Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
I mean it is pretty silly that there were race riots against migrants because a british-born son of Christian immigrants mentally snapped
When the riots started I don't think it was widely known the (alleged) stabbist was either British-born or Christian. Based on the little twitter discourse I saw, the assumption appears to have been that he was a migrant/Muslim because of the reluctance of the government or press to say anything about his identity. But if there's any better info out there I'll gladly yield to it.
Supah_Schmendrick
7d ago
I don't think it was done to the Nazis qua being a Nazi, it was done because they materially lied about it during naturalization.
These are not materially different things. GK Chesterton actually remarked on this:
When I went to the American consulate to regularise my passports . . . [t]he officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearance like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality, it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called "Confessions" which my friends and I invented in our youth; an examination paper containing questions like, "if you saw a rhinoceros in the front garden, what would you do?" . . .
One of the questions on the paper was, "Are you an anarchist?" To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, "What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist?" along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes an αρχη. Then there was the quesiton, "Are you in favor of subverting the government of the United States by force?" Agaisnt this I should write, "I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour, not the beginning." The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, "Are you a polygamist?" The answer to this is "No such luck" or "Not such a fool," according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W.T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question "Shall I slay my brother Boer?" - the answer that ran, "Never interfere in family matters." But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with beautiful gravity, "I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you." Or, "I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity." Or again, "Yes I am a polygamist all right and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries." There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.
...
Superficially this is rather a queer business. It would be easy enough to suggest that in this America has introduced a quite abnormal spirit of inquisition; an interference with liberty unknown among all the ancient despotisms and aristocracies. About that there will be something to be said later; but superficially it is true that this degree of officialism is comparatively unique. In a journey which I took only the year before I had occasion to have my papers passed by governments which many worthy people in the West would vaguely identify with corsairs and assassins; I have stood on the other side of Jordan, in the land ruled by a rude Arab chief, where the police looked so like brigands that one wondered what the brigands looked like. But they did not ask whether I had come to subvert the power of the Shereef; and they did not exhibit the faintest curiosity about my personal views on the ethical basis of civil authority. These ministers of ancient Moslem despotism did not care about whether I was an anarchist; and naturally would not have minded if I had been a polygamist. The Arab chief was probably a polygamist himself. These slaves of Asiatic autocracy were content, in the old liberal fashion, to judge me by my actions; they did not inquire into my thoughts. They held their power as limited to the limitation of practice; they did not forbid me to hold a theory. It would be easy to argue here that Western democracy persecutes where even Eastern despotism tolerates or emancipates. It would be easy to develop the fancy that, as compared to the sultans of Turkey or Egypt, the American Constitution is a thing like the Spanish Inquisition.
...
It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth; and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the manner of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.
Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion or Greek Philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among other of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow touching theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition may have been admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had to be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests. Now, in a much vaguer and more evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the great American experiment; the expierment of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was trace on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.
"What I saw in America" 1912, pgs. 3-9
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
The overt, propaganda use of a text can be significantly distinct from its artistic merits (eg: Triumph of the Will, which is both noisome NSDAP propaganda and beautifully shot)
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
As much as I love your comment, please consider that the vast majority of current legislators, as well as a disproportionate amount of political commentators have law degrees or legal backgrounds - often elite ones - and all it's got us is ever-more sophisticated rounds of "obnoxious bad-faith argumentative games."
