No political issue is more important to me than restricting immigration, so all of my instincts are on the side of ICE, but I like to read many points of view, and against my prejudices, I notice a growing consensus by experts and the populace that ICE isn’t playing fair.
My populist side believes wisdom resides with the people and the American people are clear that they think ICE (United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is out of control, which is ironic given that MAGA is fueled by populism.
Populism claims to empower the people and ends up giving unprecedented power to a federal agency that the people then come to fear or distrust.
It is rare to see an agency’s public standing crater as quickly as ICE’s has over the last year. At the start of 2025, ICE actually held a positive approval rating (+16), as many people—including some of the populist base—viewed “border security” as an abstract, necessary good.
However, as the tactics shifted from the border to the interior, the “wisdom of the people” shifted too:
Populism often thrives on the idea of strength. But when that strength manifests as masked agents in local neighborhoods or the accidental shooting of civilians like Renee Good in Minneapolis, the “authentic people” start to see the agency as a threat to their own peace and order. Recent polling shows a majority of Americans now believe ICE tactics are “too forceful.” When an agency begins raiding hospitals and schools—places that even the most rugged “Aggie” or “Redneck” cultures usually view as off-limits—it loses its populist mandate.
The MAGA movement is fueled by a distrust of “the administrative state” and “unelected bureaucrats.” There is a deep irony in a movement that hates the FBI and the IRS suddenly granting nearly $15 billion in funding and “door-to-door” authority to ICE.
In a move that contradicts the populist demand for transparency, the current administration has restricted congressional oversight and cut internal watchdogs. For someone with your “populist side,” this is the ultimate red flag: a federal agency that answers to no one is the definition of the “Elite” overreaching against the people.
Populism always requires an “enemy.” Initially, the enemy was the “illegal outsider.” But as the net widens to include “collateral arrests” of legal residents or family members of citizens, the definition of “the people” expands to include those being targeted by the agency.
Even the liberals who might have romanticized the “abstract” immigrant but feared the “concrete” neighbor—are being forced to pick a side. When the violence becomes local (like the Santa Ana incident), the “safety” they sought by moving to the suburbs is violated by the very agents claiming to protect it.
The Lawnmower Principle Revisited: If the government is the “lawnmower,” it is currently spitting out a lot of “stray rocks.” Your father’s advice to stay away and protect your eyes is becoming impossible when the mower is driving through everyone’s front yard.
The big question for 2026 is how much of the populist base will eventually view ICE as just another part of the “Deep State” they were told to despise.
LAT: “Second man shares horrific story of being blinded by officers at anti-ICE rally in Santa Ana”
All of my instincts scream that you shouldn’t hang out in violent or potentially violent places. I grew up with the direction to choose life and to choose safety and health. Isn’t that the norm? You stay away from dangerous situations if you have anything to lose, including an eye. My dad taught me to shield my eyes if I ever walked past a lawnmower or if a nude woman popped into view.
“Having something to lose” is the biggest factor in how people assess risk. When people have stable careers, families, or long-term goals, they tend to be much more “risk-averse” regarding physical altercations or volatile environments.
Gemini says:
The “stay away” philosophy is the norm for a large segment of the population for several reasons:
Unpredictability: In a crowd or a confrontation, you lose control over your environment. You aren’t just accounting for your own actions, but the actions of every other person and the police response.
The Lawnmower Principle: Your father’s advice about shielding your eyes near a lawnmower is a perfect metaphor for incidental risk. You don’t have to be the one operating the mower to be hit by a stray rock. Similarly, in a protest turned riot, you don’t have to be a “bad actor” to be hit by a projectile meant for someone else.
Legal and Professional Stakes: For someone in the legal field, even being a bystander at a scene that leads to arrests or investigations can create complications that someone with “nothing to lose” wouldn’t worry about.
While your upbringing emphasized avoidance, others are raised with a different set of “norms” regarding conflict, which is often where the friction in these news stories comes from:
Duty vs. Safety: Some believe that the moral cost of not being present at a protest is higher than the physical risk. They view “staying away” as a luxury of the comfortable.
