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Self in Society Roundup 64
Authoritarianism, Trump, ICE, Rush, immigration, mind, Substack, Kirk, guns, autism, and more.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
Trump Authoritarianism Watch
War from Within: Donald Trump encouraged U.S. military leaders to wage "war from within," to use allegedly "dangerous cities as training grounds for our military," to defeat "the enemy within." This is pure authoritarianism. It's still astonishing to me that the flag-waving, Constitution-citing, law-and-order, "never again" conservatives are the ones who have brought us to the brink of fascism.
Last on Chicago Assault: Jonathan Last: "Trump . . . not only activated and took command of the Illinois National Guard, but just in case the hometown troops are not willing to do his bidding, he has shipped in National Guard troops from a politically reliable territory. . . . There is no crisis in Chicago that requires the National Guard. To the extent that there is civil instability in Chicago it has been caused by Trump's surge of federal agents into the city and their lawless assault on the citizens of Chicago."
Binswanger on Trump's Authoritarianism: Harry Binswanger: "As with monarchs of old, Donald Trump's domain is . . . whatever he says it is. Tariffs, funding for ivy league colleges, electric vs. gasoline vehicles, arms for Ukraine, whether Israel may take over the West Bank, a comedian's statements about Charlie Kirk, a Federal Reserve official's mortgage application—anything and everything has to be pleaded at the monarch's feet. . . . None of Trump's headline-grabbing lurches apply legitimate powers of the president. No American president has any business intervening in the affairs of private entities. . . . Trump wants the military to act domestically . . . to defend his hold on power. Against what? Free elections."
Greenhut on Trump's Authoritarianism: Steven Greenhut: "Every American who is concerned about the state of our liberties ought to find harrowing President Donald Trump's recent declaration that the National Guard is now in place in Portland, Oregon. . . . There are some protests against ICE's increasingly abusive raids and detentions, but this is nothing more than a pretext to exert federal control over cities."
Yglesias on Trump's Authoritarianism: Matthew Yglesias: "Trump is fanning the flames of crisis and claiming that, for some reason, the country urgently needs totally unprecedented troop deployments in American cities. . . . Because they [Trump conservatives], in fact, are authoritarians, they think it's a good idea to seize on crisis to assert executive power and destroy civil liberties."
Letitia James Indicted: New York Times: "A prosecutor handpicked by President Trump secured an indictment of New York's attorney general, Letitia James, on bank fraud and false statement charges in the Eastern District of Virginia on Thursday after the president publicly demanded Ms. James be charged." It could not be more clear that this is a case of first selecting the criminal and then finding the crime.
Cowen on Trump's Socialism: It's darkly humorous how many people voted for Trump because he allegedly opposed socialism. Those same people mostly are quiet now!
Miller's Zero-Sum Mentality: Stephen Miller said "the Black people in Chicago are thrilled that we're getting the illegal aliens out of their communities who are stealing their housing, jobs, and resources." That is, of course, a lie. Someone who accepts a freely offered job, rents a freely offered residence, or purchases a freely offered good or service does not "steal" those things. True, government in many ways mucks up the relevant markets through housing restrictions, wage controls, and business-crushing taxes and regulations, but those aren't the fault of immigrants. Miller's zero-sum thinking is worse than anything on the left; it is socialism for racist morons.
The 82nd: The Trump administration seriously discussed sending the Army's 82nd Airborne into Portland.
Rand Paul on Boat Strikes: He writes: "At the very least, the government should explain how the gang came to be labelled as terrorists. . . . The blow-them-to-smithereens crowd also conveniently ignores the fact that death is generally not the penalty for drug smuggling. . . . If the Trump administration wants to use military power, it should seek authorization from Congress."
Trump Targets Opponents: Reason: "Trump posted on social media today that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, both Democrats, should be arrested for refusing to assist federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents."
Worker Shortages: Reason: "Trump's Labor Department Admits That Trump's Immigration Crackdown Is Causing a Shortage of Farm Workers."
