Trump Regime planning to set up "tent cities' (aka concentration camps) for unaccompanied migrant children.

[The Romulan Republic]

Moral issues aside, would putting kids into concentration camps even do anything to curb illegal immigration, which is what it is allegedly for?

"Deterrence". Note that they are applying this to legitimate asylum seekers, not just illegal immigrants. So in other words, cruelty and terror-tactics, based on racism and xenophobia.

Throw this in with the other shit, like the utter lack of due process, the potential expulsion of the Dreamers (who are living here as hard-working, law-abiding residents since childhood, with the approval of the prior administration), and ICE's racial profiling tactics and all the other shit, and the fact that many of these people will certainly die directly or indirectly as a consequence of US government anti-immigration policy, and its really hard to come up with any term for current US immigration policy other than ethnic cleansing.

[Simon_Jester]

The thing a lot of foreigners may not understand about the US:

snip text

Believe me, a lot of us get it. We get flooded with American cultural products. Many an Australian child can name many American founder. We also get to see the other side of the American dream.

I believe that the other side can and should be jettisoned from the worthwhile side; the two do not inevitably go together even though they have historically gone together.

Rejecting the good side of 'this is a country that was specifically founded to practice liberal-democratic values that reflect the world's best collective understanding of them' in order to spite the bad side of 'this country isn't practicing those values well, or consistently, or even at all sometimes' will accomplish nothing. All it does is cede the entire idea of "upholding people's rights is an American value that should be respected by Americans of good conscience' to the right-wing, which will abuse the SHIT out of that concept and be free to do so unopposed and undisputed. Meanwhile, the left-wing will stand muted, having uselessly deprived itself of effective and persuasive language.

Namely, that it started as a sincerely intended attempt by its founders to put into practice Enlightenment political philosophy.

How sincere would you say that their attempt was?

As sincere as could be expected, given that they were a group of self-selected 1750-vintage men and not a group of carefully handpicked angels of pure pureness. Which isn't impressive when judged by your standards, no doubt. But then... such is your right, if you would have been a handpicked angel of pure pureness had you been raised in that environment and era.

[Gandalf]

I believe that the other side can and should be jettisoned from the worthwhile side; the two do not inevitably go together even though they have historically gone together.

Rejecting the good side of 'this is a country that was specifically founded to practice liberal-democratic values that reflect the world's best collective understanding of them' in order to spite the bad side of 'this country isn't practicing those values well, or consistently, or even at all sometimes' will accomplish nothing. All it does is cede the entire idea of "upholding people's rights is an American value that should be respected by Americans of good conscience' to the right-wing, which will abuse the SHIT out of that concept and be free to do so unopposed and undisputed. Meanwhile, the left-wing will stand muted, having uselessly deprived itself of effective and persuasive language.

Or you could just be honest and say that the country was founded by rich white guys who wanted a free and fair world for all rich white guys. Things subsequently improved.

As sincere as could be expected, given that they were a group of self-selected 1750-vintage men and not a group of carefully handpicked angels of pure pureness. Which isn't impressive when judged by your standards, no doubt.

There's a comedy here I'm not sure was intentional.

But then... such is your right, if you would have been a handpicked angel of pure pureness had you been raised in that environment and era.

Beats me. I could have been one of the ones mowed down by the likes of Washington and friends.

[Simon_Jester]

I believe that the other side can and should be jettisoned from the worthwhile side; the two do not inevitably go together even though they have historically gone together.

Rejecting the good side of 'this is a country that was specifically founded to practice liberal-democratic values that reflect the world's best collective understanding of them' in order to spite the bad side of 'this country isn't practicing those values well, or consistently, or even at all sometimes' will accomplish nothing. All it does is cede the entire idea of "upholding people's rights is an American value that should be respected by Americans of good conscience' to the right-wing, which will abuse the SHIT out of that concept and be free to do so unopposed and undisputed. Meanwhile, the left-wing will stand muted, having uselessly deprived itself of effective and persuasive language.

Or you could just be honest and say that the country was founded by rich white guys who wanted a free and fair world for all rich white guys. Things subsequently improved.

At which point, well, you've done exactly as I described, which is in part how we ended up with the bad parts of the world we now live in.

Letting the American political right wing walk in, set up shop, and claim adverse possession on the concept of 'freedom and rights are patriotic, and if you're an American you should care about them' was a serious tactical error on the left's part. And without that error, we might not now be dealing with the massive foul farce that is Trumpolini, or much of the ongoing US government hypocrisy on human rights that you've been decrying.

Telling people that they're supposed to care, that they are heirs to a tradition of improvement, works. Telling them everyone was an asshole until yesterday and 90% of people are assholes today, doesn't.

As sincere as could be expected, given that they were a group of self-selected 1750-vintage men and not a group of carefully handpicked angels of pure pureness. Which isn't impressive when judged by your standards, no doubt.

There's a comedy here I'm not sure was intentional.

You have every right to find it funny; true things can provide some of the best dark humor precisely because they're true.

In 1790, a state governed by angels of pure pureness would have instituted an enlightened system with full equality of the races and the sexes. It would not have made and then reneged upon hundreds of Indian treaties. It would, indeed, have likely remained a string of colonies along the Atlantic seaboard while the natives gradually built themselves up out of the post-apocalyptic horror-world created for them by disease outbreaks in the 1500s. Well, actually they'd probably have all tried to somehow pack up shop and move to... elsewhere. Somewhere. Not on the Atlantic seaboard because that was stolen. Angels of pure pureness wouldn't be okay with that.

