Essay Title Contest

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 7:06pm

A Trump official tried to argue that detained children don’t need soap, toothbrushes, or beds to be ‘safe and sanitary’ while in Border Patrol custody pic.twitter.com/uLntJOEdx3

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 22, 2019

What I want to say would not make it through this site's moderation filter.

Tags:

What a Moran

Vote

Comments

Submitted by magiamma on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 7:24pm

title for essay

=
Are You Fucking Kidding Me
.

—

Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation

Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook

Submitted by Bollox Ref on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 7:49pm

The Bad, The Awful, The Unsanitary

Trump Kleastwood takes on Lee Van Plence in a very disturbing tale of not caring very much for just about anyone, whilst eating lots of spaghetti with very dirty hands, in Spain, c. 1967.

(Edited)

—

Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 7:56pm

I'm going to stick with the classics:

A Modest Proposal.

—

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Submitted by dfarrah on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 9:00pm

Well, now that the dems have

started telling everyone that these are concentration camps, word will get out, and maybe the migrants will give the whole trip a second thought.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 10:16pm

Anything to say about this lawyer?

@dfarrah

And how she is arguing that kids don't need the basic necessities of life like soap, toothpaste and a toothbrush? Or how kids are being held in the detention centers? Do you think it's okay to make them sleep on cold concrete with just a piece of foil for warmth? You think it's okay for them to be treated like this? Have you no compassion or empathy? The kids had no say in being brought here. When you lock people up your are then in charge of their wellbeing.

If everyone who comes here gets locked up then how would word spread to not come?

—

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 11:33am

And here are the

@snoopydawg feckless dems:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ocasio-cortez-other-dems-accuse-ice-and...

Denying the funding needed to deal with the crisis. Can we call it a crisis now?

—

dfarrah

Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 10:36pm

It is about time you are called out as a prick.

@dfarrah JtC can ban me, but not before I CALL YOU OUT as a prick.

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:50am

Call me anything you wish.

@on the cusp I know we're not supposed to be mean here, but I hope JTC doesn't do anything.

I still value your viewpoints.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by on the cusp on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 2:25pm

My apologies.

@dfarrah @dfarrah About 5 minutes before I typed that insult, I learned a client committed suicide. He had told me he would kill himself if he ever had to go to prison. Not wanting that hanging around my neck, I refused to represent him on his felony case.
I feel very responsible. I let the guy down.
I need to compartmentalize my emotions, not take them out on you.
edit: seems the guy was murdered, execution-style. No way I could have prevented that.

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 1:58am

This is another thing that happened at the centers

@dfarrah

You should read this whole New Yorker piece about the conditions at Border Patrol facilities in Texas, but if you can't read the whole thing, at least read this paragraph: https://t.co/xWwHYvIMjb pic.twitter.com/Iujo3Pi2av

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 22, 2019

This came from this article.

Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children

This week, a team of lawyers interviewed more than fifty children at one of those facilities, in Clint, Texas, in order to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement, which mandates that children must be held in safe and sanitary conditions and moved out of Border Patrol custody without unnecessary delays. The conditions the lawyers found were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility for weeks.

It was at a facility that historically only had a maximum occupancy of a hundred and four, and it was an adult facility. When we arrived, on Monday, there were approximately three hundred and fifty children there. They were constantly receiving children, and they’re constantly picking up children and transferring them over to an O.R.R. [Office of Refugee Resettlement] site. So the number is fluid. We were so shocked by the number of children who were there, because it’s a facility that only has capacity for a hundred and four.

And then we started to pull the children who had been there the longest to find out just how long children are being kept there. Children described to us that they’ve been there for three weeks or longer. And so, immediately from that population that we were trying to triage, they were filthy dirty, there was mucus on their shirts, the shirts were dirty. We saw breast milk on the shirts. There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once. This facility knew last week that we were coming. The government knew three weeks ago that we were coming.

So, in any event, the children told us that nobody’s taking care of them, so that basically the older children are trying to take care of the younger children. The guards are asking the younger children or the older children, “Who wants to take care of this little boy? Who wants to take of this little girl?” and they’ll bring in a two-year-old, a three-year-old, a four-year-old. And then the littlest kids are expected to be taken care of by the older kids, but then some of the oldest children lose interest in it, and little children get handed off to other children. And sometimes we hear about the littlest children being alone by themselves on the floor.

Many of the children reported sleeping on the concrete floor. They are being given army blankets, those wool-type blankets that are really harsh. Most of the children said they’re being given two blankets, one to put beneath them on the floor. Some of the children are describing just being given one blanket and having to decide whether to put it under them or over them because there is air-conditioning at this facility. And so they’re having to make a choice about, Do I try to protect myself from the cement, or do I try to keep warm?

There are some other stories that we’ve heard from the children, such as that one of the guards has an older child, who’s seventeen, serve as the unofficial guard inside the room. So he tells the kids what to do, and he tries to keep the room neat and straighten up the mattresses and everything. Now, the guards reward him with extra food, and when a seven-year-old saw that this older boy was getting extra food by being helpful, he asked if he could help clean up the room and keep it neat so that he, too, could get extra food. And the seventeen-year-old chastised him for this, and then when an older sibling tried to stand up for his little brother, the guard intervened and reprimanded both the little boy and his older brother.

And so you’ve got a guard who is manipulating these kids, very similar to what we heard about in the concentration camps. I’m not going and calling these concentration camps, although I know that some people do.

Was there anything that you think was specifically illegal?

I just got back from this facility where laws were being broken right and left. There is a judgment in this case that says that children are supposed to be treated a certain way when they are in government custody. All of these children are in government custody, and those very basic standards are being violated.

For example, in Flores, which is the class-action suit that governs the standards for the care of these children that are in U.S. custody, it clearly says that children are supposed to be kept in safe and sanitary conditions. And there is nothing sanitary about the conditions they are in. And they are not safe, because they are getting sick, and they are not being adequately supervised by the Border Patrol officers. This is a violation of the case law. In addition to that, these children are not supposed to be in a Border Patrol facility any longer than they absolutely have to, and in no event are they supposed to be there for more than seventy-two hours. And many of them were there for three and a half weeks.

And in addition to that, they are not supposed to be breaking up families. In the Ms. L case that was brought last year, when children were being routinely separated by their parents, that judge ruled that these children need to be kept with their parents, that family integrity is a constitutional right and is being violated. There were children at this facility who came across with parents and were separated from parents. There were other children at the facility who came across with other adult family members. We met almost no children who came across unaccompanied. The United States is taking children away from their family unit and reclassifying them as unaccompanied children. But they were not unaccompanied children. And some of them were separated from their parents.

Almost all of these children have family members, including parents, in the United States, who are able to and want to take care of their children. All we need to do is to get these children to their families, and we know that almost all of them will be well cared for, and it will cost the U.S. taxpayer no money to care for these children, because they will be cared for by their parents.

Families with children are not supposed to be held for more than 20 days and yet they are being held for weeks. A judge ruled last year that it's illegal to separate children from their parents and yet this is still happening. There are no road signs telling immigrants that if they continue going to the USA that they will be separated from their children held in camps so heinous that it's beyond cruel and unjust. What is happening at the detention centers are crimes against humanity and would be prosecuted if this f'cking world had a functioning justice system.

During Obama's tenure he too went to court to make it legal to detain child past what the law states. The courts turned him down. But he didn't order children to be separated from their parents and held indefinitely because families were afraid that if they picked up their kids they would be deported.

That a lawyer argued about giving children basic needs is just insane. Bat shit crazy. Unfuckingbelievable.

—

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:14am

I suppose if the people

@snoopydawg here wanted to do something concrete, instead of belly aching, go pick up a few kids and take care of them.

Anyone? Is anyone here willing to do that? Or is anyone here ready to take buy a truckload of supplies to send to the border?

My impression of the posters here is that many are retired or comfortable financially.

I know a semi-driver who you could hire. Let me know if/when you are ready, and I can ask the guy.

#4

You should read this whole New Yorker piece about the conditions at Border Patrol facilities in Texas, but if you can't read the whole thing, at least read this paragraph: https://t.co/xWwHYvIMjb pic.twitter.com/Iujo3Pi2av

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 22, 2019

This came from this article.

Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children

This week, a team of lawyers interviewed more than fifty children at one of those facilities, in Clint, Texas, in order to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement, which mandates that children must be held in safe and sanitary conditions and moved out of Border Patrol custody without unnecessary delays. The conditions the lawyers found were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility for weeks.

It was at a facility that historically only had a maximum occupancy of a hundred and four, and it was an adult facility. When we arrived, on Monday, there were approximately three hundred and fifty children there. They were constantly receiving children, and they’re constantly picking up children and transferring them over to an O.R.R. [Office of Refugee Resettlement] site. So the number is fluid. We were so shocked by the number of children who were there, because it’s a facility that only has capacity for a hundred and four.

And then we started to pull the children who had been there the longest to find out just how long children are being kept there. Children described to us that they’ve been there for three weeks or longer. And so, immediately from that population that we were trying to triage, they were filthy dirty, there was mucus on their shirts, the shirts were dirty. We saw breast milk on the shirts. There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once. This facility knew last week that we were coming. The government knew three weeks ago that we were coming.

So, in any event, the children told us that nobody’s taking care of them, so that basically the older children are trying to take care of the younger children. The guards are asking the younger children or the older children, “Who wants to take care of this little boy? Who wants to take of this little girl?” and they’ll bring in a two-year-old, a three-year-old, a four-year-old. And then the littlest kids are expected to be taken care of by the older kids, but then some of the oldest children lose interest in it, and little children get handed off to other children. And sometimes we hear about the littlest children being alone by themselves on the floor.

Many of the children reported sleeping on the concrete floor. They are being given army blankets, those wool-type blankets that are really harsh. Most of the children said they’re being given two blankets, one to put beneath them on the floor. Some of the children are describing just being given one blanket and having to decide whether to put it under them or over them because there is air-conditioning at this facility. And so they’re having to make a choice about, Do I try to protect myself from the cement, or do I try to keep warm?

There are some other stories that we’ve heard from the children, such as that one of the guards has an older child, who’s seventeen, serve as the unofficial guard inside the room. So he tells the kids what to do, and he tries to keep the room neat and straighten up the mattresses and everything. Now, the guards reward him with extra food, and when a seven-year-old saw that this older boy was getting extra food by being helpful, he asked if he could help clean up the room and keep it neat so that he, too, could get extra food. And the seventeen-year-old chastised him for this, and then when an older sibling tried to stand up for his little brother, the guard intervened and reprimanded both the little boy and his older brother.

And so you’ve got a guard who is manipulating these kids, very similar to what we heard about in the concentration camps. I’m not going and calling these concentration camps, although I know that some people do.

Was there anything that you think was specifically illegal?

I just got back from this facility where laws were being broken right and left. There is a judgment in this case that says that children are supposed to be treated a certain way when they are in government custody. All of these children are in government custody, and those very basic standards are being violated.

For example, in Flores, which is the class-action suit that governs the standards for the care of these children that are in U.S. custody, it clearly says that children are supposed to be kept in safe and sanitary conditions. And there is nothing sanitary about the conditions they are in. And they are not safe, because they are getting sick, and they are not being adequately supervised by the Border Patrol officers. This is a violation of the case law. In addition to that, these children are not supposed to be in a Border Patrol facility any longer than they absolutely have to, and in no event are they supposed to be there for more than seventy-two hours. And many of them were there for three and a half weeks.

And in addition to that, they are not supposed to be breaking up families. In the Ms. L case that was brought last year, when children were being routinely separated by their parents, that judge ruled that these children need to be kept with their parents, that family integrity is a constitutional right and is being violated. There were children at this facility who came across with parents and were separated from parents. There were other children at the facility who came across with other adult family members. We met almost no children who came across unaccompanied. The United States is taking children away from their family unit and reclassifying them as unaccompanied children. But they were not unaccompanied children. And some of them were separated from their parents.

Almost all of these children have family members, including parents, in the United States, who are able to and want to take care of their children. All we need to do is to get these children to their families, and we know that almost all of them will be well cared for, and it will cost the U.S. taxpayer no money to care for these children, because they will be cared for by their parents.

Families with children are not supposed to be held for more than 20 days and yet they are being held for weeks. A judge ruled last year that it's illegal to separate children from their parents and yet this is still happening. There are no road signs telling immigrants that if they continue going to the USA that they will be separated from their children held in camps so heinous that it's beyond cruel and unjust. What is happening at the detention centers are crimes against humanity and would be prosecuted if this f'cking world had a functioning justice system.

During Obama's tenure he too went to court to make it legal to detain child past what the law states. The courts turned him down. But he didn't order children to be separated from their parents and held indefinitely because families were afraid that if they picked up their kids they would be deported.

That a lawyer argued about giving children basic needs is just insane. Bat shit crazy. Unfuckingbelievable.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by Granma on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:27am

What is the matter with you?

@dfarrah the kids don't need or want us to take care of them. They need and want the parents they were taken away from.

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 11:43am

What gives you the idea

@Granma that all of these children came over in families?

Do you not realize that some of these kids are being used for fake families?

And what makes you think that their wonderful, non-law abiding parents, would 'take care' of them? The government takes care of the parents, along with NGOs.

People who are whining really need to step up to the plate. You are just pushing it off on everyone else, then complaining about it. It is really easy to do that, now isn't it. And apparently, it is the preferred thing to do, so you can complain and complain about Trump. The dems have denied more funding for more resources for the border. What do you say about that? It is clear that your side simply wants to have huge immigrant inflow just so you can bash Trump. People and the dems do not truly want to do something about the issue.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by on the cusp on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:40pm

I am.

@dfarrah Absolutely.

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:48am

I don't know

@snoopydawg exactly what is going on where. And neither do you. Maybe if I visit my brother in Texas, I can head down to the border and take a look.

Because I see reports of immigrants being released into society because the centers are too full.

They probably can't open the doors and let the kids out without any supervision, like they can with the adults. I've read that 'families' are being genetically tested, and they don't turn out to be related. So, it wouldn't be far fetched that 'parents' out wherever in the country would claim that these children are theirs.

None of you seem too concerned about the trafficking and use of children to get in here. No, they are all children with parents, every single one of them.

Nobody here seems to consider national security or crime issues, even though the border patrol is now reporting people coming in from all over the world. Nobody here seems to care that US citizens in need are being displaced by immigrants. Nobody here seems concerned over the depression of wages or job losses caused by immigrants.

Further, I don't believe that this onslaught is organic. Someone is paying these people to come here (I would be willing to bet). Whoever is financing these people could just as easily help them in their home countries.

At this point, I now believe that this is a deliberate effort to destroy the US (not even the fox people go there), but I will certainly change my opinion if more evidence comes to light. It is only an opinion.

What these immigrants are doing is simply not rational. Why here and now? Why haven't we seen similar onslaughts in the past? If their countries are so horrible, then why aren't more of the people emigrating? Why must the emigration be to the US? Why not apply to other countries? Why not stop in Mexico?

#4

You should read this whole New Yorker piece about the conditions at Border Patrol facilities in Texas, but if you can't read the whole thing, at least read this paragraph: https://t.co/xWwHYvIMjb pic.twitter.com/Iujo3Pi2av

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 22, 2019

This came from this article.

Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children

This week, a team of lawyers interviewed more than fifty children at one of those facilities, in Clint, Texas, in order to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement, which mandates that children must be held in safe and sanitary conditions and moved out of Border Patrol custody without unnecessary delays. The conditions the lawyers found were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility for weeks.

It was at a facility that historically only had a maximum occupancy of a hundred and four, and it was an adult facility. When we arrived, on Monday, there were approximately three hundred and fifty children there. They were constantly receiving children, and they’re constantly picking up children and transferring them over to an O.R.R. [Office of Refugee Resettlement] site. So the number is fluid. We were so shocked by the number of children who were there, because it’s a facility that only has capacity for a hundred and four.

