People do not have justifications for most choices. We watch YouTube when we would benefit more from teaching ourselves skills. We eat too much of food we know is junk. We stay up too late and either let others walk over us at work to avoid overt conflict or start fights and make enemies to protect our own emotions. If you want to know why Americans are allowing themselves to be gradually reduced to slavery, do not ask why.

What point do you think you're making?

> People are unafraid of the government knowing certain things because they believe it will not have any real repercussions for them.

A very famous quote: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

Many people - particularly white people, but let's not ignore that a bunch of Black and Latino folks are/have been Trump supporters - believe that they are part of the in-group. And inevitably, they find out that the government doesn't care, as evidenced by ICE and their infamous quota of 3000 arrests a day... which has hit a ton of these people, memefied as "leopards ate my face".

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/29/trump-ice-ar...

You're saying a proposed bill which hasn't passed is comparative to recent events in the US or am I reading too much between the lines?

Last I checked millions of europeans are living in a functioning civilization. I've lived in Europe. It is ok.

Don't confuse "GDP not as big as ours" with "totally non-functional."

China can

Yes, things are different in totalitarian states.

[delayed]

I was referring to principle, not ICE in its current state.

since you can’t turn ICE around overnight, I don’t think Americans should authorize ICE more data and power NOW.

It's amazing how quickly the party of small government, states rights, and the 2nd amendment quickly turned against all their principles. It really shows how many people care more about party than principle.

A lot of American Christians aren't hyper committed to the specific theology of whichever flavor of Christianity they belong to, and will often sort of mix and match their own personal beliefs with what is orthodoxy.

That said, I'm ex-Catholic, so I don't feel super qualified to make a statement on the specific popularity of predestination among American evangelicals at the moment.

That said, in a less theological and more metaphorical sense, it does seem that many of them do believe in some sort of "good people" and "bad people", where the "bad people" are not particularly redeemable. It feels a little unfalsifiable though.

I don't believe there is any sort of conservative intellectual movement at this point. The right believes they have captured certain institutions (law enforcement, military), in the same way they believe the left has captured others (education/universities, media), and will use them to wage war against whichever group the big finger pointing men in charge tell them to.

Some, probably; not all (and certainly not the current president, who in his more senile moments muses about how his works have probably earned him hell [0]).

But the same observation applies to lots of other attitudes, too—like “might makes right” and “nature is red in tooth and claw” or whatever the dark princelings evince these days. I feel like “logic matters” mainly pertains to a liberal-enlightenment political context that might be in the past now…

https://time.com/7311354/donald-trump-heaven-hell-afterlife-...

No, none of that is true.

Remember, Republicans represent half the country, not some isolated sect living in small town Appalachia.

Calvinistic predestination is a TULIP sense (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and Perseverance of the saints) is an extreme minority position, like 7% to 5% of the American Church (Reformed Camp)

Republicans are overwhelmingly Christian, and even though Calvinism, or its branches, may not be the religion a majority of Republicans “exercise”, predetermination is a convenient explanation of why the world is what it is, and why no action should be taken - so it gets used a lot by right wing media, etc.

It's something they say in sociology 101 at colleges in the US and some people occasionally believe it.

Comments like this remind me of those guys who wouldn't stop working, in the twin towers. Just didn't want to get out of their zone.

In a corrupt and authoritarian country, it is common to have officials busted on "corruption" or "embezzlement" charges. And yet most people know they are actually not jailed for the crimes they got charged for, because there are more than enough people to fill all the prisons for breaking the exact same laws they are accused of breaking. They knew the only reason these people got jailed is because they lost some kind of power struggle within the administration, and corruption is just a convenient lie those who prevailed tell you to keep you comfortable.

You never see the "no politics please thk u" crowd when it is about protests in Iran, Chinese oppression in Hong Kong, Russian aggression on Europe or hell, when people were literally running a political campaign the EU to stop killing games. You only see people flagging political submissions when it is a particular kind of politics - just like you only see corrupt officials jailed when they are a certain kind of officials.

Connect the dots, make your own conclusions.

They should be aware of how tech is being used in political games though...

There is always going to be an intersection between tech and politics. This convo is no different than talking about Section 230, H1B visas or using vision models to sexualize people or distort the truth.

It gets down to the definition of political which is basically anything that might have a human cost, including to the people here. I have many coworkers having to upend their lives, some can’t currently leave the country. This is not worthy of discussion, but an esoteric library update is. Paul Graham posts are not political topics for some reason, but H1B people is.

Technology, technology leaders, and technology companies are literally driving politics, buying elections, driving the whole US economy.

Saying what “political” topics are IS political - and it’s decidedly a right wing position. Only those with the powers protecting them get to avoid politics.

