Considering that they are already talking about internment camps? What makes you assume we won’t?
Or that camps are the only way to kill lots of people? I expect we’re going to see a return of good old fashioned race riots, with white mobs storming black neighborhoods killing everything they see and burning it to the ground while the police stand by or join in. With Trump and the Republicans and quite a few SDMB members shaking their heads in mock sadness and saying that things like that wouldn’t happen if blacks weren’t all criminals.
Right, so a random asshole on TV. I saw that story, and failed to understand why it was a story. IIRC the subject was on the reinstatement of a post-911 vetting law that was discontinued in 2011 and is now back on the table. For all I know it’s a shitty law, but not anything close to Japanese internment. I only get bits and pieces of the non-stories since I left Facebook, so I thought I might have missed Trump saying, “Why yes! Muslim Internment sounds like a wonderful idea!” Guess not.
In four or eight years we’ll be looking back on this thread and saying, *“You know how people predicted that Trump would be Hitler 2.0 and unleash a Fourth Reich on America? Yeah, like numerous other such breathless predictions, that didn’t happen…”
*
You going to predict that none of them will happen? Or just this one? Because Andrew Douche Cray has inspired a metric buttload of them. But they are all just the dark fantasies of raving lefties? Because, really, deep down, he’s a pretty decent guy, is that it? About the only thing he hasn’t done is open up his own line of payday lenders.
In four years, we’ll be looking back on this thread and saying, “Those morons who didn’t listen then are still clueless today.”
Trump campaigned to the lowest impulses and most simplistic worldviews in our electorate. He’s appointing and nominating the most extreme and hateful members of our polity to his administration. And he continues to be the same thin-skinned, vengeful and petty narcissist he was on the campaign trail.
Yeah, we should all be worried.
Here’s a similar take from a retired USN CWO. If you think Navy warrant officers are given to flights of fancy and hysteria, I suggest you go tell one of them that to their face.
I will roundly condemn Trump’s bullshit and his administration’s bullshit. Frankly I have fantasies about spitting in the guy’s face, but I still think he’s a far cry from Hitler. I will become alarmed when and if authoritarian shit starts happening, and if the government becomes part of a systematic mass oppression of civil rights, I will enthusiastically become part of a strategic non-violent movement to stop it (I mean hell, I already am, as a macro social worker.) I’ll be in the new Underground Railroad or whatever the thing is to do. I’ll be first against the wall when the revolution comes. It ain’t here yet.
I’m willing to predict that Trump is not going to establish concentration camps, commit ethnic cleansing, or declare martial law and suspend the Constitution, yes.
Aren’t you the guy who always defends cops when they kill black people? You wouldn’t admit that they were doing any of those things even if you were on a guard tower manning a machine gun. You’d just say the victims were all criminals who had it coming so it doesn’t count.
Comforted by such authority, I will sleep well tonight.
OK, let’s just say, as a given, that internment camps are not the point of the exercise. They have no intention of doing it, they simply want to assert that they have the power to do so! Well, that’s sure a relief, given the level of trust they inspire.
They will not arm the white trash to shoot all the blacks? No. Will they continue to maneuver to oppress and harass minority voting. Oh, yeah, for sure. Declare martial law. Nope, just good ol’ fashioned law and order.
So what are we going to do about it? Undermine American democracy by making it so Trump can’t be President? That will go over well. Yell about it in the streets? People seem to love being yelled at. People especially love riots, should we riot? Shit, right now some conservatives can’t even handle diplomatic, polite, confrontation by the cast of a Broadway musical without flipping their shit. They flat out will not hear our fear and our rage and we can’t force them without ourselves becoming the thing we loathe. I don’t understand how catastrophizing this situation helps, I really don’t. It’s not like we can go back for a do - over if we panic enough. We can’t alter reality. These people have the power now. We can only move forward one horrible policy at a time.
I am sincerely and truly invested in the best outcome for this country, and see nothing but this sort of inflammatory speech on the left making communication even more difficult. There are too many monkeys to put back in the barrel. We can’t just marginalize and shame people into compliance… That’s the reason we lost the election in the first place, definitive proof that this strategy does not work. We’re going to have to do better if we want to save this country.
That is emphatically ***not ***why “we” lost the election. We lost the election because too many Democrats participated in -and too many more believed in- either the demonization of Hillary Clinton or the disdain of political process or the denigration of government itself. Those are the things we need to fight, as we educate others about what government is and does and can do. And if that fight needs to occasionally include the “marginalization” of idiot opinions and attitudes, no American who cares about government should hesitate to so marginalize. Or deride, dispute, mock, label or look down upon.
What can be done is the exact opposite of what’s going on here, namely, over emotional reactions clouding the perception of reality that affects the decision making process of the people.
For instance I can’t take seriously people that on one hand claim that Trump won via fear mongering and promoting bigotry and on the other hand predict he’ll unleash a Holocaust and accuse everyone who voted for him of being evil incarnate.
Can’t both be true? Why the single, unwavering narrative, the one and only cause? How well does that track with the political and historical complexity of the United States? Even if we’d won, we would have still had a huge proportion of votes going for Trump and the reason for that is likely way more complex than “dumb and racist.”
People keep talking like Hitler was some uniquely evil being who rose bodily from Hell and seized power, instead of just another murderous dictator.
This refusal to permit comparison to Hitler has helped enable the rise of neo-fascism, because it means the more Hitler-like people are, the more immune they become to criticism.
I think there needs to be agreement on what exactly being a “Hitler” entails before we can debate whether Trump will be a Hitler.
Some things Hitler did were comparatively “mild,” others were extreme.
**Persecution of political opponents **= sure, I can believe Trump might try this
Genocide on a massive scale = not a chance
Invasion and conquest of many foreign countries = Highly doubtful Trump would try to do this
**Be a dictator of Kim Jong Un-level supreme power **= Highly doubtful Trump could even if he wanted to
Freedom of the press squashed = If anything, I think the media will be bolder and more outspoken than ever in the Trump era, seeing themselves as fighting valiantly against evil
Military buildup = sure, Trump might do this
**Registration of Muslims, **like how Jews had to wear gold stars = Highly doubtful but at least somewhat plausible
Invoke feelings of jingoism, nationalism and xenophobia = Sure, this is entirely plausible under a Trump presidency