And then we started to pull the children who had been there the longest to find out just how long children are being kept there. Children described to us that they’ve been there for three weeks or longer. And so, immediately from that population that we were trying to triage, they were filthy dirty, there was mucus on their shirts, the shirts were dirty. We saw breast milk on the shirts. There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once. This facility knew last week that we were coming. The government knew three weeks ago that we were coming.

So, in any event, the children told us that nobody’s taking care of them, so that basically the older children are trying to take care of the younger children. The guards are asking the younger children or the older children, “Who wants to take care of this little boy? Who wants to take of this little girl?” and they’ll bring in a two-year-old, a three-year-old, a four-year-old. And then the littlest kids are expected to be taken care of by the older kids, but then some of the oldest children lose interest in it, and little children get handed off to other children. And sometimes we hear about the littlest children being alone by themselves on the floor.

Many of the children reported sleeping on the concrete floor. They are being given army blankets, those wool-type blankets that are really harsh. Most of the children said they’re being given two blankets, one to put beneath them on the floor. Some of the children are describing just being given one blanket and having to decide whether to put it under them or over them because there is air-conditioning at this facility. And so they’re having to make a choice about, Do I try to protect myself from the cement, or do I try to keep warm?

There are some other stories that we’ve heard from the children, such as that one of the guards has an older child, who’s seventeen, serve as the unofficial guard inside the room. So he tells the kids what to do, and he tries to keep the room neat and straighten up the mattresses and everything. Now, the guards reward him with extra food, and when a seven-year-old saw that this older boy was getting extra food by being helpful, he asked if he could help clean up the room and keep it neat so that he, too, could get extra food. And the seventeen-year-old chastised him for this, and then when an older sibling tried to stand up for his little brother, the guard intervened and reprimanded both the little boy and his older brother.

And so you’ve got a guard who is manipulating these kids, very similar to what we heard about in the concentration camps. I’m not going and calling these concentration camps, although I know that some people do.

Was there anything that you think was specifically illegal?

I just got back from this facility where laws were being broken right and left. There is a judgment in this case that says that children are supposed to be treated a certain way when they are in government custody. All of these children are in government custody, and those very basic standards are being violated.

For example, in Flores, which is the class-action suit that governs the standards for the care of these children that are in U.S. custody, it clearly says that children are supposed to be kept in safe and sanitary conditions. And there is nothing sanitary about the conditions they are in. And they are not safe, because they are getting sick, and they are not being adequately supervised by the Border Patrol officers. This is a violation of the case law. In addition to that, these children are not supposed to be in a Border Patrol facility any longer than they absolutely have to, and in no event are they supposed to be there for more than seventy-two hours. And many of them were there for three and a half weeks.

And in addition to that, they are not supposed to be breaking up families. In the Ms. L case that was brought last year, when children were being routinely separated by their parents, that judge ruled that these children need to be kept with their parents, that family integrity is a constitutional right and is being violated. There were children at this facility who came across with parents and were separated from parents. There were other children at the facility who came across with other adult family members. We met almost no children who came across unaccompanied. The United States is taking children away from their family unit and reclassifying them as unaccompanied children. But they were not unaccompanied children. And some of them were separated from their parents.

Almost all of these children have family members, including parents, in the United States, who are able to and want to take care of their children. All we need to do is to get these children to their families, and we know that almost all of them will be well cared for, and it will cost the U.S. taxpayer no money to care for these children, because they will be cared for by their parents.

Families with children are not supposed to be held for more than 20 days and yet they are being held for weeks. A judge ruled last year that it's illegal to separate children from their parents and yet this is still happening. There are no road signs telling immigrants that if they continue going to the USA that they will be separated from their children held in camps so heinous that it's beyond cruel and unjust. What is happening at the detention centers are crimes against humanity and would be prosecuted if this f'cking world had a functioning justice system.

During Obama's tenure he too went to court to make it legal to detain child past what the law states. The courts turned him down. But he didn't order children to be separated from their parents and held indefinitely because families were afraid that if they picked up their kids they would be deported.

That a lawyer argued about giving children basic needs is just insane. Bat shit crazy. Unfuckingbelievable.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by Jen on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 11:06am

Wow!

@dfarrah Just, wow! So that's why the minimum wage hasn't be raised in 10 damn years! That's why I no longer have health insurance!
It's the fault of people that have even less than I do. And here I was thinking it was all the governments fault for favoring extremely rich corporations and people.
/s in case it's not obvious.

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 11:48am

Trump is considering

@Jen raising the min wage, not that that has anything to do with immigrants. The jobs they take are typically exempt from minimum wage laws.

BTW, the minimum wage hasn't been raised in at least years, so you can blame Congress and other administrations, too.

Further, what does immigration have to do with your health insurance? I thought the dems took care of that - are you not purchasing Obamacare? If you aren't, you should be glad that you aren't going to be fined, because Trump got rid of the fines.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 11:52am

Not to mention that

@dfarrah insurance policies are now mostly junk. I can't wait to get rid of my employer sponsored insurance overpriced garbage.

Trump could lose on that issue alone. I watched his rally when he announced his presidency. When he talked about people keeping their insurance (as if it was a good thing), there was little clapping or cheering. The repubs are still clueless on that, and have no idea how much people hate their insurance companies.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by Jen on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:39pm

I said government

@dfarrah I didn't say, "the current turd in the white house". Government includes all past and current administrations, all past and current senators and representatives. I clump the all together because a R or a D next to their name means diddly-squat to me. They all suck!

So, they're taking jobs that Americans typically would not want.

I had Medicare because I am deaf and they stuck a piece of crap in my head to make me hear. Then I didn't have insurance at all. Most likely because I didn't refill out the (un)necessary paperwork because I never received it because I've had to move so much. So, no, I didn't purchase ObomberCare. I can either eat or purchase health insurance. Which would you pick? They can fine me all they want, it'll never get paid because I don't (can't) work.
You were blaming them for everything else, so I figured they must be the reason for that too.

Nobody here seems to care that US citizens in need are being displaced by immigrants. Nobody here seems concerned over the depression of wages or job losses caused by immigrants.

I honestly don't know how you come to this conclusion. Are they lobbying congress? Are they bribing representatives? Are they holding guns to people's heads to make them hire them instead of US citizens? Are they forcing landlords at gunpoint to give them shelter? You're just shooting at the lowest hanging fruit because it's the easiest to hit.

I'll hold my breath for that minimum wage raise.

I am not a dim. I have never voted in my life. There is no viable left party in America. So every time you criticize dims, you're just criticizing the center right. Center right and far right don't look much different to me.

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 3:05pm

Medicare is a nightmare.

@Jen You might want to apply for Medicaid - at least that is something, and I think it is based on ability to pay.

If you cannot work, hopefully you've applied for disability pay, too. And there are non-profits that provide medical care.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by Unabashed Liberal on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 4:22pm

Traditional/Original Medicare is a very simple,

@dfarrah @dfarrah

straightforward insurance program.

More than 90% of physicians/providers, etc., are able to electronically submit the claims. So, if an individual has a plan that picks up the co-pay, or, most of it, can't think of a better insurance product (available at this time).

We have a Medigap policy which picks up the excess costs not covered by the base Medicare policy. Our claims are even 'cross-filed.' Meaning, we don't do a thing--Medicare passes the part that they don't pay, to our Medigap insurance provider. Then, both insurers pay out, and, send us an EOB, or Explanation Of Benefits.

Sorta curious--are you talking about Medicare Advantage (MA) plans?

(most of which are 'managed care' plans--although, a handful are PPO-based, and/or FFS)

Mollie

“Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made. ”
~~Roger Caras

—

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

Submitted by on the cusp on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 5:53pm

I have Medicare

@Unabashed Liberal and have a supplemental plan. The cost is $600 per month, and I do not fill out any forms, pay anything at the doctor's office, and I am not limited to any place, or doctor, or hospital.
I am never out of network, and I pick and choose which doctors I will visit.
It could not be any simpler to have 100% coverage for anything I might need.

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by Unabashed Liberal on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 6:29pm

Thanks, OTC! Appreciate the validation. ;^D

@on the cusp

Mollie

“Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made. ”
~~Roger Caras

—

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 5:47pm

hold your breath

@Jen

I'll hold my breath for that minimum wage raise.