Youthful Invulnerability: There is often a psychological gap between the ages of 18 and 25 where the “it won’t happen to me” mindset overrides the “I have an eye to lose” logic.
The “Front Line” Mentality: In certain subcultures, standing your ground in the face of potential violence is seen as a rite of passage or a sign of character, rather than a lack of common sense.
The tragedy in the Santa Ana story often lies in the collision of these two worldviews. One group sees a young person who made a “stupid” choice to be in a dangerous place; the other sees a young person exercising a constitutional right who was met with life-altering force that should never have been on the table, regardless of their presence there.
LF: In 1980, my family moved out of the Seventh-Day Adventist church and to Auburn, CA, where I encountered the term “redneck” and I met white people who fled from diversity, identified as aggies, chewed tobacco, and liked to fight. My first 14 years were spent on Seventh-Day Adventist college campuses (Avondale, Pacific Union College). Auburn was a culture shock.
The Seventh-Day Adventist church is about two-thirds women and racially diverse and a nurturing healthy space. I don’t remember many fist fights.
Gemini says:
Moving from the insulated, academic environment of Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) college campuses to Auburn in 1980 must have felt like landing on a different planet. There is a profound sociological gap between those two worlds, especially in that specific era.
The SDA “Enclave” vs. The Auburn “Aggie”
Life on campuses like Avondale in Australia or Pacific Union College (PUC) in Angwin is characterized by a very specific kind of order. Those communities are often “company towns” where the social fabric is woven through shared diet, strict behavioral codes, and a high value placed on education and religious soft power. It is a culture that prioritizes non-violence and internal cohesion.
Auburn in 1980, by contrast, represented a rugged, “Old California” blue-collar reality. The “Aggie” identity you encountered—centered on agriculture, physical toughness, and a defensive posture toward outsiders—is a culture that often views physical conflict as a legitimate way to settle disputes or establish a social hierarchy.
Cultural Friction Points
The shock you experienced likely came from several specific shifts in the social “norm”:
The Role of Conflict: In the SDA world, “stupidity” is often defined as a lack of self-control or a failure to follow the rules of the community. In the culture you met in Auburn, “stupidity” was more likely defined as backing down from a fight or not standing up for your territory.
The Concept of Risk: Your father’s advice about the lawnmower is a classic SDA/academic-class heuristic: The world is full of hazards; use your intellect to avoid them. The “redneck” or “Aggie” heuristic you encountered was often the opposite: The world is full of challenges; use your physical presence to dominate them.
Homogeneity vs. Flight: Moving from a community built around a shared religious mission to one defined (at least partially) by what it was “fleeing” changes the entire atmosphere of a town. One is driven by an internal goal; the other is often driven by external resentment or a desire for isolation.
For a teenager, this is particularly jarring because the “currency” of social status changes overnight. On a college campus, status might be linked to who your parents are in the church or your academic performance. In 1980s Auburn, status was often measured in more visceral terms—who was “tough,” who drove what truck, and who adhered to the local code of “redneck” masculinity.
It’s easy to see why your upbringing makes the idea of “hanging around potential violence” seem like a total failure of logic. To you, the physical risk is a variable you were taught to eliminate; to the people you met in Auburn, that risk was the point.
LF: After age 14, I met a lot of blokes who thought that their honor was more important than the risks that came with getting into a fight. I’ve never thought that way. My safety is more important to me than my honor.
In Auburn, I noticed widespread antipathy to blacks, even from liberals, as well as romanticization of blacks by their kids.
Gemini says:
The shift from the “Company Town” of a religious college to a 1980s commuter town like Auburn reveals a classic sociological tension. You moved from a community defined by internal cohesion (shared mission, behavior, and diet) to one defined by external boundaries (what they were moving away from).
This “commuter” dynamic in Auburn during that era created a specific psychological environment regarding race and status.
