Have any of you ever dissuaded a Christian into no longer being a Christian?

Why bother?

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Wow, that is a big bucket of crazy.

I want to make this very clear, I do not consider you my intellectual equal and I do not care about your backwards take on "morality. Diversity makes us stronger and what you are aruging for is mobocracy.

I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper!...... I fart in your general direction! . Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

Ah, the Pro-Trump people here remind me of times of the first Dubya administration, the time of the Iraqi invasion and "Freedom Fries".

Similarly were then the same kind of people feeling the urge to defend US failing policy, then the decision to go to war and reurgitating the talking points of the jingoistic media (at that time). They had the need to rally behind their president and his ruinous decisions (just as now with Trump). The President simply could not make any bad decisions, and it was their responsibility to defend their president even on the earlier forum (old PF).

At least it's soothing to know that the Trump lovers will dissappear in the long run just like those Dubya lovers. Say the time when the next Right Wing Messiah comes, who with hindsight can tell the obvious truth about Trump's administration.

However with regard to a discussion about immigration and illegal immigration it is not necessary that it be a pro-Trump vs an anti-Trump debate. Take whoever the president happens to be away the debate will always still remain.

You are wrong. The Zero Tolerance policy belongs to the Trump administration. This is not the same.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. — Jeremiah

The actual “problem”, seems to me, to be YOUR problem. Therefore it is your problem to solve. Your projection of your problem is merely cast in my direction.

The advent of this problem of yours is the immediate jump you made as a consequence of a default reflex. Certain words I used appears to have triggered this reflex.

The reflex thus triggered by certain words created a mis-ordering of the words. The reflex changed their order.

I initially felt required (in order to try to help you, perhaps, consider this default reflex), work backwards as a consequence of your reflexive jump.

Working backwards may look to a default-reflex-pattern (what you manifested as in that moment) as my being defensive.

But this wasn’t my motivation.


The “reflexive jump” created a chasm within which I attempted to fill, for you, with my explanation.

If you were not so default inclined this is not something I would probably have not needed to attempt to do.


It appears that in essence “you” are defending your default reflex. (“You” still manifesting AS that default reflex).

A default reflex will not inspect itself. The “problem” you face, but seemingly choose not to, is one of identification (you as it) WITH the reflex.

The resolution to such a problem is to not identify AS the default reflex. This, therefore, is a problem of emotion.

You are either one with emotions or you are manifesting AS any particular emotion.

“Zero tolerance” is a political word game at this point. A trump word game.

The actual processes at the border are the same now as they have been for years.

You made some racist remarks, live up to your error and stop trying to blame others for your mistakes.

Do you even know what the Zero Tolerance policy is?

The actual processes at the border are the same now as they have been for years. — raza

An outright lie. The Trump administration changed the policy on January 25th 2018.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/white-house-framework-immigration-reform-border-security/

Were you feeling feeling irate or emotional when typing that response?

Will you at least try to be civil with each other? — Mr Phil O'Sophy

There's actually been some debate over this, given Robert De Niro's "Fuck Trump" comment at the Tony's, or most recently, the owner of a small restaurant in Virginia politely asking Sarah Sanders to leave her restaurant.

Personally, when facing an administration that separates families, places children in cages, and doesn't bother placing a systematic process for reuniting them, calls immigrants "rapists", "invaders" and an "infestation", amongst a deluge of other Naziesque comments and actions, then I'm not really interested in using civil language or politely engaging in those who defend or support them. Fuck 'em. Oppression thrives best against silence and civility.

Don't really care if I piss off people who support inhumane policies.

Crazy how much insane conservative propaganda was launched in defense of Trump's zero-tolerance policy.

That sound emotional to me. I say embrace to flame, it is part of who we are.

An outright lie. The Trump administration changed the policy on January 25th 2018. — Akanthinos

The processes of vetting adults and children who are caught crossing illegally by temporarily separating them in order to do this have not changed. Remember? This has been the supposed issue the media and opposition have been attacking

Sure, other proposals have been adopted or are proposed to be adopted going forward (some being prospective, not retroactive, according to that document). It is hardly controversial that a new administration makes changes in how they administrate.


Now in that document you presented it does not contain those words “zero tolerance”.

As I stated. Trump’s political words.

