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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246352: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:16:18 PM
Thumped: Wow. That was rude. Too many of this kind of thump will bring a suspension. Please keep it civil.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
3of4 Just a harmless giant from a foreign land. from Five Seconds in the Future. Since: Jan, 2010 Relationship Status: GAR for Archer
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
#246353: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:22:53 PM

She'll sick Corgis on him.

"You can reply to this Message!"
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#246354: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:24:29 PM

[up][up]Don't be silly. Britain has gun control.

She would do well with a knife, or perhaps a very large bat.

edited 20th Jun '18 12:25:07 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246355: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:25:18 PM

She's old enough to assume he's a Jerry.

:)

That's the excuse she can go with, at least.

Edit:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/homeland-security-drafts-plan-to-end-child-separation-unclear-if-trump-will-back_us_5b2a740fe4b05d6c16c9e014

I'm skeptical.

edited 20th Jun '18 12:27:14 PM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#246356: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:31:20 PM

He's signed the EO, but it only stops seperation, not zero tolerance.

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1009517483206823937?s=19

edited 20th Jun '18 12:32:05 PM by tclittle

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246357: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:31:57 PM

Which doesn't mean the families are just locked up in the same place?

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#246358: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:32:04 PM

A family that stays together gulags together.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
ironballs16 Since: Jul, 2009 Relationship Status: Owner of a lonely heart
#246359: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:34:52 PM

I have to ask - has any previous President kept on holding "rallies" after actually attaining office and not when actively campaigning? I mean outside of major events, such as Bush's "Mission Accomplished!" or Obama speaking at various wakes of mass shooting victims. Trump seems to have one almost once a month.

edited 20th Jun '18 12:37:38 PM by ironballs16

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#246360: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:42:24 PM

I think the attempt to repair Custer's military record is an exercise in wasted resources. Even if you argue he's not an idiot, then you fall into the fact he was outright evil since his strategy at Little Bighorn was to attempt to capture the noncombatants there and use them as hostages. There's also innumerable mistakes which even armchair military types can justifiably say they would have made like accepting reinforcements and using the gatling guns in their possession. No, he was a trained military officer but he was an arrogant and foolhardy one who made an outstanding series of catastrophic blunders which a more cautious commander would not have. Which if it isn't an idiot then I don't know what is.

Would you please stop pushing this ahistorical nonsense? The search for "Custer's mistakes" has never been anything other than an exercise in racism, a search for an explanation that isn't needed, because the reason for his defeat has been self-evident from the word "go". This is a problem, I'll note, that is far from unique to the Little Bighorn, and which is, in a lot of ways, indirectly responsible for the current mess we are in, which is why I'm going to give a full length response.

Custer lost because he was outnumbered by at least three-to-one, and because Gall, Crazy Horse, and the other Native American military leaders out planned and outfought him. And the reason he was outnumbered by at least three-to-one is because Sheridan's campaign plan assumed that the Lakota and Cheyenne would scatter to the four winds, and would have to be run down. So he filled the plains with small columns of troops meant to run down the fleeing "cowards", and which left all of them vulnerable to the Natives instead deciding to concentrate their forces.

Any tactical mistakes Custer made are functionally irrelevant. "He should not have split his forces." "He should have taken reinforcements." "He should have taken Gatling guns." All of these are dodges and all of them are pointless.note  Custer lost the moment the battle was joined at all. The only way to win would have been to not fight, and in doing that he would have been going against Sheridan's orders. Any of Sheridan's columns, presented with the same situation, would have done the same, and any of those columns would have gone down to defeat for the exact same reasons. As for his plan being "evil" the capture of noncombatants as hostages was a bog-standard tactic of the wars with the Native Americans. Using it to demonize Custer is pointless; far more sympathetic figures used the identical tactic.

If America is ever going to face up to its history of racism and genocide, it has to abandon the comforting myths of the past and accept the reality of what happened. And the Custer Myth, in all its variations, has consistently obscured reality, by providing a convenient scapegoat for America's racism and ethnic cleansing. If any progress is ever going to be made on dealing with America's treatment of its First Nations people there are two things people are going to have to get through their heads:

1) Custer was not uniquely incompetent. He was a capable Civil War leader who had, in fact, made his reputation routing Confederate cavalry forces that were far larger than his own. What happened at the Little Bighorn was not the result of Custer being stupid, it was the result of Gall, Crazy Horse, et al, being more capable than any opposition he had come up against before. Native Americans are not agency-less actors in their own stories, and we have to stop treating them like they are.

2) Custer was not uniquely evil. He was, as previously stated, a moderate on Native American issues, standing in-between humanitarians like George Crook and John Pope, and exterminationists like Sheridan, Chivington, Connor, and others. Painting him as a demon has always been a way to exonerate the larger American Army, and indeed, American society, of complicity in genocide and ethnic cleansing, crimes in which Custer, while complicit, played an extremely small part when compared to figures like Sheridan. Pretending that the worst of the genocidaires went down to defeat and death at Little Bighorn is a way of ignoring these facts; in truth there were many people far more deserving of Custer's death than Custer, and most of them got away.

Moving forward on race, on white-Native relations, on taking responsibility for genocide, means moving past the figure of Custer, and ceasing to use him as a scapegoat for the failings of American society at large. The United States of America committed acts of mass murder against the Native American population. The United States of America fought wars to steal land from the Native American population. And when that population successfully resisted, the USA blamed its own generals for losing the battles, rather than acknowledge any competency or agency on the part of Native Americans. The Custer Myth is a part of this process and it absolutely, 100%, needs to die. Discarding it is not merely necessary for an accurate understanding of history, but as a matter of belated social justice for one of the USA's most abused minority populations.

