The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

On July 4th as American Evil Comes Home

It’s July 4th, and I hope all my American readers are enjoying the holiday.

I’m going to be a little grim on this day and talk about the current immigration practice of separating children from their families

In context.

I am very glad that so many people are up in arms about this. It’s clearly inhuman and it’s clearly a stupid catch-22: “We won’t let you ask for refugee status at legal crossings, but if you enter elsewhere we’ll call it a crime and take away your kids.” Further, a lot of the kids will be very damaged by this, especially the youngest, in key periods where they need human contact they just aren’t getting, especially in tactile and verbal communication.

It is, however, not even close to the worst thing that the US has done in the last 20 years. The Iraq sanctions were worse. The Iraq War was worse. The Libyan war was worse. The current Yemeni genocide, which the US is helping plan and execute, is worse. Drones were worse, etc.

But all of these things happened away from Americans. They were opposed, oh yes, but never with the ethical fervour I am seeing now–with the anger, anguish, and moral opprobrium being aimed those doing the separating.

Yet my list of American deeds created plenty of orphans, took plenty of children from parents, killed far more people, and involved a lot more rape, torture, and slavery as their inevitable side effects.

These acts desensitized a whole swathe of Americans to atrocity, too. Most of those involved in the wars, and in justifying them, were made callous and uncaring. They learned how to dehumanize people, and so when this was done close to home, there were plenty of people willing to do it and to justify it.

Doing monstrous things makes you into a monster. Doing evil makes you evil. It is almost impossible to avoid this. You are what you do. You are also what you justify.

Do monstrous things abroad, and similar actions may eventually come home. It is something which must be carefully contained to avoid contamination, and a 17-year series of endless wars is not containment.

So here it is, on the border. What’s happening there is not sui generis; what Americans have been doing to other Americans in prison is abominable, and that got ramped up in 1980 under Reagan. But now it is close, and in the face, and being done to children.

Hypocrisy is a sin, not so much because you are lying, but because you are denying the person you are. You are evil, when you say that you are good.

The United States’ wars did far more damage than this immigration policy, but many Americans didn’t care as much.

Now what you’ve sown is coming closer and closer to home, and now it comes in a form you can’t ignore.

This is not good in the sense I am glad it happened. I wish it hadn’t. But it is good in the sense that it is making some Americans see what the US is.

If you defeat it. If you defeat Trump. That is not enough. To truly end the evil, you must stop treating both foreigners and residents with so much evil. You must stop the wars and make them anathema. You must find a way to mostly empty the prisons and to make those that remain more humane.

You must find a way not just to rehabilitate prisoners, but all the various police, paramilitary, and prison guards, who by doing evil routinely (no, don’t pretend they don’t) have become evil themselves–far too willing to use force and to be cruel.

You must do this, to put it dramatically, for your souls, and because it is right. And you must do it because you believe it is right. But it is also self-protection, because what the US military and law enforcement does to others, they can–and very likely will–wind up doing to you and yours.

By protecting others from the overreach of great power and cruelty, you reduce your odds of ever being subject to it yourself.

Too many Americans seem to have lost this understanding. You protect people you don’t actually care about or even like, or people you hate, because by protecting them you protect yourself.

This doesn’t apply just to the fair implementation of law, but to justice and the norms of dignified treatment that protect everyone; if they don’t protect some people, one day they won’t protect you or someone you care about.

The crimes creep ever closer to home. Many of you have already suffered from them. More of you will if you don’t stop and then actually reverse this.

And reversal means you can’t tolerate leaders like Obama and the Clintons, who were evil, and made things worse, just more slowly than Republicans. You don’t need a lesser evil, you need, at the least, leaders who are more good than evil.

Good luck.


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88 Comments

  1. Willy

    Ever notice how the debacle which Iraq war protesters fully predicted, is pretty much ignored by the “patriot” faithful? Apparently like Jesus, America can only be failed. And then these people continue to believe that Jesus rewards his faithful with cash prizes.

    I don’t think people are inherently insane, but that a very large chunk of them can be led to believe insanity by those who know how to do so.

  2. Synoia

    And reversal means you can’t tolerate leaders like Obama and the Clintons, who were evil, and made things worse, just more slowly than Republicans.

    Were things were “more slowly than Republicans?” Less public pearl clutching, but just as relentless.

  3. kevin

    please post this on twitter & facebook–it’s beautifully put & needs to circulate!

  4. tony

    Richard Grannon mentioned that when he was interviewed by VICE he mentioned values, and the interviewer looked at him with contempt. Related to this, he also menationed that if he wanted to create a population that is easy to control, he would push nihilism, weakness and lack of values on people. Chris Hedges and you are the only people on the left who I see talking about values, and I believe people without moral strength are weak and can not stand against evil. However, even talk about values seems to be unacceptable in the left.

    There is a book Jordan Peterson often mentions, Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning, which describes how the German police assigned to Poland went from basically decent policemen, to men who would round up young men, to men who would execute pregnant women in the fields. You don’t just become evil one day. You take one step, and if you took one, then you can take another, and another, and before you know you are corrupt beyond redemption.

    That is the direction the US appears to be moving towards.

  5. Heliopause

    “it is making some Americans see what America is.”

    Maybe, but keep in mind that the common catchphrase amongst center-liberals nowadays is “this is not who we are.” They’re saying that Trumpism is aberrational and that the 85% as evil America which they espouse is the proper order of things.

  6. Synoia

    And reversal means you can’t tolerate leaders like Obama and the Clintons, who were evil, and made things worse, just more slowly than Republicans.

    Were things were “more slowly than Republicans?” Less public pearl clutching, but just as relentless as republicans.

  7. Adam Eran

    A small quibble: The drug war began as Nixon and Rockefeller were vying for who could be toughest on crime before the 1972 presidential nomination was decided by the Republicans. New York just recently repealed the Rockefeller drug laws. True, Reagan and Clinton ramped up the enforcement and incarceration…so now the U.S. has, in absolute or per-capita terms, the most prisoners of any nation on the planet. Per capita, it incarcerates at roughly five times the world average, seven times more than Canada. Despite identical demographics, Canadian and U.S. crime rates have differed only insignificantly for nearly half a century…so it doesn’t prevent crime. It also doesn’t “scare addicts straight.” Medical treatment / rehab has better outcomes and is 1/7th the cost. It’s just mean.

  8. jonst

    If we don’t have enforceable borders…we lose the Nation. Note, not just the State, but the Nation too. I think most Americans are open to whatever measures are workable, and humane, to limit, severely, perhaps, immigration. For the time being to allow the Nation to take on all the people who have come in in the past 30 years or so.

    So, I’m open to detailed plans, sans lectures.

  9. nihil obstet

    I’m trying to figure out how all this happens. It’s not like the U.S. was saintly before the 70s or that its dark side was hidden. The government practiced genocide against Native Americans, chattel slavery, genocide in the Philippines, imperial invasions throughout Central America, lynching and very cruel incarceration policies to extend de facto slavery, massive use of governmental force against workers’ and ex-soldiers’ organizations — when do we accept it and when do we actively try to stop it?

    I think part of it is having public spokespeople who can keep the moral issues in the mind of the public. That’s why I think electing people like Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez is worth working on. As long as most people just see and hear that we’re a nation of shining virtue protecting everyone against terrorists and loss of freedom(!), they’re going to stay focused on getting through their own day. The basic driving force is organizing the people, but getting high-profile advocates is necessary. That’s why anti-war journalists and commentators were dismissed from major outlets at the beginning of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Our rulers had learned from Vietnam. Embedded journalists only.

    Another part is how much the problem does affect you personally. I’ll always believe that the draft was crucial to ending the Vietnam War. It is depressing how much people have accepted obedience training at airports and entering buildings. There’s a growing pushback against police violence that’s encouraging. The sight of police in masks and shields with assault weapons showing up for very small potential infractions is beginning to bother people who have felt safe, especially people with teenaged children. And we’re hearing more and more about police arguing that if you ask to see a warrant you are resisting them, and that’s scaring people.

