LA Protests

[Deziree]

4 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

You're not wrong about how damaged both the Democratic brand and the reputation of establishment Democrats. I honestly am still not sure if Newsom would be the best Democratic candidate for president. 

AOC right now is arguably the most electrifying Democrat in the country and currently has the strongest and clearest messaging compared to virtually every other Democrat in the country. That being said, I no longer see a woman of color ever becoming president for the foreseeable future. How is AOC going to be able to allay the fears of the majority of Americans that she doesn't believe in Cuban style Socialism/Communism when she's far leftist who already calls herself a Socialist?

Moreover, it's still too hard for women and colored people even in modern America to aggressively push for economic populism on a nationwide scale. If a woman president came off as "too aggressive," even for the right reasons, she would likely face a double standard that male leaders are rarely held to. Voters, media, and opponents might say she’s: “Cold,” “harsh,” “shrill,” “Overly ambitious,” “trying too hard to prove herself," “too emotional,” or “unstable.”

If a woman of color became president and was perceived as “too aggressive,” the backlash would likely be even more intense and layered than it would be for a white woman — due to the intersection of racial and gender stereotypes.

We need an alpha male who's white, has traditional social values, but is a true economic class warrior like TR or FDR.

Yea good points. 

[zazen]

13 hours ago, zazen said:

 

The second video is especially comprehensive and prophetic of what’s occurring today. For the most part, a pretty on point and devastating analysis, not without its flaws.

The right isn't wholly wrong about pointing out certain issues and even facts around those issues. They often claim they're all about “facts over feelings”. The issues come with their narrative around those facts, that their feelings inform. They’re feelings rationalise around those facts, to affirm their own prejudices.

They take real patterns that may be observable (such as over-representation of x group in crime, poverty etc) and then pathologize those groups as innately inferior. When their own group show up in statistics or do wrong, they exceptionalize them as individual anomalies to maintain their own sense of superiority - otherwise known as American exceptionalism.

They turn circumstance into a condition. Systemic circumstances can cause certain conditions - that force people to live within the limits of those conditions. They de-contextualise in order to essentialise - attributing wrongdoing in behavior to the inherent nature or essence of that out-group.

On the other hand: the tendency of the left is to sanitise and individualise instead of pathologise and generalise. At their best they fear acknowledging harsh truths because they fear those truths energising the far right who will mis-use them to justify injustices. At their worst, they fear facing the reality of survival and power dynamics that counters their own idea of human goodness.

Realities of survival and power dynamics threatens the lefts moral framework because they haven’t synthesized the ideals of principles - with the realities of power and survival. They either deny those realities or have an incorrect relationship to it - the most extreme political manifestation being communism.

The right understand and mis-use realpolitik, the left don’t accommodate reality into their own politik - because the cold reality of nature puts into question their view of nature being good. The physical nature of power isn’t good by default - the concept of good doesn’t even exist in that plane. It’s just raw and neutral - only becoming good when nurtured by principles from the non-physical plane of the soul. Civilization is about buffering the reality of power with the conscience of principles.

 

It's best to view the state not as a actor but a broker for elite interests. Politics is noise, profit and power are the signal.

Chat GPT summary:

Organized Summary & Analysis: State Capture and the Illusion of American Democracy

1. Democracy as Illusion: The speaker opens with a brutal paradox: Americans vote in a democracy on election day but spend most of their lives inside authoritarian structures, particularly in the private sector. Offices, companies, and corporations are not democratic spaces. In fact, they are "democracy-free zones" where the principles of representation and accountability are absent. The workplace, where people spend two-thirds of their waking lives, is effectively a dictatorship.

Best Quote: "You punch in at work, you punch out of your democracy."

2. Private Sector Supremacy and State Capture: Over time, the American state has ceded more and more control to the private sector, which has now effectively captured it. The result is a government that acts less like a public servant and more like a broker for private interests. This is described as a "stack of authoritarianisms" nested inside each other—corporations within monopolies within financial behemoths.

Best Quote: "Congress is nothing but the customer service desk for the Fortune 500."

