[Politics] Trump and Concentration Camps

[Satinavian]

'But Europe is more left-wing than the US'. Fine, no country has socialism. Still proves my point that this BS argument of 'When has Socialism ever worked' is well, bullshit. No country has ever actually truly tried to give a fuck about its people, and that needs to change.

Europe is more left-wing than the US.

But Europe also is a huge number of nations, most with their own language limiting cross-border cultural influences, each also with theirr own history, own laws and own politics. Generalisations are dangerous.

Of all Scandinavic countries, Denmark has a reputation of being somewhat xenophobic and is certainly the least friendly towards refugees.

But that doesn't mean they are not left wing. Just the opposite, their mainstream leftwing parties are stronger than in most other European countries. But they kind of get keeping majorities by not fighting xenophobic tendencies in the population. They kind of throw refugees under the bus, xenophobes are happy enough to elect them and in turn they can implement other social politics making the life for Danish citicens more fair and equal.

 

[Saelune]

'But Europe is more left-wing than the US'. Fine, no country has socialism. Still proves my point that this BS argument of 'When has Socialism ever worked' is well, bullshit. No country has ever actually truly tried to give a fuck about its people, and that needs to change.

Europe is more left-wing than the US.

But Europe also is a huge number of nations, most with their own language limiting cross-border cultural influences, each also with theirr own history, own laws and own politics. Generalisations are dangerous.

Of all Scandinavic countries, Denmark has a reputation of being somewhat xenophobic and is certainly the least friendly towards refugees.

But that doesn't mean they are not left wing. Just the opposite, their mainstream leftwing parties are stronger than in most other European countries. But they kind of get keeping majorities by not fighting xenophobic tendencies in the population. They kind of throw refugees under the bus, xenophobes are happy enough to elect them and in turn they can implement other social politics making the life for Danish citicens more fair and equal.

Pretty much every country is super bigoted. There are no left-wing countries.

 

[Satinavian]

Pretty much every country is super bigoted. There are no left-wing countries.

If every country is super bigoted, then none is. If no country is left-wing, then no country is right wing.

 

[Saelune]

Pretty much every country is super bigoted. There are no left-wing countries.

If every country is super bigoted, then none is. If no country is left-wing, then no country is right wing.

That is not how that works at all.

 

[Agema]

If every country is super bigoted, then none is. If no country is left-wing, then no country is right wing.

That depends on your reference points, because it's perfectly viable to set reference points that aren't dependent on every current nation.

 

[tstorm823]

Are you being serious? The administration has openly stated that the purpose of these camps is to be a deterrent. They literally DID decide to make this policy. John Kelley literally was saying this out loud when he was in charge of this and still in the administration. They were arguing that they needed to be cruel as a warning. They've said this over and over awhile back and it's like no one remembers.

It's not a lack of remembering, it's that those claims of setting them up as a deterrent were complete and total BS of the highest order. Separating adult and child detainment was determined by court order in the 90s. More separations is just the unavoidable consequence of stopping catch and release, I don't believe there is any other reason for the family separation situation. And the rate of family unit arrivals went up at the same time they were "deterring" people, so the proof is sort of in the pudding on that one.

They didn't institute family separation as a deterrent. That was a lie, a boldfaced political lie. Because (and I know this may sound ridiculous to this forum) it's politically better to say "this is all part of our plan to reduce illegal immigration" than it is to say "we are incapable of enforcing the laws on the books without making a huge mess."

The immigration laws as passed by congress (along with court orders) have given the executive branch a completely impossible task. The laws are untenable and self-conflicting, and are going to remain that way until congress fixes them. It's been like this for decades. The Obama administration's solution to this problem was to just not enforce some laws, to allow people who theoretically should be detained freely into the US while they wait for their turn in immigration court. Or DACA is a great example, those people are still in the US illegally as far as actual laws passed by Congress are concerned, DACA is deferred action. The executive branch decided to just not enforce the laws if Congress wouldn't fix them.

The Trump administration attempted to enforce all the laws as written. Apparently they didn't realize the absurdity of that attempt. So when they made a big mess, they played cover-up and tried to act like the problems they ran into were all part of the plan. They weren't part of the plan. It was basically this scene [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hNIX7V21pU].

But that incompetence isn't the root cause of the current crisis. The laws written were already unenforceable, and now we're seeing an unprecedented rise in asylum seekers. Literal caravans of people. It's not cruelty that made us unprepared for that.

