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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Seems to me those two sentiments are mutually exclusive. The one naturally incorporates the other. Righteous indignation just doesn't cut it if you go so far as to label someone an inhuman monster.
No, because calling a person something is just an insult. Hatred is the meaning behind it. If you hate something, you're infecting yourself. It's always bad. A person who hates has no control over their emotion and will be changed by it.
That's the nature of hatred versus anger.
You can call a person an inhuman monster all you want but as long as you continue to react to them with a calm merciful heart you're good.
edited 21st May '18 6:07:35 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Okay I’m gonna stay out of this one but, Charles please can you use either quoteblocks or quotation marks when quoting people? You not doing so makes your posts so much harder to read and it’s not hard to use one of them.
edited 21st May '18 6:11:44 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranSpeaking of immigration, I like this a lot.
Not send 800k people to countries they've never seen as adults.
Not intern children on military bases.
Not waste hard-earned tax dollars on a useless thirty-foot high concrete monument to Trump's stupidity and xenophobia.
You know how to secure the border? A path to citizenship for the people who are already here to bring an exploited underclass out of the shadows. Rationalize immigration law so those who would illegally emigrate have a smooth vetted legal path. Fund border security technology.
When the Republicans want to actually address immigration, instead of "Let's blame brown people," we're ready to talk. But until then, we're not giving them one inch. As long as they describe Hispanic friends and neighbors as "animals," they are our enemies, and we will #resist.
Right now there is political instability, economic hardship, and a lack of infrastructure to our South that is in no small part due to the United States' adventurism and corporate colonialism in Latin America. It is only going to get worse with climate change. Finally, we need to remember the single greatest factor tearing these nations apart: the massive demand for narcotics in the United States and the organized criminal production it has fostered in their own.
We have a record of thirty years of tough-on-crime, war on drugs, deportation, and border security policies. What do we have to show for it? The greatest rate of incarceration in the world, highest rate of drug usage, production, & lowest prices ever, & devastation to our south.
A true fix for the migrant crisis looks like this:
1. Acknowledging it exists. There are 30 million people here living without protection of the law, a say in governance, or a chance to respond to attacks on them in the political arena. /1
2. Acknowledging it poses challenges for existing communities and providing funding for initiatives to bridge those gaps. We understand how to surmount the challenges of assimilation of different nationalities because the U.S. has done it literally dozens of times before. This includes inter-faith initiatives, commercial partnership events, ESL and Spanish courses for adults free of charge at local colleges and universities, and cultural festivals. Reducing barriers is a long-term process, but it comes down to personal relationships.
3. Acknowledging the falsity that is the "war on drugs." This is not a war. Wars have beginnings, middles, and ends. Drug usage is a medical problem that has been with humanity since its birth, and will be with us until our end as a species or it is medically cured. Doing so will allow us to treat drug addicts with the only thing we know that works: rehabilitation founded in medical care.
Additionally, legal status of drugs should be brought in line with level of danger by determining Scheduling through an independent scientific panel. Doing so will allow sales of substances physicians, not politicians, determine to be safe. This will drastically lower the criminal activity in the nations to our south, starving their cartels of revenue, while directing that same money into our own coffers for drug treatment.
4. An economic, engineering, education, and law enforcement assistance program to stabilize those nations so families can build a better life without the need to uproot themselves and travel thousands of miles to an unknown land.
5. A border security program, based on smart technology, not the fantasy of an unworkable monument. A wall will not stop tunnels, drones, ladders, ropes, or bribes.
We also must understand there is a difference between smuggling, illegal immigration, and asylum seeking.
- Smugglers bring illegal goods as well as human beings being used in the sex trade across the border. They are criminals. Full stop.
- Illegal immigrants are those crossing primarily for economic reasons, but do not face any other peculiar hardship in their home country.
- Asylum seekers face possible death, physical harm, or other grave danger if sent back to their home countries. The conditions for seeking asylum are spelled out under United States law. Presenting yourself at the border is a perfectly legally valid means of seeking asylum.
