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What is it like in the US these days? I'm on the outside (occasionally) looking in, and it looks like something out of European history class! The ice seem to h

• abhinai 9mo ago
  To put things in perspective, US is a massive country. All this news is coming from one tier 3 city. (Roughly speaking LA, NYC etc being tier 1. Seattle, Dallas etc being tier 2)
  • tantalor 9mo ago
    Twin cities are 16th largest metro, between Tampa/St. Petersburg and Seattle/Tacoma.
    • abhinai 9mo ago
      Yeah it’s a slightly blurry line. What metric are you using? I’d say Seattle is way ahead of Minneapolis in terms of economic influence.
      • tantalor 9mo ago
        Population
  • slg 9mo ago
    While being the focus, Minnesota is not the only place it's happening. For example, ICE took at least 15 people in the Los Angeles area today[1]. That article is from a local food publication that has largely shifted to covering all ICE behavior in the greater LA area. It's a good place to get a better picture of the kind of stuff that has just become background noise to the degree that it doesn't make the news elsewhere. People could also throw a few bucks their way if they think documenting this is important. And I'll point to a single example from 13 hours ago[2] for the "the deporting of illegal immigrants is not oppression" type of people like that other commenter. Just a video of a nameless person, taken who knows where, for who knows what, screaming and crying out. This just doesn't make the news, but it's happening countless times every day all over the country in the name of the American people. [1] - https://lataco.com/daily-memo-january-27th-border-patrol-attack-and-follow-community-watchers-home-while-we-see-a-new-raid-approach-unfold https://lataco.com/daily-memo-january-27th-border-patrol-att... [2] - https://www.instagram.com/p/DUBjokvEnWh/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DUBjokvEnWh/
• qwesda 9mo ago
  I'm wondering pretty much the same thing ...
• Empact 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • katdork 9mo ago
    This misses the point of how "deportation", snatching of those from communities and decision-making for whom is illegal is actually occurring, and how people are being snatched with disregard to their actual state as a citizen, resident or otherwise of the United States of America. When facial recognition is said to outrank any other proof, such as a birth certificate, one cannot claim to be operating in good faith when one allows for fallible systems to decide the lives of American citizenry, encourages false imprisonment and allows for violence to be recklessly committed against people who were guilty of no crime at all. (also, the United States and Canada are alike in their statuses as countries formed of immigrants; we close the door now simply because we feel those coming today are ineducated or don't fit our racial preferences? No different than was done to Chinese people say a hundred years prior.)
    • Empact 9mo ago
      Is any law enforcement guaranteed to be exactly correct? No, because every person is fallible, and every system is made up of fallible people. This is why we separate arrest (police) from trial (judge) and judgment (jury), to mitigate those risks. To malign a system because it is imperfect is to be unrealistic. Surely, we should minimize those harms, but they are not a reason to abdicate our laws.
      • donkeybeer 9mo ago
        There's a difference between honest mistakes and gleeful assholery.
      • ChromaticPanic 9mo ago
        These things are not being separated though. Your agents are executing citizens in the street. This is not about illegal immigration at all. It's just straight up oppression.
  • 9mo ago
• directevolve 9mo ago
  Minneapolis has 0.1% of the total USA population. It is to the USA as Dresden, Lisbon, or Genoa is to the EU in terms of population. While ICE is mass deporting people nationwide, the murders of citizens and general mayhem they’re perpetrating are primarily just in Minneapolis. 2A supporters are mixed. Some genuinely outraged at the gov, some just making up reasons to support Trump anyway. Following the definition of conservatism, liberals are the group the law binds but does not protect, and they are the group the law protects but does not bind. In the US, Republicans managed to stack the judicial system with acolytes in a well organized, long term operation over years. They broke rules to steal Supreme Court seats, giving them a majority. They control all branches of government. In that situation, the president has massive power to do what he wants. So he is. Trump doesn’t really seem to care about any issue really. He’s not much of an ideologue. But his advisors certainly are. Stephen Miller is an open fascist who’s playing Trump like a fiddle and loving every minute of the chaos. But for most of those of us lucky enough to be citizens, most of the time, we’re just dealing with institutional dysfunction exacerbated by Federal dysfunction. Funding cuts, broken commitments, uncertainty. We also are all seeing the Federal government pre-emptively brand the citizens it’s new gunning down in the street every two weeks or so “domestic terrorists” and posing with signs saying “one of ours, all of yours,” and so on. So it’s very clear that the government is now building right wing paramilitary forces to try and intimidate us. Clearly that’s not working too well in Minnesota, however! Liberal Americans overall are: 1. Disgusted with Trump et al 2. Keeping relatively calm and carrying on, because he genuinely did win the popular vote in a free and fair election 3. Figuring out constructive ways to deal with ICE, pressure the Democratic Party to pick better candidates, and thinking about how to protect elections in 2026 and 2028. On a day to day basis, life feels normal where I live, for me, for now.
