Yeah, it’s crazy out there.
I’m thinking of designating this chapter in The Great Stupid as “The Big Crazy.”
And one whole side of the political spectrum wants it to be crazy. You can talk about whatever intrigues you here, of course, but I wanted to post this Twitter/”X” statement from “Cynical Publius,” an articulate and clever conservative, which I believe is spot on:
Dear Democrat ICE Protestors:
Hi. How have you been? I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on much, but I am hoping you will nevertheless give me 5 minutes of your time, if for no other reason than for your own protection. I am going to speak some hard truths. Please listen. First of all, everything Trump and ICE are doing with illegal aliens is totally legal. They are completely operating within the bounds of federal law. The deportations are legal. The raids are legal. The detentions are legal. Your Democrat leaders know this, and they know it would be politically disastrous to just say “ignore the law.” Instead, they are attempting to delegitimize ICE while skirting around the full legality of what ICE does. To accomplish this, they need to paint ICE as being truly, horrifically evil. Nazi-level evil. They NEED that to be the image the public sees. That’s where you come in. When Democrat politicians, “organizers” and journalists send you out in the street to obstruct ICE operations, they are doing so with the specific and deliberate attempt to create a situation where ICE kills a bunch of seemingly “peaceful” protestors, all for the cameras. They want another Boston Massacre. They want another Tiananmen Square. They want another Kent State. They are desperately hoping for the deaths and injuries of scores of people just like you. THEY WANT YOU TO DIE IN FURTHERANCE OF THE CAUSE. Did you not know that already? Renee Good was a nice start, but she screwed up by hitting the ICE agent with her SUV. What they need is dozens of Renee Goods who—based on what the cameras show and do not show—were murdered in cold blood by ICE. THAT IS THE GOAL OF YOUR LEADERSHIP. Did you realize that people like Tim Walz and Hakeem Jeffries see you as mere cannon fodder in their war on America? Did you know that? It’s not that they specifically want you, John Doe at 123 Main Street, to die, but if you are one of the victims, so be it. All for The Cause. Is this what you signed up for? To be a martyr? If so, good for you. But if not, please consider my words. For your own good.
Best regards, CP
Over to you, Clarence…
Ethics Alarms 
Once the system has been so stressed by the activists who are intentionally put into harms way by their handlers to cause events like the Minneapolis shooting and the system breaks and the hyper activist handlers get tougher in the tyranny they desperately want, the former street level activists are going to be rapidly surprised how many of them are going to be treated even worse than the lady in Minneapolis by the people they formerly agitated on behalf of.
“get tougher in” should be “get to usher in”
Either one works, if you think about it. If the “by any means” necessary is the tool to usher in a socialist paradise, then use of force or violence is completely justified. The Left has “god” on its side – as in they are morally superior and better than the unwashed basketful of deplorables clinging to their gods and guns. What is done to them is simply what they deserve.
jvbh
Some things just can’t be unseen.
I attend a biweekly political breakfast with a bunch of good people that have been, and are, a lot more politically active than I am. Many of these people have been very active in Wisconsin politics. Some are or have been prominent political leaders, including elected political party officials, elected county and city politicians, and even one past Governor of Wisconsin. We have some really good conversations, not all political We simply enjoy the open camaraderie and free flowing conversations.
At our most recent breakfast we briefly got on the subject of President Trump’s actions in Venezuela and Trump also wanting to purchase Greenland and, as usual, it went off the rails a bit to talk about Trump’s perceived motives. One person perceived Trump’s motives as being based on profit which instantly sent my brain on a tangent, a humorous tangent.
I have recently been binge watching the 1990’s TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and one of the characters in the show is an alien species called the Ferengi and is named Quark. The Ferengi are a very misogynistic race of humanoids who’s society is based completely on self promoting and gaining profit and they have a long list of rules that guide their society in their efforts. Quark serves as an annoying antagonist to those around him by constantly putting Ferengi truly annoying customs in everyone’s faces. Quark is constantly correlating conversations into something related to “profit” and spouting ad nauseum, by number, some of the Ferengi’s “Rules of Acquisition”. It’s a long list but here are a few of the notable rules and the given number on the list…
I’m sure you get the idea.
