is no cross-referencing or vendor enforcement of fraud.
It did things like check if sone tax-related status code was valid for the indicated home country of emigration. It didn’t do things like check against a national database for an SSN.
It basically punished people for filling out forms incorrectly or not being able to scan a document.
We didn’t get new regulations every quarter or ever. I dunno what the point was.
Even if we had a perfect e-verify system that magically guaranteed the result was accurate, it probably wouldn't make a difference. Not while it's use is "optional" in states like Texas.
No, it’s much better to go harass people who aren’t in republican circles. Us vs them. Round up some illegals, make some examples, stick it to the democrats (who loosened the borders and are complicit). Trump is strong, and finally cracking down on all of this illegal nonsense, hoo rah!!
It’s all theater, that’s what Trump is - a darn good showman. Some illegals will get deported, eventually some of his core will see him as the thug he is. We just need to ensure democrats have a viable candidate lined up…ideally a white southern man. Clearly the push to elect a woman isn’t working at this time - we’ve tried it twice and Americans vote Trump instead.
I had a really good chuckle on this one. You may it sound like those ("we") who tried (and not only once) are not Americans.
Joking aside: these (voting Trump, and/or ready to shoot and even kill fellow countrymen) are ALL Americans. None of them were brought and installed by Stalin's tanks, when he purged half of Europe, post WWII, and forced migrated his mujiks all over, while moving local populations to Siberia. So - ought to eat American [own] "food" now, and probably for some time to come.
If you're implying that employers of illegal immigration are hard to find, it's really not. Any farmer who receives subsidies (which is most of them) has to submit all sorts of paper trails, and if they have both no employees and no fancy farm-automation equipment, then it's pretty easy to check if they have illegal immigrants.
Hell, a single surveillance drone during harvest season could do 90% of your work. Work you're already doing if you're looking for illegal immigrants. "Gee I have no idea why a bunch of illegal immigrants harvested all my fruit for free", yeah pull the other one.
This does not eliminate illegal labor completely but significantly reduces it.
Second, I disagree. It's important to disincentivize both the supply and demand. Right now, employees of illegal immigrants suffer no negative consequences when caught... so they keep in doing it. Which means that these mass deportations are purely performative, and the next wave of immigrants will get the same jobs.
If you want something like this to work, federal agents need to do it.
Doing the arrests? Sure. Intimidating protesters for partisan messaging while desecrating the honour of our armed forces? No.
And if illegals are such a problem, why do the Republicans toady up to the corporations that perpetuate and profit from it?
Afterwards, and from the outside, it looks and sounds like ... well read some history about attempts to 'restore proper order'. The outcome and progression is entirely and sadly predictable.
It's been about 80 years since WWII. Are we doomed to repeat this on an 80 year cycle, when the last generation who went through this passes from the scene?
So - maybe not doomed to an 80 year cycle, as life expectancy changes, and/or as cultural memory changes due to more/better records.
But in broad strokes... yes.
That said, what the current administration is doing is almost like they're following a manual other countries followed on their road to nationalistic decline and all the right people in places of power seem to know this. I wonder if they're ready for it? My observation is that the previous administration had four years to pass laws and measures based on trump's first four years and they didn't, which tells me there is really no stopping what is to come.
The planned decline of America won't be like other countries because of post-WW2 "super power" repositioning of country and it's critical role in global trade, communications and finance. All of humanity might suffer, at least that's my fear.
On the other hand, I like to think that if things turn sour and gruesome very fast, the American public might react to that well enough to make a u-turn.
Yeah, the decline of the British Empire is starting to look sedate and well-managed compared to this.
I'm sure because the USA was there to pick up any slack that Britain dropped, in a way that China is not doing with the USA.
I'm in LA right now. If I didn't read the news I wouldn't know anything is up.
Graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...
Republicans get primaried for supporting Dems.
This creates the reality which is sold in their information and news networks. Dems always have bad bills, and see - no Republican is supporting it.
Governor Wilson called up the National Guard, actually; subsequently, at Governor Wilson's request, and coordinating planning with both the Governor and Mayor Bradley of LA, President Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Guard, and called up the Marines, and deployed the federal and federalized forces (including, also, federal law enforcement) in close cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement to restore order.
That is very different from the situation presently.
The national guard and the marines are not trained in crowd control. They are trained in combat situations. They have no role to play here, at best they just make people angry, at worse could perpetuate a massacre.
You think any individual marine will follow their conscience and step in if they see an abuse of power by authority?
