State of the Discussion

What I look for in comments or concerns about antifa is some sense of balance.

First, "antifa" and the related term "radical left" have become so vague as to be almost meaningless. There are people who self-identify as antifa, and who will fight - physically fight - people who they consider fascist. Less commonly, they will engage in acts of vandalism, most often toward state property - cop cars, ICE facilities. Most of what they do is not directly violent, although it can be harmful to people they consider fascist - doxing, outing them to employers so they get fired. A lot of their work is tracking the actions of people they consider fascist, many of whom are themselves violent.

There are also folks who are basically anti-capitalist anarchists. They are less commonly involved in fighting and more commonly involved in acts of vandalism and sabotage, often directed at financial institutions. See also the WTO protests of 1999 in Seattle.

And there is also a general rabble of randos who are attracted to public disruption of whatever type. It's often not clear what their goals are, or if they have any, other than being publicly loud and disruptive. Some people just like riots.

All of these folks get labelled "antifa" but they're a sort of overlapping Venn diagram of communities with perhaps related, but distinct, goals.

Real, honest-to-god antifa folks are not that common, and are really focused specifically on f***ing with fascists. Everybody who shows up at a protest wearing black with "big A" armbands and a balaclava are not antifa. A lot of them are just young kids cosplaying some kind of stick-it-to-the-man drama.

We all go through our phases in life.

The randos are probably the most generally dangerous of the above, because their actions are often not focused. They are the looters, folks who set fire to stuff just to watch it burn, folks who smash windows just because they can.

The black bloc folks generally don't want to physically fight anyone, they mostly want to do expensive damage to big corporations. I don't see them around so much anymore.

The real antifa folks will definiely engage in physical fights. Mostly with obvious hard-core right wingers, who themselves like fighting. Sometimes with folks more on the periphery of the hard-core right wing - supporters, etc. They also often bring trauma medical skills, which have been helpful to folks, and not just to antifa folks. During the Charlottesville "Unite the right" mess they provided a buffer between extremely violent right-wing actors and non-violent counter-protestors, likely sparing them a lot of harm and even saving some lives. A service the police on the scene were unable or unwilling to provide.

FWIW, I do not support or endorse any of the above. I think the occasions when violent action are justified are very, very rare. Occasions when they are constructive, even rarer. I suppose things here could get to the point where some kind of organized forceful resistance would be appropriate, but I do not believe we are there yet, and hope we do not get there. And the violent actions of the broad spectrum of folks referred to as "antifa" only play into the violent fantasies and actions of their counterparties on the right.

On the other side of the fence, we have groups like the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters and the Oathkeepers, who among other things have organized the January 6 violent insurrection attempting to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power. They are part of a broader movement that includes the patchwork of militias, self-appointed homegrown private armies who regularly threaten the rest of us with deadly force. And often go beyond threats.

And now we have Trump's ICE agents, who come into peaceful communities wearing full military kit and violently kidnap anyone they care to with no regard for the law or due process.

So there's all of that.

I'm sorry that some folks in Portland are kept awake at night by black-clad youngsters with bullhorns. I'm also sorry for the folks who have been shot in the face by "less than lethal" ordinance. And I'm sorry for the people who have been kidnapped while going about their daily lives - mowing somebody's lawn, taking their kids to school, going to appointments to fulfill the requirements of trying to immigrate "the right way".

I'm sorry for the people who have been assaulted while engaging in legal peaceful protest. I'm sorry for the people who have been murdered while attending services at synagogues and liberal christian churches. I'm sorry for the people who have been, and continue to be, assaulted or murdered for being brown, Muslim, gay, trans, or whatever other thing is today's conservative bete noire.

I'm sorry for the kid who was killed by cops for being black while holding a toy pistol in a playground. And for the guy who was killed by cops for holding an air gun in a Walmart.

There is a lot to grieve. A lot to be sorry about. This is a violent country, there is no getting around it, and it gets worse when things get tense.

I hope you will forgive me if I just can't get that outraged by somebody yelling at ICE all night in Portland, even if it keeps the neighbors awake. It would piss me off, too, if it was in my neighborhood, but there are things that piss me off a hell of a lot more.

Let's look at the bigger picture, please.

I suppose because of the Japanese cars that hit the US market at about the time I reached the car buying stage.

My first car was a used 1969 Toyota Corolla. My second car was a 1979 Datsun 300ZX (pre corporate name change to Nissan). The improvement in build quality over that ten years should have absolutely terrified Detroit.

I was in college in the early 1970s when Japanese brands became serious contenders in high-end audio equipment.

Consumer video recording put an end to the belief that while Japanese companies could copy American and European engineering, they couldn't innovate.

Also, too: honey badger mom hates antifa, but loves her some Ethan Nordean.

So her concern does not appear to be violence and public disruption per se.

This reminded me of how way back when I was a kid "Made in Japan" meant cheap and shoddy. Now it is more likely to mean "made well"--I suppose because of the Japanese cars that hit the US market at about the time I reached the car buying stage.

Michael, interesting points. IANAE either, but some connected points

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/09/19/economy/bank-of-japan-september-rates/

The debt is owned primarily by the BOJ (about half) and then domestic banks and insurance companies.