    And now, children in cages. The situation combines considerable grassroots organizing around immigration which has been going on for some years, political spokespeople who are getting in front of cameras to condemn it (which they weren’t willing to do during the last administration), and the kind of sentimental indulgence that news/entertainment shows love. Let’s hope we can not only end this evil, but keep going towards the rest.

  10. V

    Well and truly spoke Ian.
    But you’re dealing with an impotent, hypocratic, society; good luck is far from enough.

  11. ” it is making some Americans see what America is.”

    As Heliopause points out, it is making people claim that “this is not who we are.” How is that “seeing what America is?” Quite the reverse, I would say. None of these people are demanding a stop to the separation of children from parents being thrown in prisons in fifty states for drug offenses, often minor drug offenses. None are demanding that we stop creating orphans in dozens of countries in the Middle East.

    No, it isn’t making anyone see what America is, it is giving them a chance to claim that this is what Donald Trump is.

  12. Ché Pasa

    This is not who some Americans are.

    And it is Trump’s policy so it is who he is. It is his policy and those who loudly cheer it. Trying to offload it onto someone else, specifically the Other Team, or those who oppose the policy of family separations at the border, is horseshit.

    On the other hand, the basis of the policy runs deep in American history, affecting every president since Washington. It’s an integral part of the functioning of government, and not just at the Federal level, not just against foreign “invaders.” Using the power of government to interfere with and destroy some families while enabling and supporting others has been ordered and done by the courts, administrative personnel, and government executives for as long as there have been governments.

    The question is, what are you going to do about it? Most likely response is “nothing.” As long as it doesn’t affect them directly, Americans by and large don’t care what happens to the Other. Not their problem. We’ve seen this in the numerous appalling wars of aggression conducted by the US. There’s rarely even a “too bad, so sad” nod toward the death and devastation wrought on the hapless multitudes abroad. The spike in civilian casualties abroad since Trump ascended the throne is almost totally ignored by Americans. (Partly because many Americans have no idea…)

    What is noticed is the nearly complete absence of succor for refugees. That seems uncomfortably unusual. Historically, it’s not. (cf: the Saint Louis among other examples). But there have been many examples of refugee accommodation on a large scale since then, particularly refugees fleeing conflict zones created by US aggression (Korea, Vietnam, Laos, etc.)

    Not so now. And only to a very limited extent since the advent of the Perpetual War On “Terror.”

  13. Ché Pasa

    This is not who some Americans are.

    And it is Trump\’s policy so it is who he is. It is his policy and those who loudly cheer it. Trying to offload it onto someone else, specifically the Other Team, or those who oppose the policy of family separations at the border, is horseshit.

    On the other hand, the basis of the policy runs deep in American history, affecting every president since Washington. It\’s an integral part of the functioning of government, and not just at the Federal level, not just against foreign \”invaders.\” Using the power of government to interfere with and destroy some families while enabling and supporting others has been ordered and done by the courts, administrative personnel, and government executives for as long as there have been governments.

    The question is, what are you going to do about it? Most likely response is \”nothing.\” As long as it doesn\’t affect them directly, Americans by and large don\’t care what happens to the Other. Not their problem. We\’ve seen this in the numerous appalling wars of aggression conducted by the US. There\’s rarely even a \”too bad, so sad\” nod toward the death and devastation wrought on the hapless multitudes abroad. The spike in civilian casualties abroad since Trump ascended the throne is almost totally ignored by Americans. (Partly because many Americans have no idea…)

    What is noticed is the nearly complete absence of succor for refugees. That seems uncomfortably unusual. Historically, it\’s not. (cf: the Saint Louis among other examples). But there have been many examples of refugee accommodation on a large scale since then, particularly refugees fleeing conflict zones created by US aggression (Korea, Vietnam, Laos, etc.)

    Not so now. And only to a very limited extent since the advent of the Perpetual War On \”Terror.\”

  14. Daniel A Lynch

    Invading or bombing or droning other countries is morally wrong, but defending your own country from invaders is not morally wrong. I don’t see the connection between non-violently resisting invaders at our borders vs. all the evil things we do to foreign countries (other than U.S. meddling in Latin America has helped create the conditions that make people want to emigrate).

    The Latin American immigrants are not legitimate asylum seekers. To qualify for asylum you must be persecuted for your race, religion, your politics, or your membership in some group. Instead, the Latin American migrants are fleeing a “shithole.” Yes, those countries have high murder rates, but no higher than some neighborhoods in the U.S., and they are not being singled out because of their religion or race.

    As for due process, if someone breaks into your home, you are not obliged to let the intruder live in your home while he is awaiting trial. In many U.S. states it would be justifiable to shoot the intruder. At the very least the intruder should be arrested and jailed. If the intruder happens to have minor children, then the children will have to be placed with a relative, or in foster care if no relatives are available. No doubt that is difficult for the children but maybe the intruder should have thought about that before he broke into your home?

    We should all follow the golden rule — we don’t want Latin America meddling in our politics so we should not meddle in theirs. They don’t want the U.S. to invade their country so they should not invade ours. Much of the gang violence in both the U.S. and Latin America would disappear if we decriminalized drugs and treated substance abuse as a health problem rather than as a crime.

    The people who are outraged over families being separated at the border were largely apathetic when Obama did it. It’s obvious that their outrage is really about partisan politics.

    Ian’s larger point, that the U.S. has acted unethically for a long time, is true, but the border issues are a poor example.

  15. StewartM

    Excellent post Ian. I have been thinking the same thing: “Yes, this is a horrible policy, but it pales from what we have been doing elsewhere”.

    I think a key difference–say, like contrasting the media coverage of the Vietnam War versus the other wars and horrible policies you mentioned–is that with Vietnam, we brought the visceral reality much of what our policy was about into living rooms (not all of it, mind you, only later did we learned about My Lai, and the Pentagon itself concluded “there was a My Lai about every month”). By contrast, most news media coverage of all the horrible things you mentioned is much more sparse and sanitized. Even when our torture policy has been discussed, it is mostly sanitized!

    Different people drew different lessons from Vietnam. The lesson that that most-often touted as learned–define your objectives, make sure they’re achievable and sustainable, define an exit strategy, make sure you have public support, yada yada yadya–were NOT learned by the US Right, by people like Dick Cheney. The lessons they drew from Vietnam were “suppress dissent, manipulate and cower media coverage, ramp up the brutality, and bypass democratic oversight”. I started hearing these “lessons’ touted by YAFFers and their ilk in college. They drew (maybe correctly) that one visceral reaction beats a million statistics, talk about a million people starving draws a ho-hum but showing images of one hungry child tears hearts.

    So while I too am glad that the public is being shown the reality of what we really do, I have to ask the media–where were you guys earlier? Is this just a ‘get rid of that horrible Trump guy’ ploy which will cease once a new Bush or Clinton or Obama comes along, who will do things just as evil if not worse but you won’t show its gory details?

  16. StewartM

    David Lynch:

    The countries are shitholes to a very degree because of US policy. Your legalisms alleviates the US of any moral responsibility for that fact? The fact is that many are fleeing due to a legitimate fear for their well-being:

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/when-deportation-is-a-death-sentence

    Fussing over the paperwork is all about minding the letter of the law, not its spirit.

    And mind you, the easiest, most-cost effective and most humane remedy is to take these in. We’ve seen the effects of “helping” via “regime change”, “economic help” (neoliberal “help” makes their economies worse, not better) and military help. And besides, asylum is temporary, do things that improve the country, and many might go back.

    I would also like to remind people that, given the trajectory of the US economically and politically all my adult lifetime, that if the worst comes to pass, then *you* may find yourself an immigrant or asylum seeker one day. Despite my having some hopes about millennials reversing these trends, I’m not counting on it. I have been working on an exit plan for myself.