The Ghorman massacre in the recently aired season 2 of Star Wars Andor is the playbook version of this.
I don't think the US is there yet, but the direction seems about right. As you say, step by step.
Andor was great. I really enjoyed it. It's the AI robots you should really worry about.
It’s usually too much for people to contemplate that things are going to end.
Or worse, it’s bad faith, and it’s shared to lull people into accepting the change.
One of the clear things is that the right side of the political sphere is no longer constrained to narratives that have accurate correspondence to reality.
Even if this blows over, there will be something else, and then something else - and some superficially plausible rationale that contradicts previous positions.
And people who’ve seen this before will point it out - but people in the hall of mirrors will be stuck dealing with whatever is being reflected around them.
It’s genuinely cognitively hard to reason past such things, especially if reasoning past them is done alone - because then you are now stuck feeling like you are outside of your group - worse, you might have to join the people you were angry with.
This is one reason it takes a long time (months, years) to travel this distance - you can’t mentally switch allegiances and world views in a moment. There’s too many interconnected beliefs, actions - neurons.
But for people who’ve seen this before, it’s pretty clear cut.
The Governor requested federal help. Legally different.
I edited this post because riots implies they weren't burning down their own neighborhoods because they didn't actually own anything there and had not been prevented from owning anything. Certain groups love to post the actually affected Korean store owners, but it's a gross one minority group was pitted against another to prove racism was ok in retrospect to cause the conflict.
You need electoral reform post haste - but I do not seed even a start to that discussion, so I think you are hosed. Might not be Dictator Trump, but maybe Vance or some other guy who succeeds in this game.
And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't. The democrats are too slow to recognize the problem and even if they eventually do, there are no majorities to change the system. And finally: Democracy needs at least two parties - democrats cannot be expected to keep branches of the government forever. You need a sane and democratic second party. Republicans ain't it - but the current system gives them success, so why change?!
We tossed that all aside in the 1930s via threatening to pack the Supreme court. Federal powers are now everything because interstate commerce is now everything and without a functional 10A and with delegation to executive agencies POTUS approaches God level.
EDIT: It was US President George H. W. Bush ...
I agree that Trump is unlikely to turn into a dictator. But Caesar wasn't Rome's last dictator. And he wasn't the first to march on Rome.
Precedents are being set. Regardless of your views on illegal immigration, what's going on should be concerning because eventually someone with strong views you don't agree with will be in power, and if they can just arrest members of Congress, openly defy courts, ship ideological opponents to Guantanamo and send Marines into states they don't like, we're all going to be poorer for it. (If this shit stands, I'd argue the next Democrat in the White House should go FDR on the system.)
From an outsider's view, everything looks so performative and fabricated to be consumed by a tv target audience. I mean, if there is so much illegal immigration in the US, is it the most effective use of resources to target a TV cliche that would gather a residual number of people?
The image the Trump administration conveys goes way beyond targeted hate. They appear to be replaying the Nazi playbook of persecuting minorities as a strategy to wedge in totalitarian control over a nation and society. Illegal immigrants just so happen to be the path of least resistance in the US.
So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.
Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the U.S., according to people familiar with the meeting.
Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-...
I think this makes it even scarier. This means the goal is clearly not establishing sound policy, but to output propaganda that is designed to be easily consumed by TV audiences. It is beyond reality because it is not designed to make sense, it is designed to make sense to TV consumers by feeding on the context they get from their TV tropes. The Mexicans hanging around in Home Depots is a TV cliche that's recognized by people living wel beyond any Home Depot.
The best is Trump crowing about historically low unemployment numbers, and then peddling hysteria about illegals "taking American jobs." None of his degenerate followers care that this argument is stupid, and calls them stupid.
Now it's been papered over with other excuses, like the mythical "fentanyl" that's pouring in from Canada.
So, you know, maybe they could try to do what they said they'd do for once?
Whether it’s good public policy is neither here nor there, so long as our Leader is right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
Safe? When manned by actors known to shoot journalists in the head with “less lethal” weapons?
ADS operators would be exposed to more than the standard maximum permissible exposure (MPE) limits for RF energy, and military use requires an exception to these exposure limits
According to Wired, the ADS has been rejected for fielding in Iraq due to Pentagon fears that it would be regarded as an instrument of torture
Seems to have problems on both ends.
One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kill-l-police-attacked-fireworks-...
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said "you had people who were...attacking police officers, deputy sheriffs and causing a lot of destruction."
