cartman
16d ago
This commenter's post is deeply objectionable for a number of a reasons, but the cherry on top is the dishonest framing of the evidence provided. The link to the comic which was provided displays that this book was available in a CITY'S PUBLIC LIBRARY, not some middle school where it was part of the curriculum. Of course the argument that a public city Library should contain zero material for an adult audience is absurd and I believe hardly anyone would defend it (though I'm happy to be proven wrong), which is why I believe this argument which could be defended on truthful merits was ignored instead for this dishonest framing.
Furthermore, a link to an article shows us the news that some female teachers rape their young male students. This is deeply horrible behaviour that deserves to be condemned, but I'd like to ask the obvious question, which is: what is the rate of teacher rape you are asserting (de facto by not mentioning other professions) is so much higher than other positions that come into contact regularly with children? Do we have reason to believe it's higher than the rate of priests at the hypothetical church you might join? If so, the evidence has not been provided. In the lack of that evidence, it seems a strange leap to assert that teachers are some uniquely dangerous creatures immune to societal condemnation (especially when incredibly disparate things like rape and allowing a graphic comic to remain on a public library shelf are lumped together)
cartman
23d ago
I think it's reasonable to take this as evidence that their personal relationship maybe isn't the greatest, that they have significant problems, etc. What I don't think is reasonable is a) taking this as evidence that her concern about him is definitely performative or fake. It's quite common, even in situations where domestic abuse of some significance has occured, that the people involved still have strong feelings for each other, care about each other, and likely would not want that partner deported illegally to a violent prison. This might seem contradictory but I think it's actually more the norm than the exception, and blithely assuming that abuse victims don't care about their abusers (married with children, especially) is a bit of a miss in my opinion.
And b) denigrating a person who has been accused of this as "not elite human capital" and therefore not worth caring about. First of all, the procedure was never finished, so this is tantamount to assuming guilt before innocence in legal proceedings. Secondly, assuming he had done the violent things he had been accused of, it would make not one whit of difference as to whether his deportation was valid or not, and the government should not be able to waive correct processing because someone is sufficiently 'bad'.
cartman
23d ago
I didn't miss it. And your pointing out that she didn't go through with the full process, I don't see how this is supposed to update my view. Perhaps she recanted her view of the domestic situation, perhaps she cares too much about him, perhaps it was too much hassle, perhaps it was a fake complaint in the first place. Perhaps she was threatened. Only the last would suggest more strongly to me that her concern about him is fake.
I am not routinely incensed at that because I don't see it come across my feed, which I am sure can be taken as evidence that I'm being a hypocrite, but if you'd like to point to an example I'd be more than happy to call it out if it seems like an egregious abuse/neglect of the system to me. I do get routinely incensed at whatever trampling of civil process I see exercised by those in power, of course mediated by the channels I follow.
Do you not believe the woman he married is a "US citizen"? What basis do you have for that?
You seem to have strange assumptions about people's state of mind when the first thing you think of when someone engages in PR to help return a family member from a notoriously violent prison to the country they were illegally deported from is that they are "chasing a fat legal payout" instead of maybe wanting to help out their family member who had an injustice done to them. Of course her children having quoted "disabilities" is further evidence for this somehow, alright.
This attempt by the executive to pay to imprison a man in a foreign country after making an administrative error that they now refuse to admit is what actually comes across as theater and (il)legal chicanery.
Apparently it is "my brain on legalism" to demand due process and rule-following from the authority that governs everyone's lives and controls untold power. The founders would be seizing in their graves.
I have no idea why you think any concern about this issue is "fake outrage". You acknowledge that they actually think something importantly fought over is at risk, so the outrage is not fake then, no? I guess you're saying they're disguising the cause of the outrage.