Noooooo! Don't do that! You'll die!

—

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 11:58am

Might be because Trump cut funding

@dfarrah

to Central American countries and any of the foreign aid that got filtered down to people has dried up.

Why here and now?

By Jove you figured it out!

At this point, I now believe that this is a deliberate effort to destroy the US

Guess if Putin's first plans to destroy the US doesn't work then he can tell Central American immigrants to come to the country to do it. It's all a plot to destroy our democracy and freedoms right?

Do you think we'd be separating and locking up kids if they looked like this?

—

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:52pm

Did he cut funding?

@snoopydawg Because he was talking about increasing it specifically to prevent immigration.

Sorry, I don't think this has much to do with race (for most people). Or maybe it does have something to do with race, since Hispanics seem to be largely supportive of illegal immigrants. Would Hispanics be as supportive if it was whites coming to the US?

Whites only make up about 16% of the world. So, the chances are much higher that if people are emigrating (for any reason), they are non-white.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 1:21pm

Democrats did give him money

@dfarrah

and he did cut off funding.

the House bill would provide hundreds of millions of dollars for processing facilities, food, water and medical supplies for migrants being held along the southern border.

But the House bill also includes a slew of restrictions on how funds can and cannot be used, including conditions for how children should be treated, reporting and oversight requirements and reinstating aid to Central American countries that the Trump administration had cut off.

I am done belly aching to you. You apparantly don't see that children should be given nurture and love, but stuck away in some dank place without being adequately care for. Such a good ~~German~~ American.

—

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 2:47pm

Can we call it a crisis now?

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

Now that the left is calling it a crisis, after months of arguing the situation wasn't a crisis and needed no attention, can we all call it a crisis now?

And please don't cite an article that talks about how dems are trying to help. They have held this issue hostage for political purposes.

And here you are blaming Trump for 'cutting' aid. And yet I hear that only Congress controls the purse strings.

So which is it? Dems cannot have it both ways.

The political abuse of this issue is astounding.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 3:01pm

Back in the

@dfarrah "no, it isn't a crisis" days, you may recall that I argued that the people would need assistance and housing.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by FuturePassed on Mon, 06/24/2019 - 10:36am

Congress . . .

@dfarrah
appropriates. The president theoretically cannot spend money without a congressional appropriation. There are lots of ways a president can avoid spending money congress appropriates. You may be able to find a free Introduction to American Government course online.

As for your argument that some of these children are being used by people other than their parents to get asylum, I have no doubt it's true. I don't see how that justifies throwing children in rooms with concrete floors and an army blanket.

Many people did contribute to improving the lives of these children, frequently through religious organizations. When representatives of the organizations went to deliver the purchases they were denied access to the children. They were told they could turn over the supplies to the government, which would oversee distribution.

Submitted by WaterLily on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:16pm

Schrodiner's Immigrant.

@dfarrah A person who lounges around on welfare all day while simultaneously stealing your job.

Are you seriously for real?

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 1:00pm

Yes,

@WaterLily they take jobs. And they use much government resources.

People here just don't want to face up to facts.

And fyi, I don't agree with the HB1 visa programs either, because I got to watch co-workers get laid off while foreigners took their jobs.

Just curious, does anyone on this site have any real-world experience with immigrants or federal or non-federal programs?

—

dfarrah

Submitted by hecate on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 3:24pm

yes

@dfarrah
In my job I deal ceaselessly with migrants, and with a galaxy of government programs. And I can state without question that every cruel, ignorant thing you think and say on this subject, has no grounding, at all, in the actual Real world.

Submitted by Deja on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:29pm

They're refugees created by our uninvited intervention.

@dfarrah @dfarrah

You said:

Further, I don't believe that this onslaught is organic. Someone is paying these people to come here (I would be willing to bet). Whoever is financing these people could just as easily help them in their home countries.

At this point, I now believe that this is a deliberate effort to destroy the US (not even the fox people go there), but I will certainly change my opinion if more evidence comes to light. It is only an opinion.

What these immigrants are doing is simply not rational. Why here and now? Why haven't we seen similar onslaughts in the past? If their countries are so horrible, then why aren't more of the people emigrating? Why must the emigration be to the US? Why not apply to other countries? Why not stop in Mexico?

up

Here's a link with a timeline of our intervention in Latin American countries, but it stops at 2009.
https://www.yachana.org/teaching/resources/interventions.html

You asked why this hasn't happened before, and it has. That last entry in the timeline was when Her Heinous and DroneBama were "intervening" in Honduras. Do you not recall the nasty woman saying we were sending the children back to their countries of origin to "send a message"? I do.

I also remember that Berta Caceres was assassinated in an all-too-familiar 'botched robbery' just 2 weeks after publicly blaming Hillary "What Difference does it Make" Clinton for the all out hell unleashed on her country. #RemberBerta

You also suggested that we, as individuals, just go down there and pick out a few kids to bring home and take care of, as if these child prisons are the fucking dog pound and as if the goddamn guards, much less the Feds would allow that to happen. You're really coming across as a callous ~~asshole~~ [edit to avoid getting banned] with no regard for the fact that WE created this "crisis" and now we are forcing these kids to pay the price in a very cruel fashion.

If you don't want refugees, then stop creating them!

if-you-dont-want-refugees-stop-creating-them-why-is-39124719.png

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 2:51pm

If the complainant in the

@Deja @Deja case that is the basis for this essay prevails in the 9th court, then yes. Restrictions for who can collect the children will be loosened.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by Dawn's Meta on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 5:03am

This was snark, right? It sounded like that to me.

@dfarrah

—

A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:08am

No it was not snark. nt

@Dawn's Meta

—

dfarrah

Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 9:43pm

Let them be Dirty

Best I can do, ma'am.

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by Granma on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 9:51pm

My Dog Gets Better Care

Or We Don't Need No Stinking Soap Here

Submitted by Big Al on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 11:30pm

I don't know, that's just so fucked up I can't play.

To be arguing about that is so fucking stupid it's beyond belief. Regular citizens falling for this bullshit should be ashamed but they're so fucking stupid they don't even know what shame is.
Sure, there are many factors involved. And I think AOC and her gang are way out of bounds on the issue. The solutions, if there are solutions, to this global problem require major changes to life on earth, particularly in human governance, and for them to pull out the concentration camp bullshit (no different than Saddam and the babies in incubators sensationalism) while playing for the Wall Street Imperialist Democratic party, shows hypocrisy as great as the right wing racists.

Submitted by Tall Bald and Ugly on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 11:39pm

Just gotta

say, I love ya man.
@Big Al

—

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

Submitted by Big Al on Sat, 06/22/2019 - 11:46pm

Back at ya brother.

@Tall Bald and Ugly

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:42am

Yup..Big Al

@Big Al

To be arguing about that is so fucking stupid it's beyond belief.

That the lawyer could even argue about those things in the first place just sums up so much doesn't it? F'cking stupid beyond belief. The judges showed great restraint by not losing their tempers and saying what we are thinking.

—

Submitted by FuturePassed on Mon, 06/24/2019 - 10:43am

Many leading experts in the field . . .

@Big Al have written publicly that concentration camps is an appropriate word, complete with examples.

The people who don't like it are Republicans and neoliberal Democrats who have a pathological hatred for AOC. Which are you?

Submitted by mimi on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 3:32am

the comments and the essay's post remind me of something ...

...very seldom my father talked about the moments of his POW experience in Russian POW camps after the Nazis had been defeated. The German prisoners all helped each other to 'de-lice' their hair and to de-bug the dirty blankets and clothes.

Another moment, when my father broke out in tears and my mother immediately asked the family listening to my father to stop the whole conversation, was when my father saw that one of his fellow prisoners was forced to dig up my fathers grave-yard hole in front of the barracks, where he was to be buried, He never mentioned that the digger got privileges from the camp guardd though. (in that regard I find the above story of bribing the kids especially awful and disgusting) The camp guards considered my father dying within hours. (that this didn't happen was due to a medical doctor among the prisoners, who amputated the arm of my father without anesthetics in the last minute).

