Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being a reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man. No one yet has guessed multiple people, or a scholar. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
I still find it problematic that a person can't criticize any fundamental pillars of a society while "benefiting" from them. Like, how can we expect the OP to not "take advantage" of personal property ownership by your standard and still be able to function in a capitalistic society?
Who says they have to operate by my standard?
The point of using someone's own standard against them is precisely because it isn't your own standard. You are co-opting provider's credibility and stake in the standard as a less questionable source of legitimacy. You are also forcing the person to defend, or to not defend as they chose here, the implications of their own definition.
If they inevitably fail by their own standard, that can mean anything from that they are unfit to pass judgement, to that it's a bad standard. Some bad standards are bad precisely because they are non-falsifiable.
If someone raises a non-falsifiable standard, then the claimed judgement of the standard loses all meaning. That's not a problematic basis of disregarding a criticism- falsifiability is a prerequisite for a complaint to have any onus.
Are we supposed to disregard any criticism they have because they themselves are forced to participate in the society as it is currently structured?
What do you think social structuring has to do with the fact that only one person can use a computer at a time?
But then you just have one illegitimate government invading another illegitimate government. Probably every war at that time was like that. If every government is illegitimate, how is it even meaningful to say that some particular side is a valid target because they're illegitimate?
By treating legitimacy as a matter of degrees, rather than as a binary state. Same as with most justification categories.
It is very rare for any party to be purely in the right or wrong by any given judgement criteria. That does not mean judgement is impossible. Nor does it mean moral equivalence is necessary.
Well, I didn't expect you to bite this bullet.
If it makes your expectations feel better, I didn't. I did say 'If you define...'
I don't restrict myself to your definition. I am just nodding and agreeing that, yes, if you set a condition in which IF X THEN Y, then when X then Y.
But it wasn't "retroactively gerrymandered", that's my point! It was accepted at the time, and by the north, before secession, that slaves weren't citizens and couldn't vote. Nothing changed retroactively.
And the point that people who were denied representation don't get to have the legitimacy of their implicit support invoked remains. As does the point that they are, in fact, part of regional population majorities.
Franchisement and representation of non-voters was a significant aspect of the foundational american political disputes. The 3/5ths compromise resulted from the slavers wanting slaves to count as much as a citizen for legitimate representation in the political system.
Ah, so the north's government wasn't legitimate either?
Sure, why not? It's not like Union (il)legitimacy affects whether the Confederacy was or was not legitimate. Independent variables.
We could question whether legitimacy is a binary state (legitimate or not legitimate), or a status of degrees (more or less legitimate), but if you don't want to stake a position I won't force you.
Is the current US government illegitimate because illegal aliens can't vote,
If you define the scope of legitimacy to include illegal aliens, certainly. Hence why various pro-migration coalitions support things like giving Congressional representation based on non-citizen (and thus including illegal) residents, and why other parts of their coalitions are very uninterested in proof-of-citizenship requirements in elections that are routinely popular with the electorate that opponents claim to be defending against disenfranchisement.
and if they could we probably wouldn't have elected Trump?
Sure, why not?
This is a relevant point not only for Trump, individually, but the Trump coalition backing him on tariffs. A critical-mass policy coalition doesn't need everyone to want the same thing from an action, only enough people to believe their priority concern is addressed enough to be worth the cost.
The [reshoring industry is worth a high price] people and the [we need to break supply chain dependence on China even if it costs a high price] are not necessarily the same people, even if they are both willing to endure [high price]. They want different things, and would likely not be as willing to accept [high price] were they not getting something they feel was worth the price.
This is a reason why people who go 'if they wanted X, why didn't they do Y?' have been confused. There is no single desire of [X]. There is [X1], [X2], [X3], and so on, and the policy coalition is- as most policy coalitions do- cluster against various interests of [X[#]].
LOL, Strawman City here, looks like -- and in Strawman City, everything you say is true by definition. Great! The only problem is that nothing that happens in Strawman City affects anyone but you, cuz you're the only one there. Sorry, just too many baseless assumptions and leaps of illogic for me to engage much. No, physical possession is not theft. No, physical possession does not entail deprivation. No, "paranoid", "not sharing", and "psychopathy" have zip-all to do with morality. No, I'm not engaging in a hobby. Before trying to construct a polemical trap, make sure you've got facts to work with. But speaking of ironies and hypocrisies, what about the fact that you know squat about me but pretend to know?
