Respectfully, absolutely not, no fucking way. If this were true, no one is going through the motions of complying with the law. If this were true, nobody is lying about the extent of compliance. If this were true, Khalil is out of the country, today. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

evanbernick.bsky.social • 12 days ago

Respectfully, absolutely not, no fucking way.

If this were true, no one is going through the motions of complying with the law. If this were true, nobody is lying about the extent of compliance. If this were true, Khalil is out of the country, today.

Comments

jbentonheath.bsky.social•12 days ago

That paragraph is sloppy, but the article ends up in a good place. Even if you have more faith in the courts than Elie seems to (a remarkable inversion of recent trends), the need for popular resistance is undeniable at this point.

adistantdream.bsky.social•12 days ago

You can't base popular resistance on stuff that just isn't true. Once you accept a "law is dead" framing you accept there will never be another election and therefore the only thing that matters is being able to turn out enough men with guns to take the country by force.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

I don’t have faith in the courts but it is wild to suggest right now that they just don’t matter.

jbentonheath.bsky.social•12 days ago

I agree. But the takeaway—that we need demonstrations and that it's not enough to wait for the courts to sort it out—is dead-on.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

I get that but I can’t pass over the quoted stuff. It cedes way too much ground.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

Law is a way to do popular resistance. It is not the only one but not a single resistance movement in the U.S. that has ever been successful has conceded law to fascists.

jbentonheath.bsky.social•12 days ago

100%

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

I mean come on. Remotely matter. That is unqualified. And wrong.

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jbentonheath.bsky.social•12 days ago

I'm trying to pitch a big tent here, man. So I'll pick this screen cap instead.

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evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

Sure. Agree with all of that.

simplifypeacelove.bsky.social•12 days ago

I have faith in the courts.

rednecklefty.bsky.social•12 days ago

Sir, where is this from?

mwwaters.bsky.social•12 days ago

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/mahmoud-khalil-arrest-illegal-fascism/tnamp/

It elided that the bare literal text of the *statute* allows the detention on Rubio’s personal say so.There was also another student ICE tried this with, but couldn’t arrest without judicial warrant.

rednecklefty.bsky.social•12 days ago

Thanks.

maledicta.bsky.social•12 days ago

The answer to all this nihilist emo cynicism is the birthright citizenship example. Trump tried to end it. 4 district courts said no. He asked the 1st, 4th, and 9th Circuits to stay those rulings. They said no. If Mystal is right that the law doesn't matter, he can't explain that.

maledicta.bsky.social•12 days ago

"Well that was an easy call, some things are beyond the pale" then make *this* beyond the pale too bitch

nnnehaaa.bsky.social•12 days ago

hello! for clarification, are you arguing that the executive branch does not have a monopoly on force but that the US gov as a whole does, or is it that even the US gov doesn’t have a monopoly on force

thereductio.bsky.social•9 days ago

LEGITIMATE force. States have a monopoly on LEGITIMATE force. That’s the rule.

The claim that states claim a monopoly on force full-stop is simply, glaringly false, since murder, assault, etc. exist. I would’ve expected more rigor from a Mystal piece.

joedudekjd.bsky.social•12 days ago

My Dear Fellow Clergymen,

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” As I am currently under arrest, you were clearly correct. Well played.

L. King, Jr.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

The federal executive branch is not the government. It is a powerful part of it, but it does not have a monopoly on force. That monopoly is distributed across countless power nodes in a complex, fragmented, messy matrix. Absolutely yes, law can be used to disrupt it.

geopotential.bsky.social•12 days ago

Trump is replacing the state apparatus with quislings and cronies. You should revisit these ideas in, say, 6 months.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

Thanks, I plan to reevaluate them tomorrow and if the situation changes I’ll change my opinion

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

If Trump had a monopoly on force irrespective of law, mass deportation is already happening. States are not exercising constitutionally guaranteed discretion to refuse to assist in raids. Judges are not issuing orders to the executive branch, and they are not being slow-walked and appealed.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

Not even in the most totalitarian of dictatorships is the law meaningless. Pure force is in short supply and cannot do very much for very long. It needs law to coordinate its most basic bullshit. This is what Trump wants you to think he can do easily. Law is one way to make it difficult.

grumpyrootbeer.bsky.social•12 days ago

I always tell people that politics is negotiation and laws are agreements. They are not mindless rituals or magical spells that compel us, even though they may seem that way. They won't just work on their own, but without them you won't be able to get much to work.

ajrichar.bsky.social•12 days ago

The mistake seems to be equating "state" to "government."

daphnelawless.com•12 days ago

Even North Korea has laws and courts which occasionally even mean something

chrisahickey.bsky.social•12 days ago

Except, who will enforce the law? A stay or a decision is nice, but Trump has already ignored them. No one has the power to make him obey the law. Without a coup.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

He has not ignored them, because he recognizes that he cannot just do whatever he wants, because he knows he is as not as powerful as he claims to be. https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3lk36h6vzrk2f

malnormalulo.bsky.social•12 days ago

I think the anxiety (which people are definitely jumping the gun on) is that he heads the branch responsible for enforcement, and he is absolutely doing purges. He may not have sufficient loyalty from enforcers to ignore the courts _now_, but he's working toward that. Could he get there?

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

Yes, he could, and I am not here to tell anyone not to be anxious. I just think that this goes way too far beyond “the law won’t *save* us” into a dark place that the law can *help* us avoid getting to.

malnormalulo.bsky.social•12 days ago

Reasonable! And to be clear I didn't read you as arguing against anxiety, just the specific content of it.

lawlawcoolj.bsky.social•12 days ago

Who wrote this?

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

Mystal

rdilipk.bsky.social•12 days ago

I sort of like him. He usually has a way of boiling down legal controversies in a way regular folks like us can understand. He does have a much more cynical view of everything happening around us though.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

Me too, and the article ends in a good place. It's the stuff along the way that I think goes too far.

lawlawcoolj.bsky.social•12 days ago

“Scholars” and it’s just Max Weber

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

And he didn’t identify the monopoly with a particular branch

will-davies.bsky.social•12 days ago

And he said “monopoly on legitimate violence”. No state has ever had a monopoly on violence.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

Yes!

andycraig.bsky.social•12 days ago

A better, more precise formulation would be the state has the monopoly on *legitimization* of force. Non-state actors are legitimized in some cases, such as self defense.

evanbernick.bsky.social•12 days ago

I mean I don’t even think that any formulations about monopoly actually work without qualifications that give away the game. but the formulation in the article is not defensible even as an interpretation of Weber. Legitimacy is a necessary part of the package.

lawlawcoolj.bsky.social•12 days ago

Both politically and legally! Even if law is a set of rules backed by the threat of sanctions, those rules must still be legitimate.

michaelresanovic.bsky.social•11 days ago

Not to mention, in the Anglo-American tradition, acts are only regarded as governmental when they follow the law.

E.g. an unlawful arrest is a private tort.