Well since Trump, our loose cannon mouthed narcissistic President, seems to be driven by self promotion and profit, and of course he’s such a narcissist that he wrote a book called “Trump: The Art of the Deal” which is sort of his “Rules of Acquisition” my creative mind got a wild hair stuck where it probably shouldn’t have and I correlated President Trump with a Ferengi and created this meme.
My inquisitive mind wonders if the writer that created the Ferengi alien species and the specific character Quark read Donald Trump’s book “Trump: The Art of the Deal” and incorporated concepts in that book into the species and intentionally stretched it to absurdity to create the absurd character that’s presented in the series.
So after all of that, it’s time to drag this back to what we do around Ethics Alarms, talk about ethics.
Since I’ve been an outspoken opponent of meme’s in the past as a general thing, going as far as creating an anti-meme meme…
…am I being hypocritical and unethical in creating this meme. Here’s how I ended a related blog post titled “Memes: An Ethical Slippery Slope Feeding Division“ back in April of 2022…
Question: I don’t consider the meme I created to be “psychological manipulation or gaslighting propaganda” or trying to undermine civil discussion, I consider it to be nothing more than humor; so, is it ethical and moral for me to share the meme I created?
Star Trek DS9 is the best series of the whole franchise.Star Trek alien species are amusing caricatures of Human traits/value sets taken to extremes. The Ferengi were meant to be a critique of capitalism (but clearly the writers never had to work in the free market because tropes are entirely out of their own echo chamber inventions of entrepreneurs).
Don’t think about the caricatured species too much, or you’ll rapidly see they are 100% preposterous.
Klingons are culture built around a hyper-honor based system, perpetually seeking glory and battle.
We actually have those cultures in world history – some of them are still around today. Exactly zero of them would ever have the ability to reach the stars.
Vulcans are a cultures built entirely around clinical logic, science and technocracy.
We had several societies within the past 100 years all aspire to be that kind of society. Guess what? They ended up murdering vast swathes of their own people, vast swathes of other people’s people, and did they’re very best to starve the rest of them. Their only aspirations for the stars were in direct hopes of developing missiles to attack better nations. Our own country is learning, comfortably easily, that technocracy and clinically sterile “logic” is no way of running a country.
The Ferengi are supposed to be some sort of culture that’s supposed to be “hyper capitalist” or something. Whatever that means. Anyway, since the writers have no idea what that means they had to invent a lot of stereotypes since they’d never actually had to do a real job of commerce in their entire lives. But since it wasn’t working, they ended up tossing in a smattering of actual good advice into the “rules of acquisition”, just to associate actual good advice people *should* follow with lampoonable nonsense. Because that’s what Hollywood writers do, they tear down the good and build up the bad.
Trump was a good Democrat back when DS9 was made. I think Ferengi were just molded on capitalists in general.
And DS9 was the best of the Trek shows.
“Since I’ve been an outspoken opponent of meme’s in the past as a general thing….”
Welcome to the 21st Century, Steve. One picture is more than a thousand words, and memes will be here to stay. We may even argue that memes have the similar function as previously a political cartoon in the newspaper. Memes fit in a culture dominated by social media and iPhones. Memes are a genre. There is nothing perse unethical about a medium or a genre.
A comment of the day. Give me time to figure out how to format it.
Thanks Jack!
Could you replace the meme photo with this one, it’s significantly better in spots?
“they are attempting to delegitimize ICE” I don’t disagree with this. I also think it is worth pointing out that the tactics chosen by Miller and Bovino (and whoever else is calling the shots for ICE? It appears that Noem is too preoccupied with choosing her outfit of the day to bother) are also contributing to the general unpopularity of ICE.
“Back in January 2025 (before most of the controversial raids that have taken place in the last year), AP-NORC found that 64% of Americans opposed arrests at schools and 57% opposed arrests at churches. The administration ignored these warnings, targeted migrants at church and school anyway, and it has suffered the consequences in the court of public opinion.”
