What is it like in the US these days? I'm on the outside (occasionally) looking in, and it looks like something out of European history class! The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning.

Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is saying. But I'm curious to hear Americans view on matters?

As a European I'm also somewhat confused. I always thought that the reason the second amendment was made into such a big deal was because Americans felt they needed to be able to protect themselves in case the government ran amok.

Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk?

Stuff seems rough over there, if they actually are, take care everybody! Also please tell me how things actually stand inside the US cause it's making very little sense right now.

People aren't shooting yet because they know it will turn into a blood bath and should only be used as a last resort. Also as bad as it is in some areas, vast swaths of the US are still only really seeing this in the news. I think the outcome of whats going on in Minnesota will be a sign of whats to come so we won't be waiting long. If citizens start shooting at government employees though, it will be chaos, the US population has had a VERY negative attitude about the government for a long time now.

People are experiencing wildly different Americas depending on their circumstances and level of political involvement.

If you're a tech worker and you still have a job and you think AI is pretty cool and you don't follow news very closely, things seem okay...ish. You are maybe dimly aware of some social problems, but they're all somebody else's problems.

If you're one of the many many thousands of people who have been abducted by federalized lunatics, or you have a child or family member in one of our concentration camps, things seem urgently and unimaginably bad.

If you're politically involved, things seem tenuous, at best. You likely know someone who either feels justifiably terrified by what's going on, or someone whose life has been seriously impacted by it.

I've spent several months successfully combating one of YC's contributions to all this mess. Tonight, federal law enforcement fired pepper rounds, flashbangs, and tear gas into a crowd of protestors who were noisy -- not violent, not even causing property damage, just noisy. One of the officers aimed the tear gas weapon directly at a protestor's head and caused a serious head injury (the kind that causes convulsions and foaming at the mouth after impact). And, they'll get away with that.

The local police department was flying half a dozen drones directly over this, but they are only there to surveil and look for an excuse to put on riot gear.

There were an assortment of reporters there, but most of them have editors or owners that won't run much of a story about any of it. A few politicians showed up, but they made a short speech and then left immediately. The building where this all happened is in a city center, so, just a block away, life and traffic continues as normal and most people are entirely unaware.

So that's also why nobody's really been making an organized 2A effort either. For most people, this isn't "real", in the sense that it isn't something they're experiencing, and for those that are experiencing it, they're trying to walk a tightrope that resists the current administration without spiraling into a widespread civil war.

> Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things?

If you think what you've seen is bad, consider how bad the stuff you don't see is, and then consider how bad it is for those who aren't the type to post on HN.

The news media is not saying a lot of what is happening. So if anything you are missing some of the insanity.

> Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk?

It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. Also, yeah, the "don't tread on me" folks mostly aren't very principaled and don't mind authoritarian actions so long as they're dressed up right. Obama wants a public healthcare option? How dare the government institute Death Panels to decide who live or dies! ICE shoot random protestors? That's what they deserve for "impeding" and "assaulting" law enforcement.

The Second Amendment was written so that the US could avoid having a standing federal army and quickly gather up defense forces from States as necessary when attacked. It was thought that having a standing army would lead to bad incentives and militarism. Just like the Executive branch only has enumerated powers, with all main governing functions belonging to Congress. The founders were worried about vesting too much power in one man, so made the President pretty weak. Of course, we've transmogrified ourselves into a nation primed for militarism and authoritarianism by slowly but surely concentrating power into one station. Exactly what the Constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job.

Use of 2nd amendment rights to combat government overreach is an outright declaration of rebellion. Cross that line and you are no longer playing rebel. If you dont have enough people behind you it will not go well.

It's confusing and messy, like most of American history.

Most cosplayers exit when they meet a real villain

I'm wondering pretty much the same thing ...

It's bad, we are living under Hitler 2.0 in every single sense of the word. He admires Hitler and says he keeps Hitler's books by his nightstand.

That said, do not rely on a single or even a few Americans for insight into what is going on, as you might get a wildly different perspective from each one, as a consequence of the billions of dollars put into generational propaganda and subliminal mind control out here. We are a nation divided.

Minneapolis has 0.1% of the total USA population. It is to the USA as Dresden, Lisbon, or Genoa is to the EU in terms of population.

While ICE is mass deporting people nationwide, the murders of citizens and general mayhem they’re perpetrating are primarily just in Minneapolis.

2A supporters are mixed. Some genuinely outraged at the gov, some just making up reasons to support Trump anyway. Following the definition of conservatism, liberals are the group the law binds but does not protect, and they are the group the law protects but does not bind.

In the US, Republicans managed to stack the judicial system with acolytes in a well organized, long term operation over years. They broke rules to steal Supreme Court seats, giving them a majority. They control all branches of government. In that situation, the president has massive power to do what he wants. So he is.

