Topic: Trumpmageddon

[Khris]

they are taking jobs that real citizens could do

Are you actually being serious?

[Scavenger]

I disagree. By law they are not supposed to be there, and they are taking jobs that real citizens could do. It has nothing to do with xenophobia or racism. It has everything to do with enforcing the law and reclaiming jobs. As long as there are legal ways to become a citizen, I don't see a problem with deporting illegals.

By law you can treat a prisoner like a slave for labour purposes as well, doesn't mean it's moral or ethical or right.

Becoming a legal immigrant is almost impossible for a lot of people. The process is expensive and most of the time they aren't eligable. For some reason poverty in their home country is not considered a valid reason for immigrating, so you'd just be sending them back to live in poverty and probably starve to death.

You can also not round up and deport 11 million people, that's impossible. You can't even be sure who is an illegal immigrant without costly background checks on each and every person, or racial profiling. And let's face it, they'd just use racial profiling and try and deport latinx US citizens.

It has everything to do with xenophobia, by the way, because you're trying to exclude people you see as an outsider from a country, even though countries have pretty arbitrary borders and you should really try and not let anyone die or suffer. If you weren't xenophobic, you'd see them as a person before a foreign national.

[Danvzare]

You can also not round up and deport 11 million people, that's impossible. You can't even be sure who is an illegal immigrant without costly background checks on each and every person, or racial profiling. And let's face it, they'd just use racial profiling and try and deport latinx US citizens.

And let's not forget the clusterfuck that is the US immigration system, which make it absolutely impossible to stop the US from deporting you even if you're an actual citizen.

Everyone talks about deporting illegal immigrants, but it's never just the illegal immigrants that get deported, it's the legal immigrants and people born in that country that get deported too.
And when you're a US citizen who has been deported to Mexico, Mexico will then deport you to another country, which will deport you to yet another country, and so on and so on.

You'd have to be a horrible person to overlook how many lives mass deportation has ruined.

[Snarky]

Even if the system worked perfectly, you'd have parents of American children being deported, not to mention kids who were brought to the US when they were little and have never known any other country.

[dactylopus]

It has nothing to do with xenophobia or racism.

I think it has at least a little bit to do with xenophobia and racism.  Maybe it's not entirely racist, but saying it's not racist at all is the complete opposite viewpoint and neither extreme is 100% accurate.  But I still hold that it's xenophobic.

Even if the system worked perfectly, you'd have parents of American children being deported, not to mention kids who were brought to the US when they were little and have never known any other country.

This is one of the biggest issues.  What we really need is a good path to citizenship for people like this.  Bring them into the system and get more of them paying taxes.

[Babar]

This is one of the biggest issues.  What we really need is a good path to citizenship for people like this.  Bring them into the system and get more of them paying taxes.

I had heard a claim about this recently, so I googled the exact sequence of words 'illegal immigrants pay more taxes', and as the top result, quoted in a box within the google page itself (as it sometimes does), was the following:

Donald Trump may not have paid federal income taxes for 20 years, but the undocumented immigrants he rails against certainly have, according to the head of a Latino civic engagement organization. ... Undocumented immigrants pay $12 billion of taxes every single year. They pay their taxes.Oct 2, 2016
How much do undocumented immigrants pay in taxes? | PunditFact

The actual article goes into a lot more detail, and yeah, there are illegal immigrants who are not paying taxes, but it really is quite amazing, that there are illegal immigrants who are paying taxes for benefits that they themselves cannot avail. The contrast the article made in that paragraph to Trump, who proudly insinuated(?) that he had not paid income tax for 20 years is pretty funny .

And yeah, plans for a muslim registry, which apparently are in discussion now would absolutely would be racist as well as xenophobic (and yes, racist, despite the "BUT MUSLIMS ARE NOT A RACE!" counterclaim that so often comes up. The registry would be for immigrants from muslim countries, so "brown people". And I don't think someone having converted to Christianity would suddenly make it okay for them to skip being registered), so it isn't conjecture, or stuff that he said years ago, or stuff that he just said crassly to be more populist.

