Commenter Archive

ICE is broken.

it's not making anyone safer. it's killing US citizens, injuring them, throwing them in jail. "conservatives" have been cheerleading this for a year.

and they'll be fine if he pretends the 'emergency' isn't something he created, for ratings, and sends in the military.

Trump just said: "With that being said, you can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns. You just can't. You can't walk in with guns. You can't do that. But it's just a very unfortunate incident."

and Republicans are going to be fine with that. oh sure, some will grumble while they figure out a way to explain it away, but none of them are going to actually do anything meaningful.

Republicans are killing this country.

wjca:

What do you see being accomplished by giving Trump what he asks for? 

My point is that by defunding ICE, you do give Trump what I think (I'm doing a bit of mind reading here) you fear: that he will militarize the response. Insurrection Act, Alien Enemies Act, etc. Without ICE, you'd have to take agents from the border and there is a limit to that. Defund DHS completely, you lose the Border Patrol (and TSA and the Secret Service too). Trump, OTOH, is still Commander in Chief. He can call up the guard or maybe even the Arctic Angels.

Trump wants state and local cooperation in rounding up the illegal aliens, especially those convicted or charged with serious crimes. Sanctuary cities/counties/states are actively resisting the enforcement of federal law. Those that think the obstruction isn't part of and the cause of much of the violence (and intentionally so) are naive IMO.

Take the resistance far enough and what you end up with may not what you bargained for.  Or maybe some are bargaining for that response in search of the revolution. 

russell:

You’re a conservative, get your freaking Congress people to stop giving these freaks the space to destroy this country.

And this is where we part company on this issue. Dehumanizing either side gets us nowhere. I don't see the situation as black and white as you do.

bc,

Let's hear your own suggestions. What do you think should be done about ICE, CBP, and the rest of those federal "agents"? And by who?

Or do you think nothing needs to be done?

--TP

Thanks Hartmut, more things to think about. I had a section about how the Trojans might be thought of as equivalent to the 'brown people' that Donald referred to in his comment and the way Neoptolemos kills Priam with his own grandchild is probably something that ICE aspires to. We zoom in on the Greeks and we see them as humans and individuals, but we pull back and we see a seething mass of resentment ready to loose all manner of torture and suffering.

That notion of the Trojans as minorities is also explored in KAOS, a TV series that unfortunately was not renewed. The allusions the story makes to Greek myth are outstanding.

Looked it up again. The Orestes-Neoptolemos affair is ambiguous in the sources. Either Hermione was the (unwilling) bride of Neoptolemos and Orestes tried to get her for himself (and slew Neoptolemos) or she was Orestes' fiancee, Neoptolemos tried to rape her and Orestes slew him for that. Again, no one asked the girl about her opinion.
Btw, here's the vase painting of Neoptolemos beating Priamos to death with the body of Priamos' grandson Astyanax: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Amphora_death_Priam_Louvre_F222.jpg
There are other stories with Odysseus either killing Astyanax or agitating for it in order to prevent him from growing up and taking revenge (Neoptolemos often involved though).

bc, thanks, appreciate it.

Actually reading both epics does not leave much sympathy for any of the male 'heroes'*. I wonder in what way Odysseus would explain his 1 year with Kirke and 7 years with Kalypso to his wife (Homer being very explicit about those relationships being sexual and the latter ending with the 7-years-itch). And other sources have Odysseus killed by his son with Kirke who then marries Penelope while his legitimate son Telemachos marries Kirke in turn.
In the Iliad Odysseus is the most active in suppressing protests from the common soldiers. Interestingly, in non-Platonic sources about the trial of Socrates, the philosopher is accused of citing these verses in his agitation against Athenian democracy.
He is, in some sources, also the main culprit in maltreating the women of Troy (and together with Neoptolemos organizes the sacrifice of Polyxena to the spirit of Achilles).
Orestes tries to justify the murder of his mother with the theory that sons are not blood related to their mothers (them being only seed vessels) and later murders Neoptolemos to steal his wife. Neoptolemos beats Priamos to death at the sanctuary altar with the body of Astyanax, his grandchild and son of Hektor (there are vase paintings of the scene).
Authors of post-antiquity had their work cut out to sanitize all of that.
What I find telling is that the Romans (with very few exceptions**) vilify Odysseus. Not for the deeds we find objectionable to-day but for using his brains instead of raw violence as a proper hero would do.

*Medea (for the female side) being an interesting case of developing from a Greek victim in the oldest to a foreign villain in the younger sources. Jason is an a-hole in all ancient sources I know.
**Apuleius being one in his 'the god of Socrates'

That is asking Trump to deploy the military for immigration enforcement without actually asking him, IMO. Or is that the point? Push escalation until the revolution?

Forgive me for being unable to understand. What do you see being accomplished by giving Trump what he asks for? How often is appeasement a successful strategy for dealing with a bully?

lj: my bad. I meant to put a divider there. Still, I thought (and think) the context is obvious and I wasn't being disrespectful. I will use my best MLA/Bluebook from here on out.

Accept the beating gracefully or it's your fault.

That is asking Trump to deploy the military for immigration enforcement without actually asking him, IMO.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. And we can't all spend our lives trying to figure out WTF Trump is going to do on a given day.

Or is that the point?

The point is to get DHS to stop beating the shit out of people, breaking into their homes, and shooting them.

Clear?

Push escalation until the revolution?

First, I'm not sure holding funding for DHS until they stop acting like the Gestapo counts as "escalation".

"Escalation" is when People Like Me start shooting back. Which is not on the calendar.

And I'm really not interested in hearing anything about "escalation" from any conservative voice, at all, right now and probably for the forseeable future.