Hours after the shooting incident, ICE showed up at a local high school. Reports differ on why they were there, but from a PR perspective, it would have seemed wise for ICE to avoid a chaotic confrontation on school grounds (including deploying pepper spray–a fun memory for the students!) hours after the shooting death of local citizen.
Oh yeah “seemed wise”… what I am thinking? Doubling down when criticized is kind of part of the brand, isn’t it?
Some years back, just before Mass, a disheveled man in prison garb slipped into the back of the church. I’m not entirely sure of the circumstances, but I believe he had been allowed an escort from the prison into town and had eluded his escort. Someone from the parish alerted the sheriff’s office he was there, and the sheriff deputies arrived to escort him back to the penitentiary. I was canting the responsorial psalm when the deputies, having exhausted the pleasant “Let’s go outside and talk” approaches, seized the man, threw him to the ground, pinned him, cuffed him, and then led him out of the church. His shouts drowned out my singing efforts, but I’ll admit, my voice got a little shaky in the midst of all of that.
Should a church be sacrosanct, in that any refugee could find shelter there and local authorities would be prevented from entering the premises and making an arrest? I can perhaps offer a single case where the public at large would agree that the church should not be off limits for an arrest: a Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse. I don’t know how many people would truly profess that, as long as the priest remained within the confines of the church building, he would remain free from arrest, but I can’t believe it would be many. So here I believe we have some precedent for arresting people in a church. Should criminals of lesser crimes still be able to find sanctuary? Would we be willing to arrest murderers and batterers, but let thieves off the hook? Once we’ve allowed some crimes to be severe enough to ignore church sanctity, where do we draw the line after that? Does it matter if the criminal entered the church outside of duress, in that if he was attending services normally, he couldn’t be arrested, but if he fled inside, he could?
As for the bad optics, all I can say is I’m glad I’m not in charge of these operations. Can the mass deportation of illegal immigrants be truly successful if hospitals, schools, and churches can become areas any illegal can flee to and escape incarceration? In contrast, can the operation truly succeed if it loses public support? Are these instances of ICE raiding schools and churches a matter of necessity or insensitivity? On the one hand, all the disruptive aspects of these arrests could arguably be the necessary consequences of voting for mass deportation, and one needs to have the intestinal fortitude to make sure the job is done. And by making sure no place is safe, it actively encourages illegals to self-deport. On the other hand, surely there are sufficient targets that ICE can be a little more politically savvy and not target illegals that are at school, in the hospital, or at church? Or could they wait for those targets to come home and make the arrest there?
Frankly, I’m inclined to believe that the optics of mass deportation are going to be bad no matter what, and to accomplish the mission, it has to be “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
“In contrast, can the operation truly succeed if it loses public support?”
I think the answer is no. I cited the numbers for specific tactics such as arrests at schools and churches, but there is also polling on approval for ICE generally.
“In a flash poll conducted on Wednesday, ICE’s job approval came in at 39% approve, 52% disapprove for a score of -13.”
This is not a temporary response to the latest shootings — this is comparable to numbers in June.
The shift in the polling numbers since February (when Trump’s approval numbers on deportation shifted from clearly positive to negative) is consistent with a backlash as people started see what the administration’s approach to mass deportation would be.
“In February 2025, just 19% of Americans held a strongly unfavorable view of ICE, per YouGov/The Economist. Today, 40% do.”
In short, when the torpedoes (following your metaphor) = voters, and public opinion is shifting toward the torpedoes, I do not think the operation can succeed. In fact the emphasis on “full speed ahead, fine if you break things and arrest some citizens too” has contributed to the backlash.
“The January 2026 YouGov poll asked whether ICE’s tactics are too forceful, about right, or not forceful enough. A majority of adults said too forceful — 51%. Just 10% wanted more force. That’s a five-to-one ratio. 56% of Independents agreed ICE was using too much force.”
It succeeds if it gets illegal immigrants out of the country and discourages others from coming in. I always assumed that deporting large numbers would be necessarily ugly, and that nobody would be willing to do it. Trump has the political courage to do it anyway.