  17. BlizzardOfOzzz

    Looks like some more asylum recipients have been busy in their new country, enriching us with some of their vibrancy. Not to worry though, those girls have merely paid partial penance for their government’s bad actions from before they were born.

    Regarding the letter and spirit of the law: do you think some of those missing pieces of paper might have helped to separate the crime victims from the criminals? Or is that distinction mere trivia as the piece of paper itself?

    While we’re on the subject, many American cities have a worse crime rate than Mexico — I wonder if they would be welcomed without limit as refugees in Canada? That would be the ethical thing, surely. Maybe some humanitarian entrepreneur will set up an NGO to hand out train tickets to the Canadian border in downtown Detroit, with some helpful coaching on how to pass a credible fear interview.

    By the way StewartM, I hope you had a good Shavout (haven’t seen you around here in a while).

  18. someofparts

    “Is this just a ‘get rid of that horrible Trump guy’ ploy which will cease once a new Bush or Clinton or Obama comes along, who will do things just as evil if not worse but you won’t show its gory details?”

    That’s what I expect.

  19. StewartM

    Yo Blizzard,

    I can attest as someone who lives here in the midst of pearly-white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture–that crime is lost down in the statistical noise. The only thing newsworthy about it was that this time, it wasn’t the locals.

    AND…if you know some of the history of where I live, you’d find out it’s always been like that here. Things might have been a bit better in the years of the Great American Prosperity when the economy was better, but historically speaking, substance abuse, dysfunctional families, rapes, and random violence R’ Us. Get some of the locals here to tell you about what went on, and still does.

    Not been around here much, due to having to my company (despite record profits) always seeking that those of us who still have jobs do the jobs of three people previously. Or, as I say, we are tasked with solving problems that eluded solution by teams of our best and brightest people individually, part-time, as some sort of hobby.

    This is also why I don’t buy the crap that “there’s not enough jobs”; I can tell you that we have plenty of things we need to do, that would require us hiring oodles of more people, and which moreover we are making the profits to do just that. But we don’t, as our neoliberal wise men have decided that it’s best, in capitalist-y fashion, to let Wall Streeters who know not a damn thing about actually how to make anything nor have any longer vision than next quarter’s profit margin dictate what resources we will have.

  20. NJ Rubble

    Note to the commenters claiming necessity as to caging people at the US border. Do you really want to claim it’s ok to cage foreigners simply because they are foreigners? Or is it the act of crossing the border? If that’s the case perhaps we should start shooting people who cross in the other direction. Hyperbole? No, and here’s why. There is no bottom to your rationalization that we should do whatever we deem necessary to stop foreigners. The reason advanced is always that it is a threat to the US. If that is justifiable then we can certainly shoot Americans who we deem to pose a similar threat.

    One other thing that to me makes this even worse. The people who claim that this is an existential threat don’t have any basis in fact for making that claim. It’s made up. So we are using a made up scare story to behave as if people outside the physical border are somehow less than human. So you see, it’s really a rerun of 2003 (“justifiable war because weapons of mass destruction that’s why”). We enable a frenzy of fear, and convince ourselves that we must do this terrible thing to save ourselves. When we permit ourselves to be whipped into a fearful frenzy founded on fake facts we surrender our power to think, and in doing so abdicate even our small obligation as citizens. What we do not seem to grasp is that abdication is not absolution, and that instead of excusing ourselves, our abdication makes us complicit in all the evil done in our name.

  21. highrpm

    @che pasa
    citizen folks may not be simply uncaring shits. it may just as well be that we are tired of not being heard. that we know we’ll likely not be heard on this one, too. learned helplessness. the 2 big wars effected permanent damage to what was a better working democratic republic. how? those big wars drove the invention and development of the military industrial complex. such that only big big money weapons were invented/ developed and produced, owned by the military industrial complex and used only by the federales. no more government accountability to the us commoners. being outlawed, we simply gave up the ideating of weapon equality. and refused to muster the will and pursuit of private weapons competitive to those owned by the big boys. lose the balance of power. and the biggest bully runs havoc over the weaker. bullies only know what they live by: fighting fire w/ fire. i’d gladly lay down my life for a messiah with a feasible objective/ strategy and tactics to bring this ship to shore.

  22. People keep asking “what can we possibly have done to piss God off so?”

    Taking her name in vain …

  23. Tom

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/the-us-labor-shortage-is-reaching-a-critical-point.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain

    Well Trump’s policies is causing a labor shortage. Given how badly the US education system has been run for years and the massive college debt forced on young adults which causes them to have bad credit scores and be rejected as unsuitable by employers, it doesn’t surprise me.

  24. 5150

    The Americans who are opposed to seperating children, don’t do it from the goodness of their heart. They oppose it because it is a Trump policy. If Obama did it, (his immigration policy was more or less the same as Trump’s) they would defend it. Neoliberals, and their supporters are ammoral sacks of scum.

  25. Willy

    Most Obama supporters were hoping for change. So were a lot of Trump supporters.

    Yet the swamp remains.

  26. wendy davis

    nice framing, ian, but of course the evil had come home long ago, in the guise of militarized police who kill citizens with impunity and ‘let the courts sort it out later’, full-spectrum search and destroy missions on dissidents and whistleblowers, multi-agencies spying and collecting data on citizens, now increasingly aided ‘in secret’ by corporations ad their products, and on and on.

    i have two links, and in hopes that a single one won’t trip my comments into 30 hours of moderation, i’ll offer this first, the other in another comment. but for those of you are determined to believe that obomba hadn’t separatefd chirren from their families, here’s brian sonenstein, shadowpoof, 6/13/2018: (and yes, i have photos similar to tapper’s in my media library)

    “Breaking up of families and separation of children from their parents is a practice that dates back to the Obama administration. As Rewire News has pointed out, men were routinely separated from their children and families during deportation proceedings.
    Immigrants were held in family detention centers that were rife with sexual abuse and lacked adequate facilities and medical care. Obama claimed the administration would stop sending immigrants to family detention centers in 2009, or rather limited to exceptional circumstances in a single state. But family detention continued, as did the trauma and abuse.
    Six years later, when the Obama administration went to court to try and continue family detention, and when a federal court again ordered the administration to release children held in detention because they weren’t licensed for childcare, the administration circumvented the decision’s intent to end that detention by getting Texas to change its child care licensing procedures to keep them open.
    In January 2016, the Obama administration openly targeted immigrant families for arrest, separation, and deportation via early dawn raids. It was part of an explicit strategy to attempt to scare people fleeing death and abuse in their home countries from crossing the US border.

    This deterrence strategy included ad campaigns in Central American countries discouraging people from making the trip by warning them of detention and deportation.”

    https://shadowproof.com/2018/06/13/immigrant-arrests-detention-and-deportation-under-trump-stabilizes-at-half-rate-of-obama-administration/

    now what sonenstein hadn’t mentioned was the ‘deal’ obomba had made with peña nieto to deport migrants at the southern border of mexico, and the gods only know how they were treated.

  27. wendy davis

    from zeese and flowers a week ago: ‘Nationwide Protests: Pro-Immigrant Or Anti-Trump?’

    “The protests against immigration policies in the Trump-era are different than protests against abusive immigration policies in the Obama-era. There were mass protests against Obama’s immigration policies, which led to deportations at levels that Trump has still not approached, but in the Obama-era, the protests were organized and led primarily by immigrants. In the Trump era, there are protests by immigrants, especially around protecting the Dreamers, but they are also being organized by non-immigrant protesters with a focus against President Trump. These protests began almost immediately with the election of Trump and focused on his policies of stopping immigration at airports, Trump’s Muslim ban.”

    they contrast the anti-war in obmba’s day largely disappearing, but revitalized under boss tweet, moveOn’s part in organizing these present actions, etc. the antiwar protests in deecee on nov. 11, ‘trump’s military parade day’…may be interesting, given the solidarity organizations involved.

