4 ms·

This logic (people should do nothing today because they did nothing yesterday) doesn't make any sense, and I don't get why it keeps coming up every time somethi

This logic (people should do nothing today because they did nothing yesterday) doesn't make any sense, and I don't get why it keeps coming up every time something related to Trump's policy comes up.

mhink 10y ago
Because it's a rhetorical tactic, not an argument based on logic. And it's tailored directly towards getting the Left to "sit down and shut up".
bmelton 10y ago
Not to speak for the OP, but at least for me, I'm seeing a lot of my friends all of a sudden up in arms over policies that Obama (and Bush, and in some cases earlier than that even) got crickets for. Admittedly, I'm not trying to compare apples to apples, and I'm the furthest thing from a Trump supporter, and it's absolutely amazing that the media have finally grown into their role of a check and balance against the government, but all too often, that means that they do so with carelessly chosen words that misrepresent the issue, and they act like it's new. The problem with acting like it's new and giving a pass to handsomer / more liked / partisan presidents of yore is that once Trump is out of office, everyone will start to be complacent again. Standing up for your rights is the job of the citizenry no matter who is president, and holding our elected officials' collective feet to the fire is what we're supposed to be doing all the time. If it took electing Trump to get people engaged, so be it, but let's not pretend that passing what effectively amounts to law with "a pen and a phone" is Trump's idea, or that people weren't cheering on the last president when he chose to do so, or that it's in any way a good thing to remove the checks and balances branches of the government are supposed to be providing against their co-equal branches.
- TenOhms 10y ago
  It also reeks of hypocrisy of the highest order.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    When we're done evaluating the motives of individual Internet commenters and ensuring that the evils of hypocritical rhetoric are forever banished from the fair shores of our message boards, can we acknowledge that children with American citizenship and their green card parents are being detained or even deported at our borders, without access to counsel, in flagrant violation of both the law and standing court orders? I'm on board for the tribunal where we evaluate everything anyone ever wrote in an Internet comment. Twenty lashes for me, I'm sure. I'll submit willingly, if we can put that aside for a year and a half and work on resisting the current threat to the rule of law.
    - TenOhms 10y ago
      Are they though? I thought Green card holders were not being detained?
      - chc 10y ago
        Result of a quick Google for "green card holder detained": https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/green-card-holder-detained-then-released-after-leaving-cruise-ship-in-florida/ar-AAmodod https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/green-card-holder-detained...
        tptacek 10y ago
        Moreover, it's been reported in several places that Steve Bannon overruled DHS to ensure that green card holders would be impacted by the ban. In addition to being flagrantly unconstitutional, that was an act of distilled cruelty.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  People keep bringing up the Obama thing in response to the immigration ban. Obama suspended visas from Iraq for six months, and gave plenty of warning beforehand so people could prepare. Trump suspended all immigration from seven countries on a Friday without warning, ordered the detention of people from those countries at the border, prevented them from seeking legal representation, and deported some of them. Including green card holders. If you don't understand the massive difference between these two things than I don't know what to tell you.
  - bmelton 10y ago
    I'm well aware of the difference, which is why I specifically did not reference any particular event for which Obama may have been responsible, except to illustrate that civil rights abuses have been going on for far longer than Trump has been president, and the comparative outcry has been infinitesimal. Apologies if my deliberate ambiguity was hard to parse.
  - fareesh 10y ago
    I have a couple of questions here if you'll allow me to play devil's advocate. 1) Given that what Trump is doing is allowed by law - what circumstances can one imagine in which this kind of travel ban would be okay (since it's legal) or is the law itself a problem? 2) I'm curious about (1) because there are legitimate reasons why Trump's ban is more draconian than Obama's, all of which are rooted in various screw-ups by the previous administration. Those are: a) Last year, the vetting process somehow managed to grant visas to 9500 terror linked individuals, all of whom are missing. When the visas were revoked, there was no way to locate them. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~ 2015 / 2016) b) DHS has 40 staff members currently handling 51000 applications for credible threat to life asylum requests. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~2015) c) Top intelligence officials have named the refugee program as a high risk attack vector (Source: CNN, ~ 2015/2016) Under those 3 criteria alone, if you are taking over as President and you see this kind of track record from the administration, and you get this advice from the intelligence agencies, would you really be comfortable with the visas issued thus far? I sort of agree with the principle in theory that if the government has granted someone the right to enter, they ought to be allowed to enter, but that's never really been an airtight thing either. Your final entry is always conditioned upon being interviewed at the airport and getting your passport stamped, and answering various questions - where will you be staying, for how long, etc. etc. I suspect it would have been more principled to have a comprehensive screening process for people when they landed, but that may be an operational nightmare. Given that there are plenty of PhD students, guest workers, etc. from Iran mostly, who are immensely inconvenienced by this kind of draconian rule, I am not entirely in favor of the policy. At the same time I'm curious as to whether a President is really dutybound to stand by the visas issued by the previous administration when there is proof of this sort of incompetence / error in the process at this magnitude (i.e. nearly ten thousand).
- seanalltogether 10y ago
  Trumps entire campaign was predicated on heavily disrupting the status quo. He promised chaos in Washington and now he's delivering on that promise. Obama pushed policies in baby steps to avoid heavily disrupting peoples lives, so of course they were never up in arms over it.
philipov 10y ago
I think that's not an accurate portrayal of their position. They're not saying one should continue doing nothing, they're instead trying to be gatekeepers of virtue. They're saying "You shouldn't get to have good publicity from this when it's convenient for you." Which is open to a completely different criticism, but is emphatically not saying people should continue doing nothing.
- mcguire 10y ago
  The effect is the same, though.
bbctol 10y ago
I don't think the argument is "people should do nothing today because they did nothing yesterday." I think the argument is "Just because you're doing something today, doesn't mean your organization doesn't have issues, and the fact that you didn't do something yesterday is useful data about your priorities."

