If they give up their sidearms they can’t use “he reached for my gun” as justification for their deadly response.

Yeah, but “plant owner” is an even more reliable indicator of political affiliation than geography.

We appreciate the perspective. I would say my concern is that there won’t be much of a cost for going along and abusing citizens. There are a lot of voices on the left of our political spectrum that are very much stuck in the “law and order” and “back the blue” mindset, so even when those forces are clearly contributing to the degradation of orderly society, no one is willing to put pressure on them from above. And pressure from below is met with extreme force that’s then propagandized by our news media to be a justified reaction and that anything less than full compliance with law enforcement is inherently illegitimate.

The cops are mostly already aligned with the American right, they’ve been training to be “warriors” for decades, and the left of center power centers never want to criticize them. Some of them got tired during BLM and would whine about not being appreciated enough, but that’s mostly still just a social consequence, and they have so so many voices calling them heroes and encouraging them to be even worse.

Yeah, there’s a problem in the assumption that this is a decision for Trump to make and that everyone under the executive just needs to wait for a decision from above about whether court orders should be obeyed. When the courts say an act was illegal, the default stance for a public employee should be to implement that instruction.

Friday at noon Gavin Newsome is their commander, whether or not Trump agrees. If they’re going to refuse that, that’s the guard itself deciding to act illegally, not a choice by Trump that they just have to follow.

Greenland isn’t a particularly hard place to conquer. It’s a tiny population and we literally already have military there. The challenge isn’t tactical, it’s diplomatic. It’d be a lot more meaningful to ask whether we have contingencies for war with Europe or losing all our bases there.

They’re going to “objectively” cover the march to their own executions.

Sending in the troops is a grievous insult to their well-established ability to abuse the people of Los Angeles without help.

These aren’t undocumented workers. These are the ones “doing it right”.

Adding to Scardina’s annoyance, the men had valid work permits and pending asylum applications, according to their attorney Regilucia Smith. “They are legally here,” she said. “Valid work permit, not even close to expired… again, no criminal records—not here, not in Nicaragua.”

Or was just semi-famous in general. Some peon caught up in their shitty AI/shitty moderators wouldn’t generate news stories or have reach elsewhere. Certainly there are plenty of examples of just how bad FB moderation is, with reviews rarely fixing the problem.

Wait, Ed Case for once was not on a list of shitty Democrats? I’m glad, but I’m also very surprised.

I think we know who LAPD prefers and that MAGA is in favor of authoritarian responses, but the curfew was declared by LA’s Democratic mayor.

The more officers they have to send to a kidnapping, the fewer kidnappings they can perform.

This isn’t really true. People have gotten off on shooting at officers because they didn’t know they were officers. It’s a huge risk, because they’ll also likely just shoot you, but the law doesn’t actually require people to have telepathic knowledge of the association of a presumed home invader.

Yes, but the same reason he chickens out on all the other big gain moves also applies here. It’s a big risk. Martial law could end with him as a dictator, but it could also end with him deposed or in a civil war or with mass refusal by the armed forces.

No one knows how something like that is going to play out. It’s a chaotic situation and no amount of propaganda or opinion polls will ever guarantee that when the move is made people don’t say “fuck that”.

He doesn’t back down from tariffs because he cares about the risks to the economy. He backs down because there’s a high risk of other power centers in the country reacting poorly and his ego and power being checked. He needs to be perceived as powerful more than he needs to actually implement any of these crazy ideas that have been pitched to him.

This assumes success. It takes more than words to pull off martial law. I’m not confident he wouldn’t succeed, but if he could just declare “I am a dictator” and it would work, he’d have done it already.

Kinda makes you wonder why the manufacturers would design a weapon that needs to be shot at the ground for an inaccurate bank shot rather than just ramp down the speed of the projectile.

Yeah, there’s a critical difference with law enforcement wearing masks. Antifa, and I guess very theoretically the Nazis, wear masks because they are private citizens opposing structures of power. Police aren’t. The only people they have to fear is the public, which is who they’re supposed to be working for.

Plus, it’s not just their faces they’re hiding. They also aren’t giving badge numbers or any other way for the public to lodge a complaint against a bad agent. That’s not a system of justice, it’s a political gang.

You can refuse donations. Or publicly disavow his support if it’s in the form of independently bought media.

Don’t accept money from Nazis.

Murder charges frequently do not allow for bail.