Trump

[FlameBlade]

Homework: look at all agreements made since 1990s. Count how many times North Korea broke them.

Nothing made by Kim and Trump will hold without heavy legwork involved.

[buckett]

Here's the mural at Trump's child immigrant prison down in Brownsville. Love to commit human rights violations.

[Tahlvin]

And now the NY AG is going after Trump & brood for their Foundation's dirty dealings.

[Phoebe]

I feel like we've hit a new low. Or maybe it's just me.

[bralbovsky]

I feel like there's finally a real reaction to it. Departing republicans think it's so far gone they can't hurt it with their candor. Manafort, whom I predict will never "cooperate" because the FBI does not kill your wife and children, is finally incarcerated. The FBI spoke up for itself, if politely. The numerous court proceedings are grinding their painful way through the system, which, thankfully perhaps, is so disaggregated that it's hard to destroy quickly.

[Phoebe]

I wonder to what extent his adult children and wife are liable if they participated in covering up his money trail, signed joint tax returns knowing they were false, and so on. I read an article about him a while back that made it very clear his family eventually figured out exactly what was going on.

[Phoebe]

I'm shocked not that the Republicans are defending Trump's immoral border policy, but that they are comfortable with and completely conditioned into outright lying about it. So not only do we steal children, but we lie about it. November or bust, you know? Demographics are on the side of a pendulum swing, but it takes time we may not have. I believe 100% that if things continue this way, ICE is going to start killing far more immigrants with zero accountability. We won't know until after it's happening, because we're ignoring it as it happens on a smaller scale right now. History tells us once this starts, it doesn't spontaneously improve, because a lot of preconditions have been laid to get here. The fact that we're now illegally searching for immigrants who are trying to LEAVE via the northern border should be a giant flashing neon of what's actually happening under our white nationalist government. We are building Arpaio-style tents for kids, and it's not because people feel the duty to care for them someplace safe, but because we think these innocent kids, infants on up, should be jailed. It's because our President thinks they are animals and says so, and we twist in knots trying to pretend he didn't really, that this admirer of dictators isn't really exactly who he says he is, and that this nightmare isn't unfolding right here, right now. People are like, but Obama detained kids too! As if that's a counterargument.

[FlameBlade]

Whataboutism.

[Phoebe]

I know there are some people who don't care, but I have to believe there are more who don't think what's happening is that serious yet, or don't think it's ever going to rise to that level. I really hope I'm wrong and they're right!

[poorpete]

Torture was sanctioned in the post-911 panic. They tortured terrorists. They tortured the innocent. Now our government is sanctioning a new torture, but there was no panic. The tortured are parents. The tortured are children.

[Bonefish]

Rapheal Lemkin's work on compiling Nazi documents relating to the holocaust was instrumental during the Nuremberg trials for showing that the genocide was not merely the act of a few deranged leaders, or that the people actively involved in it did not know what was being done with the prisoners, that they were only "following orders". His painstaking work during the war showed that it was an institutional, systematic act.

Sadly, very few people have reached that conclusion with US immigration policy. It's deeply and profoundly broken, and it is causing massive trauma to not just immigrants and their families, but to the nation as a whole. I mean, it's 2018 and people are outraged about pictures of children in what are effectively dog kennels, deplorable conditions in camps that are described as concentration camps. HOW CAN TRUMP DO THIS?! Well, hell, I dunno, because one of the most viral images around right now is from 2014, but it's credited to trump. Who was president in 2014? like, I just can't put my finger on it.

But these immigration issues continue back to Bush Jr, and to Clinton. We have had a serious problem with illegal immigration for 20 years, and now, now it's a hot topic. Why have so many of the morally outraged folks, including a lot of you guys on this page, now gasping and clutching their pearls? Deplorable and horrible conditions have been widely documented for half a decade, systematic actions of our government, no matter if it's Republican or Democrat. And now, it's all outrageous! We "lost 1500 kids"! is the modern wailing and gnashing of teeth. Yes, we did "lose", because our immigration law has been fundamentally broken since the 90s, and we've done nothing to fix it. But they were not "ripped from their parents arms".

Speaking of "ripped from parents arms", when you break the law and are arrested, do you think they cops let you take little Johnny to jail with you? No, they remove him from your custody and place him into protective custody. Generally that means the other parent, or a close relative, or, as a last resort, some form of government or private care. That's not "ripping them out of their parents arms", that's just how the fucking law works. But, hey, back to 1500 lost kids? Those were unaccompanied minors in the first place, not kids ripped from their parents.

Is trump's approach reactionary, authoritarian and heavy handed? Fuck yeah it is. But given the utter wilderness of our immigration law, this was to be expected. And the "compassionate" side that allows human trafficking and the exploitation of undocumented laborers? That shit's pretty fucking horrible too. I mean, you know there are girls from gautamala here who are forced into sexual servitude? There's kids from Salvedore who have to work, or MS13 will fuck them up? Or fuck up their family back home? Again, this is the result of almost three decades of inability by democrats and republicans to find a way to fix our very broken immigration system. But it was largely ignored by everybody, and... well, now we are here.

We've sown the wind, now we're reaping the whirlwind.

So where do we go from here? How do we fix immigration, so we can stop this shit, finally?

[Phoebe]

It's not hard, they can just decide to stop taking the kids away from their parents. It's pretty damn simple.

Conflating what is happening right now with what happened in years past, and trying to tag Obama with it, and trying to pretend that people didn't care before or weren't outraged - all of that is disingenuous and false deflection. We don't have to solve the whole ball of wax to change this policy of family separation and criminal prosecution even of legal asylum-seekers. To suggest we do is a lie and it's definitely what Trump and his people want us to think, all the way down to "democrats caused this". Baloney.

