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Former president Donald Trump ratcheted up his dehumanizing rhetoric against immigrants Saturday by saying that some who are accused of crimes are “not people.”
“I don’t know if you call them people,” he said at a rally near Dayton, Ohio. “In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”
Apparently I’m part of the radical left, because yes that is a terrible thing to say.
some who are accused of crimes are “not people.”
Crimes like sexual assault, fraud, and stealing classified information?
please focus on the word "some", this clearly does not apply to me.
I am considered radical in this country (and probably pretty moderate in a lot of Europe) but even if I was the most milquetoast centrist, I think I'd still find that terrible. It's amazing that he can still surprise me with what a piece of shit he is.
It's amazing that he can still surprise me with what a piece of shit he is.
I agree, it’s like a super power in a way.
For me at least, what makes it continue to be surprising is that he says these things and still retains his supporters. And when I hear he said something newly shocking, I know without having to ask that those supporters will still be there. So it’s not just that one person could be such a piece of shit, but that so many could agree with one.
That's why I have zero tolerance for the idea that we should just be able to disagree politely about politics and still be friends afterward. Sure, if the disagreement is about how much of a city's budget should go toward parks vs. street maintenance or something, but when "some people aren't really people because they're from another country" is the politics, that's gonna be a hard no for me. Trump supporters contribute nothing positive to politics (and probably not much to the world, considering how they view it) and I'm not interested in some fake ass "dialogue."
Yes. There are many political cartoons out there that are like
KKK/Nazis/Republicans: "The blacks/Jews/non-whites are not people
Left: "they're people. All people deserve respect and dignity"
"""Centrist""": "wow I can't tell you two apart " / "surely we can compromise. maybe kill half?"
Many people were taught "everyone is entitled to their opinion" and only learned that in the most naive way. They take it as "I can believe what I want, no matter what, and you have to accept that".
Many people are quite stupid. I don't mean ignorant. I don't mean they don't know stuff. I mean stupid. I mean they look at a set of facts and draw bad conclusions. They see more black people being arrested and go "blacks must do more crime" and don't even consider "is enforcement equal?" or other confounding factors.
But idiots still vote. And carry guns
So I don't know what the solution is.
Probably remove all conservatives from power, first. Invest more in education. Prevent consolidation of power in the hands of the wealthy.
If you don't find this terrible, I can point out exactly where you are in the spectrum.
But he fucking said it. You can't say something then claim you can't say it. Fucking idiots.
No, but he went straight to word-jail and got fined $200! Don’t you see how dire the situation is? The world is coming to an end!!! I have to vote for him to save us.
Asshole.
He would fucking cheat at Monopoly and still lose.
He'd just make vroom noises and push the car around over and over
How did I, a conservative, get lumped in with the “radical left”? What the fuck?
The Overton window has shifted so far right that basic decency or acknowledging facts is leftist.
I was a very hardcore conservative as a teenager, and even into college. Hannity, Ingraham, Beck, the whole deal (I still hear Martina McBride's "Independence Day" and think of driving down the road and listening to talk radio). This was 2001-2009ish, so it was pre-Ben Shapiro, but I would've probably vibed pretty well with him.
But something changed over the course of the Obama administration. I don't know exactly what it was. I mean, part of it was that I softened on my positions a bit as a result of meeting smart, trustworthy people who disagreed with those positions; but more broadly, something about Obama's win seemed to change Republicans. The window began to shift, and I found myself holding all of the same opinions but being suddenly shocked to discover that I was being called a RINO for them. People who were at my wedding were calling me a "liberal cuck" for posting things on Facebook that I had said four years prior to general assent and head nods. I was startled to say the least, and I wondered if I was imagining it, but I had documentation online; I could go back and check my own words. I knew what I had said.
Then 2015 happened, and I saw everyone I had previously agreed with falling all over themselves to apologize for and justify their Trump vote at best (or even actively campaign for and support him). It started to become clear that I, who actively opposed Donald J., was no longer welcome in the GOP because I wouldn't toe the line. Then "hold your nose and vote for the nominee" became "fact checking The Leader is a heresy" really quick and I got whiplash. I voted blue for the first time in 2016.
And while I was getting abuse from Republicans, the Liberals (who I had been told in high school were evil baby-killing cretins) were welcoming my questions, validating my concerns, and having lively but respectful conversations and debates with me wherein we were finding a whole lot more common ground than I thought there was.
I eventually discovered facts that indicated that a lot of what I had been told in talk radio and such were heavily exaggerated at best or even entirely fabricated, and my views actually did begin to shift. But it all began with the party trying to gaslight me into believing that I was the one whose views were changing.
Then we have something in common: he thinks immigrants are "not people" and I think he is not people.
Evangelicals: Trump is our president.
Jesus: 👀
Anyone who supports trump would have been a nazi supporter in Germany in the 30s, 40s
TbF many of them are nazi supporters now
“It means you assimilate. You become part of America; America doesn’t become part of you.”