Thank you for your illustrative response. It provides the audience more to know you by.
This response is a useful demonstration of how you respond when the moral implications of your claimed standards reflect poorly on yourself. Rather than clarify or refine an argument, you invoke the fallacy of fallacies to try and dismiss implicit criticism as irrelevant. Rather than engage any particular part, you dismiss all elements of pushback. This is a useful way to tease out someone's inclination for using arguments as soldiers, as opposed to genuine positions worth holding and defending despite implicit disrepute.
It is also enlightening to consider not only your use of highly pejorative language, but then your denial that there are any moral connotations with your choice of words. This is not only an excellent example of a particularly blatant motte-and-bailey. It is also enlightening for the speed you withdrew from the bailey, and on what strength of argument you gave to its defense.
It is very useful to know when someone is both the sort of person to deny their words have commonly understood connotations, but also opens with them while inviting others to come up with new definitions of old concepts.
You have also provided additional insights into your mindset and character. Assuming you are honest and that posting here is not a hobby, then posting here is indicative of some kind of cause or other less-trivial, more serious purpose. This supports a bias towards motivated reasoning and engagement. Your counter-argument by counter-attack to an ad-hominem, rather than over your position, suggests a motive focused on the inter-personal engagement than on advancing an ideological premise. This is consistent with your response to other people, suggesting a combative personality. Combined with the [serious purpose] position, this provides insight into potential motives, and your conduct in pursuit of [serious purposes].
Of course, if you are lying, the above could all be wrong. But lying, or even an inclination to loose and fast exaggerations, is another useful thing to know about a new poster.
But the slaves weren't citizens. Non-citizens don't get to be part of a ruling majority.
And women couldn't vote either. That doesn't mean they are not part of the whole population, or the voting minorities were not preventing self-governance by numerical majorities.
You are arguing by a different standard. I can appreciate why, but it is a different standard. The political legitimacy of the Confederacy derived from claiming to represent the legitimate will of 'the people' is certainly up for dispute when 'the people' is retroactively gerrymandered to exclude people who might disagree after making a claim to represent them.
We had a former lawyer who went on the podcast route as well, IIRC
It doesn't even benefit Trump himself. Who would benefit is China. That is self-destructive.
Only in a compositional fallacy sense of the term.
Self-destruction is part of the broader category of things considered [bad]. It is not synonymous with the entire category of [bad]. Things can be both [bad], and not self-destructive.
The rest of the dispute comes to the nature of the [bad], which in turn depends on whose standards of 'benefit' apply. This leans into the typical 'they are acting against their own interests' critique that regularly dismisses differences in preferences by supposing one's own preferences are the agreed upon standard.
The difference between the meme and hoisting someone by their own petard is that a petard must be provided by the owner and initial user.
The nature of the meme is that the counter-argument strawman figure is claiming 'gotcha' moments, despite not actually addressing any position presented. The person on the iphone criticizing Apple's pay of employees is arguing from a position that Apple could be paying the employees more with what has been provided, not that Apple should be boycotted for not paying people more. The car seatbelt person is not a hypocrite for saying there should be seatbelts, because they have not made a standard that such an expression would be hypocritical by. Society-peasant's panel isn't even about a choice of action, which is the punchline against the strawman's degeneration. The strawman is not actually using anyone else's standards, not least because they provided no standard of 'right' by which they violated. The strawman has to invent a standard they did not claim in order to condemn them.
Arguments made from a position of morality can be challenged on their own terms because they provided a standard that the arguer can be judged by. They present an argument of right or wrong that applicable examples can be compared to. The use of moral connotation language indicates what the arguer views as correct / incorrect behaviors. Pejorative language is a framing device- no one calls a reasonable decision 'paranoid' because paranoia is by its nature unjustified/unwarranted/irrational. When personal actions are subject to condemnation under a paradigm, the paradigm-provider can be judged under the same.
The OP chose to offer a definition to judge others by. They used emotive and condemnatory language to indicate their own judgement. Having established the standard and a moralist framing, they can be judged by it in turn.
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
Only if you've stopped stealing from other people.
If ownership is deprivation of others, then that deprivation is theft. After all, to deprive is to deny someone the possession or use of something. If this is supposed to be an immoral characteristic ('paranoid,' 'not sharing,' 'psychopathy), then the moral state is for it to not be deprived. The immoral deprivation of personal or even public goods is understood to be theft.
