No thankyou.
Replacing them with ICE as a political gesture? Not so much
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
Previously, some airports were even more of a nightmare, and others were actually pleasant.
Maning, airports / municipalities should be funding this. If airports were in control the the user experience, I bet you would see a lot better outcomes.
Would you? It's not like I have a choice of which airport to fly out of.
Maybe New Yorkers have options, but for the rest of us, there is only one that is an option.
Nothing wrong with asking of course. But maybe it's useful data that it was, in fact, obvious.
It's even more disgusting than that:
"Tom Homan: ICE officers will not assist with airport security scanning amid TSA staffing shortage"
https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/5795316-homan-ice-...
TSA checks bags for commercial airlines which is a service that should never have been nationalized.
Impossible to prove otherwise. No reason to try his luck.
I was staunchly against the Iraq war, but even when Bush was president I didn't let it compromise my patriotism.
The amount of people on here who ignore the fact that Iran was the primary enabler of Hamas' attack on 10/7/23, and therefore sowed the seeds of the destruction of Gaza, is insane. Basically, if Trump does a thing, they are against it, independent of the thing. There is no principle, just reactionary hatred. If Biden had launched this war, none of these people would have had a problem with it. I am 100% positive on that assumption.
I think you're wrong here. As a Biden stan who's gone to the mat debating Biden's policies here on HN many times in the past, he lost pretty much all of the remaining good will he had by defending and supporting Israel for so long after it became clear what they were doing in Gaza. Biden wouldn't be getting a free pass in the Middle East if it were helping Israel's goals (ignoring the fact that Biden is much more of a dove than Trump).
Nothing happened prior to 10/07/23, no sir. Just an evil country doing evil things. Of course the US and Israel are victims on all this.
If you don't know this, then you probably shouldn't have such strong opinions on the topic.
Nothing to do with how aggressive and expansionist Israel has been since its inception, not to mention how it abuses and oppresses the Palestinian population.
If you don't know this, then you probably should cut your bullshit.
Who am I kidding? Of course you know this. You just choose to ignore it.
> Nothing to do with how aggressive and expansionist Israel has been since its inception,
Then when Arabs invade Israel, and publish maps of areas they have considered, and Israel goes in to rescue her hostages, suddenly life is more valuable than land and Israel is at fault again.
> not to mention how it abuses and oppresses the Palestinian population.
Because on top of doing terrible things, the non-terrible things he does, he does incredibly badly.
> There is no principle, just reactionary hatred.
No, we’re all good little Bayesians around here.
> If Biden had launched this war, none of these people would have had a problem with it.
You’re really missing what’s going on here. The reason that people liked Biden is that he would not have launched this war.
No, they liked him because he wasn’t Trump. And then they liked Trump more after having him.
And it only cost them their country. Not bad!
Yes, I am “reactively” hating our president for starting wars without congressional approval and with very handwavy explanations. Besides, he has a track record for saying whatever the fuck he wants if he thinks people will like it, so you can’t trust the words from his mouth anyways. It’s pretty infuriating, actually.
I would be much happier if there was a clear justification and rational explanation for the president starting more wars in the Middle East. And yes, because Biden has a slightly better baseline of not telling bold-faced lies, I could see more people giving the benefit of the doubt at first. But overall, liberals did not like Biden very much. Trump, on the other hand, has a pretty hardcore base of people who don’t seem to care what he says or that he does/says the opposite of what he used to say. Pretty weird.
By the way, this opinion is not formed by reading or listening to any kind of mainstream media. It’s formed from listening to the words coming out of Trump’s mouth for the past fucking decade.
Chanting for death to any country or religion is not violence dude. Until and actually Iran launches an attack on the USA.
Iran didn't start this war, America and Israel did, while right in the middle of a pretend negotiation with them.
I believe this is a strong sign that any time Israel or America are asking to negotiate with any country, they should prepare a full scale military action ready for the real "negotiation".
edit: Are you a dual citizen? Everyone has a right to free speech of course and to support or not support any country or cause. But if you feel so strongly about a foreign country, why don't you be honest with yourself and pick a lane. I say this to everyone, not just Israeli, but Chinese, Dutch, any other dual citizens.
