How would term limits help? Without term limits, congressmen can be judged by their voting history. With them, we get always new batches of congressmen, while lobbyists stay the same and consolidate their power.
It's so easy to get rid of a congressman you don't like with term limits. But why do you think, on average, his replacement would be better? The replacement would only be more unknown.
One problem is that seniority confers power. Throwing out a long-serving incumbent substantially reduces your district’s effective representation.
That could be improved by getting rid of de jure preferential treatment for things like committee memberships. You’d still have informal power from seniority though.
I think long-term ("establishment") politicians are more-inclined to have been bought-out; new blood is more likely to make new alignments, churning up the dirty space that is politics.
> nobody has been killed that wasn’t carrying a gun with extra ammo or striking cops with their vehicle.
The video evidence shows beyond peradventure that Renee Good didn't strike the ICE agent — who isn't a cop — with her vehicle.
EDIT: See the NY Times's frame-by-frame, time-synchronized compilation of the various videos [0], especially starting at about 3:42 in that video [1].
The agent wasn't hit by Good's vehicle - starting at 4:53 of the video [2], he was standing well away from her vehicle (see 5:42 [3]), leaning on it with his hand on the front fender, and his feet slipped as she was trying to pull away.
He wasn't hit or run over — at most he was slightly pushed by the vehicle. His reaction — "fucking bitch" [4].
As to Alex Pretti: You're focusing like a laser on a fact — if such it be — that's completely irrelevant.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9R9dAmws6M And yes, I firmly believe the NY Times tries to get it right, and corrects their errors on the rare occasions that they make them.
> The video evidence shows beyond peradventure that Renee Good didn't strike an ICE agent
Let's not get caught up arguing about the play-by-play details. There will always be rabid disagreement regardless of merit, causing us to miss the crux of the matter. The important big-picture dynamic is that the agent set up the situation so he'd have an excuse to kill the next person who tried to drive away from him, directly contrary to ICE's own policies. That would be second degree murder, if the perp weren't a member of a protected class.
One of the above comments gives a pretty clear cut showcase of how this is not, in fact, a fact.
> I think they both contributed to the tragedy.
"Between me and Jeff Bezos we are worth several hundred billion dollars". The ICE agent contributed the bullets that made this a tragedy, the victim contributed not following the orders of people who are not police officers, I'd say it's not much of a "both" situation.
> Nobody protesting peacefully gets shot.
At least one person already has, but something tells me you'll just move the goalpost of what "peacefully" means.
> Vehicular assault protest is dangerous and illegal protest.
You need to watch the video compilation linked to above. It wasn't anything resembling "vehicular assault protest" — it was a woman trying to verrrry slowwwwly drive away and an armed ICE agent shooting her when his feet slipped.
It's a peculiar type of insanity to insist that it is the responsibility of everyday citizens to react perfectly calmly and rationally while being assaulted by armed agents of the state (themselves often acting impulsively and aggressively), and to then justify people being summarily executed when they inevitably do not.
Furthermore, it's disingenuous to talk about "unlawful behavior" while skipping over the federal government violating the much deeper laws that were explicitly written into its charter. If you want to keep closing your eyes to what is plainly in front of you, that is on you.
When you put it that way, it makes it sound like you're okay with the federal government (no matter who's in charge) having gangs of masked men kidnapping people off the streets.
You keep focusing on these small slices of the issue where you can go A+B->C "yup looks good!". Meanwhile the larger context here is exactly what's important.
Personally I'm basically ambivalent about deporting illegal immigrants. I am NOT ambivalent about the first amendment, the second amendment, abducting citizens/legal immigrants, due process and coercion, inhumane conditions, an administration that doesn't respect the loss of American life, an administration that continues to announce that their goal is to deport many more people than merely illegal immigrants, etc.
I thought Obama was running/supporting an inhumane machine as well, although I was both-sidesing at the time so I didn't see a political lever that could be pulled to affect it. But has it occurred to you that even if you consider the net actions the same, fewer people protested Obama precisely because Obama could sell those policies by engendering trust and demonstrating respect for at least some traditional American values?