 

[Satinavian]

If every country is super bigoted, then none is. If no country is left-wing, then no country is right wing.

That depends on your reference points, because it's perfectly viable to set reference points that aren't dependent on every current nation.

That was a shorthand to complain about setting referrence points in a way that the actual message becomes meaningless.

If no leftwing country exists, then "not-leftwing country" has the same information value as "country".

 

[Seanchaidh]

If every country is super bigoted, then none is. If no country is left-wing, then no country is right wing.

That depends on your reference points, because it's perfectly viable to set reference points that aren't dependent on every current nation.

That was a shorthand to complain about setting referrence points in a way that the actual message becomes meaningless.

If no leftwing country exists, then "not-leftwing country" has the same information value as "country".

No. Replace 'exists' with 'is possible' and your second sentence becomes true-- and also extinguishes the premise of your complaint.

 

[Saelune]

If every country is super bigoted, then none is. If no country is left-wing, then no country is right wing.

That depends on your reference points, because it's perfectly viable to set reference points that aren't dependent on every current nation.

That was a shorthand to complain about setting referrence points in a way that the actual message becomes meaningless.

If no leftwing country exists, then "not-leftwing country" has the same information value as "country".

'If all countries are sexist against women, then no countries are sexist against women'.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Double post, disregard.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Still sounds like you think we should not solve problems cause other problems exist.

No, I want actual solutions to problems and their underlying causes, not band-aids for the sake of opinion polling that guarantee bigger, worse problems in five to ten years' time. This is the problem with your perspective, and the American archetypal perspective in general; you're only looking at what benefits your argument and confirms your biases for the moment, as presented in the exclusive context of careful curation by American corporate media (in other words, propaganda).

If Trump's booted in 2020 for a Democratic president, do you seriously believe "KiDs In CaGeS" will be any bigger of a deal under his successor than it was under Obama? Will you be here posting 2+ new threads per day calling out the evils of that administration? I can guarantee you that shit won't go away, it'll just stop being front page and top-of-the-hour news.

Currently, we're dealing with a wave of economic and political refugees from predominantly Honduras and El Salvador. We already have a refugee wave coming from our latest shenanigans in Venezuela. Within a decade we're going to have a migrant wave that dwarfs everything that came before, due to now-irreversible effects of climate change on Central and equatorial South America. We can either keep fuckin' around, or try to fix the problem and hold the federal government accountable to fix the problem.

 

[CaitSeith]

Detention centers are not concentration camps. That's the point I care about, because claiming that they are leads to the wrong solution.

And what wrong solution would that be? These detention centers are being used as similarly as concentration camps that they are indistinguishable between each other by anything but semantics. What would be the "not wrong" solution for that?

EDIT:

But that incompetence isn't the root cause of the current crisis. The laws written were already unenforceable, and now we're seeing an unprecedented rise in asylum seekers. Literal caravans of people. It's not cruelty that made us unprepared for that.

Unless that unpreparedness was intentional, so the bad conditions served as a warning message for future immigrants.

In the R&P forum I posted a citation from an ICE agent describing the separation of families as such tactic. So I'm a little less than willing to see this as a case of incompetence over malice.

 

[tstorm823]

And what wrong solution would that be? These detention centers are being used as similarly as concentration camps that they are indistinguishable between each other by anything but semantics. What would be the "not wrong" solution for that?

The wrong solution would be taking funding away from the centers and exacerbating the problem. The wrong solution would be workers holding a walkout [https://time.com/5614072/wayfair-protest-border-detention-beds/] because they found out they were selling the beds that would keep people from sleeping on dusty floors. There's no sane world where people would think "oh, these places are tragically overwhelmed and it's hurting children, so lets refuse to give them beds." No, those people walked out because they genuinely believe facilities to house migrant children are concentration camps that shouldn't exist. Dishonest rhetoric has real consequences.

 

[Nedoras]

Are you being serious? The administration has openly stated that the purpose of these camps is to be a deterrent. They literally DID decide to make this policy. John Kelley literally was saying this out loud when he was in charge of this and still in the administration. They were arguing that they needed to be cruel as a warning. They've said this over and over awhile back and it's like no one remembers.

It's not a lack of remembering, it's that those claims of setting them up as a deterrent were complete and total BS of the highest order. Separating adult and child detainment was determined by court order in the 90s. More separations is just the unavoidable consequence of stopping catch and release, I don't believe there is any other reason for the family separation situation. And the rate of family unit arrivals went up at the same time they were "deterring" people, so the proof is sort of in the pudding on that one.