The Commuter Paradox: Antipathy and Romanticization
The “antipathy” you observed, even among liberals, often stems from what sociologists call “defensive localism.” When a community’s primary value is its distance from the perceived “chaos” of the city (crime, diversity, decay), the presence of anyone representing that city—specifically Black people in the 1980s imagination—is viewed as a threat to the town’s “closure.”
Antipathy as Risk Management: For the commuters, the home was a sanctuary. Anything that reminded them of the urban environment they spent two hours a day fleeing was met with hostility. Even for liberals, the “abstract” support for civil rights often collapsed when it touched their “concrete” desire for a curated, predictable neighborhood.
Romanticization as Distance: The romanticization you noticed is often the flip side of that same coin. When you have zero day-to-day proximity to a group, they become “symbolic.” For the Auburn liberals, Black people could be romanticized as distant figures of struggle or soulfulness precisely because they weren’t neighbors. It’s a way of maintaining a “progressive” self-image without having to negotiate the actual complexities of an integrated life.
The “Aggie” and the Redneck Identity
The white people you met who “identified as aggies” and “liked to fight” were likely using those traits as a form of cultural capital.
Status Closure through Toughness: In a town being invaded by “soft” commuters from the city, the local “Aggie” or “Redneck” identity becomes a way for the original residents to assert dominance. If they couldn’t compete with the commuters on income, they could compete on “authenticity,” physical toughness, and a refusal to “flee.”
The Conflict of “Stupidity”: This explains the clash with your father’s “lawnmower” logic. To your family, avoiding violence was a sign of intelligence and having a future. To the Auburn “Aggies,” seeking out or standing your ground in violence was a sign of belonging and “not being a pussy” (a common metric in that subculture).
Auburn as a “Buffer Zone”
Auburn in 1980 acted as a buffer between the “Old California” (gold country, agriculture, rugged individualism) and the “New California” (suburban sprawl, professional commuters, social engineering).
You were caught between:
The SDA Enclave: Status through moral/academic purity.
The Commuter Liberals: Status through professional success and “enlightened” (but distant) views.
The Local “Aggies”: Status through physical grit and racial/cultural exclusion.
It’s no wonder it was a culture shock. You went from a world where everyone agreed on the “right” way to live to a world where three different groups were using “antipathy” and “violence” as tools to define their territory.
Attitudes toward safety are not universal; they are deeply shaped by what a person feels they have to protect (status, career, physical body) and what they perceive as the primary threat (street crime vs. state intervention).
1. The “Nothing to Lose” vs. “Everything to Lose” Binary
As you noted with your father’s lawnmower analogy, the middle and upper classes often view safety through the lens of asset protection.
The Protective Shell: Higher socioeconomic status (SES) provides a “buffer.” If you have a professional license, a clean record, and physical health, “stupidity” is defined as any action that puts those assets at risk. For this group, avoiding violence is a logical calculation to preserve their future.
The Interdependent Self: Research shows that working-class individuals often have a more “interdependent” self-concept. In environments where the state or the economy feels unreliable, safety is found in group loyalty and physical toughness. In this context, “staying away” from a fight can sometimes be seen as more dangerous than engaging, because it risks losing the social safety net of your peers.
2. Differing Perceptions of the “Source” of Danger
Racial and ethnic backgrounds significantly alter who or what is perceived as the “safety provider.”
The State as Protector vs. Threat: For many white, middle-class Americans, the police are viewed as the “guardians” of safety. Consequently, they may feel safe “hanging around” a police presence.
The State as a Variable: For Black and Brown communities, especially in heavily policed areas like Santa Ana or Los Angeles, law enforcement is often viewed as a primary source of potential violence rather than a solution to it. A 2024 Berkeley Law study highlights that people of color often fear victimization by police as much as, or more than, they fear street crime. This creates a “double-bind” regarding safety: you avoid the street, but you also have to avoid the “solution.”
3. Romanticization vs. Reality (The “Liberal” Gap)
The phenomenon you saw in Auburn—where liberals romanticized Black struggle while fearing actual diversity—is a known sociological pattern called “Defensive Localism.”
