Senate The US Politics discussion

Another nauseating detail from that story:

 

What I'm imagining is even worse, a politician with the smarts and charisma of a Huey Long and spouts his anti-elitist populist rhetoric, but someone, unlike Long, who's really in the pocket of big business. I actually sort of admire what Long accomplished in his early Louisiana career when he essentially took over their old boy's network that once locked everyone else out of power. Of course, he ultimately went power mad, but at least they had reasonable way of ending the careers of demagogues back then.

As I'm sure you know, there was actually a pretty strong anti-immigration element to the Democratic party not too long ago, though not so racist in its outlook. I was wondering why Trump's family separation plan hasn't hurt him in the polls. Maybe that sentiment is alive in a lot of Democratic voters still.

 

@Darth Nerdling , anti-immigration might be alive in Democratic pockets in the rust belt(the Democratic and Independent voters) though I'm not sure it's something even close to a majority overall.

 

The guys I know watch FOX News and act like it's the Holy Gospel.

 

I'll bet it's a location/demographics thing. @appleseed, you live in a pretty red area so they're probably comfortable saying what they want. I don't know where @Glitterstimm lives, but my guess is it might be where that's a minority opinion and social liberalism is a more socially-desirable trait.

 

OK so using wokedictionary.com or whatever lazy site you first hit up is great and I'm really proud but no. Genocide is a prescribed legal term, with a prescribed meaning:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Not only is your definition woefully inadequate, mostly incorrect, and far off the mark, but it misses the key distinction - "intent to destroy, in whole or in part..." Great job on failing in such a spectacular fashion.

What happens is, woke twits on the left or hypocritical ****s on the right use the term as a substitute for crimes against humanity because their woke passionate outrage/lack of a sense of irony (when "Christians are being persecuted") overrides the rational centre of their brain and they want to make sure you know they think doubly poorly of the crime against humanity. Probably because "merely" using that prescribed legal term for "acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack [such as] murder [or] extermination" lacks the emotional cheap shot of an allegation of genocide. Sure, it cheapens the impact for actual victims of genocide but how else will people know How Outraged You Are™?

 

Perhaps the one wearing Melania's jacket should have been Donald. At least it would be honest then.

 

Here's an article from The Atlantic that addresses the shift among Democrats from a somewhat supportive position on the benefits of immigration to their nearly unequivocal support of it today. I highly recommend it. It gets into the complexities of an issue that Trump has managed to turn highly partisan and one-sided through his intolerance and cruelty.

It points out the rationale behind the Democrat's shift, as pro-immigrant positions resonate more with Democrats as the electorate today experiences demographic changes. As a consequence of this rise of xenophobia among conservatives, Democrats have also become more hesitant to appear to be siding with them, and academics have felt the need to self-censor and suppress data that presents a more mixed picture of the effects of immigration on the economy.

At the same time, the article addresses studies that show both negative and positive economic consequences of immigration both on certain segments of the population -- namely, possibly depressing the wages of low skilled workers and American tech workers affected by the H1B visa program -- and its mixed effects on the entitlement system. It also argues for new approaches that would lead to greater acceptance of immigrants and different messaging that the Democrats should use on the issue. I didn't agree with everything in the article, but thought it brought up some new and interesting points.

 

Did you not read your own quote? Here, I will bold the parts I think you missed:

This is exactly what is happening right now. Children of indigenous South American ethnicity are being forcibly taken from their parents and being placed into a prison system designed to end with them being adopted by an American family who is likely white or Caucasian. The question isn't whether or not it is happening (it is), but whether the intent is to target these people because of their race. Considering that Trump's crackdown is targeted not against Chinese or European students, workers and tourists who have overstayed their visas (which happens constantly), but rather against brown people, I think there is a strong case to be made as to its racial intent.

Now to be fair, genocide is historically difficult to define and prove, even in cases clearer than this one. For example, when Hannah Arendt described the processes of the Holocaust in Eichmann in Jerusalem, she drew criticism from parts of the Jewish community because she accounted for the role that early Israeli settlers played in accepting emigrated Jewish children directly from the Nazis, activity that could be construed as participation in genocide according to the 1948 UN Convention, a definition she was entirely familiar with.

I'm not arguing that what is currently happening constitutes genocide, but I'm not so bold as to argue it's not either. It is clearly organized, racially targeted violence being carried out by a government. If you want to make your own argument I'd recommend you do so more carefully.

 

This should also be considered in light of the decades of the US funding and training right-wing dictatorships which institute apartheid, forced assimilation and ethnic cleansing against indigenous groups, while business interests get cheap access to their land, natural resources and labor.