The thing is, no one has ever been able to explain to me where such benevolent paragons are, or were, to be found.

Instead, the early United States had a bunch of guys, who I tend to judge relative to the performance and morality of other bunches of guys, not bunches of angels that didn't actually exist at the time. Which does indeed leave us facing the reality that everyone has always been shitty to everyone, with a handful of honorable exceptions, everywhere, forever. All that can be done is to single out the occasional salvageable or admirable things within the larger sea of shittiness, or to spend the rest of our lives self-flagellating because proof by induction suggests that WE are also shitty and just don't know it, just like every past generation was.

But then... such is your right, if you would have been a handpicked angel of pure pureness had you been raised in that environment and era.

Beats me. I could have been one of the ones mowed down by the likes of Washington and friends.

Different environment, then. Not same. Which sidesteps my question:

Given where a person comes from, do we have an obligation to devalue everything else they did, due to the bad things they did?

As an example, stealing people's cattle is wrong. Does that mean everyone who comes from a society with a cattle-raiding tradition was an evil person? If a person from a cattle-raiding culture was the one who invented the wheel, would it slightly devalue their invention of the wheel that they were a thief? To be sure, being a thief isn't as bad as being a murderer, but it's not a good thing.

Where, exactly, do we draw the line, once we're in the habit of condemning everything about past societies that we today would reject, not just as a "never do that anymore" but as a "fuck everyone who ever did that, even when it was universal" stance?

[HortonX25]

Situations like this, more than anything else, honestly make me wonder how much longer I'll be able to retain my opposition to political violence.

Did you restrain it when Bush attacked Iraq, killing many children in the process?

I mean you're not exactly striking me as consistent, the US government has done many a terrible thing and you did not call for violence then, so...where's the consistency?

[Simon_Jester]

For some mysterious reason, a lot of people tend to judge it less harshly when terrible things happen as an undesired* side-effect of a state of war. And more harshly when terrible things happen as a specifically declared, intentional consequence of a policy that applies to entirely helpless prisoners already in our captivity. The former is seen as callousness and accident, while the latter is seen as malice.

And for some odd reason, humans persist in thinking of callousness as less bad than active malice. It's very illogical, and I'm sure Spock would disapprove. But if you spend all your time going around and calling people inconsistent for doing it, you'll never have time to do anything else.
______________________

And yes, Iraqi civilian casualties were an undesired side effect from the Bush administration's point of view, not an intended consequence of the invasion; I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.

[HortonX25]

For some mysterious reason, a lot of people tend to judge it less harshly when terrible things happen as an undesired* side-effect of a state of war. And more harshly when terrible things happen as a specifically declared, intentional consequence of a policy that applies to entirely helpless prisoners already in our captivity. The former is seen as callousness and accident, while the latter is seen as malice.

And for some odd reason, humans persist in thinking of callousness as less bad than active malice. It's very illogical, and I'm sure Spock would disapprove. But if you spend all your time going around and calling people inconsistent for doing it, you'll never have time to do anything else.

I agree to the extent that you wouldn't get much time, I also find that quite a fascinating aspect of human psychology. But from a purely ethical standpoint it's still a asymmetry in your ethical system, which can be attacked.

And yes, Iraqi civilian casualties were an undesired side effect from the Bush administration's point of view, not an intended consequence of the invasion; I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.

Would unexpected be the right term here? By engaging in an act of war against a sovereign country, you're going to have to expect civilian casualties and factor that into your moral calculus, as practically every war in history on that scale has involved inevitable civilian casualties.

[Simon_Jester]

For some mysterious reason, a lot of people tend to judge it less harshly when terrible things happen as an undesired* side-effect of a state of war. And more harshly when terrible things happen as a specifically declared, intentional consequence of a policy that applies to entirely helpless prisoners already in our captivity. The former is seen as callousness and accident, while the latter is seen as malice.

And for some odd reason, humans persist in thinking of callousness as less bad than active malice. It's very illogical, and I'm sure Spock would disapprove. But if you spend all your time going around and calling people inconsistent for doing it, you'll never have time to do anything else.

I agree to the extent that you wouldn't get much time, I also find that quite a fascinating aspect of human psychology. But from a purely ethical standpoint it's still a asymmetry in your ethical system, which can be attacked.

Ah, but I would argue that the asymmetry serves a useful purpose.

It's much easier to create a widespread norm against hurting people specifically as the intended goal of an action, or as the primary outcome of an action. It's much harder to create a widespread norm against hurting people as an undesired side-effect of a desired action,

So in a world that contains both malice and callousness, it makes sense to target malice disproportionately, because we have a prayer of actually getting rid of it and then being free to go to work on callousness. Whereas if we waste our time condemning callousness and callousness alone, we'll squander our resources of moral persuasion to little result, and have nothing in reserve to deal with active malice.

Would unexpected be the right term here? By engaging in an act of war against a sovereign country, you're going to have to expect civilian casualties and factor that into your moral calculus, as practically every war in history on that scale has involved inevitable civilian casualties.

Unexpected would indeed not be the right word. Which is why I did not, in point of fact, use that word. I used a different word instead.

[Zaune]

Did you restrain it when Bush attacked Iraq, killing many children in the process?

I mean you're not exactly striking me as consistent, the US government has done many a terrible thing and you did not call for violence then, so...where's the consistency?

