for those of you who live in the US: there must surely be Republican voters being appalled by this too, right? Right?
Yes.
Nah. If there’s a percentage of conservatives who have come to realize the mistake they’ve made, it’s vanishingly small.
We’re talking about a group of people uniformly ignorant and hateful. You have to be to support the conservative ideology. Those are prerequisites.
62% of the country supports deporting all illegals. Something that would be unbelievable a decade or two ago is now true for most Americans.
A strong majority of the country supports putting millions of people in camps and keeping them there for years. Of course GOP is more fervently against it- the same GOP that idolizes Reagan who gave blanket citizenship to millions of illegals.
Something that would be unbelievable a decade or two ago
The GOP’s propaganda really did a number on easily manipulated Americans. Turns out, the internet was a really, really good tool to spread hatred.
100% of that 62% have no idea at all what is going to happen to many services they depend on. Doesn’t matter if it’s the price of food on the table going up because the farm workers disappeared or the person disappearing who has the necessary but unglamorous job of cleaning bedpans at the nursing home, they’re all very important jobs that people will miss immediately, and they can often be done by migrants or illegal workers.
The thing is, I’d almost be willing to go through a hard period if it served as a lesson to all the ignorant Americans out there that would last at least a generation.
But it won’t.
They’ll be manipulated into believing the other side, and immigrants, are the cause of their suffering, despite they themselves giving total power to Republicans.
The Germans didn’t realize the error of their ways until the rest of the world killed the fuck out of them and invaded their country and their economy completely collapsed and their government was rebuilt with the guidance of their invaders. I’m assuming it’ll take at least that much to convince ignorant conservatives why their ideology isn’t compatible with the future.
Yes, for most of my life I thought we would never get rid of the illegals for precisely this reason. They are so integrated into our economy that eliminating them would cause a huge fallout. Almost 15 million people here. And they’re dramatically over-represented in specific industries.
So for example, you mentioned food. Agriculture, especially in the SW, runs on illegal labor. Construction all over the country runs on illegal labor. The people washing dishes at restaurants, the people cleaning up offices at night, the people working at landscaping companies, etc.
All of those industries are about to experience a severe supply shock of labor. This is going to mean increased prices for food, for landscaping, for construction, etc. Not only that, the services are going to be increasingly harder to staff. It’s really hard to find an American willing to relocate to rural areas to dig holes. It’s hard to find ones that are willing to pick fruit, etc.
Not to mention the effect that 15 million less consumers eating at local restaurants, buying products from Amazon, paying rent, will have.
And the worst part of it, the part that scares me, is that I’m certain Trump and his allies know this. They are entirely aware of the potential consequences of what they are doing. It does not take an economic savant to understand this and certainly Trump has some very smart advisors around him. So they are aware and they are doing it anyway.
What does that imply? That means they are willing to nuke our economy for this (throw in tariffs too while we’re at it). And when I say nuke I mean nuke- there’s no going back after this. We’re causing permanent long-term structural damage. Why would he be willing to do this?
I fear because there’s a lot worse on the horizon. Global war will overshadow the economic fallout from these decisions and will be pointed to as the cause of the near-future economic woes. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here, but this is not a good omen. It’s sort of like suicidal people giving away all their money before they off themselves. It’s a red flag.
I think we’re fucked with a capital F
Wouldn’t be surprised. Never waste a crisis. Nationalize things, martial law. Who knows what power grabs trump would make.
Who knows what power grabs trump would make.
I 100% do not expect our government to be recognizable, or functional, by the end of this. However long it lasts.
They’ll just refuse to acknowledge it
Some of the single-issue voters probably are, but not enough to actually vote against their single issue in the future.
That would require them to vote at all and Facebooks ain’t gonna scroll on the couch itself!
They’ll claim they disagree with it and they don’t like Trump (except for -insert all his policies-) and then vote for him for a third term when he makes that legal. They need to pretend not to salivate about oppressing brown people when they are in polite company but that’s about it.
Our people are horrible, vindictive morons.
And I don’t mean that from a place of emotional response to bad things, I am saying all of this dispassionately and analytically. The country has a large population of people who are objectively horrible, and vindication has become our primary focus for political action, and this is all because they’re generally morons.
