That's the point. Republicans want immigrants to suffer, they want women who have sex to suffer ("pro-life" is anything but), they want anyone who isn't a straight white christian man to suffer.
>Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.
It's not just Trump. Read the article: this policy is being enforced by countless CBP agents, sheriffs, the judiciary, and other government workers at all levels. Clearly, a very large portion of the American populace is in full agreement with these actions.
Read my article, every individual you mentioned shares the love of cruelty to others and that's the central thesis of the article. Trump is merely their avatar:
>Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.
My own parents, alas, are Republicans who frequent Fox News and voted for Trump. They aren't cruel people - they really have a great capacity for compassion. I've spend a lot of time pondering this contradiction.
Here's what I've concluded: fear warps people. When someone ingests a constant stream of fear-pandering from their news sources and their peers, it totally shifts their perception of what's likely or unlikely, which means are worth the ends and which aren't, who to trust and who to distrust. My parents wouldn't feel good about a story like this, but they'd probably see it as an unfortunate but "uncommon" collateral damage of the law and order policies that are "keeping us safe". I think they genuinely believe there are hordes of gang members pressed against the border fences, looking for any chance to cross over and ravage the land, with only the occasional woman or child mixed in.
But nobody is immune to fear. Different groups just find different things to be afraid of. I and many others on this site have had our worldviews stretched by fear of censorship, surveillance, corporate conquest, China. Even if a fact is true, any fear attached to it will compromise a person's ability to reason. Mindfulness is more important than ever in these times of internet-amplified sensationalism.
This has an old, ugly history. We are pretty much exactly recapitulating actions taken against religious leaders who were doing these things in the early 80s, and who were prosecuted under Reagan. They won by losing, then.
> In Pima County, Tucson, anthropologist Robin Reineke works on identifying the deceased, piecing together clues found among the personal effects found on the decomposed bodies found in the desert. Her goal is to trace the dead migrant's family to inform them of their relative’s fate, and ultimately return the body home for burial.
Some communities have made it a crime to feed homeless people. I like the angle of "sincere religious beliefs" - I think the Religious Right have no idea of the scope of the can of worms they've opened with that clause. Talk about your unintended consequences...
The game of nonviolent civil disobedience becomes "make the government arrest people who obviously shouldn't be arrested for doing things that nobody should be arrested for, and make them do it on the national news, over and over until this changes"
90 year old vets, priests, monks, nuns, rabbis, imams, children, mothers with babies. The more dignified-looking and able to remain composed under pressure, the better.
Nothing in US law specifically prevents the FBI from dragging sanctuary claimants out of church basements. It happened, in Vietnam protests. It proved to be counterprodutive because it was so obviously immoral and it was done with a news team on the premises.
That is a lie. When this law was codified, the authors went well out of their way to make it explicitly clear that "ports of entry" have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.
Legitimate asylum seekers can seek asylum at the border. They do not need to run across the border, unless they actually have no valid claim for asylum and are simply jumping the border.
You see, as a legal immigrant who was stuck in the dreaded green card queue for years and many of whose family are still stuck in that queue because
(a) the immigration system is overwhelmed by illegals and
(b) because there is political lack of will to fix legal immigration
I do have a vested interest and authority to complain about illegals.
> Legitimate asylum seekers can seek asylum at the border.
Not when the executive directs that they be prevented from doing so, even to the extent of closing border crossings and launching cross border armed attacks to prevent it.
The “crisis at the border” is deliberately and unsubtly manufactured to sell the response.
> the immigration system is overwhelmed by illegals
No, it's not. Both because the systems legal immigrants use don't deal with illegals and vice versa, so that simply doesn't happen in any cased because illegal immigration has been dropping for a long time to the point where there is no longer even a net inflow.
> because there is political lack of will to fix legal immigration
That's not really an accurate statement. Portraying the problem as lack of will suggests that there is a broad consensus on what it means to “fix legal immigration” but people are just afraid to stand up and vote for it, while the truth is pretty much the opposite: plenty of people are willing to stand up and vote for things that are (in the view of particular factions) “fixig legal immigration”, but there is no consensus on which of the mutually incompatible fixes to adopt, because people have diametrically opposed view of what the problem with legal immigration is and what the goals are any fix should address (and that's even before disagreements on approaches between people sharing the same view of the problem/goals.)
> I do have a vested interest
Perhaps, but clearly not much understanding, and
> and authority
Beyond the universal “authority” inherent in free speech, no.
Well, up until the 60s, it was also illegal to marry outside your race in some states. So should someone have been arrested if They let an interracial couple live with them? If you think this attitude is old - according to one survey, 20% of all conservative Christians in Alabama still think interracial marriage is a sin.
Read the sheltering charges. They are probably cherry-picked, but even so, they are ridiculous and never should have merited arrests. These are good people being harassed for not looking the other way while human beings needlessly die in the desert.
