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

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Steven (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
#246402: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:06:00 PM

Don't forget that one twat who's only reaction to this situation is "Womp Womp"

Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#246403: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:06:56 PM

[up] That's even worse since that was in response to a kid with Down Syndrome's plight. It's ableism too.

edited 20th Jun '18 7:09:17 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
RainingMetal (Handed A Sword) Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#246404: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:07:14 PM

Taking childhood back to before the 20th century. When they said they were regressive, they weren't kidding.

I doubt the child salaries will be sufficient either.

ASAB: All Sponsors Are Bad.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#246405: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:09:22 PM

If child labour really does make a comeback, I just know some Silicon Valley shitstain will set up an Uber or Airbnb like gig economy company to exploit this. Instead of a ride-sharing service, it'll be a child-sharing service!

Peter Thiel will no doubt find a way to drain blood from them while he's at it to try and extend his own wretched existence.

edited 20th Jun '18 7:11:13 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
RedSavant Since: Jan, 2001
#246406: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:12:00 PM

@M84: I can just see some white techbro in a T-shirt and blazer jacket doing that one hand gesture they love, standing in front of a screen with some abstract chromed logo and the words 'Childhood. Redefined.' underneath.

It's been fun.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#246408: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:13:03 PM

Elon Musk will probably try to use them to test-drive his smart cars. And that's on the more benign side of how this could turn out.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Steven (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
#246409: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:21:30 PM

@kkhohoho

If they do that, then Trump can't tweet about how great he is and how there's a witch hunt against him with fake news.

Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.
Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#246410: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:28:21 PM

If this goes through, does anyone think there will be any kind of protests or riots?

edited 20th Jun '18 7:28:38 PM by Kaiseror

TheRoguePenguin Since: Jul, 2009
#246411: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:31:40 PM

That'd be unlikely. Departments merging aren't as big as families being separated, and it will never make it through Congress anyway.

Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#246412: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:35:28 PM

[up] I really hope so but after all that they've gotten away with I still worry about it.

archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#246413: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:36:42 PM

Republicans have been pushing for this merger since the 90's. This is probably coming from Pence or one of the other party loyalists in the WH.

Realistically, education has never been big enough to warrant being its own executive agency. It probably wouldn't hurt to fold them into something else, but labor seems like a weird choice.

edited 20th Jun '18 7:44:57 PM by archonspeaks

They should have sent a poet.
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246414: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:37:01 PM

Elon Musk would train them as his Space Force troopers so he has a force against America's when he has Mars revolt for independence.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#246415: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:50:53 PM

Regarding Chris Kobach's attempt to claim that a court saying "change this immediately" is unclear and ignoring them to keep doing what they said to change:

That is an even worse attempt at My Rule-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours than Clinton with "definition of 'is' is".

Hey now, Clinton actually had something of a point. They asked him "Is there a sexual relationship between you and Monica Lewinsky?" and he replied no... because at that point the relationship was over, so there wasn't a relationship anymore. It's splitting the hair about as fine as it will go, but the term is generally tends to be present tense, so...

Kobach, on the other hand, is blatantly defying the law to be a dick, and is just begging to be stripped of his ability to practice law. Not to mention get thrown in jail for contempt of court.

You know, I joked about striking wages and turning everyone into serfs a few pages back, but now I'm not sure if I should be laughing.

Honestly and in all seriousness, if you trace the patterns of American labor rights and the social safety net since at least the start of the 80s, (possibly further back) see how that has gone, and don't conclude that there are forces at work earnestly and tirelessly working day and night to turn us all into serfs... well, I can only conclude that you must not be looking at the same evidence I am.

...

Ok, lets talk about new developments regarding family separation and border issues: all indications are that the border and the people being detained are still going to be a fucking mess.

Special efforts are not going to be made to reunite families that have already been split

What the order actually says to do either doesn't solve the main problems or puts everything into a process with a lot of monkey wrenches in them

Here’s what the executive order actually does.

Allows people to be prosecuted for illegal entry without being sent into the custody of the Department of Justice — thus allowing parents to be kept with their children.

The order directs the Department of Homeland Security to keep families in its custody until both the criminal case against the parent and the immigration case against the family are completed. When a family is seeking asylum, that can take weeks or months.

The Trump administration directs the Department of Justice (which runs immigration courts) to prioritize the immigration cases of detained families — which raises concerns about due process (given the last time that families were detained in an expedited process). The directive will also result in other immigration cases being pushed back even further in the backlogged immigration courts.