I can’t even really exaggerate or overplay this. The average American’s intelligence is worse than abysmal. I used to lead a team of data-workers at a large company, we had nice, casual morning meetings and talked about the latest events for about a half hour before work. I ended up in the position of people bringing me news stories and headlines to “translate” for them. I had to explain what planets are, I had to explain how gravity works, I had to explain how democracy works, I had to explain history and math and facts and ratios and words like “industrious” or “ambivalent” every day, over and over. AND I’M NOT A SMART PERSON. I have always prided myself on being informed, but at some point I became the one-eyed king in the land of the blind and I hate it.
Everything here is going to get so, so much worse because I know how far down the barrel goes, and we haven’t even touched the bottom yet.
Yup.
Remove Donald Trump and Republicans from the equation and you still have a nation overflowing with unrealistically ignorant and hateful people.
That problem doesn’t go away with whoever’s in charge of our politics.
Our situation is 100% guaranteed to get much, much worse. And probably for the rest of our lives.
The part that crashed me into a very deep period of depression (probably the high fever from Covid didn’t help) was realizing that this is as good as it gets.
All of our current issues are the same issues we’ve been struggling with as a species for the last several thousand years, and likely a lot longer before record-keeping was a thing. As much as we can bend the forces of nature and manipulate the material world around us with flashy machines and complex systems, we’re still irrevocably and immutably just primate animals adapted to an ice-age world of predators, and even if we had the perfect social systems with limitless resources, we would find ways to break everything because we’re just not capable of more. We are animals who stole fire from the Gods but we do not have the minds of Gods, we have selfish, malicious, fearful and anxious animal brains that make us ignore facts and logic and reason and respond only to our reactions.
It won’t be us venturing into the universe. If we ever get off this speck of dust drifting around a sunbeam, it won’t be us, it will be some descendant made of silicon and logic-gates emulating our species at some level but synthetic and who knows if it will even be aware like us… who knows if we’re even aware. We are so good at tricking ourselves we actually believe we have choice and freedom and awareness of the world around us.
Try to find the place in which your thoughts originate and you will find a chaotic realm where your brain has already made all its choices and it just wants you to feel satisfied with the explanation you think you came up with. It’s deeply distressing. Don’t actually try it.
And only $13 million per year in 2019, https://archive.ph/oOiK4 , per inmate that’s $390,000,000,000 per year. Sounds like a great use of tax payer money.
Let’s be realistic here…orange Don doesn’t expect any of those people to still be alive after a year, what with all the accidents involving upper storey windows that could just happen at any time, or maybe someone could call for a code red.
Oh yeah, that place Joe Biden ran on closing (archived) and then promptly forgot about, cool cool cool
Fuck both of those shitty plutocrat parties, all the time.
And by “forgot about,” you mean negotiated the release of 65% of the prisoners? He was literally on pace to clear the place out in his second term. But you knew that, I’m sure.
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I’m definitely not voting for him now.
Good because if you did it would mean that you LoVe GeNoCiDe
Now we get both foreign and domestic genocide! Best of both worlds.
I’m so glad I remained morally pure!!
That’s what so many people tried to tell these dumbasses (that weren’t just plants), but nooooo, they wanted to lecture everyone on how pure and holy they were by not voting for anyone, because “genocide”.
Cool.
The place Obama said he would close and didn’t? That place!
America’s first camp…in 83 years.
Thanks conservatives.
It won’t be the last
Concentration camp/torture camp.
Lots of people fantasize about what they might do if they had the opportunity to act to stop what was happening in WWII Germany but here we are.
All the big, strong, don’t-tread-on-me styled people just rolling on their backs and showing their bellies to fascism. What a time to be alive, at least Germans of the 1920s-30s didn’t have a direct case study to refer to.
It’s always been “don’t tread on me”
Its worse in some ways, the US is a far bigger country. While the 3rd reich destroyed their economy under the repayment plans of WW1 The US seems to be committing a similar kind of economic suicide with absolutely zero pressure to do so.
Mark my words- queer people will be next.
Trans women specifically, the others are safe for a few more years then it will be their turn.