Trump doesn’t really seem to care about any issue really. He’s not much of an ideologue. But his advisors certainly are. Stephen Miller is an open fascist who’s playing Trump like a fiddle and loving every minute of the chaos.

But for most of those of us lucky enough to be citizens, most of the time, we’re just dealing with institutional dysfunction exacerbated by Federal dysfunction. Funding cuts, broken commitments, uncertainty.

We also are all seeing the Federal government pre-emptively brand the citizens it’s new gunning down in the street every two weeks or so “domestic terrorists” and posing with signs saying “one of ours, all of yours,” and so on. So it’s very clear that the government is now building right wing paramilitary forces to try and intimidate us. Clearly that’s not working too well in Minnesota, however!

Liberal Americans overall are: 1. Disgusted with Trump et al 2. Keeping relatively calm and carrying on, because he genuinely did win the popular vote in a free and fair election 3. Figuring out constructive ways to deal with ICE, pressure the Democratic Party to pick better candidates, and thinking about how to protect elections in 2026 and 2028.

On a day to day basis, life feels normal where I live, for me, for now.

> Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is saying. But I'm curious to hear Americans view on matters?

The US media is downplaying things because they are terrified of Trump, who now has either direct or indirect control of most of it.

If you're talking about EU media, I can't assess, but I did see a clip of an Italian news crew getting harassed in Minneapolis that's fairly accurate.

It's bad. Really bad. I never thought this would happen in the US. But it's also inept. Really inept. Minnesota is super-majority white, but has taken great pride in being a home for refugee communities, and has gained many from around the world. Minnesotans are, of all the places I've lived in the world, the most open-hearted, caring, and upright moral I've encountered as a group. Hard winters make people trust community. The Georgy Floyd murders, and the riots afterwards, have made communities very strong as they had to watch out for each other, there were no police that were going to come.

For this area with hundreds of thousands people, there are only 600 cops, but 3000 ICE/CBP agents swarming it, a HUGE chunk of their forces. Yet people self-organized to watch out for their schools and their neighbors. Churches serve as central places for people to volunteer to deliver meals to families that can not leave the house due to the racialize abduction of people. Several police chiefs have held news conferences where they say in so many words "You know I'm not a liburul but my officers with brown skin are all getting harassed by ICE when they're off duty, until the show that they are cops, and that's pretty bad." A Republican candidate for Governor withdrew his candidacy because he felt he couldn't be part of a political party that was doing such racialized violence against his own people, and his job was literally to be a defense lawyer to cops accused of wrongdoing!

The deaths are so tragic, but because Minnesotans have been so well organized, so stoic, so non-violent, it fully exposes ICE/CBD for the political terror campaign that they are. That the entire endeavor has nothing to do with enforcing the law, it's all about punishing Minnesota for being Minnesota, for its politics, for its people. If the legal deployment of cameras and whistles and insults and yells is enough to defeat masked goons who wave guns in people faces, assault non-violent people with pepper sprays directly to the eyes, and tear-gas canisters thrown at daycares, then these stupid SA-wannabes are not going to win.

I live in a coastal California bubble that's even whiter than Minnesota, but here we are all rooting for Minnesota. I was talking to another parent today at the elementary school, an immigrant from Spain, a doctor, whose husband is from Minnesota. They are rethinking their choice of staying in the US.

The second amendment thing was always a charade. There are a few people that think it's for protection from the government, but what they really mean is it's for shooting liberals. There's no grander principle. There are a bunch of people that enjoy guns as a hobby, and support the 2nd amendment for that. But we all know that the time for armed defense against the government is only when you're in a bunker in woods or when you're storming the capital to overturn an election because you've been tricked into saying it's a fraudulent election.

They are buffoons, as the Nazis were, but they are very unpopular buffoons and I think the past week shows that after a few more years of grand struggle, normal americans will win. It will be hard. We need to have truth and reconciliation afterwards, and the lack of that after the Civil War and after January 6 are huge causes in today's struggles.

I'm just glad Minnesota is defeating ICE/CBP, as many states would give in to violence faster, and many states would give up faster.

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Outside of a couple of outlier cities, is business as usual. Deportations have been occurring for much longer than Trump has been president. It's just in the news now because Democrats want to make a spectacle out of it.

Most people want illegals removed.

To put things in perspective, US is a massive country. All this news is coming from one tier 3 city. (Roughly speaking LA, NYC etc being tier 1. Seattle, Dallas etc being tier 2)

> What is it like in the US these days?

For the average American citizen, status quo.

For the scofflaws and illegal immigrants, the realization that accountability for their actions might be right around the corner must be unnerving.