Authoritarian governments are always more efficient than democracies. Their flaw is that citizens have no say in what goal will be efficiently pursued. When a technocratic authoritarian is in power, things improve overall (but there are still many "inefficient" people left behind or crushed). But when a cruel or incompetent authoritarian takes control, things hit lows that sound democracies wouldn't allow. Lows that take generations to recover from.
While I like your message here, I don't think authoritarianism is actually more efficient (efficient at what?) usually. Because often it goes hand in hand with economic and social extraction, which is inherently inefficient.
But I take and am a bit heartened by your main point - while the best case authoritarian regime can plan and execute more quickly and with greater efficiency than representative government, the worst case authoritarian govt is much much worse than the worst case possible with a functional democracy.
The last time I heard about "little green men" (other than ETs) was to describe obviously-but-unofficially Russian soldiers who invaded Crimea in 2014 and claimed to be natives who wanted Russia to annex the region.
Hmm. Do you think that kristjansson was using it just to mean state-backed thugs, or were they also claiming some Russia link?
(They haven't responded, and I've been downvoted for even asking the question. I am genuinely confused. I'll admit I don't follow this all very closely, but I want to understand what the phrase means here.)
Your original question was a bit of a challenge to accept earnestly. It’s a pretty charged situation; joking about ETs led me to discount it and may have led others to downvote.
That said, I described them as such because I considered the comparison to a masked and armed force of nebulous origin and ambiguous intention apt.
Okay, understandable under the circumstances. In this case, I really did just want to know more. I did not know about the use of this phrase in the Russia/Ukraine context, so the only touchpoint I had was aliens. It was a confused guess, not a joke.
I was thinking about this yesterday. For the US system, what if the top roles of an independent Prosecutorial Branch were appointed by the Judicial Branch, but Congress would control them by using the budget and impeachments? The President could still work with the appointees on setting the overall agenda and priorities. Executive control could be enforced with allowing or denying cooperation with executive agencies.
But Prosecutorial would have to be its own branch to avoid the current SCOTUS crushing on the "unitary executive" theory.
I vaguely remember reading that Rowan Atkinson stuck to three gags for objects in Mr. Bean skits: something's the wrong size, Mr. Bean uses it the wrong way, or the wrong thing happens when it's used.
(Half of the point of this comment is a hope of being corrected with the actual quote.)
If you have the right to bear arms, but law enforcement officers can shoot you if they spot that gun, then you don't actually have the right to bear arms.
You do have the right to bear arms but bearing arms conveys a meaning, that you'd see a reason to use it, so if you have a gun at an event where there are ample amounts of law enforcement present, against who would you be protecting yourself?
The point of the Executive branch is to decide how to execute the law using limited resources. The AG doesn't have enough money, manpower, or time to find and deport every immigrant who's illegally staying here. In the past, AGs used their discretion to target dangerous immigrants and low-hanging fruit.
The protestors are against the way this administration chooses to carry out the law. They're also against the illegal or unconstitutional acts performed by immigration officers, such as warrantless entry and harassment of protestors.
> The AG doesn't have enough money, manpower, or time to find and deport every immigrant who's illegally staying here.
Sadly true. Traditionally most removals happen at the border where illegal aliens are easier to detect and where they can simply deny entry. Biden neglected to do that quite deliberately. He made speeches about it.
Trump did increase ICE’s budget though.
Anyway, https://www.dhs.gov/wow has twenty thousand examples of dangerous criminals who were insufficiently targeted by previous administrations if you’re interested.
> The protestors are against the way this administration chooses to carry out the law. They're also against the illegal or unconstitutional acts performed by immigration officers, such as warrantless entry and harassment of protestors.
This is the stated motive, sure, but the observed motive is different. Any time a “protester” sees what they think is an ICE operation their first actions are to try to save the people ICE is there to arrest. Yelling and blowing whistles to warn illegal aliens that ICE are present is just the start. Those Signal groups were training their members on how to surround officers and wrestle the arrestees away from them. They have no actual care at all for warrants; that’s merely an excuse for lawless behavior.
Why are ICE agents targeting Minneapolis? - the current estimate is 3,000 ICE agents that outnumber the Minneapolis-St. Paul police, sworn officers, 3-to-1 in a state with damn near the lowest actual numbers of actual undocumented immigrants.
Clearly this MN deployment is not about efficiency in rounding up criminal immigrants, it's a political power move designed to intimidate that has already been (unsuccessfully) used to leverage access to vote rolls, etc.