  • Epa095 9mo ago
    What you describe seems to fit the term 'Dual State', and you live your day to day life in the normative state. I hope foe your sake you don't get much contact with the prerogative one. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-executive-order-lawlessness-constitutional-crisis/682112/?gift=3qx5DAUwXOU-zo0uuMqXXXBdr-lY__ZS3Hup3wCAyzA https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-e...
• heurist 9mo ago
  It's confusing and messy, like most of American history.
• tastyfreeze 9mo ago
  Use of 2nd amendment rights to combat government overreach is an outright declaration of rebellion. Cross that line and you are no longer playing rebel. If you dont have enough people behind you it will not go well.
  • mullingitover 9mo ago
    The second amendment as a serious option for a regime reset button was always a fantasy. This federal government would happily take a lesson from the Chechen wars and use ballistic missiles against a rebelling city if the chips were down. Any 2A fans have their own Patriot missile defense systems? No?
    • youarentrightjr 9mo ago
      > The second amendment as a serious option for a regime reset button was always a fantasy. This federal government would happily take a lesson from the Chechen wars and use ballistic missiles against a rebelling city if the chips were down. Any 2A fans have their own Patriot missile defense systems? No? If it's that easy, why did we spend 20 years in Afghanistan only to suffer defeat by goat herders holding AK-47s? A quick review of the last 100 years will educate you on the viability of asymmetric warfare.
      • bigDinosaur 9mo ago
        There are plenty of examples of asymmetric warfare where the stronger party crushed the weaker one. WW2 was full of such examples. People point to Afghanistan and Vietnam as if they apply in every situation, for some bizarre reason (I assume motivated reasoning).
        • youarentrightjr 9mo ago
          [dead]
      • mullingitover 9mo ago
        The NATO forces defeated the Taliban in a timeframe that could be measured in hours. The remaining years were an exercise in nation building, there was never “defeat.” The military simply isn’t the right tool to lift a nation out of poverty and eventually the voters got bored. In Vietnam, the US was fighting an army backed by the Soviet Union and China that had anti-aircraft and artillery. No, the US insurgency would turn into a Grozny unless the insurgents get backing from China or some other serious player.
• idle_zealot 9mo ago
  > Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk? It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. Also, yeah, the "don't tread on me" folks mostly aren't very principaled and don't mind authoritarian actions so long as they're dressed up right. Obama wants a public healthcare option? How dare the government institute Death Panels to decide who live or dies! ICE shoot random protestors? That's what they deserve for "impeding" and "assaulting" law enforcement. The Second Amendment was written so that the US could avoid having a standing federal army and quickly gather up defense forces from States as necessary when attacked. It was thought that having a standing army would lead to bad incentives and militarism. Just like the Executive branch only has enumerated powers, with all main governing functions belonging to Congress. The founders were worried about vesting too much power in one man, so made the President pretty weak. Of course, we've transmogrified ourselves into a nation primed for militarism and authoritarianism by slowly but surely concentrating power into one station. Exactly what the Constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job.