Vance's Idol: The crew of the Ayn Rand Institute take on the works of Patrick Deneen, a favorite intellectual of J. D. Vance. Nikos Sotirakopoulos summarizes Deneen's project as calling on the state to overcome liberty in the sense of free self-direction in order to achieve "liberty" in the sense of control over one's "baser" nature. Elan Journo says Deneen conflates liberty in the sense of freedom from coercion with whim-worship and emotionalism. My take: While certainly a free society allows people to act badly in many ways (while protecting people's rights), it also enables them to act in moral and productive and innovative ways, and Deneen's statist alternative is far more dangerous and far more prone to moral corruption. The modern conservative movement openly begs for authoritarianism and stagnation, and, if we don't overcome them, that's exactly what we'll get.
Companies Cave: New York Times: "Apple Takes Down ICE Tracking Apps in Response to Trump Pressure Campaign." Atlantic: "YouTube . . . paid $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump after the company suspended his channel six days after the January 6 riot at the Capitol."
Targeting Soros: Stephanie Slade: The Trump-led government attacks on George Soros "represents a flagrant violation of the rule of law and norms of justice."
ICE Authoritarianism Watch
Secret Police: Judge William Young: "ICE goes masked for a single reason—to terrorize Americans into quiescence. . . . To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police." More.
ICE Raid on Apartment Building: "Amnesty International USA condemns the September 30, pre-dawn ICE raid on an apartment building in a historically Black neighborhood in Chicago. According to news reports, federal agents raided the apartment building, broke into homes without warrants in the middle of the night, forcibly removed residents, including children, from their homes, zip-tied their hands, and interrogated them without access to legal counsel." In addition to being an assault on the individual victims, it is a blatant assault on the U.S. Constitution.
ICE Killing of Villegas González: NBC reports that Silverio Villegas González had some old traffic tickets. NBC reorts, "As [ICE] agents leaned into the car [driven by Villegas González, he] began to back up his vehicle." Okay, that's extremely dangerous behavior. As was the instigation by ICE! And killing the man seems like an obvious overreaction. At a minimum the case deserves scrutiny. Cato's David Bier reasonably remarked, "ICE lied about the person it shot, claiming he was a 'criminal,' but NBC finds that he had no criminal history whatsoever. Not even traffic tickets in 12 years! It also lied about the extent of the injuries to its agents." ICE responded, in part, "False accusations like this viral post from @David_J_Bier of the @CatoInstitute have led to DAILY assaults on the men and women of ICE and dangerous riots." But ICE did not actually contradict anything that Bier wrote. Regardless, for ICE to accuse Bier of causing assaults on ICE agents, merely by criticizing ICE's killing of a man under questionable circumstances, is shameful and authoritarian. Maybe if ICE agents do not wish to be criticized for killing people, they should stop killing people.
The ICE Shooting of Marimar Martinez: Chicago Sun Times: "Body-camera video of a Border Patrol agent involved in the shooting of a woman who was allegedly chasing agents in Brighton Park over the weekend shows an officer saying, 'Do something, b----,' before pulling over and shooting the woman five times, the woman's attorney said in federal court. . . . The video appears to contradict the government's allegation that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire on her." This case deserves full investigation.
Deportation to Eswatini: Mother Jones: "Eswatini . . . is Africa's last remaining absolute monarchy. . . . In May, officials from the US and Eswatini signed a deal that allows the Trump administration to deport people from all over the world to the African nation. A copy of the arrangement I reviewed shows that the United States has agreed to pay Eswatini $5.1 million to take in up to 160 so-called 'third-country nationals'—immigrants who came to the US with no ties to the country to which they are being deported."
ICE Assaults Minister: Hey look, we've found the people persecuting Christians! Religion News Service: "Last month, the Rev. David Black stood in front of a Chicago-area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and spread his arms wide. Adorned in all black and wearing a clerical collar, the pastor looked up at a group of masked, heavily armed ICE agents on the roof and began to pray. . . . But when Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows. One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire. 'We could hear them laughing,' Black said." Where are the criminal charges against the ICE agents responsible? At least a judge has ordered some restrictions on ICE tactics.
Gratuitous Endangerment: CBS: "Federal [immigration] agents threw a tear gas canister at people on a busy street in the Logan Square neighborhood [in Chicago] . . . outside a grocery store and near an elementary school."