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
One thing the EO does which has nothing to do with the military at all is instantly make anyone who gives a cartel or cartel-affiliated person or entity money in exchange for services (such as, maybe, facilitating their transport through Mexican territory to and across the US border) becomes guilty of some federal crime - possibly, though not definitely, 18 USC 2339B; my practice doesn't deal with immigration or federal criminal law - which provides a boost to deportation proceedings. Similarly, any migration-facilitating NGO or charity which works with or around the cartel coyotes (which I am told are fairly ubiquitous in the illegal immigration scene on the southern border) suddenly has to worry that they may be debanked or that their assets may be frozen or subject to seizure.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
Contrast this with Obama who was willing to make ideological or party based cabinet nominations like Hillary Clinton, even though she was absolutely not an ally of his
Obama picked Hillary as Secretary of State explicitly because she wasn't on his team - it was a deal to get the Clinton machine on his side for the general election. Plus, Barack had read "Team of Rivals" recently and was enamored of trying to have a Lincolnian presidency. They certainly didn't agree on policy - it wasn't an ideological pick.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
This all seems to hinge on whether you believe Trump genuinely thought there was outcome-determinative fraud or not.
So you're telling me all of the outrage over "democracy being under threat" is caused by people not being able to believe that Trump could genuinely believe things he says? This whole thing is just the biggest case of typical mind fallacy and projection?!?
I swear to god this country is going to give me an aneurysm.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
asylum-seekers are expected to appear in court
The current backlog is, iirc, somewhere between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 cases. There are approximately 700 immigration ALJs ("Administrative Law Judges") working on these cases. A year ago, when the backlog was only half as large, the wait-time for a hearing was nearly four years. This translates to effectively open immigration so long as you know to mouth the right platitudes, because what is the point of deporting someone after a decade?
asylum-seekers are expected to . . . have a place to stay and in some cases are given ankle monitors to track their location.
Monitoring like this isn't all that common - as of March of this year, only 185,000 of the over 6,000,000 asylees were in this program, and possibly as few as 19,000 were given ankle monitors. And of course, being assigned to the program is no guarantee of compliance; people just cut the ankle monitors off, and the government cares more about retrieving the tech than it does tracking down the fugitive:
Many men with monitors “cut them loose and take off,” Maria said. “Better if I stay here and follow instructions to the end.”
Two former case workers with a GEO subsidiary, who spoke on condition that they not be named because they wanted to safeguard their chances for future government employment, said it was common for ankle monitors to be removed prematurely, and people who do so are rarely pursued. That’s consistent with the 2015 DHS inspector general’s report, which found that ICE lacked the resources to chase many who abscond.
“ICE has other priorities and most likely will not look for them,” said one of the former case workers, who worked in Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi. He said that if someone did flee, the priority was recovering their ankle monitor — not tracking down the person who abandoned it. “We would visit their house and knock on their door,” the former case worker said, “and at most try to look for the GPS unit.”
Supah_Schmendrick
24d ago
Blackbagging by ICE seems to be an extrajudicial process by design
You need to clarify what you are talking about. Are you talking about arrests of individuals who already have a final order of removal or order revoking a lawful visa against them? Are you talking about arrests of individuals based on probable cause that they are in the country illegally? A secret third thing? Immigration law is very complex and, yes, mostly delegated by act of Congress to the administrative branch through administrative adjudication, and discussing it based on vague generalities actively obscures more than it enlightens.
Without getting into the weeds here, I think you've slightly misjudged the call of the question. The issue isn't "who started the mudslinging," or even "was the anti-Romney campaign particularly egregious" - instead what is being asked here is "what were the inflection points which activated the Trumpian base sufficiently for him to arise in 2016?" The anti-Romney campaign is one possible answer, regardless of whether the Dem's rhetoric was in part accurate, or if the heat wasn't a substantial change from what came before.
Personally I think the Romney campaign was a lost opportunity, not a Trumpian precursor. Proto-Trumpian folks did not get all that excited about Romney; they were the ones boosting Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain and Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum in the primaries. A Romney win, if followed by competent government (a huge if in the modern-day) was probably the last serious chance the GOP's "respectability" faction had to wrest the party's momentum away from the insurgent TEA-party/populist wing which ultimately coalesced under Trump.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
However, I also think that this organisation (UNWRA plays an important role in securing basic humanitarian necessities to the people in Gaza.
Hamas regularly hijacks and diverts those shipments to its own use instead of allowing the supplies to go to civilians, and fires at the ones too protected for it to hijack.
