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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#262751: Nov 24th 2018 at 4:15:45 PM

Lying may not be illegal, but harrassment certainly is.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#262752: Nov 24th 2018 at 4:19:53 PM

Interestingly, sovereign citizens are considered the number one threat to LE Os in the US. They’re armed to the teeth and usually have no issue with shooting first and asking questions never, so police always use extreme caution when dealing with them.
... So what do they exactly do? My expectation of an otherwise well-functioning democracy with rule of law that has such a problem of a certain subset of citizens with such a fanatical adherence to their ideology and being more than willing to respond to government attempts to crack down on their defiance of the law of the land with lethal force against the government's LEOs is that said government would greenlight their LEOs to respond in kind, because these gun-toting nutjobs are a threat to not just the LEOs but also any civilians that may get caught in the crossfire or even be simply standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when some shots inevitably miss their intended marks.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#262753: Nov 24th 2018 at 4:26:07 PM

[up] Well, this being a free country and all, people are legally allowed to hold any ideal they want so long as they don’t commit a crime, or incite others to commit a crime. We don’t practice violent ideological suppression here, and we’re all the better for it.

That said, in terms of actual scenarios most law enforcement in the US have a “lethal threat, lethal force” policy. If someone points a gun at them, or at someone else, or does something which could immediately endanger the life of them or someone else then a LEO is justified in using lethal force on that person. It has to be an actual, real, immediate threat though, you can’t just bust into someone’s house and shoot them because they posted some sovereign citizen stuff on Facebook.

They should have sent a poet.
Friendperson Since: May, 2018
#262754: Nov 24th 2018 at 4:29:23 PM

[up] Correct. Our free speech laws are extremely strong, as it should be.

MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#262755: Nov 24th 2018 at 4:30:41 PM

[up][up]That policy is pretty much what I was talking about, actually, and I'm offended that you somehow missed that despite my clear wording ("respond in kind" is as clear as I could get). Yes, I know, my posts from the last few days most probably have you guys agitated at how aggressive and seemingly callous I am on the subject of pushing back against these sorts of people, but that doesn't justify glossing over such important words that I've purposefully used to ensure clarity.

[up] The countries of Europe having exceptions to their free speech laws when it comes to Nazism and the like without becoming anti-democratic/illiberal in the process proves you wrong about your way being "as it should be."

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 24th 2018 at 3:34:45 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#262756: Nov 24th 2018 at 4:37:42 PM

[up] Yeah, given our previous posting history, and the fact that you were suggesting that law enforcement respond in kind to unprovoked attacks, the insinuation that LE Os should be shooting first or otherwise hunting these people down seemed pretty clear. I do apologize for the error though.

Use of force is a pretty thorny subject in the US, the training for any law enforcement position will typically involve a several-week class on that subject alone. Generally, though, the standard is based on the threat posed immediately to the officer. Ultimately though, it typically comes down to the individual officer’s ability to articulate their decision. A very small female officer could shoot a large male suspect and if she articulated that she felt the potential difference in size and strength meant the interaction could be deadly for her she’d be justified in using deadly force, even if the suspect was unarmed. That’s a scenario I’ve actually seen play out, as well.

[down] Oh I mean, I agree. The definition of “incitement” probably needs to be a little wider, though only for certain cases and not by much.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 24th 2018 at 4:40:36 AM

They should have sent a poet.
PhysicalStamina i'm tired, my friend (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Coming soon to theaters
i'm tired, my friend
#262757: Nov 24th 2018 at 4:38:47 PM

Well, this being a free country and all, people are legally allowed to hold any ideal they want so long as they don’t commit a crime, or incite others to commit a crime.

Which spouting off at the mouth about how Mexicans are bringing crime into the US or black people are biologically inferior is going to end up doing.

Edited by PhysicalStamina on Nov 24th 2018 at 7:39:06 AM

i'm tired, my friend
Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#262758: Nov 24th 2018 at 4:41:37 PM

Yeah-adhering to an ideology is not in and of itself ever a crime per se. Speech can be met with speech, after all.

However, violence against LE Os tends to be seen as crossing the Moral Event Horizon and gets punished very harshly in the US. Essentially the idea is that the LEO-criminal relationship "should" be LE Os protect citizens from violence while criminals to get away with harming citizens (this situation isn't ideal per se, but it's "the best you're gonna get"). However, killing cops is seen as something that just plain should not happen and so cops tend to be rabidly protective of their fellow officers. IE, if you shoot a police dog you'll be magdumped by a few AR-15s (something that happened near where I live once).

Leviticus 19:34
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#262759: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:00:46 PM

Yeah, well, things like the Bundy standoff is where I get very baffled, pissed off and is part of the reason why I am very much not sympathetic to the whole "we need to be civilized" thing that keeps being touted on the subject.