That might be something to do with the fact that TRR's opposition to the use of political violence is due to his sincere and deeply-held belief that it is not justified in anything but the most extreme circumstances. (Source: My sincere and deeply-held belief is that the occasional exceptionally unpleasant politician being beaten to death by an angry mob pour encourager les autres is an important component of the system of checks and balances that hold all healthy democracies together, which has brought us into conflict before.)

And everyone has their breaking point, I guess.

[Megabot]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/20/politics ... index.html

Trump reverses course, signs order to keep families together

By Stephen Collinson, Sarah Westwood, Laura Jarrett and Tal Kopan, CNN

(CNN) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed his debunked argument that he had no authority to stop separations of undocumented immigrant families at the border, signing an executive order to keep parents and kids together.

"We're signing an executive order. I consider it to be a very important executive order. It's about keeping families together, while at the same time being sure we have a very powerful, very strong border," Trump said.

Trump's climbdown came after he faced intense pressure from across the political spectrum and from religious, political and world leaders to halt the separations, which produced days of heartrending news coverage of crying children -- some of whom were kept in cage-like detention centers.

The President claimed, though, that he isn't backing down.

"The border is just as tough. But we do want to keep families together," Trump said in the Oval Office. "We are keeping the family together."

Earlier Wednesday after a frenzied morning in which he huddled with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other key officials, Trump first flagged his reversal saying, "I'll be doing something that's somewhat preemptive and ultimately will be matched by legislation I'm sure."

Just the day before, Trump had claimed his administration's hands were tied without congressional action.

"Under current law, we have only two policy options to respond to this massive crisis. We can either release all illegal immigrant families and minors who show up at the border from Central America or we can arrest the adults for the federal crime of illegal entry. Those are the only two options, totally open borders or criminal prosecution for law-breaking," the President had said.

By Wednesday morning, he had changed course.

In the executive order he signed on Wednesday, Trump declared it is his administration's policy to "maintain family unity," including by detaining entire families together "where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources."

The order directs other agencies, including the Pentagon, to take steps to find places to house family units.

The order specifies that migrants entering the US with children will not be kept together if there's a fear for the child's welfare. Families will also be prioritized in the adjudication process.

Even so, the move is almost certain to face immediate legal action challenging the administration's authority to keep families detained at length.

The President was not required to sign anything to change the administration's practice that elicited outrage. He could have reversed the practice of splitting children from their parents with a phone call.

Executive orders typically require input from the Office of the Legal Counsel. The details of the executive order were worked out between the White House, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, a source said.

The White House may run into legal difficulties if the executive order requires families to be held intact together indefinitely since a federal consent decree known as the Flores settlement says children must be released after 20 days.

Reversal

Trump's decision to relent was a reversal since he had gambled that he could use the plight of the children and public outrage to ram through his hardline changes to immigration police in legislation.

The President continued to use tough immigration rhetoric even on Wednesday though, signaling that he is not softening his desire to change the country's laws more broadly.

"The dilemma is that if you're weak, if you're weak, which some people would like you to be, if you're really, really pathetically weak, the country's going to be overrun with millions of people," Trump said.

"And if you're strong, then you don't have any heart. That's a tough dilemma. Perhaps I would rather be strong, but that's a tough dilemma," he said.

Trump also postponed Thursday's congressional picnic at the White House, an event that is always keenly awaited by lawmakers and their families, saying it didn't feel right.

The President's decision came a day after he met Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill who fear that their own political prospects with the midterm elections are being damaged by the separation policy.

Democrats welcomed Trump's apparent change of course but said he had only himself to blame.

"The President is the one that created this humanitarian crisis," Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

"I hope the President will fix the problem that he created."

Crafting the order

While Attorney General Jeff Sessions was not at the meeting at the White House Wednesday morning, his chief of staff has been there to represent the Justice Department, the source added.

Prior to Trump's remarks, White House aides refused to comment on rumors of an executive order and Republicans on Capitol Hill seemingly had no knowledge of a coming executive action. Until now, Trump and White House officials have instead been pushing GOP lawmakers this week to pass legislation that deals with immigration reform.

The move -- if it retreats from his current stance that the administration is simply following the current law and needs congressional action to stop the separations -- would mark a huge reversal by the President.

Both first lady Melania Trump and Nielsen reportedly had roles in the changing course.

The first lady has been working for several days behind the scenes, encouraging the President to keep families together, a White House official told CNN. She has had several private conversations with her husband, pushing him to do all he can to keep families at the border intact, whether via a legislative route, or acting alone to stop the process, the official said.

The shift in Trump's thinking came an hour after Speaker Paul Ryan said the House would vote Thursday on a compromise between conservative and moderate Republican lawmakers that would address the issue of family separations.

The measure would also offer protections to another vulnerable group -- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients -- who are undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children.

But the chances of the bill passing are unclear as is the case with any bill dealing with the volatile issue of immigration. The fact that it includes fundamental changes to the legal immigration system mean its chances in the Senate are even more uncertain.

CNN's Kate Bennett, Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.

So apparently, this is now happening.

Trump changing course on policy? I'm shocked, SHOCKED!

[Tribble]

Trump jumped the gun a little too soon with the concentration camps; he should have waited until after the midterms so that his party wouldn't be as focused on winning the election.

Good thing he didn't have the patience to see this scheme through properly.

[Simon_Jester]

Trump jumped the gun a little too soon with the concentration camps; he should have waited until after the midterms so that his party wouldn't be as focused on winning the election.