Smash and Grab: "We'll smash the fucking window out and drag him out," said an ICE agent in Maryland. "It was one of nearly 50 documented instances of immigration agents breaking vehicle windows that ProPublica has identified." Related, from the Colorado Sun: "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pointed guns at and then smashed the window of a car carrying a couple and their 1-month-old baby during an afternoon arrest in Alamosa [Colorado], video footage shows. The family was on their way home from the Alamosa County courthouse."
Wrongful Imprisonment: In a just country, wrongful imprisonment is a crime and is treated as such. Reason: Afghan Sayed Naser "legally entered the U.S. through the CBP One App in July 2024." He "had worked with U.S. forces for two years during the Afghanistan War." Yet Homeland Security arbitrarily revoked his parole. "After a video of his arrest by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents went viral in June, Afghan Sayed Naser was released on September 26 following 106 days of detention." This is now how we treat people who risked their lives to help the U.S. military.
Foreign Infiltration: I first assumed this was parody but no, it's real: Homeland Security posted the message, with an image of the Statue of Liberty, reading, "Recapture the America your forefathers created. Prevent foreign infiltration." Um, all of our "forefathers" were foreign "infiltrators." (The ancestors of Native Americans came tens of thousands of years ago.) For those who need a reminder, here is part of the poem by Emma Lazarus posted at the Statute of Liberty: "A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame / Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name / Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand / Glows world-wide welcome. . . . / 'Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'" For Homeland Security to pervert the meaning of Lady Liberty for its authoritarian cause is shameful.
Quick Takes
Rush: There's a 2026 reunion tour. The sit-in drummer is Anika Nilles.
Agustina Vergara Cid on Immigration: She writes: "Immigrants are not here to serve Americans. They are not here to raise the GDP, or to save us from population collapse, or to do the jobs that Americans won't do. They are individuals with their own goals, ambitions, and their own happiness to pursue. In doing so, they work, produce, create, innovate, and consume—and that trade benefits those around them and ultimately most other people in America. They are human beings like Americans are. They are ends in themselves, not means to an end." Check out her Substack.
Machado: Reason: "Among Venezuelan opposition leaders, Machado stands out for her belief in classical liberalism and free market capitalism. Her platform calls for the privatization of the country's state-owned oil industry, arguing that Venezuela can once again become a capitalist success story if the government radically reduces its role in managing the economy. She is also one of the few prominent figures to openly embrace socially liberal causes, such as same-sex marriage and the use of medical marijuana." I hope her Nobel helps her cause. See an interview with Tom Palmer.
Caplan on Mind: Bryan Caplan comments on Searle's view of mind. Chat has a summary. I see nothing here that causes me to reconsider my own view: "What I think is going on is that conscious experiences, although themselves not physical, arise from and are made possible by a physical substrate. . . . I would describe my view as something like 'parallelism.' A sufficiently informed outside observer could perfectly map what the physical substrate is doing while I experience seeing a red ball, and that would correspond to me seeing the red ball, but the observer could not thereby directly gain knowledge of what it's like for me to see the red ball."
Warne on Education Equality: Russell T. Warne (via Steve Stewart-Williams) convincingly argues that IQ is highly related to educational advancement, and kids vary in IQ, therefore trying to equalize educational outcomes is a fool's errand. Point taken. I would respond that what matters is quality of education, and the goal should be to optimize educational outcomes for each student. Today's schools often fail students at all levels of academic ability.
Molloy on Weiss at CBS: Parker Malloy convincingly argues that Bari Weiss's Free Press got a story about transgender care substantially wrong, and she reasonably worries that Weiss, now head of CBS news, is (or can be) "'anti-woke' rather than pro-accuracy."
Lyman Stone on Substack: He writes: "Substack is first and foremost a mechanism for converting parasocial relationships into money, and this is gross. . . . To be a really lucrative Substacker and run up your follower count, you should encourage people to reply to your posts, reply to them, write posts in response to other people, post notes, do livestreams, etc. In other words, to succeed at Substack you should do everything other than do deep research for thoughtfully written pieces. If you do write, you should write in the most audience-captured way possible." Yes, writing in raw html, as I now do, is a little clunkier, and, no, I don't have ready comment fields. (If you want to comment email me!) But I also have finer control and no nonsense.