Finally, we should realize that a most of those here without legal permission did not hoof it across the Rio Grande, but rather arrived on a valid visa, and simply never left. Visa overstays actually outnumber illegal border crossings, comprising 2/3 of undocumented arrivals.
6. Acknowledge this is not about "illegal immigration" but about changing demographics. Border crossings are at an all time low, the population has fallen each year since 2008, yet anti-immigrant sentiment is at an all-time high, notably in areas with the least immigrants.
There is a significant segment of this country that feels something is wrong but cannot explain why. That feeling is a loss cultural supremacy, as the nation ceases to be a white majority nation. It is understandable, predictable, and has precedent that I would urge us to follow.
The Protestant Establishment of the United States controlled U.S. politics from the founding until just after World II. They opened up their institutions to wider & wider circles, promoting meritocracy diversity, until it reached the highest levels of the political order.
The transition is seldom remarked upon, because it was so bloodless and seamless that we hardly noticed as entire classes of people once deemed unfit for any but the lowest labor entered Ivy League, Congress, the Pentagon, the State Department, Supreme Court, and the Presidency.
Yes, they were all "white", but they only fully became so once the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants granted them that status. We are at a point of choosing. We can fully abandon our absurd caste system, dig it up by the root, reckon with our past, and work toward discarding it. Or we can repeat the mistake of our ancestors, paper over old wounds, allowing them to fester further. Perhaps it is time for some uncomfortable conversations.
This is a time for choosing: Retrenchment or rapprochement; Peril or progress; Cowardice or courage.
Let us choose well.
edited 21st May '18 6:25:45 PM by megaeliz
@973 & 972: Why not do one of my numbers and refer to people to their last 2 or 3 post numbers on an thread? It saves me the hassle of typing out their usernames since we still can't have an quote button like most forums.
And also, I see nothing wrong with hating people for the murders that they've committed. Especially if they're that brutal.
Answer no master, never the slave Carry your dreams down into the grave Every heart, like every soul, equal to breakPompeo just laid out his 12 demands for Iran. [1]
Second, Iran must stop uranium enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing. This includes closing its heavy water reactor.
Third, Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country.
Iran must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or development of nuclear-capable missile systems.
Iran must release all U.S. citizens, as well as citizens of our partners and allies, each of them detained on spurious charges.
Iran must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hizballah [Hezbollah], Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias.
Iran must also end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a peaceful political settlement in Yemen.
Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria.
Iran, too, must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region, and cease harboring senior Al Qaida leaders.
Iran, too, must end the IRG [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] Qods Force's [Quds Force's] support for terrorists and militant partners around the world.
And too, Iran must end its threatening behavior against its neighbors – many of whom are U.S. allies. This certainly includes its threats to destroy Israel, and its firing of missiles into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also includes threats to international shipping and destructive – and destructive cyberattacks.
There's no chance Iran will agree to more than a couple of those, and I'm sure they know it. This seems purely performative rather than a concrete bit of policy. It definitely also echoes the thinking of the Iran hardliners in the White House, which seems to imply that the foreign policy power struggle has been won by that camp.
They should have sent a poet.![]()
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That seems like a rather privileged thing to say. It's incredibly easy to preach about how we need to be all forgiving and understanding of people even if they are incredibly shitty people particularly if you yourself aren't being targeted by them. This all seems an awful lot like an attempt to tell us we should be understanding and accepting of Neo-Nazis and their ilk.
To which I say...no. Just...no.
edited 21st May '18 6:29:32 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
Let's just call that press release thing what it is.
It's doubling down on the "It's totally not racist, because he was only referring to MS-13, and not all Mexicans" line, that the White House was using to defend Trump's "Violent Animals" remark.
The only reason it exists is to prove a point, provide validation to his supporters, and muddy the waters of what he was referring too.
edited 21st May '18 6:33:06 PM by megaeliz
Besides sticking to the Deal in good faith? Not really.
