Trump Lambasting Diverse Congress People

[ProfessorDetective]

Regardless, modern technology puts a terrifying amount of killing power into an individual's hands, so it doesn't take all that many dedicated individuals to start causing real problems for a society at large.

If you are even vaguely aware of the horrifying rise in mass shootings in the last few years, you know that to be TERRIFYINGLY true.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

What does that have to do with technology though?

[Yukaphile]

Imagine what scarily new weapons of mass murder lay in the future, that will soon be readily available to the average person with enough money or understanding of the mechanics to build or buy one of their own?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well I guess there's that. Any other ideas?

[CmdrKing]

Okay, let's go back to this.

Now, I'm a college-educated life-long Democratic voter. I've never pulled a level for a Republican above the local level. I regularly donate money to Democratic candidates. I have lived most of my life on the border, and my grandfather crossed it from Mexico less than 100 years ago, so I have no fear of brown people. By Texas standards, I am one step short of a communist, although admittedly by California standards I am decidedly centrist. So statistically speaking, I am about as open to your argument as any American voter is likely to be. I am more that willing to listen to your proposed policies and engage with them in good faith.

I think moreso I just made some faulty assumptions about starting knowledge base. A lot of argument is communicating your idea with as little explanation as possible, because people don't actually read the whole thing.

Like people get really confused at my posts and it's bizarre... except I usually try to include nuance, anticipate and deflect arguments, and include multiple points in a given post. You have to read the whole thing and have a good memory of the rest of the conversation. Apparently that's rare!

Anyways, specifically I was working on the following
1) I had to look up the actual name of Dachau, but my working memory before that was "the first major camp had a full life cycle of (Dissident) Prison Camp-> Forced Labor Camp-> Internment Camp-> Concentration Camp-> Extermination Camp, and most people roughly know that". Either they do not, or all people ever knew about genocide and the Nazi regime in particular is those pictures of charnel houses and mass graves.
2) More broadly that education around the Holocaust includes the steps used in the systematic dehumanization and removal of rights from its victims, that you have to ease people into killing millions by making the changes just small enough the broader populous has plausible deniability. Instead people seem to know that you want to keep it secret, but have no idea of the steps involved in building that plausible deniability.
3) People could broadly understand the similarities between the Japanese Internment and the current camps. This turned out false immediately: the actual in as many words response was "Japanese Interment was bad because it was US citizens". So despite being a less charged (if honestly weaker) parallel, it failed so we had to talk about Nazis.

But forums are good places for workshopping arguments. You can take your time, post sizes are negotiable, and generally you don't actually know anyone so harassment and full offense are much rarer.

Anyway, nobody ever really brought it back up, but it loops back around to the (original) topic of the thread so it's a good ending note.

I've been extremely confident that, if allowed, these camps will devolve into full 1944 territory. And that's because Trump's behavior show's he is already in a fascist mindset; his words about Omar et al are pretty telling. "Go back to your country"... because for Trump, America is a white nation, and non-white people may remain solely on the condition of deference to his version of "being an American".
Once your head of state believes something like that, either they or underlings seeking to please them will find the right methods to move the undesirables (Trump's political opponents, but more broadly any insufficiently boot-licking minority) into the categories people are "okay" with stuffing into the camps. In this case the earlier response in the thread makes the answer trivial: find or make up some law they just so happen to be collectively breaking, and if someone is "criminal" then a plurality of the populous won't take notice when they're locked up.

That's the thing; it's not just that these camps are moral black holes the US is leaping face-first into. The entire mentality around them is rancid: it's okay to collectively dehumanize non-citizens and "criminals". And leaving that idea in people will rot the entire rest of their morality, until they're Just Following Orders.

[Yukaphile]

I hate the word "nuance." It's abused by those who like to push an agenda that victimizes the innocent and sympathizes the guilty.

[CmdrKing]

People are very bad at social reform that way. Nuance is useful and necessary, because identifying social trends and societal failings that contributed to abusive or immoral behavior is required to understand and prevent more people falling into the same traps.

eg it's extremely likely that Donald Trump is product of an abusive household. His behavior towards his older children (particularly in their teens/college years), seemingly compulsive bullying of others and deflecting blame from himself, and continual brags of wielding power and authority over others are utterly telltale signs.
That doesn't excuse his actions, hundreds or perhaps thousands of abuses big and small dished out over a lifetime. We can confidently conclude he is a cheat, a rapist, a traitor, and a disgrace to the nation, who should be dealt out the harshest punishment society deems fit.
But acknowledging all these things may help us as a society make fewer future Donald Trumps.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I hate the word "nuance." It's abused by those who like to push an agenda that victimizes the innocent and sympathizes the guilty.

Is CmdrKing sympathizing the guilty here?

[LittleRaven]

I think moreso I just made some faulty assumptions about starting knowledge base.