However, you are posting here. On the internet. A medium that requires a computer of some sort that could be not-deprived to someone else. Moreover, you repeatedly responded to others. This entails further use of time depriving the device to others. It also implies a surplus of time, and thus material resources you are depriving others of, that enable the hobby rather than sharing like a non-paranoid should. These resources are deprived from benefiting other possible beneficiaries and potential users by virtue (or sin) of your use. Your use and expected ability to use is demonstrating a de facto, even if not de jure, ownership.
It's generally understood that it is fair to judge people by their own standards, even if it's not fair to do so by your own. So be it. A priest who declares any who disagrees with their message is damned to hell will be a damned priest by their own hypocrisies. A revolutionary who declares it an act of cowardliness to not participate in a protest is a coward for not participating. You are someone who deprives others by exercising ownership and mutually exclusive use of limited resources.
Why should anyone brainstorm alternative ownership with a thief in the middle of a robbery?
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
If the delay of bombardment for the claims of process had allowed other events to occur first, sure.
The mid-19th century was a period where the telegraph was changing the political evolution/initiation of conflicts. 'How' a conflict started becomes more and more important the more people can know about it before and during the fact, rather than have it summarized for them afterwards.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
The US Civil War might have also gone very differently had the Confederacy not initiated various engagements, giving Lincoln a stronger basis to send in the troops. Had the civil war started not with the South bombarding Fort Sumter, but with the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, Lincoln would have been in a very different political position.
In some respects, the opening of the civil war was a boundary dispute, and the South had no shortage of reasons to try and set / maximize expected gains, but those proactive efforts placed a greater political onus on them as instigating the violence that followed.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
Mearsheimer looks like a better geopolitical analyst so long as you ignore not only his pre-war predictions, but his pre-1995 proposals for eastern europe.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
Agreed, and I tried to include a reference to it. I doubt it- my understanding is that a previous incident that would be analogous didn't reach Portugal- but it is the most 'benign' interpretation, and worth saying outright.
The visible-but-non-central dynamic might have been part of a motive.
Fairly or unfairly, the 2004 Madrid train bombings are often considered a case study in 'terrorism can work' due to the subsequent withdrawal from Iraq by the spanish socialist party. Coincidentally, the current socialist/social-democratic ruling coalition recently proposed an unpopular/politically controversial €10 billion military spending hike by decree. This came about a month after Spain disagreed with the EU military fund for Ukraine support, and after last week Spain claimed it was going to meet the 2% NATO military spending goal by focusing on cybersecurity. Spain's contemporary history of not-spending on hard military capacities has been a cause of political friction with allies abroad, and a basis of domestic friction within.
In a correlation-suggestions-motive framing, the cyberattack may have been decided for multiple reasons, including-
- Assessment that Spain is currently too weak / too minor to directly inflict unacceptable retaliation
- Belief that a cyber-attack would cause the ruling spanish political consensus to reject NATO-desired hardpower spending in favor of defensive cyber-spending
- Expectation the Spanish government's cyber-prioritization would preclude cyber-spending from being used on less desirable military spending, i.e. Ukraine aid
- Demonstrate/implicitly threaten other NATO/EU countries from some policies by demonstrating the consequence of vulnerability
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
In a start to the new week in Europe that is certainly a start, the Iberian peninsula has reportedly just been hit by a major power outage affecting both Spain and Portugal, including their capitals, and parts of southern France. The power outage occurred during the day, and is disrupting activities down to the public transportation level. Power is being gradually restored, though how long for full restoration is unclear.
There is no identified cause (yet), but this sort of outage on such a geographically diverse scale does not usually happen by accident. The Spanish government is probing a possible cyberattack.
While it is possible for problems in parts of the European energy grid to cause problems elsewhere, and there was a fire recently affecting a Spanish-French high-voltage cable, I am unaware of any analogous incident where a power grid failure on the Spanish-French side would affect the Portugal side of Spain as well. (For Americans, this is roughly analogous to an incident in eastern texas leading to outages in western Texas.)
Timing is a soft-indicator that supports, but do not prove, a hostile intent.
Purely mechanical system outages tend to either be random breaks or a result of load shifting. Random breaks (key thing somewhere breaks at a bad time) is more randomly distributed over time and thus more likely on weekends and nights rather than week days. Load-shift outages can occur when a power grid fails to properly balance when raising to meet daily production. This increases the impact on the mornings, when industrial centers increase energy demand for the daily work shifts, or possibly afternoons, when post-work tool-downs create a new load-balance challenge. However, this outage reportedly occurred mid-day, when the power load is relatively stable.