Joke's on him, if that is the case. The one thing a congressman, even a Republican congressman, never stops thinking about is electability. It's how they even stay in office despite everything else...

Congress can fuck up so hard it has a 10-20% approval rating, and yet individual congressmen have like 60-70% approval ratings, because they're concentrating that hard on staying electable.

[ray245]

I'm guessing there will be more GOP congressmen and congresswoman wanting to throw Trump under the bus?

[The Romulan Republic]

Situations like this, more than anything else, honestly make me wonder how much longer I'll be able to retain my opposition to political violence.

Did you restrain it when Bush attacked Iraq, killing many children in the process?

I mean you're not exactly striking me as consistent, the US government has done many a terrible thing and you did not call for violence then, so...where's the consistency?

Simon_Jester and Zaune have already replied to this, but let me just add a couple things:

First, I am so sick of Whataboutism being trotted out constantly to defend every atrocity. The argument seems to be "Other bad things happened in the past, therefore you're a hypocrite if you oppose this bad thing now, so shut your mouth and never object to anything." This is both ad hominem, and a diversion, and ultimately irrelevant.

I do not defend the war in Iraq. I'm not shedding any tears for the Hussein regime either, but it was a costly and unnecessary war that was sold on lies, criminally mismanaged, and featured frequent disregard for human rights on the part of the US government. But Iraq is not the topic here. If you want to try to defend concentration camps for brown children, then have the guts to admit that's what you're doing. Don't try to shift the topic. And if that's not your intent, then stop muddying the waters.

There is, as well, another important difference. The United States fucking around in other countries for selfish or absurd reasons, directly or indirectly, is common. Its not good, it shouldn't happen, but its something we're all familiar with. Concentration camps for foreign children in a first world country... isn't. Not in the last seventy years, anyway. So this represents an erosion of modern democratic norms that even Iraq, as bad as it was, doesn't. So on an irrational, purely emotional level, its more shocking, but I also think that there's a pragmatic reason to take it so seriously: because it represents not merely the perpetuation of a bad status quo, but a decisive step in the wrong direction.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/20/politics ... index.html

Trump reverses course, signs order to keep families together

By Stephen Collinson, Sarah Westwood, Laura Jarrett and Tal Kopan, CNN

(CNN) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed his debunked argument that he had no authority to stop separations of undocumented immigrant families at the border, signing an executive order to keep parents and kids together.

"We're signing an executive order. I consider it to be a very important executive order. It's about keeping families together, while at the same time being sure we have a very powerful, very strong border," Trump said.

Trump's climbdown came after he faced intense pressure from across the political spectrum and from religious, political and world leaders to halt the separations, which produced days of heartrending news coverage of crying children -- some of whom were kept in cage-like detention centers.

The President claimed, though, that he isn't backing down.

"The border is just as tough. But we do want to keep families together," Trump said in the Oval Office. "We are keeping the family together."

Earlier Wednesday after a frenzied morning in which he huddled with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other key officials, Trump first flagged his reversal saying, "I'll be doing something that's somewhat preemptive and ultimately will be matched by legislation I'm sure."

Just the day before, Trump had claimed his administration's hands were tied without congressional action.

"Under current law, we have only two policy options to respond to this massive crisis. We can either release all illegal immigrant families and minors who show up at the border from Central America or we can arrest the adults for the federal crime of illegal entry. Those are the only two options, totally open borders or criminal prosecution for law-breaking," the President had said.

By Wednesday morning, he had changed course.

In the executive order he signed on Wednesday, Trump declared it is his administration's policy to "maintain family unity," including by detaining entire families together "where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources."

The order directs other agencies, including the Pentagon, to take steps to find places to house family units.

The order specifies that migrants entering the US with children will not be kept together if there's a fear for the child's welfare. Families will also be prioritized in the adjudication process.

Even so, the move is almost certain to face immediate legal action challenging the administration's authority to keep families detained at length.

The President was not required to sign anything to change the administration's practice that elicited outrage. He could have reversed the practice of splitting children from their parents with a phone call.

Executive orders typically require input from the Office of the Legal Counsel. The details of the executive order were worked out between the White House, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, a source said.

The White House may run into legal difficulties if the executive order requires families to be held intact together indefinitely since a federal consent decree known as the Flores settlement says children must be released after 20 days.

Reversal

Trump's decision to relent was a reversal since he had gambled that he could use the plight of the children and public outrage to ram through his hardline changes to immigration police in legislation.

The President continued to use tough immigration rhetoric even on Wednesday though, signaling that he is not softening his desire to change the country's laws more broadly.

"The dilemma is that if you're weak, if you're weak, which some people would like you to be, if you're really, really pathetically weak, the country's going to be overrun with millions of people," Trump said.

"And if you're strong, then you don't have any heart. That's a tough dilemma. Perhaps I would rather be strong, but that's a tough dilemma," he said.

Trump also postponed Thursday's congressional picnic at the White House, an event that is always keenly awaited by lawmakers and their families, saying it didn't feel right.

The President's decision came a day after he met Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill who fear that their own political prospects with the midterm elections are being damaged by the separation policy.

Democrats welcomed Trump's apparent change of course but said he had only himself to blame.

"The President is the one that created this humanitarian crisis," Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

"I hope the President will fix the problem that he created."