The 101 Freeway shut down Sunday evening two times due to protesters on an overpass throwing rocks, debris, and firecrackers at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles.
Footage on Sunday from the CBS News Los Angeles helicopter showed that multiple windows of the police headquarters had been shattered as well.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/downtown-la-protests...
Rocks / debris came after tear gas.
The news has been startling in its mis-coverage.
Your effort to overstate might have derailed your own reality.
Don't know about you, but I could never throw a brick at anyone. I couldn't and wouldn't put a mask on and head out with the intent to burn cars, throw rocks, loot, and cause criminal damage. That is the opposite of "largely peaceful."
The LAPD chief stated it's "out of control." Your attempt to imply tear gas was used on peaceful protesters doesn't fit the evidence. Many of the rioters are highly organised with supply runs of masks, fireworks and projectiles. I'm not sure what your agenda is but "accuracy" doesn't seem to be it.
Once the state sets its eyes on enemies, it doesn't stop adding to that list.
Use of the tools and techniques in place right now will continue to be used, and against "legal" citizens.
I worry how we turn the corner. I don't like what history says.
This was always a well-understood risk though.
So less violence towards law enforcement and insurrection than January 6th. Action the President endorsed in January by issuing pardons.
Honestly, if a Democrat were to match Trump's energy, they'd be promising pardons to protesters who damaged ICE property or torched a Trump property. They're not. In part because they're rudderless. But also because they're still gripped by the notion that we're not in the midst of a coup.
The governor of Louisiana requested federal help. Legally very different.
They are being deployed on American soil for their force projection.
Will a useful idiot throwing a rock at a federal building be sufficient casus belli for the latter?
I have zero problem with deporting people that are here illegally. I have plenty of problems with how it's currently being done.
Can you expand on this? If you are referring to the AEA, as far as I know that’s not what is being used in LA.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-...
Well in a Freudian way this statement could be interpreted to exactly mean that what ICE is doing is illegal.
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The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions. They do not declare themselves, do not present their civil warrant, do not produce identification, and subsequently frequently do not follow laws, regulation, or the constitutional requirements of due process.
There is no reason that their neighbors, family, and friends need to be happy with what’s happening. They are afforded protection in our society to be angry and disclaim the government without fear of persecution or prosecution. When they’re then persecuted and prosecuted for doing that, people are pissed by the injustice. Then when their governments responsible is to fly in the military, you should expect an explosive situation.
Indeed it seems pretty clear the explosive situation was premeditated and planned - using armored vehicles and riot armored police to invade immigrant neighborhoods and abduct service workers and day laborers in broad daylight when a simple standard ICE operation was clearly designed to provoke strong response in those neighborhoods. Everything after that has been pretty deductively arrived at to create this precise situation. Even the language of insurrection and rebellion - laughably absurd claims for even a riot - which hadn’t happened until the national guard were deployed - are carefully chosen words to provide pretext for what comes next.
I desperate miss the states rights individual freedoms libertarian leaning republicans. They would never have done these things.
Also that they’re going after many people who are actually attempting to comply with the law, because those are the easiest to find. Meanwhile tens of millions of undocumented immigrants are still here, and the lesson they’re being taught is don’t trust the legal process, stay under the radar. In the end the Trump administration is unlikely to make a large dent in the undocumented population - they certainly haven’t so far. It’s mostly theater. They’ll just end up discovering how unintended consequences work.
That doesn't include the hundreds of students legally here on student visas.
And of course, if ICE is going to deport people in the country illegally: it's well establish by now that Musk and Melania violated the terms of their nonresident visas when they first came to the U.S., rendering their U.S. citizenship null and void (Musk worked in violation of his student visa; Melania both worked in violation of her tourist visa and overstayed her visa by several years; if she hadn't married Trump she would have been deported and banned from the U.S. for 10 years).
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Note that this affords the freedom to relocate within, leave, and return to one’s country, not the freedom to enter into other countries in violation of their immigration laws.
As it turns out when you send a force trained only to kill and subjugate, that's what they do. A few guardsman stood down but most did not.
No it's not. They just like slavery. If it was about states rights they wouldn't support sending in the military.
What I find shocking about comments like yours is the reminder that propaganda works. Someone in the republican party decided "guys, advocating for slavery openly doesn't go over well, let's tell them it's actually about states rights", and loads of people actually believed it.
There's no need to give legitimacy to the lie.
In the end, it will come down to SNCOs and NCOs to make the decision because the Marines try to push down "battlefield" decisions to as close to the action as possible. Of any service, I expect your average Marine to be able to make independent decisions in the moment. That may or may not be a good thing.
