ICE

[PF5]

Big fat lie!

 

[Rob B.]

View attachment 17799

Provide proof or stfu.

 

[RxCowboy]

View attachment 17793

I’ll take Second Amendment for $1000

 

[osuwhit]

View attachment 17798
This is one of the stupidest examples I’ve seen of folks playing both sides. They’re calling out the optics as evidence of someones intention?

WTF!!!???
I remember the same idiots defending the right to march with ARs and guy’s red dot is evidence he deserved to die?

Desperation & hypocrisy to the max

It doesn’t matter if the gun was nice or a huge POS. If they’re allowed to yell gun and start firing thereafter, then it’s a cop out (no pun).

It’s incredibly easy to call out “suspect is disarmed” after disarming him in order to preserve life. Yelling “gun” when it’s not in a position to be fired, is bush league. Killings will continue.

 

[RxCowboy]

Since you asked in a civil manner without the typical personal attacks. (Much appreciated BTW). Here is my take on the situation.


If you lean left, if you care deeply about civil rights, human dignity, abuse of power, and protecting vulnerable people, these questions are for you too. They are not an attack on compassion or empathy, and they are not a demand that you abandon your values. They are an invitation to slow the moment down and ask whether the way we act in the street actually aligns with the outcomes we say we want. Caring about people and thinking critically are not opposites. Wanting safer communities, fair laws, and humane treatment does not require chaos, escalation, or putting lives at risk. If the goal is justice, accountability, and fewer people harmed, then common sense, restraint, and clear thinking belong in the conversation just as much as passion does.

If I am protesting the arrest of people with criminal histories, do I fully understand what those histories are? Do I know the difference between a civil immigration violation and a violent or repeat criminal offense? Am I reacting to a headline, or to verified facts about the individual cases involved? Would I be willing to personally take responsibility for one of the people being arrested? Would I adopt one of these individuals into my home if the alternative were detention or deportation? Would I be willing to be legally responsible for their actions while their case is pending? Would I provide food, shelter, transportation, and daily supervision? Would I transport them back and forth to court dates or immigration hearings? Would I guarantee they appear in court if released into my care, and if they failed to appear, would I accept legal consequences for that failure? Would I allow them to sleep under my roof with my children in the house? Would I feel comfortable leaving them alone in my home? Would I trust them around my spouse, my kids, my neighbors, or my pets? Would I install locks, cameras, or safeguards, and if so, why would those be necessary? Would I accept financial liability if they caused harm or property damage? Would I still defend my position publicly if the person I sponsored reoffended? If I would not take one person into my own home, why do I expect society to absorb unlimited risk? Is compassion meaningful if it never requires personal sacrifice? Is it moral to demand outcomes I would not personally participate in?

What business is this of mine, right now, in this moment? Am I directly involved in what is happening, or am I inserting myself into something that does not concern me legally or practically? What do I believe will actually change because I am standing here today? Am I confusing feeling strongly with thinking clearly? If I walk away right now, does anything meaningful get worse, or do I just lose the feeling of being involved? What is my specific goal here? Is my goal emotional release, public visibility, moral signaling, or an actual policy outcome? Can I clearly explain what law I want changed and how that change would realistically occur? Do laws change because of street interference, or because of legislation, courts, elections, and sustained pressure? If my actions today succeed perfectly, what does success actually look like tomorrow morning? Am I assuming everyone else will stay calm while I act impulsively? Am I relying on someone else’s restraint to protect me from the consequences of my own choices? Do loud noises, crowds, and adrenaline usually improve judgment, or do they make mistakes more likely? If something goes wrong, am I prepared to accept responsibility for my role in it?

Why am I standing this close to armed professionals performing a job I do not control? Do I believe proximity increases my moral authority, or does it just increase risk? If a vehicle moves unexpectedly, if someone panics, if someone stumbles, what happens next? Is this moment worth someone getting hurt? Is it worth me getting hurt? What am I hoping the officers will do differently because I am here? Do I believe yelling, blocking, or interfering causes better outcomes, or just faster escalation? If I believe enforcement is wrong, am I creating evidence and records, or am I creating chaos, and which one actually helps courts, oversight, and accountability? If I care about people being arrested, have I supported legal aid, court navigation, or lawful advocacy? Have I spent time understanding the legal process I am trying to disrupt, or am I performing concern in public?

