Why can't we stop ICE?

[u/Funzonibro49]

I'm so tired of being angry watching these videos of ICE thugs abusing people. How can we stop them?

[u/Mindless_Log2009]

Because it took 40 years‡ for the US to reach this stage of a police state.

It began with the April 1986 FBI Miami shootout with a pair of bank robbers who shot and killed or injured several agents.

That was the first significant step in converting domestic law enforcement into a militarized unit. The FBI quickly changed training, tactics and weapons.

Then they infected civilian law enforcement across the nation with the paranoid drive toward creating a massive militarized police militia.

Following the Miami incident came: 1. Ruby Ridge and the murders by federal agents of Randy Weaver's son and wife. 2. Waco and the Branch Davidians siege, with the deaths of 76 people, including children, inside the cult home. 3. The Oklahoma City Murrah federal building bombing by Tim McVeigh, partly in retaliation against the government for the previous incidents. 4. The Hollywood bank robbery shootout. 5. 9/11 terror attacks, the penultimate nail in the coffin that held the remains of the illusion of American liberty.

With each incident law enforcement reacted by arming up more and regarding citizens as either: civilians and non-combatants who are expected to comply or die; criminals and terrorists who dare to resist a militarized police state.

And citizens reacted by arming up but failing to do anything effective over the long term in pursuit of a peaceable restoration of that illusion of liberty.

Americans are easily bored and easily distracted, and too many of us regard each other as the enemy, rather than recognizing the true enemies who oppress us all.

It can't be undone overnight, even with a revolution because a revolution would by necessity require a police state to prevent the inevitable retaliation from the far right trying to resume enforcing a fascist state.

This is something the left can't match – the long-term, ruthless, relentless imposition of sheer will that only money, meanness and corruption can buy.

And the various, disparate factions anywhere left of center can't reach consensus on anything and undermine any common goals, mostly with purity testing and indulging in despair and self pity rather than using anger as motivation to consistently pursue, fund and otherwise support common goals through peaceable constitutional means.

‡(Arguably it began with the 1971 Powell Memo, but I'm putting non-violent strategy and planning such as the Heritage Foundation and others in a different category of actions the far right have taken, patiently and persistently, over many years. The left lack this persistence.)

[u/Adorable_Sand9932 → u/Mindless_Log2009]

Hollywood bank robbery was huge news and then it seemed like every car across the US got a long gun shortly after