 

So you can prove the intent to destroy in this case?

I ask because as the resident of a country where Article 2(e) actually applies, I might have some suspicion about right wing, I'm sorry, "left by American standards" liberals arguing that the act of separation is sufficient to give rise to an intent.

 

Why would he sign the photos?

 

Well I don't know what country you are referring to and I don't know what to make of your conflation of right-wing liberals and American standards so I can't comment on that.

But as to proving intent to destroy, I specifically said that I'm not prepared to argue it's existence in either the affirmative or negative. I am curious though which situation in which you seem to be saying article 2(e) does exist?

 

@Ender Sai I didn't mean for Glitterstimm to take my place in replying to you.

Take it up with SuperWatto for summoning you here? Because I know losing burns.

 

The American left is the global right. There's no conflation; Hillary Clinton was a Thatcher clone and Obama, an American David Cameron.

The genocide in question is the Stolen Generation.

Yes you said something eye-wateringly ignorant and vapid, you should feel burned for losing.

 

I agree, except that I believe that while the Clintons are essentially right-wing, there is still an American Left. It is currently unorganized and impotent but hopefully that will change.

 

Certainly, it's my assumption that he was talking about migrating here illegally, due to the fact that the waiting list is already pretty long. He's not telling people to start their paperwork, he's telling them to get to steppin'.

It certainly seems implied to me.

And yes, he's the future president, not the current one. However July 1st is just a bit over a a week away.

 

I had to tag him. What if he'd missed it? We wouldn't have gotten the wokedictionary.com gem.

 

I’m on vacation in California, and my allergies virtually went away. It’s so much less polluted here than it is in Texas. I want this throughout the United States. Clean air!

 

1. The right to apply for asylum is a human right

2. As is the expectation of basic minimal standards of treatment, even when you’ve otherwise committed a crime.

3. Donald Trump’s family separation policy significantly infringed both

So, yes, in a speech laying out a response to that crisis, he spoke more broadly about migrant rights. The refusal of Trump and his allies to recognize that they have any is actually the much more “lawless” stance.

 

Is Texas really that polluted?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how the United States will react when China finally flexes its muscle and overtly defeats America in a major way for the very first time.

I thought that day was still a few decades off but with Trump and his trade war, it’s probably coming up within the next year or two. China is so much more forward-thinking than the US; it’s going to be quite ugly when they actually take an action that truly hurts the US economy. I still think it will come as a direct challenge to the dollar, because that would be the hardest for America to retaliate against.

Not even sure Congress would be able to get it’s **** together long enough to respond, either.

 

I'm shocked (well, not that shocked) at how quickly Trump is destroying decades of good agricultural and diplomatic relations with China.

One of Trump's first appointees was the Ambassador to China, and his pick was perfectly justifiable, one that I had few issues with: Terry Branstad, governor of Iowa. If you think of states that have good relations with China, you probably wouldn't think of Iowa as being one of the top states, if you even thought of Iowa at all, but decades of careful diplomatic and economic negotiation have made the two governments quite friendly with one another. Branstad made multiple visits to China and personally met with Xi Jingping, and Chinese state-run media, often expressing concerns about Trump's policies, were by-and-large warm to the idea of Branstad being their new American ambassador. Iowan senators for Congress promised their constituents that Trump's policies would continue to further strengthen those diplomatic and economic ties with China, and that Iowa would greatly benefit from this new President.

Fast forward almost two years, and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is making public statements every other week basically freaking out that Trump is going to destroy U.S. agricultural trade with China, and that his boneheaded policies are going to severely impact the Heartland. China's proposing tariffs on corn, pork, and soybeans--a huge portion of Iowa's agricultural sales to China. Trump's basically shrugging at the idea of how the trade war is going to hurt the Midwest's farmers, literally saying "We'll make it up to them."

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s...-farmers-soybeans-pork-corn-perdue/508287002/

Meanwhile, Branstad's flying back to D.C. to talk with the Agricultural committee and his Iowan political allies to try to find a way to un-**** this mess. He and other governors spent DECADES building up relations with China to ensure the average Iowa farmer would get the best trade deal while China would be happy with their product and would continue buying, and in two years, all of those diplomatic ties are dead in the water. The average Iowan farmer is still riding the Trump train and hasn't figured out that they're going to be royally screwed by the tariffs, but once Iowa starts losing major trade dollars from China, you can bet that Grassley and Joni Ernst will be running back and forth from Iowa to D.C., trying to do damage control and keep their voter base from kicking them out in November, since they campaign hard on "helping the Iowa farmer". I'm interested to see where it goes.