I remain amazed about the absolute stop of new illegal entries at the border. They’re both long videos, but they’re such a stark contrast these two are amazing. One is from two years ago and shows the chaos, and the second is from last spring, when the boards became completely DEAD.
Correct second link
Something worth commenting about.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/watchdog-exposes-taxpayer-funded-teacher-program-for-banning-white-applicants-likely-illegal/ar-AA1TSSqH#comments
This would violate equal protection.
“We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place.” Brown v Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).
I wasn’t sure whether to post this here or under the next post, but here’s my concern about the situation we’re in. I would liken it to inconsistently disciplining your children. If you only irregularly discipline your child for a particular infraction, the child learns that most of the time, he can get away with that infraction. When that infraction is then punished, the child reactions disproportionately because he’s used to getting away with the infraction, and he believes that if he makes noncompliance painful enough, it will discourage further disciplinary action.
That seems to be the case we’re in with illegal immigrants. We’ve been very poor at enforcing our immigration laws, and so many said illegals and the communities around them grew complacent about the laws not being enforced. When the laws are enforced, it comes as a great shock, and the immediate reaction is to scream about how unfair it is. And to a certain extent, I do agree that it is unfair. It is unfair to cultivate the expectation that a law won’t be enforced, only to turn around and enforce it. But it is unfair because of cultivating that expectation, not because of the subsequent enforcement.
The significant problem is the whiplash effect of enforcement/non-enforcement depending upon who is in charge. We’ve run the gamut of no enforcement (even inviting in illegals), to soft enforcement, to promises of citizenship, to harsh enforcement. To anyone watching from outside the country, it is like dealing with a schizophrenic or someone suffering from multiple personality disorder. Worse, because we keep seesawing back and forth, the expectation right now is that by keeping up a defiant stance against the current administration, illegals and their allies can simply wait for the winds to change and go back to their lives as they’ve been.
I know this aspect of the situation glosses over the deliberate effort of radicals to the destabilize the nation, the outrage over the money spigots that are being closed, the efforts to import in reliable Democratic voters, and the genuine concerns over destabilizing families that had, admittedly against the law, put down roots and became productive members of their communities. But it is a serious problem that we seem to be lurching one direction, and then back the opposite way, with every swing of political power. This has been exacerbated by most policy changes coming from executive orders, which are easily undone, rather than congressional legislation, which is much harder to walk back.
How do we fix a problem where the head of the executive one year says, “I will enforce this law”, and the next year says, “I will not enforce this law”? Impeachment seems to be dead, because the only way impeachment could ever succeed is when there is a majority of the opposition in the House, and a supermajority of the opposition in the Senate, and that is a very rare occasion and could not be relied upon to fix this issue.
It’s an important and fascinating problem, and not discussed enough. The Biden administration invited aliens to break the law. But we can’t have a system where laws are repealed by executive non-enforcement—that’s what was so dangerous and unethical about the Democrats’ policy in this area. I don’t see that Trump has any choice. Biden didn’t execute the laws, so now it’s more traumatic when a responsible POTUS does. The responsibility for the trauma should be placed where it belongs.
The problem will be fixed over time. We’re in a political realignment right now. Should start settling around 2030 (+/- 2 years or so). We’ve gone through them before (like a half dozen times or so). Lots of issues are becoming louder than they have been simply because of the realignment tensions.
As for why immigration is at the forefront – for the majority of our history we’ve been able to be lax on immigration because outside of the big notable waves of immigration – the Germans and the Irish – immigration has not had a noticeable affect on the cultural make up of the nation.
Primarily because while there was ALOT of immigration, it was mostly from cultures already close enough to American culture that assimilation (or “becoming American”) was short and relatively painless – another reason why even the disruptive waves of Irish and German immigration weren’t really that disruptive.
Immigration is a problem *now* because the insidious push for “multicultural America” instead of “melting pot America” has made it so vast swathes of the people in this country do not share the Founding vision.
That’s is unequivocally NOT GOOD.
Until we pump the brakes on letting people in who are increasingly from places for whom assimilation will be very long and difficult, then the vast swathes of the unassimilated will remain unassimilated for even longer.