Anyhow, a bit off-topic, or maybe not, but it is very interesting to me how in recent years as a response to accusations of racism towards a third party, some people bring up "We have to be more tolerant of peoples' differing opinions!"
Even in this election, part of the post-election conversation was "It was so obvious that Trump won! You shut all these people out! What did you expect would happen! You need dialogue!", exemplified by that irritatingly jarring fake interview video that kept autoplaying a couple pages back.
And that's interesting, because my understanding of most responses to racism have always been:
1) If it is a criminal offense, report it
2) Otherwise, if it is from an unrelated or not closely related party (some other group), you exclaim the wrongness openly, mock it perhaps, so that society as a whole would not come under the impression that it is okay, and the people would hopefully shut up with embarrassment- like most people were doing with Trump's supporters
3) If it is someone you know, and could possibly influence (your kid?), explain to them in no uncertain terms what they did is wrong
4) If it is out of your control (your parents, grandparents, relatives), ignore it, or passively show your displeasure

These people are suggesting a third option, which is "dialogue". I am very curious how this dialogue would go. For every racist person, you'd introduce them to a nice person from the race they were racist towards?

[dactylopus]

I don't think we need to be tolerant of other people's views if those views seek to discriminate based on race, gender, religion, sexual preference, or other such minority groups.  We can be tolerant of their other views, sure, but there should never be tolerance of discrimination.  It is abhorrent.

[Mandle]

This is just unbelievable:

Here's what actor Brandon Dixon said during the curtain call to Mike Pence, who attended a performance of "Hamilton":

"Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at 'Hamilton: An American Musical.' We really do. We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us."

And here are Trump's twitter responses:

"Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!"

"The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!"

It's completely unimaginable to me that, in anyone's mind, such a resprectfully and politely worded statement could be perceived as "harassment". What's he gonna do if Duterte calls him a "son-of-a-bitch"? Fly over to the Philippines and punch him in the nose?

I guess they shouldn't have given the big baby his twitter account rattle back.

[Jack]

Are you actually being serious?

Yes I'm being serious, and no I don't expect americans to be happy being paid the slave wages that illegals get, or live in the conditions that they do.

And while I don't believe that illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay when others have to earn their citizenship, and feel great antagonism towards people that have children as leverage, some good points were raised on mass deportation. I don't think that the issues benefit from being conflated with racism and sexism, when the real problem is stupidity.

To step back from it and get all philosophical for a moment, I really wish that people didn't feel like they had to resort to a crude solution like trump to get out of the bad situation that we're all in at the moment. But people as a whole seem to have large deficiencies when dealing rationally with politics, because all barry has to do is smile and everyone goes weak in the knees.

Anyway, more Washington's Blog: Installing a Torture Fan at CIA

It's a really complex situation. On one hand trump is starting to make good on some of his worst policies (torture in this case), while on the other, the establishment's attempt to steal the election for hillary seems to have been in earnest. I have no doubt that they can bring trump in line with their murderous agenda. He has a family, after all. If that happens, we will have the worst of both worlds.

[Snarky]

the establishment's attempt to steal the election for hillary seems to have been in earnest.

Again with quoting sources that don't even remotely say what you allege they say!

(I would also suggest that it's not so much a "really complex situation" as it is your worldview encountering reality for the first time in a while.)

[Atelier]

Throughout this entire thread I've had problems with people throwing around the word racist willy nilly as some kind of catch-all buzzword, so I'd like to share how I see it.