  1. Bundy defended having his cattle graze on federally owned public land by claiming that the federal government has no authority whatsoever to own such land (i.e. "it's not owned by anyone").

  2. The federal courts, like any sane judges would do, threw his argument out to the gutter where it belongs.

  3. Bundy nevertheless continue defying the law by persisting in grazing his cattle on the federal land.

  4. A vast portion of this area of federal land is closed off temporarily, and the Bureau of Land Management was authorized to engage in the "capture, impound, and removal of trespass cattle."

  5. A mob of fully armed sovcits, presumably led by Bundy, rally to the BLM round-up, their weapons and the use of such language as "range war" a clear sign of their intent to resort to violence against the federal government's officers if they don't have their way. The confrontation escalated such that a sovcit had the gall to directly hit a federal truck with an ATV; a police dog was kicked and several officers were assaulted as well.

  6. The BLM's director released the cattle to "de-escalate the situation."

  7. It took two years after this standoff for Bundy to be arrest and have charges levelled at him...

  8. ... but then District Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed with prejudice those charges, so now Bundy is back at large and free to pull more of his bullshit.

The whole thing should've ended with a mass arrest of the mob of gunmen after the assaults of those officers and the one police dog, even if it took shooting back and killing some/many/most of them if they were insane enough to actually resist arrest violently and shoot first, not with that cowardly director caving in to their demands just because he apparently doesn't want any sort of violence happening on his watch.

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 24th 2018 at 4:02:47 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Alycus Since: Apr, 2018
#262760: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:12:52 PM

Laws that restrict what people can say about the government are bad. Laws that restrict what people can say about other people, especially minorities, are good. Only the former actually is censorship, and we must not fall for disingenuous traps claiming that the latter is too.

archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#262761: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:18:08 PM

[up][up] Well, the thing about the “deadly threat, deadly force” policy is that it doesn’t mandate that response, only permit that response. A man could be pointing a gun at an officer and the officer would be within his authority to shoot the guy, he could also choose to talk him down instead. Discretion, the ability to not act to the full extent of your authority, is actually one of the most important tools a LEO has.

In this case, someone made a call that they felt a nonviolent resolution would be preferable. I’m sure Waco and Ruby Ridge were looming in everyone’s mind and nobody really wanted a shootout that would have almost certainly ended with dozens dead, officers and suspects alike. Which, I will say, is fair, though maybe not the best choice. They probably should have been a little more aggressive, but not to the degree you’re suggesting.

The prosecutor and judge then went ahead and dropped the ball afterwards, but that’s not really a law enforcement issue. I’m not sure why the charges were dismissed, I know there were accusations of evidence being mishandled flying between local law enforcement and the prosecutor’s office but nothing really came of it. Hopefully someone got fired.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 24th 2018 at 5:19:21 AM

They should have sent a poet.
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#262762: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:25:08 PM

See, that's the problem: You espouse a "peace over justice" philosophy. Some people would call my rejection of said philosophy as "justice over peace", but they're wrong, because what I believe in is "peace cannot be achieved without justice". Or in other words, I believe that any "peace" that is achieved at the cost of justice to be a false one that will never last, nor will it help alleviate the problem it purports to be trying to alleviate.

Case in point: The aftermath of the American Civil War. The victorious Union side decided that quickly restoring peace to the entirety of the nation was more important than exacting justice upon the slave-makers of the defeated Southern states. Not a few decades later, Jim Crow laws are put in place, thus shitting upon all the limited "progress" that the African Americans managed to eke out in the wake of the civil war. Yup, peace was well worth sidelining justice there.

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 24th 2018 at 4:28:48 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#262763: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:30:23 PM

I am not sure how "justice" would have worked in this case. What they did wasn't exactly illegal after all, no matter how morally wrong it was.

PhysicalStamina i'm tired, my friend (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Coming soon to theaters
i'm tired, my friend
#262764: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:33:33 PM

[up]That, then, is perhaps a failing of the law.

i'm tired, my friend
wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#262765: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:35:38 PM

I’m gonna Godwin’s Law here and point out that the Holocaust was also “legal.”

Laws are often bad, though the degree varies. Legality=/= morality.

archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#262766: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:38:47 PM

[up][up][up][up] In the case of the Bundy standoff, a bloody shootout wouldn’t have helped anyone. Again, this isn’t about peace or justice, it’s about the end result. If the end result you’re looking for is satisfaction gained from violence done to those you oppose that’s fine.