UNWRA, consistent with an organization which has been thoroughly suborned by Hamas, denied this was happening.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
I kinda wanted Trump to go full-bore off on that tangent about concrete because Rogan is at his best when he facilitates his guest in talking about something they know about and have enthusiasm for, and I really think Trump cares way more about concrete than he does about running the federal government.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
I would think the major argument against this would be that it massively increases the incentives for a deranged partisan to try and elevate their guy to the presidency through assassination. As such, I don't think repealing the 12th would be a good idea at all.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
two well muscled physically fit men can't handle a tiny woman in her nightie
I'm baffled why anyone thought there was a need to handle her at all! She had called the cops to report a prowler; they were there, they had presumably seen that there was no prowler. What on earth was stopping them from going "right, lady, you're acting weird and we're not comfortable here. We don't see any one around your house and we're going to leave now. Have a good night"???
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
If Congress, which is the body which actually passes laws, wants to stop him, Congress can. Except, to raise the idea is to immediately understand how ridiculous it is, because Congress hasn't exercised real policymaking judgment in more than a vestigial way for half a century. It's all been seconded (in a dubiously-legal manner, not made any more impressive by everyone refusing to take responsibility for calling it out) to the executive, who now is demonstrating the truth of the proverb "what the hand giveth, so it may take away."
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Hits really close to home. I, a young autist-in-training from the provinces, was enamored of DC and the chance to influence world events in high school. I duly went off to study international affairs at an inside-the-beltway school and immediately ran into a brick wall of these people and suffered basically a minor nervous breakdown at the shock of having my ideals shredded right in front of me. Not a pleasant part of the bildungsroman.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
Campaign rhetoric? sure. But clearly some people really believe Trump is a Nazi? Can somebody help me understand the claim? Not necessarily the veracity, but what the substantative argument is. . . . Can anyone lay out the argument and why Trump is Hitler sufficiently captures a real claim about the dangers of his presidency. (Again not looking for veracity, I'm trying to understand what the claim means.)
At the risk of being glib, Orwell already explained this: The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.”. They're just screaming "ORANGE MAN BAD" in the most powerful imagery they can think of.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
To be fair, comedians literally have as a job description "tell narratively-interesting and humorous stories in as economical, effective, and entertaining a manner as possible." It's useful for politicians to also have this skill, but they're not as hyper-selected for this trait as comedians.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
unremarkable despotism
It's plenty remarkable for a lot of reasons. First, the soap-opera drama of the Nazi rise is just incredible. If it weren't so horrifying, you could make a dozen comic soap operas out of it. Second, the remarkable run of wild success that Hitler's early-career gambles met with is fascinating. There were generals locking themselves in their offices with nervous breakdowns over the Anschluss, the handling of the Sudenten crisis, the invasion of the rump Czechoslovak state, Fall Weiss, and Fall Gelb...and somehow each one worked out fantastically in Hitler's favor. Even the amazing success of the Wehrmacht at the beginning of Barbarossa was down to ridiculously good timing (catching the Soviets forward-deployed for an invasion to the West...but not yet on a war footing) and a shocking case of the normally-wily Stalin suddenly grabbing onto the idiot-ball of world-history with both hands. Third, the speed at which things broke down for the Nazis is just as vertiginous, and makes an equally-interesting story. And of course fourth, the sheer industrial scale of the killing achieved through bureaucracy is itself a modern marvel, and a sobering reminder to western, advanced, industrialized nations that we are not exempt from the blood-lust we might otherwise be tempted to put down to the savagery of less-enlightened souls (the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan Hutu, the Young Turks, etc.)
Supah_Schmendrick
23d ago
I'll quote @gattsuru here:
... the Obama administration issued thousands of work permits under DAPA after the Fifth Circuit [entered an] injunction [blocking the practice], and then said oops. A further hundred thousand reprieves were granted after the Obama administration swore before the court and in written submissions that they would not act on the memo while the court was ruling on the preliminary injunction to start with. During appeals the Obama administration held that it could offer whatever individualized discretion it wanted, so long as no one made those decisions because of the DAPA rule. Nor was this problem specific to DAPA. The Obama admin repeatedly refused to follow both statutory requirements and court orders mandating notice to a state for settling refugees, up to and including directing state charities to not tell state authorities.