This is the heaviest hammer in the toolbox. Deploying it against citizens he doesn't like because he resents their message is a historical display of bad character and is profoundly unethical in a way that the harshest adjectives struggle to reflect.
I’d cite my source, but can’t find it. I also can’t find anything saying he is invoking it.
Do you have any specific source?
Edit: I’ve found several sources that make It clear the Insurrection Act had not been invoked.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/09/politics/insurrection-act-tru... - “Trump officials quietly discuss moves in LA that avoid invoking Insurrection Act, but it’s not off the table”
Republicans would have to lose a lot of seats for it to happen. Or, Trump would do something beyond the pale for the GOP. Hard to imagine what would make them change their minds on it. Probably not thousands of dead protesters.
> Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.
It seems like Trump has not invoked the insurrection act but instead it’s all under a different federal law. Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor, has a write up [2] on Title 10 vs the Insurrection Act and some possible concerns. He posted this about the National guard but given the military release states they are being deployed to assist the nation guard under title 10 it still seems relevant. To quote the TL;DR of his post:
> The TL;DR here is that Trump has not (yet) invoked the Insurrection Act, which means that the 2000 additional troops that will soon be brought to bear will not be allowed to engage in ordinary law enforcement activities without violating a different law—the Posse Comitatus Act. All that these troops will be able to do is provide a form of force protection and other logistical support for ICE personnel. Whether that, in turn, leads to further escalation is the bigger issue (and, indeed, may be the very purpose of their deployment). But at least as I’m writing this, we’re not there yet.
[1] https://www.northcom.mil/Newsroom/Press-Releases/Article/421...
[2] https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/156-federalizing-the-californ...
Well, I'm not so sure about that last part anymore.
Trump deploys National Guard as Los Angeles protests against immigration agents (105 points, 2 days ago, 50 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44214230
The National Guard Deployment in LA Is a Threat to Democracy (15 points, 7 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44230137
(Although you'd think 2000 National Guard troops would be enough without the 700 Marines)
The President can of course dispatch the military for domestic law enforcement, but to do so he needs to establish a legal exception, like the Insurrection Act. That hasn't happened yet.
[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/poss...
The USA is a dictatorship now, the trump cult has won. Let's hope it crumbles fast.
Yet it's clear your police isn't trained for deascalation (or at all tbh), and have no idea of how a mobile defense works (that's a doctrinal issue, not an individual issue).
Kinda liked the 'shame, shame' chant though, very good idea, keep it up!
Tame is good.
The administration wants the protests to turn into a flashpoint so they can send in more military control.
Lighting things on fire and launching fireworks is enough to create the tipping point. Don't encourage this stuff.
https://theonion.com/protesters-urged-not-to-give-trump-admi...
The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors. The worst possible thing for a protest movement to do is scaring the masses, since then they will flock to the state for "protection" and give the state carte blanche to get the situation under control.
For all the work that MLK and his coalition did to practice nonviolence and to appear respectable, they were always disliked by the majority of the public. Being liked by the public is not a prerequisite to getting results. If you focus too much on respectibility, the impact of what you can do decreases until it hits YouGov petition levels.
Being annoying can be quite beneficial to a protest. It brings attention and forces people to think about you. There is a point after which it turns people off, and becomes a net negative, but you usually have to be very annoying for that to happen.
Being scary is entirely different thing though. When people are afraid they tend to become closed off to new ideas, and look to strong leaders. You absolutely don't want that in a protest.
> The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
I think the ultimate point of a protest is to reach the ordinary people who aren't part of a movement. Movements succede and fail not by how much they convince the die hard supporters, but by how much they convinced average uninvolved people.
This doesn't just work by getting the public on your side. It works by showing that you are not repressed by fear. Fear is how facists rule, so showing others they don't need to fear, that they can decide not to fear, that is the real threat to authority.
That means they will abuse you to make others fear. When that happens, you need it to trigger outrage as widely as possible.
The problem with your opinion is that it leaves out the fact that one side is deeply involved in ensuring this escalation takes place, either in fact or in appearance only.
So regardless of what protestors are doing, or even who infiltrated protests to inflame and escalate events, the Trump administration is hell bent on having these protests escalate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Split
So a tipping point is required. ideally you engineer it to more likely tip the right way. But doing nothing because otherwise it might reinforce the status quo, will guarantee the status quo.
