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Where is the shame, Americans? Where is the shame?
Background: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/20/ice-secretly-deported-grandfather (all bolding mine)
My first reaction after seeing this was a singular and complete WTF???. I do not see how it is possible to read this and go anything other than "Shame on you" at the American government, ICE in particular and also the American populace for acquiescing to this.
Note that this is not some drug dealer or gang lynchpin, this is 82 year old gramps, who is a retired leatherworker granted asylum fully under the rules who has been working in the USA for the last 40+ years and has raised a family in the country. Instead after losing his Green Card he gets summarily disappeared and put on a flight to Guatemala, a country to which he has no connection...
This is not the behaviour I would expect of a mature world power like the USA, this is more like what one would expect of Saudi Arabia, or actually no, at least the Saudis would at least have more respect for their elders. Instead what we see here is what happens when a modern secular polity jettisons the moral framework it took up as replacement for the laws of God and the ancient idea of noblesse oblige: we are left with a hollow shell; a massive cavity, ringing under the total emptiness of its own fundamental depravity.
The US supreme court has its own share of blame and shame to take here. Judicial Review is a fundamental check on the balance of power of any modern western government, as Americans with their whole "we have checks and balances" schick are wont to tell us. Instead some power tripping ICE worker two grades above the rank of janitor decided to act as judge, jury and executioner and sent a vulnerable 82 year old man off to a country with which he has no links whatsoever.
And what did the Supreme Court do? It approved this sort of behaviour from servants of the government just a few months earlier. Either this is direct malice from the court or the learned justices, sitting in that august hall (august by American standards, by our standards there is terraced housing within 5 minutes walk of me that is older), failed to consider the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions. Now I know what they say about Hanlon's Razor but even I will admit the people elevated to the Supreme Court of the United States aren't going to be incompetent...
In a civilized country like the UK, firstly something like this would never have happened as the man would have a right to argue against his deportation in front of a judge, so none of this "ambush deportation" would ever be possible. Furthermore, even if the deportation for some inexplicable reason happened without following any process the family of this old man would be able to bring a massive suit against the government which they would easily win if the government was foolish enough to not settle.
On top of this, in the UK they have a special class of damages called "Exemplary Damages" which are designed to punish the perpetrator instead of compensating the victim. Exemplary damages are very very rarely available under UK law, but one of the very few exceptions is "arbitrary and oppressive conduct by a servant of the government". In a mature democracy like the UK the government recognizes that it has more power, and therefore more responsibility, than a private entity in the same situation, and so opens itself to an additional type of liability when it makes a big mistake compared to a private company that does something equally as grave.
Instead in the USA we have the opposite situation where the government, with the tacit support of the judiciary, has cloaked itself with additional protections under the guise of "Sovereign Immunity" that mean it can behave in a malicious way and not leave itself liable to damages. The US talks the talk on how it has punitive damages which keeps big bad actors in line so they don't mistreat the little man but then you can take one look at its convoluted and extremely adversarial judicial system and realize instantly just how difficult it is for ordinary people to not get worn down in a war of attrition long before any final hearing.
The UK handles things so so much better here. The judge in the UK isn't a neutral umpire but they have their own duty to the court to ensure that cases are handled fairly and efficiently, the more inquisitorial nature of our legal system means that playing procedural games is frowned upon and both parties are incentivised to stay honest lest they piss off the judge, who has a certain amount of leeway available to them to help out the little man if necessary.
All in all as I learn more about the Law as it is in both the UK, other systems like European Civil Law and the US, I am slowly being drawn to the inescapable conclusion that the American legal system, for all its grandiose self professed claims, is a steaming pile of shit. And no, I'm not basing my conclusion here solely on modern jurisprudence, but also looking at old Supreme Court cases like Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Co. where the court, in its infinite wisdom, decided 8-1 that refusing a job offer for a non-security sensitive role to a Mexican national who was a US green card holder with full working rights in the US just because they are technically not a citizen does not count as discrimination based on national origin...
And what may be the worst part of this sordid affair may not even be the ambush deportation, but the utter and total lack of class displayed in falsely telling the family that that their patriarch had died... I mean have some basic respect... The chain of failures and completely absolute misjudgment by multiple different individuals without somebody interjecting somewhere that what they are doing isn't right which must have happened for such a call to ever be made in the first place speaks volumes about the American psyche...