Weekday afternoons, and especially early in a work week, are more valuable hostile-disruption windows. Noon and afternoon attacks affect more people out in their days, and cause more social panic as parents are separated from children or trapped without working public transportation. Mondays in particular are the inverse of the 'bury bad news by publicizing it Friday' rule. An event on Mondays is more likely to dominate public discourse and media coverage for the new work week.
Correlation is not causation, and that does bear reminding here. However, that reminder does not mean correlation is irrelevant to anything else. Expect cyber-security paradigm discussions to grow, particularly if a benign fault can't be identified. Even if a benign fault is identified, awareness of the scale of vulnerability is likely to be used either in other messaging efforts, or as inspiration for copy-cat attacks.
My best wishes for anyone affected, and hope for everyone to stay safe and have a power outage plan.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
Either that or public stops being empathetic to anybody but their tribe, but I don't think that's very likely in America.
"It is not that 'cruelty is the point'- it is that the accusation of cruelty is no longer sufficiently deterring." - was a quality contribution nominee in the last quality post roundup, for what it's worth.
The SIL's job in this case is "accompany the kid on the plane ride from mom to dad after both of them write consent letters and get them notarized".
Not quite. Remember- the father was not asking for custody for himself. The father was asking for custody to be transferred to his sister-in-law. And this sister-in-law who is supposed to be taking both escort and legal custody has no established relationship to the mother, only the father.
A notary might be able to help the plane ride in abstract, but a notary cannot transfer formal or de facto legal custody from a mother to a potentially unrelated citizen of another country. Since the purpose of the plane flight is to remove the mother's custody of the child, after she (reportedly) indicated to the US government she wanted to retain custody...
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
It sounds like the SIL is legally in the united states. With notarized parental consent letters on both sides and the 2 year old's passport I'd be surprised if there was any major issue in having the SIL pick up the kid and bring her back to the US to dad.
That depends on the Sister-in-Law's actual relationship to the mother, not the father.
The SIL and the mother do not necessarily have any legally relevant relationship. This is where the implication of the mother and father never being characterized as married potentially matters.
If the father's SIL is in fact the mother's sister, then as you say it could be legally simple to reverse if the parties are in agreement. That is not the same as administratively simple- I'd be surprised if the child has a passport- but
If the sister-in-law is a SIL due to the father marrying someone else- a currently undisclosed woman who would be unsympathetic to the narrative- then the analogy would be more akin to an adoption than familial custody.
Following from @Quantumfreakonomic's post yesterday on the judge who was arrested for trying to sneak an illegal migrant out of a courthouse to avoid ICE, that media storm may be prompting a counterstory on the latest Trump immigration outrage to be outraged about.
Reuters: Two-year-old US citizen appears to have been deported 'with no meaningful process'
New York Times: 2-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Deported ‘With No Meaningful Process,’ Judge Suspects
CBS News: Judge demands answers on whether 2-year-old U.S. citizen was deported to Honduras
Washington Post: Three U.S. citizens, ages 2, 4 and 7, swiftly deported from Louisiana
Rolling Stone: Trump Has Now Deported Multiple U.S. Citizen Children With Cancer
CNN: Federal judge says 2-year-old US citizen was deported with mother to Honduras
Yes, the new scandal for the new week, just in time to replace coverage of the somewhat embarrassing judge from last week, now presents a heroic judge objecting to the deportation of US children. While multiple cases are there, the focus of the current not-at-all coordinate push focuses on the 2-year old from Louisana.
Admittedly, the CNN article did make the mistake of letting the headline reveal some of the possible nuance as to 'why'. Being the only headline to mention 'mother' was what started this little media dive.
The key sequence of events from the CBS article include-
According to a petition filed Thursday by Trish Mack, a friend of child's mother, the girl, her 11-year-old sister and mother were taken into custody Tuesday morning while attending a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at an ICE office in New Orleans. The mother had attended meetings like this regularly for four years, often bringing her daughters with her. They were taken to the meeting by the girl's father, the petition reads.
After being detained, the mother and her two daughters were transported to an ICE field office in New Orleans, court documents state. When the father arrived at that office, ICE officers gave him papers stating that the mother "was under their custody," documents read, and that she "would call him soon."
