Pressure on Senators •is working•.
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@slimhazard @inthehands no access to banking, loans, credit cards, pensions or any government functions, if they hate democracy so much they can fuck off & live somewhere more to their liking, they should never be able to avail themselves of all of the things that democracy has given them...
@Vonskinnback as @inthehands has pointed out, these are the moderate solutions. My more radical version would be to exile them to North Korea. If they want to grovel before a preposterous dictator, let them go do that. Put them on a boat off the North Korean coast, let it drift towards the shore, good bye and good riddance.
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your "extremist" position reminds me of this short story (from @garbados ?) that i have had open in a spare tab for *months*
https://blog.bovid.space/they-let-me-live
it is oddly hopeful about the aftermath of adopting the extremist position
@trochee @inthehands @garbados just read the story and it is still the moderate position
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My message to Senators:
❝The correct amount of funding for not just ICE but the •entire Department of Homeland Security• is zero. ZERO. You heard me: the entire agency. Under current leadership, it is off the rails. It is dangerous. It it a menace.
“More training” is a pathetic non-answer; that just means more money. These murderers are trained; they are just monsters. Don’t say “better oversight.” Don’t say “more reforms.” Pull the rug. Switch it off. • Shut • it • down • NOW •
If you have to shut down every airport in the country because the TSA budget is in there too, then you shut down every damned airport in the country. If you have to shut down the federal government again, you shut it down. Your inaction is sleepwalking the country into civil war. SHUT. IT. DOWN.❞
2/
The TSA has not actually been able to present any compelling evidence that they have prevented any terrorist attacks. All they can conclusively show is that they have taken a great many things from travelers, most of which are demonstrably harmless. They also routinely fail their own tests -- missing weapons hidden in luggage that they are supposed to be stopping.
It is theoretically possible for them to do a much better job. But not likely, regardless of budget.
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Pressure on Senators •is working•. Previously head-in-sand centrist Senators are actually coming out to vote against ICE funding. Their positions are still weak and insufficient, and more need to cave to pressure — but they are visibly buckling.
Again, we should not and must not wait on elected officials to save us — they will not — but we can and should deploy pressure on them as a strategic tool in moments when that can be useful.
Now is such a moment. KEEP IT UP.
1/
@inthehands Honestly the sad part is that you even need public pressure to defund the gestapo even after they started doing public executions. The Senators should just be acting on their own after shit like that. -
My message to Senators:
❝The correct amount of funding for not just ICE but the •entire Department of Homeland Security• is zero. ZERO. You heard me: the entire agency. Under current leadership, it is off the rails. It is dangerous. It it a menace.
“More training” is a pathetic non-answer; that just means more money. These murderers are trained; they are just monsters. Don’t say “better oversight.” Don’t say “more reforms.” Pull the rug. Switch it off. • Shut • it • down • NOW •
If you have to shut down every airport in the country because the TSA budget is in there too, then you shut down every damned airport in the country. If you have to shut down the federal government again, you shut it down. Your inaction is sleepwalking the country into civil war. SHUT. IT. DOWN.❞
2/
@inthehands I think so too. Ross had eight years with the brutal force.
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And to be clear, zeroing out the budget, scrapping the DHS, returning its law enforcement duties to local agencies, and prosecuting ICE officers — all of that! — is the •moderate• position here.
The extremist position is violence of a kind and scale I shudder to contemplate.
Pressure them. Rattle them out of their stupor.
/end
UPDATE: I am now seeing reports of Senators calling for the impeachment of Noem.
Good. Fine. Do that. Yay. Put a head on a pike.
My demand upthread doesn’t change. Having a different Trump appointee running ICE will not fix ICE. You can’t fix ICE. Scrap it. Abolish it. Shut it down. This deranged tyrant must not and cannot be allowed to have an unaccountable personal army.
Still, I’m delighted that Senators are scrambling to do something. Keep up the pressure. Keep them all scared.
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your "extremist" position reminds me of this short story (from @garbados ?) that i have had open in a spare tab for *months*
https://blog.bovid.space/they-let-me-live
it is oddly hopeful about the aftermath of adopting the extremist position
@trochee regarding extremist positions, C.L.R. James wrote that "The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression. For the one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary passion soon appeased." @inthehands
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UPDATE: I am now seeing reports of Senators calling for the impeachment of Noem.
Good. Fine. Do that. Yay. Put a head on a pike.
My demand upthread doesn’t change. Having a different Trump appointee running ICE will not fix ICE. You can’t fix ICE. Scrap it. Abolish it. Shut it down. This deranged tyrant must not and cannot be allowed to have an unaccountable personal army.
Still, I’m delighted that Senators are scrambling to do something. Keep up the pressure. Keep them all scared.
@inthehands Having someone more responsible in charge of the secret police does not make it okay to have a secret police in the first place.
And if ICE is not removed - if the secret police continues to exist - then the absolute best case result is this calms down now, and the same thing happens again later. -
@inthehands Honestly the sad part is that you even need public pressure to defund the gestapo even after they started doing public executions. The Senators should just be acting on their own after shit like that.
@reiddragon
Politicians never lead. The population leads; politicians follow. Sometimes it seems like maybe that’s not the case, but it is. -
@reiddragon
Politicians never lead. The population leads; politicians follow. Sometimes it seems like maybe that’s not the case, but it is.@inthehands it's just that you'd think that at least in times like this it would be obvious enough what the people want that they don't even need to say it, though -
UPDATE: I am now seeing reports of Senators calling for the impeachment of Noem.
Good. Fine. Do that. Yay. Put a head on a pike.
My demand upthread doesn’t change. Having a different Trump appointee running ICE will not fix ICE. You can’t fix ICE. Scrap it. Abolish it. Shut it down. This deranged tyrant must not and cannot be allowed to have an unaccountable personal army.
