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The USA Politics Thread

#6941 User is offline   Gorefest 

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 03:48 PM

View PostCause, on 20 June 2018 - 02:45 PM, said:

I would say calling them Nazis is still hyperbole. They are not killing their own citizens or planning to invade mexico, kill all the Mexicans and make space for more Americans.


Yet.
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#6942 User is offline   QuickTidal 

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 04:25 PM

Add to the Nazi similarities...the forcible injection of drugs to sedate the kids...

Holy gods, what are we watching? This is evil. Plain and simple.
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#6943 User is offline   Aptorian 

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 05:29 PM

But, again, if the only people you believe are capable of such an act, you forget the wests shared history of atrocities.

I don't think there's a single country, be they European or American or Canadian that has not done fucked up shit to the poor, the minorities and even the kids. You should hear the shit Denmark did to children on Greenland.

Stop equating our inate ability to be cruel, with Nazis. This isn't a black and white thing. This is the underbelly of our civilization.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 20 June 2018 - 05:30 PM

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#6944 User is offline   QuickTidal 

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 06:23 PM

Nice Whataboutism Apt. Can we not comment and compare what's happening to one awful group of people, without needing to comment on them all?

Like yes, there are plenty examples of all countries being awful (what's happening now in the States is reminiscent of Residential Schools in Canada), but this currently lines up well with Nazi's and that's an easy one to use as a yardstick, so I'm going with that. I don't feel like I should need to list out all the atrocities all the regimes of the world have done to make a comparison...
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#6945 User is offline   Aptorian 

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 07:03 PM

I point it out because you are continuing the erosion of civil discourse that has led us to this point.

Nazis is the go to bogeyman, it is the evil we blame when we can't believe humanity is capable of such an act. It is like invoking the name of the devil. It is another absolute. An invocation of them vs us. Where there is no understanding, no common ground.

Saying somebody is a Nazi is putting them within a nice definable box, where you strip the other side of any humanizing characteristic and simply label them as the enemy.

When you speak of Nazis you make any further discourse impossible. And maybe that is pertinent. Maybe this child snatching thing should be a line in the sand but you are closing a lot of doors if this the rhetoric you are set upon.
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#6946 User is offline   Malankazooie 

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 07:16 PM

^^^^This.
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#6947 User is offline   Primateus 

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 07:23 PM

I actually have to agree with Apt here. Remember the basket of deplorables? That wasn't meant as something you should want to belong in, but suddenly people started calling themselves proudly deplorable.

Keep calling people something, they're either going to react, or worse, lean in!
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#6948 User is offline   Macros 

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 07:28 PM

I kind of agree with what Apt is saying.
and I see where QT is coming from by using Nazi as an easily identifiable label that everyone will instantly understand.

I side with neither, but am just playing devils advocate.

I think Apts view is right in that Humanity taken as a whole is fucking awful when you look through our history. every nation has shame and darkness in its past.
To simply label people "nazis" when something new an awful happens I think diminishes the acts they are perpretarting (hear me out) because of the Hyperbole associated with the term. People throw the nazi term around a lot, and its used jokingly as well (grammar nazi etc) so labeling a group of politicians as Nazis gives their supporters an easy mindset of its just "libfags" (or whatever the terminology is) are being over dramatic labelling everyone a Nazi, ergo it must be over blown lies or whatever.
If the opponents of these actions (decent humans) just simply took the actions as they stand, detail them and beg the question, what kind of assholes permit, enable and, well actively encourage (by not using their power to stop) these kinds of acts and label them as absolute the absolute cuntsticks they are they might gain more traction.
again hear me out
People hear nazis and immediately think WW2, the Genocide. Not everyone is as remotely well educated on history as most members here seem to be, and know nothing of the Nazi rise to power and what they did in the 30s. so when you cry Nazi, people (who don't know) will label you a sensationalist, they aren't gassing people or starting wars, etc etc. So yes, Nazi is a term everyone recognises as evil fuckers, but it will mean different things to different people, so if their knowledge of Nazis is just WW2 and Auschwitz they (if they are fox news) can spin it as an over reaction bla bla bla.


HOWEVER

we, as people who do have some kind of a grasp on Modern history, know that what is happening now is not overly dissimilar to what happened in 30's Germany, and have to wonder what the next step will be. and as such the Nazi tag (given the Repubs seeming embracing of WS beliefs as well) can seem appropriate, if inaccurate in the finer details. It serves a purpose of underlining how bad what is happening is, by giving us a simple connection to compare to. Everyone knows enough Modern History to know the Nazis.



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#6949 User is offline   worry 

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Posted 20 June 2018 - 08:45 PM

Cry me a river. People reacted to the "basket of deplorables" comment that way because 1) a Democrat said it, 2) Hilary Clinton in particular said it. It was fake outrage then and it's fake outrage now.

