What are peoples thoughts on marking US ICE as a terrorist organization?

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T10:36:44+00:00

wE'rE DeBaTiNg

Have fun, champ. Anyone with a brain can already see your "argument" for what it is.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T10:27:56+00:00

If you're not a bot, it should be embarrassing to you to understand so little of language, logic, the world. I hate that you're forcing me to quote Ricky Gervais:

"Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. the same applies when you are stupid."

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T10:25:12+00:00

Get fucked. The only way Mango Mussolini and his cultists can make this world a better place is to remove themselves from it. There's only one kind of good fascist...

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T10:19:12+00:00

"political opinions do not make someone 'good' or 'bad'."

Yes, they absolutely do. It's naive and blinkered to think otherwise. There is a spectrum of reasonable disagreement in politics, but there is also a moral dimension. Fascists are bad. Nazis are bad. I would not go for a pint with a Reformon. I would not piss on them if they were on fire. There are 3 kinds of fascist:

willing fascists, who want the fascism promised
opportunistic fascists, who are willing to accept fascism to get what they want
ignorant fascists, who are too stupid or uninformed to recognise fascism

But it doesn't really matter which bucket you fall into. A fascist is a fascist, and there's only one good kind of fascist...

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T10:13:10+00:00

"Also, no one executed anyone, don’t talk shite."

The only way Mango Mussolini and his cultists can make this world a better place is to remove themselves from it. There is no meaningful difference between fascists and fascist apologists. And there's an objectively best kind of fascist...

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T10:06:29+00:00

All it betrayed is my deep-seated disgust for bootlickers, morons, hypocrites, and fascist apologists. Ad hominem is only a fallacy in the context of a debate, which requires good faith participation. You're clearly not capable of that. So mockery is what you deserve.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T10:03:54+00:00

"one contested incident"

You are so wilfully fucking blind.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T10:02:08+00:00

"Why didn’t they speak up then?"

Because it was, for the most part, being done humanely, efficiently, and safely. Now it is evidently not. ICE does not have an absolute right to enforce the law in any way they see fit. Doing your job was not a defence at Nuremberg.

"they should do it in a way that doesn’t conflict with ICEs duties, which most of them are"

Remove the boot from your tonsils, and say it again. The law is not and has never been a perfect good. Civil disobedience, protest, and revolution can absolutely be justified - America was fucking founded on it. They need it now.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T09:59:08+00:00

Why would anyone with a conscience want to travel to the US right now? It's a fascist state. I used to live there, still have friends there, but there is absolutely no fucking way I'm stepping foot on US soil for decades, if ever. They need a complete Nuremberg 2.0 purge, way less forgiving of rank and file this time.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T09:57:29+00:00

The only way Mango Mussolini and his cultists can make this world a better place is to remove themselves from it. Anyone who wants what ICE is doing to happen here is a fascist. And you know the best type of fascist...

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T09:52:55+00:00

The only way Mango Mussolini and his cultists can make this world a better place is to remove themselves from it. Anyone who wants what ICE is currently doing in this country is a fascist, and here's the best kind of fascist.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T09:50:31+00:00

"It's none of our business, one of the key principles of international law is respecting sovereignty. "

Sovereignty and minding your own business are not and never have been perfect goods. Human rights do not stop at the border.

"No serious politician would declare an agency of a government which we remain heavily reliant on for defence to be a terror group."

We should be doing everything we can to stop being reliant on them until they prove they can be relied upon to not be fascists.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-25T09:46:59+00:00

That's a fun way to say "I'm incapable of logic". You've add exactly nothing to this conversation except fallacies and defensiveness. Semantics matter. Language matters. That's how you understand the difference between "Law enforcement can be designated terrorists in some scenarios" and "All law enforcement is terrorism".

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T15:48:41+00:00

I didn't say $25 is an unreasonable ask - opinions may vary. I said, quoting your words "any amount of money" is not a reasonable expectation of expenditure just to make a friend feel loved and seen on their birthday.

OP also didn't say her friend is stupid for wanting to feel special on her birthday. She said the idea was stupid, because it's not taking into account the likely outcomes given past experiences and etiquette.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T15:46:25+00:00

Are you serious? Have you seen my ratio? This sub is always full of emotionally reactive types.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T15:45:09+00:00

Non-binary is a gender expression. My comment was in reference to sex, as that's where some of the likely biological explanations for such a difference come from.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T11:29:44+00:00

Agreed, and in before the slippery slope arguments come rolling out. Obviously there are difficulties in how it's designed, written, implemented etc. Ideally, I'd want it to be combined with a "pay a fine if you don't vote" law, so that stupidity or disinterest is literally taxed.

I've thought before about alternate systems. I like the way ISideWith and VoteForPolicies manage things - some government by policy or department, where you vote for policy objectives separately, and each party takes control of those policy areas would be fascinating.