And yeah, plans for a muslim registry, which apparently are in discussion now would absolutely would be racist as well as xenophobic (and yes, racist, despite the "BUT MUSLIMS ARE NOT A RACE!" counterclaim that so often comes up. The registry would be for immigrants from muslim countries, so "brown people". And I don't think someone having converted to Christianity would suddenly make it okay for them to skip being registered)

I see the 'muslims are not a race' counterclaim as entirely valid. Far too often I see people unable to sever the race of a person and their culture and ideology. They are absolutely entirely severable. It astounds me how people continue to have problems with that concept - your race is biologically what you are, your culture is socially what you do. I am certainly not a racist but I am proudly a 'culturalist'. Some cultures and ways of thinking are simply better and more wholesome than others, and I will stubbornly never change my mind on that. (I'm subsuming religion within culture for these purposes).

Discrimination based on what one genetically is (I won't hire him because he's black) is what racism is. Saying you dislike Muslims is not, because specific instantiations of religion and culture is not genetic. Those systems are abstract counterfactuals and I think can therefore be legitimately scrutinised and discriminated against.

So, in theory we see that one's race and one's culture are completely separable. But obviously it rarely works this way - a white European is more likely to be a Christian than a Muslim; and if you're born in Saudi Arabia you're probably a Muslim. Yet this distribution is just an accident of history. After the invention of agriculture human populations have necessarily been relatively geographically static, meaning divergent cultures have grown in areas, which we attribute to the race of that area. But importantly the race is not the cause of the culture, and thus those claiming that an attack on the culture necessitates an attack on the race are mistaken.

Babar, you seem to have fallen for the same flawed thinking that we see in the uneducated racist (I know that you are not racist, obviously). Instead of seeing the ban on the 'Muslim country', you assume that that means 'country where brown people live'. I do not see it that way because I'm not fixated with race. Having said all that, I do agree with you up to the point that you can prove that there is some 'ulterior motive' for Trump's ban on people coming from Muslim countries; that he is not concerned with their faith, but the colour of their skin. False dichotomy flag: it is actually probable that Trump's reasons are both their faith and colour of their skin. However, we do not see him calling for a ban on sub-saharan Africans, Indians, Asians, etc. So I strongly suspect his primary motive is indeed what he says.

By the way, to preempt anyone who attacks me for saying that some cultures are simply better than others (that I need to "be more tolerant and open"), I'd like to quote dactylopus:

I don't think we need to be tolerant of other people's views if those views seek to discriminate based on race, gender, religion, sexual preference, or other such minority groups.  We can be tolerant of their other views, sure, but there should never be tolerance of discrimination.  It is abhorrent.

God forbid that some cultures openly discriminate on the basis of all of those things!

Edit:

Forgot to mention re the case of the 'Christian convert' coming from a Muslim country: if it is a wholesale ban on immigration or travel from a discrete list of countries (which I believe it what Trump called for, apologies if not) where Islam is the dominant religion and/or the law is based on sharia, then it leads me to believe the Christian also would not be allowed to enter the US from that country.

[Problem]

Saying you dislike Muslims is not, because specific instantiations of religion and culture is not genetic. Those systems are abstract counterfactuals and I think can therefore be legitimately scrutinised and discriminated against.

Some cultures and ways of thinking are simply better and more wholesome than others, and I will stubbornly never change my mind on that.

But even this could never be the base of disliking or even banning Muslims, because that would imply that they all think the same way, which is just nonsense. Add to that that many people are born into their religion, and you don't just change this like underwear. So judging individuals based on their race and judging them by their religion is not that much different, unless you clearly go into the different sub-groups. Otherwise you'd be drawing a direct link between the formal membership of a religion to one's character, and you'd put a single label on millions of different people, which may not technically be racist, but of the same quality.

[Jack]

Again with quoting sources that don't even remotely say what you allege they say!

If there's someone else who doesn't get my implication, let me know and I'll clarify.

[Babar]

Discrimination based on what one genetically is (I won't hire him because he's black) is what racism is. Saying you dislike Muslims is not, because specific instantiations of religion and culture is not genetic. Those systems are abstract counterfactuals and I think can therefore be legitimately scrutinised and discriminated against.

