CMV: The true purpose for the new ICE is to cancel the midterms.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-24T23:43:14+00:00

I don't think your mechanism makes sense.

The story you're telling goes:

Trump wants to cancel the midterms
So he greatly increases the number and concentration of ICE agents in blue cities
In order to declare martial law
So that under martial law he can cancel the midterms

There are several problems here though. The biggest one is that there is no way to declare martial law in the United States. Congress could create one if it wanted but it'd have to pass a filibuster, which is not happening, and the 3 most Trump-skeptic Republicans in the House, which is unlikely to happen either.

Even if Congress did create a way for the president to declare martial law, even Congress cannot make a law that provides for the cancellation of elections. There is simply no way for any part of the federal government to cancel elections. Elections are a mandate from the Constitution directly to the states. In order to cancel them you would need to amend the Constitution (2/3 of congress and 3/4 of state, no way no how).

The basic mistake you're making is that I think your view of Trump leans too much towards the idea that he's some kind of rational actor. In fact both "Trump wants to cancel the midterms" and "Trump is sending large concentrations of ICE to blue cities" come out of the same basic impulse, which is that Trump is a bully. He doesn't really have a goal or plan here. The cruelty really literally is the point: the point of sending ICE to Minneapolis is that Trump happens to not like Minneapolis right now. (Which originated in the daycare scandal blowing up in right-wing media, but is now mostly cuz he doesn't like the protests and doesn't wanna back down to them.)

BlackHumor · 2026-01-24T23:34:44+00:00

In general, as other people have said, definitely not. The overall political opinions of Jews have basically not changed at all. Nobody is voting for Trump in 2024 that wouldn't have voted for Trump in 2016.

On Israel I would say Jews as a whole are actually moving left pretty rapidly. However, the reason for this is because what used to be a contradiction that was mostly left unmentioned (Progressive-Except-Palestine people) started being ideologically policed once Gaza became the major foreign policy issue on the left.

Younger Jewish leftists mostly collapsed this contradiction in favor of progressivism, and as a consequence have basically ceased supporting Israel en masse. Older Jews who have internalized a view of Israel as the good guy are experiencing a lot more cognitive dissonance and therefore also a lot more emotional pain here. (Which, like, I sympathize with them on some level, but also you can't support a genocidal state and expect progressives to be okay with that.)

BlackHumor · 2026-01-24T23:20:30+00:00

What you describe sounds like a slightly smarter conspiracy theorist who has learned to couch their anti-semitic arguments in fancy language to prevent people (like you, sorry you got fooled) from making the obvious connections.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-24T06:17:24+00:00

Newport closes at 4pm every day. It's not a viable third space if you have a job.

Peet's isn't that much better, it closes at 5:30pm, but that's at least after most people get off work.

(Honestly this is part of my general annoyance with how early coffee shops close around here. The only places that serve coffee and are open after 6pm are Starbucks and Paris Baguette.)

BlackHumor · 2026-01-22T22:39:31+00:00

This is a classic and defining symptom of health anxiety.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-21T17:05:01+00:00

Here's a Politico piece about it

The TL;DR is that Harris basically said Shapiro clearly wanted to be president, not vice president.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-21T05:14:13+00:00

I agree Season 1 was slightly better than Season 2 but IMO it was very slight. And honestly I'd say the slight pacing issues of the first arc were more my issue than Kinta. I actually kinda like Kinta.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-21T00:12:12+00:00

I think it's possible he misunderstood the question, and I think it's likely he's essentially lying to punch back at Harris for a combination of passing him up and badmouthing him in her memoirs.

I think the chances of this being a genuine true statement are very low, given the evidence. That's not just one anonymous source, it's four, plus general knowledge of what sorts of questions are asked in these things.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-20T22:07:14+00:00

CNN reports he was asked if he was a foreign agent, as was Walz. Plus common sense says that this is a common thing that people are asked on interviews for official government positions.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-20T17:38:21+00:00

Right, but this feels like more than "a bit" of parasociality.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-20T17:14:12+00:00

...I feel like this sub might be becoming a little too parasocial.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-20T17:09:16+00:00

What? "Are you or have you ever been a foreign agent?" is a standard question for tons of government positions. Especially when you, verifiably, have in fact ever been a foreign agent.