Arming the Huthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and various Iraqi militias _is_ violence. When an aggressor with a history of violence says that they are coming for you next, it is prudent to believe them. Iran has been chanting Death To America and Death To Israel for decades. They have been attacking Israel and are developing technology to attack the United States. It is the United States' responsibility to ensure that the attack will not come.
Claiming that Iran is not violent is a lie. Promoting the idea that the US should wait to be attacked first is a nice way to allow Iran to arm properly and ensure US interests are sufficiently harmed.
By what conceivable measure do you think Israel started it?
It was a really massive thing.
or the Mujahiddeen.
Oh look, the list is so long there's an entire article about it, fun:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponso...
So tell me, if Israel is justified in invading Iran due to alleged proxies of Iran attacking them, would you agree that all these countries should invade the United States?
I re-flagged OP.
Freedom of expression, not executing gays or hunting them for sport; the end of slavery, universal suffrage, space exploration, being able to criticise the government.
Am I allowed to have an opinion?
If it differs from yours?
Diversity. So long as I conform?
Europe is a massive melting pot, not some single, monolithic "culture." In fact, I have much more in common with my Latino neighbors than the WASPs having conniptions over the purported decline of "white culture."
> the end of slavery
Lol, lmao. Well, it's pretty obvious what fetid corners of the web you lurk in.
In other nearby regions Slovenians, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipino, Indians, Pakistani, Nepalese…
Have all managed to end up co-existing, build businesses, even to the extent that we’ve got along well enough to build a nation together.
And yeah, I actually don’t know anyone who owns slaves around here. I’ve met people from all over Europe and the USA and none of them own slaves or are involved in the slave trade.
Australian doesn’t have forced labour prisons, it’s optional and the inmates gain additional benefits for their labour and the potential to have their custodial sentence reduced.
But anyway, the whole point isn’t to say that I don’t like brown people.
The point is to goad people like you to claim I live in some fetid corner.
Simply for saying I’m white, and I’m proud of what my ancestors have accomplished.
My Dutch and Italian ancestors left their home lands and have become know throughout the word as very successful farmers pretty much everywhere they’ve settled.
But thats not an okay thing to say.
It’s okay to be black a proud, LGBTQI+ and proud, it’s okay to sterilise children, mutilate their genitals, give them cross-sex hormones, it’s okay to be a proud Australian Aboriginal.
It’s okay to tax the working class, it’s okay to artificially restrict the supply of housing.
But if you’re white, you are guilty of things you didn’t do, and owe reparations to people who didn’t have it happen to them.
If your white and proud, your a Nazi. You drink Elon’s cum for breakfast, and enjoy eating babies with your Jewish handlers in Sundays.
White European culture [..] including [..] Australia, Canada, South Africa and Zimbabwe before they turned to shit.
Freedom of expression, not executing gays or hunting them for sport; the end of slavery,
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_gang_murders (in an about Sydney since the 1970s)
I don't know what the comment you are replying to was talking about, and I agree that "white culture" is an absurd false construct, because "white" is a false construct. I understand flagging stuff like that, but nothing in my comment warranted it. I expressed a logical opinion. The percentage of people in the United States present on legal visas getting caught up by ICE is near-zero. It's an entirely propagandistic narrative to suggest otherwise, based entirely on motivated reasoning.
And before you label me a bigot or whatever to feed your sense of moral superiority, be aware that I'm the only "white" person in my household, and I'm also, by far, the most "liberal". Outside of the Bay Area, a lot of people of color like my wife and her family absolutely despise your politics, viewing them as luxury beliefs.
My politics are basically identical to Garry Tan's, but you've lost the plot so much that you felt a need to flag my comment.
Which implies they've been trained?
"Dobias later said that young Trump “always had to be number one, in everything. He was a conniver, even then. A real pain in the ass. He would do anything to win” (D’Antonio, Never Enough, 43)."
It's like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Oddly the Christian deity is mentioned exactly zero times in the Constitution.
Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?
Those are all Christian values. For what it's worth, I'm not Christian.