Yep. They’re here to bury their head in the sand and keep up to date with the latest tech trends like the good little worker bees they are.

I don't disagree with where you're coming from. But to be fair, our system did have separation of powers and legal accountability for most of the time it was accruing so much power. The fascists just managed to get enough of the Supreme Council on board to sweep these away under the guises of unitary executive theory and blanket immunity for the new president-king.

“If it was up to Stephen [Miller], there would only be 100 million people in this country, and they would all look like him.”

To accomplish things like that, a lot of us are going to be removed. I don't think these are jokes, it's a pattern of statements to condition and normalize. A thing he has done over and over.

Darker skin, trans, gays, and opposition to them are all valid targets.

Nobody thinks that. They are there for money.

Speaking of propaganda, do you have a link to the data behind those claims? It feels like “complete destruction” should make the news.

It all comes back to women being treated as full people. Having a child is dangerous, expensive, and a major time commitment which mean that women who have other options are going to have fewer children later in life when they have the resources to support them. We also have much less demand for unskilled workers so even women who really want children are getting educated and establishing careers first rather than getting married at 18.

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/is-the-us-birth-rate-decli...

That leaves really only two choices: pull a Ceaușescu and try to remove the choice, or improve all of the things which make people feel now is not the right time to have kids. Since the former choice is both immoral and self-defeating, that really flips the discussion to why the people who claim to want more children oppose universal healthcare, childcare, making housing more affordable, banning negative career impacts for mothers, addressing climate change, etc. There are many things which factor into an expensive multi-decade bet and you have to improve all of them to substantially shift the outcome.

Because of eroding worker rights and raise cost of living.

You need free time for kids and if the salaries are too low for a single income household a lot of people will end up opting out of having kids.

This isn't unique the the US. Basically every country with a whack work life balance is looking at population replacement problems.

> obviously can lead to unmanageable waves of immigration that strain a country’s housing, healthcare, schools, welfare, and other resources, among other effects.

I don't agree that this is "obvious". Immigrants bring important social and cultural capital. Who do you think is building a lot of the infrastructure in the US? The people putting a strain on the system are actually the aging baby boomer generation.

I have many other reasons for supporting open immigration that are less transactional, but the suggestions that immigrants "strain" our infrastructure is incorrect.

Yes, well I don't think we should deport people and I think immigrants improve the US, so I would be in the latter category. He's "waiting to hear of alternatives that don't involve deporting illegal immigrants", and I have one: don't deport anyone.

What actual, concrete benefit do you see from deporting immigrants?

It's a false dilemma either way. "You are with ICE or you are pro-illegal immigration".

...and that's best case scenario, giving the benefit of the doubt.

Experienced police officers have also infrequently and unfortunately shot people. Is the conclusion we should halt all law enforcement? Or we just enforce laws you like?

The goal is to minimize such outcomes as much as humanly possible while also maintaining the law.

We could also save lives if we stopped politicizing the act of law enforcement. The left didn’t mobilize ordinary people to harass armed ICE officers when Obama was in office and deporting illegal immigrants, and naturally this preserved lives. The difference isn’t in the act of law enforcement then and now, which is essentially the same, but in its politicization from both the right and left.

Tons of young people either voted for Trump or didn't vote at all this time around.

Undoubtedly influenced by social media, they're now realizing that what they voted for was their own future's destruction and are now abandoning him in droves.

We'll see if it's too late or not.

Delete your social media, shit is poison.

That's the question, isn't it? Why not just do that? Who are you trying to keep out of the country, and for what end, and is that end best attained by removing people from the country who aren't the ones you are trying to keep out?

For instance, if you believe the border should be strict to keep out serial killers, what does that have to do with removing Korean car factory workers who aren't serial killers?

Because we like second-class citizens because its easier to exploit their labor.

No horse either but here is an attempt (ignoring criminal record as you say): Opening the border and letting her rip is clearly not sustainable in the medium term. So you try to make it (reasonably) hard to get in incl. turning people away at the border.

Once they are in (incl illegally so) you concede you have lost on this instance. Now you admit that forcefully removing immigrants carries too high a cost (literally + damage in the communities you remove the immigrants from + your humanitarian image). So you don't.

Somehow that balance seems really hard to get right and edge cases (criminal record) matter.

Buying into the framework that any of this is about illegal immigrants is a red herring. Immigration is merely a pretext for enabling an unaccountable fascist police state using big data from the consumer surveillance industry to both keep enough people believing the regime's abject reality-insulting lies (the carrot), while extralegally punishing anybody who might be too effective at speaking out (the stick).

Another way to look at it: the native born are twice as likely to be arrested for violence and drug crimes.

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG...

What percentage of illegal immigrants have committed violent crimes?

The stats are pretty clear. Based on DHS own numbers

https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/number-deported-im...