June 25 Open Thread: I Say, My Good Man, Jailing Babies Seems Not Quite Cricket
The headline is my crack at showing the proper level of civility apparently required when pointing out to certain of our fellow citizens that they are monsters — a notion to which I, along with some of my leftist fellow travelers, cry, “Bullshit! With a capital SHIT!”
[I]t is simply too comical to be lectured about social decorum by a party whose members shouted “You lie” at a President during a State of the Union address and made Donald Trump their party leader. But even that is really beside the point. What does matter is where we draw the lines of what’s legitimate and what’s not. Most of the civility talk isn’t about any real red line, any boundary that is critical to the kind of free society we want to preserve and build. It’s more a wet blanket meant to tsk-tsk legitimate protest and legitimate resistance to corrupt government, misrule and injustice.
As often happens in Trumpworld, new, more damning details keep coming out. For example, parents separated from their children were offered reunification in exchange for signing a deportation order. The decision to prosecute asylum seekers has meant pulling prosecutors off actual drug cases to instead persecute people who, if found guilty, will have misdemeanors on their records.
In case anyone cases about the actual immigrants, it helps to know who’s coming and why. The demographics have changed dramatically in recent years. In 2000, the year illegal entries peaked, 98% were Mexican. Now almost half are from Central America.
One reason the Trump gruppenführers officially deny that the policy is intended to deter immigration is that such a position would be a clear violation of human rights treaties that we have not only signed but pushed on other nations.
And, because no scandal is complete without liberal self-flagellation, it has been noted that Barack Obama’s record on immigration is checkered at best. It also has been noted that his statement on this issue was very little, very late.
My best evidence that conservatives are stupid: They ignore what happens to every “hero” they elevate. A decade ago Glenn Beck starting his meteoric ascent. Today he’s walking out of interviews when he’s asked about his crumbling media empire.
If anyone still cares, Roseanne Barr took her pitiful-me act to Israel, where she gave a self-pitying interview to a RWNJ rabbi. Between emotional breakdowns, she explained that she thought Valerie Jarrett was white, and a threat to Israel. As my Sarcastic 8-Ball says, “Yeah, and I’m the pope.”
Absolutely not cricket.
Happy 115th birthday to Eric Blair.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/06/george-orwell-birthday-politics-socialism
Highlights:
Orwell never romanticized left groups, even those he favored, like the Independent Labour Party in Britain or the militia of Spain’s Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification, with which he fought in the Spanish civil war. But he admired dissent, and he knew that building an oppositional force, however small, is an achievement. “I have never seen him so enthusiastic,” Arthur Koestler later reminisced, as when they decided to work together to found a human rights organization in 1946.
…
Organizing takes effort and courage, and Orwell saw no shame in starting small. He collected pamphlets from even the smallest groups, and he took them seriously. The 214-page inventory of his 2,700-item collection includes pamphlets by the All-India Congress Socialist Party, the People’s National Party (Jamaica), the Polish Labour Underground Press, the Leninist League, the Groupe Syndical Français, the Workers’ Friend, Freedom Press, Russia Today, the Meerut Trade Union Defence Committee, the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, and myriad others.
Also, and in this vain, great your ass to a demonstration on Saturday.
https://www.familiesbelongtogether.org/
Thanks for the Families Belong Together link. I’ll head for the one in Wilmington at Cool Springs:
“From 10:00am-12:00pm, the people and families of Delaware will unite against the separation of families by the hands of a tyrant. We will march peacefully to show our support of keeping immigrant families united and to show our fight against apathy and oppression in the face of human rights violations. … We will march from the Historic Cool Springs Park Reservoir to the State Government Building “
“The decision to prosecute asylum seekers…”
This is at the heart of this bullshit. Showing up on America’s southern border while brown skinned is now illegal. No new laws have been passed, no court order put the law in place. The Trump administration simply willed the new law into being.
It was the US’ actions like deporting MS13 gang members that set up the lawless conditions that drove this wave of asylum seekers here. In typical US fashion, we now terrorize those who seek asylum here. Karma is a bitch, so get over it and be welcoming, comfort-giving to those on the border.
“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome, [diseased Attorney General?]”
As noted the Republicans abandoned civility long ago when they declared war on the rest of us decades ago, Trump and Mitch McConnell have elevated that war to a near fever pitch. Progressives have wanted the Dems to fight back in kind, instead what we got are the Corporate Dems eager to kiss and make up, after they give the store away or collaborate with the right. Give Scott Pruitt credit for one thing other than hatred of the environment, he knew it was coming. And I doubt it will stop.
“Please, I beg everyone to stop making meta-arguments about what plays well politically and just articulate what your actual principles and beliefs are. No one actually knows what ‘works’ or not.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1011350031654379520
REV: I understand what you’re saying (or what Hayes is saying). But if we can’t articulate what will work politically, we’re less likely to win politically. Which makes it hard to put those principles into action. This might not be true for an actual revolution where force comes into play. I don’t think it has come to that, but I guess it could.
I guess I’m saying articulate the principles in a way that attracts enough voters to win. I probably am saying that, since I’ve said it before.
I’m off on a different track. Same team, different position.
You thought I posted the Hayes too support my shit posting? Nah.
If you want a tweet to defend my tactics, see Simon, David Judah.
“Rally the sane. Fuck the rest.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1010512239663767552
Not for nothing, but I’d like to see some of this evidence that proves an amiable articulation of facts “works”? Nothing comes to mind.
“Rally the sane.” I’m for that.
How about this?
“Speak the truth regardless of tactical considerations, since concessions to tactics are concessions to truth. If you cannot speak the truth, be silent. The discipline of truth is the hardest of all disciplines.”
—-Ivan Svitak, June 1968
Didn’t know about this guy. He sounds interesting. I’m for any enemy of autocratic rule. In Prague they have a small museum of communism. It is almost entirely devoted to mocking the Russians. It’s next door to a McDonalds. Not sure what that signifies.
Nathan, that’s easy, pink slime in both cases.