So the rare moments when we talked at the dining room table about my fathers POW camp experiences lasted two or three minutes, may be three or four times through my whole life until I left the parental home at age 19.

That unbelievable 'conversation' shown in the video snoopydawg posted, I can even imagine to have happened. Wow. I think JtC would not have banned you for foul language, snoopydawg.

There is hope in this too. My father's fellow German POW camp prisoners all became best friends for life. None of them were enthusiastic Hitler supporters. They all were forced to serve in the military at the age of 16 to 18 (one of my father's school classmates, whose parents went to Latin America when he was boy during the early years of the Third Reich even had to come back from there to Germany to serve in the German Wehrmacht later on), and ended up in Russian camps. Two of them became my godfathers, when I was baptized aa a baby in 1949.

The one uncle I had, who was a convinced Nazi, went into French POW camp and served in Norway during the wwII. As a child I liked him a lot. He gave me always secretly (my parents didn't know about that) two German Marks when he visited us. I still was in elementary school. So, so much for the likelihood ending up being 'corrupted'.

These kids will never forget what happened to them.

Dirt is as what dirt does.

—

https://www.euronews.com/live

Submitted by Dawn's Meta on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 6:47am

I didn't mean to respond to Mimi. I find the story of your

@mimi @mimi @mimi father very moving. I heard stories of Latvians first hand who had to choose between being shot by Russians or joining the Germans. Years later, they would boo and hiss at the TV during the Olympics when Russians took the field. Multi lingual, professional and successful. It had made a life altering impression on them. They identified strongly with Germans.

Onto my comments....
The thing I find in common with these "camps", the indiscriminate shooting of black and brown people; the rhetoric and language used about any group another doesn't like these days; the poor and sick (somehow they deserve it or earned their misfortune); on and on....is that first it's ok to make a little joke. Then it's ok to attach some anti societal behavior or thinking to that group which makes it ok to separate them out (or in - ghettos, banlieus). We certainly never cross paths with them. Eventually it's ok to "kettle" pro environment protesters and pepper spray them in the face. Or, provide "free speech zones". Or, put kids in safe "camps".

There is a progression; a ramping up; a spread of the numbers of groups not appropriate in 'our' society. Dehumanizing the 'others' so when the unfortunate members of our police forces and border patrols are tasked of doing what it takes to 'contain' the problems, they fall into the shared experience of neglect, abuse, and death.

The Wikipedia article on "Dehumanization" is one of the most thorough and excellent pieces I have seen on this subject and does credit to the site. It is long, and covers a lot of the nuances.
Dehumanization

Several lines of psychological research relate to the concept of dehumanization. Infrahumanization suggests that individuals think of and treat outgroup members as "less human" and more like animals;[8] while Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeld uses the term pseudo-speciation, a term that he borrowed from the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, to imply that the dehumanized person or persons are being regarded as not members of the human species.[15] Specifically, individuals associate secondary emotions (which are seen as uniquely human) more with the ingroup than with the outgroup. Primary emotions (those that are experienced by all sentient beings, both humans and other animals) and are found to be more associated with the outgroup.[8] Dehumanization is intrinsically connected with violence.[citation needed] Often, one cannot do serious injury to another without first dehumanizing him or her in one's mind (as a form of rationalization.)[citation needed] Military training is, among other things, a systematic desensitization and dehumanization of the enemy, and servicemen and women may find it psychologically necessary to refer to the enemy as animal or other non-human beings. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has shown that without such desensitization it would be difficult, if not impossible for someone to kill another human, even in combat or under threat to their own lives.[16]

Delegitimization is the "categorization of groups into extreme negative social categories which are excluded from human groups that are considered as acting within the limits of acceptable norms and/or values."[9]

Moral exclusion occurs when outgroups are subject to a different set of moral values, rules, and fairness than are used in social relations with ingroup members.[10] When individuals dehumanize others, they no longer experience distress when they treat them poorly. Moral exclusion is used to explain extreme behaviors like genocide, harsh immigration policies, and eugenics, but it can also happen on a more regular, everyday discriminatory level. In laboratory studies, people who are portrayed as lacking human qualities have been found to be treated in a particularly harsh and violent manner.[17][18][19]

The Role of Governments

The role of nations and governments

Paintings on the walls of the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities in North Korea
Sociologists and historians often view dehumanization as essential to war. Governments sometimes represent "enemy" civilians or soldiers as less than human so that voters will be more likely to support a war they may otherwise consider mass murder.[citation needed] Dictatorships use the same process to prevent opposition by citizens. Such efforts often depend on preexisting racist, sectarian, or otherwise biased beliefs, which governments play upon through various types of media, presenting "enemies" as barbaric, as undeserving of rights, and as threats to the nation. Alternatively, states sometimes present an enemy government or way of life as barbaric and its citizens as childlike and incapable of managing their own affairs. Such arguments have been used as a pretext for colonialism.[citation needed]

The Holocaust during World War II and the Rwandan Genocide have both been cited as atrocities facilitated by a government sanctioned dehumanization of its citizens. In terms of the Holocaust, government proliferated propaganda created a culture of dehumanization of the Jewish population. Crimes like lynching (especially in the United States) are often thought of as the result of popular bigotry and government apathy.

The Milgram Experiments have been studied and have pros and cons as to how they were done and how data can be interpreted. There are however, some universal constants. The Wiki article covers the history, subsequent reviews and other attempts to replicate these studies and critiques quite well.

In Science, Medicine and Technology

Relatively recent history has seen the relationship between dehumanization and science result in unethical scientific research. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment and the Nazi human experimentation on Jewish people are two such examples. In the former, Africans Americans with syphilis were recruited to participate in a study about the course of the disease. Even when treatment and a cure were eventually developed, they were withheld from the Black participants so that researchers could continue their study. Similarly, Nazi scientists conducted horrific experiments on Jewish people during the Holocaust. This was justified in the name of research and progress which is indicative of the far reaching affects that the culture of dehumanization had upon this society. When this research came to light, efforts were made to protect participants of future research, and currently institutional review boards exist to safeguard individuals from being taken advantage of by scientists.

Personally, I have had the potential and/or have been a member of 'outgroups'. And been the member of societal controlling groups. Both.
Outgroups
My maternal grandmother was Jewish from a region of NE France/Germany depending on the year. My family left after the Franco-Prussian War to farm in the midWest. My mother was born in a sod house and the family rose to regional prominence in agriculture.
My paternal lineage is Sicilian almost all from one small region. My father was called a "nxxxx" by midwest relatives of the German/Alsatian/French extraction and suffered discrimination most of his working life in Oregon. OTOH, my grandma would lean out of NYC cabs and shake her fist at Puerto Ricans, she regarded as taking her neighborhood. Those Sicilians were and are some of the most obnoxious racists I have ever met in the US.
As a teen in a white upper crust area, our high school teachers were given some kind of training in "constructive confrontation" or possibly EST. The lights in the classroom were turned out and students were encouraged to talk to each other about what bothered them about another student. I don't remember much about the rest of that day or a lot of my HS because I was told because my vocabulary was big words, multi-sylabic, that I was condescending, a show-off, smarty-pants and the rest of it. I was a reclusive kid who read voraciously, and in our family group it was how we talked. Both my parents were kids of immigrants and sought to assimilate. They valued books, higher education and strength of character. This experience clearly affected me for life.

After a progressively successful career in high tech, I came down with Lyme Borreliosis. The why of this set of infections is still being looked at but in general understood by scientists and medical doctors. However -

A major difference between the syphilis controversy of the turn of the 20th Century and the Lyme controversy at the turn of the 21th Century is the existence and influence of the insurance industry. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had an important formative role in the creation of the National Institutes of Health (Document 16). This raises the issue of possible ongoing undue influence of the insurance industry in setting national public health priorities.

Liegner Testimony
As doctor Kenneth Liegner stated in Albany, NY

What is being promoted as the "standard of care" for chronic Lyme disease is medical neglect, a vast de facto and unintended Tuskegee experiment, whose hapless subjects are your constituents.

As a member of this particular 'outgroup' the immeasurable cruelty of being sick in front of a doctor who denies what he sees, is unbelievable.