In a way this really goes to show us that the US, for all its wealth, is still a young country: it is still new money, in the worst possible sense of the word. I think the great LKY put it far far better than I ever could talking about the true character of Americans (n.b. I'd say that if you watch just one video today, this should be near the top of your list, it's only 3 minutes long and well worth the time as it shows one of the great men of the 20th century diagnosing the American malaise with effortless precision).
Perhaps after the end of Trump, the USA will be in a position where it can apply for readmission to the human race...
The erosion of shame as a social force is one of the biggest impacts of the Trump presidencies.
You see pretty often in this forum and in right-wing circles people expressing pride that they have got free of the distorting power of empathy and shame. Elon Musk's claim that empathy is the most dangerous force in society would be the peak example of this phenomenon. As a result of this, they go even beyond biting the bullet of e.g. it being disgraceful that an old man has been wrongly deported. They actually enjoy said bullet like a delicious amuse bouche, and imply that it is a GOOD sign if it's true that he has been deported and that his family wrongly told he was dead, because it implies the administration is acting at speed and focusing on the big picture, not worrying overly about individual liberty.
I'm pretty sure those who embrace this conclusion are making a major strategic mistake that will come back to haunt them. By thinking they can jettison the concept of shame, they are storing it up to be brought down on their asses in much larger quantities later. Shame is not a force humans can, ultimately, live without.
The erosion of shame as an asymmetric weapon is one of the biggest impacts of the Trump presidency; the right will no longer accept being shamed. Its use for anything but had long since died. McCarthy could be brought down with "have you no sense of decency, sir?"; while McCarthy himself probably didn't, others on his side did. The woke could not be shamed; when they brought down Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt based on a lie, or Hawaiian Shirt Scientist for no good reason at all, it was to thunderous applause.
Finding empathy to be dangerous has little to do with shame; Musk was talking about a phenomenon similar to what rationalists call "utility monsters".
As for Leon, I suspect the truth lies between "The story is completely fabricated and no such 82-year-old Allentown grandfather named Luis Leon even exists" and "82-year-old Allentown grandfather Luis Leon got his green card replaced because he needed it to take a trip to Guatemala, which he then did". Making up stories to shame people is certainly one way to immunize them against shame, and there's been a LOT of stories.
This is the problem though. Large parts of the right now won't accept being shamed full stop, by either side. They won't be shamed by the left. And they won't shame themselves. Trump has identified accepting shame of any kind as weakness; I suspect it would be soul death for him to think of himself as having done something wrong or acknowledge contrition. With the regulation that shame provides gone from both directions, nothing can stop awful things being happily written off as costs worth paying in the name of a bigger cause such as lowering immigration.
To my mind a wise right wing person would accept shame for something like this story, if true. They are then welcome to e.g. turn the tables and say it's the left who should be really ashamed for not taking immigration seriously in the first place. That'd be a stronger response, one that keeps shame in play, versus claiming oneself to have moved beyond shame altogether.
I don't think that's correct. There were significant dramas around H1B's, Iran, Epstein, and recently amnesty. All this involves a doing things powerful people don't want done, or not doing the ones they do want done, so it's not an insta- victory for Trump's base, but it does show he responds to shame from his supporters.
That's a big "if". There were too many controversies where the right was expected to accept shame, that turned out to be obvious lies. A wise right wing person would not even acknowledge this as a real thing, until several smoking guns are produced. Then we can start talking about accepting shame... though it's a tall order. When I want to talk about the biggest medical scandal of this generation - pediatric trans medicine - I get told that the amount of people impacted is tiny, and so I shouldn't care. So since the impact of this (if it's even true) is one dude, I'm afraid I won't be able to accept more shame than the wise left-wing person does for transing kids.
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What has accepting being shamed by "the left" brought them?
It hasn't bought them economic prosperity, it hasn't bought them moral prosperity.
The problem with shame is that you can always just say "no" if you're willing and powerful enough to do so. The "right" has regained that power, for the "left" emptied their stores of social credit on wasteful social investments that ultimately failed to pay off/legitimize themselves.
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Why is this a problem?
No, events have demonstrated that accepting shame is weakness. Both Smollett and Floyd demonstrate this -- the totally fake Smollett incident got Congress to pass a hate crime law, and the shame about the killing of Floyd resulted in shamefaced politicians dialing back on enforcement of basic laws against real crimes.
That doesn't work, the left simply sneers at the idea that they could do anything shameful or that the right has any standing to shame them. As I said, it had become an asymmetric weapon, and the breaking of it was necessary.
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