😢 I’d guess trans women and all unhoused people could be the first casualties, potentially involving cheap prison labour within the US to replace externally detained migrants. Why is it so easy to think of worst case scenarios but so hard to think of ways to stop this?
Democrats could actually campaign on healthcare for all, living wages and stop trying to restrict gun ownership for the working class. But here we are. But then they’d have to actually help poor people instead of trapping them in cycles of dependency, and tax the rich. There’s a reason they shut Bernie down. Their owners don’t like those things.
I meant before elections come (and that’s assuming they don’t find a way to undermine those as well). All I can think of is how Michelle Obama quoted MLK Jr. and said to honour his legacy by getting involved in local community, honouring the other important day of the year that it was, rather than commenting on the inauguration directly.
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Some of us are able to keep more than one concern in our heads at a time.
So no, I’m not going to ignore the oppression of queer people just because you don’t want their existence brought up.
Also, you do know that some of those immigrants are queer, right? Did you assume they were all cishet?
100%. If you look at the language they’re using to describe trans people in their EOs it’s clear as day where they’re heading and considering they’ve begun holding trans people’s passports indefinitely- they don’t want us escaping.
Someone in another thread is literally telling me queer people have nothing to fear because, according to them, nothing serious has happened yet.
And they and others give me shit for getting my gay daughter out of the country because I’m supposed to put Palestinians (who I work my ass off to help) ahead of my own child. Which, and I’m not sure they understand this, is neglect and generally frowned upon by child protective services.
I don’t get it, what does you moving to the UK have to do with helping Palestinians?
Apparently you should care more about Palestinians than your own queer child because there is no genocide of queer people in America even though it’s literally already started… but it’s not like those people actually give a shit about Palestinians. They’re just a pawn in their need to berate strangers on the internet.
I pointedly ask them what they are doing about the genocide since I work my ass off contacting politicians. It’s very clear that not only have most of them not done shit, most of them have never even talked to a Palestinian.
They also don’t seem to realize (or maybe care) that there are queer Palestinians. In America. At risk right now. Also in Palestine. But I guess they’ll be just fine.
Ah, the usual bad faith crap where some people decide that one particular tragedy out of the thousands happening all over the world right now is all you should care about. They’re just like the single-issue voters that helped Trump get elected.
Very much that, yes.
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There are definitely others that seem to participate in these discussions with the sole goal of upsetting people wearing a veneer of of leftist politics while lacking any seeming empathy. I tend to doubt their motives when they seem to only have compassion for some and not all
How did you get out of the country if you don’t mind me asking? I have no idea where I would start if I needed to leave. I’d prefer to go to a blue state if I could but of course that might not be an option. Also do you miss living in the US?
I am lucky because of this: https://www.gov.uk/apply-citizenship-british-parent/born-before-1983
However, we are living on my savings until I get a job and my wife had to stay behind for now. My daughter can be here on a travel visa for six months and we will be out of money in three. I need a job that makes at least £29,000 a year to get a family visa for the two of them.
We’ve also only been here since the inauguration, so I am not all that homesick so far (I miss my wife and our dogs). Also I am just in awe of how nice and helpful people are here. I really didn’t realize the exact extent of American self-entitlement asshole culture until we got here and everyone has been friendly and helpful. Even the drunks.
That does sound nice. Hopefully you’re able to find some work and you’re able to get the rest of your family soon!!
I hope so, thanks!
HomosexualityQueerdom is aJewishimmigrant plot againstGermanythe US.It’s practically fascist mad libs.
The path to that easier than you might think. Just get the propaganda mill talking about Thai ladyboys and black-market hormones a bit. They love little talking points that are are rooted in preconceptions and tiny slivers of half-truths that they can contort to fit their agenda…to expand on and then justify their actions.
They are fun to pick out. The other day Trump claimed that the ominous “they” were sending water directly to the ocean to save an endangered fish instead of to LA to fight fires.
That endangered fish is called a Delta Smelt. “Delta”, as in a river delta, as found at the end of a river…you know, that thing that carries said water to the ocean.
Are they just reviewing all the accusations they made about Democrats over the past few years and just using that as a template for what they want to do.