They didn't institute family separation as a deterrent. That was a lie, a boldfaced political lie. Because (and I know this may sound ridiculous to this forum) it's politically better to say "this is all part of our plan to reduce illegal immigration" than it is to say "we are incapable of enforcing the laws on the books without making a huge mess."

The immigration laws as passed by congress (along with court orders) have given the executive branch a completely impossible task. The laws are untenable and self-conflicting, and are going to remain that way until congress fixes them. It's been like this for decades. The Obama administration's solution to this problem was to just not enforce some laws, to allow people who theoretically should be detained freely into the US while they wait for their turn in immigration court. Or DACA is a great example, those people are still in the US illegally as far as actual laws passed by Congress are concerned, DACA is deferred action. The executive branch decided to just not enforce the laws if Congress wouldn't fix them.

The Trump administration attempted to enforce all the laws as written. Apparently they didn't realize the absurdity of that attempt. So when they made a big mess, they played cover-up and tried to act like the problems they ran into were all part of the plan. They weren't part of the plan. It was basically this scene [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hNIX7V21pU].

But that incompetence isn't the root cause of the current crisis. The laws written were already unenforceable, and now we're seeing an unprecedented rise in asylum seekers. Literal caravans of people. It's not cruelty that made us unprepared for that.

But...but they've said both. Trump has both stated that this is all part of the plan, and that this is a disaster because how everything is set up is a mess. It's what I meant when I said that they changed their tune. It hasn't hurt him politically to do so either. Why would it?

I'm aware that during the 90's the things we were allowed to do by law expanded, but I have never heard of a court deciding that separation must happen under all circumstances. I can't find any information on such a case either. I can find things related to the subject, but nothing outright stating that it needs to happen regardless of the situation. I know this was happening before, but making it a manner of policy to separate for the sake of it, was their decision. They've also been ignoring things like detainment periods, so it's not like they're even following the laws as written.


I'm not just talking about the separation either. The conditions that they're in aren't because of an overwhelmed system. They're supposed to be that way. The administration doesn't want funding, they don't want to improve things, and they've argued that they don't have to. I'm aware of poor conditions from years past, but they've actively gone out of their way to make things worse. They've improved nothing, made things worse, and Congress can't and won't do anything about it. McConnell won't allow it, and hasn't for a long time. Not that I think the Democratic leadership would do anything anyway. They're too afraid to, and the Republicans know it. I'm fully aware how how fucked our immigration system is, and it needs to be reformed. I just don't see that happening though, not at this rate and with the direction that we're going in.

And yes, all of this cruelty still isn't stopping them, but of coarse it won't. Nothing short of literally gunning them down at the border will stop them from coming. And even then, some will still try. It's why this is all pointless to begin with. As someone else keeps pointing out, it's the actions of this country that have caused this in the first place and nothing is being done to address that either. Nothing is really being done to address anything about any of this. It wasn't done under Obama because he was a fool who did nothing but capitulation, and it's not being done under Trump because this is the ideal situation for them. They want this.

 

[CaitSeith]

And what wrong solution would that be? These detention centers are being used as similarly as concentration camps that they are indistinguishable between each other by anything but semantics. What would be the "not wrong" solution for that?

The wrong solution would be taking funding away from the centers and exacerbating the problem. The wrong solution would be workers holding a walkout [https://time.com/5614072/wayfair-protest-border-detention-beds/] because they found out they were selling the beds that would keep people from sleeping on dusty floors. There's no sane world where people would think "oh, these places are tragically overwhelmed and it's hurting children, so lets refuse to give them beds." No, those people walked out because they genuinely believe facilities to house migrant children are concentration camps that shouldn't exist. Dishonest rhetoric has real consequences.

What would be the "not wrong" solution for that? The guards don't care about the detainees' well-being enough to prevent children's deaths (which didn't happen before 2016), and constantly dehumanize them. Nevermind ICE; the CBP itself is slowly getting rotten to its core.

 

[tstorm823]

I'm aware that during the 90's the things we were allowed to do by law expanded, but I have never heard of a court deciding that separation must happen under all circumstances. I can't find any information on such a case either. I can find things related to the subject, but nothing outright stating that it needs to happen regardless of the situation. I know this was happening before, but making it a manner of policy to separate for the sake of it, was their decision. They've also been ignoring things like detainment periods, so it's not like they're even following the laws as written.