3. Thorium Example: Missed Opportunities for Humanity: The abandonment of thorium-based nuclear energy in favor of more weaponizable uranium highlights how military-industrial interests override human advancement. China's progress in this space is contrasted with the U.S.'s retreat, not because of technical limitations but because thorium could not be easily weaponized.

Best Quote: "If it couldn't facilitate war and killing, it was deprioritized."

4. Privatization of Immigration Enforcement: The speaker argues that ICE has become a corporate arm of private prison contractors, functioning not as law enforcement but as a profit-generating logistics operation. Immigration enforcement is not about law but commerce, and each arrest or deportation is a financial transaction.

Best Quote: "ICE is not a law enforcement agency. It's a mercenary force under contract to private corporations."

5. Expansion Beyond Immigrants: The speaker warns that the apparatus being normalized against immigrants will inevitably be expanded to target other vulnerable populations: the poor, minorities, protesters, and political dissidents. Surveillance infrastructure, AI raids, and detention centers are described as pre-fascist architecture.

Best Quote: "This isn't just a pilot project. It's a supply chain."

6. Corporate Logic Driving Policy: Investor briefings celebrate deportation orders. Stocks rise with every new detention center. The entire immigration system has become a monetized business model, incentivizing human suffering and undermining the moral foundation of law.

Best Quote: "Respecting rights is financially inefficient. Violating dignity is now incentivized."

7. State Has Abdicated: This is not just corruption. It is capture. The state has fully abdicated its monopoly on legitimate violence and handed it over to private interests. It is no longer governing—it is facilitating corporate domination.

Best Quote: "Deregulation is just the state regulating its own abdication."

8. America as a Captured State: What remains of the state is described as a "brand," not a real body politic. Like Rome before its fall, the U.S. is using privatized mercenaries to manage domestic unrest. The result is the hollowing out of legitimacy and the normalization of emergency repression as governance.

Best Quote: "You're being policed by marauders and mercenaries."

9. International Legitimacy Lost: The United States is no longer seen as a moral leader. Its violations of international law, inhumane detention practices, and erosion of legal norms have destroyed its soft power globally.

Best Quote: "Your whole brand is tarnished. America can never again call itself the beacon of liberty."

10. Call to Action and Moral Clarity: Finally, the speaker calls for resistance, warning that silence or inaction is complicity. The system currently targeting immigrants will eventually target everyone. The moral high ground belongs to those who resist, expose, and protect.

Best Quote: "If you're not resisting, you're colluding. If you're not protecting them, you're rehearsing for when no one protects you."

Conclusion: This is not a hyperbolic rant, but a structural critique of a system in late-stage neoliberal collapse. It presents a chilling but grounded diagnosis: the American state has been fully captured by private capital, and its institutions now function to maximize profit through domination. The capture is complete, the moral framework of governance is dead, and the only thing that remains is resistance—or submission.

[Leo Gura]

@zazen

This is not an issue of capitalism, it is an issue of nationalism.

Illegals are a problem for national identity not business.

That is bad leftist analysis because leftists don't understand the importance of ethnicity and national identity. Which is why Trump won. Trump understands this issue better than leftists.

Edited June 11 by Leo Gura

[zazen]

Border has the word order in it - but the order of the past differs to the order of today which there are new incentives for. Incentives primarily drive actions while ideology justify it - if the actions being taken based on those incentives don't look good, it's ideologies purpose to make them look good. This is why we're told that these raids and deportations are being done for ''nationalism'' and ''security'' = national security. Whilst that has elements of truth and validness, its not the key driver.

In the US where profit is King, everything else becomes its servant. Racist ethno-nationalists ideologues jumping on this bandwagon is secondary to the primary driver being the profit motive. Illegality isn't objective but conditional on profitability. When undocumented immigrants served a profitable function, their "illegality" was tolerated - now that they cease to serve a profitable function to the same extent - suddenly their illegality is a liability looking for a way to be monetized. In the past, legality didn't matter because profit sanitized illegality. Today, illegality is weaponized for revenue. Legality is simply a selective tool serving profit and power, not a principle applied universally.