If I were writing the law myself, what would it actually say? How would it handle violent offenders, repeat offenders, and due process? What resources would it require, where would that money come from, and what unintended consequences would it create? Do I believe laws stop applying when enough people disagree with them, and if that were true, which laws would still exist tomorrow? Would I want that standard applied to issues I care about less? Have I ever called 911? Do I expect law enforcement to exist when I need help, and if so, how do I reconcile that with believing all enforcement is illegitimate? If I am not a citizen, do I believe street chaos improves my legal outcome, or would calm legal counsel and verified support help more than confrontation?

Am I here to save lives, or to feel righteous? If someone is injured today, will I still believe this was worth it? If nothing changes at all, will I admit this accomplished nothing? Am I thinking, or am I reacting? Am I acting out of principle, or out of anger? If I walk away, does that make me weak, or does it make me rational? What happens after today, after the crowd leaves, after the cameras are gone? What does my future look like if this escalates instead of resolves? Is common sense cowardice, or is it how people go home alive?

These questions are not meant to shame, silence, or score points. They exist to interrupt reflex and replace it with thought. Before stepping into the street, before escalating a moment that cannot be taken back, before assuming righteousness guarantees safety, it is worth sitting with these questions honestly. Not to prove anything to others, but to be clear with ourselves. Lives are not improved by confusion, noise, or impulse. They are improved by clarity, responsibility, and choices that reduce harm rather than multiply it. If thinking carefully keeps even one person from getting hurt, then asking the questions matters.

I don't believe it was necessary to have shot and killed Alex Pretti. I also don't believe it was necessary for him to show up as an armed protestor. I also wasn't at the scene and don't know the exact circumstances that led to his death. Neither was anyone else on this message board.

I want ICE to do its basic function. I want the Constitution upheld. This ain’t it.

 

[TheMonkey]

Did you ignore the word "armed" on purpose?

The part you chose not to read clearly explained that I don't think any of Jan 6 was necessary either. But, as usual, throw out a whataboutism without reading what I typed.

First of all, I realized I left out “armed” and almost edited the post to add that in. I did not intentionally leave it out and should have included it. @Upgrayedd’s post mentioning Kyle Rittenhouse was a better example than Jan 6.

Secondly, I went back and read your novella. I saw no mention of Jan 6 explicitly or implicitly. Maybe I missed it in that wall of text.

Third, if you’re going to ask hard questions of people in the street, you also have to ask hard questions of power.

You framed your piece as an invitation to think clearly, not to abandon values. I want to respond in that same spirit, but from the opposite direction: there is a deeply American, moral, and patriotic duty to refuse quiet compliance when the state uses force in our name. That duty does not evaporate because protest is messy, risky, or uncomfortable. In a free society, the risk of public resistance belongs in the cost of doing government, not solely in the cost of being governed.

The right to protest is not an emotional outlet we generously indulge when convenient; it is one of the primary mechanisms by which ordinary people check power between elections. It exists precisely because the law, the courts, and the ballot box are slow, imperfect, and often captured by the same institutions people are protesting. If we only speak up where it is tidy, scheduled, and pre-approved, then we haven’t limited abuse of power; we’ve simply made sure it can proceed without any visible friction.

You ask, “What business is this of mine, right now, in this moment?” In a constitutional republic, the answer is: every act of state power is your business. When the government arrests, detains, deports, or kills in public view, it is doing so as your agent and in your name. “I am not directly involved” is not neutrality; it is consent by silence. You may choose not to be present, but you cannot claim that what happens in your city, under your flag, with your tax dollars, is none of your concern.

You place heavy emphasis on personal responsibility for protesters: Would I house this person, feed them, sponsor them, vouch for them? That’s an important moral examination, but it is only half of the ledger. The other half is: what responsibility do I bear if I stand by while human beings are treated as disposable problem sets at the edge of our laws? If I wouldn’t take someone into my home, does that absolve me of any duty to question whether they deserve to be shot in the street, warehoused indefinitely, or disappeared into a system I know is fallible and sometimes cruel? There is a vast moral space between “adopt them into my living room” and “let the state do whatever it wants without witnesses.”

You suggest that laws change through courts, elections, and legislation, not “street interference.” But history in this country suggests something more complicated. Legal change often follows years of inconvenient, disruptive, morally insistent presence by people who refused to wait quietly. Lunch counters didn’t desegregate because everyone stayed home and funded legal aid. Child labor laws, worker protections, women’s suffrage, civil rights: none of these moved forward because ordinary citizens trusted that if they just stayed out of the way and wrote polite letters, the system would repair itself. Peaceful assembly in the streets did not guarantee those victories, but it repeatedly created the pressure, visibility, and moral urgency without which “the process” would have happily postponed justice for another generation.

