Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
![]()
![]()
Agree to disagree. I think hairsplitting on technicalities misses the forest for the trees. You don’t have to make an explicit “ok, we only do this to all the brown immigrants, and we only give their kids to white parents” policy, if the end result is nearly the same as if you did.
Reposting in case people have missed it, since the discussion is moving rather fast right now.
![]()
At the end of the day you’re still calling the situation something it isn’t for what seems like political expediency.
It’s disrespectful to victims of genocide, and entirely unnecessary for fighting the current situation to boot.
Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 27th 2018 at 1:16:19 AM
They should have sent a poet.Actually, no, I was surprised by it as well but separating children from their families falls under genocide as well.
It's because of attempts to destroy Native cultures by raising children white.
So, yes, it's genocide.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
x4 Here’s an ACLU overview
of problems with the death penalty. My initial googling on deterrence hit a lot of academic research website paywalls.
Edited by wisewillow on Oct 27th 2018 at 4:26:48 AM
![]()
![]()
Internment isn’t genocide. It’s still a crime against humanity, though. It was a war crime as well during WW 2, kind of the double whammy of evil.
![]()
The current family separation fails to meet the definition of genocide. Words have meaning, they can’t just be anything you want. Speaking as someone whose ancestors were actual victims of genocide, it really is disrespectful to bend the term for the sake of making things sound worse, especially when things are bad enough already.
Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 27th 2018 at 1:31:07 AM
They should have sent a poet.Uh...dude.
You may want to research this. Just saying.
Here, look at the definition:
http://www.un.org/ar/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/osapg_analysis_framework.pdf
- Forcible transfer of children, imposed by direct force or through fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or other methods of coercion
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 27th 2018 at 1:46:34 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Yeah, it's bullshit to claim that it's disrespectful to victims of genocide when you're denying that they're victims of genocide. It's genocide, plain and simple. You're minimizing how dire the current situation is because you're in denial that it really is as bad as it is, but no, it is that bad.
The government is not about to commit genocide, the government is committing genocide as we speak. The time to act is now.
![]()
![]()
You should quote the actual definition, not cherry pick:
The situation at the border is horrific. It absolutely meets the requirements for a crime against humanity. Despite that, though, it's not really genocide. We have no evidence that the Trump administration is attempting to destroy Latino culture. To use an example, while internment during WW 2 was both a crime against humanity and a war crime, it wasn't genocide because it wasn't committed with "intent to destroy" Japanese culture.
I agree with the Genocide Watch article you linked that it is a matter of concern, though I don't think a genocide is imminent. In a just world, Trump and friends would already be before the ICC for crimes against humanity. Again, not genocide though.
I appreciate it, and I do think my views are probably a little more stringent on this subject than average. However, if this went to court, the definition wouldn't be met. I'm in no way trying to downplay what's going on here, just pointing out that it's not quite all the way there yet.
Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 27th 2018 at 2:05:55 AM
They should have sent a poet.@wisewillow:
And like that, I already start suspecting that this is a biased assessment.
- There's not even a brief explanation of why the surveyed individuals have ranked it so low.
- Increasing the number of police officers would only make sense if there's a problem of understaffed jurisdictions, which is a whole different can of worms; meanwhile, drug abuse and a better economy are technically aimed at fixing the roots of the problem, which is a different paradigm that isn't mutually exclusive with the death penaltynote .
- Citation needed for the last claim.
That doesn't mean that they're right about doing so, though.
The death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. It is applied randomly – and discriminatorily. It is imposed disproportionately upon those whose victims are white, offenders who are people of color, and on those who are poor and uneducated and concentrated in certain geographic regions of the country.
- "Many murder victims do not support..." Since when did we figure out how to communicate with the dead?
- How many of those people are opposed to killing of any kind on principle? And exactly why should their objections be valued more than the calls of others who do support "state-sponsored violence" to avenge the deaths of their loved ones?
At this point, I've lost any interest in continuing through the rest of this Wall of Text (I'm only about 10% through), as practically every argument I've read so far is largely if not utterly unconvincing, with several being guilty of one Logical Fallacy or the other.
Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 27th 2018 at 12:02:27 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.The government is not about to commit genocide, the government is committing genocide as we speak. The time to act is now.
The targeting of undocumented immigrants while undeniably a heinous crime driven by nothing but prejudice cannot be seriously called genocide, there is no ongoing program to empty the United States of Latinos through mass murder or forcibly breaking up families.
To use genocide for anything other than the targeted destruction of ethnic or racial groups is an abuse of the term. And targeting undocumented immigrants is not by itself an attempt to destroy an ethnic or racial group.
It is not comparable to the Holocaust, Rwanda, or the Armenian Genocide. There is nothing bullshit about acknowledging the very real differences.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Oct 27th 2018 at 5:12:42 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangI'm actually pretty ambivalent on whether the death penalty as a concept is inherently immoral.
But, I consider that irrelevant to the fact that it's provable that it's application is routinely arbitrary and unjust for a number of factors, and I don't have much confidence that all of those factors will be adequately addressed (or even that it's possible to completely address them) any time soon.
So that alone is enough for me to say I functionally oppose the death penalty.
Edited by LSBK on Oct 27th 2018 at 1:40:56 PM
It's sort of a well known legal principle that harsher penalties fail to deter criminals because as a rule criminals do not plan on being caught. When decision-making, they do not weigh the potential penalty very much at all, because if they thought they'd get caught they wouldn't be committing crimes. Making them think they're more likely to get caught has a far more direct effect on the crime rate.
This isn't directly related to the death penalty so much as punitive justice in general.
Edited by Clarste on Oct 27th 2018 at 2:20:06 AM
![]()
I agree. Given that the current application of the death penalty is so, so messed up, I can’t support it. Executing an innocent person is a mistake that can’t be undone.
I can’t find any specific studies on the death penalty and deterrence they aren’t behind a pay wall. But I think we can agree that the majority of people who decide to commit murder don’t make that decision based on whether or not the death penalty might be their eventual fate.
Edited by wisewillow on Oct 27th 2018 at 5:20:05 AM
Going back to the discussion of genocide, I want to make one last point.
White European immigrants are not being treated this way. While the Trump administration may not focus on a specific nationality or race, they are pretty clearly obsessed with getting rid of all the black and brown immigrants here without perfect documentation (and taking away the legal status of currently legally documented black and brown immigrants), and keeping out/imprisoning all the black and brown people attempting to come here, whether legally or not.
Ironically, since their white supremacy is so broad, covering multiple religions and races and nationalities, they are escaping the definition of genocide on a technicality.
Edited by wisewillow on Oct 27th 2018 at 5:36:54 AM
![]()
![]()
The best example for this is the decline in bank robbery. The reason why less and less bank robberies are commited is not because of the (severe) punishment awaiting those who are captured, but because being captured has become very likely, thanks to modern safety standards. Furthermore those safety measures have also made bank robberies highly unattractive, because the amoung of money they can steal has become very negligble. Who wants to risk spending several years in prison for a few thousand bucks?
While I too am against the death penalty on morel grounds,but I do see why someone would support it.There are some crimes I feel which no amount of jail time is enough for the victims because the crime is just that bad,a crime so unforgivable and the criminal so unrepentant that the death sentence is the only way justice can be felt to be done
have a listen and have a link to my discord serverIsn't there a thread for discussing the death penalty? Maybe we should move it there, since we're not really discussing the topic as it pertains specifically to US politics.
Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 27th 2018 at 12:38:53 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.Edited due to
editing out her post.
Sorry! (Seriously, is it too much to ask for gender symbols next to each poster's avatar? Almost every other forum out there does it.)
Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 27th 2018 at 12:49:33 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.x6 It’s more lack of intent than lack of effort, sort of like manslaughter versus murder. To be genocide it needs to be a premeditated policy action to eliminate that specific group, what’s going on now is just more of a generic hatred and internment. Which is still a crime against humanity, obviously, and should be treated as such.
x5 100%. A life sentence or long sentence may as well be the death penalty in terms of deterrent effect, what really makes people think twice is realizing they might get caught.
Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 27th 2018 at 2:47:59 AM
They should have sent a poet.