Japan has an additional problem with Tokyo and other urban areas taking up all the economic growth and depopulation in rural areas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaL-ocOtooM
"If just [Tokyo] was its own country, it would be the eighth largest in the world, ranking ahead of Italy and falling just behind Canada."

about 4), one advantage Japan has is availability of public transport, hard to imagine Grandpa Toshio going to work if he has to drive a car there and back.

I am not an economist (although I've taken a few graduate classes) so take the following with a grain of salt...

1) It strikes me that if Japan is selling large amounts of debt, and it's almost all being bought domestically, they have a problem with their tax structure. Selling interest-bearing bonds seems like a very inefficient way to do income redistribution.

2) As I recall the basic welfare theorems that justify the use of prices to match supply and demand, they say "There exists some initial distribution of wealth and set of prices that maximizes utility." Soon after, the initial distribution of wealth assumption disappeared from the discussion. This seemed a shame, since to paraphrase someone, the US government is primarily an income/wealth redistribution system with a very large military tacked on.

3) The answer to all of the problems the experts claim shrinking populations or shrinking worker-to-retiree ratios will cause is productivity: getting more out of the available resources (labor, electricity, land, water, etc).

4) Can't speak to Japan, but one of my long-standing complaints about the US is that forcing the elderly back into employment doesn't work if "employment" means eight hours plus commuting time five days a week, 50 weeks per year.

5) With respect to #3 and #4, I have been known to complain bitterly that US business management has gotten incredibly lazy and cheap, unwilling to be flexible or invest in education and productivity tools.

At times, there have been several hundred protestors at the ICE facility.

People have a right to protest. But they don't have the right to make other people's lives unlivable, assault people, or destroy property.

CharlesWT - C.K. Bouferrache aka Honeybadgermom is very concerned with ANTIFA, Satan, Drag Queens, Christian Oppression in the US, and the poor treatment of the J6 Prisoners.

I get that you aren't endorsing her, just looking at a few of her videos as evidence for ANTIFA presence in Portland, but I have a real hard time trusting her representation of anything given her Q-Anon obsessions and raving.

And in pretty much all of those, what I see is a small group of people being disruptive and annoying. I wouldn't want them as neighbors, but it's not the sort of thing we need the military to come in and deal with. It's not a war zone. It's just assholes with a cause being provoked by assholes with unconstitutional police powers.

On making life difficult. There are a couple of low-rise apartment buildings on the block adjacent to the facility. I know I wouldn't want to listen to bullhorns and boomboxes all night long while trying to sleep.

Katie Daviscourt

USA Fencing (the national governing body for sport fencing in the US) starts Veteran categories at age 40. They keep adding higher age categories, recognizing that 60-year-olds can't generally keep up with 40-year-olds. At this year's national tournament, there was a Vet-80 category. There are online videos of the finals bouts in Vet-80. Some of the age-related health problems -- eg, many forms of cancer -- just come with the territory as things wear out at the cell level. More of the elderly health care problems are related to people just going sedentary at some point.

I recall visiting a club where one of the members was an 84-year-old who won a silver in epee at the Olympics in the 1950s. All of the local members seemed to be ignoring him despite his being dressed out, so I made a point of asking him to fence. He couldn't move and fence both, so he stayed in one place. But his eye was sharp, his wrist was quick and strong, and if you left any sort of opening on your weapon arm, he hit it. The club owner thanked me later for taking the time. I never did find out how an 84-year-old Eastern European fencer ended up living in Lincoln, NE.

For some reason, there are no fencing clubs within a reasonable driving distance of Fort Collins. This strikes me as particularly odd since it's a university town. I miss it.

Every time someone argues against citizenship for anyone except those whose parents are citizens, I feel moved to ask a couple questions. First, what of those who have one parent who is a citizen and the other not? Or one (or three) grandparents citizens and the others not?

Second, how many generations back do you go in demanding parents' citizenship? And how do you justify that number? Because, of course, everybody (even Steven Miller) has ancestors at some remove who were immigrants.

The reality, of course, is that those people don't care about parents being citizens. They care about race. (Occasionally ethnicity as well, i.e. nobody from Eastern and/or Southern Europe.). If they finally admit it, ask a) are you advocating going back to the "one drop" standard? And b) if so, what genetic criteria do you propose to establish that? Because there aren't (written) records to establish an answer.

That's a pretty evergreen topic for me, and there's a lot to discuss on that. Is it going to be a crash, or a controlled belly landing? Opinions differ.

I'll put together a post of youtube links for people to watch today or tomorrow.

Japan is headed for a population crash. Without immigration, maybe AI and robots can make up some of the difference. In any case, there will be a rough patch while the numbers of the old and young rebalance and the population shrinks over time.

Many countries are headed in the same direction, faster or slower, sooner or later.

– announced on social media that he’s sending troops into Portland, Oregon, which he described as “war-ravaged”. The city itself, which filmed reports show as boringly peaceful, doesn’t want them.

Boringly peaceful by day, while Antifa and other activists are home sleeping off the night before.