Ah yes, if one side is violating the rule of law then we can just throw laws out the window and do whatever we want. Always bring yourself down to their level, that’s how you win.
“But the alcoholic neighbor’s kids down the street are allowed to smoke and skip middle school, so why can’t I mom?”.
Who cares how they get here? They came seeking a better life. I would rather have more people like that, than elitist pigs who feel entitled to America, and we should all get their permission to live our lives.
No one is entitled to go anywhere they want whenever they want, anywhere on earth. Why would or should the United States be any different? The only people entitled to any country are the citizens of that country.
The reason someone would care about this is because society is maintained by rule of law.
Another reason is that we do not live in a post scarcity utopia, and resources are not unlimited.
I know it’s not the same, but do you support China sending immigrants to Tibet and annexing the country? How about the rest of their neighbors and the South China Sea? What about Russia doing the same in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea?
If national autonomy is something to be respected then border laws and immigration laws have to be as well. If you only agree with those things only for non-wealthy countries like the US and EU members, which I suspect might be the case, I would call that biased and hypocritical.
That’s my point, there never was anything to fear for the rich. They don’t fear guns in the hands of the people because they know that they’re safe. They know a few AR-15s are not a threat to them.
Looking at the difference in how the police handled peaceful protests when the protesters were openly and obviously armed compared to when they weren’t, the boots on the ground doing the enforcement are the ones who care.
It’s not the rich who will be breaking into your house in the middle of the night to disappear you.
Plus, as we’ve seen recently, even when there’s a actual fascist taking power and trampling on people’s civil liberties, people aren’t actually going to use their guns.
Do not trust that the amount Americans will bend in the face of tyranny is infinite. They colonists attempted years of bargaining and peaceful solutions before the revolution. Only 20-30% of the population at the max think Trump is an actual fascist who will seize power and overthrow the democracy, and that group is both the least armed and most violence averse. It will take something completely overt and undeniable to get people to throw what comfort they have in life away to initiate armed rebellion.
This doesn’t mean the right move is to give up that option completely and hope that capitulation isn’t too bad.
I will preface this by saying I do not agree with how this administration is enforcing immigration law, and triple disagree with how they are removing legal status from people to get easy deportations. It is being done both stupidly and cruelly. ICE should be uniformed and identifiable, and all law enforcement should be held to the highest standards.
That said, an asylum seeker is just that, an asylum seeker and not an illegal immigrant. Lumping them in with illegal immigrants to help whitewash illegal immigration is, in my opinion, as much a contributor to the problem as those claiming asylum seekers are lying. Both sides of this argument keep shoving the asylum seekers into the illegal immigrant bucket to serve their narratives and it pisses me off.
Obviously every person who illegally immigrates is doing so trying to feed themselves and/or their family better than they can in their own country, basically no one wakes up and decides to throw away their entire lives and legal status to go to another country. That does not mean laws don’t apply to them. No one on earth has a right to go to another country except through the established legal means of that country, which is why statelessness is such a terrible crime against the people who are rendered such.
Lumping in illegal immigration with things like race and slurs and calling it racist waters down racist. Basic human dignity and respect for things that are intrinsic qualities like race, gender, sexuality, etc is not the same thing as someone’s legal status. This doesn’t stop the racists, doesn’t help anyone, and weakens actual narrative.
Somewhat true, though the US loosing for 30 years to peasant armies in the Middle East proves military technology hasn’t changed as much as you might feel it has, but that wasn’t my point. Disarming and giving all power to the elite is still neither preferable nor a good idea.
Labor gave up their economic weapons (unions) because times were peaceful and prosperous and their overlords promised they’d be safe, and now they are debt slaves working gig jobs with shit or no benefits. The monopoly of economic violence belongs to the FAANGs and Walmarts.
Doing the same for guns and the government is rolling out the red carpet for the jackboots to break in because there is nothing to fear. Giving up freedom for safety means you will get neither still holds. A government that doesn’t righteously fear (as in healthy respect) it’s governed is not of and for the people, but over and above the people.
Human nature and society hasn’t changed since then. Hell, it hasn’t changed since wide spread written history. Go read ancient Greco-Roman graffiti. We are not fundamentally different than our ancestors, and it is the height of arrogance to pretend we are the enlightened peak so far above them.
