Anytime I want to know what the administration will do next, I really just ask myself, “What would a sociopathic abuser do in this situation?” To be fair, that’s almost always DARVO.

Even though I’m a cynic about the reality we’re in, I still believe stories like this would slowly wear down the right wing propaganda effect, if MAGA actually saw them.

I mean, a flashbang thrown under a family car that stopped a 6-month old from breathing and traumatized an autistic child, none of whom were even part of the protests, for no reason. The narrative MAGA is fed is that these are left-initiated violent riots, but all is the actual data is ICE terrorizing and lawlessly assaulting peaceful people. Cognitive dissonance can grow to be enough to break a person’s delusional reality, but the biggest problem is just putting actual information in front of these people’s eyes. Because they’re never going to seek it out, or get it from a sycophantic algorithm.

It just feels insurmountable sometimes to connect with the human part of MAGA people.

The worst epithet they can think of is that someone is anti-fascist.

I’m not a believer in Ayn Rand or objectivism, she was wrong on the fundamentals, but she’s excellent brain exercise. It’s vanishingly rare to find anyone who can meaningfully explain an organized, recursively-coherent single-idea philosophy for 70 pages (the Atlas Shrugged monologue) without clear contradiction if you accept her flawed premises. She truly, viscerally believed, and spent the time thinking about it to prove it (even if, again, she’s wrong).

This manifesto is just someone who made some money post-facto rationalizing it with grade-school logic.

“I like your Christ, I do not like your christians. Your christians are so unlike your Christ.”

-Maybe Not Gandhi

It’s just one: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1mkt0vd/26tb_seagate_expansion_shucking_experience/

The size of the enclosure isn’t large enough to accommodate more than one 3.5" drive.

I’ll just note there is still a loophole: external drives have sales in the $10-11/TB range, and you can shuck the drives.

Right now $280 for 26TB, for example: https://slickdeals.net/f/19091557-26tb-seagate-expansion-desktop-usb-3-0-external-hard-drive-280-free-shipping

That’s apparently CMR Barracuda inside.

These may disappear completely, or may simply be drives that AI data centers do not prefer permanently, since they are not rated for 24/7 use. Fine for RAID home server use, apparently, though

That was my first thought, yes, but I concede it could be both.

That’s rough, to say the least. Thank you for all you’ve been doing. Please forget about Lemmy for awhile and relax and recover. The world (unfortunately?) will be right where you left it so don’t rush.

Is it Trump’s mission in life to make the word “great” completely meaningless?

Your theory is valid of course - delaying could work in their favor. But my core point is that if there is citizen-led violence in response to ICE, the argument is moot, because no hypernormalization would be necessary to make a (low-information voter-, or Supreme Court-) plausible argument for martial law.

I stand corrected, thank you.

Jan. 6th was stopped because they were a violent mob who didn’t think far enough ahead to expect to be shot. ICE is not that - at least Noem and Miller know and want there to be violence against ICE. It’s fundamentally a different situation.

Otherwise, I’ll just address the martial law point: Trump threatening it only gives away the game and is seeking to normalize it. It shows how much they palpably want to invoke it. If he could, he would. Him saying this is to test the waters, see if republicans will let him do it, sure, but also an admission he cannot yet do it.

Trump is effectively an id in a body suit. That means even when he is manipulating, he is revealing his motivations and admitting to his weaknesses.

I upvoted your reply, I get it and feel the frustration. Sorry for the long response (this is effectively therapy for me at this point):

1. Yes, they increase violence, we do nothing, they increase violence… A ratchet literally works when one side does nothing and the other keeps doing shit.

Right, but to be clear, my point for this first bullet is that people should understand that by acting with violence, it won’t be a one-time “fight back” moment, they are voting with action to permanently increase the violence of future confrontations for both protestors and bystanders.

2. Violence is happening regardless, doing nothing won’t stop it. It’s uneven because only one side is doing it, like… It’s “uneven” when one side acts and one doesn’t.

This isn’t quite what I’m saying. Obviously the fascists are the ones causing the violence. I’m saying that they have the advantage in violence. They have the literal state monopoly on violence. It’s like someone issuing a challenge to “beat Michael Phelps,” and you agree to a 200 meter butterfly swim rather than a chess match. Violence is an uneven playing field that favors the fascists.

3. They’re gonna do it even if we don’t react.

Yes, they’re going to do something even if we don’t react. But no, it’s not necessarily martial law. I feel like people aren’t understanding what “plausible” martial law and the Insurrection Act invocation will really mean. It can and will get unimaginably worse, for not just those who choose it, but for millions of innocent people. It’s possible we can’t avoid that, eventually, but the rational choice is certainly to do what we can to avoid it.

4. No, he doesnt. Because any idiot should be able to tell by now if they don’t get the reaction they want, they’ll just fucking lie. Megan Good didn’t attack anyone, but they’re saying she did and used that as justification to kill her.

It’s hard to see it, but there is in fact a limit to how much they can lie effectively. Their base, 30% of the population, will believe whatever Fox News says is real, those oligarch-backed networks will stoke the fire or enlarge the wound. But they need something to burn or bleed first. They can’t pull the Overton window too far too fast to become unplausible, and either way, it makes no sense to help them build their preferred narrative. That changes of course once we have martial law. At that point, we’re Russia - hypernormalization, no tie to reality. It’s vital to avoid that.