See how you switched the actions there? Discrimination based on what one genetically is is what racism is, sure. What is discrimination (not simply saying you dislike them) based on what religion the person was born into called? Or heck, even the religion they converted into?
Is that as okay as "Saying you dislike them"?
Is it okay to discriminate against the worse cultures?
What about the idea of forcing people of a specific culture to have to register with the government, perhaps wear an patch on their clothes so they could be easily identified, and be forcefully interred in the case of a war with people of that culture?

As you yourself zeroed in on the point we are discussing at hand, the DISCRIMINATION of a people, so in that context, yes, "Muslim is not a race" isn't a valid counterclaim at all. That is the exact reason I mentioned the Christian convert (or heck, even born christian in a muslim country) point. Not because I was curious as to what would happen to them, but to show that in the end, it isn't their religion that is being targetted, rather their ethnic background. Another example: so far, all iterations of the "Muslim registry" idea I've read about are for immigrants, not the local population who may have converted. Not saying we won't get there, of course.

The problem here is that you can't "see" religion, so it is easier to go with alternates: colour of skin, type of clothes being worn, etc. Which is why you sometimes hear on islamophobic attacks on Sikhs as well. So essentially, it IS racism.

[Atelier]

You're absolutely right Problem; but now we are getting very theoretical. Holistically Muslims do think the same way, in that we can differentiate the aggregate group mindset from that of another culture or religion. If we would not be able to do this, the label Muslim could be said to not exist! I agree that there is a tension between 'tarring people with the same brush' but also being able to de-individualise to make statements about the whole. This problem of reductionism is as ancient as philosophy. But unjust sacrifices at the level of the individual are inescapable if you want to deal with the whole, which is where practicality requires our attentions to be directed.

And yes, one cannot change their religion like they change their clothes - especially not if they live in a country where this is culturally impossible. Do you see the circularity of these oppressions?

See how you switched the actions there? Discrimination based on what one genetically is is what racism is, sure. What is discrimination (not simply saying you dislike them) based on what religion the person was born into called? Or heck, even the religion they converted into? Is that as okay as "Saying you dislike them"?

Sorry yeah, I did switch the actions, but only accidentally. I don't think it matters because we are talking about a ban on Muslims which could be compared to a ban on blacks. Both are discriminatory but one is based on culture and one on race.

Edit: I don't want to get hung up on the distinction between discrimination and dislike, but just to add that if somebody said they 'disliked' blacks they would certainly be called a racist.

What about the idea of forcing people of a specific culture to have to register with the government, perhaps wear an patch on their clothes so they could be easily identified, and be forcefully interred in the case of a war with people of that culture?

Absolutely not what I've been saying - massive straw-man, par for the course in this thread. (I saw your post pre-edit where you insinuated I'd be fine with that).

As you yourself zeroed in on the point we are discussing at hand, the DISCRIMINATION of a people, so in that context, yes, "Muslim is not a race" isn't a valid counterclaim at all. That is the exact reason I mentioned the Christian convert (or heck, even born christian in a muslim country) point. Not because I was curious as to what would happen to them, but to show that in the end, it isn't their religion that is being targetted, rather their ethnic background. Another example: so far, all iterations of the "Muslim registry" idea I've read about are for immigrants, not the local population who may have converted. Not saying we won't get there, of course.

You're essentially saying a wholesale ban on people travelling from a country equates to a ban on the ethnic group, simply because that is where they live on the planet. But as I've said, the ethnic background and the culture of those people is an anthropological accident, and the two are linked only by virtue of how cultures develop and people settle. The Muslim registry is obviously going to be targeted at immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, because that is where the majority of the world's Muslims are from!

By the way, I'd just like to reiterate to everybody (because I know that someone will eventually claim this), I'm not at all condoning or wishing for such a ban. As usual I'm talking theory here, not making value judgments.

The problem here is that you can't "see" religion, so it is easier to go with alternates: colour of skin, type of clothes being worn, etc. Which is why you sometimes hear on islamophobic attacks on Sikhs as well. So essentially, it IS racism.