Crafting the order

While Attorney General Jeff Sessions was not at the meeting at the White House Wednesday morning, his chief of staff has been there to represent the Justice Department, the source added.

Prior to Trump's remarks, White House aides refused to comment on rumors of an executive order and Republicans on Capitol Hill seemingly had no knowledge of a coming executive action. Until now, Trump and White House officials have instead been pushing GOP lawmakers this week to pass legislation that deals with immigration reform.

The move -- if it retreats from his current stance that the administration is simply following the current law and needs congressional action to stop the separations -- would mark a huge reversal by the President.

Both first lady Melania Trump and Nielsen reportedly had roles in the changing course.

The first lady has been working for several days behind the scenes, encouraging the President to keep families together, a White House official told CNN. She has had several private conversations with her husband, pushing him to do all he can to keep families at the border intact, whether via a legislative route, or acting alone to stop the process, the official said.

The shift in Trump's thinking came an hour after Speaker Paul Ryan said the House would vote Thursday on a compromise between conservative and moderate Republican lawmakers that would address the issue of family separations.

The measure would also offer protections to another vulnerable group -- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients -- who are undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children.

But the chances of the bill passing are unclear as is the case with any bill dealing with the volatile issue of immigration. The fact that it includes fundamental changes to the legal immigration system mean its chances in the Senate are even more uncertain.

CNN's Kate Bennett, Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.

So apparently, this is now happening.

Trump changing course on policy? I'm shocked, SHOCKED!

He hasn't changed jack. The executive order is a stunt which offers no clear solutions, and basically tries to shift the burden of responsibility onto others. It has no provisions for dealing with the 2400 children already taken from their families. And it doesn't revoke the zero tolerance policy. This is significant because it means parents will still be being jailed, so now their children will be kept with them... in jail. But wait!- the law limits how long children can be kept with their parents in prison. So either that law will have to be changed, allowing for long-term imprisonment of children with their parents, or they'll have to be separated again in twenty days. In either case, Trump will be able to say "Its Congress/the Democrats' fault".

So either they get separated again in twenty days, or we change the law to sanction long-term incarceration of children with their parents.

By the way, how come no one's pointing out the blatant parallels with Trump's new buddy Kim Jong Un here? One of the atrocities Kim is infamous for is collective punishment of entire families by incarcerating them in slave labour camps.

I'm guessing there will be more GOP congressmen and congresswoman wanting to throw Trump under the bus?

I wouldn't hold my breath. The majority of the Republican voting base supports this shit, and the executive order will give the waverers political cover to say "Trump TRIED to fix it, and the Democrats/Congress kept him from doing it."

[Simon_Jester]

The fundamental problem the Republican Party faces is, and remains, that they've propagandized their voter base so hard that even though the Republican politicians themselves are (mostly) not actively fascists, the base will support anyone who pounds on the table and postures and makes fun of their opponents hard enough.

Their political machine is intended to funnel power to relative nonentities like Bush Junior, or smarmy eat-the-poor creeps like Ted Cruz, or vaguely racist old Southern white men who only start saying really offensive shit after they begin to go senile. Someone like Trump is a superstimulus to such a machine; it's the equivalent of taking someone who normally drinks no stimulant stronger than weak tea and giving them a massive infusion of Jolt cola and a splash of Black Blood of the Earth

This results in the Republican base voters developing a loyalty to Trump that conventional Republican politicians cannot shake, and don't dare to try to shake, because he's got 'Republican politician' tags like "constantly being accused of lying by MSNBC" and "says insensitive things that align with my prejudices" and "looks like a guy with plenty of money," only to a much higher degree than most Republican politicians do.

[Zixinus]

Yeah, but if they were smart and competent they could ruin things a lot worse

Or maybe if they were smart and competent they wouldn't be ruining things, but simply building things without causing havoc.

But they're not smart and competent. Smart and competent is clean, efficient. A system they don't want would be removed or merely weakened in a way that could be possibly rebuilt later. Incompetent and stupid is not better because they are ruining things not only that it will be harder to later rebuild, but also cause collateral damage to other systems they touch.

A smart man will focus his effort to a specific end while preserving the system that gives them power, while a stupid man will make a mess braking anything and everything in the way to get what they think they want. Do you think they really WANTED child concentration camps? That they're stupid and incompetent is NOT a comfort when they have power and authority. If anything, it is worse because they have power, are incompetent enough to abuse it every time they intend to use it and stupid enough to not realize the point of what they're doing.

You do not have to be smart and competent to ruin an entire country. It is in fact, an asset to such endeavor.

[Gandalf]

At which point, well, you've done exactly as I described, which is in part how we ended up with the bad parts of the world we now live in.

Letting the American political right wing walk in, set up shop, and claim adverse possession on the concept of 'freedom and rights are patriotic, and if you're an American you should care about them' was a serious tactical error on the left's part. And without that error, we might not now be dealing with the massive foul farce that is Trumpolini, or much of the ongoing US government hypocrisy on human rights that you've been decrying.

Telling people that they're supposed to care, that they are heirs to a tradition of improvement, works. Telling them everyone was an asshole until yesterday and 90% of people are assholes today, doesn't.

Does the US not have that tradition of improvement? There used to be slavery and genocidal westward expansion. Now not so much. Jefferson kept slaves, and eventually someone freed them. The US grew despite its ugly origins and originators.

Also, I would posit that if any error led to Trump being elected, it was someone in DNC land forgetting about Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. If the American left was as smart as they seem to think they are, perhaps someone would have noticed that along the way.