These immigrants are breaking your laws and it's understandable if they aren't accepted, but waiting for them to die crosses the line into evil. Sometimes the moral alternative is illegal, but that doesn't make it wrong.
I'm not sure about why either. It did occur to me that it could be racism/nationalism, but I'm not used to see that here, so I dismissed it and kept wondering why.
Showing compassion is always a good thing, and the man should be commended for that. However the law against aiding criminals is also a good thing that should be upheld.
He deserved to be arrested. As an immigrant, I can attest to the fact that the USA has one of the (of not the most) compassionate immigration policies in the world. But people who continue to spread false information in order to push for open borders encourage these people to break the law and get killed in the process.
So much strawmaning in this thread about the motivations of religious and conservative Americans, I'm truly understand why conservatives say you all live in a bubble. So sad.
36 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 95.4 ms ] threadhttp://forms.nomoredeaths.org/drop-the-charges-against-dr-sc...
>Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.
>Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.
Here's what I've concluded: fear warps people. When someone ingests a constant stream of fear-pandering from their news sources and their peers, it totally shifts their perception of what's likely or unlikely, which means are worth the ends and which aren't, who to trust and who to distrust. My parents wouldn't feel good about a story like this, but they'd probably see it as an unfortunate but "uncommon" collateral damage of the law and order policies that are "keeping us safe". I think they genuinely believe there are hordes of gang members pressed against the border fences, looking for any chance to cross over and ravage the land, with only the occasional woman or child mixed in.
But nobody is immune to fear. Different groups just find different things to be afraid of. I and many others on this site have had our worldviews stretched by fear of censorship, surveillance, corporate conquest, China. Even if a fact is true, any fear attached to it will compromise a person's ability to reason. Mindfulness is more important than ever in these times of internet-amplified sensationalism.
Someone who shrugs about people dying and support policies that enable it are by definition not good people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_movement
> In Pima County, Tucson, anthropologist Robin Reineke works on identifying the deceased, piecing together clues found among the personal effects found on the decomposed bodies found in the desert. Her goal is to trace the dead migrant's family to inform them of their relative’s fate, and ultimately return the body home for burial.
The game of nonviolent civil disobedience becomes "make the government arrest people who obviously shouldn't be arrested for doing things that nobody should be arrested for, and make them do it on the national news, over and over until this changes"
90 year old vets, priests, monks, nuns, rabbis, imams, children, mothers with babies. The more dignified-looking and able to remain composed under pressure, the better.
Nothing in US law specifically prevents the FBI from dragging sanctuary claimants out of church basements. It happened, in Vietnam protests. It proved to be counterprodutive because it was so obviously immoral and it was done with a news team on the premises.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1158
8 U.S. Code § 1158. Asylum
Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.
I have neither reason, legal authority, nor moral authority to a priori doubt the legitimacy of asylum claims, and neither do you.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2019/01/17/falli...
http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S...
http://theconversation.com/todays-us-mexico-border-crisis-in...
You see, as a legal immigrant who was stuck in the dreaded green card queue for years and many of whose family are still stuck in that queue because
(a) the immigration system is overwhelmed by illegals and (b) because there is political lack of will to fix legal immigration
I do have a vested interest and authority to complain about illegals.
Not when the executive directs that they be prevented from doing so, even to the extent of closing border crossings and launching cross border armed attacks to prevent it.
The “crisis at the border” is deliberately and unsubtly manufactured to sell the response.
> the immigration system is overwhelmed by illegals
No, it's not. Both because the systems legal immigrants use don't deal with illegals and vice versa, so that simply doesn't happen in any cased because illegal immigration has been dropping for a long time to the point where there is no longer even a net inflow.
> because there is political lack of will to fix legal immigration
That's not really an accurate statement. Portraying the problem as lack of will suggests that there is a broad consensus on what it means to “fix legal immigration” but people are just afraid to stand up and vote for it, while the truth is pretty much the opposite: plenty of people are willing to stand up and vote for things that are (in the view of particular factions) “fixig legal immigration”, but there is no consensus on which of the mutually incompatible fixes to adopt, because people have diametrically opposed view of what the problem with legal immigration is and what the goals are any fix should address (and that's even before disagreements on approaches between people sharing the same view of the problem/goals.)
> I do have a vested interest
Perhaps, but clearly not much understanding, and
> and authority
Beyond the universal “authority” inherent in free speech, no.
Harboring someone who is actively breaking the law doesn't seem that controversial.
> leaving food and water
Littering and providing assistance to someone breaking the law.
It was illegal to harbor fugitive slaves.
It was moral to break that law.
If you think the issue is that clear-cut, you end up on the side of slavers.
It's illegal to harbor rapists, murderers, drug smugglers and sex traffickers.
If you think that's legal, you're on the side of rapists, murderers, drug smugglers and sex traffickers.
I don't think it's clear-cut.
These immigrants are breaking your laws and it's understandable if they aren't accepted, but waiting for them to die crosses the line into evil. Sometimes the moral alternative is illegal, but that doesn't make it wrong.