God, it always feels so weird to see people lying to themselves to have a circle-jerk about something they dislike.

First off, 90% of your comment is ad hominem or straw-man.

Secondly, it’s abundantly clear you don’t know what a political ally is. You’re confusing the term with “friend” or “exactly the same in beliefs.”

Me.

Presumably you’re doing all this shit-stirring because you think the US is on the wrong path (i.e. oppressing people), so people who want to stop the oppression it’s doing are on your side. Even if you only care about certain people it’s oppressing, and they only care about certain people it’s oppressing, you both want to stop the oppression, yes?

Otherwise I guess you’re just an agitator with no real goal, which would be kinda funny if you’re just openly admitting to out of the blue.

Because it’s going to it might be far more than one person.

Fixed that for you.

How many? 2? 5? Will that number be over the line in the sand for enough Americans to Do Something™?

Obviously we’ll probably see shortly, but my suspicion is we’ll mostly hold up some signs in the street or in Congress, complain on social media that nobody is doing anything, and move on with our paycheck-to-paycheck existence.

We are an inherently selfish people; few of us will risk our necks for others.

I mostly agree with you (because most of it is pure fact and not opinion) and it mostly doesn’t refute what I said (because it’s also factual).

MAGAs see that reading the Communist Manifesto is a requirement for entry and simply don’t bother. They have X, Truth Social, Reddit, etc. to party on, and they’re fine with the downsides of those platforms, i.e. supporting oligarchy/technocracy.

It’s not that they “get their asses handed to them,” they’re just not here.

Compare your perception of reality with election results. Even if Trump cheated like he probably did, I doubt it was bigger than single digit percentages.

TL;DR: You simply don’t witness enough MAGAs and you naturally assume they must not exist.

So you’ve confirmed your goal here is to get into a nasty fight with your (alleged) allies.

I’ll pass on the offer, but enjoy your day.

I think 1 is unlikely because it’s NYPD and ICE

I don’t know where you got that opinion from. Such things are truly routine for large local and most federal agencies. You don’t hear about it for the same reason you don’t hear people discussing gum chewing techniques; it’s simply mundane and near-universal to them. There’s going to be crossover between ICE and some of the more frequent federal deputizers, i.e. the U.S. Marshalls. I know this because I used to be a cop and plenty of my colleagues would be routinely snatched up and deputized for some quick federal thing, which was treated as an absolute nothing burger by all parties.

Comforting yourself with the idea that your opponent is so overwhelmingly incompetent that there’s no way they could do anything dangerous is such a bad plan.

2 is true broadly because there isn’t a law forbidding it in general, but there is a law against lying about being a public servant.

Frankly, I read the New York statute on the matter the other day and it didn’t give me a clear idea that what they (allegedly) did in this case is illegal. They are “public servants” by the apparent definition New York uses. Will it be argued in court very soon? I surely hope so, and I surely hope they carve out a more explicit ban on this kind of thing.

But as you say, it’s all barely worth discussing because few prosecutors would risk their literal or metaphorical necks going after ICE/NYPD.

I hate seeing this comforting fiction.

The truth is there are absolutely tens of millions of people who think Trump is fantastic and will bend over backwards to vocally support him for virtually anything he does. Some of those people have Reddit accounts. Most of those frequent /r/conservative.

Are there bots among them? Almost certainly. We do see slowdowns there whenever overseas propaganda mills go down. Then there’s the Twitter fiasco where so many of their MAGA influencers turned out to be from Eurasia.

But patting each other on the back about how 80% of them are bots serves only to undermine the passion with which people should be opposing MAGA. I guarantee many would-be Clinton and Harris voters stayed home because they were sure MAGA was an extremely vocal minority almost entirely propped up by bots. Just look at the aftermath of those elections on Reddit and Lemmy; it’s generally mass confusion.

My point is that we’re not so different.

Your point is that (Americans all think) we’re so different, despite me saying we aren’t and showing we aren’t.

Your version of the truth is much more convenient for you because it means you have nothing to worry about in your own back yard, so we’re not likely to see eye to eye on this any time soon.

Okay, if you can’t handle that part of the metaphor, I’ll fix it for you:

You’re in a house with a fire in the kitchen laughing turning your nose up at your neighbor for being so utterly stupid to let their entire house catch on fire.