If this administration becomes desperate enough to offer North Korea an actually generous deal that's unfair in their favor (no doubt because Trump wants that Nobel) after condemning and scrapping the Iran Deal...well, you need only see my signature for how I'll be reacting.
edited 21st May '18 6:39:48 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedThe big worry over Iran is that the Iranian government has to consider how it needs to respond now to a possible invasion shortly down the line, it has to consider if the only way to prevent a US invasion is to break the deal with Europe and rush nuclear capability before Trump orders US troops into Tehran.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
That seems like a rather privileged thing to say. It's incredibly easy to preach about how we need to be all forgiving and understanding of people even if they are incredibly shitty people particularly if you yourself aren't being targeted by them. This all seems an awful lot like an attempt to tell us we should be understanding and accepting of Neo-Nazis and their ilk. To which I say...no. Just...no.
That's the same kind of argument the Right engages in. You can't be compassionate and accepting of hatred because if you do that, you're engaging in hatred. Its like drinking water mixed with sewage. You have to destroy it.
In real life, massacres and genocide happen because people claim they are avenging past wrongs all the time. The United States is not the only place on Earth where evil and horrors have been done—and it needs to be risen above. That doesn't mean you tolerate or think they have a point—that's a perversion of compassion and love. You can still treat the people who engage in it as awful.
Another reason why dehumanization is less awful than hatred. Because I can definitely hold them in contempt without hating them. With believing we as a people can be better and they can get better—but they need to be roundly treated as fools until they do.
edited 21st May '18 6:56:43 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
x3 They can't rush nukes and form a pact with Europe; if they rush for Nukes, Europe will drop them like a flaming potato. Iran's in a lose-lose situation; they do nukes they will absolutely be invaded (with Europeans also invading), and if they form a pact with Europe they'll be attacked and possibly invaded but Europe won't help them (especially if the USA is the invader).
edited 21st May '18 6:58:35 PM by DingoWalley1
If they can get nukes they’re invasion proof, but yeah it’s a bad situation, they have three possible outcomes, Europe talks the US out of an invasion, the US invades and they’re screwed, or they get nukes and deter an invasion themselves. Thing is going for outcome three has a good chance of triggering outcome two.
X4 He’s quoting people who used arrows, that’s why they make no sense.
Oh and on that topic, I’m oretty sure lots of genocides have happened because the victims were dehumanised first and thus people felt okay genociding them because they wern’t ‘real’ humans.
edited 21st May '18 7:02:54 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
The problem with getting nukes for Iran is that they then open themselves up to a nuclear attack in the event of a war. Very few countries are able to field nuclear arsenals and defensive systems like what the US has, the theoretical arsenal Iran could build would be 70s-era at best.
Personally, I think they want to put themselves in a state where they could very quickly build a nuclear weapon if needed, hence the continued testing of nuclear capable missiles even after they shut down the main program.
Of course, that's sort of academic now. These demands from the US are clearly a pretense for escalation.
edited 21st May '18 7:06:07 PM by archonspeaks
They should have sent a poet.So what's wrong with hating people who've done terrible things? Because to me, apologizing or sympathizing with everything that they've done doesn't necessarily means that you're an good person.
Answer no master, never the slave Carry your dreams down into the grave Every heart, like every soul, equal to breakThere's nothing wrong with hating people who do shitty things. Just don't forget they are still human beings, lest you risk falling into the trap of going "only a monster would do something this awful". Because then you might miss the signs of similar behavior in others because they seem so "normal".
And especially don't go You're Insane!. For one thing, it's disrespectful to people with actual mental problems, who are more likely to be victims anyway. For another thing, that's just falling into the trap of "We don't want to admit that a sane person would do this."
edited 21st May '18 7:09:49 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised

Trump's own aides now think that the summit with Kim might be in danger.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/politics/trump-north-korea-south-korea-moon/index.html
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.