    “While abuse of immigrant families and their children are important reasons to protest, it is critical to be non-partisan or the pro-immigrant movement risks going the way of the anti-war movement, which is still struggling to rebuild. If the protests are framed as anti-Trump, then voters may conclude that electing Democrats will solve the problem. Both major political parties have failed immigrants in the US. We need to build national consensus for pro-immigrant policies that hold whomever is in power accountable.”

    then separate section on ‘Facing the Roots of Abusive Immigration Policies: Racism and Profit’, and ‘The United States Needs A Pro-Immigration Policy To Correct Abusive Treatment of Immigrants’, and the green party’s platform on immigration which i still haven’t taken the time to read.

    https://popularresistance.org/nationwide-pro-immigrant-or-anti-trump/

  28. NR

    5150:

    “The Americans who are opposed to seperating children, don’t do it from the goodness of their heart. They oppose it because it is a Trump policy.”

    Bullshit. The opposition to the child separation policy came from people of many different political stripes, including many right-wing evangelicals who had previously been staunch Trump supporters.

    Just suck it up and admit that your guy implemented a policy that was terrible and evil on its merits, and wasn’t the victim of some vast neoliberal conspiracy.

  29. Ché Pasa

    Excuse me. No one I know of is saying Obama and Bush and Clinton and presidents all the way back to the beginning did not engage in terrible actions against whoever was designated The Other during their presidencies, including destruction of families and not infrequently genocide. It happened. We know this. It does not in any way invalidate current protests. If anything, it makes the current protests more necessary.

    Those who claim that the outrage against Trump’s policies with regard to Others is purely hypocritical and that there was no protest during previous administrations are strumming on a bizarre and fully false string. Similar policies in previous administrations were rather widely known and were protested, often vigorously. Many of those who are protesting now were protesting then.

    Yes, there is a heightened awareness and more widespread protest during the current regime, but that does not invalidate it. To assert that the current protests are invalid because something something Obama is truly an obscenity. There should be no quarter given to what is going on now, neither should there be forgiveness because some previous regime did something similar or worse.

  30. Willy

    “Something something Obama” seems to work so well on the nitwits, that they impulsively try it here.

    When Trump lies about the Democrats love of undocumented’s, or any “bad laws” calling for family separation (which simple research proves don’t exist), his people eat it up like candy. An NPD with a lifelong history of scapegoating literally owns their minds.

    The truth is, that:

    “statistically, more people were deported from the U.S. during the administration of President Barack Obama than during that of any other president.”

    Yet quick trips to factchecker sites also reveal that there are no “bad laws” written by Democrats calling for family separation.

    So we wind up with these people bitching about Democratic sanctuary cities, while at the same time bitching about the Democrats family separation policies for illegals. I’d tell them to just pick one side and stick with it. But they sure do seem to love their folly.

  31. Just suck it up and admit that your guy implemented a policy that was terrible and evil on its merits.

    Of course you mean your guy Obama implemented a policy that was terrible and evil on its merits, and then Trump continued it. Just like every Republican and every Democrat always does. Because Reps and Dems, Repbots and Dembots like you, are peas in a pod.

    And of course you still think simply mass-murdering children directly with bombing, drone strikes, death squads, and constriction warfare waged on civilians (“sanctions”) is good and normative. God knows your Fuhrers Obama and the Clintons could never get enough of that kind of good ole’ mass murdering.

  32. NR

    Russ:

    Try to follow the discussion. We’re talking about the policy of separating children from their families, which Obama did not do.

    Is it too much to ask that you stick to the topic at hand? Apparently so, since you obviously still think that childish name-calling is a valid debating tactic.

  33. NR

    Russ:

    Also, Che Pasa basically already refuted your comment in the post that’s two above yours, so just go read that if you still don’t get it.

  34. wendy davis

    @Ché Pasa: you’ve somehow jumped to the notion of ‘hypocritical’ rather easily, but neither zeese, flowers, nor sonenstein claimed that. the former two did question the partisan nature of it, meaning the fix would be ‘elect more democrats’, which is what we see here re: ocasio. she and the elected dems following suit (or not) want immigration reform that ‘reflect our values’, whatever that means, but make it about ‘crime’, ‘saftey’, ‘secure borders’, not just deportations and separating children. the wall? dunno.

    but crossing a border was a crime under O as well, and as he separated families he came up w/ the con of a ‘dream act’, which was in the end, good for the bottom line. as in, i assume, per sonenstein:

    “By 2013, undocumented activists had been organizing and sounding alarm over the separation of families from deportation and detention for years. Protestors were in that room because the president promised to negotiate an immigration reform package on the campaign trail, only to turn around and dramatically expand the deportation machine while in office.”

    diFi was shocked!!! but she knows now, and will fix it. (although as brian pointed out she’d been on that immigration reform committee, never mind). yes, what’s frustrating to me is that the Trumpeter is the naked face of the cruelty of ‘the Empire comes home to roost’, although more overtly racist and facist than obomba, including his planned military FEMA camps as per Time magazine. only for 120,000 now, but it’s a growth industry, as were private prisons under O.

    absolutely the protests should continue, and are, of course, but the roots of capitalist wars and exploitation driving so much of it need to be addressed right.now. and those are a bi-partisan. ha, bernie’d bragged unbidden on cnn that he’d voted to fund trump’s wall.

  35. Willy

    I was at a kids birthday party once with the usual goings on, when my wingnut in-law suddenly blurted out some Fox Newsian crap about global warming, totally out-of-the-blue. There was the pause with “Huh?” stares, for a comment most toddlers and mothers would think inappropriate for such an occasion, before the party resumed as normal.

    Maybe it’s something like that?

    So what’s the plan for taking advantage of all the angst out there to try and get more change balls rolling? Being all nihilistic and stocking up on doomsday food and supplies is getting old.

  36. someofparts

    “The problem here isn’t just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. During the United States’ blood-soaked invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Twain penned an imaginary history of the twentieth-century United States. “It was impossible,” Twain wrote, “to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home.” ”

    “The fetters imposed on liberty at home,” James Madison wrote in 1799, “have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers abroad.”

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/08/rotten-to-the-heart-authoritarian-chickens-roosting-at-home/

  37. NR:

    Now you’re lying, as you know perfectly well. And Che Pasa admitted the same thing I’m saying, which you’d have recognized if you were capable of reading. To quote:

    “No one I know of is saying Obama and Bush and Clinton and presidents all the way back to the beginning did not engage in terrible actions against whoever was designated The Other during their presidencies, including destruction of families and not infrequently genocide. It happened. We know this.”

    I only reject the part he wrote about denying the vile hypocrisy of you liberals.

    But he’s also wrong about what no one is saying. You’re saying it, criminal.

  38. someofparts

    Ten Bears – Well, yes. I would add that asking what we have done to piss off God might even be a nonsense question because being pissed off is what the God that rules our world does. Being angry is the centerpiece of his job description. So, knowing that, has it started to dawn on anyone yet that we are literally ruled by a Death God? Because, honestly, is it not the case that under the rule of this God we are literally killing the living earth? If it looks like a Death God, quacks like a Death God and walks like a Death God, well then …

  39. V

    someofparts
    July 7, 2018
    Oh my, and now we know god? We know the wants of said entity?
    Which god? Whose god?
    Wakan Tanka?
    I think the concept of god is lost on modern humans of these times.
    A few indigenous peoples have been able to maintain a thread of connection to the spirit, the animus of their origins…

  40. @Che Pasa, “This is not who some Americans are.”

    The very definition of specious argument. If a minority opposes policy while the majority either supports it or stands idly by, then that policy is exactly what that nation is. Pointing out that there is a minority in opposition does not refute the point in the least. The argument is made more absurd by the fact that the legislators enacting the policies are reelected 85% of the time.

    This nation is judged, or should be judged, by what it does, not by what a feel-good minority wants it to be. “I want my nation to be a wonderful place, and so I will pretend that it is.”