You have every right to find it funny; true things can provide some of the best dark humor precisely because they're true.

In 1790, a state governed by angels of pure pureness would have instituted an enlightened system with full equality of the races and the sexes. It would not have made and then reneged upon hundreds of Indian treaties. It would, indeed, have likely remained a string of colonies along the Atlantic seaboard while the natives gradually built themselves up out of the post-apocalyptic horror-world created for them by disease outbreaks in the 1500s. Well, actually they'd probably have all tried to somehow pack up shop and move to... elsewhere. Somewhere. Not on the Atlantic seaboard because that was stolen. Angels of pure pureness wouldn't be okay with that.

The thing is, no one has ever been able to explain to me where such benevolent paragons are, or were, to be found.

Instead, the early United States had a bunch of guys, who I tend to judge relative to the performance and morality of other bunches of guys, not bunches of angels that didn't actually exist at the time. Which does indeed leave us facing the reality that everyone has always been shitty to everyone, with a handful of honorable exceptions, everywhere, forever. All that can be done is to single out the occasional salvageable or admirable things within the larger sea of shittiness, or to spend the rest of our lives self-flagellating because proof by induction suggests that WE are also shitty and just don't know it, just like every past generation was.

Societal self awareness is hard. Who knew? Though the "nobody's perfect" defence always surprises me when it comes up.

Different environment, then. Not same. Which sidesteps my question:

Given where a person comes from, do we have an obligation to devalue everything else they did, due to the bad things they did?

As an example, stealing people's cattle is wrong. Does that mean everyone who comes from a society with a cattle-raiding tradition was an evil person? If a person from a cattle-raiding culture was the one who invented the wheel, would it slightly devalue their invention of the wheel that they were a thief? To be sure, being a thief isn't as bad as being a murderer, but it's not a good thing.

Where, exactly, do we draw the line, once we're in the habit of condemning everything about past societies that we today would reject, not just as a "never do that anymore" but as a "fuck everyone who ever did that, even when it was universal" stance?

I find universality of something being the yardstick of its acceptability to be fascinating, especially coming from a context of slavery and Divine American Leaders.

[Simon_Jester]

Does the US not have that tradition of improvement? There used to be slavery and genocidal westward expansion. Now not so much. Jefferson kept slaves, and eventually someone freed them. The US grew despite its ugly origins and originators.

Oh? That makes sense. And yet if I say "we're supposed to be an improving nation, this willing tolerance of a despotic jackass and his internment camps for toddlers is un-American," I get fucking pushback.

Probably because in the 'Year Zero' mindset, if we go back far enough (and the Constitutional Convention of 1789 is well before 'far enough') history is an undifferentiated seething mass of evil, that somehow magically just sort of... ceased.

Myself, I see the seeds of this having been planted well before 'far enough.' There were people, in the darkness before the dawn, who were themselves accustomed to and a part of the darkness, but who at least had a concept of light. Who, to borrow an over-used metaphor, lit one candle. One we were later able to use to create greater flames and greater illumination.

And I'd rather be able to bless them for lighting that candle, even as I repeatedly and very blatantly and explicitly declare that they were part of the darkness... Than simply say "curse them" and then find myself unable to fully comprehend the history of how the light came to be.

Also, I would posit that if any error led to Trump being elected, it was someone in DNC land forgetting about Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. If the American left was as smart as they seem to think they are, perhaps someone would have noticed that along the way.

There is ample room for many errors. Everyone is a stupid, there is a crack in everything, the world is terrible and the best of us are all fuckups trying not to shamble too far towards the edge of the cliff.

Such is life. And yet, we do not go jump off of cliffs voluntarily, so presumably we must have agreed to deal with that reality, no?

Societal self awareness is hard. Who knew? Though the "nobody's perfect" defence always surprises me when it comes up.

Well, the way I figure it, we can uniformly hate the past as an undifferentiated mass of seething evil, or we can at least try to sort out the good from the bad.

The 'Year Zero' approach of declaring the past to be irredeemable and therefore irrelevant is a recipe for so many kinds of collective failure that I consider it to be ridiculous, in the literal sense of 'worthy of ridicule.' Among other things, because it is hardly conducive to societal awareness for us to cultivate the belief that the past is so full of evil that nothing which happened in it can be worthy of praise or compliment.

Humans' innate predisposition towards evil hasn't changed much. There were quite a lot of well-meaning people in the past, who were no more or less intelligent and who had no stronger or weaker desire to do good than typical people today. And yet, quite a few of them sincerely held terrible opinions and did terrible things to each other. If we ignore that, we're setting ourselves up for self-righteous stupidity in the present. Trying to sneer that reality away makes us blind to our own faults, because it leads to the equivalent of "bad things can't happen to good people" or "good people can't have bad beliefs."

Different environment, then. Not same. Which sidesteps my question:

Given where a person comes from, do we have an obligation to devalue everything else they did, due to the bad things they did?

As an example, stealing people's cattle is wrong. Does that mean everyone who comes from a society with a cattle-raiding tradition was an evil person? If a person from a cattle-raiding culture was the one who invented the wheel, would it slightly devalue their invention of the wheel that they were a thief? To be sure, being a thief isn't as bad as being a murderer, but it's not a good thing.

Where, exactly, do we draw the line, once we're in the habit of condemning everything about past societies that we today would reject, not just as a "never do that anymore" but as a "fuck everyone who ever did that, even when it was universal" stance?