You warn that being physically close to armed officers doing their jobs is dangerous, and you’re right. But danger alone cannot be the measure of what is moral. It was dangerous to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was dangerous to stand in front of fire hoses, to register Black voters in the Jim Crow South, to organize unions under violent strikebreaking regimes. If we retrospectively honor those people as heroes but tell present-day protesters that any willingness to accept bodily risk is reckless, we are enjoying the moral capital of past courage while asking today’s citizens to live as cautious spectators.

You also frame proximity to armed professionals as if their presence automatically carries a presumption of legitimacy. But law enforcement is not an abstract force of nature; it is a set of human beings, armed and empowered, whose judgment is sometimes excellent and sometimes catastrophically wrong. If the state chooses to deploy armed agents into neighborhoods and protests where tensions are high, it is also choosing to accept a higher degree of scrutiny and confrontation. “Don’t stand too close to the people with the guns” cannot become a moral shield that prevents us from ever looking those people in the eye and saying, “Not in our name.”

Your questions about sponsorship—would I let this person sleep under my roof with my kids, would I take legal responsibility for their actions—reveal an underlying assumption: that unless I am willing to personally absorb the worst-case scenario, I have no moral standing to challenge harsh enforcement. But we rarely apply this standard anywhere else. I don’t have to personally adopt every abused child to protest the closing of shelters. I don’t have to be willing to house every veteran to demand they not be left on the street. We live in a society precisely because we share risks and responsibilities at scale; we build systems, institutions, and safeguards so that compassion is not limited to what any one household can carry.

Another thread in your argument suggests that disruptive protest is often more about feelings than outcomes—about being visible, righteous, or morally expressive. Sometimes it is. Humans are not robots, and politics is not a lab experiment. But that emotional dimension is not a bug; it is a signal. Outrage, grief, and fear are often the first and truest indicators that something has gone badly wrong before the paperwork and the court cases catch up. To dismiss that energy as mere performance is to ignore the moral alarm system of a community. The challenge is not to suppress it, but to channel it: to make sure that people who show up in the street also show up in courtrooms, city council meetings, mutual aid networks, and voting booths.

You ask whether people believe laws stop applying when enough people disagree with them. A fair question. But there is another: do you believe laws are self-legitimizing simply because they exist? If not, then there must be a realm of conscience where people say, “This enforcement may be legal, but it is wrong.” The American tradition is full of people who broke laws, or stood in the way of lawful orders, because they believed the moral order required it. Sometimes they were vindicated by history; sometimes they were not. The fact that the line is hard to draw does not mean we should never risk drawing it.

You also suggest that if one has ever called 911 or relied on police, it is inconsistent to question enforcement. That standard collapses a complex reality into a false binary. It is entirely coherent to say: “I want a system that protects people from violence, and I also demand that this system be restrained, accountable, and answerable when it harms the very people it claims to protect.” Wanting rescue from danger does not mean surrendering your right to oppose unnecessary killing, excessive force, or policies that criminalize desperation.

Risk is central to your post: the risk of being near armed agents, the risk of crowd dynamics, the risk of escalation. But a world where everyone internalizes the lesson “risk is bad, stay home, let the professionals handle it” is not a safer world; it is simply one where the only people regularly accepting public risk are armed state actors. That imbalance is dangerous in itself. A healthy democracy depends on some portion of the citizenry being willing to carry personal risk—legal risk, reputational risk, physical risk—to make wrongdoing visible and to remind officials that the governed are not passive objects.

When you say “Is common sense cowardice, or is it how people go home alive?”, I hear a reasonable fear of pointless harm. I share that concern. Recklessness helps no one. But there is also a quieter cowardice that calls itself common sense: the voice that always finds a reason to stay on the sidewalk, to stay behind the screen, to stay out of the frame when power is acting in ways we would find horrifying if we weren’t so used to them. If everyone listened only to that voice, we would have far fewer martyrs—and far more uninterrupted abuse.

The death of Alex Pretti is a tragedy. It is right to say it should not have happened. But the conclusion you draw—that his presence as an armed protester was also unnecessary—risks implying that the safest and most rational choice is always to stay away, especially when the state arrives with guns and authority. An alternative reading is possible: that his willingness to stand physically in opposition, even knowing the danger, is part of a long, difficult lineage of people who believed that some moments require bodies, not just opinions.

Protest will never be perfectly informed, perfectly targeted, or perfectly safe. People will show up with incomplete facts, messy motives, and vulnerable egos. Some will be there from principle, some from anger, some from grief, some from the need to belong. And still, in aggregate, the willingness of ordinary people to show up—visibly, inconveniently, sometimes perilously—remains one of the few real leverage points that the powerless have against institutional force. Asking them to forfeit that leverage in the name of tidy process is asking them to accept a world where their lives and voices are always downstream of someone else’s timeline.