McManus on Kirk: Left-liberal Matt McManus critiques Charlie Kirk's ideas in a recent podcast episode of Liberal Currents. McManus also reviewed Kirk's book, Right Wing Revolution: "'Wokeness' seems to be anything Kirk doesn't like. . . . Kirk has little to no interest in arguing for the truth his positions or against opponents in anything like a cogent way. What matters is insisting repeatedly on the 'objective truth' of one's own views while insisting the opposing ones are ugly, evil, and untrue."
Yglesias on Guns: He writes: "If all the privately owned firearms somehow vanished from the United States tomorrow, that would do an enormous amount to bring down the murder rate. But that goes against every tradition that we have in this country, and it's not something that people want. I think it makes Democrats look silly when we start talking like regulating exactly which kind of rifles hobbyists can buy is going to make a difference to a crime problem that is overwhelmingly about small, easily concealed handguns, most of which aren't even purchased legally. The kind of 'gun control' we actually need is to arrest people carrying illegal guns, and to crack down on the people selling them." On this last point, I think government needs to get serious about cracking down on people who commit violent crimes. I don't think Yglesias's starting assumption is right. Consider this thought experiment: "If you could snap your fingers and instantly disarm all people in the U.S., and also arm people in the UK to match current rates in the U.S., would the crime rates reverse?" The obvious answer is no. The U.S. homicide rate would continue to be several times that of the UK rate, although there would probably be some narrowing.
Persecuting Women: Elisha Brown: "Prosecutors charged hundreds with pregnancy-related child abuse crimes post-Dobbs, research shows." If only someone could have warned about this.
Drugs in Oregon: Zach Weissmueller has a very good report on Oregon's "failed experiment" with drug decriminalization. My take: Properly, decriminalization does not mean public drug use, public intoxication, squatter camps, street violence, toleration of theft, and so on. Government can and should enforce safe public spaces. As always, anarchy is not the proper alternative to tyranny. Weissmueller discusses other places that have handled decriminalization far better, and Portland is improving in some important ways.
Groomers: Hey look they found the groomers. Hemant Mehta: "Megachurch founder and Trump ally Robert Morris pleads guilty to child sex abuse."
Education and Migration: Surprisingly, increasing education in Africa could reduce global wealth by discouraging some people from moving to high-productivity areas. See Cowen, the NBER paper, and Chat. But to me the obvious answer is to improve not only education but everything else in Africa enough to turn the region into its own economic powerhouse. Easier said than done!
Child Sacrifices: Ideological insanity can cause people to murder children. National Geographic: "Since 2011, Peruvian archaeologist and National Geographic Explorer Gabriel Prieto has uncovered evidence of mass child sacrifice around Chan Chan, a massive mudbrick city in northern Peru that served as the capital of the Chimú people from the 11th century until they were conquered by the Inca around 1470. More than 250 young victims, whose grisly deaths occurred around 1400–1450, have been located to date."
Be Smart on Autism: The Be Smart show has an excellent run-down of autism research. Some highlights: Although genes account for most cases of autism, environmental factors do cause perhaps a fifth of cases. Research strongly indicates that neither vaccines nor acetaminophen causes autism, but some other drugs and some pesticides can. There is a complication with autism, though, according to the show; Dravet Syndrome is linked both to seizures and to autism, fevers can help cause seizures, and vaccines can cause fevers. So the interplay between genes and environment is enormously complex.
Excess Acetaminophen: Yes, taking too much of the drug is dangerous. (The same is true of any drug.)
More RFK Idiocy: Stat: "No, circumcision doesn’t cause autism." Shesh! But I'm still against routine circumcision for non-medical reasons, on grounds that an infant cannot possibly consent to the procedure and it's bad to cut off body parts for no good reason.
Thiel on the Antichrist: Chat has thoughts (or at least analysis). Maybe he's just a little crazy?
Free Press Finds God: Unsurprisingly, Free Press has taken to promoting religion. Jerry Coyne answers. Related: Richard Dawkins takes on Tom Holland's blend of history and fabrication.
California Wage Controls: Surprise, surprise, Econ 101 generally still holds. California's harsh wage controls for fast-food employment cost jobs.