I'm not a huge fan of politicians, but what you're saying strikes me as overly cynical and a kind of moral cowardice. In my life, I've seen good and bad politicians and politicians don't seem to me to be any worse than anyone else from some other similar walk of life. Doesn't saying they're all corrupt (or almost all) make it easier then to justify voting for someone you know you shouldn't be voting for?

OK, fair enough. I'm not trying to be a prick. I like arguing and attacking assertions I think are false. This is a philosophy forum. You're going to get a lot of that here.

A politician that furthered my goals perfectly would not do those things. — MrLiminal

Really? I'm thinking of the case of Bill Clinton, who furthered a lot of my goals, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for him because of his behavior. That can't happen with your goals and some hypothetical sleazy leader? Can you give examples of some of your goals?

I think most if not all politicians are morally reprehensible people — MrLiminal

I want to unpack this, because it seems demonstrably false. What was morally reprehensible about Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Obama, for example?

I vote for which monster I think will further my goals. — MrLiminal

Really? There's no disqualifying behavior a politician can partake in that would make you not vote for him? To take an obvious extreme case, what about a politician that furthers your goals perfectly, but is revealed to be a Grand Duke in the KKK? He's also been impeached for bribery. As a citizen, would you vote for this person, assuming the impeachment fails and he runs again. As a senator, would you vote to convict in an impeachment trial if your vote meant conviction? Assume you are convinced on the bribery charges.

Trump's comments on the Central Park Five case don't strike you as racist? Just a tiny bit? Has Trump ever gone after white kids like that?

I agree. I don't think Trump wants anything to do with this. War with Iran means higher gas prices, a lower stock market, higher inflation and higher interest rates.

I think that's obvious, but I don't think it's obvious to Amadeus.

Why do you think Trump escalated the situation by deploying marines? We both agree the NG was enough, right?

Do you think the rioting was so bad the Marines had to be sent in?

What is Iran going to do about it? Their last attack on Israel couldn't get past their missile defenses. Hezbollah has been severely weakened. Iran will be under intense pressure to retaliate in a way that hurts Israel. How do they do that?

Chatgpt:
What’s Likely?
Immediate: Expect a mix—proxy rocket/drone strikes into Israel’s north mixed with ballistic missile launches aimed at military targets. Some will break through.

Cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure.

Broader escalation: Possibly Gulf shipping attacks.

Western escalation? Minor risk, unless Iran directly hits U.S. assets.

Don’t expect nuclear/civilian strikes—that would trigger full-blown war. They’ll calibrate to hurt Israel enough for domestic pride and deterrence, without crossing Israel’s red lines.

Bottom line: Iran needs something visible to save face. Expect rocket/missile salvos and proxy action soon—and cyber subterfuge. But they’ll avoid all-out war.

So it becomes a somewhat strict place as a result. — Outlander

This is one of the loosest MB's I've been on. People routinely insult each other here, even the mods do it. It's all great fun. You can get away with a lot if you're a quality poster.

Does this indicate though that the administration perhaps isn't quite so gung-ho racist as purported? — AmadeusD

They hired him again! After he said competent white men should be in charge! Aren't you asking me to do an incredible suspension of disbelief when you argue the Trump Admin isn't racist in the face of something like this?

It sounds harsh, but how many people have been killed or seriously hurt here? Isn't that a useful metric for how bad rioting is? Some cops went to the hospital for minor injuries. The reporters getting shot by rubber bullets have been injured about as bad as anyone. Not much of a riot, is it?

He should be fired then, but again, I'm sure I could find deplorable people in every administration. Politicians tend to be bad people, in my experience. — MrLiminal

Can you think of a comparable situation in a democratic administration?

I've lived in L.A. County most of my life. I remember the Rodney King riots, wondering if the rioters would make it to my area. What's going on now is nothing like that. I've seen soccer rioting worse than this.