Horribly, this means one of the best possible outcomes is an unprovoked massacre by these Marines, ordered by Trump.
I've seen a number of people on social media thanking others for neutralising tear gas, so it's definitely happening. Maybe just not evenly distributed.
I tell my friends that we need to look to Hong Kong and France in case the protests move to Texas.
Such "protests" would be much rarer and shorter in Texas.
No comments yet
edit: I got throttled, as is the case on HN when things get "active". Here is my response to koolba:
---
At a head? Sure.
Do I think police can get rough and "in it" with civilians without live fire and without the use of the US Military? Yes.
Do I think, when a sufficient bloc of a city rebels against its law enforcement, then maybe the law enforcement should reconsider what they're enforcing? Also yes.
I disagree with the premise that the State is always right and that their monopoly on violence is absolute.
We celebrate the US revolution and revolutions across the world when governments act illegally and against the will of the people, violating civil rights.
I would not support firing into a crowd of people because of minor property damage.
So you are saying, guy throws rock. Now he has no rock. He should be shot despite having no rock?
So you are saying, police riot gear is useless against rocks?
Trailer: https://youtu.be/QDz1WVUHim4
Def worth watching with people and sharing. Very inspiring <3
Kind of like shooting reporters with rubber bullets.
This is a dire situation and I'm not sure how this country crawls back out of this authoritarian slide, but we've got to somehow.
(But to your point, anything >0% is pretty horrible.)
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...
>In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote and 65.3% (or 154 million people) voted according to new voting and registration tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Moreover, due to the electoral college and Senate and gerrymandering of House districts, the majority is hardly needed for attain power. I bet that even in other societies, throughout time, roughly a third of the population will not react to what one of the other thirds is doing (even if they claim they don't approve in polls).
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-d... ("Former Pentagon chief Esper says Trump asked about shooting protesters")
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I think the analogy will be more akin to Bloody Sunday, a hideous massacre denounced across the globe that sparks a 25 year long insurgency against an illegitimate monarch, the occupation, and the loyalist WASP paramilitaries who kept disappearing Catholic minorities. Yeah… if you don’t think those old world sectarian hatreds don’t still fester under the surface, you’re not paying attention.
Imagine if the Provos had FPV drones, ransomware as a service, and 3D printed rocket launchers. The future is gonna suck.
edit: and remember, it was a net positive for conservatives in the end.
Y'know, if we even get to vote again.
EDIT:
Downvote all you want. It doesn't make me wrong. It was blatantly apparent that a second Trump administration would end up this way. Anyone who told you that Harris would be anything remotely similar was lying.
We're not even six whole months in. It's going to get worse.
The only effect of any protest vote is to tell your friends. Hasan had a lot of friends. Arab communities in Michigan had a lot of friends. Never-never Trumpers had a lot of friends.
I personally believe that a personal political strategy should have a conscientious goal, cognizant of the effects of its action.
There’s no separate moral universe where you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side.
A voter should weigh the value of their statement vs the value of voting for the lesser evil. In a state like mine, where the results of the next three presidential elections could be predicted with accuracy today, a statement seems to have more value to me; if I lived in a battleground state, it would be different. I have often voted in presidential primaries where the candidate was already selected; again, I value my vote for the lesser evil much less than a statement.
Harris was an authoritarian, but not an autocrat. People got sick of ever-growing bureaucratic authoritarianism, but made the mistake of thinking the problem was the bureaucracy rather than the authoritarianism. So now the bureaucracy has been smashed and we are left with autocratic authoritarianism.
However, enforcement of immigration laws has been one of the biggest parts of his election platform, if not the central part(build the wall, etc).
I imagine his voters are happy to see some action being taken.
The protestors could really do with some better optics, destroying property and waving foreign flags is just going to increase approval for military action.
If the protestors had instead marched peacefully with American flags, it would have been a much better PR win.
If you pay attention, you will notice that immigration policies have nothing to do with what's happening in the US, and at most they are a pretext.
The Trump administration is rounding up and transfering people, including US citizens, to prisons in third world countries they have no connection with. They are doing this without due process or legal basis. They have attacked and threatened judges who can and did opposed these actions. Lately the Trump administration is even threatening elected officials, including governors, with imprisonment.
Now you are witnessing the Trump administration illegally mobilizing both a state's national guard and the armed forces against its own citizens.
At one point anyone has to ask themselves if this is really about immigration at all.
Then this would be a great time for him to start following them.
Many of his actions this year have been in violation of immigration laws. Incredibly brazen violation of them, in fact.
