Comment by assimpleaspossi
15 days ago
>>Given current events in the USA, I can't emphasize enough how worried one should be
I've been putting my pants on every morning for the last several years, had breakfast, gone to work, and come home without worrying about any current events in the USA and my life seems no different than 50 years ago except I have modern gadgets.
Social media is not the world. In fact, it's 10% of what the real world is like and how the real world thinks. It's why I ignore social media except for HN and one other but I only scan the headlines and rarely pop into comments like this.
And I'm happy.
EDIT: And the comments below are proof why you, too, should ignore all social media and why you, too, will be happier.
Thousands of people have put their pants on, had breakfast, gone to work, and then been intercepted by militarized federal agents, thrown to the ground, locked up in prison camps, then deported overseas.
Glad things are comfy for you though.
Or just beaten, locked up, abused, then released, because after all they had never done anything wrong to begin with!
never done anything wrong to begin with
Except illegally migrate to the US without applying or engaging in human traffic and smuggling.
You may not like it, but the USA is still a nation of laws. It's also a modern nation. Third world shitholes have lots of problems caused by illegal immigration because they don't do enough to enforce the law and restore order for their citizens.
I'm rather glad that US culture hasn't yet turned into another Afghanistan or Pakistan.
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People who were actively violating the law of the country.
Not true. As mentioned elsewhere, plenty of people were not in fact violating any laws when this happened to them.
Here's another case. In this one, the government targeted someone who had violated no laws for exercising the 1st Amendment rights afforded to every individual in our country.
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2025-04/FIRE%20Ozt...
Were these thousands of people all legal US citizens?
>Glad things are comfy for you though.
Things for my family, my relatives and me are great! When I was in my early 20s I often went hungry. Now I'm worth a lot of money. Couldn't be happier as a normal, decent, everyday US citizen.
As someone completely unaffected by both the protests and deportations, I still feel quite sad about the current situation.
I feel like we should still have empathy, not only for the people who are completely clean legally, but also for the illegal immigrants. Sure, they made a choice which put them at odds with the legal system, and yet I still don't want them beaten up, stripped of any of their rights (as non-citizens), with their families destroyed. I keep thinking, if I was in their situation, I could've made that same choice, it's certainly possible, if I was just born somewhere else.
Now I don't think illegal immigrants are guilt-free I suppose, some of them are horrible people I'm sure, and they still deserve humane treatment, I have a lot of faith that that's still one of the most important pillars of a good society.
Obviously we can argue about numbers, maybe abuse doesn't even happen often at all, maybe every single person abused has committed a crime. It could be, and even then we should try to be humane, if we can...
I am always happy to hear when people are doing well though! Most of us won't be directly affected, luckily, and I really hope it will stay that way as well. The less people in duress, the better.
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Wrong question. The right question is, "were any of them US citizens or legal residents?" And the answer is yes, some of them were. For some of them the use of past tense is particularly appropriate because they are no more.
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They should have thought of that before entering this country illegally. Millions more have an opportunity to avoid this risk right now by leaving voluntarily but they choose not to.
Newsflash: citizens have also been deported. Maybe you're next, who knows.
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WTF are you talking about? Next time you fail to obey a yellow light signal, you'd be rightfully distraught if you were put in prison and someone were to say that you deserved it because you should have thought about stopping at the yellow as the law prescribed.
Citizens are abducted by ICE too. Even native Americans
Those people were people who previously made the decision to illegally immigrate to the US. Lots of people start their day normally and then get arrested by militarized cops because they are wanted for murder or assault or burglary or cryptocurrency fraud. The fact that the US has a criminal justice system including police that arrest people suspected of crimes, isn't new, isn't obviously worse than competing systems (e.g justice via informal militia/lynch mob), and doesn't have any implications for the use of Discord today that it didn't have a decade ago.
That assumes that e. g. ICE were only involved against people who have broken the law. First and foremost - this is not the case. Second: when you look at the two executions of US citizens, that is also something not touched by your comment. It is not good to try to describe e. g. ICE without also mentioning the negative sides, such as them having shot dead at the least two US citizens already for no justifiable reason.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/09/irish-man-se...
No they weren't.
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> Those people were people who previously made the decision to illegally immigrate to the US.
There are no limits here and there many publicly available proofs of people getting harassed and detained regardless of legal status and deported contrary to court rulings that apply to their situation. You don't need to repeat the current ICE/DOJ lies - they can speak for themselves.
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This narrative has been debunked many times already. Legal residents, even citizens, have been arrested, deported, or shot. And people get denied entry based on social media posts. Your comment is way off base and severely detached from reality.
If the US criminal "justice" system arrests people suspected of crimes, why are the criminals running the country while innocents get locked up?
Fixed this for you: "I haven’t been affected, so everyone else is overreacting."
Almost no one has been affected so yes.
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> I only scan the headlines
Have you scanned any headlines about ICE lately? Maybe do a quick search for news about Minnesota?
(I'm pretty sure that if you'd been putting your pants on in Minnesota, you would not have written this comment.)
Are you saying legal US citizens are having a tough time in Minnesota with ICE? My cousins and their families aren't. They're too busy leading their own normal, daily lives.
Yes; my neighbors had trouble going to the grocery store. From appearances, you might think they're on vacation from Mexico. They have been here for generations, and one of their family is a high enough ranking member of the military that I won't say more to avoid the risk of doxxing them.
Yes, two of them were just killed. Does that qualify as "having a tough time?"
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If your eyes are closed, then things look the same whether you're in the middle of a calm meadow or on a highway about to be run over by a truck.
If you prefer not to look, maybe because you're convinced there's no truck, or you don't think it would help avoid the truck if there is one, fair enough. But the fact that your personal experience is unchanged is meaningless.
It is well known that news and social media is biased towards outrage. Most issues people get upset about are really not that big in reality and quickly forgotten once the public consciousness moves on to the next thing. If there is someone yelling "look out for the truck" all the time no matter what the rational choice is to ignore them.
Ignoring them means not letting them influence your opinion either way. You should still allow yourself to reach the same opinion they're espousing by your own means, otherwise you're letting them control your opinions just as much as somebody who slavishly agrees with them.
Ignore the boy crying wolf, but you should still watch for wolves. If you don't want to, fine, but "I don't look for wolves and my sheep are fine" is not a very good argument.
That is not a good analysis because it insinuates that everything stays the same. This is clearly not the case. Besides - no matter whether in a democracy or in a dictatorship, almost everyone puts on pants.
It is also incorrect to confine this "merely" to social media. This is clearly government overreach. They want data from The People.
It's sad and pathetic to see such apathy.
while there is nothing wrong with it, you are clearly in a stable section of a stable country
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