The reasons for Marx’s statements and the reasons the founders wrote the 2nd amendment have not changed, and technology has not changed sufficiently to invalidate that.
My issue with that is putting permit requirements on constitutional rights is a bad idea. We are sliding closer and closer to needing permits for free speech world wide, and I can see this administration giving out 4th and 5th amendment permits if you submit to pre-screening by ICE and the police.
Gun safety and training should be free and part of our mandatory education system to ensure what you want, rather than gate kept by certifications and permits. The administrative bureaucracy will find a way to be discriminatory with any steps in a shall issue chain.
I would have initially put money on it being an Onion article, but no, it’s sadly real.
Like Henrietta Lacks, who I mention in another reply, who had her cells harvested from a cervical cancer treatment and propagated indefinitely to be used as human medical specimens. Pharmaceutical companies have already attempted patenting portions of the human genome, so having them take sections of your personal genome if you have an allele mutation they find profitable is a concern. Using your genetic code like an advertising fingerprint to sell you treatments or services. Selling that data to third parties. Making registries of people with specific genetics for use by Governments to regulate or oppress, either eugenically or ethnically.
There are multiple movies where instead of growing individual organs they clone people for harvest, which I would hope is just too far beyond the pale to ever leave Hollywood but, then I remember shit like Unit 731 and Josef Mengele. That last one isn’t really a real fear, but had to mention it.
Now I voted (not that it would have mattered as Kamala was going to win my state regardless), but for the sake of argument I also didn’t see minorities NOT being brutalized and killed under Biden or Obama. Or Clinton for that matter.
Exactly what I am talking about along with the immortalized cell lines stolen from minorities. I have no problems with people donating themselves to science or being appropriately compensated with thoroughly informed consent, the advances to science are critical. I just don’t want the biomedical equivalent of OpenAI stealing IP happening to make the 0.1% even richer.
The main concerns I see are if it is actually only individual organs, and things like your rights to your own genetic code/cell lines.
It’s time for Voodoo to make a triumphant return!
You will never get human trials for anything that hasn’t passed animal testing until we have lab grown human organs/organ systems, but that is a ways out and also somewhat controversial. Coning partial people or parts of people needs a lot of safeguards.
Are you talking about the Donald Trump who is definitely on the Epstein list, because the only reason to disappear evidence against your opponents is because you are also on there? I am also experiencing that particular deja vu.
I know several boomers who still believe Trump knew/knows nothing about Project 2025 and the amount of stuff getting completed on the Project 2025 is just purely coincidental. They cannot handle having been unable to tell Trump was lying about that, so cognitive dissonance it is
You’re either actively against them, or you’re part of the problem.
I’ll take this whole section generously as a nebulous “you” and not you directly calling me either “one of them or a useful hateful racist”.
Two things can both be wrong, it’s not a zero sum game between open borders and fascist police states. Treating it as such caused the Democrats to lose some amount of support base, and did contribute to Trump getting reelected. The increase in Trump support from Hispanics and other immigrant groups was partially from resentment with treating illegal immigration as equivalent to legal immigration.
Yes, the poem on the Statue of Liberty is wonderful, and should still apply as the US is and should remain a nation of immigrants. That is not the same as having open borders for anyone and everyone, and it never has been.
So who and how many from those hostile countries to we have to kill to stop them from being hostile? Do we do it blitzkrieg style or Gaza style until all the hostiles are gone? Do you have the reeducation camps ready to ensure whatever resulted in the countries becoming hostile in the first place can’t happen again?
I don’t know about you, but this is starting to sound like a lot more work (and maybe a lot more death) than just dealing with borders.
Both things can be true, this is not a zero sum between open borders and masked ICE agents abducting people.
I sincerely wish all the white collar crime and shit would get more press, especially since wage theft surpasses property crime every year. I won’t stop caring about property crime because there are bigger fish out there.
I heartily disagree with how ICE is currently operating and how legal status is being removed from people to get more “low hanging fruit” to inflate numbers. Obama managed to deport millions of illegal immigrants without the theatrics, or destruction of reputation for the department so we know it can be done.
This doesn’t mean that I cannot or should not also be concerned about illegal immigration or that I should support jumping the border or overstaying visas.