News flash. The opposition is always going to say something like this to set an impossible bar for the protestors. This type of thinking undermines all protests, protects the status quo, and basically boils down to victim blaming.
Not to mention you can always have false flag operatives undermining a movement.
It's true that the opposition will say that even the best most peaceful protest is bad. But sometimes people broadly will agree with them, and other times they won't, and that depends on what's actually going on.
There are issues worth rioting over. Maybe you don't feel that illegal immigration is one of them, but you should at least understand the logic of a protest, and why sometimes becoming violent is necessary to accomplish anything.
Trump is purposely manufacturing a crisis because he knows his opposition is taking a losing position. Polls have been very clear that voters want the government to enforce immigration laws. Maybe not in Los Angeles, but nationally, the left is taking the losing side of this issue.
The idea is absolutely farcical. Plus, we know for sure that these raids have taken people mistakenly.
It's extra bad when the government's official position is that they can't get someone back from the foreign prison they're sent to. The threat to all citizens is clear; that's why they're resisting. "The left" may lose in the mainstream media but it's clearly the correct side of history.
It’s clear since the election - Trump administration will use violence without any due process. Sort of Catch-22.
If you resist the indiscriminate purge of what Trump considers “illegal immigrants”[0] - military will be called to suppress the protests with some sort of never ending “emergency situation” established giving him full dictatorial powers.
Or he will just do the purges without resistance and achieve same goals.
“Protest voters” and democratic leadership have a lot to think about right now.
[0] lets not forget that you can be a US citizen and you can still be purged
Its been comical watching broken systems fall over themselves to accommodate trump while people pretend that they just need to vote for people who will maintain the broken systems instead of abusing them.
If you didnt spend the last 12 years tearing down your broken system and replacing it, you support all this bs. Eventually someone was going to get past the election, into the cockpit of the machine and press all these fucking buttons.
Not only did americans vote for the chimpanzee twice, they never got rid of all the buttons.
"Elections have consequences" you guys are meant to be the demonstration of how an armed populace responds to tyranny. But until I see you guys actually do anything about it, its just proof that more american values are completely worthless.
Enjoy the fall.
The destruction happens in the blink of an eye.
Rebuilding takes a lifetime.
In a democracy people can vote for the Devil him self, and the Devil him self would become the president, but there are institutions which prevent him from instituting his demonic policies.
Elections have consequences, but if those consequences are the loss of rights, then you never lived in a democracy to begin with.
Self-coups are a thing, and the best person to subvert a democracy is one who already wields considerable power within one. History is replit, unless you're doing the no-true-scottsman shuffle on the topic of democracy - if so, carry on.
So I guess these folks who live in a "real democracy" according to you just have the good government fairy swoop in when the people vote in a dictator.
At the end of the day, a democracy is just people, all the way down. It doesn't matter what laws you've written down, what courts you have, what procedures you've developed. If enough people stop believing in the enforcement of those laws, or court orders, or governmental norms, there is no deus ex machina.
Everyone’s okay with peaceful protests, but they should call in the national guard and prosecute people for violence. You might hate Trump, but in my previous experience, it’s the residents of the most liberal districts that suffer all the consequences of this nonsense.
Edit:
Fwiw, the governor probably shouldn’t have waited for permission. A white man encroaching on the city run by a black woman at the height of Freddie Gray, tough spot to be in.
> where the mayor of the city said that she was going to allow, give protesters room to destroy and wasn't going to stop them.
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/hogan-says-defunding-police-wors...
Of the 2000 national guard deployed, only 300 have actually been operationalized.
There was hardly any looting or rioting. Certainly not more than could be handled locally. Trump is doing this to deliberately escalate the situation.
> LA had plenty of local police to handle the scale of the protests before
sure, and why didn't they do it this time? I suspect for the same reason: both Bass and Newsom want to escalate the situation as well. And when both sides want escalation that's what we get. My 2c.
Was literally everything destroyed, no, but I've got photographs of small businesses boarded up with they already looted everything, please don't loot again. There was devastation throughout the city.
After everything happened, national guard trucks showed up and guarded the devastation. If you drive out to the wealthy burbs, it's like nothing happened. They devastated one of the most liberal parts of America. Congrats.
Glad to see Trump learned his lesson from the first time.
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Here's hoping this is purely an optics play and they are only there to waste money and incite nationalism. Because if this escalates in any way and the US military turns on Americans, its hard to understate how bad things could get.
