CSotD: And some, I assume, are good people
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I like First Dog’s observation “It is so bad they are even doing ICE things to white people.” After all, Trump began his war on foreign folks by attempting to ban all Muslims from entering the country and by condemning Latinos with “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
To be fair, he hasn’t declared war on white folks, at least not as a group. If they keep their mouths shut and behave, that is. If they get up and make speeches differing with his policies, that’s different, but he’s explained that to the colleges.
We ought to admit that screw-ups have always happened at the border from time to time. I remember, but can’t find, a story of a non-citizen who went over to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls for a look and was stopped for several hours on the way back.
And an Australian author was held and questioned at LAX in 2017. She eventually got an apology from the US government, but reported the insults and poor treatment she and other people had received.
The stories you hear are bad enough. But they have to make you wonder about the stories you don’t hear, and I say that as someone who covered the northern border for several years and had good relations with officials there.
As First Dog says, ICE have always been terrifying. Back in 2015 — that is, before Trump — Josh Neufeld told the story of a number of Muslims, some born in the US, some naturalized citizens, who were held for several hours on their way back from a wedding in Canada.
You can find the rest of the story here on Medium, and, while there was some bullying and being pushed around involved, the truly frightening part was how completely unnecessary and unfair it was, and that it wasn’t a one-off. It happened to several of the wedding guests at different border crossings.
Those incidents amounted to accidents and misunderstandings and bad behavior on the part of individual officers, back in “the good old days,” before Dear Leader unleashed the hounds.
It used to be that the stories emerged by happenstance: One of the wedding guests, for instance, was an NPR producer. Whoops.
Today, Dear Leader sets up the abuses complete with a camera crew, and rebroadcasts them with a musical sound track.
It’s not a screw-up anymore. It’s a publicity stunt, a proud display of cruelty.
Juxtaposition of the Day
This juxtaposition plays like a little horror movie, as three cartoonists depict the destruction of justice at the hands of Trump’s jackbooted enforcers. And it fits the administration’s mission of cutting government spending, because there’s no need for hearings and trials. Just grab’em, cuff’em and drag them away.
We even save money on prisons, because instead of locking them up here, where there are rules and standards, we pay El Salvador to keep them in prisons where there are, so to speak, some money-saving shortcuts that wouldn’t pass muster in an American prison.
A judge did attempt to intervene, ordering the deportations to halt and directing the planes carrying the prisoners to return to the United States, but Trump defied the order, claiming the planes were no longer in domestic air space and therefore not subject to American law, and then launched a truly unhinged attack on the judge, threatening him with impeachment for ruling against Trump policy.
As Granlund says, that drew a rebuke from Chief Justice Roberts, who reminded Trump and the nation that we don’t impeach judges because we disagree with their rulings.
Trump responded that Roberts’ comments didn’t apply to him: “He didn’t mention my name in the statement. I just saw it quickly. He didn’t mention my name.”
That’s a new level of narcissistic delusion: OJ Simpson and Jeff MacDonald at least knew why they were arrested, even if they truly believed they were innocent.
Wolterink takes it as inspiration for this vision of the future, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could dismiss this as exaggeration and fantasy rather than as a warning?
But the gloves are coming off, and there’s little doubt that America has crossed over and become a Russian ally. Or at least, there’s little doubt in the outside world, even if there are Americans who can’t see the evidence in front of them.
Blower considers it a passive acceptance of whatever Putin wants in exchange for a ceasefire he has no intention of honoring.
While fellow Brit Andy Bundy offers a more exhaustive list of the Moscow-friendly policy decisions Trump has been told to carry forth as part of a farcical “peacemaking” effort in which Putin calls the shots.
Nor is Ukraine the only place where a ceasefire has been declared, and Le Lievre notes that the resuming of bombing in Gaza is made possible by the continued support of the USA.
Here are some of the terrorists killed in the new bombing raids. Israeli officials explained that “it only targets members of armed groups.” As you can see, they attempted to escape justice by wearing disguises.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
It’s comforting to think that “truth will out,” as we do the best we can, but Dear Leader has shut down the Voice of America, which has broadcast to distant nations for nearly a century, countering the propaganda and breaking the silence of tyrannical governments.
As Telnaes suggests, the first step towards becoming a tyrannical government yourself is to draw the shades so truth is no longer seen or heard.
How does that phrase go? “First they came for the Associated Press …”
Juxtaposition of the Day #3
Buss points out that, while Trump declares documents signed by autopen invalid — despite presidents having signed documents that way since the Truman administration — he has declared himself capable of changing the security status of documents simply by willing it to be so.
By contrast, Benson loyally spoofs the evils of the Biden Regime.
Well, nobody wants to spend the rest of their life writing in Europe.
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