Multiculturalism is an intended disruptor of our Republic and that’s why it’s preached in text books as better and more inclusive than Melting-Pot (which is actually better and more inclusive).
Ooops, left of the point:
The problem will be fixed when the electorate hammers out the arguments of this realignment.
Either immigration law will be something we have (either tighter or freer or even the same) and enforce and those who disagree will disagree quietly, civilly, and in the halls of congress.
or immigration law is something we will go back to ignoring and those who disagree will disagree like they did in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s…quietly and often ignored.
I think it’s much simpler that that.
If the rules for State Apportionment were built around a census of the number of American citizens rather than just live people living in the State, the Democrats wouldn’t give two shits about protecting illegal aliens.
It’s always about POWER, and in this case it takes the form of, for example, giving Democrat-controlled States (particularly California) more Representatives in the House and more Electoral College votes.
–Dwayne
Ryan, an EXCELLENT, thought-provoking post. Without getting overtly Biblical, I’ve been thinking about exactly what you wrote with respect to what we read in the Old Testament’s account of Israel/Judah, and how the people were subjected to this same “back-and-forth” as one good/evil king was replaced with his antithesis, and how that probably played havoc with civic, ceremonial, and moral laws throughout the country.
We read about the disasters it led to in those people’s lives and it seems to be playing out in a similar fashion here.
Joel,
Yes, the havoc played in Judah especially through the reigns of Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Josiah, and Jehoahaz probably had the people experiencing some similar whiplash. (Yes, I skipped Amon, but for the sake of the bad king/good king alternation.) One aspect of that, though, which should probably be the warning to our political elites today, is that even though the good kings worked hard to establish proper worship in Judah, the people still by and large adhered to pagan practices in the countryside. In other words, the kings may have tried to set the tone, but it was a completely different matter to get the rest of the populace to follow suit. I think Josiah was the most successful, in his own way, but after the reign of Manasseh, which lasted 50 years, the rot was pretty well sunk in.
Comment of the Day, and I will only delay posting it because I will want to write some more on the topic when I do.
CP’s (whom I follow, as well) point re the ICE situation is also applicable to the “unlawful order” video made by Kelly and others. The aim was to make servicemembers think that they were being given unlawful orders, that they were justified in refusing lawful orders, and to put themselves in harm’s way so that their legal immolation could be used to support the overall anti-Trump cause. “Again, it’s nothing personal, we just need some misguided people we can parade around as martyrs, and there you were.”
Here is a link to the video.
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DRMxZAnlUF9/
They wanted to speak directly to the troops. They prefaced the video with saying that, “American trust in the military is at risk” and that “this administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.
Well said but needs some paragraphing for emphasis. he also should have included the Venezualean operation, the boat obliteration. Allo f which is legal within federal law.
As an add on, all those municipalities (either state of local) that self identify as “sanctuary} need to be cut from any federl mnoies, from SS benfits down. Stop the money, stop this insurrection.
I like Cynical Publius, as he is just as me cynical about political motivations. I will include his following post as it follows the post quotes by our host and is essential for his line of thinking.
If he is correct there is no off ramp, no possible compromise between the Democrats and the Trump administration on the enforcement of immigration laws.
Everything makes sense when you consider the following seven immutable truths:
“2. The only way Democrats can win national elections is to import new voters, both legal and illegal.“
And, preferably, from countries without strong attachments to or traditions of respecting individual liberties in order to create a new breed of more pliable Americans.
Philadelphia Sheriff: ICE Is “Made-Up, Fake, Wannabe Law Enforcement” That “Violates Moral Law” | Video | RealClearPolitics
Larry Krasner, the Soros non-prosecutor in Philly is threatening to arrest federal officers. Philadelphia, the Cradle of the Constitution.
on what charges?
Violating moral laws? Being mean? Not being nice?
I’ve read a number of Holly Mathnerd’s Substack columns. Here is one where she discusses an approach to using AI, AI Literacy 101. I believe this is a free column — if not, well, I will just quote Gilda Radner.