"Civil discourse" makes a mockery of the truth. Real political correctness isn't calling people by the pronouns they prefer or providing trigger warnings to people with PTSD. It's the press not identifying U.S. Representative and actual neo-Nazi Steve King as a neo-Nazi whenever he's in the news. It's what gave us the notion that fiscal responsibility means absolutely gutting the social safety net and increasing the defense budget by billions every year, and thus the natural sphere of Republicans. Paul Ryan, who wants to do it the most, must be the most fiscally responsible person in the country, and not a ghoul who would starve every child and elder in the country if it meant a pat on the head from his donors.
As QT says, the Nazis were Nazis before the death camps. Before the wars of aggression. They were Nazis when they were ghettoizing people, passing laws to distinguish one group from another. They were Nazis when they were publishing tracts and cartoons. They were Nazis when they were organizing a party, when they were complaining about infestations of foreign or filthy human vermin, and when they called the opposition traitors to the country. They were Nazis in 1940, Nazis in 1930, Nazis in 1920. And in that light, collaborators were collaborators.
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#6950 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 07:58 AM

Is it necessarily hyperbole if their actions match those of 70-80 years ago? If it smells like poop and it looks like poop, it's probably poop.
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#6951 User is offline   Macros 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 08:08 AM

To bring us back towards topic.

There's a motion being put to the house today after some kind of executive order by trump?
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#6952 User is offline   Primateus 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 08:51 AM

View PostMacros, on 21 June 2018 - 08:08 AM, said:

To bring us back towards topic.

There's a motion being put to the house today after some kind of executive order by trump?


Dunno, but as I understand it, Trump's executive order would probably be in violation of the 1997 Flores agreement which states that children cannot be detained for more than twenty days. So a court would probably overturn the executive order. I'm not sure, but I believe something similar happened with Obama? Led by House Democrats I'm told.
Anyhoo, am I paranoid here? Because if this is true, that'd allow Trump to go out and say "Hey, I totally wanted to end the family separation program, bigly time, but the courts won't let me, so now I have to continue taking kids away from their parents! Also, Hillary is crooked and my election was the bigliest ever!"
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#6953 User is offline   worry 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 08:53 AM

Kinda sorta not really. As far as I've read, it's another poison pill bill meant to use the DACA/Dreamer kids as bait to cut huge chunks out of other avenues of legal immigration and also putting billions of $ towards THE WALL. Not to paint with too broad a brush, but DACA activists have repeatedly said they don't want their 'victory' to come at the expense of everyone else. ^^^ That one is kind of the compromise between the GOP's right wing and its moderates (I'll leave it to you to decide what a moderate GOPer in 2018 looks like). It does have a fix to the family separation issue grafted onto it within the past few days.


It's considered a compromise bill because there was also another just-hardliner immigration bill being floated around last week too, IIRC.


As far as I know, there isn't a pure family-separation-fix bill in the House, though there is one in the Senate as I mentioned a page or two ago.

And it's worth defining that the president's executive order today superficially ended the policy of family separation by imprisoning families together indefinitely (including asylum seekers), but it's also meant to destroy a specific legal precedent called the Flores Settlement, which regulates how the government treats incarcerated immigrant children, and that immigration hardliners have wanted to torpedo for a couple decades now.
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#6954 User is offline   worry 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 08:56 AM

View PostPrimateus, on 21 June 2018 - 08:51 AM, said:

Dunno, but as I understand it, Trump's executive order would probably be in violation of the 1997 Flores agreement which states that children cannot be detained for more than twenty days. So a court would probably overturn the executive order. I'm not sure, but I believe something similar happened with Obama? Led by House Democrats I'm told.
Anyhoo, am I paranoid here? Because if this is true, that'd allow Trump to go out and say "Hey, I totally wanted to end the family separation program, bigly time, but the courts won't let me, so now I have to continue taking kids away from their parents! Also, Hillary is crooked and my election was the bigliest ever!"


Ah, you beat me!
You're not being paranoid, but it's already one of the excuses he was trying to use before today, so I don't think it'll convince anyone who didn't already agree with him.
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#6955 User is offline   Macros 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 09:19 AM

Oh my thats depressing.

Is there a proviso for how trump's gonna build the wall without cheap foreign labour. Maybe the illegal immigrants can work for their freedom!
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#6956 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 09:58 AM

View PostMacros, on 21 June 2018 - 09:19 AM, said:

Oh my thats depressing.

Is there a proviso for how trump's gonna build the wall without cheap foreign labour. Maybe the illegal immigrants can work for their freedom!


Good god, I know we're supposed to be getting away from the Nazi theme, but I can't be the only person who read that last sentence and thought "Arbeit macht frei" somewhat reflexively.

And no, Primaetus, that's not paranoid. It's depressing that we've all gotten that used to how the idiot works, but certainly not paranoid.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 21 June 2018 - 09:58 AM

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#6957 User is offline   Garak 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 11:14 AM

*shudder* Ok that idea with the immigrants building the wall is scary. Also if that is ever done, it's just a step away from putting the kids to work.
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#6958 User is offline   Macros 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 12:12 PM

It was a jest, albiet quite a dark one (similar to my land bridge to Poland)
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#6959 User is offline   TheRetiredBridgeburner 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 12:16 PM

I assumed it was, to be fair - the reference just sprung into my head anyway. Really it's just a sad indictment of the situation that something said in jest isn't so wildly farfetched as we might wish!
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#6960 User is offline   Primateus 

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Posted 21 June 2018 - 01:00 PM

But at least Trump is a classy guy!
Screw you all, and have a nice day!

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