That better? Please don’t say your country is not technically on fire. I’m not tailoring the metaphor for you again.

Your country probably has almost or exactly as many deranged morons as we do here with MAGA, per capita. The difference is we’ve weaponized voter disenfranchisement and bipartisan hackery (crucially including gerrymandering), largely abandoned ethical journalism standards, and never really properly dealt with the aftermath of our civil war, what with shaming our traitors and educating and rebuilding the nation. We were able to get away with all of that because we toot our own horn so hard for so long about being the bastion of democracy, and the world largely agreed with us.

So we still have backwoods y’allQaeda training grounds who vote Trump because anyone with a (D) is the (D)evil, and their vote counts more than someone in an educated area due to the electoral college system.

TL;DR: MAGA isn’t special - other countries have AfD, FdI, etc., which are all rising in popularity despite you turning your nose up at us for us being uniquely ridiculous.

Authoritarianism is a spectrum. We are more authoritarian than ever.

That doesn’t mean we weren’t authoritarian before.

I have a feeling you knew all that and just wanted to fight CptOblivius, though.

Nothing popped off for the time they didn’t swear in Adelita Grijalva. What makes you think it will if that happens for someone else?

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within” ― Will Durant

Not really. All democratic countries understood the fragility and flaws of their systems.

Is that why pretty much every Western country but France went virtually all-in on investing in our armament without developing their own? Sounds like Trump 4D Chess to me.

The adults don’t want to crush a kid’s dreams. We hope you guys would believe it enough to make it mostly true.

Mocking hindsight. You say that because the dream turned out to be a fiction. If it had done better, you’d never have said this.

TL;DR: “I knew those were going to be the winning lottery numbers. Ignore that I bought another ticket number entirely.”

Most other western democracies have held them back to date, and they deserve credit for that. Even when right wing parties win, they are still largely constrained in what they can do.

No? Again, AfD, FdI, The Tories in the UK, etc. etc. are all gaining on rational, liberal democratic forms of government. They haven’t won yet, but they’re closing alarmingly fast.

TL;DR: You’re in a house with a fire in the kitchen laughing at your neighbor for being so utterly stupid to let their entire house catch on fire. Give it ten minutes and we’ll be in the same situation.

The irony, of course, is that you mock the American Exceptionalism that led to our imminent demise while implying we are unique in our failure, which makes you especially vulnerable to the same arrogant fall that we’re undergoing. As is the case in scams, the best marks are the ones that think they’re above getting taken advantage of.

While it feels deeply satisfying to say that and even applaud you, I’ll do a hot take:

Your country probably has almost or exactly as many deranged morons as we do here with MAGA, per capita. The difference is we’ve weaponized voter disenfranchisement and bipartisan hackery (crucially including gerrymandering), largely abandoned ethical journalism standards, and never really properly dealt with the aftermath of our civil war, what with shaming our traitors and educating and rebuilding the nation. We were able to get away with all of that because we toot our own horn so hard for so long about being the bastion of democracy, and the world largely agreed with us.

So we still have backwoods y’allQaeda training grounds who vote Trump because anyone with a (D) is the (D)evil, and their vote counts more than someone in an educated area due to the electoral college system.

TL;DR: MAGA isn’t special - other countries have AfD, FdI, etc., which are all rising in popularity despite you turning your nose up at us for us being uniquely ridiculous.

If it’s anything like my state’s Disorderly Conduct law, it’s a wide-reaching law with a lot of room for abuse.

For Disorderly Conduct, all a cop in my state needs is one (1) non-law enforcement person to say they were offended by your conduct, and it’s off to jail for you.

I used to think the same thing before I became a cop. Reddit was flush with what seemed like justified outrage at the obvious recursive and thus tyrannical nature of arresting someone for resisting arrest.

… then I found out some states call their Obstruction statute “Resisting (Someone Else’s) Arrest.”

Obviously this leads to a lot of confusion, anger, and division. Another fine example of how legislation can drop the ball on doing their jobs and leave law enforcement holding the bag of public ire.

You’re being ten times the troll I could ever aspire to be, especially in light of your getting shitty in this comment.

Enjoy the block.