  • pseudohadamard 9mo ago
    As a footnote, it was also written at a time when a bunch of guys with muskets could face down another bunch of guys with muskets. When one side has tanks and attack helicopters and training and outnumbers you a hundred to one it doesn't really work any more.
    • 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
      That would explain why it was so easy for the US to suppress insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan... It's actually rather difficult to think of tyrannical regimes which persisted against an armed citizenry in the long term.
      • moi2388 9mo ago
        That however is a political issue, not a military one. Given free rein the military absolutely can do that.
• epistasis 9mo ago
  > Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is saying. But I'm curious to hear Americans view on matters? The US media is downplaying things because they are terrified of Trump, who now has either direct or indirect control of most of it. If you're talking about EU media, I can't assess, but I did see a clip of an Italian news crew getting harassed in Minneapolis that's fairly accurate. It's bad. Really bad. I never thought this would happen in the US. But it's also inept. Really inept. Minnesota is super-majority white, but has taken great pride in being a home for refugee communities, and has gained many from around the world. Minnesotans are, of all the places I've lived in the world, the most open-hearted, caring, and upright moral I've encountered as a group. Hard winters make people trust community. The Georgy Floyd murders, and the riots afterwards, have made communities very strong as they had to watch out for each other, there were no police that were going to come. For this area with hundreds of thousands people, there are only 600 cops, but 3000 ICE/CBP agents swarming it, a HUGE chunk of their forces. Yet people self-organized to watch out for their schools and their neighbors. Churches serve as central places for people to volunteer to deliver meals to families that can not leave the house due to the racialize abduction of people. Several police chiefs have held news conferences where they say in so many words "You know I'm not a liburul but my officers with brown skin are all getting harassed by ICE when they're off duty, until the show that they are cops, and that's pretty bad." A Republican candidate for Governor withdrew his candidacy because he felt he couldn't be part of a political party that was doing such racialized violence against his own people, and his job was literally to be a defense lawyer to cops accused of wrongdoing! The deaths are so tragic, but because Minnesotans have been so well organized, so stoic, so non-violent, it fully exposes ICE/CBD for the political terror campaign that they are. That the entire endeavor has nothing to do with enforcing the law, it's all about punishing Minnesota for being Minnesota, for its politics, for its people. If the legal deployment of cameras and whistles and insults and yells is enough to defeat masked goons who wave guns in people faces, assault non-violent people with pepper sprays directly to the eyes, and tear-gas canisters thrown at daycares, then these stupid SA-wannabes are not going to win. I live in a coastal California bubble that's even whiter than Minnesota, but here we are all rooting for Minnesota. I was talking to another parent today at the elementary school, an immigrant from Spain, a doctor, whose husband is from Minnesota. They are rethinking their choice of staying in the US. The second amendment thing was always a charade. There are a few people that think it's for protection from the government, but what they really mean is it's for shooting liberals. There's no grander principle. There are a bunch of people that enjoy guns as a hobby, and support the 2nd amendment for that. But we all know that the time for armed defense against the government is only when you're in a bunker in woods or when you're storming the capital to overturn an election because you've been tricked into saying it's a fraudulent election. They are buffoons, as the Nazis were, but they are very unpopular buffoons and I think the past week shows that after a few more years of grand struggle, normal americans will win. It will be hard. We need to have truth and reconciliation afterwards, and the lack of that after the Civil War and after January 6 are huge causes in today's struggles. I'm just glad Minnesota is defeating ICE/CBP, as many states would give in to violence faster, and many states would give up faster.
• heavyset_go 9mo ago
  > Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? If you think what you've seen is bad, consider how bad the stuff you don't see is, and then consider how bad it is for those who aren't the type to post on HN.
  • 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
    Also consider that there are 340 million people in the US. With that sort of population size, you can construct whatever narrative you want out of daily video clips of 1-in-a-million events. >the type to post on HN. When's the last time you saw a Trump supporter on this site? The userbase here is considerably further left than a very left-wing state such as California. That will very much be reflected in what gets posted here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46791909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46791909
    • seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
      Most techies are libertarians and/or moderates. They definitely live in liberal hot spots, but they aren’t going out of their way to address social wrongs and protest. Heck, most Californians are moderate, mostly concerned about making money and living the good life, the only reason they are called liberal at all is because Pete Wilson alienated most of the states Hispanics from the Republican Party in an ill planned illegal immigration witch hunt. It didn’t just go from Reagan to Newsom overnight, the change was mostly for anti-racism reasons. California is also hardly a far left state, it still has more trump voters than Texas.