As a person who brought mutltiple millions of dollars in new business to my firm, I was in a position of some influence. A couple of moments stand out:
I passed a young man who was very conservative, with a screen-saver of the entrance to a concentration camp, with the portal stating "Arbeit macht Frei". Work makes [you] free. I insisted he pull it down, or I would report him. He saw nothing wrong with having it. But removed it. How long it was there, and how many saw it, I have no idea.
I was a gun owner and a good shot. I talked with my conservative colleagues a lot about guns and shooting. Eventually I was offered a membership in the NRA. My response was, after a year don't you realize I'm a flaming Progressive. No thanks. By then they knew me well enough to trust me and we continued to talk and joke around.

Any one of us can be members of some ingroups or outgroups through our lives. Out groups are growing in number and size. Not sure who that even leaves.

We need to bridge gaps, share common experience, grow our gardens, take care of our families and critters.Take care of each other. Love our Mother Earth.

So much easier said than done.

...very seldom my father talked about the moments of his POW experience in Russian POW camps after the Nazis had been defeated. The German prisoners all helped each other to 'de-lice' their hair and to de-bug the dirty blankets and clothes. Another moment, when my father broke out in tears and my mother immediately asked the family listening to my father to stop the whole conversation, was when my father saw that one of his fellow prisoners was forced to dig up my fathers grave-yard hole in front of the barracks, where he was to be buried, He never mentioned that the digger got privileges from the camp guardd though. (in that regard I find the above story of bribing the kids especially awful and disgusting) The camp guards considered my father dying within hours. (that this didn't happen was due to a medical doctor among the prisoners, who amputated the arm of my father without anesthetics in the last minute). So the rare moments when we talked at the dining room table about my fathers POW camp experiences lasted two or three minutes, may be three or four times through my whole life until I left the parental home at age 19. That unbelievable 'conversation' shown in the video snoopydawg posted, I can even imagine to have happened. Wow. I think JtC would not have banned you for foul language, snoopydawg. There is hope in this too. My father's fellow German POW camp prisoners all became best friends for life. None of them were enthusiastic Hitler supporters. They all were forced to serve in the military at the age of 16 to 18 (one of my father's school classmates, whose parents went to Latin America when he was boy during the early years of the Third Reich even had to come back from there to Germany to serve in the German Wehrmacht later on), and ended up in Russian camps. Two of them became my godfathers, when I was baptized aa a baby in 1949. The one uncle I had, who was a convinced Nazi, went into French POW camp and served in Norway during the wwII. As a child I liked him a lot. He gave me always secretly (my parents didn't know about that) two German Marks when he visited us. I still was in elementary school. So, so much for the likelihood ending up being 'corrupted'. These kids will never forget what happened to them. Dirt is as what dirt does.

—

A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

Submitted by mimi on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:59am

I just now come back to read here

@Dawn's Meta
(Sunday, 2 minutes to six o'clock pm German time).
Let me swallow the comment and I believe I will have something to answer as well later on.
Thank you for all your effort to write this up. C99p feels like a home to trigger thinking, amirite?

See you later...

#8 #8 #8 father very moving. I heard stories of Latvians first hand who had to choose between being shot by Russians or joining the Germans. Years later, they would boo and hiss at the TV during the Olympics when Russians took the field. Multi lingual, professional and successful. It had made a life altering impression on them. They identified strongly with Germans.

Onto my comments....
The thing I find in common with these "camps", the indiscriminate shooting of black and brown people; the rhetoric and language used about any group another doesn't like these days; the poor and sick (somehow they deserve it or earned their misfortune); on and on....is that first it's ok to make a little joke. Then it's ok to attach some anti societal behavior or thinking to that group which makes it ok to separate them out (or in - ghettos, banlieus). We certainly never cross paths with them. Eventually it's ok to "kettle" pro environment protesters and pepper spray them in the face. Or, provide "free speech zones". Or, put kids in safe "camps".

There is a progression; a ramping up; a spread of the numbers of groups not appropriate in 'our' society. Dehumanizing the 'others' so when the unfortunate members of our police forces and border patrols are tasked of doing what it takes to 'contain' the problems, they fall into the shared experience of neglect, abuse, and death.

The Wikipedia article on "Dehumanization" is one of the most thorough and excellent pieces I have seen on this subject and does credit to the site. It is long, and covers a lot of the nuances.
Dehumanization

Several lines of psychological research relate to the concept of dehumanization. Infrahumanization suggests that individuals think of and treat outgroup members as "less human" and more like animals;[8] while Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeld uses the term pseudo-speciation, a term that he borrowed from the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, to imply that the dehumanized person or persons are being regarded as not members of the human species.[15] Specifically, individuals associate secondary emotions (which are seen as uniquely human) more with the ingroup than with the outgroup. Primary emotions (those that are experienced by all sentient beings, both humans and other animals) and are found to be more associated with the outgroup.[8] Dehumanization is intrinsically connected with violence.[citation needed] Often, one cannot do serious injury to another without first dehumanizing him or her in one's mind (as a form of rationalization.)[citation needed] Military training is, among other things, a systematic desensitization and dehumanization of the enemy, and servicemen and women may find it psychologically necessary to refer to the enemy as animal or other non-human beings. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has shown that without such desensitization it would be difficult, if not impossible for someone to kill another human, even in combat or under threat to their own lives.[16]

Delegitimization is the "categorization of groups into extreme negative social categories which are excluded from human groups that are considered as acting within the limits of acceptable norms and/or values."[9]

Moral exclusion occurs when outgroups are subject to a different set of moral values, rules, and fairness than are used in social relations with ingroup members.[10] When individuals dehumanize others, they no longer experience distress when they treat them poorly. Moral exclusion is used to explain extreme behaviors like genocide, harsh immigration policies, and eugenics, but it can also happen on a more regular, everyday discriminatory level. In laboratory studies, people who are portrayed as lacking human qualities have been found to be treated in a particularly harsh and violent manner.[17][18][19]

The Role of Governments

The role of nations and governments

Paintings on the walls of the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities in North Korea
Sociologists and historians often view dehumanization as essential to war. Governments sometimes represent "enemy" civilians or soldiers as less than human so that voters will be more likely to support a war they may otherwise consider mass murder.[citation needed] Dictatorships use the same process to prevent opposition by citizens. Such efforts often depend on preexisting racist, sectarian, or otherwise biased beliefs, which governments play upon through various types of media, presenting "enemies" as barbaric, as undeserving of rights, and as threats to the nation. Alternatively, states sometimes present an enemy government or way of life as barbaric and its citizens as childlike and incapable of managing their own affairs. Such arguments have been used as a pretext for colonialism.[citation needed]

The Holocaust during World War II and the Rwandan Genocide have both been cited as atrocities facilitated by a government sanctioned dehumanization of its citizens. In terms of the Holocaust, government proliferated propaganda created a culture of dehumanization of the Jewish population. Crimes like lynching (especially in the United States) are often thought of as the result of popular bigotry and government apathy.

The Milgram Experiments have been studied and have pros and cons as to how they were done and how data can be interpreted. There are however, some universal constants. The Wiki article covers the history, subsequent reviews and other attempts to replicate these studies and critiques quite well.

In Science, Medicine and Technology

Relatively recent history has seen the relationship between dehumanization and science result in unethical scientific research. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment and the Nazi human experimentation on Jewish people are two such examples. In the former, Africans Americans with syphilis were recruited to participate in a study about the course of the disease. Even when treatment and a cure were eventually developed, they were withheld from the Black participants so that researchers could continue their study. Similarly, Nazi scientists conducted horrific experiments on Jewish people during the Holocaust. This was justified in the name of research and progress which is indicative of the far reaching affects that the culture of dehumanization had upon this society. When this research came to light, efforts were made to protect participants of future research, and currently institutional review boards exist to safeguard individuals from being taken advantage of by scientists.