That day, an attorney for the family contacted ICE and informed authorities that the girl was a U.S. citizen, the petition said, and also emailed a copy of the girl's U.S. birth certificate to ICE.
But that night, an ICE agent called the father and informed him that "they were going to deport his partner and daughters," documents read.
On Wednesday, an ICE agent spoke with the family's attorney, and "refused to honor a request to release" the girl "to her custodian, stating that it was not needed because" she "was already with her mother," court documents read.
Some of the potentially relevant context, not all of which was in the CBS article, and which different organizations provide different framings for.
On some differences in filings and timings-
CBS
When Doughty, appointed to the bench by President Trump during his first term, sought Friday afternoon to arrange a phone call with the mother of the girl, Justice Department lawyers informed him that a call with the child's mother "would not be possible because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras." The girl is identified in court documents as VML.
CNN
Lawyers for the family filed an emergency petition Thursday, asking the court to order the child’s “immediate release” by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying they “lack any statutory or constitutional authority” to detain her as a US citizen, according to the petition.
Washington Post
Lawyers representing the father of the 2-year-old U.S. citizen who was deported, identified as V.M.L. in court documents, filed an emergency petition in the Western District of Louisiana on Thursday seeking her release. The child was put on a plane to Honduras the next morning before the court opened.
CBS
In an effort to halt the deportation of the two daughters, the father on Tuesday filed for a temporary transfer of legal custody, which under Louisiana law would give his sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen who resides in Baton Rouge, custody of both.
CNN and the Washington Post did not raise the legal custody issue raised on Tuesday, which frames later decisions. The Post in particular removes the child from the context of the mother in the plane to Honduras, treating the 2-year-old citizen as the only relevant individual on the plane as opposed to the mother and older sibling.
CBS did raise the custody case, but does not raise the Thursday petition for immediate release that could be understood in the custody decision.
Only CBS raises that the court session sought Thursday afternoon occurs on Friday afternoon. The Washington Post emphasizes the time of the departure flight as before court could open, insinuating without explicitly claiming a motive for the timing of the flight. No context is provided by anyone on what time the flight actually was, what time the court was, or the other normal times of possible flights to Honduras from the local airport are.
Additionally, no media actually characterizes the relationships between mother, father, and sister-in-law. There's no claim that the father and mother are married. Therefore, there is only an insinuation that the 'sister-in-law' is meaningfully related to the mother in a sense that would normally sway custody fights.
On the basis of the child's removal, for sources that did so-
CBS
The immigration status of the girl's father, mother and sister was unclear. The girl was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in January 2023, according to the filing.
"The parent made the decision to take the child with them to Honduras. It is common that parents want to be removed with their children," Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to CBS News Saturday.
Washington Post
The government is not disputing the immigration status of any of the three children. Instead, officials contend that the undocumented mothers opted to take their citizen children with them back to Honduras. In their court filing, Justice Department lawyers attached a note they say was written by V.M.L.’s mother saying that she was taking the child with her to Honduras.
CNN
The federal government said in court documents the mother wrote in a letter she “will bring my daughter … with me to Honduras.”
“Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with someone the parent designates. In this case, the parent stated they wanted to be removed with the children,” the official said.
“V.M.L. (the child) is not at substantial risk of irreparable harm if kept with her lawful custodian mother,” the government said.
Different sources provide different strengths of agency to the mother. CBS only attribute a mother motive via government statement after the fact, and makes no claim of the mother herself expressing an interest. CNN reports that the government claims the mother wrote a note, but does not mention the note itself was included in court submissions. Washington Post notes that there was an actual note attached, but disassociates veracity via 'they say' to open door for doubt.
Only CNN directly addresses a claimed government policy of asking the migrant parent their preference.
On the status of the father-
Washington Post
Justice Department lawyers argued that “the man claiming to be V.M.L.'s father” had failed to prove his identity to the government despite requests that he present himself to ICE agents, adding that he had also “demonstrated considerable hesitation” regarding the inquiries into his immigration status. The man’s lawyers included V.M.L.’s birth certificate in their fillings, which shows she was born in Baton Rouge and lists the names of both her mother and father.
CNN
The father then moved to give provisional custody of his two daughters to his sister-in-law, a US citizen who lives in Baton Rouge, and the mandate was notarized in Louisiana, the documents say.
The petition alleges ICE refused to honor the father’s request to release V.M.L. to the sister-in-law, stating “it was not needed” because the child was already with her mother, and informed the father he would be taken into custody if he tried to pick her up.