Uses other departments — including the military — to house migrant families if needed.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t even have room for all the adults it’s keeping in detention — which is why it had to send 1,600 detainees to federal prisons two weeks ago. Now it’s being told to detain thousands of children as well. To accommodate this, the Trump executive order allows the military and other departments to provide space and facilities if needed for migrant families.

Tells Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ask the courts to change their mind and declare family detention to be legal.

The Flores settlement, as it was interpreted by courts under President Obama, prevents the federal government from keeping children in immigration detention for longer than necessary — and that applies to children who are being kept with their parents as well as those who come to the US without adults. Under Obama, the courts ruled that 20 days was about the limit of how long “reasonable” would be — but any asylum proceeding that takes 20 days or less is going to be legally suspect from a due process perspective.

So it’s very likely that this executive order will lead the government to violate the Flores settlement as it stands now. Trump’s solution is to tell Sessions to ask the federal courts to amend the settlement to allow him to detain families together as long as needed.

Regarding that last note: Getting rid of the Flores settlement may well open the door to indefinite detention (Also, this article is a very good informational breakdown on what the Flores case was, what it means, and what it might mean to end it.)

The solution to the crisis of family separation at the US-Mexico border, the Trump administration has decided, is to get rid of a 1997 federal court decision that strictly limits the government’s ability to keep children in immigration detention.

The administration has fingered Flores v. Reno, or the “Flores settlement,” as the reason it is “forced” to separate parents from their children to prosecute them. It claims that because it cannot keep parents and children in immigration detention together, it has no choice but to detain parents in immigration detention (after they’ve been criminally prosecuted for illegal entry) and send the children to the Department of Health and Human Services as “unaccompanied alien children.”

The Flores settlement requires the federal government to do two things: to place children with a close relative or family friend “without unnecessary delay,” rather than keeping them in custody; and to keep immigrant children who are in custody in the “least restrictive conditions” possible.

Republicans in Congress have proposed legislation that would overrule Flores and allow children to be kept with their parents in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody while they are put through criminal prosecution and deportation proceedings — which many migrant families fight by claiming asylum in the US, a process that can stretch out for months or years.

Trump can’t overrule the Flores settlement with the stroke of a pen. But getting rid of the court agreement has been in his administration’s sights for months. While Republicans frame Flores as the obstacle to keeping families together, many of the people outraged over family separation might not be too happy with a world without Flores, either.

...

Over the past couple of decades, the principles undergirding Flores evolved into specific rules about exactly how long and under what conditions children can be held. But they generally applied only to children who had entered the US as unaccompanied minors — not those who arrived with their parents.

In 2014, however, the Obama administration attempted to tamp down the number of Central American families seeking asylum in the US by keeping families in detention and processing and deporting them as quickly as possible.

Immigration advocates challenged the policy of family detention under Flores. And judges agreed with them — in large part because it said the Obama administration was out of bounds in detaining migrant families for the purpose of “deterrence.” (As NBC’s Benjy Sarlin has pointed out, that’s why certain Trump administration officials have been careful not to say that family separation is a deterrent, or even a policy, now.)

Ultimately, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Flores settlement covered not just unaccompanied alien children but “accompanied” ones as well. It set a general standard that the government couldn’t hold them in custody for more than 20 days.

The Ninth Circuit stopped short of saying that parents could be released under Flores. But the federal government hasn’t responded to Flores by keeping families together for a few weeks and then splitting them apart.

Instead, it’s made a practice, for the most part, of releasing the whole family after 20 days. Since the current family detention facilities — two in Texas created under Obama, and an older one on Pennsylvania — are mostly full, they don’t have a ton of space to detain families anyway.

This is one example of what the Trump administration calls “catch and release.”

...

It’s not at all clear that Trump can, legally, issue an executive order that would override the Flores settlement. That’s why analysts are assuming that any order Trump issues to keep families together in DHS custody will be challenged by a lawsuit and may get thwarted.

If DHS somehow manages to craft an executive order that evades that issue, or if Congress passes any of the suite of Republican bills that purport to end family separation by expanding family detention, it will mean one of two things.

Either the Trump administration will start keeping families in detention for as long as it takes to fully adjudicate their asylum cases — which can take months or years — or it will need to ram them through an “expedited” legal process to minimize their time in detention.

President Obama tried the latter in 2014. It went horrifically. Pro bono lawyers who went to family detention facilities (which were flung together in a matter of weeks) reported that it was all but impossible for families to get due process for their asylum claims.

