A lot of Hispanics that I know (I live in North Texas) vote conservative because they don't want anyone to associate them with "the illegals". They are usually very quick to tell a white person how they were born here, or that their families go back so many generations, etc. They will do almost anything to not be viewed as illegitimate, and more than a few of them hate undocumented workers for putting them in that situation. I would imagine that the closer you get to the southern border, the more common this is. I see it as a type of Stockholm syndrome, really, and I didn't understand the depth of it until I talked to Hispanics who were voting for Trump despite his calling them rapists and such. This stuff goes DEEP. I always cringe when liberals refer to Texas Hispanics as "LatinX" - which they hate with a passion. Even if they might agree with Democrats on a lot of working-people and social issues, this one thing keeps them supporting conservative candidates -- the hope that they will be accepted by the powers that be (i.e., white and moneyed people) as belonging, as opposed to "the other".

Unfortunately, many people are stupid and useless in a crisis, and the self-help turds are usually the worst. I try to approach these types of posts from that basic premise ("they know not what they do"), so that I don't get so mad at them. It doesn't always work.

I spent a few days away from this thread and in the meantime we have found out that the reality is, unimaginably, far worse than we feared. Remember the unofficial police motto - "Better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6." There's going to be an investigation and we may get a few more details, but honestly the gist is pretty simple. They didn't go in....because they didn't want to get shot.

Cops are not required to put themselves in harm's way to protect anyone, ever. This was also an issue at the Parkland shooting, where the sheriff or whatever stood outside and waited for backup while all the shooting went down inside. It's obviously VERY telling that the cops knew that anyone going in there would be putting their lives in danger. People don't really understand that most police work consists of cleaning up after a crime has already been committed. This is the ONLY scenario I can think of where a militarized police force might actually be useful??? By all appearances, these police were ill-prepared, out-gunned, and outfoxed by a teenage psychopath. And that is very fucking scary.