Personally, I have had the potential and/or have been a member of 'outgroups'. And been the member of societal controlling groups. Both.
Outgroups
My maternal grandmother was Jewish from a region of NE France/Germany depending on the year. My family left after the Franco-Prussian War to farm in the midWest. My mother was born in a sod house and the family rose to regional prominence in agriculture.
My paternal lineage is Sicilian almost all from one small region. My father was called a "nxxxx" by midwest relatives of the German/Alsatian/French extraction and suffered discrimination most of his working life in Oregon. OTOH, my grandma would lean out of NYC cabs and shake her fist at Puerto Ricans, she regarded as taking her neighborhood. Those Sicilians were and are some of the most obnoxious racists I have ever met in the US.
As a teen in a white upper crust area, our high school teachers were given some kind of training in "constructive confrontation" or possibly EST. The lights in the classroom were turned out and students were encouraged to talk to each other about what bothered them about another student. I don't remember much about the rest of that day or a lot of my HS because I was told because my vocabulary was big words, multi-sylabic, that I was condescending, a show-off, smarty-pants and the rest of it. I was a reclusive kid who read voraciously, and in our family group it was how we talked. Both my parents were kids of immigrants and sought to assimilate. They valued books, higher education and strength of character. This experience clearly affected me for life.

After a progressively successful career in high tech, I came down with Lyme Borreliosis. The why of this set of infections is still being looked at but in general understood by scientists and medical doctors. However -

A major difference between the syphilis controversy of the turn of the 20th Century and the Lyme controversy at the turn of the 21th Century is the existence and influence of the insurance industry. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had an important formative role in the creation of the National Institutes of Health (Document 16). This raises the issue of possible ongoing undue influence of the insurance industry in setting national public health priorities.

Liegner Testimony
As doctor Kenneth Liegner stated in Albany, NY

What is being promoted as the "standard of care" for chronic Lyme disease is medical neglect, a vast de facto and unintended Tuskegee experiment, whose hapless subjects are your constituents.

As a member of this particular 'outgroup' the immeasurable cruelty of being sick in front of a doctor who denies what he sees, is unbelievable.

As a person who brought mutltiple millions of dollars in new business to my firm, I was in a position of some influence. A couple of moments stand out:
I passed a young man who was very conservative, with a screen-saver of the entrance to a concentration camp, with the portal stating "Arbeit macht Frei". Work makes [you] free. I insisted he pull it down, or I would report him. He saw nothing wrong with having it. But removed it. How long it was there, and how many saw it, I have no idea.
I was a gun owner and a good shot. I talked with my conservative colleagues a lot about guns and shooting. Eventually I was offered a membership in the NRA. My response was, after a year don't you realize I'm a flaming Progressive. No thanks. By then they knew me well enough to trust me and we continued to talk and joke around.

Any one of us can be members of some ingroups or outgroups through our lives. Out groups are growing in number and size. Not sure who that even leaves.

We need to bridge gaps, share common experience, grow our gardens, take care of our families and critters.Take care of each other. Love our Mother Earth.

So much easier said than done.

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Submitted by Dawn's Meta on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 6:08pm

Thanks Mimi. From your Nachbarin. n/t

@mimi

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

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Submitted by Deja on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:09am

Enumerated Word Salad

It's a catch 22 or something.

Since they're only supposed to stay up to 72 hrs, they don't get/need sanitation items because they're supposed to be moving to a facility or somewhere else, where they'll be given these "entitlements" (greedy little takers that they are /s). But, because there is no room at the inn, they get extended stays at the concrete sardine can. And since it's not written in the goddamn law that regardless of where they are being forced to be, as juveniles having no say in whether to enter the U.S. or not, they get nothing.

Same goes for the separation of the adults from the children upon entry, in a way. By separating them, the kids can then be labelled "unaccompanied" and made to endure the above, alone. The goddamn law doesn't forbid it, so let's do it! ¡Dios mio!

I'm surprised there aren't reports of massive skin infections as well. No one is mentioning the sexual predation that has to be taking place, whether at the hands of guards or older kids.

I have said in the past that it's as if my ex mother in law tried like hell to raise my ex to be a serial killer based on the abuse she dished out. Later, as a forensic psychologist, she said he was a sociopath with malignant narcissistic tendencies. He's serving 99 years in the mental part of the Texas prison system.

Our government is trying like hell to make seriously fucked up adults out of these kids by punishing them for simply existing and showing up without having the capacity to choose to come in the first place. Maybe they're hoping to, in the not so distant future, fill the beds in the prison system vacated by legalization of weed, because there will be issues with their behavior and mental states if they're ever freed. (If they're ever freed. So fucked up!)

Sometimes I seriously hate people.

Submitted by mimi on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 11:04am

If hugs could heal, I would give you thousands of them.

@Deja
... and your ex as well.

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Submitted by Deja on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 11:32am

Thank you, mimi

@mimi
Right back at cha!

Submitted by leveymg on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 11:19am

From the look of that greasy tied-back mop, she hasn't washed

lately. So, why should the children she detains be allowed better hygiene?

Fascism stinks.

Submitted by Deja on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:33pm

Reminds me of Tonya Harding

@leveymg
Remember her? Had her ice skating competitor's leg broken so she could win? And Tonya reminds me of a woman who once ran for president. Sucked so bad she had to cheat, then lost anyway except that the one who ran for prez was never brought up on charges like she should have been.

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 4:57pm

I'm really disappointed by this comment.

@Deja
Okay, just to be clear: I'm not trying to absolve her of any responsibility here, but comparing her to the scheming, self-entitled, ultra-privileged, thing that is HRC is way far off the mark. With that said, before going further, two minor factual corrections: Kerrigan's leg was bruised, not broken; and Harding did win the competition in question, which was the US championship, not the Olympics.

Right. So.

Tonya Harding was never proven to have known beforehand about the attack that bruised Kerrigan's leg -- it was the doing of two men in her life who somehow thought they were doing her a favor. However, a grand jury decided there was enough circumstantial evidence of involvement, that she could be charged. She wasn't, though, because of an earlier plea deal. The closest thing we have in the public record to a confirmation was her ex-husband (the orchestrator of the attack) remarking that it was something, "I talked her into doing." Based on what little we know, it seems more than plausible that she did know beforehand (they probably used her money to hire the goons), but that none of it was her idea or her plan.

Harding made her way very nearly to the top of the figure skating world despite the fact that they hated her -- and that's goddamned hard to do in a system where the people who hate you (usually, deeply flawed people) get to decide whether you deserve the prize. They hated her because she wasn't a sweet, pretty little upper-middle class pixie. She was nearly trailer trash -- god knows where the resources came from to keep her in the sport, all i know is her mom was a waitress and her dad chronically unemployed. She was molested and harassed by her half-brother; when she was sixteen she called the cops on him -- imagine any other 16-year-old world-class figure skating competitor having the guts to do that, in the pre-Kardashian, pre-sextape, pre-meToo era -- but then her family talked her out of pressing charges. She was tough, and she talked tough, and she looked tough (after she was banned from skating, she had a brief boxing career). In a sport where the teensy champions are all shopping in the juniors section, if they're even developed enough for that, Harding had a pelvis that drew derision and even contempt from figure skating commentators. While the girls she competed against were styled, dressed and coiffed by high-end pros, Harding wore costumes sewn by her mother, and her hair "style" could have been a cost-cutters special.

After the Kerrigan attack, and then the later conclusion of the Olympics, she was convicted of some sort of obstruction of justice or something, in a plea deal. I don't know the details, but presumably she was trying to keep her ex-husband out of prison. Think about that for a moment. How many gold-medal contenders in skating are even old enough to have husbands; nevermind how many might ever find themselves even knowing a guy with the socioeconomic profile to somehow imagine that he was helping her by contracting an attack on her #1 competitor?