The government said the “man claiming to be V.M.L.’s father” has not presented or identified himself to ICE despite requests to do so, the court documents say.
CBS News
The immigration status of the girl's father, mother and sister was unclear.
In an effort to halt the deportation of the two daughters, the father on Tuesday filed for a temporary transfer of legal custody, which under Louisiana law would give his sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen who resides in Baton Rouge, custody of both.
The ICE agent further said that the "father could try to pick her up, but that he would also be taken into custody."
The Washington Post makes no reference to the legal custody attempt by the father, and thus why ICE might request he present himself to them regardless of immigration status. CNN and CBS do acknowledge the custody shift to the sister-in-law, but do not elaborate why the father could not request custody for himself. CBS alludes that the father's status is 'unclear,' while CNN establishes a threat (custody) but not basis for the threat (possible immigrant status himself).
No media covers the implication of an unverified man requesting custody of a child be revoked from the undisputed mother to another woman of unclear relation.
On the Judge's Comments-
CBS
A federal judge says a 2-year-old Louisiana girl and U.S. citizen may have been deported to Honduras this week with her mother and 11-year-old sister without due process, according to court documents obtained by CBS News. In an order Friday, Judge Terry Doughty, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, wrote there was a "strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."
Washington Post
Doughty set a May 16 court hearing to investigate his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.” The order did not call for the girl’s return or recommend any recourse for the family.
CNN
“In the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process,” Judge Doughty said in the order, a hearing is scheduled on May 16 in Monroe, Louisiana.
The judge added, “It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen,” citing a 2012 deportation case.
The federal government, Doughty said, “contends this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her … But the court doesn’t know that.”
Only CNN quotes the opening section of the Judge's sentence and interest. Both CBS and the Washington Post begins their quote after removing the opening clause, creating a stronger statement.
Trump First Term Child Separation Scandal
Human Rights Watch: Trump’s Cruel Separation Policy Has Not Ended
...I kid, that one is from 2018.
No media references, raises, or otherwise brings attention to the criticisms to the first term policy of detaining or deporting adult illegal migrants without their children.
In summary, if it this starts permutating on the interwebs next week-
The two-year-old american citizen case involves
A larger family(?) of non-citizens migrants with a singular birthright-citizenship daughter
- The non-citizen attributed include the mother who was deported, an 11-year-old-daughter also deported but not claimed to be a US citizen, and the father of unclear-nationality
- The family was allowed to remain under Biden-era Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), which allows individuals to remain in their communities while undergoing immigration proceedings
- ISAP is for illegal migrants, not legal migrant proceedings, as the Biden administration was practicing a remote-application program for processing immigration proceedings pre-arrival, and violating that was a basis of deportation
- There is no allegation that ISAP concluded with a permanent legal status for the family
The American citizen is/was an archetypical 'anchor baby' context without being called such
- Born in Baton Rouge, LA in January 2023
- Which means conception mid-2022, after Biden-era migration policies had become apparent / gained reputation
- The mother either migrated while pregnant, or conceived after arrival.
- The primary legal concern focus raised around this deportation case center around the child's due process rights, not the mother's or sister's
- Unclear legal / policy / political relevance of the sister-in-law to the migrant decisions
More broadly, the headline/surface narratives conflate child deportation with child-custody considerations
- Narratives characterize deportation of the 2-year old child, as opposed to children accompanying deported parents Minimal engagement of process / standards for parents keeping young children with them during processing
- Articles generally avoid acknowledging government policy of offering parents a chance; not mentioned, as opposed to claims it was violated
- General avoidance of parental custody rights and legal expectations of deporting non-citizen adults with citizen minor. For example
-
- If a mother can choose to take an American citizen child with them
-
- If a non-citizen father should be deferred to when requesting custody of children to be taken from the mother to someone else
-
- If the custody dispute between non-citizens must be adjudicated before deportation of the primary parent with their child
Finally- Is there basis for legitimate concern in this scandal?
Yes.
If you thought the lead-up was a the media is totally lying about everything trope, that was deliberate. It was to make a point about why I expect this scandal to hook some and be dismissed by others.
For people who are hawkish on illegal immigration, this case is not your friend. There is a lot of red meat here that could be uncovered- potentially unmarried family unit, a concerned father of uncertain status who in the first minute of establishing contact tries to convey a litigation strategy, child-custody defaults being reversed- but there is a hook that can work against you. And that hook is the disruption of what most people would consider a due process right, even if deportation legalism is different from a criminal court process.