I want to agree with you, and I do to an extent, but I also tend to feel that being philosophical in the face of the racism, xenophobia and / or general scumbaggery, lies and trolling of some of the Trump crowd (and I'm not aiming this at anyone specific in this discussion) is a dominated strategy and often tends to result in more of the same. Kind of like when faced with a barking dog you might have to bark back before you get things under control. Once they are then maybe dialogue is possible, but as I said before the kind of dangerous and demeaning rhetoric the Trump crowd regularly employs needs to be met with full force, and that won't always look very philosophical partly simply because it's in the political domain. And the futility of trying to be philosophical with someone who is being purely political was demonstrated earlier when reasonable responses to tom's off-topic distractions led to only more of the same. That's my take for now anyway. I'm open to being corrected.

If anyone else ever gets banned due to this discussion, a proper 'we welcome you back if you alter your views slightly' would be pretty cool. :cool:

No-one was banned directly due to this discussion and no-one will get banned for political views that are not very obviously racist or anti-semitic etc. tom got banned for stuff that happened afterwards.

Didn't mean to imply anything by that comment. I'm just enjoying the show.

Just to add to that @Mr Phil O'Sophy. Remember the OP. We are not in political philosophy territory here, really.

This place serves 7 purposes:
1) Debate about Trump.
2) Talking about Trump.
3) Shouting whatever you want at Trump.
4) Laughing, crying, hating, liking Trump.
5) Whatever else you want to do so long as it relates Trump.
6) Whatever else you want to do even though it has nothing to do with Trump.
7) etc. — René Descartes

I think Raza's comparison between illegal immigrants and rapists was not well thought through but I don't read any necessary racism in it.

The processes of vetting adults and children who are caught crossing illegally by temporarily separating them in order to do this have not changed. Remember? This has been the supposed issue the media and opposition have been attacking — raza

The zero-tolerance show did change things; illegal border crossers were prosecuted under criminal law, whereas previously this was dealt with under civil law. Minors cannot be criminally prosecuted, so the separation caused them to end up in different departments that don't communicate with each other (children with HHS).

ICE, responsible for the civil law approach, as a rule did not separate families with very young children due to the children's dependency on their parents. Now, children younger than five years old were separated from their parents some of them even unable to talk, that suggests ages below 3 and if my daughter is anything to go by: below 2 years old. I find it incredibly difficult to wrap my head around how people consider this morally acceptable; treating babies and toddlers as a means to deter illegal immigration.

Even if it were morally acceptable, there's no evidence criminal prosecution is effective. In fact, it was standard practise to follow the civil law route as it was more effective than criminal prosecution (which has a much higher burden of proof). The whole criminal court system was swamped as a result of the new policy, further underlining the change in policy was ill considered.

Absolutely agree for 99% of discussions here but not necessarily for this one. Refer you again to the OP.

[Cross posted. OK, you made some good points, for sure.]

I posted this on a CNN news feed earlier this week and it hit the top comment for a while, so I'd thought I wanted as whether the vetting process should apply to presidents too?

You are being dramatic and emotional yourself. The worst burn I could feel here is a form banning, somehow I think I'll live.

There are times to set emotions aside and there are times not to, such as in moral concerns which requires the use of both. This is an emotional topic and if you think reason alone will lead you to truth here then you are mistaken. Also I would like to point out since this is text communication here then you are adding some of the emotion that you are reading. That is the nature of the written word.

So everyone should be like you, seeing how you are better than us all?

EVERYONE

Well this turned into an absolute poo storm...

Its slightly off putting to have to sift through all the childish bickering to find anything of substance written in this thread.

Will you at least try to be civil with each other? If you're feeling irate or emotional when you're typing your responses, that is probably a good sign you're probably not going to be very philosophical. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

Just to add to that Mr Phil O'Sophy. Remember the OP. We are not in political philosophy territory here, really. — Baden

I agree with both of you. Of course, we don't want this become a poo storm. There is a place for all that poo and that's the Shoutbox .

This was mostly meant to have fun at Trump. I'm not going to force anyone to say or not say anything, as that's not my job, and I accept everyone's opinion here. We don't want to be going too far into any extremes which may be offensive. Of course, I wrote an OP that was open to almost any discussion, but these must still conform to the site guidelines.

This isn't meant to be philosophical, it was just meant to loosely be a discussion about Trump or the whitehouse or anything else interesting that one would like to talk about. I'm fine with crazy conversations as long as they are not against the site guidelines.

I trust the moderators with any decisions they take regarding this discussion. Now back to Trump.

My point is simply that if you consume yourself in emotion, it blurs your vision. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

Then don't worry, as I can be an ass and not become consumed in the horrible flames of emotional blurriness. Personally, I think you are underestimating my skills to do both at the same time.