Obviously his statement is racist and wrong, but I don't find throwing back and forth quotes of politicians saying unhinged things particularly helpful in discussion. — MrLiminal

Oh, that's not the only thing:

"A speechwriter for the Trump administration has been fired following reports that he spoke at a white nationalist conference in 2016.

The White House confirmed to US media on Monday that aide Darren J Beattie, a former visiting instructor at Duke University, had been dismissed.

Mr Beattie had appeared on a panel at the HL Mencken Club conference, which is attended by white supremacists."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45249154

And now he's an undersecretary at the State Department. Of all the qualified people in the country for that position, we hired THIS guy? After firing him years ago for being a racist? Nobody else could do that job? Really, now.

"If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black!" - Joe Biden

It seems perhaps so. We could put this down to Biden making a gaffe, but that's cop out material. Given that his administration put forward at least a few overtly racist policies or guidelines (COVID recovery, ARP, COVID mortgage relief guidelines etc..) it isn't that hard to see why people are going to equivocate.

Its hard to think Trump or Biden are actually racist - they both played to their audience. Does this mean everyone is racist? Probably all the loud people, yes. — AmadeusD

It was terrible that Biden said that, but what do his actions show? Does he act racist? Did he hire someone who said "competent white men must be in charge" or did he prioritize putting the first black woman on the Supreme Court and arguing in favor of affirmitive action? What similar things has Trump done to help blacks? I can't think of anything.

There are legitimate differences of opinion about the size and scope of government but those who disagree with us are not traitors or enemies of the state. — prothero

I think we crossed a Rubicon in 2020 when Trump tried to steal the election. In the aftermath, there was a bipartisan vote to impeach and convict him, but it fell short of conviction. Still, very rarely do members of a president's own party vote to convict in an impeachment.

If the deportations are racially motivated, why is that not already happening? — MrLiminal

Why is what not happening? The foreign aid scenario I talked about? Because some things are a little too on the nose even for the Trump Admin to pull off. They have the Midterms to think about. If the racism becomes too overt, they suffer politically.

An undersecretary of the state department tweeted this:
"Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work"

Does that happen in a non racist administration?

It's funny how people thousands of years ago warned us about people like Trump. Truly there's nothing new under the sun. Regarding human behavior, that is.

My understanding is that the South African immigrants were brought here legally, whether or not you agree with the government's reasoning for doing so. — MrLiminal

It would be legal to double foreign aid to all countries with majority white populations and eliminate foreign aid to all countries with majority black populations. But what would you conclude about an administration that did that? You wouldn't spare a second thought about that? That wouldn't seem just a tiny bit racist to you?

If there weren't one, then I'm opposed to it. Like I said, you're asking me for an opinion on the validity of the court analysis, and I just haven't looked into it.

If you want to make the case that an opinion was rendered in error, you could well be right. It sounds like you're just asking me to be outraged though. I don't know. Maybe the US has outrageous laws. That's not a basis for ignoring them. — Hanover

Hanover, are you an American citizen? The Abrego Garcia case has been in the public eye for months here. It's like the Dreyfus Affair. These kinds of individual cases often come to symbolize different political factions. Are you trying to tell me that when people voted for Trump they voted for immigrants to be mistakenly sent to third world prisons?

Really. That's what it means to be a nation of laws. — Hanover

What law was it that said Abrego Garcia should be sent to CECOT?

Do you see anything racist in brown immigrants being sent to CECOT and white South Africans being welcomed as refugees? Anything at all?

It's awful. I'm ashamed to be an American.

These are complicated legal questions, and so I'd really have to read the court opinions on it. — Hanover

Really? You need a court opinion to figure out whether a non El Salvadorian person should be sent to an El Salvadorian prison?

What about returning Albrego Garcia back to the states when the Trump Administration admitted they sent him there by mistake? Do you agree with the way the Trump Admin handled that?

No. That's a legal document. — Hanover

Do you think we should be sending immigrants to an El Salvadorean prison?

And the Constitution is just a piece of paper with some words, right?