      • 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
        I don't think HN is representative of techies, especially not when discussing politics.
        • seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
          Techies even more moderate if they aren’t on HN, si I don’t get your point.
• gmerc 9mo ago
  Most cosplayers exit when they meet a real villain
• swaits 9mo ago
  > What is it like in the US these days? For the average American citizen, status quo. For the scofflaws and illegal immigrants, the realization that accountability for their actions might be right around the corner must be unnerving.
• sawjet 9mo ago
  [flagged]
• jaimsam 9mo ago
  [dead]
• westpfelia 9mo ago
  The news media is not saying a lot of what is happening. So if anything you are missing some of the insanity.
• soulofmischief 9mo ago
  It's bad, we are living under Hitler 2.0 in every single sense of the word. He admires Hitler and says he keeps Hitler's books by his nightstand. That said, do not rely on a single or even a few Americans for insight into what is going on, as you might get a wildly different perspective from each one, as a consequence of the billions of dollars put into generational propaganda and subliminal mind control out here. We are a nation divided.
• thaumaturgy 9mo ago
  People are experiencing wildly different Americas depending on their circumstances and level of political involvement. If you're a tech worker and you still have a job and you think AI is pretty cool and you don't follow news very closely, things seem okay...ish. You are maybe dimly aware of some social problems, but they're all somebody else's problems. If you're one of the many many thousands of people who have been abducted by federalized lunatics, or you have a child or family member in one of our concentration camps, things seem urgently and unimaginably bad. If you're politically involved, things seem tenuous, at best. You likely know someone who either feels justifiably terrified by what's going on, or someone whose life has been seriously impacted by it. I've spent several months successfully combating one of YC's contributions to all this mess. Tonight, federal law enforcement fired pepper rounds, flashbangs, and tear gas into a crowd of protestors who were noisy -- not violent, not even causing property damage, just noisy. One of the officers aimed the tear gas weapon directly at a protestor's head and caused a serious head injury (the kind that causes convulsions and foaming at the mouth after impact). And, they'll get away with that. The local police department was flying half a dozen drones directly over this, but they are only there to surveil and look for an excuse to put on riot gear. There were an assortment of reporters there, but most of them have editors or owners that won't run much of a story about any of it. A few politicians showed up, but they made a short speech and then left immediately. The building where this all happened is in a city center, so, just a block away, life and traffic continues as normal and most people are entirely unaware. So that's also why nobody's really been making an organized 2A effort either. For most people, this isn't "real", in the sense that it isn't something they're experiencing, and for those that are experiencing it, they're trying to walk a tightrope that resists the current administration without spiraling into a widespread civil war.
  • solaris2007 9mo ago
    > or you have a child or family member in one of our concentration camps I must be one of those comfortable and oblivious tech workers because I don't know about any concentration camps in the US. So you'll have to tell me what this is about.
    • js8 9mo ago
• AngryData 9mo ago
  People aren't shooting yet because they know it will turn into a blood bath and should only be used as a last resort. Also as bad as it is in some areas, vast swaths of the US are still only really seeing this in the news. I think the outcome of whats going on in Minnesota will be a sign of whats to come so we won't be waiting long. If citizens start shooting at government employees though, it will be chaos, the US population has had a VERY negative attitude about the government for a long time now.
  • AngryData 9mo ago
    For anyone downvoting this, I don't see you fighting to the death over this, why do you expect others to do it for you and then complain when they don't? I guarantee many of you would be screaming about terrorism if people were shooting back right now. You can't have it both ways.
