It’s the Jonathan Swift gambit.
You’re unaware that the typical use of “both sides do it” is to give their side a pass on whatever “it” is? Seriously?
Dying in custody isn’t the same as dying becuase they’re in custody.
From CNN:
Well, I can’t criticize that. Unless Trump has the ability to stop them.
No, and we don’t really know enough about either case to know how much fault lies in our policies and with our border patrols.
But yeah. This is why I care. I don’t really care whether the father was partially at fault. What bothers me is that I am partially at fault in the death of this girl. And honestly, if she didn’t start vomiting or spike a fever under several hours after they turned themselves in, I think there is at least some fault on us. 
You don’t know that. Why did they flee? Her life was probably in danger if they didn’t flee, too. Those single adult males that our border patrol is designed for are mostly here for economic reasons, but a lot of the people crossing now with kids are refugees, people who fear death if they don’t leave their homes.
And with Trump at the helm, they can fear death for their families if they come here too. Not exactly the best way, nor a good way, or an acceptable way, or even a non-inhumane way of protecting our borders, but a way that Trump supporters can get behind.
Any organization that houses/detains families will eventually have some deaths. The question is whether this organization is doing everything reasonable to prevent death, and I think there’s good reason to suspect that they’re not.
I specifically call out the right in how they treated Obama and Khan in those quotes, and in no way gave any kind of pass. Many people on the right unfairly characterized what they said, and continue to do so to this day. Unfortunately, I do see people on the left do the same thing, and it’s bothersome. This is called being consistent. I’m not too terribly concerned here about the people who try to ameliorate fault on their own side by saying “both sides do it”, I’m concerned with what I actually wrote.
I was playing a game a few weeks ago, and one of the mechanics of it reminded me a lot of how this logic goes. Bear with me.
The game is called “Planet Coaster”, and it’s a theme park-building sim. Pretty fun, very well made, you should check it out. Anyway, when you build a rollercoaster in this game, you need to find a way back to the starting track, to complete the circuit. Often, you end up at a weird elevation after so many inversions and loops, and at a weird angle. But the game has a cool feature: “autocomplete”.
When you click the autocomplete button, the track starts cycling through different pieces to try finish the track. You can see it in action. A snake slowly starts to form as it finds a piece that works to begin with, then starts branching off and cycling through different pieces again, slowly working it’s way towards completing the circuit. After a few seconds, it finally finds a way to complete the circuit, and it’s God-awful.
The bends are too tight, the angles are all weird, and in general it just looks like crap. But it made the connection! It completed the circuit!
This is what I imagine takes place inside the head of people who try to link the little girl’s death, and now this little boy’s death, to Trump. By all accounts they arrived in Border Patrol custody on death’s door, and every indication is that Trump or his supporters had nothing to do with it. So the autocomplete begins. Trump is tougher on immigration, so therefore illegal crossings are undertaken with greater risk, and the Border Patrol probably didn’t do enough, and this is what Trump wants anyway, so it’s Trump’s fault! The argument looks like complete crap; the mental gymnastics are wonky, and the leaps of logic don’t fit right. But the connection has been made, and that’s the important thing.
Which is disheartening, it really is. Because it feels like they’re so eager to slam Trump they’re willing to beclown themselves with this transparent politicization. As I said earlier, if there was some malfeasance by CBP or any kind of neglect, we need to find out where and who and rectify it, and I think a preliminary step to take right now would be to prepare Border Patrol agents with water and training to identify health concerns with individuals crossing the border, if they don’t already.
But this desperation to try and complete the logic circuit to somehow blame Trump is just awful.
It’s not a new thing either. People were excoriating Trump for tear gas use at the border, and then DHS data came out showing Obama did the same thing. These events are plainly capitalized on as a way to criticize Trump, because the only variable is Trump. There was no outrage when Thing X happened under Obama, but immense outrage when Thing X happens under Trump. This seems to indicate that the outrage is about Trump, not Thing X at all.
There are significant differences both in policy and rhetoric. The Trump administration has stated that families were separated in order to deter future migrants. Trump has used dehumanizing rhetoric to describe immigrants on multiple occasions. There was no such purposeful family separation in order to deter migration in any other administration that I’m aware of, and no such dehumanizing rhetoric in the Obama administration.
Dacien, “The buck stops here.”
Which is why I’m now reading that the Border Patrol has overhauled it’s medical assessment of minors. They’re ending up in our custody, so we’re taking steps to keep it from happening again. Good.
It’s still laughable that Trump is responsible for these little ones dying. Platitudes are useful in abstract discussion, but fall short in detailing matters of fact.
Was he not responsible for ordering that asylum seekers not be permitted to cross via border stations?
So this is a complicated issue, right? It’s no secret that our asylum backlog is immense, and this policy shift from Trump came at the height of the caravan hysteria, and the worry was that this large group of people was going to overwhelm a border crossing ill-equipped to handle such a large number of people. At least, that was the line. I think part of it was Trump playing to his base.
So there were a lot of moving parts involved in that decision. But the bottom line was a very sick child was gathered up by Border Patrol, and hours later she died. Undoubtedly, if they had never been found, she would have certainly died never having been in Border Patrol custody. The boy who died was even more attended to, according to DHS. The child was reportedly sick when taken into custody but was well taken care of. As soon as his health took a turn for the worse, he was immediately taken to a hospital. Again, DHS’ account.
So I don’t think it’s accurate at all to say that Trump is to blame for their deaths. While I’m hesitant to even blame CBP, I need to know, in the girl’s case, if there was neglect, improper procedure being followed, or carelessness involved that could have saved her life.
I mean to say, “…could have prevented her life from being saved” in that last line there.
I’d say it’s appropriate and well deserved, you fucking self righteous pearl clutching fascist hypocrites.
Complaining about “politeness” while children die - to feed the ego of a raging psychopath.
Fuck you guys.
All you Bible thumping bastards also better READ that damn book you keep flaunting. It says plenty about those who harm children.
He knows. But that ploy has worked for so long …
This thread really brings out the special posters.
I hope you are never depending on the humanity of others for your survival. But if you do, I hope you will find a like minded spirit.