Now ask yourself why Trump is sending a group (who are explicitly prohibited from making arrests) whose entire mission is war to the 2nd biggest city in the country? It's for the same reason those Marines carry guns.
As I've seen others remark, LA gets far worse whenever the Dodgers or Lakers win a championship. It is not a war zone, warriors are not needed. But clearly they are desired.
YMMV.
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If it was ever true, it hasn't been true for a long time.
There used to be (and probably still is) a saying in the US military that goes something like "Folks who can't hack it in the military wash out and become cops.".
The military is not at all configured to be an effective long-term occupying force, but its personnel are trained to be soldiers [0] and peacekeepers. (While I'm absolutely certain that one can find examples of psychos that should have been detected and discharged earlier, that's true of any sufficiently-large organization. Finding every malicious person is a task that's next to impossible.)
Anyway, in a high-pressure, chaotic situation, I'd rather come up on a random member of the US military [1] than a random cop any day of the week.
[0] Yes, this does mean that they damage, destroy, injure, and kill when required.
[1] Whether active duty, reservist, or honorably discharged.
They don't deserve any benefit of the doubt at this point. Ask yourself what the MAGA reaction would've been to troops being deployed to their riot at the Capitol.
Is it crazy to want someone to protect my neighbor's car , or business? Is it wild to expect my lifetime saving not be torched or destroyed?
You realize that this is all happening in a very small part of LA, which is an absolutely enormous metropolitan area with more than 10 million residents. The cars being torched are Waymos (which have been happily recording video that is turned over to authorities at request, instead of by warrant -- this action will keep them out of the protest zones) and no businesses are being harmed. The ones being violent are in uniform (even LAPD is saying that protesters are peaceful and those who are violent are people who are frequently violent and showed up for the fight, which is telling on themselves more than a bit).
For 99% of Angelenos, this weekend could have been business as usual if they chose to ignore the federal threats to their neighbors. Millions went to farmers markets, kids birthday parties, church, and all of the other regular weekend activities. The city has not been invaded by anyone other than feds, it is not a war zone, it's not even close to a riot. You are being lied to and manipulated if you believe any of that.
And this week, many residents who have the privilege of doing so are standing in line to barricade the entrance to schools that are hosting graduation ceremonies, so abuelas can celebrate the end of elementary school without being terrified of being kidnapped by men in masks. This is how the community protects its own, and a lot of other places could learn from that if they gave a shit.
In LA, the guys standing outside of Home Depot are the kind of guys that a woman would feel safe telling that they're carrying cash, invite them into their car, and bring them to their house... alone. These are not dangers to anyone.
LAPD and especially LASD, on the other hand, aren't the kind of guys who are safe alone with their own wives.
Sorry, this ship has sailed.
For those who don’t know the reference: This quote is from a journalist who tries to make a protest with a few billion dollars private property set on fire (BLM), pass a peaceful, with fire as the decorum of the journalist. It ignited the moods because the speech was obviously contradicted by the background, highlighting that journalists invert reality and are missioned for propaganda (by whom, nobody knows).
And then “the People” voted for Trump. It’s probable there is massive support for the current deployment of forces. The protestors themselves probably aren’t the real target of this episode, it’s probably rather about highlighting the lack of will and complacency of the Californian structures in establishing order.
And the protestors aren't the problem; the problem are the looters using the protestors as cover. The looters mostly belong to the retail theft gangs that have been plaguing stores across the country (even in red states) since COVID.
It’s dangerous to have the military do it. The Founding Fathers knew this.
No, it’s not crazy but for an unusually large portion of the populace it makes you a racist.
Ditto for any suggestion that immigration law be enforced.
I mean, Gavin Newsom just did a long interview from a "crisis center" where he did exactly that, today. And plenty of Democratic politicians also speak against violent protests whenever they occur.
But unless you actually pay pretty close attention to what Democratic politicians actually say, you won't hear these statements. Fox doesn't cover Democratic politicians speaking against violence. And frankly, if there's a 99.9% peaceful protest with one burning car, the media will devote 80% of their coverage to the burning car, and maybe a few sentences to politicians saying the burning car is bad. The media is unfortunately interested in spectacle and entertainment.
I pay more attention than average to what politicians of both parties say, and it's kind of hilarious how often I hear "Why didn't so-and-so say X?" (uh, they do every week or two), or "I never believed so-and-so would do Y" (uh, they literally promised Y on the campaign trail). I don't know how to fix this.
Trump: We must have law and order. Immigration laws must be enforced. We will not tolerate riots or destruction.