You've got it backwards. The things they were allowed to do didn't expand, they contracted. A migrant minor was detained in a detention facility with adults with the intention of holding her until her parents were found to release her into their custody. A lawsuit emerged, as treating a minor as a detained adult was unacceptable. After a bunch of court rulings, the federal government signed an agreement with regards to the treatment of minors in the custody of immigration services. Among the standards the government agreed to meet, they agreed to "release children from immigration detention without unnecessary delay". That's the policy that leads to a 72 hour limit on detainment for children. They have to release the kids to someone or somewhere within a few days of picking them up, they can't keep them in detention. So if their parents are in detention, the only option is to release them to someone who isn't their parents. That's family separation. The Obama Administration avoided this by releasing parents with their kids, but that's just meeting one requirement by ignoring another.

Family separation didn't come about as a punishment, it didn't come about as a deterrent, it came about specifically to protect children from having to suffer through the same conditions as the adults.

 

[Saelune]

Still sounds like you think we should not solve problems cause other problems exist.

No, I want actual solutions to problems and their underlying causes, not band-aids for the sake of opinion polling that guarantee bigger, worse problems in five to ten years' time. This is the problem with your perspective, and the American archetypal perspective in general; you're only looking at what benefits your argument and confirms your biases for the moment, as presented in the exclusive context of careful curation by American corporate media (in other words, propaganda).

If Trump's booted in 2020 for a Democratic president, do you seriously believe "KiDs In CaGeS" will be any bigger of a deal under his successor than it was under Obama? Will you be here posting 2+ new threads per day calling out the evils of that administration? I can guarantee you that shit won't go away, it'll just stop being front page and top-of-the-hour news.

Currently, we're dealing with a wave of economic and political refugees from predominantly Honduras and El Salvador. We already have a refugee wave coming from our latest shenanigans in Venezuela. Within a decade we're going to have a migrant wave that dwarfs everything that came before, due to now-irreversible effects of climate change on Central and equatorial South America. We can either keep fuckin' around, or try to fix the problem and hold the federal government accountable to fix the problem.

Trump 100% made bad problems worse, and made more problems that wasn't there before.

Democrats have only been moving left. 1990's Dems may not have been the bastion of LGBT rights, but 2008 on, especially with Obama as the ONLY SITTING PRESIDENT to be actively Pro-LGBT, have been, well, pro-LGBT.

Things will only get better if we move FORWARD, not back. Trump and the Republican party has set us back DECADES! Fucking hell, I actually fucking miss George Bush cause of Trump and that is messed up!

You claim to want progress while being ok with regress. There is literally no defense of Trump, full stop.

 

[Saelune]

Family separation didn't come about as a punishment, it didn't come about as a deterrent, it came about specifically to protect children from having to suffer through the same conditions as the adults.

This is literally not true at all and you know it.

 

[tstorm823]

Family separation didn't come about as a punishment, it didn't come about as a deterrent, it came about specifically to protect children from having to suffer through the same conditions as the adults.

This is literally not true at all and you know it.

It is true. The Obama administration put families into family detention and got sued based on a settlement from the 90s for having kids in prolonged detention. Now we're not allowed to detain families together. That leaves the options of releasing whole families or detaining the parents and not the kids. And even ignoring the moral issues with just releasing people caught committing a crime, choosing to not detain only people with children just incentivizes doing stupid things like swimming across the Rio Grand with a small child. It wasn't evil people trying to rip children from their parents arms who put forward that lawsuit, it was advocates for migrants and children trying to have the child safety rules enforced.

 

[Saelune]

Family separation didn't come about as a punishment, it didn't come about as a deterrent, it came about specifically to protect children from having to suffer through the same conditions as the adults.

This is literally not true at all and you know it.

It is true. The Obama administration put families into family detention and got sued based on a settlement from the 90s for having kids in prolonged detention. Now we're not allowed to detain families together. That leaves the options of releasing whole families or detaining the parents and not the kids. And even ignoring the moral issues with just releasing people caught committing a crime, choosing to not detain only people with children just incentivizes doing stupid things like swimming across the Rio Grand with a small child. It wasn't evil people trying to rip children from their parents arms who put forward that lawsuit, it was advocates for migrants and children trying to have the child safety rules enforced.

Citation needed.