Of course it is going to seem like everyone is unprincipled when you assume that to start. It's taken us what, three comments here for you to admit to yourself that I'm coming from a principled place? Three comments of you writing off everything I am saying as if I am only saying it in bad faith to try and manipulate you, rather than as part of some consistent worldview that might help explain all of the opposition you see.
And then even after that, rather than accepting it and maybe seeing that some productive understanding could be had, you launched right back into firing off a bunch of wild partisan assertions - presumably hoping that I won't continue to walk the principled tightrope as perfectly, and you can go back to writing me off!
I'll be first in line to criticize how pathetically captured the Democratic party is. I'm not and never have been a Democrat - I just begrudgingly vote conservative now that open fascism is upon us. The Democrats thought they could phone it in in 2024, just like they were able to do in 2020. Their current strategy seems to be pointing out "this is really bad!", but never sticking with it to make a solid stand - just the occasional glimmer of inspired opposition, that is then left to sputter out. Lazily hoping that in 2026/2028 things can somehow go back to business as usual. I actually think the appalling lack of any sort of discussions about how we can possibly rebuild all of our societal institutions that Trump has burnt down is one of the most appalling things about our current situation.
That's not how it looks to me. Her vehicle seems to come close and might even touch the agent's leg — maybe (the narration says no). But "hitting him" doesn't seem to be a reasonable way to describe it, even granting that the video clip is in slow motion.
The agent was leaning significantly forward, and suddenly acquired backwards momentum just when the car got close, despite his center of mass being in front of his feet. The only way he could move like that was by getting hit by the car.
> The only way he could move like that was by getting hit by the car.
He had a hand braced on the left-front fender and was leaning against it, with his feet maybe a yard away — apparently on icy pavement. The vehicle could well have pushed him as it moved; that's not the same as hitting him.
So she rapidly accelerated at him, and her car pushed him away, either by hitting his torso or his arm. And that in the 1-2 seconds the agent had to figure out her actions and intent, he arguably made the wrong call, is rephrased as:
"Speech is disallowed if someone with any authority feels like killing you"
See my edited comment, with a link to the NY Times's frame-by-frame, time-synced compilation of various video angles. She didn't run over him or even hit him.
It only takes that to be a «nazi» sympathiser huh. And my comment flagged. You might need to go read up on what the nazis were like. I’m in Europe. We _really_ know what the nazis were like — they occupied my country. I live in a street named after resistance fighters who died fighting them. You’re extremely naive and disrespectful of the victims of the nazis.
> Advocacy of force or criminal activity does not receive First Amendment protections if (1) the advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and (2) is likely to incite or produce such action.
You'd need to say something which directs others to violate the law or commit acts of violence, at a specific time ("imminent"), and your statement must be likely to be effective at causing them to do so.
Protesting, encouraging others to protest, expressing your political beliefs, organizing a protest, etc. are not incitement to violence. Nor is "doxxing" (filming, identifying) a public employee. None of these activities satisfy those criteria.
Remember the "Twitter files" nonsense? I recall they were upset at the government influencing the expression of political views on social media. Not hearing much backlash about this from the same people, because this is what they were claiming, but 100x worse.
"You're free to use something else" doesn't work when it was legal pressure that introduced age verification. All the something else's will eventually be forced to follow.
> For any theory/ hypothesis: how well does it stand against the null-hypothesis? For example: How much physical evidence is there really for the string-theory?
That's an unfortunate choice of example - the problem with string theory is that there is no null hypothesis. We know that our other theories are not self-consistent when unified, but we don't have a theory that is self-consistent, that could serve as the null hypothesis.
> I ask myself every time I hear that Thiel is a "libertarian" _while also_ being the founder of the biggest surveillance dragnet ever created: what about surveillance is libertarian?
Surveillance does not directly violate the non-aggression principle, and a myopic adherence to minimal principles without any consideration to where they lead is the central feature of libertarianism.
Self-proclaimed libertians aren't anything of the sort. You'll never meet actual libertians, they won't tell you, because they don't care. It's basically the opposite of the vegan, crossfit, prius charade.
Surveilance means stealing intellectual property of surveiled people. If you're a TRUE libertarian, then you need to make sure that you arrange some kind of a contract with the people you surveil.