A shootout would have done a few things. First off, it would have gotten a bunch of LE Os who were just doing their jobs killed for no good reason. Second, it would have massively emboldened and legitimized militia and sovereign citizen groups across the US. It’s well known that engaging with them violently actually is perceived as legitimization by their members. As an example, there was a correlated uptick in both recruitment and related crime after one of the ringleaders of the Malheur occupation was shot, and that was a clean shooting too. A bloody and legally unclear shootout would have emboldened them to an even greater degree. Finally, the optics of that scenario just would not have been favorable for the federal government, and it would have formed a propaganda centerpiece for the right that they’d still be harping on to this day.

It seems like you’re mostly looking for revenge, not for a solution.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 24th 2018 at 5:40:01 AM

They should have sent a poet.
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#262767: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:38:53 PM

[up][up][up]Yeah, when it comes to To Be Lawful or Good, I would absolutely always choose Good and flip off Law if it insists on not cooperating. I already have enough experience with corruption-ridden Law in the form of my own government, thank you very much.

[up] No, I'm looking for a decisive solution that makes it clear it's very unwise to fuck with the government and flagrantly defy its authority when it's already working its ass off to protect its citizens from enough domestic threats (including ideologues hell-bent on killing off the poor) and plenty of foreign ones already, especially when the government didn't actually do you anything wrong.

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 24th 2018 at 4:45:34 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#262768: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:44:37 PM

[up] Shooting it out with them would not have been a decisive solution. It would have been a messy one with a whole bunch of aftereffects that nobody would have liked.

Don’t mistake decisive for violent. Having worked in law enforcement I can tell you that violent solutions are very rarely a good idea, and frequently just make things worse.

Also, I find the implication that the government should keep its citizens cowering under the barrel of a gun to keep order a little odd, not to mention anti-democratic.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 24th 2018 at 5:45:36 AM

They should have sent a poet.
wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#262769: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:50:17 PM

Everyone involved should have gotten jail time and/or massive fines. Letting them off scot free was a terrible decision.

HOWEVER, we need our cops to STOP being trigger happy around black and brown people, not for them to start shooting white people too.

MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#262770: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:53:34 PM

Also, I find the implication that the government should keep its citizens cowering under the barrel of a gun to keep order a little odd, not to mention anti-democratic.
That's because I'm not talking about the citizens. These guys have by their own words rejected their citizenship of the "United States of America" (as in, the federal union of the states) because somehow they can be citizens of their state without being obligated to recognize the authority of the federal government that was born from these states' political union, and have made it clear they're willing to fight back violently if the federal government tries to enforce its laws on them. That's far more serious of a matter than, say, someone circumventing tax law because they believe it's wrong to put so many taxes on their income.

[up] I never said anything about them starting the shooting process of a shoot-out. I said that when a sovcit mob armed with assault rifles and other military-grade weapons threatens to violently resist arrest, the law enforcement officers are supposed to call out their bluff by initiating the arrest process despite the threat, all while making it clear that if these guys start shooting, the police will shoot back with as much lethal intent as the law-defiers are exhibiting.

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 24th 2018 at 4:57:00 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#262771: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:55:15 PM

They’re still citizens, regardless of all the bullshit they spew. And killing should always be a last resort, not an intimidation tactic.

archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#262772: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:56:48 PM

[up][up] Yeah, they were still citizens. The federal government has an obligation to protect all of its subjects, even ones that don’t like it.

And again, a massive shootout would not have been a clean resolution to that situation. It would have been the single messiest solution to that situation possible, in fact. And “you should stay in line because you’re scared of the government” isn’t really a good way to run a country.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 24th 2018 at 5:59:06 AM

They should have sent a poet.
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#262773: Nov 24th 2018 at 5:58:40 PM

[up]x3 On top of what [up] and [up]x2 are saying, even if they weren't legally citizens of this Country, they'd still have almost the exact same rights as legal citizens do. What you're suggesting would allow a President like Trump to do whatever he wanted to Illegal Immigrants, which would be not only horrendous, it would also be disastrous to us as a nation.

MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#262774: Nov 24th 2018 at 6:05:53 PM

So what, are you guys saying that a big enough gathering of people guns on their persons should be allowed to get away with not being arrested for openly violating federal law? What's the use of arming the police if the threat of violent resistance to arrest is enough to deter arrest???

At least here, people that get away with breaking the law do so because either the crime is too "trivial" for the local policemen to get off their asses and bother investigating properly (all too frequent), or the offender has enough money / political clout to literally buy their way out of being charged and maybe even turn the tables on the victim.

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 24th 2018 at 5:07:46 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#262775: Nov 24th 2018 at 6:08:12 PM

...we’re saying arrest them. Prosecute them. Jail/fine them.

Not shoot them. And honestly I think most police shouldn’t be carrying guns but that’s another discussion entirely.

Edited by wisewillow on Nov 24th 2018 at 9:08:55 AM


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