Abstract Safety: Liberals in safe, homogenous areas often view safety as a social justice issue to be solved through policy.
Concrete Safety: When diversity or potential conflict enters their immediate vicinity, their “status closure” kicks in. They prioritize the “safety” of their property values and neighborhood predictability over their stated abstract values.
4. Cultural Socialization (The Lawnmower Principle)
Different cultures teach “Risk Heuristics” (mental shortcuts for staying safe):
Preparation for Bias: Many Black families use “the talk” as a safety heuristic. Safety isn’t just about avoiding a fight; it’s about managing your body language and presence to avoid being perceived as a threat by others.
The “Aggie” / Rural Logic: In rural, white “Redneck” or “Aggie” cultures, physical grit is the primary safety tool. Safety isn’t achieved by fleeing; it’s achieved by being the most formidable person in the room.
For those within the Seventh-Day Adventist or academic tradition, “stupidity” is defined as a lack of foresight or taking an unnecessary risk, and they rely on avoidance, intellect, and strict adherence to rules as their primary safety tools.
The urban middle class tends to view “stupidity” as any action that could jeopardize their professional status or career, choosing to protect themselves through the legal system and by maintaining physical distance from conflict.
In working-class or “Aggie” cultures, “stupidity” is often defined as backing down or appearing weak, which leads individuals to prioritize physical toughness and peer loyalty as their main forms of security.
For targeted minorities, “stupidity” is often seen as trusting the wrong authority or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, necessitating a reliance on hyper-vigilance and community shielding for protection.
LF: After age 14, I met a lot of blokes who thought that their honor was more important than the risks that came with getting into a fight. I’ve never thought that way. My safety is more important to me than my honor.
Gemini says:
That distinction defines the fundamental split between a culture of honor and a culture of dignity (or “safety/intellect”). In the worlds you navigated after age 14, honor wasn’t just a feeling; it was a currency.
In “Aggie” or “redneck” subcultures, if you allow an insult to pass or avoid a confrontation, you “lose” something tangible in the eyes of the group. The risk of a black eye is seen as a small price to pay to keep your “standing” in the local hierarchy.
The Honor-Safety Trade-off
Your refusal to adopt that mindset is a classic marker of the “SDA/Academic” upbringing. In that environment, “status” is achieved through self-discipline, health, and intellectual achievement—all of which are physically fragile.
The Fragility of the Professional: If you are a pianist, a surgeon, or a paralegal, your value is in your hands, your eyes, and your brain. Getting into a “stupid” fight risks the very tools that provide your long-term security.
The Durability of the Laborer: In a culture where status is based on physical grit, a scar might actually increase your status. You aren’t protecting a professional license; you are protecting a reputation for being someone who cannot be pushed around.
The “Stupidity” of the Bystander
This explains why you view the Santa Ana victim through a different lens than a populist might. To someone who values safety over honor:
Presence is Consent to Risk: If you show up to a place where “non-lethal” rounds are being fired, you have made a calculation that your “honor” (the cause, the protest, the being seen) is worth the risk of your eyesight.
The Lawnmower Logic: From your perspective, the protester stood next to the lawnmower. While the “lawnmower” (the police) may be malfunctioning or “out of control,” the primary mistake was standing close enough to be hit by the debris.
The Populist Paradox
The irony of the current moment is that “MAGA populism” often adopts the language of the Culture of Honor. It prizes “strength,” “not backing down,” and “fighting” (literally and figuratively). However, the American people at large are increasingly moving toward your “Safety/Dignity” model.
When the people say ICE is “out of control,” they are speaking from a place of violated safety. They don’t care about the “honor” of the agency or the “honor” of the border; they care that the “lawnmower” is throwing rocks into their living rooms.
Comparison of Social Currencies
Culture of Honor: Status is maintained by responding to threats with physical force. “Stupidity” is backing down. The body is a tool for defense.
Culture of Safety/Dignity: Status is maintained by avoiding conflict and preserving health/wealth. “Stupidity” is unnecessary exposure to risk. The body is a vessel for intellectual/professional capital.