You're a conservative, get your freaking Congress people to stop giving these freaks the space to destroy this country.

Thank you.

bc,

Not really cool combining two people's comments (and removing the context) to make your point.

So it’s a chance (whether large or tiny) of accomplishing something vs no chance at all. Easy choice.

But do it anyway. Do whatever is available.

That is asking Trump to deploy the military for immigration enforcement without actually asking him, IMO. Or is that the point? Push escalation until the revolution?

Fascinating, lj, thanks.

This (the reaction of the Minneapolis public) is rather inspiring. You could say it's an example of Moral Sanity:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/minneapolis-uprising/685755/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCZ3XpunvY7eUEOPAgaybJ3M&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

From where I stood, a few yards back from the scrum last Wednesday afternoon, it looked, at best, to be a savage caricature of our national divide: On one side, militarized men demanded respect at the butt of a gun; on the other, angry protesters screamed for justice.

But behind the violence in Minneapolis—captured in so many chilling photographs in recent weeks—is a different reality: a meticulous urban choreography of civic protest. You could see traces of it in the identical whistles the protesters used, in their chants, in their tactics, in the way they followed ICE agents but never actually blocked them from detaining people. Thousands of Minnesotans have been trained over the past year as legal observers and have taken part in lengthy role-playing exercises where they rehearse scenes exactly like the one I witnessed. They patrol neighborhoods day and night on foot and stay connected on encrypted apps such as Signal, in networks that were first formed after the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

***
Avalos told me that 65,000 people have received the training, most of them since December. “We started in a very different tone; it was preventive,” she said. Now, after Good’s death, “people are understanding the stakes in a different way.”

If you haven't, check out Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey and the Iliad.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/08/the-odyssey-translated-emily-wilson-review

A fun quote from the review that gets us to questions of nobility and truthfulness

“He failed to keep them safe,” writes Wilson. “He could not save them from disaster,” is Robert Fagles’ version for Penguin. Chapman has: “But so their fates he could not overcome.” The Greek? “All’ oud’ hos hetairous erruasato” – “but even so he did not protect his companions”. Whereas male translations have a habit, perhaps quite unconsciously, of letting Odysseus off the hook (he tried his best! He just couldn’t manage it!), Wilson is more attentive to the poem’s foldedness, its complexity.

I also may have mentioned this, but if I haven't, you might be interested in the South African translation of the Iliad

https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2013/2013.03.06/

My copy of The Cure at Troy has just arrived. I'm looking forward. But it's weird how the story of Troy seems to be following me around at the moment; I just read Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, and will soon be starting the second and third volumes in her trilogy, The Women of Troy and The Voyage Home. It was fascinating to read the first, it is a story most of us know incredibly well, one of the cornerstone myths of Western culture. Yet reading it for the first time from the point of view of the women involved is a revelation.

Does anyone in Greek myths have a noble character as we would define it? Brad DeLong, long ago, noted that he'd rather have Odysseus as his buddy in a foxhole rather than Achilles, as Achilles only wants kleos, whereas Odysseus, because he has metis, would craft a plan to get everyone out of whatever jam they are in. (with Nolan's film and the Ralph Fiennes movie, the Odyssean pov seems to be ascendent, though I've also noted that people can be too clever) One thing I like about thinking about Greek myths is that what they value and deprecate are often at odds with what we do.

Philoctetes certainly doesn't have any noble traits (those are assigned to Neoptolemus, who was coming fresh to the battlefield) but is identified with a noble act, lighting Hercules funeral pyre when no one else would, which is why he got the bow and arrow. (a quick check shows that another thread has his father, Poeus, lighting the pyre, which then makes the bow and arrows is a tainted inheritance). But in his implacable hatred of those who got him in his situation, I'm really seeing where he is coming from.

do. whatever. is. available.

the (D)'s are minority but they are not utterly without any power. use what you have.

the sternly worded letters are not working.

"There's An Emergency!" is getting a lot of work done for TrumpCo right now. if the funding is cut, Trump will declare an emergency of some kind and pull funding from whichever program will hurt Dems the most.

To expand on what russell said: absolutely slash DHS (or, at minimum, ICE) funding. The administration may invent some way around that, and spend the money anyway. But if the funding isn't cut, they will definitely spend it.

So it's a chance (whether large or tiny) of accomplishing something vs no chance at all. Easy choice.

What hairshirt said.

If the (D)'s actually manage to turn off the DHS money, Trump et al will (a) bit h and moan and write a million Truth Social posts about it and (b) try to find a way around it.

They might be successful with (b).

But do it anyway. Do whatever is available.

Perhaps the Federalist Society's vetting is less robust that they thought....

Also the Sinister Six's use of the shadow docket instead of actual cases. Those aren't precedent under any theory. I seem to recall reading that one of the Justices -- Alito? Thomas? -- was complaining about the lower courts not using the shadow docket rulings and said something like, "How many hints do you need about how we will eventually rule?"

I'm not sure that I'd say that Philoctetes, Hercules, or Odysseus were great and noble of character. All three were men of great ability, sure, but of very mixed character. In this they seem to support Aristotle's claim in the Poetics:

There remains, then, the character between these two extremes,—that of a man who is not eminently good and just,-yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous,—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.

I think many of the supporting people in the first Clementine Caligula administration fit this description, and were brought low by it. Of the current batch, Rubio is probably the closest thing.

Whatever the case, it'll probably require a deus ex machina to achieve public catharsis in our current state. We are still deeply polluted, politically, by the miasma we have allowed, and the sources of our pollution have not yet suffered enough to assuage the wrath of the political gods.

...at least speaking from the classic Greek perspective.