You can get a million people to support anything on facebook. BFD.
That said, my perspective on a couple things. I support group A. I support your third, "innocents" group. I think the difference between us is that I don't particularly care that much about group Z. My entirely uneducated opinion is that illegal immigration is awfully close to a victimless crime, so more power to them. I suppose there's an argument to be made that they're increasing my tax burden, but frankly, without hard numbers on it, if people think the life of an illegal immigrant will make them happier than their existing state, I'm willing to pay.
I also think that your suppositions for fair enforcement are so far out in fantasy land that you may as well ask Tinker Bell to enforce the law. I think your faith in the Arizona law enforcement system is wildly misguided. Strictly anecdotally, I've had experiences with Los Gatos police that make me believe that white people get better treatment. I've seen my family members pulled over for traffic stops and had the officers insinuate that their kind weren't welcome here. I've been told myself (not by police) multiple times to go back to my own country (when did Wisconsin secede?) This is all in Los Gatos, which is a massively white privileged town, but not exactly a hotbed for the upcoming Chinese race war. But I don't trust the people I grew up with to treat me fairly, and I certainly don't trust law enforcement in a more racially charged environment to get it right. Maybe I'm being unfair to law enforcement. I doubt it. When one of them can show me that he's not a raging asshole, I'll admit that there's at least one out there who isn't.
I sort of see your argument about changing laws through conventional channels, but I think that's again an idealized sort of method in a frictionless world. I also just have a different evaluation of the matter than you - I'm okay with the slippery slope to anarchy. I generally believe that the reasonably important laws will be enforced, and the rest is just noise. Sure, I'd like to change the priority order, but if some minor laws don't get enforced, I'm cool with that. That said, it seems like what's happening right now is actually doing a pretty decent job of changing this law through conventional channels.
Finally, wrt to your last example, I don't particularly care if the guy's here legally or not. If they're a menace to society on the roads, there's already mechanisms to deal with that - I think their immigration status is irrelevant.
I should probably clarify that I don't actually expect the law to be enforced without abuse, I was just trying to rhetorically separate whether people think it's a crappy law even when Saint Tinkerbell and her Miniature Army of Hombres enforces it perfectly. I halfway suspected that people would still think so, based on the vitriol that's flowing towards it.
That said, there's an extent to which the reason why I get to write this in my comfortable, air-conditioned house is because law enforcement officers are out there getting their asses shot at night-in and night-out, doing a very difficult job that needs to be done. Some of them, maybe most, are doing it to a pretty high level of professionalism, given the constraints.
Some of them just like to blow half-inch holes in the chests of unarmed juvenile black men for fun, though, so it's fair to say that there's a pretty broad spectrum.
That said, my perspective on a couple things. I support group A. I support your third, "innocents" group. I think the difference between us is that I don't particularly care that much about group Z. My entirely uneducated opinion is that illegal immigration is awfully close to a victimless crime, so more power to them. I suppose there's an argument to be made that they're increasing my tax burden, but frankly, without hard numbers on it, if people think the life of an illegal immigrant will make them happier than their existing state, I'm willing to pay.
I also think that your suppositions for fair enforcement are so far out in fantasy land that you may as well ask Tinker Bell to enforce the law. I think your faith in the Arizona law enforcement system is wildly misguided. Strictly anecdotally, I've had experiences with Los Gatos police that make me believe that white people get better treatment. I've seen my family members pulled over for traffic stops and had the officers insinuate that their kind weren't welcome here. I've been told myself (not by police) multiple times to go back to my own country (when did Wisconsin secede?) This is all in Los Gatos, which is a massively white privileged town, but not exactly a hotbed for the upcoming Chinese race war. But I don't trust the people I grew up with to treat me fairly, and I certainly don't trust law enforcement in a more racially charged environment to get it right. Maybe I'm being unfair to law enforcement. I doubt it. When one of them can show me that he's not a raging asshole, I'll admit that there's at least one out there who isn't.
I sort of see your argument about changing laws through conventional channels, but I think that's again an idealized sort of method in a frictionless world. I also just have a different evaluation of the matter than you - I'm okay with the slippery slope to anarchy. I generally believe that the reasonably important laws will be enforced, and the rest is just noise. Sure, I'd like to change the priority order, but if some minor laws don't get enforced, I'm cool with that. That said, it seems like what's happening right now is actually doing a pretty decent job of changing this law through conventional channels.
Finally, wrt to your last example, I don't particularly care if the guy's here legally or not. If they're a menace to society on the roads, there's already mechanisms to deal with that - I think their immigration status is irrelevant.
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That said, there's an extent to which the reason why I get to write this in my comfortable, air-conditioned house is because law enforcement officers are out there getting their asses shot at night-in and night-out, doing a very difficult job that needs to be done. Some of them, maybe most, are doing it to a pretty high level of professionalism, given the constraints.
Some of them just like to blow half-inch holes in the chests of unarmed juvenile black men for fun, though, so it's fair to say that there's a pretty broad spectrum.
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