U.S. citizen in Arizona detained by immigration officials for 10 days

Republicans are the party of white Christian conversatives, so whatever message is most expedient to appealing to them at the moment is what they stand for.

"Small government" meant "get the Black President out of my healthcare." "Personal freedoms" meant "let me discriminate against people."

Never take a Republican at face value, especially if you're not in their in group. Get them alone and they'll tell you what they mean behind what they say.

> Small government: cut things we don't like (e.g. social programs)

Yeah, and guess how? By claiming the program is rife with abuse, demanding all sorts of record-keeping and auditing...and then a few years later shouting blue-bloody-murder about "administrative cost" in the program.

I wonder what the actual stats are for TANF and SNAP in terms of paper-pushing and auditing vs funds dispersed to recipients.

> remove freedoms for things we don't (e.g. LGBTQ)

Or the really big one: abortion. Doing things like passing legislation that forces doctors to say certain things to their patients, for example...and mandate medical procedures like forcing the mother to go through an ultrasound so they have to see the fetus and if it's old enough, listen to its heart.

Can you imagine how much outrage there would be if democrats passed legislation mandating doctors tell their patients that the vast overwhelming majority of scientific evidence supports efficacy of vaccines, and oh by the way, flu shots are now compulsory? They'd lose their goddamn minds and riot in the streets (er...again?)

Not to lessen your point, because I 100% agree, but I'd like to point out that you could swap a couple words in your statements to make the same point about the Democrats:

- Small government: cut things we don't like (e.g. military), and spend more on things we do like (e.g. social programs)

- Personal freedoms: more freedoms for things we like (e.g. LGBTQ), remove freedoms for things we don't (e.g. guns)

Even in the past it was nothing but a coded language. They don't actually believe in it from a principled point of view. Lee Atwater 1981 interview has continued to remain relevant. From direct racial slurs to forced busing, states' rights. Then it morphed into small government, personal freedoms. And now it's DEI and trans.

> And even someone who disagrees with them can recognize the "small government" within their idealized view means government that is only involved in the things that government should be involved in.

Sure, maybe if they were ever ideologically consistent. Yet somehow “government should not be involved in healthcare” also means “government can dictate your healthcare decisions” vis a vis gender affirming care and abortions. Or how “government should not be involved in wealth redistribution” means “let’s grow the national debt to give billionaires more tax breaks and subsidies”.

This is totally setting aside the fact that small government has always carried the connotation of fiscal conservatism.

It’s basically the party of narcissism. Which is why Trump has succeeded. Freedoms insofar as their world and life are concerned. Generally not an externally motivated “hey they need to be free too” unless they can somehow appear morally superior in a US Christian way, like abortion or prootecting marriage.

Perhaps. Supreme court preemptively reminding the government it has to stop deportations until court case is resolved has been reported as quite unusual. On the other hand, the only people who are empowered to punish Trump are terrified of him and the people he's pardoned.

I was abused at this same port of entry, including being jailed as a USC.

Prior at this same port, a woman was warrantlessly vaginally "searched" via manual manipulation at the direction of CBP. She lost. And I contacted her attorneys with my own case, they said I would lose too.

But this was under Biden, so no one gave a shit. They don't give a shit unless it suits their political agenda.

The problem with these programs is that the government granted the amnesty, but then failed to follow through on the enforcement in the aftermath.

This is seared into the conservative memory, so they are extremely resistant to the idea, IMO rightly so.

We had a shot at a general amnesty or reformed guest worker program in the mid 2000s to early 2010s, but unions like the UFCW (the primary decider of elections in NV) and others in the AFL-CIO opposed it.

That said, the AFL-CIO of today is much more white collar and diverse compared to that of 20 years ago, so it wouldn't be as brutal for their locals.

I've said this a thousand times: all unions aren't equal, and we as Dems need to drop the Midwest (aside from MN and IL, where unions are AFL-CIO aligned, and demographics are Dem aligned) and the UAW+ILU. The GOP has a platform that is closer aligned to their locals, and national has flipped as a result.

Give up the rust belt, and concentrate on shoring up UFCW heavy states like NV, AZ, GA, and NC.

Pandering to the UAW and ILU cause the Biden admin to snub Musk, which enraged an already unstable egotistical person to go into the deep end [0], and the UAW and ILU anyhow decided to endorse the Trump admin's current moves [1]. So much for making an enemy.

Stop pandering to the Hank Hills - they will vote red.

Of course, this won't change - such a change would inevitably break a lot of factions internally in the Dems, and would be fought tooth and nail by the Shapiros and Whitmers.

[0] - https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/how-elon-musk-broke-w...

[1] - https://www.axios.com/2025/03/04/uaw-trump-tariffs-united-au...

Bureaucracy has different failure modes, but failures still happen. The point is to make the government accountable for its own actions, which increases its legitimacy and sets up an incentive to minimize the amount of harm it causes.

I think government accountability, which includes making government agents and agencies beholden to the laws they're purporting to uphold, would have helped prevent many of the frustrations and "both sides" arguments that made otherwise reasonable people shut off their reasoning and buy into the destructionist movement.

As for the realities of our current situation, I acknowledged that in my last sentence.

This isn't the holocaust though and probably not fascism. There's an earlier article about ICE arresting Americans:

>The largest number of those arrests occurred in 2012 and 2013 -- at the height of an aggressive push by the Obama administration to deport unauthorized immigrants. https://www.latimes.com/archives/story/2018-04-27/ice-held-a...