So yes, ask the hard questions about tactics, goals, and consequences. Ask whether a given action reduces harm or multiplies it. But don’t let “clarity, responsibility, and choices that reduce harm” be redefined as passive spectatorship while heavily armed agents operate in public without sustained, bodily, visible dissent. There is a moral, patriotic, and distinctly American tradition of saying, “We will not go quietly. We will not avert our eyes. We will not accept that safety belongs only to those who obey without question.”

If anything, the danger and uncertainty you describe are not arguments against protest; they are reminders of why protest is sacred. Freedom that never costs anyone anything at the point of contact with power is not freedom—it is permission, revocable at will.

Sources

 

[steross]

View attachment 17798
This is one of the stupidest examples I’ve seen of folks playing both sides. They’re calling out the optics as evidence of someones intention?

WTF!!!???
I remember the same idiots defending the right to march with ARs and guy’s red dot is evidence he deserved to die?

Desperation & hypocrisy to the max

Sad that I, a random person with no training in self-defense, can easily poke holes in this supposed argument of the "country's top expert in the law of self-defense."

 

[PF5]

Provide proof or stfu.

there he is...LOL...

 

[steross]

We're wasting our time with these clowns. They scream things like "comply or die" but if you don't fall in line with the way they think you're an idiot for not complying with them. They call me out to ask my opinion then form the circle to hurl insults because my opinion doesn't comply with the circle.
Then they have the audacity to think I care what they think of me.
Playground tactics at it's worst.

You choose who/what you respond to. You seem to jump on the slightest insult so you can now play victim. Yet, nothing to either of my posts which did not insult you in any way.

 

[Vakarian74]

We're wasting our time with these clowns. They scream things like "comply or die" but if you don't fall in line with the way they think you're an idiot for not complying with them. They call me out to ask my opinion then form the circle to hurl insults because my opinion doesn't comply with the circle.
Then they have the audacity to think I care what they think of me.
Playground tactics at it's worst

@GratefulPoke they don't care they have been for 30 years full of hate for people like me. They have been listening to Rush Limbaugh and the like for so long they don't care about anyone but themselves. If you are against what they believe anything you say is a personal attack. I've just gotten to the point a lot quicker than most to notcare about their little feelings. These two would have been two of the first to turn in their neighbors in Nazi Germany. They're the first ones to throw out a racist meme then try and say it was just a joke. Out of respect to you I will try and keep it more civil but IMO these people haven't changed they are just being embolden to act how they have always believed. They are the abusive spouse that treats you like Crap and when you finally push back yells to the world that you are the uncivilized and crazy one. They are who they are.

 

[RxCowboy]

I want the border protected.
I want immigration laws enforced.
I want better access to legal immigration.
I want ICE to perform its basic function.
I want the Constitution upheld, even for the worst criminals, because that protects ALL OF US. Yes, it will take forever to process all the undocumented immigrants or whatever you want to call them and that is the mess we are left with, but again, due process and equal protection PROTECTS ALL OF US, YOU AND ME! If we short circuit due process or equal protection for anyone then all of us are in danger. All of us.

I tried to warn my friends and family about Trump in the summer of 2016. I wish I had been right then, because it’s worse than I thought.

Holee sheet…

 

[steross]

Your government wants you to believe that this man showed up to a protest today in order to kill other federal employees.

1.4M views · 56K reactions | The son of a veteran who died in 2024 says Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was his dad's ICU nurse and read out a final salute after his father's death. | NBC News

The son of a veteran who died in 2024 says Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was his dad's ICU nurse and read out a final salute after his father's...

www.facebook.com

 

[osuwhit]

@GratefulPoke they don't care they have been for 30 years full of hate for people like me. They have been listening to Rush Limbaugh and the like for so long they don't care about anyone but themselves. If you are against what they believe anything you say is a personal attack. I've just gotten to the point a lot quicker than most to notcare about their little feelings. These two would have been two of the first to turn in their neighbors in Nazi Germany. They're the first ones to throw out a racist meme then try and say it was just a joke. Out of respect to you I will try and keep it more civil but IMO these people haven't changed they are just being embolden to act how they have always believed. They are the abusive spouse that treats you like Crap and when you finally push back yells to the world that you are the uncivilized and crazy one. They are who they are.