• 15155 9mo ago
  > As a European I'm also somewhat confused. I always thought that the reason the second amendment was made into such a big deal was because Americans felt they needed to be able to protect themselves in case the government ran amok. Americans, yes - not illegal immigrant invaders. As it would turn out, American citizens aren't ready to die for these people just yet.
  • aoshifo 9mo ago
    The man killed was not an illegal or immigrant
    • 15155 9mo ago
      Nobody said he was? Are you in the right thread?
• songodongo 9mo ago
  Depends which side you’re on and how far. If you’re far-left, you’re thinking the administration is the Fourth Reich, you’re watching movies with Leonardo DiCaprio doing terrorist attacks on border patrol, and fighting the Gestapo. If you’re far right, you’re thinking the administration isn’t going far enough, Trump “is a cuck”, and Renee Good and Alex Pretti would be alive if they had just protested in front of a government building.
• spicyusername 9mo ago
  This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but most places for most people are fine. Good even. Great, by historical standards. But that just goes to show how much room the US has to decline, and how well off the average American really is by global standards, even if they don't subjectively feel that way. Donald Trump and the politics of the last few decades have definitely been pushing things the wrong direction, but most people in most places live relatively well, by global standards. As it is, all we would need is a decade of politics and policies gently tugging the right direction and we'd be good to go. Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? Kind of both at the same time. America is a huge place. So if you live in Minneapolis, or in one of the cities where ICE is heavily targeting immigrants and are non-white, it's as bad as the media makes it sound. If you live anywhere else, which in most cases are places thousands of miles away, it's business as usual. You have money, you go to work, the grocery store is full, you see your friends on the weekends. The only bad things in life are home prices and the news.
• nailer 9mo ago
  It’s the same as in the EU or Britain or the US ten years ago, where unauthorised migration is handled by law enforcement, except in some states the organised vigilante groups form this article exist and endanger everybody. The government hasn’t run amok: the laws are the same.
• eudamoniac 9mo ago
  The best way I can put it... All the people I know are at work when most of this protest news is happening.
• MaxHoppersGhost 9mo ago
  >What is it like in the US these days? Pretty normal unless you're an illegal immigrant. Despite what the media tells you and all your pearl clutching coworkers are told to think by said media.
• marcusverus 9mo ago
  > The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning. How do you figure? > I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is saying. Media coverage of the Pretti shooting has been awful. All seem happy to show the slow-mo recap of the officer disarming Pretti, but none show him reaching for/toward his holster in the moment before being shot (0:12-13 in this video https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1qm4b0v/slow_motion_stabilized_video_of_alex_pretti_being/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1qm4b0v/slow_m...). If the officer heard the "he's got a gun" callout but didn't see him be disarmed, this would obviously justify the response. > As a European I'm also somewhat confused. I always thought that the reason the second amendment was made into such a big deal was because Americans felt they needed to be able to protect themselves in case the government ran amok. This is the reason for the second amendment. Trump and some others have seriously fumbled the messaging on this point. The issue isn't that Pretti had a gun, nor that he had a gun at the protest, but that he had a gun at a protest, obstructed law enforcement (a felony), then resisted arrest. Of course, doing so didn't mean that "he deserved it". Fighting the cops while armed with a firearm was extremely reckless and stupid, but that alone doesn't justify a shooting. Most attacks from the left are (whether honestly or disingenuously) based on only these facts, but ignore the most pertinent fact in play here, which is that cops have rights, too. Among these is the right to defend themselves. If a police officer perceives an imminent threat of lethal force, they are permitted by law to use lethal force in self defense. That is why it was so reckless for Pretti to fight the cops--because it is extremely easy, when fighting someone who is armed with a lethal weapon, to reasonably perceive an imminent threat of lethal force. Pair this with Pretti's aforementioned rapid movement of his right hand toward his hip in the moment before the first shot, and it is not a stretch at all to see this shooting as a justifiable use of force. Tragic, of course, but still legally justified. > Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? 2A supporters often spitball about scenarios that might justify a revolution. I've never heard anyone suggest that they would fight for protestors' imagined right to fight cops with total immunity from consequences.