A Republican Argument for Camps

[Phoebe]

Since at this point my relations with Trump lovers have devolved to "not speaking ever again, good riddance" or "not speaking about anything remotely political because I hope you can still recover your senses and we don't want our kids estranged from yours forever" or "you actually have Alzheimers so we will glide past this somehow", I usually only hear the usual batshit from the Trump lovers in my life (their illegal parents shouldn't have brought them, so if they die that's all on them / Obama was totally weak and ineffective and Trump kissing dictator ass is the new kind of effective power we needed! / the libruls love to mass murder the unborn because Satan and gay marriage / ha ha today is a rainy 74 degrees in summer with a foot of hail, where's your global warming now idiot?) and then ignore without asking any further questions. As a result, I only hear such rational conservative argument as is presented by a few national or media figures who bother to try justifying what is going on.

But now I have at last heard a "rational" GOP voter try to mount an argument in favor of child immigrant detention camps, because he deeply believes in the inherent goodness of the US and so we must be totally good/right even in this way. The argument first goes (as always), thanks, Obama! He started it, Trump is just continuing it. Since we are dealing with a rational person here, presentation of Actual Facts gets us past this evergreen reaction to our Black president who is so intensely disliked for reasons that clearly have nothing to do with his being Black, because Republican dude clearly has not a racist bone in his body! Sure, ok. Once we get past the Obama thing, the next argument is that most children don't come with their parents, but with traffickers who want to exploit them in a variety of ways, so the only safe and humane thing to do is separate the children from parents and then sort it all out later. Any failure to separate the children from the parents that occurred before the Trump administration is thus recast as a policy failure, rather than a normal, lawful, or decent way of dealing with people. Attempting to enter the country is also viewed as an automatic felony under any circumstances whatsoever; the only way people should be allowed to enter is by waiting in line somewhere else and then being chosen. Coming here to a customs entry point to declare asylum should be impossible and persons who unwittingly attempt it under international law should automatically be charged as felons and never able to enter again.

The only question about what to do with the children, then, is to determine whether they need to be separated from traffickers or whether they need to be sent home with their automatically illegal parents. And if this takes a month or five spent crammed into a holding cell, an abandoned Walmart, or a tent in the desert, that's okay, because the system is overwhelmed by this mass invasion of people and what can you do? In fact, the Republicans who voted more funding for this are the only righteous ones, and the Democrats who wanted to tie funding to assurances of basic standards of treatment being met are the immoral ones who would have cheerfully let these kids suffer even worse. The children in the tent camps are far better off than they would have been during the migration process or in the hands of traffickers. As long as we are providing for their basic needs - and any assertions to the contrary are clearly lies motivated by the always-lying liberals, because even rational Republicans are sure that the liberals are always lying about this stuff just to make Trump look bad, because he is unfairly persecuted - these kids should be extremely grateful for our help, and if we make it too nice in the camps by allowing them to play soccer or have educations, everybody's going to want to come here and live in a tent camp and we can't have that.

So, that's the state of play - that's where the mind of an otherwise reasonable Republican person is at. I take some solace in the weak chinks in this armor: at some level of extremity they are still persuadable by facts and evidence, they don't want to hurt kids so will go through any gymnastic to assure themselves this ain't happening or that others are to blame for it, and they are DEFINITELY not racist. If this group realizes that we really are illegally harming innocent kids and the people doing it have explicitly racist motives, hopefully they will reach a point of discomfort where they are moved. That's all I have.

[Kyle]

I disagree with your original premise that this is a rational GOP voter.

[mimekiller]

The bad faith argument that makes me scratch my head is republicans pointing out(correctly) that Obama started all this(google is your friend). But its presented like Well that OBAMA is a bad man for starting it but Trump is a saint for continuing it. huh?

[Kyle]

[Mike]

But it's more than just my-guy-good/your-guy-bad. It's also the constant "both sides" talk that acts as if these are equivalent. But they are qualitatively different.

Yes, the Obama administration began the policy of family detention which is gross in its own way. Obama's administration jacked up deportation rates and did some very bad things, but children were only separated from parents when there was good reason to believe the children were in danger.

Trump's administration instituted family separation as a policy with the specific stated intent of using the threat to children as a deterrent to keep people away. That's monstrous on a completely different level.

Both policies are terrible, IMO, but one is worse. And even if they WERE equivalent, people need to stop acting like their opposition's atrocities somehow justify their own.