I don’t hate you or anyone like you. I have no clue who you are. What I feel that you’re doing right now is projecting and throwing out wild, outlandish claims and comparisons that you know nothing about.

I’ve haven’t hurled any personal insults at anyone I disagree with. JD, someone I slightly know in real life, chose to insult me over a disagreement last night and I returned insults back, but those insults weren’t about his political opinions. People do that sometimes. I can move past it and certainly won’t lose sleep over it.

If I had to guess, opposition triggers you and you don’t handle it well. We’re taking place in discussion here. Don’t let it get any heavier than that. I don’t wish ill will or anything awful towards you personally. At worst, I might disagree with you. At most, we actually agree on some things.

 

[GratefulPoke]

https://bsky.app/profile/maddenifico.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3mdb5tlvths2z

 

[GratefulPoke]

‘Speak truth to power’ does not mean try and convince power by the logic of your truth. If it means that, it’s a slogan we should dump, because power doesn’t listen to logic. Power doesn’t give a damn about truth. ... Power only responds to raising social costs, to force, basically.

–Michael Albert

 

[Vakarian74]

I don’t hate you or anyone like you. I have no clue who you are. What I feel that you’re doing right now is projecting and throwing out wild, outlandish claims and comparisons that you know nothing about.

I’ve haven’t hurled any personal insults at anyone I disagree with. JD, someone I slightly know in real life, chose to insult me over a disagreement last night and I returned insults back, but those insults weren’t about his political opinions. People do that sometimes. I can move past it and certainly won’t lose sleep over it.

If I had to guess, opposition triggers you and you don’t handle it well. We’re taking place in discussion here. Don’t let it get any heavier than that. I don’t wish ill will or anything awful towards you personally. At worst, I might disagree with you. At most, we actually agree on some things.

You were accidentally included in that. Yes we agree on some. But I'm not against opposition at all I'm wrong a lot. I want to be told when I'm wrong. I don't like Tob because rob is fake civil. He can insult you but not call you names and act like he did nothing wrong it's how most conservatives that have been swept up in MAGA are. They want to insult you with nice words and play the victim when they get called out. They have never or will never take responsibility for their errors. They are Trump on a normal person scale.

 

[TheMonkey]

Look… I don’t care if you or anyone here like or dislike me. I have no clue who you are and probably never will. We don’t need to be friends, but we can be cordial here. So, with that said, I admit my OP was tone deaf. I’m sorry it rubbed y’all the wrong way and I honestly mean that.

There’s no gaslighting here, man. So, if you want to continue to be pissed off, that’s your choice. I just want you and anyone else that is pissed off to know, that my post was tone deaf and I’m sorry.

I’m not on the side of what ICE was doing, so remember that too please.

I truly appreciate you owning the OP. Thanks.

As far as me liking you. Sure, you’re right, I don’t know you. It was an olive branch. A way to say “this isn’t personal.” It’s called de-escalation. Something ICE should try. Sometimes I think you completely ignore nuance in order to make your point. Not sure if that is intentional.

We're wasting our time with these clowns. They scream things like "comply or die" but if you don't fall in line with the way they think you're an idiot for not complying with them. They call me out to ask my opinion then form the circle to hurl insults because my opinion doesn't comply with the circle.
Then they have the audacity to think I care what they think of me.
Playground tactics at it's worst.

@Rob B. it’s not a playground tactic and I never have called you a name like you did replying to Whit’s direct response to me. I’m not mad or hurt, before you call me a snowflake. Just asking you to be civil, as I believe you typically intend to do.

 

[osuwhit]

I truly appreciate you owning the OP. Thanks.

As far as me liking you. Sure, you’re right, I don’t know you. It was an olive branch. A way to say “this isn’t personal.” It’s called de-escalation. Something ICE should try. Sometimes I think you completely ignore nuance in order to make your point. Not sure if that is intentional.

Nuance gets ignored often in here. Probably a habit on my end. I’ll work on it.

 

[osuwhit]

You were accidentally included in that but while I do agree with something your last statement says a lot about you to me.

Considering I was tagged and you used the word “they” I feel my last statement was warranted at the time I wrote it.

If you weren’t referring to me and I haven’t triggered you then it’s unwarranted. At the time I wrote it, I was responding to what I thought you were calling me out on.

Does that make sense?

 

[Vakarian74]

Considering I was tagged and you used the word “they” I feel my last statement was warranted at the time I wrote it.

If you weren’t referring to me and I haven’t triggered you then it’s unwarranted. At the time I wrote it, I was responding to what I thought you were calling me out on.

Does that make sense?

I edited it. I do understand why you said that.