Sucked so bad she had to cheat? She was one of the greatest female skaters of her era. Harding worked her fucking ass off from early school age, and along the way accomplished some really impressive firsts for a female figure skater -- firsts that might have been possible partly because she was built like a stereotypical Ukrainian farm wife, with a stocky skeletal frame, and leg muscles that nobody then -- and probably not a lot of people now -- would ever have described as "feminine". She might well have won the US championship going head to head against Kerrigan -- we'll never know -- despite the fact that she was considered over-the-hill at that point (she had beaten Kerrigan more than once in the past). She did, after all, beat all of the other skaters in that competition. She was a previous US champion, had twice won major international competitions, and for most of the time between the ages of 18 and 24 was one of the top 3 or 4 female skaters in the US -- a sport dominated by 14-18 year-olds. Her "disappointing" 4th-place at the '92 Olympics might have opened up the door to, if nothing else, financial security, had she been what everybody wants female figure skaters to be -- dainty, boobless little cuties still waiting for their first kiss. Instead, she was an unattractive, unrefined woman who -- I have just learned from wikipedia, where i went to make sure i've got my facts straight -- liked to hunt, fish, and tinker on cars (i've also just learned that post-figure skating, she "set a new land speed record for a vintage gas coupe with a speed of 97.177 mph (156.391 km/h; 43.442 m/s) driving a 1931 Ford Model A, named Lickity-Split, on the Bonneville Salt Flats.").

So, yeah. I don't know why I decided this was something worth investing more than an hour to write about. I just -- I've never liked the way the Harding thing played out. I've always despised figure skating, and one of the things that I've despised is the way that both class and lookism play into the medal standings and then long-term success (endorsements, professional sponsorships, etc.). Had her ex-husband not, as he claims to have done, "talked her into" the attack on Kerrigan, all of her skating accomplishments would have earned her only a small footnote in the sport's history. Only true enthusiasts would remember her as the first American woman to perform a triple Axel, or for the rest of her remarkable achievements in 1991, summarized by wikipedia:

Harding's breakthrough year came in 1991 when, at the U.S. Championships, she completed her first triple Axel in competition on February 16 — the first American woman to execute the jump. She landed seven triple jumps in the long program including the triple Axel. She won the 1991 U.S. Ladies' Singles title with the event's first 6.0 technical merit score since Janet Lynn's 1973 performance at the U.S. Championships. She won the long program when seven of the nine judges gave her first place, and in doing so won the whole competition. She scored eight 5.9s and one 6.0 for technical merit and six 5.9s, one 5.8 and two 5.7s for composition and style. At the March 1991 World Championships, an international event, she again completed the triple Axel. Harding would finish second behind Kristi Yamaguchi, and in front of Nancy Kerrigan, marking the first time one country swept the ladies medal podium at the World Figure Skating Championships.
At the September 1991 Skate America competition, Harding recorded three more firsts:
The first woman to complete a triple Axel in the short program
The first woman to successfully execute two triple Axels in a single competition
The first ever to complete a triple Axel in combination (with the double toe loop)

She was an extraordinary athlete, but her sport even now treats itself as half-athletics, half-miss-whatever-pageant, and she just wasn't ever going to measure up in that second half.

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Submitted by edg on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:06pm

Any details on the lawyer?

When was she hired by DoJ? Where did she get her law degree? Who did she work for before DoJ? Has she made arguments like this before?

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 6:35pm

she's just an ordinary DoJ attorney.

@edg
been there for quite a while.

i saw some people raging over an instance where she declined to agree to an earlier hearing (don't know if it was this case) because she was dog-sitting. so that doesn't look real good for her -- "sorry about your situation kids, but i'm too busy taking care of somebody's dog to deal with your problems."

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Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:17pm

i guess a secondary remark might be this:

@edg
She hasn't got a leg to stand on, and she knows it. She's unable to articulate a clear and reasonable case for her employer, the US executive, because there isn't one. Something I found a bit startling, not that I've watched a whole lot of court proceedings, was that she couldn't even finish her sentences before the justices interrupted her with incredulous responses.

So, yeah, it kinda feels good to hate on her as the face of the administration, and there's a whole lot of people saying the right thing to have done would be resign -- but if she knows she hasn't got a hope in hell of winning, what difference does it make if she accepts the assignment?

Though I bet she didn't count on going viral. Ugh.

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Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:21pm

Here is some interesting information

that can round out the discussion.

It would be nice if people here would quit blaming the Trump administration over issues that the US has struggled with, apparently, for a couple of decades or more.

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/06/15-56434.pdf

I'm still not clear on what the case is about that is in the clip to the essay - trying to find it now.

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dfarrah

Submitted by dfarrah on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:37pm

I think I found the origination

of the case you mentioned.

From what I read, it sounds like a challenge to the 1997 agreement that says minor children should only be released to parents or certain relatives, and under extraordinary circumstances to others.

The current case does not even appear to be about provisions for the children, but about who and how and the time frame related to the release of the children. Now I understand why the attorney mentioned focusing on the topic at hand. This is the 9th court after all, and it was veering off track from the original legal matter at hand.

I think the appellants want the children released to anyone, anyhow, which would contradict the 1997 settlement. And I'm sure the 9th circuit will rule in their favor.

Oh, the lawyer was in the Obama administration, too.

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dfarrah

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 12:58pm

Still defending the indefensible

@dfarrah

Does it matter what the case is about? The lawyer was trying to say that this administration does not have to provide ‘safe and sanitary’ items for children. It is the law that they have to do that. Trump is still separating children from their parents after a judge ruled that he cannot do that legally. No matter where people come from or how they get here they are still supposed to have rights. Does it matter if the kids were trafficked or not? They are still kids.

How you can defend this is just utterly mind blowing.

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Submitted by lizzyh7 on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 2:30pm

Your Sig line

@snoopydawg shows how perfectly.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:48pm

Heh..I thought this same thing

@lizzyh7

Unfortunately there are a lot of people who don't think that kids who are here illegally should be taken care of.

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Submitted by Granma on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 3:44pm

This particular video/story

Is getting much attention at the Guardian news site. It is one of the most read articles.

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 6:26pm

Just so everyone understands, claims that this is

all about something that happened under the Obama administration are disingenuous (such claims are abundant in the twitter comments responding to the posted video). It is about what is going on right now. The original matter, from 2015 -- namely, that the government was failing to abide by the terms of the 1997 Flores case -- resulted in a court order. From what I can tell, the main issue there was actually whether the kids were entitled to a bond hearing, the conditions of their detention being a secondary set of issues. The government (i.e., Obama administration) appealed. In mid-2016, the 9th circuit largely upheld the original order. In mid-2017, there was some sort of hearing in a US district court on a plaintiff's motion to have an independent special monitor appointed, on the grounds that the government (i.e., the Trump administration) was not following the court order with respect to conditions during what was supposed to be short-term detention. The Trump administration fought the motion. The judge (Gee) told them to fuck off, appointing the monitor, and enumerating various examples whereby, in her opinion, the government was failing to provide safe and sanitary conditions. I don't know any more about the subsequent establishment of the independent monitor, but I suppose it may be possible that the report excerpted above is a result of an inspection by just such an agent.
Forward to NOW, and the problem is that the Trump administration is still not living up to the terms of either the 2015 order, or to the additional specifics enumerated in the 2017 order. They've been challenged because they're not providing "safe and sanitary" conditions, among which the 2017 order lists access to stuff like soap and toothbrushes, as well as decent sleeping conditions. The Trump administration is responding, not in defense of anything that happened under the Obama administration, but in defense of their own behavior, asking the 9th circuit to reverse the 2017 order (which they had previously upheld) on the grounds that nothing in the original Flores ruling promised specifics like soap and toothbrushes and beds. Basically (from what I can tell, and I most certainly Am Not A Lawyer), they're arguing a technicality, trying to get the entire order reversed on the grounds that the judge overstepped her authority under the 1997 agreement. In order to make that argument stick, they need to argue that things like basic hygiene, beds and blankets are not necessarily aspects of "safe and sanitary conditions". The judges are having none of that BS, responding that, while there will of course be some kind of gray area at the boundaries, every reasonable person would agree that if you're detained for more than two nights, soap, toothpaste, clean towels, beds and blankets absolutely are essential elements of "safe and sanitary".

Contrary to what has been asserted elsewhere in these comments, this is not primarily about the plaintiffs wanting it made easier to get these kids out of detention altogether. It is still primarily about ensuring that they receive decent care while in short-term detention, and that they are entitled to legal proceedings that will get them out of short-term detention in a timely fashion, whether they are then released into the care of a responsible adult, or sent on to a government facility of some sort.

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