The former is what families are still going through at the Pennsylvania facility. The long-term detention of immigrant children raises some of the same concerns that keeping them in custody without their parents does, in terms of long-term trauma. Bright lights in the Burks facility reportedly keep children from sleeping well, for example — and they can be disciplined if they try to climb into a parent’s bed for comfort.

Furthermore, getting rid of the Flores settlement entirely wouldn’t just get rid of the mandate to release children; it would also get rid of the requirements for what conditions children must be held in. In other words, the legal standards that undergird the Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities — standards that Trump administration officials brag are among the highest in the world — would be wiped away.

Depending on what replaced Flores, it’s possible that ICE could simply use existing adult detention facilities to herd children into as well.

There are also rumors flying that attempts are going to be made to upgrade the crime of illegal/unauthorized entry from a misdemeanor to a felony, among other things. So everyone buckle up, this fight isn't anywhere near finished.

The good news is that now immigration is on the radar in a way that it wasn't a week or two ago, with many voters now identifying it as the #1 issue for the midterms. That's going to fire up and bring out the hardcore Trump supporters, but this incident has also lit a fire under plenty of Democrats and Independents, and even among Republicans it's not polling very well, with barely over half approving, even with the constant propaganda and spin from Fox and others.

Oh, and in Mueller related news, Michael Cohen officially resigned from a post in the RNC, adding fuel to the speculation that he's flipped, and on the way he added a parting shot at the administration by criticizing child separation, referencing his own family's experience in the Holocaust.

Anyone else think this has the potential to be a case of The Dog Bites Back?

edited 20th Jun '18 7:51:44 PM by TheWanderer

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246416: Jun 20th 2018 at 7:55:40 PM

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-executive-order-only-protects-against-family-separation-for-20-days/

Yep. Trump's protection only lasts 20 days.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#246417: Jun 20th 2018 at 8:42:17 PM

[up]x4. If they were going to fold education into another agency, is there one that would be a more appropriate fit?

edited 20th Jun '18 8:45:00 PM by megaeliz

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#246418: Jun 20th 2018 at 8:51:01 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.

And there we have it folks. Some people just can't give credit where it's due to minorities. Even when confronted with the wrongness of their position they'll keep insisting that a given white man must have been stupid in order to be defeated by a minority.

This is bad history. This is (presumably unintentional) bigotry. And this is a huge part of what remains wrong with the country: namely an assumption, shared not only by reactionaries but by a depressing number of self-proclaimed liberals, that minorities have no agency and no control over their own lives.

We don't do this when whites fight whites. The absolute crushing defeat of the Confederacy has never been used to argue for the incompetency of Confederate generals. Quite the opposite; most of them have inflated reputations that are badly in need of puncturing. But when someone loses to an "Indian"? Must be incompetent. Has to be incompetent, in fact, so that the basic assumptions of white supremacy need never be questioned. It's so drilled into us that even people who oppose white supremacy in its overt forms, accept it as basic fact.

The myth of Custer's incompetency was started by, among others, Sheridan, who was looking to cover for his own failings in doing so. It has never had a basis in reality. Replace Custer with Miles, with Crook, with any of the other officers present on that campaign, and the battle will still end in a defeat, because, as I say once more, Custer's mistakes don't influence the defeat. Defeat was assured from the moment the battle was joined. The errors were made at a strategic and operational, not a tactical level. They belong to Sheridan, not to his field commanders.

But we've been over that already, so I'll return to the larger point: the assumption that minorities can only be victorious over white people when white people screw up, is a bigoted assumption that needs to die. It is a part of a larger collection of negative assumptions that govern our notions of how whites and nonwhites interact, and they too, need to die.

It's these attitudes that not only see the Lakota victory over Custer (and the Shawnee and Miami victories over Harmar and St Clair) written off, but that see Obama's victory over McCain put down purely to Republican failings, rather than Obama being a monster of a candidate. That sees "reaching white working class voters" pushed, while "increasing minority turnout" is dismissed. That sees white politicians ignore minority concerns as "identity politics" while telling minorities what they really need. It's all a part of the same set of trends and beliefs, in which the agency of white people is privileged over the agency of nonwhite people.

Custer did not lose. The Lakota and Cheyenne won. That's the reality. The bigotry that underwrote the previous (and still popular, obviously) framing has been acknowledged in the historiography since the 1990s. The case you're making is coming up on thirty years out of date. Drop it, or better yet, examine the suppositions that underwrite it, and let's move on. The only way that we, as a society, are going to make strides in the better treatment of minority populations is when we stop putting white folks at the centre of things, and grasp the extent to which the agency of minorities has shaped this country and the world at large.

archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#246419: Jun 20th 2018 at 8:52:21 PM

[up][up] HHS would probably be best. There have been more than a few proposals to restructure it into a broader civil services department, given how expansive its mandate already is.