It's very complicated. You could be here seeking asylum, or protected by DACA, or on a student visa, or on a waiver by the Biden Administration which has just been revoked by the Trump Administration, or on a tourist visa or probably a dozen other things. It used to be that we wouldn't split up families and if you were here illegally and had a kid here, who was a U.S. citizen, you were safe. That was called an anchor baby. But the Trump Admin has no qualms about breaking up families.

Could we compensate them in other ways besides letting unvetted masses breach our national borders and become our responsibility? Helping them stabilize their own countries sounds like a better solution.

As I see it, a government's responsibility is first and foremost to its citizens. — BitconnectCarlos

It is, except a past president called us a shining beacon on a hill and we have a proud history of welcoming immigrants and one of our iconic monuments has this inscribed on it:

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Is that just talk to make us feel good, or are those words to live by?

:up:

No need to mention the Laken Rileys of the world. — BitconnectCarlos

On the other hand, there have been umpteen number of people who's lives have been turned around because they were able to escape from horrific conditions in their home countries and come here. Does that balance out? Maybe not, but now consider that WE, the U.S. are responsible in large part for the horrific conditions in those countries because of our insatiable drug appetite and constant meddling in internal affairs to keep the communist menace at bay. Now does it wash out? You probably still don't think so, but I think we have a debt to repay for those countries we fucked over and letting their people in is a small way to repay it, even if it means the occasional Laken Riley.

Jesus, Amadeus, just ask chatgpt to explain it to you!

"I'd also posit this is a privilege, rather than right, but that could be nitpicking here."

Yes, it's like getting pulled over for speeding and sweettalking the officer into a warning: I was brought here by my parents, I have no memory of my home country, please have mercy.

I was pushing back against Hanover because there is precedent for letting people here illegally be safe from deportation and it was upheld by the Supreme Court.

They don't age out. They have to renew every two years so we can verify they're keeping their noses clean.

That is in pursuit of the normal process of citizenship gaining though, right? It's not going to be indefinite and it doesn't actually grant people anything but a stay. — AmadeusD

No, DACA recipients don't have to be pursuing citizenship. You get a S.S. number and eligibility for state id.

The law is clear, and it does not allow those that make it here in violation of the law to stay once they've been in the US a certain amount of time. — Hanover

It does though. DACA is still in effect. The latest court ruling on it is people already in DACA can renew and are safe from deportation.

It's difficult to determine what percentage of demonstrators on the street are protesting Donald Trump's mere existence; protesting ICE raids; protesting law enforcement, or protesting all three. Rounding up people--be they vicious gang members, drunks, illegal immigrants, scoff-laws of all sorts--isn't a pretty sight. — BC

Neither Bush nor Obama had this problem, and they deported countless people. That was because they approached the problem in a humane way. They didn't revel in the suffering that deportation causes. Enforcing the law was the point, not the pain that it caused. ICE didn't operate like jackbooted thugs.

With Trump and MAGA, the cruelty is the point. Instead of deportations, we have people being sent to a third world prison. When someone is sent there by mistake (by the Trump Admin's own admission- the lawyer was later punished for admitting it), is he brought back? No. And when the courts intervene, the judges are attacked. The courts should be ignored. Habeas Corpus should be suspended.

Brown immigrants are sent to El Salvadorean jails. White South Africans are welcomed as refugees. An undersecretary at the State Department (Darren Beattie) tweeted this:
"Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work"

People see the deportations as monstrous and racist and so they protest them and try to shield the deportees. Good for them. I would be particularly upset with American Christians, who have turned their back on Christ's teachings, but when is that ever not the case? American Christians aren't real Christians and haven't been for a long time. Probably never.

I withdraw that last comment. I'm going to edit it out. I don't want to be insulting.

Oh, I think he cares about his Big Beautiful Bill passing and being called a pedophile. Trump's a narcissist. Musk is inflicting narcissitic injury. Trump can't help but care deeply and plot his revenge. Musk must pay for his disloyalty.