Still, I’m delighted that Senators are scrambling to do something. Keep up the pressure. Keep them all scared.
@inthehands
Can the senate impeach, or does the house have to do it like with the president? -
@amyshark @inthehands the situation we're in requires many avenues of resistance, and none of them are completely without value. Discouraging people from calling their senators doesn't inherently encourage them to do other things that might work a little better. Everyone is at a different stage of growth out of the capitalist hell we were raised in, and I imagine finding out that their call did nothing will give people better ideas more than giving up before they even try it will
Exactly. Spread education. Spread ideas. Channel the energy people have into useful activities. Don’t give up - do things that can add value to the resistance. Maybe it’s something small like reposting something on social media, signing a petition, asking someone to lead a local event, going to a town hall. Maybe it’s brushing up your own knowledge or helping others learn. Craftivism. Protesting. Not using Amazon. ANYTHING is SOMETHING.
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UPDATE: I am now seeing reports of Senators calling for the impeachment of Noem.
Good. Fine. Do that. Yay. Put a head on a pike.
My demand upthread doesn’t change. Having a different Trump appointee running ICE will not fix ICE. You can’t fix ICE. Scrap it. Abolish it. Shut it down. This deranged tyrant must not and cannot be allowed to have an unaccountable personal army.
Still, I’m delighted that Senators are scrambling to do something. Keep up the pressure. Keep them all scared.
@inthehands yes!
And same with ICE leaving Minnesota. Don’t just get them out of one state. Get them out of every state.
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My message to Senators:
❝The correct amount of funding for not just ICE but the •entire Department of Homeland Security• is zero. ZERO. You heard me: the entire agency. Under current leadership, it is off the rails. It is dangerous. It it a menace.
“More training” is a pathetic non-answer; that just means more money. These murderers are trained; they are just monsters. Don’t say “better oversight.” Don’t say “more reforms.” Pull the rug. Switch it off. • Shut • it • down • NOW •
If you have to shut down every airport in the country because the TSA budget is in there too, then you shut down every damned airport in the country. If you have to shut down the federal government again, you shut it down. Your inaction is sleepwalking the country into civil war. SHUT. IT. DOWN.❞
2/
@inthehands How can these Senators sit back and watch US AID get defunded, and the FTC, and the FDA, and the CDC? Then, when people discuss defunding murderers, it’s not that easy?
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UPDATE: I am now seeing reports of Senators calling for the impeachment of Noem.
Good. Fine. Do that. Yay. Put a head on a pike.
My demand upthread doesn’t change. Having a different Trump appointee running ICE will not fix ICE. You can’t fix ICE. Scrap it. Abolish it. Shut it down. This deranged tyrant must not and cannot be allowed to have an unaccountable personal army.
Still, I’m delighted that Senators are scrambling to do something. Keep up the pressure. Keep them all scared.
right. don't replace her. prosecute, disband the whole DHS/CBP/ICE, prosecute any of them that need it too.
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My message to Senators:
❝The correct amount of funding for not just ICE but the •entire Department of Homeland Security• is zero. ZERO. You heard me: the entire agency. Under current leadership, it is off the rails. It is dangerous. It it a menace.
“More training” is a pathetic non-answer; that just means more money. These murderers are trained; they are just monsters. Don’t say “better oversight.” Don’t say “more reforms.” Pull the rug. Switch it off. • Shut • it • down • NOW •
If you have to shut down every airport in the country because the TSA budget is in there too, then you shut down every damned airport in the country. If you have to shut down the federal government again, you shut it down. Your inaction is sleepwalking the country into civil war. SHUT. IT. DOWN.❞
2/
@inthehands
Department of Fatherland Security
AKA
Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich -
I don’t actually expect centrist Senators to do this. I mean… come on. But a bunch of these noodle-spined tools think politics means splitting the difference between opposing positions, so I’m just giving them an opposing position that actually packs a punch before they water it down. (“Don’t negotiate against yourself. Ask for what you want.”)
3/
@inthehands


What excellent advice: “Don’t negotiate against yourself. Ask for what you want.”
Love reading what you urge: so clear and practical.
Better resourcing for mental health & to improve substandard education needed longer term - not more policing. -
@Vonskinnback as @inthehands has pointed out, these are the moderate solutions. My more radical version would be to exile them to North Korea. If they want to grovel before a preposterous dictator, let them go do that. Put them on a boat off the North Korean coast, let it drift towards the shore, good bye and good riddance.
@slimhazard
Hmm, was going to suggest the #Epstein island but your idea is better. Or… maybe there’s enough for both?Make Exile Great Again
#USPol #Epstein #NorthKorea #Exile -
@amyshark @samiamsam @inthehands
Republican billionaires funded a multi-front war on democracy.
Courts. Congress. Disinformation. Sabotaging education. Book bans. Defunding higher education. Decades of Fox News blasting away into the minds of soldiers on military bases.
An equally broad response is required to counteract it.
A counterinsurgency needs guerilla tactics beyond simply voting.
Get creative. A big one is collecting evidence for war crimes trials. DNA. Payroll records. ID'S.
@Npars01 @amyshark @samiamsam @inthehands Look at the tactics of fascists butthurt about masks. Most of those didn’t own the trucks they used to block roads and bridges. Look at the guys who occupied the Malheur facility. They were openly armed, but only one was shot and he had to repeatedly threaten to draw down on FBI before finally getting shot. I know the threshold will be nowhere near that high, but we need to start playing their game.
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@stepheneb @inthehands And it's a campaign of retribution. MN didn't vote for DJT 3 times. Now he's taking out his revenge on them.