Oh for sure, I completely agree. That's the common uneducated racist that I described. I'm just saying that personally I'm able to sever race and culture absolutely, and wish more people did the same.

[Babar]

Sorry yeah, I did switch the actions, but only accidentally. I don't think it matters because we are talking about a ban on Muslims which could be compared to a ban on blacks. Both are discriminatory but one is based on culture and one on race.

But considering the difference between discriminate and dislike (one is passive, the other is active), you can see my probing for clarification (as in the following quote)?

What about the idea of forcing people of a specific culture to have to register with the government, perhaps wear an patch on their clothes so they could be easily identified, and be forcefully interred in the case of a war with people of that culture?

Absolutely not what I've been saying - massive straw-man, par for the course in this thread.

I didn't say you had said that. I was just taking what you HAD said (or at least what I understood from what you wrote), that it is okay to discriminate based on religion, and shifting it to an extreme to give an example.

You're essentially saying a wholesale ban on people travelling from a country equates to a ban on the ethnic group, simply because that is where they live on the planet. But as I've said, the ethnic background and the culture of those people is an anthropological accident, and the two are linked only by virtue of how cultures develop and people settle. The Muslim registry is obviously going to be targeted at immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, because that is where the majority of the world's Muslims are from!

But all these things are linked. "Scientific" racists in the 19th used physical attributes, geographic location and culture as an explanation as to why Africans, for example, were subhuman. Heck, you know, there is no "black gene" or "white gene" or such, no combination of DNA that can give you "This person is black", so there is the idea that race as a whole is purely a social (or even cultural) construct!

[Atelier]

But considering the difference between discriminate and dislike (one is passive, the other is active), you can see my probing for clarification

Yes, I welcome the clarification but it's entirely irrelevant because we are talking about actual cultural discrimination (ban on Muslims).

I didn't say you had said that. I was just taking what you HAD said (or at least what I understood from what you wrote), that it is okay to discriminate based on religion, and shifting it to an extreme to give an example.

I saw your post pre-edit where you insinuated I'd be fine with that (something along the lines of 'if you think some cultures are better than others then I assume you'd be alright with people registering with the government... etc')

Heck, you know, there is no "black gene" or "white gene" or such, no combination of DNA that can give you "This person is black", so there is the idea that race as a whole is purely a social (or even cultural) construct!

What? That is literally how human genetics works. There are clear phenotypic and genetic differences between humans which we can classify as races relative to one another. If there weren't we would all be homogenous. These differences are biological, not cultural.

[Khris]

Yes I'm being serious, and no I don't expect americans to be happy being paid the slave wages that illegals get, or live in the conditions that they do.

I have always assumed that illegal immigrants mostly get jobs that citizens don't want. So your statement that they're "taking jobs that real citizens could do", while not factually wrong if taken at face value, sounded like you're implying they're taking those jobs away from citizen that absolutely would do them.
Was that your intended meaning or not?

Edit:
Also this: Mike Pence's Hateful Laws Almost Kept Me From My Dying Wife

[Snarky]

Discussion about the scientific status of "race" has been split into a new thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=54177.0

[Jack]

I have always assumed that illegal immigrants mostly get jobs that citizens don't want. So your statement that they're "taking jobs that real citizens could do", while not factually wrong if taken at face value, sounded like you're implying they're taking those jobs away from citizen that absolutely would do them.
Was that your intended meaning or not?

Well, I think at this point a lot of americans would jump at those jobs, even with their current work conditions and pay. But the basis of what I was saying (not implied), is that companies that exploit illegal labour get away with subjecting them to these conditions because they have no legal foot to stand on. If the companies could no longer do this they would have to go back to treating their work force with more respect. There will of course be a decrease in the number of available jobs because of this, but a lot of these jobs need doing regardless, so it will result in more jobs for americans.