Oh, gods, the continued decline of political discourse. When I feel it's near zero, it somehow gets stupider. Mind, though, it's hardly just the United States:
nativism &
xenophobia are flourshing all around the planet, particularly Europe.
Lately I've been hearing a lot of GOPster quacking about immigration, particularly of dark-skinned Spanish-speaking people of limited means. Of the moment's Top Ten at debunkers
Snopes.com, seven are in that category.
I suppose that I can tolerate being lied to by Big Orange. After all, the easiest way to tell that a politician is lying is to see if his lips are moving -- or, in this instance, his thumbs.
What bothers me is the number of people who appear to be of moderate intelligence & sanity, yet accept obvious lies as absolute Truth -- & any readily verifiable facts as "fake news." As a former student of world religion, I'd say that such blind fanaticism has been rare among Euro-blood people for possibly centuries.
With the exception of personality cults that led to murder or suicide. That is where I worry things are heading.
Let's turn to one pernicious meme that keeps getting trotted out by Reds that I encounter locally:
Separating families at the Border is the fault of bad legislation passed by the Democrats. Border Security laws should be changed but the Dems can’t get their act together! Started the Wall.
6:58 AM - Jun 5, 2018
Jeff Sessions made comments in April that breaking family groups into separate individuals was in fact part of a NEW border-control initiative;
Snopes has a video clip from May 7 where Sessions lays this out.
The situation gets murkier because Reds have become notorious for being unable to hold onto any two thoughts simultaneously, & therefore have massive difficulty comparing two things. (They are often quite proud of being "single minded."
) They get hold of the meme that "Obama took more children!" which is actually based on kids arriving at the border without an adult ("unaccompanied minors"), NOT separating kids from present guardians (something very rare under Obama).
After some predictable fumfuh & random arm-waving (similar to that accompanying tertiary-stage syphilis), the GOPsters manage to point to "a 1997 law" -- a-hah, it's those damned Clintons again!!
Well... or not -- see, under the so-called
Flores settlement,
DHS could detain unaccompanied children captured at the border for only 20 days before releasing them to foster families, shelters or sponsors, pending resolution of their immigration cases.
The settlement was later expanded through other court rulings to include both unaccompanied and accompanied children.
That is, kids can't be held in custody for more than 20 days, period. It in no way mandates
separating kids from family.
"Oops, busted, DAMN that Fake News!!"
Soon enough, the Reds were pointing excitedly at
Public Law 107-296. (Remember the early
2001: A Space Odyssey scene where the monkeys are pointing excitedly at the monolith? Yeah, kinda like that.
) It was "passed by Democratsin 2002!!"
Well... no.
One versions of that rumor was shared by the Facebook page Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children on 19 June 2018 ... captioned: “HERE IT IS. PASSED BY THE DEMOCRATS. ENOUGH OF THE LIES, DECEIT, & FAKE NEWS[.]”
On the date of Public Law 107-296’s passage (25 November 2002), Senate.gov provided its majority as Republican, not Democrat.
The bill’s sponsor was Rep. Richard Armey of Texas (a Republican). The bill had 118 co-sponsors, of whom 114 were Republicans and four were Democrats.
So not only an expression of post-9/11 Rightist hysteria, but almost entirely a Republican steamroller.
As for mandating the crime of stealing children to feed the foster/adoption industry:
This did not mandate that children be separated from their families, but instead, created a legal classification for children with no parent or guardian present or for whom no parent or legal guardian was available to provide care and custody.
Sorted, then: no law to create de facto orphans, no law (even vaguely connected) "passed by Democrats."
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The problem, of course, is the uphill logic battle of attempting to
prove a negative. Gingrich & Fox News have been planting these mustard seeds for 30+ years; now, if you tell a Red that "no such law exists!" they will soon demand "
prove it!!
If they see angels walking around amongst us -- a distressing number
actually do & haven't yet been treated for it -- how can you possibly "prove" those spirits ARE NOT there?
Faith won't stop a bullet, but logic helps keep you from getting shot at in the first place. The "faithful" see themselves as righteous heroes, stalwart in their "faith based" campaign against the poor "reality based" people -- yes, they actually do use that term. They will face up to the bullet of Fact rather than put down their cardboard shield of Faith.
________________
Suddenly, after endless tweets about how weak & powerless he is -- "weh, weh, mommy!! They're blamin' ME but all I was doin' was following the law!!" Embarrassing, man.
-- our Orange Ghandi (as Gutfeld calls him) takes a moment between pieces of KFC to sign an Executive Order that might solve the whole quagmire (
which he created) without involving Congress.
Gotta leave Congress out, because the "separation" crisis -- which, again,
Trump created -- is hammering at deep rifts in the GOP that existed before The Donald & have only got worse. There are Reds who are now much more in danger than they were a month ago of being unseated in 2018, & suddenly don't know whether "I love Donald!" is salvation or poison.
I say "drain the swamp." Kill the Republican Party, then go after the Democratic Party. Put the Libertarian Party on notice they could be next if they don't straighten out their policies & get rid of the pernicious influences of the Koch Brothers & the John Birch Society & various fascisms (like Pelley & Rockwell) & Ayn Rand (& definitely of people who crow about Rand yet have read nothing but a handful of pithy quotations). The political system is a 19th century "solution" to problems of 2018 & beyond, a GREAT way of making wood-spoke wheels. (For a prescient alternative, read Spinrad's
A World Between (1979
) & note how the hyperconnected Pacifica handles it.)
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Strangely, the Trump separation policy backfired in a way you are probably unaware of. See, if a family is detained, they can be investigated
as a unit &, if not meeting criteria for immigration or refugee status, can be "fast tracked" back over the border
as a unit.
Problem is, having ripped children away & thus given them "unaccompanied minor" status, children BY LAW CANNOT be "fast tracked," & therefore become de facto abandoned/orphaned children, & put into the U.S. foster care system, meantime being cared for at exorbitant taxpayer expense (rather than simply having been left with their detained family).
Rather than be done in a few weeks, this can happily be dragged out for YEARS, adding to the already overburdened court system (in general) & the absolutely crushed immigration courts (in particular).
(Yes, I poke at Reds for this egregious waste, being extended years into the future yet, & demand to know when "drain the swamp" is going to begin rather than be further expanded by yet another lying GOP administration.
)