This logic (people should do nothing today because they did nothing yesterday) doesn't make any sense, and I don't get why it keeps coming up every time something related to Trump's policy comes up.

mhink 10y ago

Because it's a rhetorical tactic, not an argument based on logic. And it's tailored directly towards getting the Left to "sit down and shut up".

bmelton 10y ago

Not to speak for the OP, but at least for me, I'm seeing a lot of my friends all of a sudden up in arms over policies that Obama (and Bush, and in some cases earlier than that even) got crickets for. Admittedly, I'm not trying to compare apples to apples, and I'm the furthest thing from a Trump supporter, and it's absolutely amazing that the media have finally grown into their role of a check and balance against the government, but all too often, that means that they do so with carelessly chosen words that misrepresent the issue, and they act like it's new. The problem with acting like it's new and giving a pass to handsomer / more liked / partisan presidents of yore is that once Trump is out of office, everyone will start to be complacent again. Standing up for your rights is the job of the citizenry no matter who is president, and holding our elected officials' collective feet to the fire is what we're supposed to be doing all the time. If it took electing Trump to get people engaged, so be it, but let's not pretend that passing what effectively amounts to law with "a pen and a phone" is Trump's idea, or that people weren't cheering on the last president when he chose to do so, or that it's in any way a good thing to remove the checks and balances branches of the government are supposed to be providing against their co-equal branches.