To say nothing of how the Biden administration twisted and turned to do anything possible to refrain from enforcing the actual law on the border.
The left has a track record of breaking the law and ignoring court decisions in order to keep the border open, then trying to hide the ball under obfuscatory administratrivia.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
The US could sort out the corruption and drugs,
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh citation very much needed.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
"Social trust" isn't just between a population and its rulers, but also between the members of the polity themselves. Perception of crime, "thickness" of social bonds, community engagement, etc. That also has been going down thanks partially to increasing diversity but also thanks to the internet which has everyone staring at a screen instead of each other and staying in instead of going out.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
The big trend with the GWB was the abolishment of the rules of war. There were no prisoners of war, only terrorists who can be tortured in any which way.
Were the people captured while acting as uniformed members of a recognized belligerent state's regular military? If not (and not within a few closely-associated civilian professions like military sutlers and contractors), they're not legally POWs under the Geneva Conventions. And even then, the Convention does not bar prosecution of POWs for acts which contravene the laws of war, such as indiscriminate attacks against civilians.
Pashtuns can't have any reason to oppose the Afghan government.
They absolutely can - they're just not POWs when they're captured fighting out of uniform, or attacking civilians; they're insurgents/terrorists.
Palestinians are completely justified in having armed resistance and participating in an armed conflict.
Sure, that's a moral claim. They can fight if they want to. But if they choose to fight, they then can't complain about the consequences of the other party fighting too.
They are not terrorists, they are armed combatants participating in an armed conflict.
They are not fighting in uniform so as to readily distinguish themselves from the civilian population, and are engaging in indiscriminate attacks against civilians.
There is no special terrorist clause in the Geneva convention.
No, there is a specific definition of who gets protection under the convention as a lawful combatant. Hamas and Hezbollah fighters do not qualify.
Israel is clearly trying to depopulate Gaza in order to steal the land.
Low-effort mindreading.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Why, in eight years, haven't MAGA Republicans built any real organization outside of Trump's personality?
Because the footsoldiers and bureaucrats who build those organizations (attorneys, accountants, policy-wonks and other recent elite-college grads willing to swallow low salaries in exchange for proximity to power and influence) are overwhelmingly not MAGA, and even not Republican.
Why, in eight years, is there no political heir to Trumpism?
Because Trump has a lot more name-recognition than any other politician, and has a plurality of personal loyalists. He's also very good at attacking rivals, gets basically infinite amounts of free media from mainstream and liberal outlets horrified by him (but who don't realize that their coverage backfires and helps Trump with his base), and the people who rose to challenge him are either out-of-step with the modern conservative electorate (Nikki Haley) or too-online and actually not all that charismatic (DeSantis)
Why, in eight years, isn't there a policy apparatus behind Trump that Trump won't disavow?
Because that would tie Trump to something that he didn't dream up, and his personal policy is basically an anti-NAFTA 1980's Blue Dog Democrat. His genius, such as it is, lies in realizing that policy rhetoric doesn't actually matter all that much.
Why, in eight years, do we lack any MAGA candidates in the Capitol or Governor's Mansions who aren't complete weirdoes?
Because MAGA is so incredibly low-status among wealthy and white-collar folks that only the complete weirdoes are willing to tie themselves to it. Also, Trump has a bad habit of cannibalizing his own supporters to buoy his own efforts. (Does DeSantis count as a weirdo in your view? If so, he's awfully effective for a weirdo)
Mark Halperin, a high-priced political analyst, just said "The media now has, it's a single mission: [to] stop Donald Trump from winning." I think that's probably right, with "media" defined as "everything to the left of FOX."
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