In a two-party system, having a collection of positions that does not align well with either makes you an independent, not necessarily a centrist.

Centrist is often used to describe someone who is aligned with a party, but holds mild or compromised versions of that party’s positions. It can also describe someone who wants things to stay mostly as they are with any changes being incremental, but one might reasonably describe that position as conservative.

The lack of subtlety in online discussions can be tiring.

Anyone who voted for Trump a second or third time absolutely should have known he was a shithead who would harm the country. If they were clever, they might have figured out his plan for mass deportations would result in an armed goon squad killing some Americans, but if they were clever, they never would have voted for him at all.

None of that is equivalent to a mother wanting Trump’s goon squad to kill her daughter. She fell for his bullshit about immigrants being scary.

The Libertarian National Committee expelled the LPNH earlier this year. They probably should have done it earlier, as the LPNH has a long history of outrageous public statements.

She probably didn’t want ICE to murder her daughter, and claims like that are ineffectual counters to far-right messaging.

She wrote:

I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect the citizens of the United States — innocents like our family and the others here — against terrorists

and that probably is what she thought she was doing, but those agents turned out to be a far greater threat to her family than immigrants or “terrorists”.

A proposal I’ve seen floated a few times is to require police to carry liability insurance individually and give them a stipend for an average/reasonable amount. This is usually paired with changes to qualified immunity to make lawsuits and insurance claims easier.

The idea is that risky behavior from police costs them money personally.

In a just world, the officer, the police department, and Flock would all owe her compensation. I’d put the amount at about 10x the fine for the offense.