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So I don't really follow the news, except that adjacent stuff that pops up on hacker news... Is the administration serious or is this like just a distraction while they do something else when no one is paying attention?




    So I don't really follow the news
I feel like not knowing about the tariffs and your cost of living being on an exponential graph is more than "not following the news"? The administration is serious and causing harm to everyone it can.

It is certainly a privilege being an American right now and not having to worry about:

1) A rapidly growing economic crisis due to aggressive and inchorent foreign policy decisions

2) The new force of Gestapo murdering and harming citizens in cities all across the nation

A real privilege.


ICE isn't the Gestapo. The Gestapo didn't hide their faces.

If history is any guide, ICE may be better compared to the SA. Their job is to make it safe for the future Gestapo to operate unmasked... at which point the unprofessional street thugs in ICE will find that they've become a liability to the regime.


The Gestapo also didn't have smartphones recording their every action in public places being disseminated to the entire planet.

Note that Noem has already declared that any video evidence of ICE's criminal activity is itself illegal and inadmissible [1,2].

As I understand it, the right to record police has never actually been tried definitively at the SCOTUS level. The Republicans certainly have the tools on the SCOTUS bench to prohibit it now, so look for a case to be brought at some point.

1: https://reason.com/2026/01/08/you-have-the-right-to-record-i...

2: https://www.kqed.org/news/12070260/what-you-need-to-know-abo...


She says all kinds of stupid stuff. Nobody out in the real world should take that kind of statement seriously. Which school gave her that law degree?

Ah, the "They don't really mean it" school of thought. Thanks for your input.

I'm sure she means it, she's just an idiot.

Gestapo was proud of their work. If they could and had phones, they would post selfies.

But, they were actual police, highly effective. (Torured, murdered, commited genocide ... buy were actual trained cop good at being cops and good at genocide).


Who knows. But at some point it doesn't matter and it would be imprudent not to deal with it as serious.

Does it matter?

You can only threaten your friends so many times before they cut you out, and Trump is going on a year straight of threatening us (Canada, but also Greenland) with annexation, and the EU with sanctions and tariffs.

It doesn’t matter if the US government are serious or are posturing, the message is clear: prepare for existential warfare (economic or militarily) or be faced with it.

I think Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech yesterday captures the shared sentiment outside of the US very well. It’s worth listening to and lays bare the cracks in international diplomacy the last 80 years.

I personally find the argument that it’s about masking something clever weak. There are two things going on: repeatedly admitting US manufacturing can’t keep up with China and desperately trying to bring it home, and “Donroe Doctrine” colonialism where the US wants to lean on the weak to extract money out of them.

Maybe next year Trump is going to say “look how strong I made NATOs military, no more freeloaders here, this was all a ruse”, but I doubt it.

And my personal raw take, as a Canadian: we’ve shown we will take a punch to the nose for the US, it’s going to be impossible to look at our relationship the same for a generation. I’ve worked for US companies (as do most of our best and brightest), we have tight security integrations, this all feels incredibly unnecessary.


>this all feels incredibly unnecessary.

American here with Canadian family members.

Agree 100%, this whole thing was incredibly dumb from the beginning. Trump's dementia and ego will ruin (has ruined?) the US's standing in what was the former West. What a sad day to be alive.


>> or is this like just a distraction while they do something else when no one is paying attention?

"Nearly all Epstein files still unreleased a month after Congress deadline" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/jeffrey-epst...


People should end up in jail, unfortunately it's the people responsible for enforcing the law that are breaking it. I expect impeachment attempts within the next year or so.

Neither. Trump is a reality TV guy and he's running things as if it's a TV show. He's making drama for the sake of drama. He's basically one of those kids who never learned the difference between good attention and bad attention.

He's also never gotten what drama addicts get as kids that kinda steers them in the right direction: someone to firmly tell him "no" and someone to kick him in the balls when he acts out.

This administration is awful and yes they are serious. Listening to the speech yesterday was infuriating.

I wish I could ignore all of this because I am tired man.


What is the difference? When threaten or invade in order to distract from Epstein, how is it different from threatening or invading because they want glory and look masculine as a primary goal rather then second?



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