[Bonefish]

Fucking reform immigration. Close down the goddamned camps. Grant amnesty to those who are not violent criminals.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[Kyle]

[mimekiller]

ok "started" is a gross simplification, I will admit that, but just going by the numbers(at the time) taking deportation rates in record numbers, on camera, statements like this. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-w ... d=24320063 It certainly seems that Trump is the natural evolution to a lot of things that were in progress.

and I think the rich Texas Oil man cartoon that Pheobs knows kind of speaks to a overall mindset a voters have from minorities to Christians who hate abortion in that 'I kind of know that they dont care about me but at least they PRETEND to care about me so I guess its the best I got"

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

Obama's policies were bad, Trump's are worse. Ok, that's settled. So what do we do about it?

Unless you change the status of these undocumented people, they will remain an exploited underclass whose safety and wellbeing relies on us ignoring their existence. That seems less than ideal.

[Kyle]

[Bonefish]

[Kyle]

[Bonefish]

So its perfectly valid then, for me to discount your opinion since you dont labor in the sun?

Nah, that would be ridiculous. I wouldnt just discount your opinion because you lucked out on the draw of life. Thats the way the cookie crumbles, and im sure you have trials and tribulations of your own, right?

[Kyle]

[Phoebe]

Allow me to explain why I do consider these people rational and worth listening to - apart from the obvious fact that it's good to get out of your own echo chamber from time to time, and these people help me get out of mine. The most rational Republican I know, my relative, the stock trader, started from nothing and completely built his own company from the ground up. He is in fact that job creator and "maker" type you will hear conservative talk about, so I would take issue with the idea that he hasn't contributed anything. He contributes more than most of us, tangibly. His childhood circumstances were also by far worse than most people's. Not only was nothing handed to him, but he has had to overcome many bad personal things. So when he reflects on life he thinks that everybody can bootstrap it up just like he did, and he is totally committing to raising his own child with the highest standards of value, the best education, and so forth. He has a fairly cynical view compared to most Republicans, but he's also wise and I learn from him even though his politics are very different from my own.

I tend to look on people who live in the opposite manner and think, okay, 1000 factors were working against them, and I'm not particularly concerned that they didn't beat the odds as well as another person did. We're going to live in society with all these people no matter what, so it helps everyone if we can make conditions as good as possible, especially for children. Punishing people for their poverty seems like really stupid social policy to me, even if we didn't have much basic compassion for others. Meanwhile, as a society we are very quick to ignore the incessant free-riding that goes on at the top, and the way things are set up to be easier for some people than for others. So I don't care to judge people by how they have fared in this system, but I get that another person who had to scratch their way up from nothing might look upon this in a different way and expect more from other people, and feel more entitled to his own gains.

The person who gave me the argument about immigration is not this guy, but another pretty rational Republican. His position is basically that child detention would be wrong if it were hurting the kids, but he is convinced that we're not hurting the kids and that what we're doing is saving these kids from a much worse fate. There's an awful lot of false dilemma going on in his reasoning, but at least his moral compass is working in some fashion, so I am willing to listen and I think he's persuadable. The problem is there's so much mistrust and misinformation right now - I honestly think most Republicans have become so distrustful of factual information sources that they are lost in the wilderness of their own propaganda. It's not clear how a person like this can be brought to any other view, because they don't believe any of the things you think are true about the situation, and they think all of your sources of information are liars or biased or whatever. This is the scariest thing about the situation, to me, because even if Trump isn't re-elected or there is a change, the fundamental underlying problem isn't going anywhere. A good third of the population is way off the reality rails and I don't know how to get them back.

[mimekiller]

Also I think a lot of it can be summed up by that WOMP WOMP interview made famous by this

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/19/politics ... index.html


the notion that LIBERALS are crying and trying to manipulate people with these sad stories in hopes of using emotions to changes peoples mind are just met with loud and clear FUCK YOU from these types.

I dont believe that but I'm trying to speak to the mindset that you're talking about

[Phoebe]

I see what you are saying, but would say these are the really morally depraved, irrational ones. It may not seem like much of a difference in practice, but I distinguish people who have compassion for other humans and are confused about what is possible or practical as a solution, from those who truly do not give a shit about anyone else, including their own mortal souls (substitute any secular version of soul you like here, such as being able to live with your own terrible self in any capacity). If nothing else, I think the ones with compassion can be moved in two ways - to say "this is too far" once in a while, and to realize that they have been presented with false choices and other options are readily available if only the political will were present. Like, what else can we do but kidnap and imprison innocent kids, and then abuse them? What else? Can't think of anything? Jesus!