This is a fascinating statement. I'm not sure how much Moreno really thought it through. But something about it seemed weird and I kept looking at it; the second part just didn't make any sense to me. Like I couldn't even parse the language.
I think I finally figured it out: When you become part of America, he's saying, you lose everything else about you. Being "American" doesn't form one piece of your identity. It becomes your entire identity. For being American to be only a single part of your identity, and you to still have other parts, is forbidden, in his mind. That is, more or less, the literal meaning of what he's saying.
Then I thought, maybe I'm reading too much into it. I think he's trying to say that you're supposed to come to America and become part of what's already there; America isn't supposed to change to include part of what you brought with you. You're supposed to change, and America's supposed to stay the same. That's not literally what the words mean, but I think that's more likely what he was aiming to say and he just didn't take the language seriously enough to get there successfully literal-meaning-wise.
I'm not trying to make it more than it is. It's just a weird little throw-away sentence. I just kept looking at it. One of those two things is what he meant. And they're both just... wrong. Like the whole value and purpose of the American story is supposed to be the exact opposite of all of that. IDK. I know they're trying to change the whole meaning of what it means to be American, but it's weird to me that the most perfect distillation of what they're getting wrong about the whole thing from start to finish came from their own explanation of how it's supposed to be.
Edit: I can't let it go. America is the only big country in the world that works the way it does. Almost every country is an ethnic monolith. Italy is full of Italian people, Japan is full of Japanese people, but America is full of white/black/Asian/Hispanic/whatever else people all working somewhat more or less together. And, somehow, America wound up being by far the world's dominant economic / military / diplomatic superpower (for now). To me those two factors are cause and effect. "Diversity is our strength" is very much a literal and serious geopolitical statement. But these guys don't like it being that way. They want to undo everything that makes America a special type of country, for all its evils and all the stuff we do wrong or badly, just because they're too insecure to get by without having a badge that says "my race is special." Fuck 'em. I really don't like it and I don't like them.
America is the only big country in the world that works the way it does. Almost every country is an ethnic monolith.
I'll just disagree a tad there. A lot of the Americas are racially diverse, not just the US. Canada, Brazil, Cuba, just to name a few, have similar ratios of racial demographics to the US (maybe Cuba to a lesser degree, you don't hear of many Asian Cubans).
If we're talking specifically big ones, Brazil still fits the bill. Brazil is not without its own problems, however.
Yeah that's accurate, maybe that would have been a better way for me to say it. Turkey is another multi-ethnicity country, and Turkey actually has the same sort of uniquely impactful presence in its area that the US has globally (with the US's size and and its geography and some lucky accidents also propelling it to a position beyond just what its natural advantages would tend to get it.) Maybe it's more accurate to say that the US's multi-ethnicity combined with its other advantages to produce the position it's currently in today.
In fascist America, melting pot melts you.
ooh, I hate this but... have my upvote
I feel like America's dominance has a lot more to do with its size (geographically and population-wise), access to natural resources, and coming late into WW2.
Being late to WW2 helped and so did being distant from both fronts. Thus no widespread damage and ruin to recover from for decades.
And all that lend-lease money to collect :P (I assume, at least. If someone comes in and tells me the US wasn't paid for all that gear I'll be shocked, but prepared to believe it since stranger things have happened)
This is accurate - I think you’re right; it would have been more realistic for me to list it as one of a number of important factors working in the US’s favor.
Your edit is absolute horseshit. Almost every country on Earth is multiethnic. The fact that you chos Italy which has only been a unified country since the middle of the 19th century just shows how deeply ignorant you are. Stop making shit up and read a fucking book, instead of using far right nativist talking points to back up your American exceptionalism nonsense.
Who hurt you
The most recent border bill contained everything Republicans said they wanted. Democrats gave them everything they wanted, and they voted no and moved to the right.
Now Democrats' position is the result of giving Republicans what they wanted. This was not Democrats' position 4 years ago.
How long before Republicans' new stance is adopted by Democrats?
Well the Christofascist Speaker admitted that perpetuating chaos and linking it to Biden is their best shot in November. So everything is going according to plan. Democrats can say they tried, Republicans can blame the fallout on Biden, and the rest of us non-politicians lose as usual. We have reached an "interesting time" where being elected is more important than governing.
Of course he did
He's just gonna keep climbing that ladder, isn't he?
New Slogan: MACSA!
Make America Chattle Slavers Again!
I'm not a Trump voter, but this headline is disengenuous. In context Trump was dehumanizing hardened convicted criminals. He also said that many illegal immigrants are criminals (tiny percentage) and that Mexico was emptying their prisons by exporting their convicts to the USA (not even remotely true).
This douchebag says enough insane shit that you don't need to make stuff up to sensationalize. The MSM doing so just further reduces their credibility.
The humans he's dehumanizing don't really make a difference lol.
Well, there ARE way too many foreign animals smuggled into the country, but it's not their fault. And a lot of them don't survive. Of course as usual Trump finds a way to be stupid as well as hateful instead of learning anything about the real problem.
Dehumanizing to the extreme