TenOhms 10y ago
It also reeks of hypocrisy of the highest order.
- tptacek 10y ago
  When we're done evaluating the motives of individual Internet commenters and ensuring that the evils of hypocritical rhetoric are forever banished from the fair shores of our message boards, can we acknowledge that children with American citizenship and their green card parents are being detained or even deported at our borders, without access to counsel, in flagrant violation of both the law and standing court orders? I'm on board for the tribunal where we evaluate everything anyone ever wrote in an Internet comment. Twenty lashes for me, I'm sure. I'll submit willingly, if we can put that aside for a year and a half and work on resisting the current threat to the rule of law.
  - TenOhms 10y ago
    Are they though? I thought Green card holders were not being detained?
    - chc 10y ago
      Result of a quick Google for "green card holder detained": https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/green-card-holder-detained-then-released-after-leaving-cruise-ship-in-florida/ar-AAmodod https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/green-card-holder-detained...
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Moreover, it's been reported in several places that Steve Bannon overruled DHS to ensure that green card holders would be impacted by the ban. In addition to being flagrantly unconstitutional, that was an act of distilled cruelty.
enraged_camel 10y ago
People keep bringing up the Obama thing in response to the immigration ban. Obama suspended visas from Iraq for six months, and gave plenty of warning beforehand so people could prepare. Trump suspended all immigration from seven countries on a Friday without warning, ordered the detention of people from those countries at the border, prevented them from seeking legal representation, and deported some of them. Including green card holders. If you don't understand the massive difference between these two things than I don't know what to tell you.
- bmelton 10y ago
  I'm well aware of the difference, which is why I specifically did not reference any particular event for which Obama may have been responsible, except to illustrate that civil rights abuses have been going on for far longer than Trump has been president, and the comparative outcry has been infinitesimal. Apologies if my deliberate ambiguity was hard to parse.
- fareesh 10y ago
  I have a couple of questions here if you'll allow me to play devil's advocate. 1) Given that what Trump is doing is allowed by law - what circumstances can one imagine in which this kind of travel ban would be okay (since it's legal) or is the law itself a problem? 2) I'm curious about (1) because there are legitimate reasons why Trump's ban is more draconian than Obama's, all of which are rooted in various screw-ups by the previous administration. Those are: a) Last year, the vetting process somehow managed to grant visas to 9500 terror linked individuals, all of whom are missing. When the visas were revoked, there was no way to locate them. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~ 2015 / 2016) b) DHS has 40 staff members currently handling 51000 applications for credible threat to life asylum requests. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~2015) c) Top intelligence officials have named the refugee program as a high risk attack vector (Source: CNN, ~ 2015/2016) Under those 3 criteria alone, if you are taking over as President and you see this kind of track record from the administration, and you get this advice from the intelligence agencies, would you really be comfortable with the visas issued thus far? I sort of agree with the principle in theory that if the government has granted someone the right to enter, they ought to be allowed to enter, but that's never really been an airtight thing either. Your final entry is always conditioned upon being interviewed at the airport and getting your passport stamped, and answering various questions - where will you be staying, for how long, etc. etc. I suspect it would have been more principled to have a comprehensive screening process for people when they landed, but that may be an operational nightmare. Given that there are plenty of PhD students, guest workers, etc. from Iran mostly, who are immensely inconvenienced by this kind of draconian rule, I am not entirely in favor of the policy. At the same time I'm curious as to whether a President is really dutybound to stand by the visas issued by the previous administration when there is proof of this sort of incompetence / error in the process at this magnitude (i.e. nearly ten thousand).
seanalltogether 10y ago
Trumps entire campaign was predicated on heavily disrupting the status quo. He promised chaos in Washington and now he's delivering on that promise. Obama pushed policies in baby steps to avoid heavily disrupting peoples lives, so of course they were never up in arms over it.

philipov 10y ago

I think that's not an accurate portrayal of their position. They're not saying one should continue doing nothing, they're instead trying to be gatekeepers of virtue. They're saying "You shouldn't get to have good publicity from this when it's convenient for you." Which is open to a completely different criticism, but is emphatically not saying people should continue doing nothing.

mcguire 10y ago
The effect is the same, though.

bbctol 10y ago

I don't think the argument is "people should do nothing today because they did nothing yesterday." I think the argument is "Just because you're doing something today, doesn't mean your organization doesn't have issues, and the fact that you didn't do something yesterday is useful data about your priorities."