The outrage is certainly not fake. What do you think all that bureaucracy (which you call nonsense) is supposed to stop? Is it not the very deportations you argue people don't think they're at risk for, and other similar injustices? If I see a lion in its enclosure pounding away at the glass 5 inches in front of me while staring me down and yowling aggressively, I will assume that once it breaks the glass it will attack me. That's what the glass is there to prevent, and there's a reason the lion doesn't like it. It's because it wants to bite people it's angry at.
If I'm in a crowd of 1000 people at the zoo when the glass breaks, my personal odds of getting eaten are very low, but I still don't want it to happen and would take measures to prevent it. I might even feel some fear if I saw cracks forming in the glass despite knowing my odds are good. This is all pretty normal human behaviour, not what you call "play acting".
There is no legal protection for any citizen without adhering to some forms of bureaucracy, and people get scared when they are not protected.
Also, its strange that you dismiss the threat of deportation to Europe. I guess you don't see a huge cost in forcibly having your life uprooted from friends and family and work? But again, doing the utmost to avoid such a thing and being worried about it when its use is actively threatened against citizens is pretty normal human behaviour, even if the countries are nice. If you truly would have no qualms about such a thing (which I do find a bit hard to believe, but I'll take you at your word) then all I can say is I think you are in a tiny minority.
In general, I have a hard time understanding the distinction you're trying to draw between people worried about the fall of this supposed "shadow government" and actual cuts to USAID, government departments, etc, none of which I would describe as "shadow organizations". It really seems to me like people are worried about exactly the thing that it says on the tin, the thing that both Trump supporters and his opponents agree he is doing: "circumventing the procedural nonsense" that our country's documents call laws and taking a tire iron to the parts of the government he doesn't like, and which the people he dislikes support.
cartman
27d ago
"pro-Trump camp who wants Abrego Garcia to stay in El Salvador are not at all concerned that they will be next, because in their view citizens and non-citizens are two morally distinct categories."
You are either ignorant or a liar. Which is it?
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/trump-says-he-supports-deporting-u-s-citizens-237322821769
Literally from the man's own mouth in response to a direct question. He does not care about citizens that he decides he doesn't like. Maybe you or I will be next because we have a Hispanic name and tattoos.
Are all uncensored drawn images of sexual acts erotica or are you drawing some distinction between the two?
"Tom of Finland may have made many gays very happy, but if they want his material they are free to pay for it themselves." I don't know what this is supposed to be telling me; this is a fully generalizable argument against having libraries at all. If you want a math textbook, you're also free to pay for it yourself if you like math? Would you like to argue that erotic images are a special category that should be treated differently? If so, make the case.
Absent some evidence I am loath to accept your null hypothesis, just as you are clearly loath to accept mine. I will also note that you have chosen a specific slice of the argument I was making to defend by focusing solely on what you call drawn erotica and not, say, graphic images of war in history books. Do you support the latter being available in public libraries? If so, again, why the distinction?
Assuming that you were correct for the sake of argument, I think a pretty good justification for the change would be the Internet. Everyone already has unlimited free access to whatever type of content they want online, so it seems strange to put some special restrictions on an alternative service that is also available to serve the public at large (making it even less competitive than it already is with the Internet). Why would it be incumbent on the librarians to restrict their hub-of-information service when this onus is not placed on the Internet at large to do the same?
I fundamentally don't buy the arguments that children are being nefariously exposed to dangerous erotic content in some unique way through their public (not school) libraries. If their parents are so lax as to allow them to view dangerously inappropriate material in a public physical facility which has demarcated children's sections, when the system requires you to check out books for a defined length of time under a particular name, then those parents are lax enough that restricting the public libraries will have no effect anyway.
And everyone is always free to, you know, not take their kids to the public library if they don't want to. The fact that there is little necessity to do so is a load-bearing part of why the libraries should not necessarily feel obligated to cater their entire catalogue to the lowest age denominator.
And of course, there is room for nuance in all of these points. There is a great difference between erotic books being available in some clearly marked corner of the library vs. being advertised up front and loudly to all who enter.
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