You really want to be on the side of a white nationalist who openly says all Muslims are the enemy and openly advocates for christian prophecies that require the US to submit to Israel? These aren't conspiracies. Hegseth openly believes all this stuff.
Not in the US, not a US citizen or voter. My suspicion is the answer is "no, but it is not a given that a competent supreme court which looks likely to overturn the WH exists, if they say they want to do this"
Trying to cancel elections seems like it'd be a lot harder than in other countries.
To do so would basically be an open announcement of dictatorship and - more than we have already - the end of rule of law and a likely civil war.
I truly hope you are proved right by history, but I'm concerned.
otoh, i saw ice agents to murder a super aggresive protester, who was actually trying to help a super aggressive woman dumped to the earth by ice agents, from many angle. also, and i followed minnesotans aggressively filming everywhere what happens to them. and i saw, how aggressive they were to bovino and co.
so, i really understand your rant.
All Red states. So if you roll over and let the federal government trample your state's sovereignty, they won't murder people in your state? Somehow I don't think that's what federalism was supposed to mean.
Trump nearly passed out with glee when he was talking to the Ukrainian president and found out elections are canceled, by their law, due to martial law because of the war. I would not so casually assume he won't try it here.
Like actually tell us what you know so we can make useful decisions about our safety.
"Americans abroad should follow the guidance in security alerts issued by the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate."
None of those factions will be gone, but their battles will weaken their cause more than they have since 2016.
Some of this can be seen by how even his own popularity falls any time he actually has power, since there are no effective ideas there, only misplaced blame, and that doesn't sustain support for four years. Without him there at all in an out-of-power period, the "blame the Jews"/"blame the brown people"/"blame the women"/"blame the baby-killers"/"blame the anti-Semites"/"blame the sexual deviants" factions will likely fail to find another person they all rally around.
Dems lean more on moderates/independents. Trump won because he persuaded that group, particularly the young men.
https://www.thirdway.org/memo/why-republicans-can-win-with-t...
Trump is very much a symptom, not a cause. He is simply the kind of personality most fit for the media environment.
The media environment on the right has essentially eschewed journalistic standards for political and economic velocity.
Fringe theories get introduced during podcasts, which then get brought up by guests on Fox. Members of the government point out that the news media is talking about fringe theory X, which then gets repeated by the news media. Eventually the government opens up an investigation or creates a task force to address the issue.
It is not that people don’t come up with objections or counter narratives on the right, it’s just that they don’t get platformed.
Verification is the expensive part of journalism. If you eschew verification. You can be more efficient. Today the right is simply the more “efficient” political consensus manufacturing machine.
This is foundation upon which the rest of the events occur. This is why there will always be space for another character to appear.
If Trump is the most charismatic political personality America has to offer...
To prompt with something more specific: there is a possibility of a Gavin Newsom vs. Tucker Carlson in 2028, it's crucial to understand why Tucker might win and why he would be ten times worse than Trump.
But it's true he is a symptom.
Perhaps you'll be explicit though, what is the "sickness" you perceive?
It's that a significant number of Americans are mean, selfish, racist, arrogant, and delight in the victimization of those they perceive as belonging to an outgroup.
2/3 of your electorate either voted for him (meaning they liked what they saw) or were sufficiently unbothered by him to not vote (meaning they were more or less okay with Trump).
These crocodile tears about how "we were bamboozled" are just that. It was plainly obvious to the rest of us looking in from outside, even before his first term but certainly after, that he was exactly the person he is now, and fully two thirds of American voters accepted this.
http://exiledonline.com/we-the-spiteful/
>The left won’t accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix “if only the people knew the Truth.”
>But what if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber and meaner the lie, the more the public wants to hear it repeated.
Every time there's a cycle of fringe-right blowing up in popularity, pushing an agenda and flaming out, it's still the same people they're appealing to who are voting for them.
But hey, it's not like they funded and backed a bunch of theocratic fanatics who committed a mass atrocity in Israel and provoked a war that destroyed Gaza or anything, right? Or that they were exporting massive quantities of drones to Putin for him to use to murder Ukrainian civilians, right? They were nice guys, and the 35K protesters they murdered deserved it, right?