In 2025 - automation, AI, reshoring without labor, and rising political instability make that labor force less economically useful and more socially expendable. At the same time, the rise of the carceral-surveillance economy created new ways to monetize enforcement through deportation quotas, detention centers, tech surveillance, and federal contracts. The same system that once profited from their presence now profits from their removal.

The cost-benefit equation has shifted:

See: 

 

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, zazen said:

their "illegality" was tolerated

It was never tolerated. Liberals just keep refusing to enforce laws.

Yes. This is about law enforcement, not capitalism.

There is hardly a nation on the planet that has worse border enforcement than America. No other nation tolerates such liberal nonsense.

The only thing liberals know how to do on this issue is cry and make any excuse imaginable other than to enforce immigration law.

Even you guys here cannot compute this issue. You keep inventing excuses for not enforcing laws. Including this excuse of capitalism, fascism, whatever. You will say anything to avoid admitting you are wrong.

You guys fundementally do not understand what nationalism is, how it feels, and why it is necessary.

Edited June 11 by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

31 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It was never tolerated. Liberals just keep refusing to enforce laws.

Yes. This is about law enforcement, not capitalism.

There is hardly a nation on the planet that has worse border enforcement than America. No other nation tolerates such liberal nonsense.

The only thing liberals know how to do on this issue is cry and make any excuse imaginable other than to enforce immigration law.

Even you guys here cannot compute this issue. You keep inventing excuses for not enforcing laws. Including this excuse of capitalism, fascism, whatever. You will say anything to avoid admitting you are wrong.

You guys fundementally do not understand what nationalism is, how it feels, and why it is necessary.

What effective border security policies did Bush or Trump (1st term) have during their presidencies to minimize illegal immigration?

Moreover, why aren't Trump and his party working on passing a new border security law to update the infrastructure for it?

Edited June 11 by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

What effective border security policies did Bush or Trump (1st term) have during their presidencies to minimize illegal immigration?

That only strengthens my point.

Nationalism is a more primordial force than any particular administration's failures.

Trump wanted to build a wall but they didn't let him.

The problem is not just the failures to stop immigration, but that leftists don't even think it's a problem.

Leftists have zero credibility on this issue and the voters feel it in their bones.

You have no solution and you don't even try, you don't even care.

Edited June 11 by Leo Gura

[PurpleTree]

10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That only strengthens my point.

Nationalism is a more primordial force than any particular administration's failures.

Trump wanted to build a wall but they didn't let him.

The problem is not just the failures to stop immigration, but that leftists don't even think it's a problem.

Leftists have zero credibility on this issue and the voters feel it in their bones.

You have no solution and you don't even try, you don't even care.

Far lefists actually just want to open the borders.

No borders no nation is a slogan.

[BlueOak]

@Leo Gura

You representing the right here, are conflating illegal immigration with legal immigration.

Therein lies the point and purpose of the protests against the state, that and the military occupation of a city to conduct these illegal and unconstitutional raids. If immigration law is changed to your position, you'll be arguing for the law, at present, you are not. 

But as i've said, morality trumps the law here, even if what you were arguing for here was indeed lawful, it wouldn't be ethical or moral. 

[zazen]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@zazen

This is not an issue of capitalism, it is an issue of nationalism.

Illegals are a problem for national identity not business.

That is bad leftist analysis because leftists don't understand the importance of ethnicity and national identity. Which is why Trump won. Trump understands this issue better than leftists.

Posted above comment before seeing yours. It's one thing I'm conflicted on. What primarily drives action: ideology or incentive?  I think its incentive with an overlay of ideology. If actors can instrumentalize ideology for their own ends, they will. If capital can capitalize compassion, it will. Liberalism’s failures are real, but its failures are also useful to capital.

I'm not sure if liberal morality is causative or instrumental. Compassion can be rented when useful and discarded when redundant. If US is ruled by a corporate-oligarchy then cost-benefit analysis is primary, and morality is secondarily justified after the fact.

If compassion prevented enforcement, why hasn't it prevented other predatory actions like mass incarceration, wars, corporate bailouts, denial of universal healthcare, under funding of critical investment..doesn't look like compassion dictates or prevents much in the US.

Why has it been tolerated across parties for decades? One is political cost, another is because undocumented immigration has been profitable by providing corporations third world labor costs within first world borders.