Yeah, it's hard when you're so much smarter than other people. You just have to accept that the rest of us are not quite operating on your level. Having genius chained to such dross is always discouraging, of course, but there's no helping it. Don't worry, lesser men than you have overcome.

Either they do not, or all people ever knew about genocide and the Nazi regime in particular is those pictures of charnel houses and mass graves.

The single most influential work on the Holocaust in recent memory is, by quite a large margin, Schindler's List. Where in that movie do you get a sense of build up from persecution -> political prisoners -> labor camps -> extermination? It freakin' starts in Krakow.

2) More broadly that education around the Holocaust includes the steps used in the systematic dehumanization and removal of rights from its victims, that you have to ease people into killing millions by making the changes just small enough the broader populous has plausible deniability. Instead people seem to know that you want to keep it secret, but have no idea of the steps involved in building that plausible deniability.

My son recently scored a 4 on the AP World History exam. I am quite confident that he has virtually no understanding of any of that - and he's WAY ahead of most high school students in our country. And remember...for over 60% of American voters, high school is all they ever get.

You go to war with the electorate you have, not the electorate you want. It may serve you well to get to know them a little better.

This turned out false immediately: the actual in as many words response was "Japanese Interment was bad because it was US citizens".

In fairness, that's a pretty big distinction. Most people draw a very distinct line between what they expect from a government vis-a-vis its own citizens vs what they expect from a government for foreign people on their soil. That isn't likely to change no matter where you go - it's as true in Sweden as it is here - so you're going to want to make sure you address it in future arguments.

I've been extremely confident that, if allowed, these camps will devolve into full 1944 territory.

Well, like I said, there's only two ways to stop it, and you don't like the rifle option. So you're going to want to work hard on becoming more persuasive.

You have 473 days.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Anyways, specifically I was working on the following
1) I had to look up the actual name of Dachau, but my working memory before that was "the first major camp had a full life cycle of (Dissident) Prison Camp-> Forced Labor Camp-> Internment Camp-> Concentration Camp-> Extermination Camp, and most people roughly know that". Either they do not, or all people ever knew about genocide and the Nazi regime in particular is those pictures of charnel houses and mass graves.
2) More broadly that education around the Holocaust includes the steps used in the systematic dehumanization and removal of rights from its victims, that you have to ease people into killing millions by making the changes just small enough the broader populous has plausible deniability. Instead people seem to know that you want to keep it secret, but have no idea of the steps involved in building that plausible deniability.
3) People could broadly understand the similarities between the Japanese Internment and the current camps. This turned out false immediately: the actual in as many words response was "Japanese Interment was bad because it was US citizens". So despite being a less charged (if honestly weaker) parallel, it failed so we had to talk about Nazis.

I understood #1 when you spoke it, and I agree with #3. #2 though, not entirely. People see that historical event more in line with agents, as in "who was in power doing what to whom." Again with 3, I agree considering the semblance of inhumane camps is readily apparent, not to mention not being really disputed by anyone on the right. But education surrounding the holocaust isn't wrapped up so much in the logistics and intricacies of the process. People wouldn't have cared about them as much if it weren't for the genocide, and that's what's packed into the term concentration camp. And that's admittedly what the left is precisely trying to do.

I've been extremely confident that, if allowed, these camps will devolve into full 1944 territory. And that's because Trump's behavior show's he is already in a fascist mindset; his words about Omar et al are pretty telling. "Go back to your country"... because for Trump, America is a white nation, and non-white people may remain solely on the condition of deference to his version of "being an American".
Once your head of state believes something like that, either they or underlings seeking to please them will find the right methods to move the undesirables (Trump's political opponents, but more broadly any insufficiently boot-licking minority) into the categories people are "okay" with stuffing into the camps. In this case the earlier response in the thread makes the answer trivial: find or make up some law they just so happen to be collectively breaking, and if someone is "criminal" then a plurality of the populous won't take notice when they're locked up.

That's the thing; it's not just that these camps are moral black holes the US is leaping face-first into. The entire mentality around them is rancid: it's okay to collectively dehumanize non-citizens and "criminals". And leaving that idea in people will rot the entire rest of their morality, until they're Just Following Orders.

I personally don't agree in entirety. I'm receptive to what you're saying as far as the camps being a red flag, but I don't think our state is to really transform to that. ICE comes off less like the Gestapo and more like an incompetent enforcement agency that's ill equipped to handle what the presidential administration urgently put into action so that he could retain his constituency for 2020. Granted this is incompetence on a very contemptible level, and it is also the case that the federal government has a heavy hand of authority to its own extent.

Trump's political rally also though, I have to admit that it was probably the most dystopian sentiment I've gotten out of this term, but while there's definitely a degree of racial bias among his people, it more comes off as neglect for humanity and just more defiance of more modern leftist Globalization efforts (for instance) in favor of that American traditionalism you're talking about. That applies to the apparent indifference towards ICE detention camps as well as his verbal tirade against the more culturally diverse representatives.