  41. someofparts

    V – personally, Taoism is the only way of thinking about such things that ever made sense to me.

    However, that doesn’t change what most of the people I live around believe. To the extent that a significant majority of my neighbors believe in an Abrahamic God then, yes, it does matter if the god those people think they know is not what they think He is.

  42. SoP: I was being a smart ass but, now that you mention it it has long been my observation the Abrahamic god is quite blood-thirsty, a War god. It’s adherents baby-rapers, woman-beaters.

  43. NR

    Russ:

    I haven’t lied about anything. Again, we were talking specifically about Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents.

    Don’t blame me for your inability to follow the topic of a discussion.

  44. Willy

    Are there any well known non-vile non-hypocrites out there who Russ thinks are worth admiring? Philosophies? Movements? Religions?

  45. wendy davis

    ian, i’ll pay you my standard rate of a $1.99 to get my recent comment out of a holding cage. i’d posted it about 17 hours ago… oh hell, you’ll prolly want a couple loonies… sigh.

  46. Ché Pasa

    The broad brush argument that “this is who Americans are” doesn’t work when you realize how split and polarized the public is on many issues, and when you see that even when a majority or 2/3rds or 3/4s of the public seeks a different policy or action than the government, the government policy prevails.

    A minority can and often does control the government against the public interest and will. Our system is set up that way. We the Rabble have very little direct control over what the government does or doesn’t do and our representatives are notorious for governing contrary to the public interest and will.

    It’s the way it is. Not “who Americans are.”

  47. StewartM

    Willy

    I was at a kids birthday party once with the usual goings on, when my wingnut in-law suddenly blurted out some Fox Newsian crap about global warming, totally out-of-the-blue. There was the pause with “Huh?” stares, for a comment most toddlers and mothers would think inappropriate for such an occasion, before the party resumed as normal.

    Heh. I had a an uncle, long ago, who would start ranting at get-togethers about “New York Jews!” and blacks. Finally, when I was in college, I said “Uncle XXX, will you please cut out the racist BS!”.

    Funny thing happened as he slunk back, silenced. Not a word was spoken, but then people came up to me and initiated friendly conversations about this-or-that. I had the distinct feeling that the message was “We’ve been waiting for years for someone to tell that blowhard to can it!”

    Which leads me to Bill H’s post:

    The very definition of specious argument. If a minority opposes policy while the majority either supports it or stands idly by, then that policy is exactly what that nation is.

    Given that US governance is essentially that of a plutonomy, how can you say that “the majority either supports it or stands idly by”? If we were truly more democratic, we’d have free, universal health care, we’d have tuition-free college, we’d have a $15 an hour minimum wage, we’d be doubling SS payouts, we’d be regulating Wall Street, AND we’d be scaling back our endless wars. All these things poll well, upwards to over ́80 % agreement, but note we have none of the above; if anything, what we’re getting is going in the opposite direction. That’s because in a plutonomy, it’s not the will of the majority that counts, but the will of the monied few. We are getting exactly what *they* want.

    US elections are piss-poor way of determining what the majority really wants, and should not be used as a gage. Just look at the US Congress, and see how they they would answer the very same poll topics I just put forth! We have non-representative government for a variety of reasons, including 1) winner-take all elections, made worse by using highly gerrymanderable districts–doing away with districts altogether and doing state-wide representation and/or proportional representation would be better; 2) voter suppression, “the electorate” and “the citizenry” are not one and the same, voting for the US is not an “inalienable right”; 3) money is now “speech” and propaganda outlets “news”; 4) even if you do get someone elected promising change, the chances are they will be compromised and/or bought-off by big money, discouraging people to try voting for “hope and change” again.

    And, I remind everyone, our “news” media is complicit in this, and not just undisguised propaganda outlets like Fox. 50 years ago, in Vietnam, US media, while not perfect, brought the horrors of war right into American living rooms. We saw dead babies lying in a ditch in My Lai, we saw a prisoner executed live on TV, we saw US soldiers burning homes, we saw the ruins of hospitals destroyed in air raids. When journalists exposed some of these, or one (Daniel Ellsburg) leaked government documents to expose the lies, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor; while awaiting trial Ellsburg toured the country, giving speeches in his own defense. Now, by contrast, by and large we don’t get those photos and films, and when someone does try to expose war crimes (Chelsea Manning) they get tossed into a black pit awaiting trial and have their lawyers gagged.

    No, Americans are not “deplorables”; at least no more or less than any other country. I am confident that the same people who react with outrage and horror of when they see small children separated from their parents (and it turns out, the records connecting children and parents have been deleted) would react similarly if they saw the film and photos of even more horrific deeds our government does in their name. But most rarely if ever see any of this, and what news they do get is heavily sanitized and filtered to make it look tidy and not-that-bad. Most Americans would benefit if they escaped the American news bubble.

  48. Willy:

    Plenty. Too bad they’re all unacceptable, or more likely incomprehensible, to you.

    But we’ve constituted the vast majority of human societies hitherto, and will do so after your vile biophobic civilization has collapsed, unless of course your kind of death wish was virulent enough to exterminate hominids completely. God knows that’s what you want.

  49. Don’t worry NR, we know exactly what your crimes are, and will hold you to account appropriately.

  50. NR

    Russ:

    By all means, please enlighten us all as to the nature of the “crimes” you imagine I’ve committed. This should be instructive.

  51. Willy

    Plenty. Too bad they’re all unacceptable, or more likely incomprehensible, to you.

    realitychecker is back!! Mishanthropy lives!!

  52. @ChePasa
    Except that “this is who Americans are” was not the statement that was made. The statement was, “This is what America is.” Once again the specious argument of refuting a statement other than the one that was made.

  53. Ché Pasa

    Both statements were made. Or did you miss that somehow?

  54. BlizzardOfOzzz

    The evolution of the left frankly amazes me. With all their wailing about the threat of fascism, you would think they’d want to avoid fueling it. And yet they can’t seem to bring themselves even to oppose immigration of violent criminals. I guess they think that would a propaganda loss — but every violent criminal that immigrates, which is then (unsuccessfully) covered up by their corporate media allies, they lose hearts and minds.

    And boy, are they losing. Left/liberal positions have become so extreme that they are now increasingly just being mocked. From Trump, to Lewindowsky’s “womp womp”, and now seemingly a new Trump in Italy; just look: “Soros wants to fill Italy and Europe with migrants because he would like Italy [to become] a giant refugee camp because he likes slaves.” (lol)

    If your heart bleeds for victims seeking asylum, wouldn’t you have a mind to keep out the perpetrators of the same? Ordinary people are increasingly noticing the yawning gulf between your claims and easily verifiable reality. Oh well, carry on …

  55. Willy

    I see your wholly unsupported anecdotal opinions and raise you three published studies (even threw in a Cato for fun):

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9125.12175

    https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4450776-Light-Et-Al-AJPH-Published.html

    https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4450775-CATO-Illegal-Immigration-and-Crime-in-Texas.html

    That allowing illegals is far more in line with neoliberalism’s driving down of wages seems a safer strategy. Just sayin’.

  56. NR

    Blizzard, since you’re approvingly linking to an Infowars source, I’m just going to ask you straight out: Do you believe Alex Jones’s claim that the victims at Sandy Hook were played by child actors, and no one was actually killed in the shooting there?

  57. I second that: answer the question, do you think Sandy Hook was a false flag?

  58. StewartM

    Blizzard:

    And yet they can’t seem to bring themselves even to oppose immigration of violent criminals.

    Big difference between a previous conviction and yer mere suspicion based upon ancestry, oh Blizz.

    Like I said, if ever you came here to oh-so-white Appalachia, you’d see plenty of violent criminals of all stripes. Everything racist whites accuse non-whites of is just as true if not more so of the “white culture” here. Substance abuse? Dysfunctional families? Single Moms? People on the dole using their money on drugs/booze instead of their kids? We got ’em, in spades. Yet something tells me if the immigrant was white and from Northern Europe, you’d utter nary a peep of a complaint.