5. Because we’re letting them do whatever they want.

Again, need more imagination here. We have in order of effect-to-cause: actions (e.g., murdering Renee Good) built on principles (state violence against left-leaning opposition is always justified) built on theory (fascism) built on motives (Stephen Miller views non-white people as inhuman and wants to remove them by any means necessary) built on foundational reality (Trump is a demented narcissist who is easily manipulated).

A response to an action, or at best a competing principle some advocate (that responding to state violence with violence is justified), won’t change any of the lower causal steps in this chain. A change to foundational reality (Trump dying of Cheeseburger 4,205,243) upsets every link in that chain. It’s not a bet, but it’s one way which the game board can clearly change for the better. Putin knows this, for example, and it’s why when he’s losing he will be the one calling for peace talks through back channels. “Wait it out” is a valid and sometimes superior strategic choice.

6. “Won” two people got shot a week ago and ICE is still there abusing power, are you experiencing sick learned helplessness that a week without a extrajudicial killing on the streets mean we “won”?

I know that word would be easily misunderstood, but the win condition here is to not have martial law and a suspension of rule of law, at which point fascism becomes nearly impossible to dislodge without a world war and millions of deaths. You may say it’s already effectively suspended. Again, I think they are trying, they are test-casing, but we are not there yet. We must not give that to them.

Edit[…]

Thanks for the clarification. After all that is said, I agree, if people want to open carry, that may dissuade ICE violence, sure. I support people doing that. But without very clear training and better-than-ICE escalation policy, I suspect it will just be more dry kindling waiting for a match. A match to a pile of dry brush is much easier for Miller to work with, versus building the entire fire from scratch.

That’s fair, and I’ll take any silver lining at this point.

Well, maybe true for qualified people, the job title is no longer prestigious.

But for the scum of the earth? That job title legitimizes them, by comparison.

I think I know which type will be the ones applying…

Oh, I think that’s what all reasonable people agree on. ICE, and at least Jonathan Ross, the murderer, should be charged. But qualified immunity is the reason why this guy and ICE more generally hasn’t already been charged.

Edit: I misspoke, see TipRing’s explanation below.

I agree with you on a lot of comments, but I disagree pretty strongly here. I do say that we shouldn’t escalate to outright violence unless and until there is no other option. I say that because:

1. Violence is a ratchet. It will permanently increase the violence. Yes, violence is already being perpetrated, but more innocent people will be killed faster, which will (following this philosophy) increase the justified violent resistance which will increase the state violence, and so on. It’s inexorable accelerationism.

2. Violence is a very uneven playing field. Yes, Americans have guns, but the state has sooo much more gunpower. This is not a counter-FAFO. Any violence by protesters can and likely will be returned 50x. The administration doesn’t even see people as humans beyond PR concerns. Regular people will disproportionately suffer.

3. Declaration of martial law or the Insurrection Act will also accelerate violence, and lead to other decay of rule of law, including increased use of concentration camps, edicts that erode or outright suspend the First Amendment (pending totally objective Supreme Court review (…)), suspension of elections, and further abuse of immigrants (yes, it can get much much worse). I’m pretty sure imagining this is Stephen Miller’s animating motivation. Speaking of which…

4. Stephen Miller certainly has thought many steps ahead to total fascist takeover, and it’s clear he needs a casus belli to move to the next step. We don’t even have a clear leader, much less one with the training and planning to counterbalance a real fascist with (as I believe Miller has) full control of state power. Do we know what the step after martial law is? Is someone preparing to counter all the next post-1933 steps that are certain to follow? Or are we just reacting? What’s the longer strategy?

5. The game board and rules are constantly changing. Sometimes the hardest but the smartest thing to do is wait for conditions to improve. Trump’s health is objectively bad, he may die on his own tomorrow, losing the “charismatic” figurehead, and also losing the demented, easily-manipulated nexus point for all of the other evil working behind the scenes. Vance can’t be Trump and once he’s on the throne, his ego will be too big for Stephen Miller. There’s a reason why Miller and his white supremacist squads are rushing here - this is the most opportune moment. So why should we rush to give it to them?

6. It has worked in other cities already. Portland responded and won by nonviolent resistance. Yes, it may have gone differently if there was a cold-blooded murder like Renee Good. But we choose between (a) resisting escalation and following our model for thwarting martial law that has already worked, or (b) escalating and giving the Trump admin a model they now know will work for martial law in every other city (just kill some citizens and get everyone pissed off enough to declare it). The rational choice is (a).

I know the morally justified, most emotionally satisfying thing right now is to give as we are getting. But that doesn’t make it strategically wise.

Almost certainly the felony murder rule. This is a first-year law school concept that they are twisting and perverting - par for the course for this administration - but it basically means that a group committing a felony are all liable for any murders that happen during the course of that felony.

The idea of using it on an innocent murder victim’s wife to feed into an already ludicrous narrative that the victim was the perpetrator is outright evil. It’s not surprising that these people resigned, because if you have morals, you will feel your skin crawl at the very idea of doing that.

Well, I can recall one time about 5 years ago we’ve seen him take a decisive stand. … Or I meant to say, run.