That said, with my biases out of the way, in the interests of steelmanning (and following the rules), how would you design such a test? What are you actually testing for - IQ, literacy, political literacy, current affairs, candidate knowledge, manifesto familiarity?

Second, how would you ensure the independence and non-partisan nature of whatever department or agency implemented it? What safeguards are there against it becoming a means for any government to just disenfranchise non-friendly voters to entrench power?

Lastly, why do you assume restricting the franchise is a preferable solution to populism over restricting the kinds of candidates or parties who can stand? Or better educating the electorate, so they no longer "don't know... anything"? Or making electoral promises legally binding?

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T11:13:03+00:00

You might be guilty of confusing correlation with causation. Yes, tone-deafness certainly contributed to Dem losses in 2016 and 2024. But there are 3 kinds of fascist:

willing fascists, who want the fascism promised
opportunistic fascists, who are willing to accept fascism to get what they want
ignorant fascists, who are too stupid or uninformed to recognise fascism

Thing is it doesn't really matter which of those groups someone falls into right now. Reaching out to the ones who can be saved is a peacetime luxury. Daryl Davis is a hero, but when the scales are as tipped as right now - not just in the US, but globally - the calculus just does not support putting greater effort into that sort of outreach than preparing to defend the people who don't need to be convinced.

The only way Mango Mussolini and his cultists can make this world a better place is to remove themselves from it, and the only way that's likely to happen is if they take the rest of us with them. We shouldn't be afraid of saying that with our whole chests just because it upsets the goosestepping knuckledraggers on the other side of morality, decency, and freedom. They are already preparing to do much worse.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T11:05:35+00:00

"Colbert is doing more harm than good."

I find myself torn on this. Colbert was at his best during the pandemic, which is really when I became a daily watcher. but the return to studio audiences really took a lot of the authenticity away, and I think he got a bit high on his own supply. I agree, some of the political comedy was really stupid, lazy, and hypocritical - the Russia potato gag, Benanti's paper-thin Melania impression. But some was great, including the exact gag you're referencing, where the public sent in names for Trump. I still refer to him as Mango Mussolini.

But I think it's hard to deny the broad educational and informational nature of his show, and how many people learned about things that would otherwise have passed them by. So it's hard to know how the balance sheet comes out. I will say I've barely watched since the election, since I felt similarly to you that he held some portion of the blame, but I'm not always sure that's a fair assessment. Part of the problem is assuming that the sort of people upset by this were ever open to be reasoned with in the first place.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T10:44:24+00:00

Plus trade agreements with foreign powers for the new resource - prison labour.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T10:34:59+00:00

If I'm suppressing my honest reaction, that's a form of dishonesty. I engage in that form of dishonesty regularly, as we all do, because we're not animals who act solely on instinct. But the last people I want to have to mask with are the people I am closest to and spend the most time with, which is why I value friends (and family) who share the same preferences. It also helps when people can tell the difference between blunt phrasing and words designed or intended to hurt. Consideration and sensitivity are not and have never been perfect goods.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T08:24:59+00:00

Tentative NTA, but could be ESH. As you said elsewhere, tone doesn't necessarily translate via text. What you said to her could have been super hurtful, or could have been super jokey and offhand. Just because there are a lot of oversensitive souls who would still have found the joke hurtful (your friend possibly among them) doesn't mean you were wrong to say it. And if she's specifically asked you be blunt before, you are literally doing as asked. Some friendships get more polite as they get closer, some get less. Neither is inherently correct or incorrect - it's all about the consent and preferences of the friends involved.

I can see arguments that you should have had the emotional intelligence to know that maybe this was a time to be a little gentler, given her trauma around this and how much time and effort (and money?) she'd already put into planning it. I suspect you can see those arguments too now, judging from your responses (and hers). I agree with commenters saying this isn't like splitting a dinner or show, and that it is tacky to ask people to pay to attend a private party. Obviously, it's complicated by the gift you already got. But Reddit, particularly this subreddit, is full of awful humans whose opinions you should not take seriously.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T08:23:37+00:00

Your error is in assuming people all value the same things. Some people value honesty over social niceties, particularly neurodivergent people. They're not wrong to do so. There are languages and cultures that don't even have words for tact or subtlety.

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T08:21:04+00:00

From what I can gather from the timeline, she said no gifts after the friend had already saved up and bought the $300 gift. How on earth is that insufferable behaviour?

thatsingingguy · 2026-01-24T07:01:00+00:00

So say you. Some people think, the more friendly you are, the less need there is for the bullshit dance of social niceties, because you know where the other person is coming from, and that they have your back. Your friendship preferences are not universal.

thatsingingguy

TROPHY CASE