    (Of course, some of us say all that has nothing to do with the amount of melanin in their skins, or what continent they (cough cough) immigrated from, and everything to do with a culture created by their infrastructure. Appalachian whites have many of the same cultural behaviors of Napoleon Chagon’s Yanomani because they traditionally had many of the same infrastructure preconditions, conditions which created a patriarchal, patrilocal cutlure wracked by internal warfare (feuds) where the “good husband” merely beats his wife; the bad one maims or kills her. Change the infrastructure, and eventually you change the behaviors).

    The evolution of the left frankly amazes me. With all their wailing about the threat of fascism, you would think they’d want to avoid fueling it

    The only people who are fueling it (deliberately) are those on the right, those seeking (often foolishly) to ride a neo-fascist wave to get more tax cuts and wealth-grabbing for the rich (most of the Trump elite is doing that). Or those (inadvertently and just as foolishly) of the DNC ‘center-left’ (Clintonite-Obamacrat) who embraced identity politics as a cover for their center-right economic policies, all which drove the working class to destitution, cauing some of them to embrace the only people (fascists) who talk about their plight and who seem to care (but who offer in truth non-solutions).

    By contrast, in the FDR economy, it was no accident that an economy where working-class real wages rose was also a time when the rights of African-Americans, women, and others also advanced. Something like the Sanders program, or better yet, the Corbyn program, would advance both the rights of the historically marginalized and also provide economic advancement for poor working whites. But any such program is met with the staunch opposition of both the Trumpsters and the Clintonites/Obamacrats alike….they find something to agree on!

  59. StewartM

    Blizzard:

    Soros wants to fill Italy and Europe with migrants because he would like Italy [to become] a giant refugee camp because he likes slaves.” (lol)

    Instead of that crapola, a more insightful description of George Soro’s policies, and their failure, can be found here:

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/06/the-george-soros-philosophy-and-its-fatal-flaw

    Throughout his career, Soros has made a number of wise and exciting interventions. From a democratic perspective, though, this single wealthy person’s ability to shape public affairs is catastrophic. Soros himself has recognised that “the connection between capitalism and democracy is tenuous at best”. The problem for billionaires like him is what they do with this information. The open society envisions a world in which everyone recognises each other’s humanity and engages each other as equals. If most people are scraping for the last pieces of an ever-shrinking pie, however, it is difficult to imagine how we can build the world in which Soros – and, indeed, many of us – would wish to live. Presently, Soros’s cosmopolitan dreams remain exactly that. The question is why, and the answer might very well be that the open society is only possible in a world where no one – whether Soros, or Gates, or DeVos, or Zuckerberg, or Buffett, or Musk, or Bezos – is allowed to become as rich as he has.

  60. steeleweed

    On expert on the process noted that our current policy encourages illegal entry – the worst that happens is you get caught and deported. If you claim asylum – as many do, as well as economic hardship – we’ll take away your kids until the immigration courts rule on your claim (well over a year’s wait). If I were in their shoes, I’d go illegal.

  61. highrpm

    thoughts of a simpleton (me:) why don’t Soros, or Gates, or DeVos, or Zuckerberg, or Buffett, or Musk, or Bezos or all of the above create a student loan forgiveness fund and simply forgive, all at once, the present bulk of student loans. these debt-strangled younger generation are Dreamers, too, and deserve better, too. why not start now and do some radically instant “change we can believe in?”

  62. V

    highrpm
    July 8, 2018

    1.4 trillion dollar student loan debt is a lot of money even for them and they’re not that generous.
    Why not implore the government to declare a debt jubilee?
    After all, the bastards print the money…

  63. BlizzardOfOzzz

    NR, Ten Bears – what an oddly specific thing to be interested in. It was just a quote – I don’t follow PJW or Alex Jones. That’s not to say I don’t tend to believe in conspiracies. I used to read Paul Craig Roberts who liked to point out discrepancies in the Official Respectable Opinion about those type of events. And Ron Unz has written a very good series of articles that he calls American Pravda, showing that the media has frequently conspired to bury the truth about important events.

    If you guys are pretending to love the corporate media nowadays, it’s only because they’re pretending to love you – a marriage of convenience. No one honestly thinks the corporate media is worth a damn, although Gell Mann Amnesia is real.

  64. BlizzardOfOzzz

    StewartM,

    Big difference between a previous conviction and yer mere suspicion based upon ancestry, oh Blizz.

    Previous conviction, huh? To know about that wouldn’t we have to require those “papers” you’re so scornful of? You believe we should accept people whose only crime is a lack of documents such as arrest warrants for rape/murder from their home country. If you’re back-pedalling now, then you might want to talk some sense into your fellow demon-possessed lunatics.

    The only people who are fueling it (deliberately) are those on the right …

    I suppose you’re right that if no one mentioned the brutal crimes committed by your swarthy pets, there would be no fuel. Shame about the 1st Amendment, or you could like Britain start arresting rape victims for hate speech.

    So much for that — what you brought up about economic policy is more interesting. I’m not sure what the Corbyn program is … What I know of the Sanders program seems idiotic, because higher education is a massively wasteful boondoggle, and expanding it would be a terrible idea. In this country we have the American System, which preceded FDR, and emphasized government-funded internal improvements, along with labor-saving technology and high wages. (Which stands in pretty marked contrast to your preferred policy of massive importation of indentured labor for low-skill farm work.) Even Bernie denounced open borders as a “Koch brothers idea” before he was cowed by your coalition of proud colored folk. Trump may not be the embodiment of the American System, but he does align with important parts of it, and has been wildly successful at shifting the Overton Window. The re-introduction of tariffs and a commitment to bringing home high-skilled manufacturing jobs are an excellent first step.

    The connection to fascism is interesting — as I’m sure you know, fascism was a kind of socialism. I haven’t studied the subject, but I’m sure there are important similarities between the New Deal and Hitler’s economic program. As I see it, the main obstacle to sane economic policy is Big Money, there’s this unholy alliance nowadays between International Capital and International Socialism. If anyone should smash the Big Money parasites, it’s going to be a resurgent right, since it owns the Left body and soul.

  65. Ian Welsh

    Fascism really really wasn’t a form of socialism, in any way, despite the word being in the party’s name.

  66. Willy

    demon-possessed lunatics

    I can remember when talking that way was considered lunacy by normal folks.

    It’s gotten so bad that when democratic socialists say they like what Sweden’s got, modern conservatives automatically start in about the horrors of the USSR.

  67. Willy

    How could the right possibly limit corporate-government collusion, when the right is owned by corporations?

    Boehner? Boehner?

  68. jonst

    I disagree with you Ian. There always was, and is, a strong lower class, middle class anti communist component in society. To say nothing of the Ruling Class. There was always a strong anti consumerist, anti materialist, or anti positivist bent in the same groups. Or, if not strong, certainly substaninal. There was and remains, a strong belief in the ‘Nation’ preceding the State. So this was not simply a patriotic movement. Although it was that too, at times. All of these dynamics found a home, roughly, more or less, in Fascist movements.

  69. BlizzardOfOzzz

    Hard to see how Hitler’s party platform does not qualify as a type of socialism.

    The dictionary specifies means of production owned *or regulated* by the community as a whole. Not very useful, since every modern state qualifies (although the capitalists who called FDR a socialist were correct by that definition).

  70. Ian Welsh

    What Hitler actually did was break unions, reduce wages, liquidate socialists first (before Jews), and move more production to the private sector.

    The actual actions of Nazis are not socialist in any significant way. And they were heavily supported by Germany’s corporate elite. Under Hitler their salaries soared, by the way. Workers were paid less, corporate execs paid more.

    That’s not socialism by any definition that means anything. Lots of people say socialist shit, Democrats do. The question is what they do when in power.

