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Comment by BobaFloutist | Hacker News Reader

It's also worth noting that one function of brownshirts and blackshirts is to provoke violence against themselves, seeking to retroactively justify their existence and to justify a further crackdown.

Say all you want about how any protest, no matter how peaceful will be vilified (it will) or about how the entire foundation is built on lies (it is), but we still have some real elections coming up, and the imagery of ICE brutalizing someone who's clearly not an immigrant, not violent, not obstructing is much more rhetorically effective than that of armed clashes between government and non-governmental forces.

And as you said, many of us are still convinced that this can be solved at least partially rhetorically and electorally.

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Hence the tactical frivolity Portland approach. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/10/22/trump-ice-port... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_frivolity

It's the social media evolution of non-violent confrontation, with the similar goal of making it impossible for any visual image or recording of a confrontation to seem anything other than ridiculous to the average viewer and laying bare the "violence inherent in the system" (as it were).

> but we still have some real elections coming up,

Unless the president declares a permanent temporary state of emergency for whatever reason that would prevent such elections.

There is no precedent for this. The executive lacks the authority. It would require Congress to enact a law, and this is easier said than done. The states run elections, and while the feds have some input on how elections for federal office are conducted, it is quite limited.

The vast majority of the population is relying on these protections holding.

Ah yes, all of the precedents and lawful authority that this president cares so much about adhering to.

> There is no precedent for this. The executive lacks the authority. It would require Congress to enact a law,

Does this actually matter in practice? It seems like the administration has done a bunch of things that normally requires Congress to do something, yet they were able to and I don't see anyone getting arrested. The executive have lacked the authority for lots of things, yet it doesn't seem to stop them.

I'm not saying you're wrong, in theory. But in practice it seems like those things aren't actually stopping anyone, at least not yet.

> There is no precedent for this

We are well past the point where precedents matter.

> The executive lacks the authority.

The executive lacks the authority to do more than 99% of the things done in 2025. Just about all of it is blatantly illegal or unconstitutional.

But, turns out, there is no enforcement mechanism against any of this. There is nobody that can put a stop to the illegal behavior. The legislative branch and the judicial branch can write sternly worded letters, but they have no army to enforce obedience.

Right, at which point I think many of us would be less concerned with optics.

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