Law? We don’t need no stinkin’ law. We’re trying to banish children here. Kids are being hauled into court and told by a judge that they are trying to decide whether to kick them out of the country.
“The reason we’re here is because the government of the United States wants you to leave the United States,” Judge Ubaid ul-Haq, presiding from a courtroom on Varick Street, told a group of about a dozen children on a recent morning on Webex.
“It’s my job to figure out if you have to leave,” ul-Haq continued. “It’s also my job to figure out if you should stay.”
The parties included a 7-year-old boy, wearing a shirt emblazoned with a pizza cartoon, who spun a toy windmill while the judge spoke. There was an 8-year-old girl and her 4-year-old sister, in a tie-dye shirt, who squeezed a pink plushy toy and stuffed it into her sleeve. None of the children were accompanied by parents or attorneys, only shelter workers who helped them log on to the hearing.
Enough. Enough. Shut down ICE, arrest every fucking member of the Trump administration, and give them some toys to play with while a humane judge decides what to do with them. How can that judge preside over a kangaroo court to decide on the fate of children?
Do they suspect those dozen kids are members of MS-13? Do they have tattoos?
Last Week Tonight – Immigration Courts (2018)
I’ve never been able to quite figure out what the fundie xians/GOP care about.
They don’t much care about children, their own for sure, and especially any one else’s.
.1. Child sexual abuse rates in fundie families and churches is very high.
It is rarely investigated or punished.
.2. The faith healers and antivaxxers have high rates of child morbidity and death.
The death rate of a faith healer child is 50 times higher than normal people between 0 and age 18.
” Parents of Texas 6 year old child who died of measles stand by decision to not vaccinate.”
.3. The current maltreatment of young children by ICE and the GOP is nothing new. They were keeping migrant kids in cages during Trump’s first term and some of those kids ended up dead.
If these children were white, there would have been screams of rage coming from all over the white community. This is entirely wrong on all counts.
The fundie xians/GOP don’t care about children.
They also don’t care about their own lives.
.1. We saw that during the Covid-19 pandemic when they opposed any public health measures and rejected the Covid-19 virus vaccines.
This cost the lives of 400,000 people, most of them Republicans.
It was not unusual for one family to have several people very sick from the Covid-19 virus and more than one of them die.
Rather than learn the obvious lesson, they would blame the hospitals and frequently attack the health care workers. Every hospital ended up with battle tested internal security forces.
.2. You see this right now with the shutting down of the EPA, the USDA, the CDC, NIH, etc..
Without public health, food inspections, and pollution control measures, the death rate of Americans is going to go up.
We are already seeing it with E. coli food outbreaks, measles epidemics, and whooping cough outbreaks.
This is just going to steadily get worse.
.3. Attacks on our health care system, Medicaid, which many of them are on.
Also Medicare, which almost everyone over 65 is on.
.4. You see it with the huge efforts to stop even minimal and common sense gun control.
Another school shooting?
Nothing can be done, no big deal.
(Which ignores that the USA is the only country with this problem.)
.5. Ignoring climate change which is already killing people in the USA.
So there you have it.
The Trump voters don’t care about children.
The Trump voters don’t even care much about their own lives. If they die, they die, I guess.
The Trump voters certainly don’t care about living in a democracy.
So what do they care about?
Who knows?
Maybe they don’t care about anything except what is on TV tonight.
@2 & @4 raven pointed out many of the evil ‘turns’ of the rtwing xtian terrorist magat cult.
To me each of those valid points raven makes refer to points along the downward death spiral.
(just my viewpoint, raven. Whether you agree or disagree I welcome your further thoughts in this,)
If you have need of absolution, then giving up all the glory is a small price to pay to quiet a racing mind.
raven @ 2: They care about stories they can tell themselves. Less “appearances” and more of a “facade”. There is a tiny bit of depth to it but not much. Just enough to pretend the real thing is there.
My parents, especially my mom, were the type of person you’re thinking of. She liked telling a story about how my German immigrant father was born in Poland as their family ran around Europe trying to avoid the fighting during WWII. He wasn’t. He was born in Germany. I’d heard that story growing up as a kid and didn’t find out the truth until a few decades later. She just liked to repeat the story and he didn’t correct it until he was in the hospital dying after a long, full life. If I hadn’t tried to give the nurse incorrect information about where he was born in front of him, I might never have known. This was several years after my mom had also died. That’s how weirdly attached these sorts of people can be to their stories.
As far as I can tell this is why people say they care about children and sexual abuse but still give money to churches that won’t lift a finger to protect children from known sexual predators. And it’s how people can insist on the absurdity of having voted for president based on egg prices. Or manage to be outraged that people who are different from them have the same sorts of life goals and expectations out of life that they do. Or any number of other contrary, ridiculous ideas.
As long as the facade makes them feel strong, important, well-off, or some other positive thing, it’s better than reality.
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blockquote>If these children were white, there would have been screams of rage coming from all over the white community. This is entirely wrong on all counts.
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blockquote>
These days, I kinda doubt anyone on the right would care. If kids get targeted by a hateful autocratic government, they’d probably rationalize it by saying they’re trans or something.
And the judge said “This isn’t a court of justice, son.
This is a court of law.”
– Billy Bragg’s “Rotting on Demand”
Re: Raven @4:
What makes them angry?
The thought that someone they don’t identify with is successful or happy or common or even legally on par with them.
Criticism of a book they barely read themselves and, more generally, the fan club for that book into which they’ve invested so much of their identity. Acknowledging abuses would make their affiliation look bad.
Opportunities to participate in the outrage du jour, joining a side, without much care for the end goal or effectiveness of the means.
They care about being part of something bigger than themselves to make them feel bigger. Even if that thing is a minority subculture. Degrading public infrastructure that mitigates societal ills puts such matters back into the hands of God, who likes them best ofc—as opposed to matters ANY culture can empower itself to regulate.
Sadly, this is would go over about as well as “Defund the police.” Americans love their cops, especially the dirty ones.
The problem is that we don’t have an actual leftist voice in American politics. We have a center-right party and a fascist party. We have a handful of honest progressive politicians who could make a difference, but the Dems do far more at keeping them quarantined than fighting the fascists, afraid of losing the great unwashed “center.”
That, and let’s face it “liberals” love capitalism too, they just naively thinking that its irredeemable aspects can be mitigated with taxes and regulation. As we now see, that doesn’t work. We need socialism, but nothing will change as long as the allure of wealth and luxury exist, temping the inherently greedy and selfish human race to abandon their best interests for the astronomical chance of become wealthy.
Hey drew old buddy, you still delighted to have the government you believe preferable to the Dems?
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 10
When reading the Guardian I was surprised by an article about Republicans being triggered by stories about the Obamas living in a happy marriage.
A small consolation: Absolute evil being absolutely incompetent.
Rachel Maddow:
“Oops!: Trump’s first 100 days marked by incompetent screw-ups and frantic walk backs.”
(15 min video covering the worst mistakes)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bFKxLJuJPZA
Re: birgerjohansson @13:
That explains this then.
The Onion – Obamas show off vibrant marriage by inviting nation to join them in boudoir