Let’s not introduce other people’s spouses unless they bring it up.
[/moderating]
Well, in my first quote, I said that many Republicans were not reasonable, coherent, nor articulate. This is hardly “demonization”, and hardly equivalent to saying that asylum seekers are filthy animals, who deserve only to be shot on sight (note - this is not something YOU ever said, or would say - but I have heard it from Republicans who are not reasonable, coherent or articulate)
In the second quote you use, I note that Republicans value winning above all else, prefer simplistic solutions to complex problems, and that there is juvenile language coming out of the White House these days.
Again, hardly equivalent to saying that asylum seekers do not even know how to use a toilet.
But thanks anyway.
Do you think that it can’t happen here?
They don’t have to directly murder people… just make conditions so deplorable that people will die from exposure, neglect, disease when they’re weakened by hunger and thirst… and when, inevitably, some of those people fight back they’ll be further abused to “keep order” or even shot during a riot…
It doesn’t start with cattle cars of people being taken off somewhere else (although the image of people in standing-room-only conditions for days at a time do conjure up echoes of WWII cattle cars, which were also standing-room-only). It starts with just a few people being “detained” or taken away.
God, I hope not.
No need to in the case of Latin American immigrants - their accents brand them as “other” to the bigots.
Yes. As a matter of fact, it has. Detainees have been stripped of personal belongings that they carried from their points of origin, many of them being destroyed as “biocontaminated” because they got wet along the way at some point. Because that’s so much easier than, say, letting a backpack or clothing dry out. Or giving people access to laundry facilities.
The immigrants have already passed through Mexico to get to the US, and they can’t get to Canada from south of the US without going through the US. It will be a situation where they’re between a rock and a hard place.
Geography doesn’t matter but political systems do. No, I don’t think it will happen at this point and time in America. Of course, it’s not impossible.
You don’t think the genocide page was talking about more offensive seizures, like people’s homes, money and heirlooms? You think they mean backpacks?
If all you have is a backpack, it’s pretty significant to lose it.
ETA: If you have a house and lose it and everything else you have, and I have nothing but a backpack and lose it, are you poorer than me because you lost more? :dubious:
…lets clear this up.
America is at a crossroads. Its in very big trouble. Its been building to this for a very long time.
Trump didn’t start this. Trump is a focal point, the pivot, he’s the perfect storm that has people with white supremacist idealogies to take power. Putin talks about how “liberalism is obsolete”, that he accepts LGBT peoples but they can be “excessive”, what we are witnessing here is not isolated to America but is part of a global movement towards authoritarianism.
What happening on the borders is not the problem. Its a symptom. Its been exacerbated by the power vaccum which allowed people like Stephen Miller to effectively make the decisions on how things have been done, and they have been exacerbated by the fact that Customs and Border Patrol by its very nature will attract people with toxic personas to the job.
There are several ways this can end. Genocide isn’t inevitable. At this stage I don’t even think that its likely. But we could end up there.
And the fastest way to end up there is to not have this conversation. My biggest fear over the last few months was the hold that Trump & Co held over the narrative. Important breaking stories would fade in a couple of hours, exemplified by this tweet by Washington Post writer David Fahrenthold, about his story on how Donald Trump inflated his wealth:
Out of all the damaging things Trump is doing to America at the moment, what is happening on the borders is what needs the attention the most. Because what the camps have descended into happened in only a year while the world was distracted. We went from outrage of the child seperation policy to almost no coverage for months. What will stop the slide to a genocidal regime will be to keep shining a spotlight on the borders, on the camps, and the people that run them. What will stop the slide will be people holding this administration to account, it will be voting the fuckers out of office at the next elections.
As horrible as this all is: I’m less worried about it now than I was when there was “near-radio silence” just a couple of months ago. This story hasn’t dropped out of the news cycle. We are still having this conversation. That is something that has to continue. We can stop this. I believe we **will **stop this. But it will only be stopped if we fight. So we can’t stop fighting.
And this entire story proves one more thing to me: that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the smartest politican the American left have, I will fight anyone who claims otherwise, and you must protect her at all costs. She did all of this with a single, calculated tweet.
First: no, she did not do anything single-handedly. There were a dozen lawmakers present and they all contributed images and words that are important for people to see.
Second, please don’t do this. Don’t put her on a pedestal like this, don’t make her your new messiah, don’t declare “only her”. That’s something they do and it’s how demagogues happen.
Please don’t attempt to build a myth of infallible genius sainthood around anyone; I’ve had quite enough of that bullshit already.
ETA: The rest of your post is spot on.
…the “dozen lawmakers present” didn’t change the conversation. That only happened yesterday. The tweet about the concentration camps did.
