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I got nothing.

Oh, how about them unmarked storm troopers whisking people away and detaining them without cause or explanation? Pretty cool/creepy/scary/unconstitutional eh.

TIL that there is a $2400 fee to renounce your United States citizenship.

Yaknow, not like there's any reason for that given how fantastic, amazing and whimsical our country is in its current state.

About half of people I've spoke to about this condone it. They believe everyone being dragged away are "Marxist terrorists" who are each guilty of burning down entire cities. They then repeat the same line about "restoring law & order" and some such I can't even remember it all but its like they're all part of the same hive mind.

It is becoming extremely depressing to know that so many Americans will happily go along with anything. Anything at all. There is no rock bottom. They are like minions for some god-like evil. I have never felt so much disgust, and I know it will only get worse from here.

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I couldn't tell you what the Useful Idiot "law-and-order conservatives" think but I can tell you that Trump has zero idea what anyone else thinks. Which is why his Portland gambit failed (notice the massive surge into other cities hasn't happened yet) and suburban voters are increasingly slipping from his grasp. People aren't in the suburbs shaking in fear of what's happening in a couple blocks of some city. People in the suburbs usually feel affection for their host city and aren't impressed by the president calling it a crime-ridden shithole. People in most suburbs are actually fairly well integrated and don't like being cast as the villains or victims in Trump's race war. Suburban voters are, to a good extent, college educated and informed enough to not buy into "Trump is saving my property values by having some re-labeled Park Patrol cops beat up protestors twenty-five miles away"

What suburban voters do want is to be able to pay the mortgage and send the kids to safe schools. Two top priorities threatened by Trump's catastrophically poor Covid response. A recent poll put "Crime" at 6% on the voter priority list. Add that to the general "Trump is a racist, sexist asshole" vibe that helped lose the suburbs for the GOP in 2018 and there's not enough Customs agents in gas masks available on the payroll to turn his problems around.

Edited, Aug 3rd 2020 7:18am by Jophiel

Once a **** always a ****.

Or..people can change.

What I find amusing is that while you guys on the Left continually accuse Trump of politicising everything, that's exactly what you just did. WTF? Trump didn't send in federal law enforcement to those locations for political reasons. He did it because it's the right thing to do. There are rioters trying to burn down federal buildings in a city. The local Mayor and Governor are not taking the steps necessary to prevent it. So Trump sends in federal law enforcement to do so. What the heck does that have to do with suburban voters?

That's the Dem spin on this. That Trump is just doing this for political reasons. But again, those folks are the ones politicising this. If Trump really just wanted voters to see how weak the Dem politicians are, and how unwilling to protect their property they are, all he has to do is... wait for it... nothing. Those Dem Mayors and Governors are doing a bang up job of showing their inability to handle violent protests and riots all by themselves.

Trump sent in those forces because he's putting doing the right thing, and preventing buildings from being destroyed ahead of the politics. Geez. Can you get this more backwards?

People getting destroyed, though??

OK with him as long as he's "hurting the right people", amirite?

False. But that's a nice job repeating the talking point though. Folks were rioting in Portland and destroying stuff for over a month before Trump sent in any federal officers. It was the dem pundits who claimed that by sending those officers it would some how make things worse, but that was purely the result of their own absolutely moronic "if we just let them protest they'll be nice to us and like us" mentality speaking. There's no truth to that.

I'm looking at a source from July 7th listing property damage in Portland from the previous 6 weeks of rioting at $300k to public buildings and $4.8M in damage to private property. This was before Trump send Federal Officers to that city. So no, the whole 'everything was fine until Trump got involved" narrative is complete an utter BS.



No. Liberal pundits claimed that would happen and supported this by doing everything they could to encourage and incite conflict between the rioters and the federal officers, but whatever damage was done was as a result of that encouragement, and not the mere presence of the officers. Also most of the damage after that point was done to non federal buildings, where these federal officers weren't even present. So um.... They hated the feds being there so much that they went to other parts of town to burn things? That makes a ton of sense.

And they didn't "back down". The were successful in arresting those who were actively involved in causing destruction to federal property and the riots reduced as a result. See. There's this funny thing where if you actually step in and enforce the laws and start arresting people who break them, other people stop getting involved in breaking the law. If you know that no police will stop you if you go out and smash and burn stuff, you might just join in the destruction. But if you know you're likely to get arrested, spend time in federal jail, and face fines for the damage you do, you'll probably stay home.

If the politicians in Portland had even the smallest spines, this never would have gotten this out of hand in the first place. That's most definitely not Trump's fault.



Um... You can't negotiate with people who don't actually have an agenda other than causing random destruction and chaos. You just arrest them. Period. The folks rioting in Portland are using the whole BLM protests as a cover. They don't care about BLM. They don't have a "cause". There is nothing they want from the government. They just want to show that they can destroy stuff with impunity. It makes them feel powerful so they do it. As the stupid Portland mayor learned. There's not "I"m on your side" that will work here. They don't have a "side". They're just breaking stuff.

You can't possibly actually believe that. Negotiation. Lol!

Man, I love when Republicans admit that they don't actually give a **** about states' rights.

Yep.

Uh. I'm thinking you don't really understand the concept then. Respect for states rights is why Trump didn't send federal forces to just arrest anyone rioting anywhere. He has allowed the mayors and governors to handle it. However, states rights does not prevent the president from sending in federal officers to protect federal buildings. Which is what he did.

There's no violation of states rights involved here.



You're moving the goalposts from "federal buildings" to "public buildings". What part of "Trump is only empowered to protect federal buildings" did you not get? Yeah. They were only protecting federal buildings, because those are the only buildings they are legally allowed to protect.

The damage to other municipal properties owned by the state and/or city are 100% the responsibility of the governor and mayor to protect. That they failed to do so is 100% on them and not Trump. Again, if they grew a spine between the two of them, maybe this sort of thing wouldn't have happened in the first place?



Sounds like maybe if the mayor and governor had done their jobs, none of this would have been necessary. You're also making this bizarre assumption that the rioters would magically stop after 60 days of rioting if only Trump "didn't" send in federal police. That's a pretty ridiculous assumption.

Look. It's not even a hard concept. If you want people to stop breaking the law, and rioting and destroying property, you arrest them. Yes, in the short term, that will "increase the violence", in the same way any act to stand up to bullying and crime will result in increased clashes between police and the law breakers. But in the long run, you have to do it. Otherwise, you're just giving in to the criminals and it will never stop.

What's funny is that I know you are smart enough to understand this, and that you fundamentally agree with me in terms of the need of police to prevent these sorts of crimes. What's baffling is your willingness to ignore that in favor of political expediency when the whole thing can somehow be spun into a "Trump is bad" narrative. Why?


A couple weeks ago I was watching a news segment about the various riots and protests going on, and one of the liberal pundits on the show made a point of talking about the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict came out, and basically excusing the current rioting as the same sort of thing and that it'll work itself out. Of course, said pundit maybe forgot the small detail that the LA riots only lasted a few days specifically because the CA governor called out the national guard and used them to enforce curfew and restricted travel. Riots ended in one night once that was done.

Ironically, we saw the same thing in Minneapolis. Riots went on, several police precinct buildings were burned and had to be abandoned. Then they finally mobilized the guards that had been activated, but by their own admission they should have done it a day earlier.

The lesson consistently is that you can't just sit around and hope things get better. And some of these politicians in an ill-conceived effort to not offend people, are allowing their cities to burn instead. I just think it's nuts.

Voting up Jophiel does not imply explicit endorsement.

It's covert endorsement.