I'm not opposed to restructuring, I'm just opposed to using it to handicap various agencies. Here's a list of all of our executive departments [1], you can definitely see spots where there's overlap or unnecessary division.

[up][awesome] I'll also point out that the idea Custer was a fool overlooks his successes during the Civil War. He was more or less average for the era, unlike Sheridan who was openly genocidal and massively racist. Sheridan is the guy who famously once said "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead" to a Comanche chief's face while they were trying to negotiate with him.

edited 20th Jun '18 9:14:53 PM by archonspeaks

They should have sent a poet.
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246420: Jun 20th 2018 at 9:02:44 PM

And there we have it folks. Some people just can't give credit where it's due to minorities. Even when confronted with the wrongness of their position they'll keep insisting that a given white man must have been stupid in order to be defeated by a minority.

Your argument is racist as all get out. You apparently can't conceive that the First Nations don't NEED you to defend their military skill and history of noble resistance to the campaign of genocide perpetrated against them by the American government that you have to raise a incompetent commander up at a battle which is not remotely their finest hour because you apparently think they don't have other victories or actions worthy of talking about.

It's also a nonsensical argument. It's like saying Hitler had to be a military genius for the heroics of WW 2 to exist. They didn't. The resistance at Little big Horn was against a terrible commander but still against horrifying murderous assholes attacking their families.

Good Lord, what inspires you to think defending CUSTER makes you a better friend to the Native American?

edited 20th Jun '18 9:03:58 PM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#246421: Jun 20th 2018 at 9:03:49 PM

@Charles Phipps, maybe you should just drop it. Even if Ambar is sort of abrasive at times, I think you tend to keep going with these things longer than you should.

edited 20th Jun '18 9:04:16 PM by LSBK

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246422: Jun 20th 2018 at 9:05:27 PM

Sorry.

I just had to deal with a lot of people who were all about following the narrative of Custer being a misunderstood genius wrongly maligned by the US military. Invariably, these assholes take it one step further and talk about how his actions were justified and the Natives needed to be stopped. I doubt that's here but Custer is an embodiment of the awful in the US military of the time and needs to be treated as a monster.

Apologia for Native genocide and "Indian Fighters" remains thick in my region.

edited 20th Jun '18 9:06:15 PM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#246423: Jun 20th 2018 at 9:09:41 PM

This is probably the most blatant case of No, You I've ever seen. Seriously, Charles, drop it.

Also, Ambar's recent post didn't say anything about Custer's morality. Merely his competence. Never mind that the framing of Custer as some uniquely awful monster when it came to his treatment of Native Americans is also part of a manipulative narrative, since it implies that other officers weren't just as bad or worse.

The point Ambar was trying to make is that looking at history this way denies non-white people their agency. It treats them as monsters, obstacles, victims....and not as people.

edited 20th Jun '18 9:14:13 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#246424: Jun 20th 2018 at 9:14:24 PM

It's about his legend.

And the attempts to redeem it which have been ongoing for literally a century. Custer has been defended by countless people who says, "he was really a genius" and "his heroic last stand" that I view it as akin to Confederate apologia with "officer and gentleman" treatment.

He needs to be buried by history because he was an awful officer as well as human being.

The point Ambar was trying to make is that looking at history this way denies non-white people their agency. It treats them as monsters, obstacles, victims....and not as people.

I know what he's saying and I think it's speaking against what the Native Americans themselves have typically said on the subject. The idea that Custer has to be some sort of super-badass to make the Native Americans who were defending their families more heroic. Talk about the heroics of the Natives there, not the awesomeness of Custer. Hunkpapa and Sihasapa.

I admit to being influenced by the works of Richard G. Hardoff on the subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Lakota-Recollections-Custer-Fight-Indian-Military/dp/0803272936

https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Views-Custer-Fight-Source/dp/0806136901/

https://www.amazon.com/Cheyenne-Memories-Custer-Fight-Source/dp/0803273118/

Effectively, the Native views on Custer are he was a Dirty Coward and should be remembered that way.

edited 20th Jun '18 9:21:51 PM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#246425: Jun 20th 2018 at 9:23:11 PM

Guys, please knock it off. Start a US history thread if you want, but this is starting to derail the thread.


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