Do they also teach about Comanche slave raids and other intra-native wars, and the native American treatment of prisoners of war and slaves, putting European conquerors in context as just another warring 'tribe', just a more successful one? Or do they teach a one-sided morality play version of history?
What history course would you expect to see this in? Courses don't tend to contain "by-the-ways" for things outside of the course material. Should it be against the rules to have a course specifically on the african slave trade? If somebody is teaching a course on the italian renaissance, should they be obligated to mention that great art was made in china too?
College history courses aren't "one-sided morality plays."
The reason why there is more discussion of atrocities committed by europeans is because there is way more course material focused on europeans. There are more courses on the american and french revolutions than the haitian revolution. Even orientalism is a european frame, focusing on how europeans engaged with the near and far east. A course on orientalism is not a course on the middle east. It is a course on europeans.
I do not observe classes on precolumbian american or the islamic golden age shying away from atrocities in their course material. Courses on specific topics rather than time period / region pairings don't tend to shy away from a global frame either.
So you've got a few options.
You could insist that when atrocities come up in courses that focus on europeans that the course contains a "but actually" where it discusses other atrocities to balance things out. This seems odd from a pedagogical standpoint.
You could reduce the number of courses focusing on europeans and increase the number of courses focused elsewhere. But doing this is also considered "woke."
You could deliberately avoid discussion of atrocities committed by europeans in "western civ" style courses. This also doesn't strike me as right.
Could you share what specifically you'd expect to change about history curricula?
Oh, I hadn't considered that there are complex and nuanced reasons why only white wrongdoing is discussed, and by others is ignored.
> Even orientalism is a european frame, focusing on how europeans engaged with the near and far east. A course on orientalism is not a course on the middle east. It is a course on europeans.
It is nothing of the sort. "Orientalism" is not about Barbary slave raids that emptied whole villages, about Ottoman invaders colonizing half of eastern Europe for centuries, or about the Islamic invasion of Spain. Instead it's focused on problematizing the fact that Europeans viewed these invaders as an 'other', and did not accept and welcome them as their own.
There is, notably, not a similar course chiding native Americans for seeing Europeans as 'other'. There's not even a course problematizing how Ottomans viewed [1] Europe.
You're free to invent further sophisticated reasons why this ridiculous cherry-picking is all perfectly natural and not motivated at all. I am done.
Orientalism is a discussion of how europeans engaged with culture from the near and far east, yes. That's a topic on europeans. And europeans engaged with this culture incompletely, which is not exactly a surprise for any community on the planet.
Again, the reason why we see more courses on Orientalism than the reverse is because of the continued disproportionate focus on european history in the academy. And at least for my professor friend who teaches indigenous american history, there is absolutely discussion of the ways that they understood and misunderstood europeans.
I do not understand how a modern authoritarian leader relates to this whatsoever. Does Erdogan have some say in history curricula at US universities?
Strange. The report the article discusses shows that whites are, relative to their share of the population, underrepresented at top-200 colleges [1, page 13]. And this counts Jewish students as white - if one counts them separately, the numbers are even more stark, at least judging by 2023 Ivy League admissions, where non-Jewish whites were the most under-represented group, despite having the 2nd/3rd highest SAT scores [2].
Yet the report ignores this, saying only [1, page 15]: Data on who benefits from legacy preferences is severely limited, but some research has found that the advantage goes mainly to wealthy White applicants;
Are they not curious why, despite benefiting from high SAT scores and legacy status and "inherited advantage", whites are still under-represented? The group that produced the report, Class Action, claims to be about equity [3] - isn't it then their job description to care?
[3] Class Action is a student-driven organization of student, alumni, faculty, and civil society leaders organizing for a new academic social contract: one that rebuilds public trust by embracing inclusion over exclusivity, public service over private gain, and opportunity over inherited advantage. - https://www.joinclassaction.us/s-projects-side-by-side
Are we supposed to expect that tools police themselves? They're going to use the ridiculous notion that fake images need consent, to expand the surveillance state into our computers (even more).
It's so easy to get rid of a congressman you don't like with term limits. But why do you think, on average, his replacement would be better? The replacement would only be more unknown.