For people upset about ICE and due process, this coverage is also not your friend. The framings- and the not-very-deep undercurrents that go against the framing- will give a basis to dismiss concern as motivated. The children-in-cage's and child-separation critiques are not going to be forgotten. The fact that not separating children from their deported parents is now a basis of criticism is going to undercut criticims of both. The media's rush to present a concerned father is going to run into discrediting disappointing revelations.
But the propaganda doesn't mean there is only propaganda. Even if it's not what the coverage generators wants you to be concerned about, because- again- you need to piece together relevant events not tied together in any single framing.
CBS
When Doughty, appointed to the bench by President Trump during his first term, sought Friday afternoon to arrange a phone call with the mother of the girl, Justice Department lawyers informed him that a call with the child's mother "would not be possible because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras." The girl is identified in court documents as VML.
Why was Doughty asking for a phone call with the mother?
Washington Post
That [Tuesday] night, the girl’s father was allowed to speak with her mother for only a minute before an ICE agent ended the call, lawyers contend. Lawyers say the man did not get the chance to speak to his partner or child again until after they were released in Honduras.
Why did the Tuesday night phone call with the mother (allegedly) get stopped by ICE after only a minute?
CNN
Before the father could finish providing the mother with contact information for their attorneys, he heard the ICE officer “take the phone from her and hang up the call,” according to the petition.
This is a claim. It is a claim made by someone with an interest in claiming it regardless of whether it is true or not. It is also a valid basis for concern, independent of deportation of the mother or custody decisions of her child.
If true, this would indicate that communication between the woman and potential legal representation was deliberately disrupted. How long it was disrupted is a relevant interest, particularly if other legal advice might have changed her mind of letting her newborn stay with someone else.
This brings relevant questions that may or may not have been precluded.
- Was the sister-in-law a valid close relation of the mother under existing custody precedent? (It is not claimed. Only that the father requested.)
- Was the mother interested / aware of the attempt at custody revocation at the father's request? (It is not claimed. Only that the mother signed an intent to keep her children.)
- Were the father's lawyers denied access to contact the mother? (It is not claimed. Only that the father did not speak with her until post-deportation.)
- Was the mother denied access to any lawyers she was entitled to? (It is not claimed. Only that the lawyers are characterized as the father's or the family's, not if they contacted her.)
- Was the mother, as opposed to the US citizen child, denied due process deportable aliens are entitled to? (It is not claimed. Only that a specific phone call was ended.)
Is there any legal barrier preventing the 2-year-old US citizen from returning to the US, beyond 'typical' international legal custody issues?
It is not claimed. But then, no major media coverage has expressed interest in that paradigm either.
Frustration.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
And the efficacy of 'memetic hacking.'
Propaganda has been a tool for millennia. Tailored systemic propaganda has been a state practice for centuries. It still has yet to demonstrate the level of social/political control that advocates predict or require for other predictions.
This may, indeed, be an argument tailored to certain bureaucratic political interests... but a key lesson of the last decade of politics has been the increasingly clear limits of political propaganda in changing positions as opposed to encouraging pre-existing biases. And in the US in particular, many of the policy makers most convinced in the value of systemic propaganda are also in the process of being replaced by the previous targets of systemic propaganda campaigns.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
There is this thing called the Constitution that does ban discrimination against citizens of another US state.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
I'd say not for lack of trying, and more a result of mis-planning than desire.
The Americans planned to bomb the infrastructure from the start. They set aside stockpile stores precisely to do so. They planned to rebuild it afterwards, even if they didn't have much of a post-war plan as they should have.
The Russians did not plan to bomb the infrastructure from the start, because they didn't think they would be fighting a war and thought they would capture it intact. They then used most of their stockpiles on kinetic targets during the phase where they though they would be able to compel some sort of negotiated armistice (month one) or trigger a Ukrainian military collapse (spring-summer). By the time the Russians planned to as part of the long-term war plan, committed to around the fall 2022 mobilization, they'd already used most of their relevant stockpiles. Hence the drones from Iran and Shahed strikes targeting the power distribution rather than generation sites.
Fully granted. Now, overcome the prima facie case that most are good (especially given some conditions on freeness and such) by calling upon some sort of specific external reasoning for the instant case. Not just that there is some tail on the normal distribution, where someone bought some useless gadget from Temu or whatever. Justify that the entire trade (in goods) deficit is "lost".
