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4 hours agoIt’s the closest thing the US has to a national ID card, there’s a blanket assumption that every functioning adult has one (or the non-driving-license equivalent, administered by the same authorities).
WesternInfidels
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Joined 28 days ago
Cake day: January 29th, 2026
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Some people might say that, technically, the US is a failed state that’s become breeding ground for violent extremists, an incubator for global terror.
What a time to be alive, eh?
I’m an expert on nothing but I would have guessed the hand-lettered sign was a deliberate choice, a suggestion of his personal involvement.
It’s the GOP who has the waves of identical machine-printed signs (“Mass Deportation Now”) these days.
291·1 day agoThere was a time when Amazon was not full of scummy rip-off products, when it was not playing games with prices, when it was not a cloud-computing powerhouse, and you know what happened?
That’s right, they crushed their adversaries (retail shopping) and earned billions in profits. They won.
But somehow that’s not enough winning, there isn’t enough winning until all the value has been vacuumed up from the world.
My first Fediverse account was on Pixelfed. I am nobody, but I immediately attracted a couple dozen followers. All blank profiles, all followed exactly five accounts, all suspiciously algorithmic names. They’ve all gone quiet.
Disingenuous social media participation is everywhere. I think we might call it “cyberturfing.”
The South African billionaire paper that wouldn’t endorse Harris? Well, our options all suck, I guess.
Even when we say “This guy is an asshat and we should all ignore him,” we are giving the asshat some attention, which was his goal all along. It’s actually not possible to arrange a coordinated response that doesn’t give the asshat what he wants, because a coordinated response requires many people to understand the identity and nature of the asshat. Which is what he wants.
That’s what I mean by “the tragedy of the attention economy.”
This is the Tragedy of the Attention Economy ™ I’m afraid.
Comic Sands had some background on this and I think it explains a lot:
Self-described content creator “Danny Spud” is known for producing ragebait video content. He frequently uses Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses to covertly film his “pranks.”
Spuds “prank” videos routinely show him harassing strangers until they’re forced to react. No one was buying his support of anything other than self-promotion. Danny Spud doesn’t support ICE or law enforcement. Danny Spud only supports Danny Spud.
Spud got exactly what he was hoping for, in other words. This was his plan, his plan worked, so he should be happy, right? I had felt like an “I Love ICE” sign, in this day and age, was pretty much incitement, and it turns out, it was exactly that. In a perfect world, there would be consequences for doing that.
Privilege used to be a real thing. It’s still a real thing, but it used to be, too.
Babies born in a Texas concentration camp would technically be US citizens. Constitutional citizens.
I don’t imagine that’s going to work out in any kind of positive way, though, is it? Will CBP just ignore that, meaning that US citizens will literally be born into lawless captivity? Will they use their citizenship status as justification for separating babies and mothers? Forced adoptions?
ICE’s internal policy states that the agency “should not detain, arrest, or take into custody for an administrative violation of the immigration laws individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing” except in exceptional circumstances.
The rules aren’t doing too much ruling these days.
Even a considered-opinion racist, even a loud “proud deplorable” right-wing extremist bigot, should be worried about this. Because among the many other problems with it, this is inevitably going to erode the meaning and protections of citizenship itself. It leans in the direction of making rights contingent on circumstances, of turning rights into privileges that the government can dole out at its discretion. Government of the mafia, by the mafia, and for the mafia, more or less.
So somebody took a look at the modern web and thought “Hey, this is pretty good, but you know what would make it even better? Even more shit you didn’t ask for popping up in your face with every click!”