We should have just let things keep rolling the way they were. It was all going so well, and at no point would the regime that was actively inciting terrorism all over the world for the last 47 years be a threat if they got nukes on the ICBMs we now know they had been a problem. I mean, heck, those missiles they shot at Diego Garcia were just fireworks, purely for decorative purposes, right?
The HN bubble is truly grand. My college girlfriend was the daughter of parents who fled the Ayatollah in 79. You people on here think everyone shares your values and worldview, and that the mullahs in Iran are rational actors. They are not. They are part of a specific sect of Shiite Islam that truly believes that bringing about an apocalypse is a desirable thing. It's such a foreign concept to you that you dismiss it as fantasy and misinformation. But it's real. And you simply lack the life experience to know it. You've never seen entire masses of people infected with the radical religious mind viruses that those of us with firsthand experience with religious fundamentalists have seen.
Imagine the Branch Davidians in Waco with nukes, and you start to scratch the surface of what this would look like if you let it play out.
Man, imagine that, how scary. I bet in theocratic regimes there's a bunch of stupid stuff going on, like a ~Secretary~ Minister of ~War~ Defense that justifies an attack on a foreign nation by calling it a holy war and prays every time he gives a speech to the troops.
Those theocrats probably do things like de-funding every science project they can when they get power. Or worse, maybe they think vaccines are against god's will and get a bunch of kids sick by opposing vaccines for preventable diseases. Hell they probably don't even teach their kids about evolution or gay people.
Can you imagine if a nation like that had nuclear weapons and long range missiles? Why, they might start a war for no reason.
There isn't a single "red state" in the US that requires women to cover their heads and bodies in public or executes people for speaking out against the "regime".
But you pretend like that's the case, while acting like Iran was just minding their own business when they have exported terror for decades, along with drones being used to murder Ukrainian civilians. I mean, I guess supporting Ukraine was soooo 2022-23, and now we're on to the new fashion trend of supporting the people helping to murder them because "orange man bad."
Totalitarian: hyperbolic, but the state of the executive branch over the last couple of decades is moving things in that direction. And clearly one could say this to make a point.
Theocratic: A slight stretch, but mostly yes.
Long range ballistic missiles: check
Nukes: check
I don’t think your concern for civilian casualties is genuine.
> The narcissism of small differences on full display here.
And what is your pose, here? The selfishness of implicitly dismissing the foreign policy implications of American religious n*jobs because you don’t live in the affected countries?
But hey, at least we've lifted sanctions and we are now sending them even more money because the oil market was completely destroyed so that's great right?
Obviously this is the best strategy because we can see how the Taliban was completely dismantled in Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation right?
Unless you are proposing genocide of Iran or an eternal occupation, what we've done is kicked a hornets nest.
It's the only country in the world with nuclear weapons that at this moment gets bombarded by missiles right now, if that doesn't make you worried you aren't paying attention.
---
*EDIT*: Corrected word. Lol.
https://www.c-span.org/clip/campaign-2016/user-clip-too-much...
Trump says US is 'winning so much' in longest ever State of the Union - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhQUGjRtq-M - February 25th, 2026
Hence the joke, "I am tired of winning." as the situation continues to rapidly degrade through policy choices. So much winning, it's too much.
How nice it must be to be able to just dismiss these things.
I don't know anyone in the US in real life who is happy with the current situation, including people who voted for Trump. The cheer leaders are only visible online.
The people who voted for Harris are saying "we told you so," and the others are saying "he conned us."
Trust me, as sad as it is, those people still exist.
Outside that, what I've noticed in my area is a whole lot less trucks driving around with cartoonishly large American flags and pro-trump bumper stickers. Even homes that proudly flew the "Trump 2024" flags and flew the 2020 flags for a long time have taken those down.
Republicans here (Idaho) have been gleefully touching every 3rd rail (Medicaid, public school funding, public lands). I don't really have hope that the electorate will do anything about it, but who knows. I've never really seen such bold actions against the citizenry.