  71. BlizzardOfOzzz

    Not doing what was promised — surely the final proof of socialist bona fides.

  72. StewartM

    Blizzard

    To know about that wouldn’t we have to require those “papers” you’re so scornful of?

    I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you saying that people seeking asylum or entry have to prove that they have no warrants out on them? How do you prove something that by its definition has no paperwork to show if true?

    I suppose you’re right that if no one mentioned the brutal crimes committed by your swarthy pets, there would be no fuel

    The only people that is important to are people like yourself, who focus on the brutal crimes committed by immigrants while steadfastly ignoring the equally brutal crimes committed by oh-so-white natives. At the very worst, immigrants commit crimes in about in the same proportion as natives; though the data actually suggests that immigrants may commit less:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/two-charts-demolish-the-notion-that-immigrants-here-illegally-commit-more-crime/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b2487f9bdd35

    http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/aug/03/antonio-villaraigosa/mostly-true-undocumented-immigrants-less-likely-co/

    In this country we have the American System, which preceded FDR, and emphasized government-funded internal improvements, along with labor-saving technology and high wages.

    Well, it’s odd you say that about US history, because for the first 100 years we had no, nada, none immigration restrictions–at all!! And it took another 50 or so years for restrictive barriers to be erected. So how did you propose how all that wealth and economic growth and wage increases happened in a country with no barriers to anyone coming in?

    (And while I too have good things to say about the American System, remember my part of the country was ag’in it. Very much so, it helped fuel a Civil War).

    The connection to fascism is interesting — as I’m sure you know, fascism was a kind of socialism.

    No it wasn’t. People who repeat that lie cannot explain why Hitler and other fascists were supported by their corporate elites, and by conservatives in their own countries. Hitler never won an election–his ‘negatives’ were too high—even in the 1933 election with the SA running the polls he and his conservative allies only managed 44 % of the vote. No, Hitler was *invited* to power by German conservatives who thought they were so much smarter than that stupid Austrian corporal loudmouth and could manipulate him into doing their bidding (as Franz Von Papen bragged, “In two months we’ll have pushed Hitler into a corner where he can squeal…”).

    Boy did they find out who were the stupid ones. They played with fire and got burned; some of them (like von Schleicher, von Bose, Edgar Jung, Erich Klausener) perished in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. Von Papen himself only survived as the British ambassador (who liked Papen personally though he thought him a scoundrel) made a point of driving his car around Von Papen’s residence to keep the SS assassination squads away.

    Conservative’s infatuation with fascism was not limited to Europe. In the US, too, there were plenty on the right who saw fascism as a cure. There may have been a plot to overthrow FDR, by business elites, to replace him with a fascist strong man, as exposed by Gen. Smedely Butler:

    http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Coup.htm

    At least everything that Butler said, that could be verified, was verified as true.

    The businessmen also promised that money was no object: Clark told Butler that he would spend half his $60 million fortune to save the other half.

    And what type of government would replace Roosevelt’s New Deal? MacGuire was perfectly candid to Paul French, a reporter friend of General Butler’s:

    “We need a fascist government in this country… to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight.”

    Indeed, it turns out that MacGuire travelled to Italy to study Mussolini’s fascist state, and came away mightily impressed. He wrote glowing reports back to his boss, Robert Clark, suggesting that they implement the same thing.

    If this sounds too fantastic to believe, we should remember that by 1933, the crimes of fascism were still mostly in the future, and its dangers were largely unknown, even to its supporters. But in the early days, many businessmen openly admired Mussolini because he had used a strong hand to deal with labor unions, put out social unrest, and get the economy working again, if only at the point of a gun. Americans today would be appalled to learn of the many famous millionaires back then who initially admired Hitler and Mussolini: Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, John and Allen Dulles (who, besides being millionaires, would later become Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and CIA Director, respectively), and, of course, everyone on the above list. They disavowed Hitler and Mussolini only after their atrocities grew to indefensible levels.

    So Ford, Rockefeller, Dulles, et. al are really “socialists?” The thing is that this also fit in perfectly as the same class was supporting fascists in Germany and Italy and elsewhere, as Ian said above. In Britain conservatives (save notably Churchill) apologized for Hitler as the ‘bulwark against Bolshevism”.

  73. someofparts

    Stewart M –

    “Hitler was *invited* to power by German conservatives who thought they were so much smarter than that stupid Austrian corporal loudmouth and could manipulate him into doing their bidding”

    The similarity to our situation with Trump is terrifying.

    Even though I’m not surprised that wealthy businessmen tried to stage a coup against Roosevelt, it is still gut-wrenching to learn that they probably did try it.

    On the being woke spectrum, I suspect that many people fall somewhere in between Blizzard and Stewart. Maybe that is the point of getting out into the community and working together to build some kind of healthy consensus.

  74. XFR

    Yet they created plenty of orphans, and took plenty of children from parents, and killed far more people, and involved a lot more rape, torture and slavery as the inevitable side-effects.

    More than a side-effect in the case of the Iraq War. The children of captured Iraqi rebels were raped as their parents were forced to watch.

    The subsequent investigation gave the U.S.-led Coalition a clean bill of health on the matter–the Coalition had hired Iraqis to do the raping, so the incidents were dismissed as an example of the barbarity of the locals.

  75. Don’t blow sunshine up my ass boy, answer the question: do you believe Sandy Hook was a false flag?

    Detailed analysis re Smedley Butler, a coup attempt on the FDR administration and a German preacher’ account after the war of how it sneaks in the backdoor can be found at my place under Fascism Creeps.

  76. XFR

    As if it really had to be pointed out–

    The problem with “this is not who we are” is that it’s a sleazy, hypocritical, fatuous cop-out.

    At best, it’s a “no true Scotsman” argument.

    At worst, it’s essentially the “Twinkie defense” on the scale of a whole country.

  77. XFR

    Futhermore, it blatantly sets the stage for further wars and mayhem under the cover of the nation’s “exceptional” character. “This is not who we are, but it bloody well is who they are, so let’s go in and get’im.”

  78. BlizzardOfOzzz

    StewartM,

    I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you saying that people seeking asylum or entry have to prove that they have no warrants out on them? How do you prove something that by its definition has no paperwork to show if true?

    Just a regular white boy from Appalachia (who definitely doesn’t have a second passport for when things go south here), how could you be expected to know highfalutin book-larnin’s like criminal background checks.

    The only people that is important to are people like yourself, who focus on the brutal crimes committed by immigrants while steadfastly ignoring the equally brutal crimes committed by oh-so-white natives.

    That’s true my fellow white person, we whites do sometimes abduct little girls too. What’s all the fuss about? Pablo was going to rape someone, the only question is whether an angelic little brown girl or a racist fellow white one (no-brainer).

    So how did you propose how all that wealth and economic growth and wage increases happened in a country with no barriers to anyone coming in?

    A real head-scratcher. Who ever heard of settling the frontier? Not poor white folk from Appalachia!

    I will defer to your and Ian’s knowledge of German NS economic program for now, as I’m totally ignorant of it; although I don’t think corporations supporting it is as decisive as you are claiming (being a bulwark against Soviet communism is no small good, as you might perhaps grudgingly be forced admit).

    Either way, the question remains for socialists today, whether they will be nationalist or internationalist. Common sense implies that international socialism / open borders would inevitably pull first world standards of living down towards that of the impoverished hordes of the Global South. And furthermore, since you’re convinced that corporate support is the kiss of death for socialism, here’s a question for you: do corporations today support nationalism or internationalism, and why?

  79. Willy

    do corporations today support nationalism or internationalism, and why?

    Not mine to answer, but you gotta be kidding me…

    What made you think this way Bliz? I mean originally. Was there a sudden epiphany moment? I’m hoping it was something personal and traumatic, and not the thing where one goes to church one Sunday to find everybody talking Fox Newspeak.

  80. BlizzardOfOzzz

    Willy, bro I’m not following, you’ll have to be more explicit. I gather you dispute the premise? I don’t follow Fox at all by the way.

