Pressure on Senators •is working•.
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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.
A little problem we face this year is that many of those Dem politicians are not scared of you because they have the whole thing stitched up.
I don't mean electoral fraud; just run of the mill political kettling where you have to choose between full-on evil and demure evil. No other choices, welcome to democracy!
I don't have a solution to this problem, but the problem is as much the Democratic party as it is MAGA, as these "centrists" incomprehensible position illustrates.
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A little problem we face this year is that many of those Dem politicians are not scared of you because they have the whole thing stitched up.
I don't mean electoral fraud; just run of the mill political kettling where you have to choose between full-on evil and demure evil. No other choices, welcome to democracy!
I don't have a solution to this problem, but the problem is as much the Democratic party as it is MAGA, as these "centrists" incomprehensible position illustrates.
@johnzajac @inthehands there _is_ a solution to this - it's not a perfect one or even an easy one... but culturally, one of the things I have always liked about the Democratic Party is that democrats are cheerfully willing to bare knuckle fight other democrats when they disagree.
The party has tried to tamp down on this tendency since the Clinton years, but it never goes away. The trick is, though... (sorry, I'm getting long winded, I'm going to need another one of these...)
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@johnzajac @inthehands there _is_ a solution to this - it's not a perfect one or even an easy one... but culturally, one of the things I have always liked about the Democratic Party is that democrats are cheerfully willing to bare knuckle fight other democrats when they disagree.
The party has tried to tamp down on this tendency since the Clinton years, but it never goes away. The trick is, though... (sorry, I'm getting long winded, I'm going to need another one of these...)
@johnzajac @inthehands ...that the candidates you send in to battle the old guard have a tendency to get diluted. That's sadly very hard to avoid, when the new blood is trying to figure out how to navigate the machinery, but it can be countered by sending even more democrats even further from the old guard immediately after.
It's part of what the Republicans did, only they moved in the other direction.
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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 On Day 1, Biden should have written a memo "I have determined that Donald Trump is an alien enemy aligned with Russia.", forced his plane to land while still on route to Mar-a-Lago, and taken him and sent him over to Guantanamo ...
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@trochee @inthehands @garbados just read the story and it is still the moderate position
@otfrom @inthehands @garbados Yep, we only mulch SOME of the ICE/Miller/Bannon types, and let the oligarchs capture & torture each other
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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
@inthehands You shouldn't be doing "law enforcement", you should be doing just regular policing instead. Laws being violated is just one kind of risk to public order and security, and it needs to be balanced against other ones.
And I'm appalled that this term has made its way even into EU law, probably through bureaucrats with an insufficient knowledge of English.
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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
@inthehands I would ask that FEMA be transferred to another department before you shutdown DHS.
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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
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@johnzajac @inthehands ...that the candidates you send in to battle the old guard have a tendency to get diluted. That's sadly very hard to avoid, when the new blood is trying to figure out how to navigate the machinery, but it can be countered by sending even more democrats even further from the old guard immediately after.
It's part of what the Republicans did, only they moved in the other direction.
Here's the thing: observations about "old guard" and "new guard" are irrelevant. The Democratic party has proven over the last year (and especially last month) that they are not fit to govern.
The real question is how to dislodge their party's corpse from its perch straddling every electoral process in the country, while still defeating fascism and protecting the vulnerable.
But fascism won't die until both Republicans and Democrats are gone.
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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 Exactly. I think we have to tug more in the Overton window.
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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.❞
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@inthehands This is not a training problem because they’re doing exactly what they’re being told to do, what they’re given impunity to do. And there is no oversight when the overseers WANT THIS and are trying to foment more violence.
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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 It's an incredible story, I think about it often.
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@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 Thanks for sharing that, it was delightfully written.
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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
@inthehands violence of kind and scale against fascism is in fact NOT violence but self and community defense. These murderers must face real and SEVERE consequences this time. We made it too easy for Nazis and fascists after WW2. This time we eliminate them ALL. Including their voting base that enabled and cheers this on.
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@inthehands
Department of Fatherland Security
AKA
Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich@Asbestos @inthehands Department of Heimat Security.
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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.
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@inthehands Restorative justice and rehabilitation for all though.
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I want ICE disbanded immediately and payroll rescinded. These are folks who joined the Nazis with both eyes open. They should not be paid for their part in joining an operation for murdering citizens. They don't get that $50k. They don't get whatever they were set to. If the Trump administration can cancel payroll for however many people at the say of DOGE, this should be juuust fine.
I really want them locked up in freezing concrete bunkers with no toiletries, clothes or food for weeks, but our system still believes in humane treatment for mass murderers.
@theogrin @inthehands well, it used to. They can go to the for-profit detention centers as tenants.
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@theogrin @inthehands well, it used to. They can go to the for-profit detention centers as tenants.
That would be the ideal result.
Oh, what's that? There aren't enough to hold all the Nazis humanely? Too fucking bad, cram them in like sardines.
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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.
Speaking as a Brit and anarchist here.
Your entire political system is FUBARed.
If the entire MAGA/Republican crime syndicate were to replaced by the Democrats overnight there wouldn't be much real change. Trump and MAGA have destroyed the USA. The Dems would try to work with the wreckage instead of throwing the whole sorry mess away and starting from scratch.