I find universality of something being the yardstick of its acceptability to be fascinating, especially coming from a context of slavery and Divine American Leaders.

Firstly, who the fuck said 'divine?' Not me. I don't think I could make that more obvious, but you persist in strawmanning. Either that or you're actually cross-posting from some bizarre parallel universe version of this forum.

Secondly, you are sidestepping the question yet again.

Given where a person comes from, do we have an obligation to devalue everything else they did, due to the bad things they did? Where, exactly, do we draw the line, once we're in the habit of condemning everything about past societies? And condemning them not just in terms of "that was wrong, very wrong, never do that." But also condemning them in terms of "we can never say anything less-than-fully-bad about them, ever, because obviously everyone in the past was just failing to live up to our contemporary moral standards on account of being a bunch of cackling villains?"

It's like, what IS the yardstick, exactly? Or do we get to use different yardsticks when we're measuring someone we want to shit on, versus someone we don't?

[HortonX25]

For some mysterious reason, a lot of people tend to judge it less harshly when terrible things happen as an undesired* side-effect of a state of war. And more harshly when terrible things happen as a specifically declared, intentional consequence of a policy that applies to entirely helpless prisoners already in our captivity. The former is seen as callousness and accident, while the latter is seen as malice.

And for some odd reason, humans persist in thinking of callousness as less bad than active malice. It's very illogical, and I'm sure Spock would disapprove. But if you spend all your time going around and calling people inconsistent for doing it, you'll never have time to do anything else.

I agree to the extent that you wouldn't get much time, I also find that quite a fascinating aspect of human psychology. But from a purely ethical standpoint it's still a asymmetry in your ethical system, which can be attacked.

Ah, but I would argue that the asymmetry serves a useful purpose.

It's much easier to create a widespread norm against hurting people specifically as the intended goal of an action, or as the primary outcome of an action. It's much harder to create a widespread norm against hurting people as an undesired side-effect of a desired action,

So in a world that contains both malice and callousness, it makes sense to target malice disproportionately, because we have a prayer of actually getting rid of it and then being free to go to work on callousness. Whereas if we waste our time condemning callousness and callousness alone, we'll squander our resources of moral persuasion to little result, and have nothing in reserve to deal with active malice.

Would unexpected be the right term here? By engaging in an act of war against a sovereign country, you're going to have to expect civilian casualties and factor that into your moral calculus, as practically every war in history on that scale has involved inevitable civilian casualties.

Unexpected would indeed not be the right word. Which is why I did not, in point of fact, use that word. I used a different word instead.

Ah, slight slip up there. So what we're saying here is that moral accountable in regards to holding other people for it shouldn't be consequentialist? I think though that there should be to some level as otherwise we're then assuming that people/government are so myopic that I'm going to have to expect it with some level of skepticism.

Another issue I raise is going down to the very basics, is that human beings could be described as always making some level of consequentialist decision making. To elaborate, I fully expect that the feeling of moving my arm to type these words now will send an electrical impulse to my arm muscles, so that I can type these words on my keyboard, making it de facto a consequentialist type of action.

Meaning that we need some way of delimiting things here. Is for example it based upon what you know, what you can see? Which seems to be what you're getting that, the problem in this case is that the US government would be able to see the civilian casualties of Iraq occurring, unless we assume an absurd measure of incompetence to them...not that I think the Bush Administration was competent by any means, but they would've known people were going to get killed in the war.

[Bedlam]

Does the US not have that tradition of improvement? There used to be slavery and genocidal westward expansion. Now not so much. Jefferson kept slaves, and eventually someone freed them. The US grew despite its ugly origins and originators.

I'm not sure if those stopped due to some moral enlightenment or rather due to more practical concerns, in the first case due to running out of west to expand to.

[Civil War Man]

Does the US not have that tradition of improvement? There used to be slavery and genocidal westward expansion. Now not so much. Jefferson kept slaves, and eventually someone freed them. The US grew despite its ugly origins and originators.

I'm not sure if those stopped due to some moral enlightenment or rather due to more practical concerns, in the first case due to running out of west to expand to.

Not quite in that regard. Yes, the country couldn't expand further west, but there are other reasons why the expansion stopped. The abolition of slavery was one, since the slave owners and slave traders were the primary political force behind America's aggressive expansion in the early to mid 19th century. By all accounts, had the Civil War never happened, Manifest Destiny would have turned its gaze south, to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Many Southern gentry were openly agitating for the annexation of Cuba prior to the Civil War, and some even expressed their desire to turn the entire Caribbean and all land touching it into the center of slave power in the world.

It's also worth noting that expansion didn't immediately stop, but merely slowed. Hawaii and Alaska are the only states whose lands were taken over by the US after the Civil War, but by focusing on the territories that became states, you ignore the places that came under American control when the country started to flex its muscles as an Imperial power in the late 19th and early 20th, places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, Samoa, and the Philippines.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

And China.

[The Romulan Republic]

Just a reminder to everyone:

Rallies are being held tomorrow in many places to protest Trump's immigration policy, under the name Families Belong Together.

If a rally is being held in your city or town, please consider taking a couple of hours out of your schedule to attend if possible.

[Nicholas]

https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-ri ... egal-drama

Inside the Family Separation Legal Drama
By Stacy Sullivan, Deputy Director of Editorial and Strategic Communications, ACLU
July 16, 2018 | 6:00 PM



The federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to reunite the nearly 3,000 children it separated from their parents has temporarily blocked the government from deporting any of the families it reunites until at least July 23.