The prima facie concept itself is what is in doubt / contested. The construct that shapes the [valuation] of trades is what is being challenged.
The question isn't whether there is value in the trade. The question is whether the value-distribution resulting from the structure is desirably structured. Or in other framings, it is a direct questioning of whether the [value] the system delivers is actually valuable compared to other considerations of [value]. The judgements of preferences decades/generations ago are not inherently persuasive.
To bring an extreme historical metaphor- there were a lot of 'good' trades between Britain and India during the British empire. 'Most trades are good' could honestly be made on most trades that were made. However, the macroeconomic structure of the system meant that the [value] that was generated was not mutually beneficial. India economically devolved as these 'good trades' continued. The British Isles certainly benefited from being the seat of empire, but the benefits to the Indians were incidental, not deliberate. This [value] got worse, not better, the more trade occurred, despite the [value] being greater and greater to the British.
So when you say-
None of this refined conversation means that we can just look at the total wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost".
The answer is... sure. Similarly, no amount of trade volume can be looked at and say 'this represents [value] gained.'
The only way to make a moral judgement on the nature of the trade is to make a moral judgement on the structure of the trade. Big numbers good if you think the big number implies a good thing. But by a different premise, bad trade structures get worse, not better, with scale.
Now, on a less-extreme historical metaphor, but one more relevant to the United States- the value of the neoliberal model in play starting in the 90s and since.
A lot of neoliberal economists have argued over the decades that this was a Good Deal. Free market liberalization and international trade allowed cheaper imports and increases to the value-added economy. That the [value] to the United States outweighed the [costs]. GDP per capita would go up. And lo and behold, it did.
The issue is that [the United States] is not an individual actor. It is a collective of hundreds of millions of individuals. And the [value] most appreciated gained went to people and actors who did not suffer the [costs]. The system did not produce results in which everyone felt they were gaining [value]. The Rust Belt, once a significant contributor of [value] to the nation, did not become an even larger contributor of [value], except in so much that sacrificing their interests benefited others. The [value] that went into American shipyards was better able to grow in other ways.
Which is fine in and of itself. Winners and losers and all that.
Except that the neoliberals were also wrong on various [cost] estimates. Not only were they wrong about the nature of the [cost] that would be born by people other than themselves. They were also wrong about what future collective values would [value]. The neoliberals did not place much [value] on sovereign supply chains. They placed high [value] on [cheaper supply chains], with things like the just-in-time model reducing [costs] like warehousing and stockpiles and such.
They did not recognize things like, say, global pandemics or cyber-sabotage that could paralyze distribution systems and leave to supply bottlenecks at ports. They did not think profit-minded countries would make deliberate plays at developing global monopolistic power on supply chain inputs, even selling at a loss, and then using economically-irrational cutoffs as a geopolitical weapon. They did not factor in policies intended to result in regulatory capture of global markets beyond sovereign borders. They did not recognize that a military, or paramilitary, could be crippled by attacking the supply chain and replacing cellphones and radios with bombs enmass. They did not think that countries might want an industrial base capable of massive wartime production capacity on short notice.
Or if they did recognize it, they didn't value it very much. But modern governments do. And governments- not just Trump but globally- have begun to hire people who have somewhat different [value] judgements.
So when you say things like-
One can acknowledge that some percentage probably aren't perfect, but then we have to get into details of whether/how we can identify them from the outside, whether/how we have any tools to change that, or if it's best to just acknowledge that the employers are in a better position to judge the value of their employment relations. They have the best incentive to make sure that the lion's share of their employment decisions are positive value, and we should observe that they are, indeed, positive value. Normal curves are normal, but the mean is positive, and probably significantly so.
I'm inclined to agree. I'm also inclined to consider [advocates of neoliberal models] to be equivalent to the [employees] in this metaphor, and that the new waves of [employers] place increasing relevance on characteristics other than process economic efficiency when determining [value]. We'd probably both agree that [employees] who are not delivering the desired [value] to their [employers] quote-unquote 'should' be fired to improve [value].
I'm also fairly sure you'd disagree with their judgements on value. But that in and of itself is the point- the judgement of how to [value] things is a first principle judgement. The [employee's] appeal to a prima facie is not actually relevant if it is not actually the prima facie standard.
I will accept the sentiment with a 'no apologies are needed, misunderstandings happen' and happily part ways.
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