October 2025
"I believe Trumps gutting of institutions of learning, culture, democracy, law is punishment for the Branch Covidians. I believe this punishment must continue for some time until the lesson is learned about abuse of power"
Should we reconcile this great nation, not balkanize, not be in an antebellum period, not be a Weimar republic, and walk back the rubicon and cross into more quiet waters, we must turn our attention to what made this country great. What has made it unique? That our constitution is explicit about what freedoms and rights are reserved for the people and are not to be trampled, touched, or looked at by the government. State, Local, or Federal. Our founding fathers and great men who preceded us recognized government as a necessary evil, one that must be kept at bay, not used as a violent tool to achieve outcomes. All of these institutions must walk back their power, give the rights back to the people, to be truly afraid of the populace. Each tax collector must shiver when he goes to work, and each police officer be fully aware that a single parking ticket is an act of violence.
All said, I am afraid, we have lost that. And now we must face the future hoping that someday, another group of smart men can realize something so unique, so right, so innately just and moral was achieved by the signing of the constitution that it must be tried again.
Calvin - 2022
If there's one thing you can't accuse Trump of, it's ever masking how utterly nonsensical he is.
What did the attackers say to you that told their intention was to harm you for having an American flag?
Plus it usually looks better.
Not sure why you need any flag on you.
2. Kidnapping Maduro made the rest of Venezuela's government roll over and play fetch, they are stupid enough to believe it would have worked again.
3. Israel says jump, GOP asks 'how high'?
4. There are no negative consequences to them killing people, driving the country into ruinous debt, or blowing up the American economy through higher energy prices. The drawbacks simply don't exist.
It's all upshot, zero downshot.
There's a christian prophecy involving israel occupying certain lands, a cow, and some other nonsense. A weirdly high number of Americans, mostly christians, believe it. There are a ton of them in the Trump admin.
It was a ten year plan, not a permanent plan.
You are suggesting that these people change their entire identity to suit your notion that the world should be peaceful. Would you suggest that a metalhead not wear leather because you don't like loud music? Would you suggest that a gay man "be normal" because "God doesn't like gays"? Identity is not something you change in other people. Unless you're some colonial conquerer forcing your culture on others.
By any rational, third-party standard, such a country should not have nuclear weapons.
But it also wasn't not to have the capacity to target the US; if France implicitly trusted the US they wouldn't have opted out of the NATO unified military command for 43 years as well as developing their own nuclear deterrent.
to not be political this lies at the heart of principles, morals, meritocracy
values that the current gvt lacks & things that drove america forward.
I did vote for Eric Adams in NYC, and while Eric Adams didn't advertise blatant corruption as part of his campaign, insofar that I can be blamed for his idiocy and bribes I will accept responsibility. I didn't vote for him the second time around and I feel foolish for voting for him the first time.
Don't get me wrong, I know I'll deal with the consequences of other people's bad decisions here, that's just the price of democracy (or whatever the hell we have in the US), but I have a hard time accepting that it's my fault since I did what little I could to stop it.
I understand that ultimately I have to deal with the consequences of the group's action, not just mine. If the group decided to elect a convicted fraudster and alleged sex pest, I don't like it but that's just what I'll have to deal with. If something bad happens because of it, I don't have to like it but I have to deal with it. If something good happens, I probably will like it but I have to deal with it.
But I don't take responsibility for either the good or bad things that happened from a president I didn't vote for. If it turns out that Trump is actually much smarter than I think he is and everything ends up going swimmingly because of his seemingly-incompetent decision making, that would be great but I would concede that I did nothing to enable that. If something bad happens, I will also say I did nothing to enable that. It really isn't hypocritical.
There you go - mystery solved.
The current situation has been giving me so many flashbacks. Here, my GWB-era teens had the terror threat level, and now we're lazily reimagining State Department traveling warnings as a dark slapstick version (be afraid everywhere, American!)
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/iran-fires-missiles-remot...
And Iran denies it as well: https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2035477318055985648
Makes you wonder who really did launch those missiles?
As soon as they felt like denying it would be better for them they did and took down https://en.mehrnews.com/ where it was published. Unless you say mehr was defaced and the news were planted by Mossad