As long as American history is taught as an endless parade of white accomplishments and white mistakes, with evils blamed on individuals who were only tangentially connected to them, figures like Trump will continue to be empowered. American history is not all about white people. And it's high time we let go of the myth that it is.

edited 20th Jun '18 12:47:35 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#246361: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:45:25 PM

[up][awesome]

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#246362: Jun 20th 2018 at 12:59:55 PM

[up][up]Seconding [up]'s [awesome].

edited 20th Jun '18 1:00:04 PM by LSBK

Wariolander Since: Nov, 2017
#246363: Jun 20th 2018 at 1:05:48 PM

By the way, about the immigrant children being forcibly injected with drugs thing, seems that specific shelter, Shiloh, has been abusing children for years even before Trump got into power, and the Texas businessman who owns it had another shelter in the state shut down because a child died in it: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Federal-agency-s-shelter-oversight-raises-5969617.php

edited 20th Jun '18 1:12:44 PM by Wariolander

speedyboris Since: Feb, 2010
#246364: Jun 20th 2018 at 1:33:42 PM

I have to ask - has any previous President kept on holding "rallies" after actually attaining office and not when actively campaigning? I mean outside of major events, such as Bush's "Mission Accomplished!" or Obama speaking at various wakes of mass shooting victims. Trump seems to have one almost once a month.
I can't speak for presidents who were in office before I was born, but no, I don't believe this is normal. Trump needs his adulation fix.

That said, Trump would argue that he is actively campaigning for 2020, just way early. Which is why I said a couple months ago that the Democrats need to fight fire with fire sooner than later. Right now the optics make it look like we have nobody to run against him, which isn't good.

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#246365: Jun 20th 2018 at 1:42:35 PM

[up][up][up][up][up][up][awesome]

Thank you for that post. Very informative.

edited 20th Jun '18 1:42:45 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Grafite Since: Apr, 2016 Relationship Status: Less than three
#246366: Jun 20th 2018 at 1:51:00 PM

[up][up] The opposition presidential campaign only begins after the midterms, it's been like that forever. We don't need to start changing standard procedures left and right because of one out of the norm president elected in a fluke.

Life is unfair...
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#246367: Jun 20th 2018 at 1:54:09 PM

[up] Yeah, let's not give him this.

[up][up][up] The one is Duluth is going to be particularly deranged I think.

It's going to be an outlet for all the frustration he's feeling about the immigration crisis and the Mueller investigation. He thinks he got out of this looking good, and will be crowing all about it tonight, in between screaming about how it's all a Witch Hunt.

My advice: Be a duck. Observe with detachment, and let it roll off your back. Save your outrage for another day.

edited 20th Jun '18 2:09:06 PM by megaeliz

ironballs16 Since: Jul, 2009 Relationship Status: Owner of a lonely heart
#246368: Jun 20th 2018 at 1:59:42 PM

I just had a disturbing thought - given the backlash over this, what are the odds that Trump will use that as a reason to dismiss him so he can install a toadie who'd be willing to end the Mueller investigation? It'd allow his supporters to go "Just a month ago you were complaining about Sessions, now you're complaining he's been fired? Typical libs!"

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#246369: Jun 20th 2018 at 2:03:58 PM

Sessions can't do a thing to Mueller, he's recused himself. Unless he goes after Rosenstein (which should hopefully trigger a constitutional crisis, and will trigger massive backlash), Mueller Ain't Going Anywhere (MAGA).

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#246370: Jun 20th 2018 at 2:04:34 PM

[up][up] One thing about Trump that has been extremely consistent is how extraordinary lazy he is.

He'd much rather take the easy out he was handed, and crow about it to his supporters than actually think that far ahead.

edited 20th Jun '18 2:08:33 PM by megaeliz

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#246371: Jun 20th 2018 at 2:06:18 PM

Support for Democrats is ticking up, and this is before most of the impact (if any) from the detention policies is going to be reflected.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/20/politics/generic-ballot-june-poll/index.html

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246372: Jun 20th 2018 at 2:12:11 PM

One does not need to think Custer was more racist or unique in his desires for murder as well as genocide to think he was a stupid military commander making a stupid decision. Conflating the idea of apologia to the idea Custer was a fool is a bizarre and nonsensical position to take. It's like saying to hate the Last Jedi is approving of the Alt-Right. Just because some assholes have scapegoated Custer doesn't mean he wasn't bad at his job.

Bluntly, American genocide and displacement isn't even an issue with Custer. It's conflating the Fruit Company and South American exploitation with a specific banana.

edited 20th Jun '18 2:13:37 PM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#246373: Jun 20th 2018 at 2:39:54 PM

Interesting mix of people apparently attending the Trump rally tonight. [1]

Spotted bording AF 1 for Trump’s Duluth, Minn., rally: Stephen Miller, Brad Parscale, Kevin Mc Carthy, Marc Short, Bill Stepien and Peter Navarro. So, quite the mix.

edited 20th Jun '18 2:40:45 PM by megaeliz

Deadbeatloser22 from Disappeared by Space Magic (Great Old One) Relationship Status: Tsundere'ing
#246374: Jun 20th 2018 at 2:52:37 PM

@246272:

Don't be silly. Britain has gun control.

You do realise those guys in red with the funny hats aren't just for the tourists, right?

"Yup. That tasted purple."
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246375: Jun 20th 2018 at 2:59:39 PM

They'd stop the Queen?

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

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