MAGA has a hardon for cruelty. It’s about hurting people. They love the idea a rounding up non-white people, loading them into boxcars, and shipping them off to concentration camps. Everything that Trump has done so far is going make billionaires richer and regular Americans much poorer but as long as he’s hurting non-whites they will sit around giving each other rage handies and praising him.
Right wing politics in a nutshell
Exclusion & Sadism
Can I just make the point here that Not All Sadists
Well yeah, There are Leftist sadist too
but as long as he’s hurting non-whites they will sit around giving each other rage handies and praising him
What I find fascinating is the right-wing illegal immigration latinos who support Trump. Up until now they’ve been saying “He’s not going to deport us, he’s deporting the criminals”. I just read a news article about half of the people they’ve arrested so far did not have any criminal records.
White House press secretary goes live the other day and says “We’re going to deport all of them. They’re all criminals as far as I’m concerned”
I think people have this instinctual burning desire to feel part of an “in-group” and to hate against an “out-group”. It’s such a strong burning desire that people will jump through so many mental hoops even when they are in the “out-group”.
Note that being illegal is not a crime. It’s like when you get a parking ticket. It’s against the law but it isn’t a criminal violation. But of course the administration doesn’t care and neither does the army of rabid Americans cheering on the destruction of the country.
Le perma stun keeps as expected
Call your senators
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?Class=1
Call your representative in the house
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
It’s “illegal” migrants now. But it will be us eventually! Do not let it get to that point. They did not win this election by a landslide, and they can only do as much damage as we let them!
It’s not eventually. The ‘problem’ with being overly aggressive on migration is how easy it is to ignore someone’s “documentation”. And then it is a quick move to a camp where they’ve determined that, for efficiency, you don’t have any right to representation. License? Fake. Passport? Fake.
Man, the place is gonna so quiet without all the US citizens, we’ll finally be able to talk about stuff that isn’t related to the US!
Like how your country is going in the same direction they did!
This is a concentration camp, we’re past the point of calling.
So what are you going to do about it? Just sit there and let it happen?
It’s cute that you think senators have any power anymore. I’m guessing you think the next election won’t be Russia-style too.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, when will Americans understand this? Their political system is done, there’s no turning back at this point, it’s gone beyond the event horizon. The only question is how long will Americans continue to bicker and bitch while they see how much worse things get. You have concentration camps now, 10 days in, what will it take? Where is the line that they cross when you know they’re a threat to your life? When the soldiers are already banging your door?
Concentration camps killed and tortured millions.
At this point, you’re very much still exaggerating. Is it possible we’ll get to concentration camps? Sure. But we aren’t right now, as you are spreading. As of now there’s not much different than his first term, remember the kids in cages? Also terrible, but very far from concentration camps, where they killed and tortured millions.
So people should only start any action after the damage is done? After the torture and death of millions? Because only then it is undeniably similar to WW2 concentration camps. I would propose not to wait for that.
Concentration camps killed and tortured millions.
At this point, you’re very much still exaggerating.
This is exactly how it happened.
From its rise to power in 1933, the Nazi regime built a series of incarceration sites to imprison and eliminate real and perceived “enemies of the state.” Most prisoners in the early concentration camps were political prisoners—German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats—as well as Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah’s Witnesses, gay men and men accused of homosexuality, and persons accused of “asocial” or socially deviant behavior. Many of these sites were called concentration camps. **The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy. **
Explain to me how sending people to Guantanamo Bay, already infamous for torturing inmates, is somehow not exactly this?
I cannot BELIEVE people will hand wave stuff like this or Elon’s Nazi salute so we have to wait until they’ve killed a million people before we’re ALLOWED to say what we KNOW is happening.
Concentration camps killed and tortured millions.
The first concentration camps were established by the British during the Boer War. There were deaths from malnutrition and disease, but no poison gas or bullets in the head. More malign neglect.
Thank you for proving my point, bicker and bitch while you see how much worse things get it is then. Americans like you truly deserve what’s coming, because the rest of the world is trying to scream at you but “it’s not bad enough yet.” I’ll ask again, what will it take? Where is the line that they cross when you KNOW they’re a threat to your life?
You have this beautiful, nearly unique concept called the second amendment.