Protesters: The government shouldn't detain people who are in the country illegally. We should ignore federal laws we don't agree with. If we disagree with federal agents who are enforcing existing laws, we should impede them, attack them, and destroy property to lash out.
This is not an endorsement of Trump, as he's clearly milking this situation to squeeze Newsom. This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal to everyone outside California. Until the left takes a logically defensible position on illegal immigration, they will continue to be vulnerable to Trump's theater on this and he will continue to bludgeon them with it in elections.
>This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal
What's fascinating with current US politics and media is how these two sentences can be constructed in same sentence in an attempt to come off as "see I'm smart and media literate, I can see the full picture!" while literally the first sentence of your comment shows that that's not the case.
The media repeating "Democrats are far left" long enough and it have penetrated your head. There's probably pandering to far left in democratic party I assume, but it have been magnified to a reality altering level by media so that's now believed as the core, while same thing happening on the far-right & Republican party.
Both side must be truly be thinking like you, I assume. "I see the full picture, I'm smart" while parroting a distortion only required to be repeated for years.
If everyone could put their phone down, touch some grass, take a road trip to the opposite political isle maybe this distortion could've been avoided.
We should be clear, protesting is not illegal. It's protected first amendment speech. There is activity at protests that is illegal, and should be punished, but that's not protesting and lumping them together puts a chilling effect on.
"Too many people are saying, "It's terrible that innocent black men died, but this property destruction has to stop!"
when they should be saying, "It's terrible that there is property destruction, but the death of innocent black men has to stop!"."
I've seen lots of pictures of protestors waving Mexican flags, and of the burning Waymos, etc. My guess is these are a very small percentage of protestors, but it makes for great TV, and Trump gets to say that he's "protecting America against violent foreign invaders". And I can imagine many people watching this and agreeing with him - I mean, I consider myself quite liberal, but waving a Mexican flag at these events just makes me think you can fuck right off with that bullshit.
It's a great example IMO of how Trump deliberately sows division and escalates whenever possible in order to use people's fear to consolidate power. It's basically Autocracy 101.
I'm confused, you consider yourself quite liberal but you think it's bullshit for Mexicans in the US to celebrate their heritage?
If you think that's what's going on, you are indeed quite confused
You either support somewhat violent protests, regardless of topic, expecting that law enforcement and civilians will handle it amongst themselves, or you are authoritarian and demand that the federal government intervene with the US Armed Forces the moment someone throws a rock at a cop car.
This is an abomination, and anyone who supports the deployment of troops in my opinion lacks the values I thought were universal in this country.
(To support this action by Trump is to say you don't support the second amendment, on the grounds that the people should never have the power to subvert the state).
I really hated when Fox news would say things like this and I hate it when individuals do. It makes it impossible for us to communicate.
Just because the other side doesn't share your values doesn't mean they have none. You might say their values are evil. That's a different discussion, but they're rarely just reacting blindly.
I'm saying they lack the values I grew up believing were universal in this country.
Finally, the American people fights for democracy, after centuries of oppresion. /s
What happens in these coming months defines a major historical event for the USA, which sets it's course for the coming century.
It may become a country which is directly hostile to you. If you are American and are ignoring this, then it is no different to getting mad your family is wanting to talk about the raging kitchen fire that is unaddressed and escalating because "so what, the stove top has fire sometimes, it's a gas heater, that's normal" which, sure, would be right, but right now the entire wall is ablaze.
You cannot ignore this one, even those of us in other countries cannot ignore this one, as we have to reconsider our alliance with a country that reasonably one can assume is in the middle of falling to a fascist regime.
This is NOT run of the mill politics. This is genuinely about the collective future of the Anglosphere.
I don't love the phrasing of inferiors, but at least evil certainly applies. (Well thought out, well informed) Politics is a duty not a luxury.
And it's even topical here - this surveillance industry that grew out of many tech startups is itself at ground zero of this fascist takeover, both boosting extremist disinformation to drive "engagement" and also creating a crop of newly-minted elites with the audacity to kick over the whole apple cart of our American way of life.
If that kind of talk worries you, consider how much uglier it will be when the good people of LA form unregulated militias instead. Do you really want to see Ruby Ridge 2: Rooftop Korean boogaloo?
We are to depend on our trusted local law enforcement to protect us, as well as our valiant governors who will assuredly call up local guards to do the same. Examples of brave, novel Democratic resistance to Trump abound these days. There's no need to worry!
What can they do to guard then?