The ACLU had requested the temporary restraining order due to concerns that families may have been coerced into agreeing to voluntarily return to countries where they may be in danger because they believed that was the only way they could get their children back. We wanted to make sure that parents would have time to consider their options and be fully informed of their rights before making their decision.

The ruling came after a rollercoaster few days in which Judge Dana Sabraw both praised the administration for its good faith and compliance with court orders, then lambasted it for fundamentally misunderstanding what it was being asked to do.

On Friday, July 13, when Judge Dana Sabraw held a status conference on the government’s efforts to reunite the children by the July 26 deadline, he seemed pleased with the progress.

“There is substantial compliance,” Judge Sabraw said. “There is good faith being demonstrated, in no uncertain terms and measures, by the government. There is a collaborative process that is well underway.”

But when the hearing ended, and the government submitted its written brief on progress, Judge Sabraw was furious. He said the government appeared to have a “fundamental miscomprehension” of what it was being asked to do and demanded that an official with “decision making authority” from the Department of Health and Human Services appear in his courtroom on Monday morning.

The government brief included a declaration by Christopher Meekins, deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the HHS, which argued that by ordering the agency to adopt a streamlined process for verifying parentage, the court was endangering children.

“While I am fully committed to complying with this Court’s order, I do not believe that the placing of children into such situations is consistent with the mission of HHS or my core values,” Meekin said.

At issue is this: The Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency that has custody of the children separated from their parents, normally has custody of children who crossed the border without their parents. Those children are held in ORR custody until that agency finds a suitable sponsor for them in the United States. Sometimes that sponsor is a parent, who is already in the U.S., or another relative or a friend.

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In those circumstances, ORR conducts time-consuming vetting processes that include criminal background checks of the sponsor and every other adult living in the household as well as finger printing, possible DNA tests, and home visits.

Judge Sabraw made it clear to the agency that this process was created for sponsors who were applying to get custody of an unaccompanied minor, but that a more streamlined process was required for children who were forcibly taken away from their parents. The government simply needed to determine if the parent was really the parent, and whether or not the parent had a criminal history or something else that might jeopardize the child’s welfare. He said that where there any doubts as to parentage, the government should conduct DNA tests.

But in his declaration, Meekins alleged that by streamlining the process, the court was forcing the government to relinquish important security procedures that could result in a child being put into a dangerous situation. He also indicated that the agency was no longer doing DNA tests and was being forced to reunify children with parents before parentage could be confirmed.

“It is clear from Mr. Meekins’s Declaration that HHS either does not understand the Court’s orders or is acting in defiance of them,” Judge Sabraw said. He added that Meekins appeared to be providing cover for the government’s “lack of foresight and infrastructure necessary to remedy the harms” caused by separating families and that HHS appeared to be “operating in a vacuum, entirely divorced from the undisputed circumstances of this case.” Judge Sabraw then ordered the government to submit its plan for reunifying the children with their parents, which the government did on Sunday.

When court resumed on Monday morning, Jonathan White, the deputy director for HHS’s Office of Human Services Emergency Preparedness and Response, was in the California courtroom to answer questions.

By then, the government had submitted a plan for family reunification to the court, which addressed many of Judge Sabraw’s concerns.

Judge Sabraw said he was pleased with the plan, which he said, “does all of the things that I thought the court had made clear from day one.” White assured the court that reunifications were already under way, stressing that the government was working to reunify all of the children quickly and safely.

After providing considerable detail on the numbers of children and their parents, and assuring the court that that the government would work to provide as much notice as possible before reunification so that non-governmental organizations could be present to provide for the families’ needs, Judge Sabraw appeared to wind up exactly where he started on Friday morning -- satisfied that the parties were working together to reunite as many children with their parents as quickly as possible.

The next status conference is scheduled for July 20. Strap in.

Just a reminder that this is far from over and Trump can bring it back to the front page whenever he wants by saying nasty things about the judges or refusing to obey their orders.

Also I am undecided regarding if the family separation policy is wanton cruelty driven by stupidity and racism or calculated cruelty driven by Machiavellian political genius.

I'm seriously considering the latter because it looks to me like the results of the family separation policy (and the slightly preceding announcement about the missing unaccompanied minors) have mostly benefited Trump. As a result of these actions:

• We seem to have a national consensus that the government should keep close track of all minors who try to enter against US law until they are granted legal status or deported.
• The policy of holding all adults caught at the boarder or in the US illegally until they can be deported or receive legal status has been accepted by the general public.
• Trump's base which has been decrying "catch and release" immigration enforcement for decades has been motivated to vote this fall.
• Democrats have been drawn into taking radical positions on immigration which they are not willing to defend when questioned.
• Trump has staked out such an extreme position on immigration enforcement, by using the separation of families as a deterrent,that he can back down without angering his base. meaning he can look moderate while still radically altering US policy.
• He has created a situation where he might be able to make this fall's election about whether or not US immigration law should be enforced. That is a question on which he can win the election.

The only downside I see for him to date is that he has angered and motivated the Democrats base as well but they were already angry and motivated so that isn't much of a loss for him.

What do you all think?

Nicholas

[The Romulan Republic]

Why can't it be both?

Trump is a racist, in the service of racists. He is also genuinely good at exactly one thing: conning people.

It is up to those of us who know better to keep calling out his lies.