Dirty_DemSoc
Registered Demoncrat
Probably actually a SocDem rather than a DemSoc.
User ID: 3648
Dirty_DemSoc
Registered Demoncrat
14d ago
Well, I try.
Dirty_DemSoc
Registered Demoncrat
14d ago
Do you have any examples of Democratic-friendly
figureheadswriters who actually were horrified, during the actual Obama presidency, about those terrible conditions?
Notable ones? Not really, no. Critical voices certainly did exist, but they didn't get much national spotlight. As I said, the borderline cult-of-personality around Obama was probably a bad thing; I have to imagine that the desire to maintain Democratic unity under Obama likely had a chilling effect on people who otherwise would've criticized him from the left.
Anyone who looked into the conditions encouraged by Biden-era rules and noticed what the results were, on your side?
On this, I can confidently say there were, in fact, people on the left who noticed the lack of improvements under Biden- indeed, I was one of them. Unfortunately, since the Biden administration spent most of its existence being attacked relentlessly from the right (and towards the end, even from the center and even from some leftists!) about the perceived border crisis, and calls for harsher crackdowns on immigrants polled pretty well, it was, unfortunately, a pretty foregone conclusion that the Biden administration wasn't going to try and improve those conditions, for fear of giving further ammunition about being 'soft' on the border issue- and that the kids who were still in cages at the time were just going to be SOL.
Okay, immigration is not a field everyone spends all way writing about. Do you have any examples of any Principled Worried Person who panicked that COVID gamesmanship about religious services or with visas would Possibly Hurt People Who Count? That a state governor said "just arrest everyone"? Anything?
There were a few times that other left-leaning people I knew personally expressed worries that there would eventually be a backlash to the lockdowns, and there's certainly no shortage of people who've come to view it as a strategic error after the fact...
...But on a broader level, no.
Because there's still quite a lot of us on the left who fundamentally dispute the framing of
COVID gamesmanship about religious services or with visas
I very much do not grant this!
Especially since, frankly, conservative anti-lockdown hysterics at least as good as they got, if not more. Certainly, where I live, "lockdown measures" were a total joke due to Republican-lead efforts to fight the lockdowns.
We're simply not going to see eye-to-eye on this particular topic.
There's a fun philosophical distinction between whether someone 'really' does something because of their internal state, or because of what they do. I don't particularly care. If I can't tell the difference from outside between Kelsey and The People Who Really Care, it's not something that can change how I have to model your behavior, if Really Caring doesn't modify your behavior.
On this, I'm not sure that we're really disagreeing?
Dirty_DemSoc
Registered Demoncrat
14d ago
A bit of an aside, but how did you end up with a network of family and friends who arrived in the US illegally from El Salvador after having to leave due to pst affiliations with MS13?
I don't- I probably could've been more clear, but when I said that my friends & family would be higher up on nightmare-scenario government list of people to target, it'd be for different reasons.
In the hypothetical scenario where Trump & co start going after their perceived domestic enemies, I figure that trans people & outright socialists would be the next logical group to get hit after immigrants, and since I move in a lot of circles where both are highly over-represented, that concerns me by proxy. Several of my friends are already considering moving states, since the deep-red legislatures they live under have already made it exceedingly clear that trans people aren't welcome.
Dirty_DemSoc
Registered Demoncrat
14d ago
Sure, 'actions speak louder than words', and all that- but what, exactly, would you propose I do to "change my behavior" going forward? Vote Republican?
(I'm aware that may come off as more than a little glib, but I'm being completely serious. I may be quite disgruntled with the Democrats, but what's the alternative? The Democratic Socialists? The Libertarians? Might as well just throw away my vote, and I'm not going to do that.)
Dirty_DemSoc
Registered Demoncrat
14d ago
Please don’t antagonize other users. If you’ve got to block them, go for it, but skip the flouncing.
Fair enough; I suppose I should've known better.
You do know the Cold War's over, right?
Delusional**, paranoid fantasies about communist revolutionaries lurking in your closet are more fitting for 1925, not 2025.
Less glibly, I guess this particular conversation's run its course, then.
And if
Calm your tits It's not happening, though now that I think about it, if it does happen it's probably not a bad thing. The left has become increasingly violent and anti-semetic, with the blm riots and polls showing most of them are okay with political assassinations, they are a very dangerous group, more dangerous than muslim extremists even. They really have only themselves to blame.
