An open thread

Going on a tangent here, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around what animates these militia, white power, and Christian nationalist types. Is it that hard to be happy and chill the f**k out?

I’m sure it’s the fault of all the woke social justice warriors who get upset when right-wingers try to make vulnerable people’s lives worse. Maybe don’t f**k with other people so much?

I don’t know. It’s crazy and exhausting. I’m becoming increasingly disgusted by human nature. I was starting think we were in the early stages of turning away from this bullsh*t, but that’s been put to rest.

Happy New Year…

“what animates these militia, white power, and Christian nationalist types”

I’ll pretend to be a mind reader for a minute and take a guess.

For some, fear, that they are unable to acknowledge, so they compensate.

And some people are just fucking bullies.

“…, having only his cellphone footage to go by, …”

There’s a reason for LEOs to wear body cams. Had he been wearing one, it might be clearer exactly what happened.

Maybe they thought they would simply make their escape after having had their activist fun.

Yeah. “Activist fun.” I’m sure that there are some thrill seekers sprinkled through those crowds – mostly energy drink aged males looking to prove their courage – but given all we have seen of this administrations violence and disregard for civil rights and the rule of law, most all of those folks who are showing up are there despite the danger.

Moms with young kids being so well known for seeking out potentially deadly encounters just for fun because they saw it on the internet…

Fuck that guy and his glib dismissiveness. Fuck his lack of empathy for anyone outside of his own in-group. I wish him a heavy lesson in karma.

Even the science guy didn’t mention that she backed up before going forward (going forward while steering to the right, which he does mention).

If Renee Good was trying to kill the guy, she was really bad at it and had very little idea of how to operate a vehicle. Also, too, Ross was really bad at getting out of the way if that’s was he was trying to do.

Take a deep breath, Tiny. A slow deep breath.

Charles was actually agreeing with you. If these thugs were real law enforcement, they would routinely wear body cams. (Which, be it noted, are also real useful if there’s an actual court case to be made in these situations.). The reason they weren’t wearing them is that they are nothing like real law enforcement.

I am reminded of an acquaintance who was in Chicago in 1968, and his advice for protesters.

• If you have to drive to the site, leave your car well away from the action because any moving car is threatening.
• Don’t carry a sign on a stick, because sticks are threatening.
• If people around you start throwing baggies full of sh*t at the law enforcement personnel, leave. Immediately. Because baggies full of sh*t are threatening.
• If you’re going to stand in front of advancing law enforcement, whether one officer or a line, be prepared to be hit in the head with a solid baton. Being hit in the head with a solid baton can be fatal.

He showed me the scar where the baton split his scalp open.

ICE believes they are law enforcement. So far, the courts seem to agree with them. They don’t have batons, they have guns, which are much more dangerous (any fool can point and pull a trigger; batons take at least minimal training). They have less training about crowds than riot police, are milling around, lack explicit shields, so are more dangerous. The biggest difference I see is that the Chicago PD in riot gear were actually anonymous. I’m slightly amazed that we know who the ICE person behind the mask was.

David Brooks is too much of a coward to actually look at the evidence and try to render any judgment. Doing that would destroy his ability to find the right angle to flatten any difference and equivocate.

Meanwhile, since we were discussing who these people in masks are, and what motivates them…

https://web.archive.org/web/20260113135117/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/ice-recruitment-minneapolis-shooting.html

Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.

Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.

According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”

The other gem in this piece:

When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this event’s lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. That’s the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.

Enjoy!*

*If you are a masochist.

 “Three things everyone wants – fast, cheap, and good. But you can really only have any two of them.”

Itshould be noted that two is only the maximum. This administration demonstrates that you might get only one. Or, more often with them, none.

I like “public safety” much better than “law enforcement.” Instead of “LEO,” you’d have “PSO,” but that looks too much like “POS.”

Maybe this is what Bannon meant when he advised King Lear Jet to flood the zone with shit.

The cheapest way to dye the shirts brown.
Someone needs to update this classic:

Caveat: His Orangeness has the stature of neither the Austrian painter nor the Italian he tries to imitate in public. He is just another case of history repeating itself as a farce (or Grand Guignol just with less taste and brains). But cheap imitations can be lethal too.
I still think His Orangeness would be a better (ridiculous) fit for the painting above