I'll have to think over it. But yeah, leftists don't get nationalism or its importance. That's the irony: they rail against corporations with no national loyalty, then dismiss nationalists and conflate every one of their concerns with racism. They reject the only counter-force who have a vested interest in their nation, against those who have interests beyond nations - trans-national elites. The issue is that a whole bunch of racists are part of that group too.

Edited June 11 by zazen

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

illegal and unconstitutional raids.

I don't see what is illegal about arresting illegals. Leftists want to portray it that way to distract from looking the elephant in the eye.

Again, this issue is being avoided by calling law enforcement illegal when it is 10+ million people who are here illegally. You can't just keep ignoring that as if it isn't a thing.

Doing these raids is designed to create fear, so more illegals don't cross the border. The only way to stop illegals from crossing the border is to make them feel unwelcome. If there is no punishment for being in the country illegally, then millions more illegals will come, because why not?

Yes it is cruel and unfair. But that's how borders are created.

Again, this is a matter of nationalism. You may be too woke for nationalism, but 50%+ of Americans are not.

Edited June 11 by Leo Gura

[BlueOak]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I don't see what is illegal about arresting illegals. Leftists want to portray it that way to distract from looking the elephant in the eye.

Again, this issue is being avoided by calling law enforcement illegal when it is 10+ million people who are here illegally. You can't just keep ignoring that as if it isn't a thing.

Doing these raids is designed to create fear, so more illegals don't cross the border. The only way to stop illegals from crossing the border is to make them feel unwelcome.

Again, because you are conflating those engaged in the legal process of immigration with those who are not.

The right, says:

Leftists don't want to talk about illegal immigration or its restriction.

I answer:

That's because the right wants to stop all immigration; its not about the legality of immigration or better the ethical or moral framework it is structured under. If we were arguing ethics and morality, at least that'd be an improvement, hell, even the economic reality for all concerned, but we are just arguing skin color Leo and the culture war. It's not an honest discussion of the issues surrounding it, else that'd be what we are talking about.

You saw the quote I gave right? From the Latina's for Trumps co-founder specifically complaining about exactly what I am stating here. 

To generate fear effectively at the border, you'd do it at the border. Its about generating fear, yes, but inside the country itself, white supremacists wanting a white state, the people running it like Stephen Miller are white supremacists.

Indirectly you (speaking as the right) are correct that fear will play a factor, but only because you want to ignore everything I am trying to say about legal immigration and the reasons behind this, and the absurdity of turning a city into a warzone, while at the same time complaining it is in fact a war zone.

[zazen]

23 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

But as i've said, morality trumps the law here, even if what you were arguing for here was indeed lawful, it wouldn't be ethical or moral. 

Yeah, lawful doesn't always mean legitimate ie slavery was once legal. The abstraction of laws don't negate the reality of survival. Both sides have a argument around survival - the right frame it as national, the left frame it as personal/familial.

The right is saying we need to protect the body politic at the level of the collective / nation. The left is saying we need to protect the bodies of people - at the level of the individual / neighborhood.

The liberal left can be too compassionate of the individual that they overlook the collective, while the conservative right can be too dis-compassionate of individuals for the sake of the collective. The issue among the right is that they have split definitions of who they consider as the collective - civic nationalists (value based) vs etho-nationalists (race based)

Leo is correct in that had the law been enforced appropriately before, it wouldn't have to be disproportionately enforced today so ruthlessly with much more collateral damage.

Edited June 11 by zazen

[BlueOak]

This is also the absurdity of nationalism. Rather than try to improve the economic reality of neighbouring countries, so people don't emigrate in the first place, we are threatening to go to war with them instead.

Rather than say to ourselves, let's not paint ourselves as the best nation on earth, and dominate everyone culturally; let's be realistic about our flaws and promote other cultures outside of our own. Then people might want to move there instead! Shocking I know. But nationalists have always and will forever be some of the most clueless people about the world around them because they are always focused nationally.

What about high-speed trains with living accommodation in mexico? What about instead of fighting economic realities, we actually engage with the need for labor, and provide a way to get into the US and out effectively, encouraging those workers to legally register and be tracked? Here is a rightwing help: If penalties are needed, make it hard labor for illegals crossing; give them jobs that fill the labor shortage before they are deported.