(that's not happening and it's good that it is)
is genuinely your stance, than any future conversations are probably futile as well.
Should we just block each other and move on?
**At least, from my own perspective. Your own bespoke reality is so far detached from mine we might as well be living on different planets. Who knows, maybe I'm the one with the deranged view of the present-day state of America; either way, though, with such irreconcilable perspectives, the odds of us being able to have any constructive discussion is nonexistent.
EDIT: I stand by all this, though I'll admit that actually posting it was a mistake.
Back during Trump 45, pictures of kids in cages were posted to Twitter and Facebook to show the horrors of the Trump administration. People were horrified. Truly horrified. But it was a very strange sort of horrification, because when it was revealed that the pictures were in fact taken during the Obama administration, they did not become horrified at Obama.
I am not "they". I certainly was rather disquieted to learn that those dated back to Obama's administration- though given his deportation record, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. Much like with his record on transparency, Gitmo, drone strikes (and various other expansions of the Bush-era "security" apparatuses), and others, I've soured on Obama in the years since he left office- and looking back, the borderline cult-of-personality surrounding him was probably a bad thing; it's for the best that he's now out of office and he keeps a relatively low profile nowadays.
I will say that at least the Obama administration had the minimal decency to regard this as a shameful necessity and not attempt to highlight and proudly boast about it. It's a low, low bar, to be clear, but it's one of the many the Trump administration couldn't.
They want to be the sort of person who most effectively is scared and horrified by Trump. Thus, they self-modify to actually feel those feelings. That's similar to method acting.
If you run over your neighbor with a car while texting & driving down your cul-de-sac, immediately realize its your own fault, and then feel crushing shame over your carelessness, then I suppose we could call that "method acting" too.
But that would dilute the term "method acting" to the point of meaninglessness- as well as cheapen the rhetorical effect of dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as just being a 'method actor'.
It's all play acting.
Against my better judgement, I've decided to stop lurking and make this account specifically to tell you (at the admitted risk of being uncivil) that you are VERY fucking wrong on this- and that you should consider 'updating your priors', as the local lingo goes, in order to better reflect your hated outgroup's theory-of-mind accordingly.
Most of the American's that are "frightened" about this deportation don't actually think they are at risk for being deported.
I'll grant you this much; In the nightmare scenario that Trump does start deporting US citizens to El Salvadoran gulags, I'd probably be pretty far down the list of people to target; after all, I'm not a felon (at least, as far as I know), I'm white, I'm male, and otherwise generally inoffensive to MAGA sensibilities aside from my leftism...
...But a lot of my friends would be a lot higher-up on that list than me, as would most of my family (by virtue of being even more actively outspoken than I am), and if they do get targeted, I'm liable to quickly get a lot more radical- and thus a lot higher on the list as well.
Where would they even deport actual Americans that didn't come here as looters? Most of em are from parts of Europe. You're gonna threaten someone by deporting them to the UK? Germany,? Scandinavia? Most of the left supposedly want that.
El Salvador, of course. As Trump just clarified earlier today.
The arguments they are posting here are the same sort of fake outrage and concern they were pushing about Elon gutting USAID
That particular bit of outrage and concern wasn't fake either. You should perhaps consider updating your theory of mind on that as well.
Consider the possibility when someone tells you they're against something, maybe they are, in fact, against it on the object-level, as well any other deeper levels you care to psychoanalyze.
And to respond to your and @The_Nybbler 's responses to @Amadan- ...It's not "play acting" or "method acting"** either. I assure you, I genuinely do worry about this.
I'm sure you genuinely believe that you think you can tell I'm lying by my "crocodile tears" & 'revealed preferences' over COVID measures, the January 6th protestors, and other perceived injustices from "our team"... But consider the possibility that the bespoke realities of others differ from yours, and the screen that you (and most of the other posters on TheMotte, seemingly) is showing a very different picture than the screen that I (and most other liberals & leftists in this country) are watching.
**To the latter poster- I'd respond that the most common way to 'Live the role of someone who believes Trump will deport US citizens for being political enemies' is to actually be someone who believes Trump will deport US citizens for being political enemies- which I believe he likely will unless he starts getting real pushback on this kind of shit real quick.
Well, I hope you're right about that.
But while not every slippery slope has to be slid down, the sliding we've seen in the first three months alone doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
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