[poorpete]

Agreed.

I've been on record saying that the Dems were cynical in helping kill Bush's immigration reform in 2007, though in the details, you see McCain, Hillary, and Obama all supported the legislation. Reid could have pushed his caucus to support it, but handing the unpopular W another defeat was more important. You could hear how big the loss was in this article
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... 3820070629
Obama wanted legislation, but after the midterms in 2010, it was a non-starter, so he went on alone to do the Dreamers and deferred action, and the GOP sued him.

But yes, agreed, this is "reactionary, authoritarian and heavy handed". Fuck Trump.

[bralbovsky]

False equivalency is largely to blame. Often this is purposeful and strategic, and it makes issues we might otherwise agree about impossible to reconcile.

Instead of a few cockroach sightings, which we all agree are bad and should not be ignored, we have a Joe's Apartment of the corrupt and racist and intentionally ignorant making important policy changes. Everything from drone attacks to deportations have increased manyfold, while things we might consider positive, like mentioning human rights at international get togethers, gone.

[FlameBlade]

Dems is partially to blame. Was there any GOP noise back then? But saying that dems is at fault, then doing nothing to fix is something else.

[Bonefish]

We HAVE to reform Immigration. Because if we don't fix the goddamned law, then the goddamned at risk people will always be held ransom to the vagaries of the Chief Executive choosing to either ignore the problem(which abet's the exploitation of brown people, human trafficking, and the erosion of labor rights for all people) or to handle it how they see fit. And given that we're not exactly putting our best people up for election, and the horrible things that multiple people on all sides have done, I think relying on the good will of the Chief executive is fucking ridiculous.

Democrats didn't cause this. Republicans didn't cause this. WE, YOU AND I, ALL OF US, are guilty and implicated in the callous abuse of immigrants for going on about 30 some damn years. You can blame Trumpkin if it makes you sleep better at night, or you can blame the Democrats, or you can blame the moon. I don't give a fuck.

I want to see change. Stop putting off something of tremendous import to the future of our country. Stop kicking the can down the road and blaming the otherside. It's a big ole shit sandwich, so it's best not to nibble. Take a big bite, gulp it down, pass it to the next person. We're all pretty much guilty by this point.

Tell your congress critters what you want. And if they won't run on it. Fuck'em. I dunno. But this has to be fixed.

[FlameBlade]

That, I agree with you.

[Phoebe]

No, actually, I'm not guilty of anything to do with our many years of screwed up immigration policies, not even one little bit. Trying to solve pieces of a big problem is not "kicking the can down the road", either. It's the way you solve most big problems. I'm not pissed about the latest stuff in the news because it's Trump or because it just suddenly came to my attention for the first time; I'm pissed about it because it's indecent, going from bad to way worse recently, and maybe with public attention there's finally a chance to move the needle away from full-on human rights violations. Or maybe not, but maybe then people running for office will have to be responsive to this issue.

[bralbovsky]

I understand we don't want to be held responsible for sending a parent back into likely peril and poverty without the child he/she brought. Ok, that's just negligent and bureaucratic malpractice. That specific thing is not your fault. That belongs to president bonespurs and his posse of traitorous weasels. BUT overall, I have to agree in shared culpability, so your kids aren't responsible, until they start choosing which vegetables to buy.

We refuse to admit that we need people to come in. We refuse to treat them humanely when we deign to let them come in. If it's not us, specifically choosing to treat them a certain way, we support the businesses that make those choices. Nobody after Dorothea Lange and Cesar Chavez can claim they haven't been told the real cost of food.

Having said that, if it weren't hard enough, we have agribusiness and the now global citizens united crowd who purposefully and systematically attempt to overwhelm and silence the voices of regular folks, folks who might actually do the decent thing, or elect a decent person, were that a choice. Ok, so that makes it harder. Lecture your congressman (ok, so that wasn't particularly effective; now he runs away when he sees me), spend time or money getting good people to run. Run. Ya, I know, Bernie's had the same message for decades - what's his progress been like? Doesn't matter.
"...what real courage is... It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through."

Meanwhile, shop local; be more careful where you send your money.
Tell people who think it's ok because 'they're not us, they're (according to DHS 6/18/18) "alien children," how fucking disgusting and unchristian they are, and stand there until they know enough to be embarrassed. (maybe buy something to have around that'll take out a weasel, because they're greedy mofos, and unlikely to give up without a fight.)

[Phoebe]

I understand where you are coming from, and the reason I resist the "blame everyone" mentality going around with this latest wave of publicity over child separation is that it's the weapon of choice for those who want either to have harsher immigration policies, or who think we can't solve any of it unless we solve it all (unrealistic), or to pretend Trump isn't doing something new or worse. When we get into blaming everyone who buys a cheaper orange (which is related to global trade practices as much as to particular immigration policies or enforcement choices), then the people who really do bear the blame for supporting human rights violations can deflect that blame onto a general mush of "it's all screwed up anyway, so let's throw up our hands and keep electing people like Trump!"

Maybe we should be consistent with our enforcement policies. So if you're going to rip away the children of people presenting themselves legally for asylum, then you had better be ripping away the kids of people who hired a roofing contractor, or gardener, or nanny, or maid, who didn't have proper papers and for whom they didn't pay employment taxes. There is a whole economy built around these services and I guarantee you almost no one is following the law. Well, why should they have the benefit of skating by ignored, or with slap-on-the-wrist civil penalties? If you're a lawbreaker who pays your lawn guy in cash and doesn't ensure he's legal to work in the U.S., then your kids probably should be sent to a tent in El Paso. Right? Isn't that what we're saying?