Please don’t do this. Don’t claim I’m making her my “new messiah”, don’t claim I’m going to say “only her.”
Calling her the “smartest politician on the American left” is not building a myth of infallible genius sainthood." Its an opinion. Nothing more.
:dubious:
:rolleyes:
…do you need clarification on what I said? Do you not understand what hyperbole is, and can you not figure out that a sentence like “I will fight anyone who claims otherwise, and you must protect her at all costs” might be a tad, just a smidgen, just a little bit hyperbolic? Especially considering at the age of 44 I’ve never had a real-life-fight in my life?
This is how the news cycle is set. Fox news sets the agenda: then the main-stream media follows it. If Fox & Friends doesn’t talk about the camps on the borders then nobody else will. AOC’s used her social media reach to bring attention to the camps. She got Fox news talking about her, which got the rest of the media talking about what she she said. The public conversation mirrors how the debate happened in this thread: debate over “are they concentration camps or not”, that debate allowed the facts to come out, and tied us over to this week which saw the release of the OIG report and the visit to the camps by the congress-people.
You aren’t going to “win the war” if you don’t understand that the Trump administration is running a propaganda campaign against the American people. The propaganda machine is indistinguishable from North Korean propaganda. You aren’t going to win unless you have the ability to combat this. Its exactly why people like AOC are so important to the debate. It isn’t about “lionising her” or elevating her to “messiah” status. A single person isn’t going to win this. But she’s leading the way. And we all need to follow that lead.
Yes, I do. Because otherwise the word “genocide” would only apply to the relatively wealthy.
The people arriving at our southern border seeking asylum and being locked up for it have already lost most of what they had, what they carry is all they have left. Taking that means taking everything leaving them with literally just the clothes on their back. A backpack might not mean much to you or me, but you and I have the money and the freedom to go out and buy another one if we want to - these folks have neither money nor freedom left.
How is taking every last remaining possession from someone NOT offensive? Does genocide apply only to homeowners and not to people who rent? Is taking someone’s last dollar (or peso) less offensive than taking their last 100,000? Does genocide only apply to people who have heirlooms? How much money and stuff does someone need to qualify for that stage of genocide? I read it literally - you take away someone’s stuff, even if they don’t have a lot of stuff, then it qualifies. And that would include someone who’s worldly “wealth” fits in a Wal-mart bag.
The poor and dispossessed have always been easy targets, but they care no less for the few things they have (had) than the wealthy care for their many things.
If you haven’t noticed the increasing erosion of our political systems, where have you been?
Trump’s basically turned his entire Administration into his personal toadies, including DoJ (whose independence has been an important norm in our democracy) and our national security apparatus. His daughter and son-in-law are his primary diplomats other than his own self. With the aid of Mitch McConnell who kept Obama from appointing anyone to the Federal judiciary for the last two years of his administration, he’s crammed the judiciary full of judges who will reliably decide cases his way.
And this has happened in less than two and a half years.
Yes, political systems matter. Ours isn’t what it was just a few years ago. We’re not a banana republic quite yet, but we’re past the point where merely electing a Dem President and giving ourselves a four-year break from Trumpism will suffice to change our direction.
Hammer Trump supporters with this. “Do you think that is something Jesus would do?” “If Jesus saw that guard do that, what would Jesus think?” “Would Jesus hold these children like this?”
Don’t say it with anger; ask with genuine concern and curiosity.
Just remember, others have already asserted that pediatricians have a political agenda.
They probably don’t think Jesus was a refugee either, because no.
Take a look at these drawings and tell me they don’t make you sick.
Making america great again.
You’re preaching to the choir here brother. These drawings will have no impact on Trump supporters, because we’ve already reached the stage where Trump supporters do not consider the children of these asylum seekers to be human beings. They will simply think of these drawings as amusing curiosities - sort of like when a magpie makes lines in the dirt with a stick.
Many of them would think that Republican Jesus would consider these children to be parasites on the soft underbelly of Trump’s Great America, and they’d think that Republican Jesus would be pleased that the guards are protecting us from these filthy animals.
Thus far, you have 51 posts in this thread. The majority of them are mostly ranting. We typically allow group insults, but your consistent offerings have served to degrade the level of discourse - what’s the response to this? That Republican Jesus wouldn’t consider these children to be parasites? Pretty lame.
And given that many who disagree with you are posters on this board, these types of sweeping generalizations can be difficult to separate as an insult to a group rather than to a poster. When an attack on a group is inseparable from an attack on a poster is where a person can run afoul of the rules.
I am directing you to avoid sweeping generalizations that demonize those that disagree with you.
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I wish I could be surprised that people could sink that low, or that there are people who would defend it.
Now I know how the decent Germans felt, watching their country change around them.