Just a random selection of 30,000 people or for an actual reason?
Well, it’s somewhat color dependent.
Sooo…not orange, then?
Can they even hold that many?
Not in any safe manner. Safe for the assholes running the show that is.
I really hope This play out like a brother hood of nod campaign. Cause this is too familiar.
Theoretically? Well Manhattan has a population density of about 73,000 people per square mile so it’s certainly possible to safely provide for 30,000 people in the space of Guantanamo Bay.
In practice? There’s no way they’ll be doing anything like that, and the cruelty is the point.
Oh taking a page from El salvador.
No, they can’t. Guantanamo is a very harsh environment with very small capacity
Edit: well, I guess if the plan is to starve them and put them in unliveable conditions where disease is rampant and they begin to die in droves…yes it would make sense then.
They looked at Auschwitz, realized that zirkon B was too expensive, and decided that Malaria and Dysentery can do it for cheaper.
Literally 0 humanity. Did the nazis even pretend to care about christ?
About as much as Trump does
Yes, religion is a powerful tool to justify all kind of inhumanities
When that breaks out, he’ll probably issue an executive order to make them drink bleach
I don’t know anything but isn’t Guantanamo Bay, like, kinda small?
At it’s peak it held about 800 prisoners, kinda impossibly small for the numbers discussed here.
Edit-- Well, trump did say “Most people don’t even know that we have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo”, I guess file me with most people. Must be incredible how they scaled up while simultaneously closing camps and losing facilities to disrepair, apparently.
This feels like “how many dead babies can you fit in a trash can?”
Depends on how good your blender is.
I must’ve missed that episode of “Will it Blend”.
Could it be that Trump is lying?
Doesn’t matter how many beds they have, Trump doesn’t want them making it past the showers.
But I’m sure there will be all sorts of bipartisan and humanitarian oversight. Right?
Right?
It’s not like you can just make a single “undocumented” person disappear. Let alone their whole nuclear family. What would the rest of their family say?
Probably “can I crash in your attic”.
I think that’s a bonus for Trump. Also, Cuba should reject our lease on the land.
To the best of my knowledge, although the U.S. makes “lease payments” on the land the prison sits on, they do not have the authorization of the Cuban government, which in turn has not cashed those checks.
Oh my God, what if they cashed them all at once and emptied out America’s checking account.
Yes, it’s a camp where he plans to concentrate people.
All the better for them to die faster of unliveable conditions, it seems
That’s only an issue if you assume they’ll be treated with any humanity
Don’t worry, they’ll find a way to pack people in. Maybe some kind of high energy weight loss system like their role models used in the 1940s?
This is bad juju. The detention camps from the first cycle with this fascists was nothing on what we’re seeing ramping up here.
Don’t worry, they’ll find a way to pack people in. Maybe some kind of high energy weight loss system like their role models used in the 1940s?
I’m sure they are already working on the final solution.
Now I want someone to ask trump “what’s your final solution for these people?”
Bloody sickening.
I knew the concentration camps were coming, but just after ten days? Holy shit
Rather unfortunately, the mass deportations was one of the most popular parts of Trump’s platform. Everybody knows mass deportation comes with concentration camps. It’s not that his voters are unaware of it, they actively love it!
Honestly, I was expecting them in less time. Like 2-3 days in.
The faster they move the more they can get done before their opponents can mobilise resistance.
I would say that so far, there appears to be much less public resistance to Republican policies than in previous years. The Democrats appear to be at sea. The left’s working class base is split. Public institutions are too busy protecting their turf, making gestures at cooperating with the new world order rather than trying to resist.
It feels like last time there was an assumption that
Trump and MAGA politicsa criminal dictator and fascist politics were a blip or aberration from the norm, now there’s an acceptance that they’re institutionalised.Trump and MAGA politics
Maybe the language we use to describe them is itself normalising and pacifying. Like calling a Nazi salute a “hand gesture.”
I would suggest “a criminal dictator and fascist politics” as a substitute in your sentence to provoke an acceptable, proportionate reaction.
I like it.
He is not quite a dictator yet. Let’s call him an aspiring dictator, to make it clear that action can still prevent it from getting that bad.