Am I the only one who can think of things like this? Is the entire world dumber than me? No, they'd just rather go roll tanks through Washington, shoot at protestors in LA and thump their chest in some desperate way to prop up outdated institutions and ways of thinking, which fight the economic and actual reality rather than guide or fix it.

[PurpleTree]

10 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

What about high-speed trains with living accommodation in mexico? What about instead of fighting economic realities, we actually engage with the need for labor, and provide a way to get into the US and out effectively, encouraging those workers to legally register and be tracked? Here is a rightwing help: If penalties are needed, make it hard labor for illegals crossing; give them jobs that fill the labor shortage before they are deported.

Well first it sounds impossible. And after a week or two far left would say it’s inhumane, immigrants can’t be tracked and they all need legal status.

[BlueOak]

5 minutes ago, PurpleTree said:

Well first it sounds impossible. And after a week or two far left would say it’s inhumane, immigrants can’t be tracked and they all need legal status.

Here is another way to neutralise that from a sensible righting perspective.

Define humane to me in this context. As this too is a conflation. Then humane can be exactly defined in law. I personally think it'll be hard to define humane to mean, not working for the collective good while you are in prison. By hard labor I am meaning useful jobs that contribute.

I feel the majority of the country, including the left are for tracking immigrants.

Edited June 11 by BlueOak

[AION]

It is all fun and games until a refugee is shitting in your front lawn. 

[Leo Gura]

28 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

but we are just arguing skin color Leo and the culture war.

Just??

Just??

Not just.

This is more important than your liberalism. That's what you don't understand.

[Apparition of Jack]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

That only strengthens my point.

Nationalism is a more primordial force than any particular administration's failures.

Trump wanted to build a wall but they didn't let him.

The problem is not just the failures to stop immigration, but that leftists don't even think it's a problem.

Leftists have zero credibility on this issue and the voters feel it in their bones.

You have no solution and you don't even try, you don't even care.

White America has become a parasitic entity on the planet. It’s refusal to deal with its history of slavery, oppression and death whilst maintaining its innounce has led it to some of the worst case of collective psychosis since WW2.

Chucklefucks like Stephen Miller think White America is entitled to the world’s resources while giving nothing in return. It’s one thing to talk about regular human nationalism, it’s another to defend some of the most brazen forms of hypocrisy on the planet. 
 

White America uses the threat of nuclear annihilation to do what it wants with impunity on the world scale. You keep talking about power Leo, do you not understand how many times white nationalists in the White House have fantasised about nuking the Middle East or Mexico or wherever?

White America have become a bunch of gutless, chickenshit cowards who think they can hide behind their bombs and absurd levels of wealth to do whatever the fuck they want, consequences be damned. Unfortunately for them, reality doesn’t work that way.

EDIT: If you want to understand the deep pathology of White America, listen to this song:

 

Edited June 11 by Apparition of Jack

[zazen]

38 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

This is also the absurdity of nationalism. Rather than try to improve the economic reality of neighbouring countries, so people don't emigrate in the first place, we are threatening to go to war with them instead.

Rather than say to ourselves, let's not paint ourselves as the best nation on earth, and dominate everyone culturally; let's be realistic about our flaws and promote other cultures outside of our own. Then people might want to move there instead! Shocking I know. But nationalists have always and will forever be some of the most clueless people about the world around them because they are always focused nationally.

Not all nationalists are imperialists - though it can be used to justify it. China is nationalist whilst working with other nations and not against them. Many anti-imperialists are nationalists who resisted imperialism.

Historically it was nationalist imperialism that ruined neighbouring nations. But thats evolved and fragmented - we now have anti-globalist populists who are nationalists divorced from imperialist action abroad, because they see it as a waste of national resources they very much need.

Yet there’s still a corporate, military, and financial power blocs of elites who have no loyalty to any nation and still act imperially. They’re not patriotic but opportunistic.

So nationalism once fueled empire, but is now often divorced from imperialism, and the real imperialists are no longer national but borderless.

Edited June 11 by zazen