  81. Willy

    First part it seems there’s much talk about how globalized corporations increasingly have no heart or soul, with offshoring, tax havens, zero loyalty towards their birth nation…, while previous versions of themselves (at least some of them) once proudly Made In The Motherland. On top of that it seems that in their long view many large corporations aren’t even loyal to planet earth.

    Second part was a general question.

  82. realitychecker

    Anybody here who doesn’t immediately step up and condemn this soulless mother fucker Willy for his new low, way below his eternal passive-aggressive obnoxiousness, in “hoping it was something personal and traumatic” that happened to Blizzard, just because he obviously got his little rhetorical ass kicked, is also a soulless mother fucker.

    And the host sucks if he doesn’t finally ban this twisted psychopathic POS.

    In any event, I will never come back here. What’s the fucking point?

  83. Willy

    You an Alex Jones fan too?

  84. Willy

    Sorry Bliz, not hoping for any personal trauma, like the one I had once that had changed me, but factors that made your thinking what it is today. I’ve already explained mine and the changes it made in my thinking, TMI, and probably too often.

  85. StewartM

    Blizzard:

    Just a regular white boy from Appalachia (who definitely doesn’t have a second passport for when things go south here), how could you be expected to know highfalutin book-larnin’s like criminal background checks.

    Where in the article you posted does it say that these men had a criminal record in their home countries? Plus, they were here illegally, they had faked documentation, so it’s not like they were just waved in at the border with a smile and “have a good time in ‘Merica!’ greeting.

    I’m rather amazed you think it’s easy to get into the US. Even to visit, it’s very hard. Do you not know of people who wanted to visit here, had no zero, zilch, nada, criminal records, and have no intent to remain, who have sufficient incomes, and yet, after paying the visa fees and such, get turned down without any stated justification? (I do). We treat legal visitors (not immigrants, mind you, visitors) pretty barbarically, and for no reason at all–these same people can go visit other countries with a lot less hassle (UK, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, etc) and moreover these countries have literally 1/10th the problem with people overstaying their visit to work.

    And you want to know why? It’s that thing called a “national ID card” that you need to have a job. Ah, but the very thing that helps address the problem most of the people who cry about immigration and illegal workers don’t want, because it would almost certainly be usable as a voter ID card for (cough cough) the “wrong kind of people” voting.

    That’s true my fellow white person, we whites do sometimes abduct little girls too.

    And at least most of the data suggests we white people (especially in my region) commit those crimes at higher rates than (at least) legal immigrants, and maybe even illegal ones. In fact, higher proportions of immigrants (legal and undocumented) in a jurisdiction correlates to significantly less crime, not more. So why did you bring up crime?

    (I will say this–some of the data says that lower crime among immigrants is a first-generation thing. Once their kids are born, and learn to eat hamburgers and pizza, watch football, drive muscle cars, becoming fully Americanized, so to speak, then gosh by golly they commit crimes in about the same proportion as other native-born folk).

    A real head-scratcher. Who ever heard of settling the frontier? Not poor white folk from Appalachia!

    Yeah, massive theft from the Natives, I agree on that bit. Part of building the country also was the massive theft of labor from African-Americans, that bit too.

    I myself always say “when capitalists talk about the history of ‘wealth creation’ under capitalism, from the Tudor enclosure to the West Indies sugar plantations to US slavery to the “opening of the frontier” to colonialism in general up to software patents, it usually involves someone very rich stealing something from the very poor at worst, or at least taking away something that was once free and making others pay for it.

    But I do want you to note that once stolen, the land wasn’t all given to XYZ corporation or JP Morgan, but to any ordinary folk who was willing to work on it. Hmm, land redistribution? Sounds suspiciously “socialist” dontyathink? We wouldn’t make that same ‘mistake’ again.

  86. StewartM

    Blizzard:

    I will defer to your and Ian’s knowledge of German NS economic program for now, as I’m totally ignorant of it; although I don’t think corporations supporting it is as decisive as you are claiming…

    In 1932, the German government first tried to bankrupt Hitler and the Nazis by repeatedly holding election after elections. This strategy was working, the Nazis ended up out of money.

    But who came to the rescues? Why, some of Germany’s rich:

    https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis

    I would also recommend picking up a copy of William Sheridan Allen’s The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single Town 1922-1945. He describes the Nazi takeover from a local perspective, and you find out which groups of people tended to vote for or be sympathetic towards the Nazis and who remained fiercely opposed (the SPD or socialists being the main opponent). Mainstream conservatives (i.e., the rich) weren’t Nazi, but they shared some of the Nazis’ aims and were willing to ally with them. The backbone of Nazi support came from small shopkeepers and businessmen. Despite NRA propaganda, gun owners too liked the Nazis, who promised to remove restrictions on gun ownership and use (and despite NRA propaganda, the Nazis in fact did exactly that once in power).

    https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Seizure-Power-Experience-1922-1945/dp/1626548722

    (being a bulwark against Soviet communism is no small good, as you might perhaps grudgingly be forced admit).

    From a world perspective, even Stalinism wasn’t the danger Nazism was. That’s because Stalin retained at least a veneer of Marxist ideology which stated the victory of Lennism was historically inevitable, while Hitler hewed to more a “great men move history” Carlyle-type thinking. The result of both ideologies was that even Stalin could accept defeats as just temporary setbacks in the grand progression of the triumph of Lennism, whereas Hitler thought Germany’s achieving greatness required a great leader to bring about–and, insofar as he could see, he was the only person in the Nazi leadership who fit the bill. Ergo, Hitler’s goals all had to be achieved *in his lifetime*. That explains Hitler’s grasping and seemingly reckless foreign policy–he had a deadline to meet in conquering Eurasia, and that deadline was his lifetime.

    Stalin and his successors had nuclear weapons. Did they ever use them? No, because even setbacks and retreats could be rationalized away as temporary. No use blowing up yourself and the world if the “laws of history” predicted your inevitable eventual triumph anyway. By contrast, there’s little doubt that if we had been dealing with Hitler with nukes, the world would have been a mountain of rubble decades ago.

    Either way, the question remains for socialists today, whether they will be nationalist or internationalist. Common sense implies that international socialism / open borders would inevitably pull first world standards of living down towards that of the impoverished hordes of the Global South.

    “Common sense” also would suggest that time, space, and mass are constant. They are in fact not.

    Yes, it’s important to control large capital flows outside the country, and it’s morally justified because as Ian has written “no, that money isn’t all ‘yours'”. Human beings, by contrast, should be much freer to move or travel where they want, that’s something more akin to a human right (the state telling you ‘you must live here, not there’ and restricting/controlling these things is something that the Stalinists did, no?).

    And to say that wages must, or only can, be determined by market forces is just wrong. Even today, supposedly in a tight labor market, wages aren’t budging much:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/13/american-economy-wage-suppression-how-it-works

    Now, we could 1) hire a lot more people, immigrants included, and 2) pay them more. But Trump’s policies are a failure in this regard, because they focus on non-factors like immigration and do the opposite of what needs to be done on things like taxes (we need a 90 % or higher individual rate, plus a higher corporate rate) and regulation (we need to forbid stock buybacks and throttle mergers plus more). In short, we need to punish the rich and corporations for paper-only investments and force them to invest in real improvements (which includes staffing, as most American businesses are massively understaffed today).

    As I said even if we had NO immigration, none at all, we would still have a shitty economy for workers because the Fed’s policy is to suffer wage stagnation if not decline and unemployment in order to protect the investment class from ever losing money.

  87. Willy

    I’m thinking that while libertarians may be useful for watchdogging against government overreach, true libertarianism probably always inevitably leads to fascism. The simple reason is that corporate overlords want to maintain their feudal empires and will empower their governmental protectors to do so, against the increasingly disenfranchised and angry masses.

  88. Still haven’t answered the question. Not just Blizz.

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