As I'm not an American can you refresh my memory as to what the US founders had to say and felt about Federal over reach into state territories?
On a related note, are you aware of the initial moves by both Stalin and Hitler before they each became infamous?
To quote a US historian:
In a constitutional regime, such as ours, the law applies everywhere and at all times. In a republic, such as ours, it applies to everyone. For that logic of law to be undone, the aspiring tyrant looks for openings, for cracks to pry open.
One of these is the border. The country stops at the border. And so the law stops at the border. And so for the tyrant an obvious move is to extend the border so that is everywhere, to turn the whole country as a border area, where no rules apply.
Stalin did this with border zones and deportations in the 1930s that preceded the Great Terror. Hitler did it with immigration raids in 1938 that targeted undocumented Jews and forced them across the border.
> As I'm not an American can you refresh my memory as to what the US founders had to say and felt about Federal over reach into state territories?
Since you’re not an American, I’ll forgive you for forgetting that all matters of immigration are given to Congress, (that is, the Federal government) to regulate. This is not a matter of Federal overreach.
As for Hitler and Stalin, your comparisons are inapt. They were motivated by antisemitism, ie racism. While racism and antisemitism are, sadly, on the rise in the United States, that blight is concentrated in the universities and colleges where the faculty and students feel free to hold rallies where they chant about the destruction of all Jews in the world.
Say whatever else you want about Trump, but he is clearly motivated in opposition to this rise in racism. To imply otherwise is to admit your ignorance or political bias.
>The main thing I see these protesters doing wrong is that they seem to freak out and fight back once they get aarrested. This is not how to deal with under-trained law enforcement unless you want to die.
Actually, the less training and self-restraint an officer has, the more incentive there is for a target to do everything they can to flee or resist. If a town trusts its local police to be fair and professional, criminals are more likely to accept the offer of "Drop everything and put your hands on the ground." They trust they'll survive the arrest and avoid anything worse than a rough perp walk. But if the arresting officers are known to brutally beat and pepper spray people they detain, I would expect people to resist detainment.
Last weekend, we saw video footage of a man executed while being restrained and with no weapon in his hands. At this point, reasonable people could believe an ICE officer trying to detain them is threatening their lives. When do self-defense laws kick in?
It doesn't show what led up to this moment, but it appears the person was indeed resisting arrest. If you are not resisting arrest, you don't need three officers to pin you to the ground.
> If you are not resisting arrest, you don't need three officers to pin you to the ground.
If three officers decide to push you to the ground and jump on top of you, you have three officers on top of you. This says nothing about whether you were resisting arrest or not.
Resisting arrest at least implies that you have some understanding that you are actually being arrested and by someone who at least notionally has some legal basis for doing so. It's why police officers will typically identify themselves and tell you under what you are suspected of during an arrest. If after that someone attempts to flee or fightback then sure.
I'm relatively sure spraying chemical irritants at point blank range is not following any reasonable use of force guidelines. They are just retaliating with force because it suits them.
It likely wouldn't poll well for elections, but today's ICE does need to be disbanded. Its tasks can be given to other agencies until a replacement can be created and staffed. The recent recruitment drive makes it nearly impossible to reform the agency. There's just too many agents introduced in the poisonous culture and goals.
An easy win that should get widespread approval is bolstering the immigration court system. I have dark worries, but I'm still not entirely sure why this administration is whittling away at immigration courts. You'd think they'd want to process asylum applications faster, so invalid claimants could be deported sooner.
>An easy win that should get widespread approval is bolstering the immigration court system. I have dark worries, but I'm still not entirely sure why this administration is whittling away at immigration courts. You'd think they'd want to process asylum applications faster, so invalid claimants could be deported sooner.
Absolutely. Especially since upwards of 80% of asylum claims are denied[0] when they actually get adjudicated. Which usually takes years to happen because there aren't enough immigration "courts."
Provide enough immigration "judges" and "courts" and we could clear up the backlog within a couple years. I'd also point out that while asylum seekers aren't (yet) legal immigrants, they are (based on Federal law[1]) legally in the United States until their case has been adjudicated -- once again arguing for increasing the number of immigration "courts" and "judges." It certainly doesn't argue for hundreds of billions of dollars for a bunch of jackbooted thugs to terrorize citizens and immigrants alike, all to deport fewer people than other administrations who didn't need to shoot citizens to do so. Funny that.
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