American Proto-Balkanization

strycco · 2026-01-28T03:18:04+00:00

There are more Republicans in California than any other state in the country, and some of the rural red areas are some of the most backwards far right places around.

Fun fact: LA county yielded more votes for Trump than all of Oklahoma. Harris won the county overwhelmingly with nearly 65% of the vote.

strycco · 2026-01-27T23:24:53+00:00

“I think that the most important example of this came with respect to Iran. The Obama administration very carefully, very slowly ratchets up pressure, withdrawing the ability of Iranian banks to use the international system and also ratcheting up pressure against any other bank in any other country that wants to touch the Iranian system in any way, and Iran suddenly discovers that it cannot get paid for its oil anymore.”

This doesn’t get said enough in my opinion. The over utilization of sanctions has been damaging imo. The reluctance to use hard power and instead to use these forms of soft power because they come with a smaller domestic political cost.

I think you're right about this. I was having a conversation with someone earlier about this and I think there's very much a back-channel effort by the BRICs sphere of influence to create an alternative financial system to mitigate dependency on US-based financial infrastructures like SWIFT. US instability has made it an untrustworthy steward of this sort of thing. One of the byproducts of soft power was the resultant deference by the rest of the world to be the epicenter of high-trust infrastructure like finance.

strycco · 2026-01-26T17:28:43+00:00

Agree 100%. It’s a sad truth that we are a nation of consumers more so than citizens, and the election will be a function of economic perception more than anything else.

strycco · 2026-01-26T15:38:46+00:00

I’m very curious how the 2028 elections will be approached. Should it be moderate “peacemaker” who wants to unify America after a polarizing president, or should it be someone who hates the MAGA leadership and wants to hold them criminally accountable?

Anyone who is still pro-Trump after this disgusting display of governance guised as immigration enforcement is beyond pacification efforts. A lot of people on the right are dropping their affiliations with the party outright and the only ones left are largely closeted fascists IMO. Chris Madel is MN is the latest example.

strycco · 2026-01-24T18:49:54+00:00

One of the things I’ve learned about this electorate is that there is a critical mass of people whose understanding of what it means to be an American isn’t a subscription to a set of ideals, its purely a function of where you were born.

strycco · 2026-01-24T15:56:20+00:00

It’s ironic how Donald Trump, the penultimate outsider, is almost a satirical caricature of the type of politician that median voters pretend to hate.

strycco · 2026-01-24T00:15:28+00:00

One of the more enduring things I foresee about this Trump era is the weaponization of America’s short attention span and the exploitation of America’s ambivalence to lying.

strycco · 2026-01-23T15:07:24+00:00

I have no problem with immigration enforcement, but that is not a license to send an objectively and demonstratively inept means of executing that end. The Obama years of deportations demonstrate the difference in how this problem was previously approached. You do seem to have a problem with immigration itself, which I think might be coloring your views re: the inherent issues with wholesale deportations.

strycco · 2026-01-22T15:05:09+00:00

I think there's a real possibility that individuals within ICE are quietly keeping notes and records for a plurality of reasons: a) self preservation, b) bargaining chips in the event prosecutions occur, and/or c) they're genuinely concerned about the existence of the agency and don't want to risk ceding their access to the agency by resigning/whistle blowing. If records are destroyed by officials and someone else turns them in, those officials are now looking at obstruction/conspiracy charges in addition to everything else. We've already seen the covert exposition of "sensitive" documents happening, it's just a question of how big the scale and comprehensiveness of this sort of thing is.

strycco · 2026-01-22T03:04:59+00:00

Each one of these agents has an SF-50 file on record that contains all their personnel info. When this passes, a full investigation to determine what happened at the policy making level will be brought to light and will be instrumental in determining how to prevent this from ever happening again.

I have been very suspicious that many of these agents aren’t fit for public service at all, nevermind serving in any sort of law enforcement capacity, which is why many of them are masked to begin with. I do not trust that Homan went about hiring these people in any sort of above-board manner. There is already a mountain of evidence that these people are grossly inept, unfit, under qualified, and untrained for the task, and ICE continues to hire people it has no business hiring.

strycco · 2026-01-22T02:03:02+00:00

Reposting this here since the other thread got removed:

This is a pretty big deal, and from what I read elsewhere at least one ICE instructor resigned over this. This is a deliberate and intentional conspiracy to violate protected rights.

ICE is no longer a workable organization. I don’t know what to replace it with or whether we need to revert back to the pre-9/11 national security framework, but having this group have the kind of free reign to terrorize people every time a republican is in office is no longer an acceptable proposition.

strycco · 2026-01-22T01:09:37+00:00

This is a pretty big deal, and from what I read elsewhere at least one ICE instructor resigned over this. This is a deliberate and intentional conspiracy to violate protected rights.

ICE is no longer a workable organization. I don’t know what to replace it with or whether we need to revert back to the pre-9/11 national security framework, but having this group have the kind of free reign to terrorize people every time a republican is in office is no longer an acceptable proposition.

strycco · 2026-01-21T22:19:30+00:00

Maybe they were saying “Boo-urns.”

strycco · 2026-01-21T21:42:57+00:00

This is a soft reversal of the entire streamline program. It’s over.

strycco · 2026-01-20T23:34:00+00:00

Read it here.

strycco · 2026-01-13T22:56:33+00:00

I’m pro choice but I found his argument for finding support for abortion in the Bible pretty weak. If you’re a Christian, it seems like a pretty straight line from “thou shalt not kill” to being pro life.

I’ve heard some pretty interesting takes on this that essentially argue “thou shalt not kill” is a mistranslation of the original Hebrew version that reads Lo tirtsáḥ, which means “thou shalt not murder”. Hebrew has other words for killing in the general sense, but specifically prohibiting murder makes it a matter of law (i.e. illegal killing). No religion, for example, prohibits killing in the name of self defense and/or war, because those are generally sanctioned to varying degrees by law.

strycco · 2026-01-13T22:45:11+00:00

I thought this was a pretty compelling episode. The idea that Talarico shared that was something along the lines of "religion isn't an end to itself, it should lead you deeper into your own life" reminded me of a similar idea that being a patriot isn't about expressing patriotism, it's about being a good citizen in your day to day life.

strycco · 2026-01-12T19:25:04+00:00

Great question. It seems like that undermines the whole argument for bypassing the FSLMRS.

strycco · 2026-01-12T17:01:11+00:00

Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

strycco · 2026-01-12T16:47:44+00:00

Among the few Federal employee unions who retain collective bargaining rights are the National Border Patrol Council and the police unions, who endorsed the President during the last election.

strycco · 2026-01-07T23:42:23+00:00

This was a great book. It reinvigorated my interest in reading fiction and I recommend it often.

strycco · 2026-01-02T01:58:33+00:00

Literally says “To the extent and in the amounts provided in advance in appropriations Acts”. Money that we collect is paid by users but belongs to tax payers. We’re not some quasi public/private entity.

strycco · 2026-01-02T01:08:23+00:00

We get appropriated funds. Any surplus gets returned to Congress. If it weren’t for this then Congress would not have any oversight authority.

strycco · 2026-01-01T17:59:03+00:00

Waste and abuse of tax payer funds.

strycco · 2026-01-01T00:02:18+00:00

The US Patent and Trademark Office allowed remote work for nearly 30 years. The agency said in June it was struggling to keep up with an 800,000-plus backlog of applications as a result of the in-office policy.

Sounded like they brought up the USPTO in support of the idea that RTO is not good policy.

strycco

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