nevermind, this is GQ
Yes, I have seen them. And yes, the Border patrol does have uniforms. Not sure about DHS. However, they do have patches and large tahes that say “police”.
[Moderating]
There was scant chance of a question like this being treated factually to begin with, and replies have born that out. Moving to GD.
Oh good, it’s in GD now. Thank you mods!
No, I am like a person being kidnapped off the street. My kidnappers do not need to answer me truthfully, but if they want to have any legitimacy, then they should.
I am allowed to fight back against an illegal kidnapping, so if it is a legitimate law enforcement detainment, then it is on them to prove that to be the case.
If I am buying drugs, and rather than hand me my sweet narcotics, they slip some handcuffs on me, then I am aware that I was committing a crime, and have some expectations that I may find myself arrested.
If I am peacefully not breaking any laws, and people come up to me and start trying to abduct me, I have no reason to expect that I should be arrested by legitimate law enforcement.
The problem is that you are coming at it from the perspective that I am trying to get away with a crime, rather than to peacefully exercise my constitutional rights. As long as you do that, you will be arguing in the defense of totalitarianism.
Thats confusing since in Okla there are plenty of marked cars and plenty of unmarked ones
Failure to disperse, block roading ways, etc is not “peacefully not breaking the law”. maybe you could argue its “peacefully breaking the law” “nonviolent civil disobedience” etc.
Are these people being “disappeared” by the secret police? Or do that get brought back to the station, charged with a specific crime, brought in front of judge, provided a lawyer if they can’t afford one?
I’m guessing you are on the left of the political spectrum, but you aren’t very different from a right wing Sovereign Citizen yahoo. “I, who have no legal training, have arbitrarily decided that Federal Law Enforcement have to drive in marked vehicles and Uniforms, so I don’t have do what they say and can defend myself from an illegal kidnapping”
Again, good luck with that.
Except that they aren’t even doing that.
That’s just it. We don’t know. I actually doubt that anyone has been “disappeared” at this time, but I don’t take that for granted, and believe that we should remain vigilant. Being complacent while our rights are being eroded is the fastest way to lose them.
And we do not know. If someone were to be disappeared, how would we? No, I don’t have the blind faith in the government that you do that it will always be truthful as to its actions and motives.
Sov cits aren’t right wing, they are just nuts. (They do tend to skew that way, but it’s less a political ideology and more a delusion)
Anyway, your are far, far off the mark with your little quote that you have falsely attributed to me. I am not as comfortable as you are with Federal Law Enforcement driving around in unmarked vehicles and without uniforms or any form of ID as to who they are with snatching people up off the streets. That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that laws apply to me, as sov cits do.
I know that I would feel unsafe being approached by armed people who refuse to identify themselves or tell me what they want. That you would go willingly and without complaint with anyone who demands that you do so is not actually a healthy or safe outlook.
Now, sure, they have guns and numbers, so criminals or LEO, you probably don’t have much chance of defending yourself. So, if that’s all you are saying, then I agree, but I would disagree with your assertion that LEO shouldn’t distinguish themselves from criminals.
I don’t agree with what Trump is doing, I’m just saying it is legal.
The ACLU disagrees
But it’s not legal. “Arresting” people without probable cause that they’ve committed a crime is illegal, it’s some flavor of false imprisonment or kidnapping. Same thing if they only crime is one that you don’t have jurisditcion over - for example, ‘failure to disperse’ is not a federal crime, so no federal agency should be trying to enforce it. It’s not surprising that Portland PD refuse to protect their own people against kidnapping by paramilitary thugs with no legal authority, since general police culture is strongly against protecting civilians and none of the authorities in Portland have forced them to. But it’s certainly within their power to arrest jackbooted thugs who are accosting people off of the street and attempting to effect ‘arrests’ without probable cause.
And then you have things like your basic assault and battery, which is a crime if they don’t have a legal justification for use of force, which ‘he questioned my authoritah’ isn’t:
Maybe I was wrong thinking y’all were on left. That’s another Sovereign Citizen type phraseology
I’m sorry I’m not buying it. Skepticism of the Gov’t is a healthy. But I until I hear from parents that their loved ones when down to the protests and haven’t been seen since (a la some third world dictatorship) , I’m gonna assume these people were brought back to station, read their rights, provided with a lawyer, charged in front of judge, and will get a trial by a jury of the peers. If you are right that none of these people were doing anything illegal, maybe some of the charges will be thrown out by the judge, maybe the DA declines to prosecute, maybe the jury founds them not guilty. But there will be a paper trail/public record.
While the NRA popularized the term in reference to the ATF in the mid-90s, “Jackbooted thugs” as a term for the people enforcing the will of an authoritarian regime goes back to at least the 19th century (oldest reference I found with a quick google was from 1853), and has been used by such non-sovereign-citizen types as Margaret Thatcher and Noam Chomsky. But I’m glad you decided to complain about the use of a phrase that goes back at least two centuries instead of anything substantive.
Because we aren’t living in 1853, we are living in 2020 and in 2020 “Jackbooted Thugs” is definitely a ultra right buzzword.
Uh-huh. Well, if you have nothing substantive to respond to me with, and no cites demonstrating that Noam Chomsky shifted to the ultra-right, I think we’re done here.
I am glad that you have such unwavering trust in your government institutions.
I will remain vigilant, to try to prevent us from turning into a third world dictatorship.
I’m sorry, I don’t remember you guys copyrighting it. Sure, every time any democrat proposed any social program, you guys responded with hyperbole of “jackbooted thugs” come to take your guns/taxes/land/wedding cakes…
But it is actually a term of criticism of any authoritarian regime. The fact that it is used hysterically by the right fairly frequently does not mean that it is an “ultra right buzzword”.
You have failed at this criticism of using a term.
Noam Chomsky, while a famous linguist, does not decide what is and isn’t a ultra-right buzzword.
If you wanted a substantive debate…
But I guess you just wanted to have a semantics debate about the use of the term in 1853.
If you guys want to argue about who owns the term “jackbooted thugs” then I suggest you start a different thread. This was supposed to be about why the Portland police are not arresting the camouflaged federal agents who are apprehending people without cause and without identifying themselves or the reason. Also they are teargassing and beating people who do not represent a physical threat to anything. And the governor, mayor, et al have asked them to leave.
But you do? 