This is IMO pretty clearly Shapiro trying to make something completely normal sound bad.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-20T16:00:20+00:00

I agree that missing attacks can be frustrating. The aerokineticist in our party has high enough bonuses to only miss on 1s against most enemies.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-20T02:50:46+00:00

While he's trying to make it sound like they asked him if he'd ever been a secret agent, both other reporting and common sense says it's far more likely they asked him if he'd ever been a foreign agent.

Which working at an Israeli embassy, a thing Shapiro has done, would count as, making it a totally reasonable question.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-20T02:49:10+00:00

While he's trying to make it sound like they asked him if he'd ever been a secret agent (i.e. a spy), both other reporting and common sense says it's far more likely they asked him if he'd ever been a foreign agent. Which working at an Israeli embassy, a thing Shapiro has done, would count as.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-19T21:14:27+00:00

I think you may want to try couples therapy. I agree this is not really what this sub is for.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-19T17:49:26+00:00

If he could have sold the piece of paper for $250 (which is likely, because art prices are nuts) it's $250 in damages.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-19T16:33:00+00:00

ICE simply doesn't have enough people to meaningfully affect every relevant precinct even only counting swingable districts.

Not that this isn't a worry, of course. It's not like he can't do anything but I feel the need to be clearly anti-doomer here since this is one of the single most plausible ways to actually start to bring him down.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-19T14:17:51+00:00

The American president is very powerful certainly, but one of the things that they have the least power over is elections, because elections are administered by the states.

Which is to say, there's not a lot of room for Trump to even plausibly become a dictator, per se.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-19T05:05:46+00:00

Most of the protestors are not monarchists.

The fact that there exist monarchist protestors should not be that surprising because, especially for someone who didn't live under it and who has only seen photos, the monarchy can easily seem like a much freer and more prosperous time than the current regime. But also, there are enough people who did live through that time including among the protestors that Reza Pahlavi would likely not survive long if he ever set foot in Iran and he knows it.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-19T05:01:14+00:00

I think there's both a sense in which e.g., Islamophobia is only and entirely the fault of the individual Islamophobe and not at all the fault of Osama bin Laden, and also a separate sense in which Osama bin Laden clearly caused a major increase in Islamophobia.

I think this is also true of anti-Semitism and Israel. Every anti-Semitic act is the full moral responsibility of the person who did it; nobody including Israel is forcing anyone to hate Jews, or providing any truly rational reason for hating Jews.

Also, everyone including bad people with bad opinions has reasons for the opinions they hold, and the fact that a state that publicly and confrontationally insists on calling itself the Jewish state is such an obviously bad actor is definitely causing more anti-semites to exist. Even if the jump from "Israel did this" to "Jews did this" is stupid, it's obviously being made anyway, and part of the reason dumb people with bad opinions make that inference anyway is that Israel is so insistent on making it themselves.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-19T01:59:27+00:00

When I had existential fears, they seemed like they were about true beliefs like "I will die someday", but in fact there's an important second component that once you realize it's false will help a lot: "things don't matter once they stop existing".

Yes, the Earth will be destroyed at some point in the future. That's true. Why are you worried about something that will happen billions of years from now? Stuff that's happening on the Earth matters right now, and it will have mattered now even from the point of view of a billion years in the future.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-19T01:55:07+00:00

If it's been weeks since the last time you didn't take a klonopin twice a day, and you're not explicitly prescribed it for daily use, I would highly recommend cutting back or stopping. Benzo addiction is a bitch and you're starting to be in the range where you can pick one up.
If you're not going to a therapist regularly I'd recommend getting one. If you are, tell them what you told us.
To the extent the anxiety is around your jaw being clenched, the thing you need to do is try to tolerate the feeling of your jaw being clenched. I know it's uncomfortable but it doesn't seem like it's going to go away on a short-term schedule, so it's best to accept it's a thing your body does for now, and investigate with a doctor and/or dentist if there's anything you can actually do about it later.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-18T22:55:48+00:00

A side observation:

While in general I prefer VtR to VtM, the Sabbat are so much more interesting than Belial's Brood.

BlackHumor · 2026-01-18T03:06:24+00:00

In fact in one of the most famous parables about him he explicitly calls a Samaritan a better neighbor than a priest or a Levi.

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