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If you think your government carrying out ethnic cleansing operations is just a minor thing but that comparing those ethnic cleansing operations to earlier ones

by olefoo 8y ago

If you think your government carrying out ethnic cleansing operations is just a minor thing but that comparing those ethnic cleansing operations to earlier ones by other governments that you were taught were bad is rude... You are not a good person. Shaming is thoroughly justified here. What the US government has been doing to the most vulnerable, brought here by their parents, fleeing persecution and coming to what was once a beacon of hope for a better life; is shameful. Shaming those who support shameful policies is one of the few effective ways we can arrest the slide into catastrophe. When the .gov is looking at ways to strip naturalized citizens of their citizenship; you should be alarmed because it will not stop there. Look around, do you have coworkers, family, loved ones who are not in the groups favored by this administration? They are at risk. We are all at risk. If the price of putting a stop to this is to slightly reduce the social standing of someone who I only ever hear of when he does something gross. ( Porn slides at a conference, this. ) I am OK with that.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago
I'm an open borders guy. I have been for years. I have no problem with vastly liberalizing immigration policy. I also have direct experience in immigration, having worked at ICE for a couple of years. I know how it works on the inside. I've worked with immigrants and have done my best to help them my entire career. I've been very fortunate to have worked with great people from all over. Finally, I know a lot of people on both sides of this issue. If you are willing to accept new information, I'd like to share with you that the U.S. is not carrying out ethnic cleansing operations. To me that appears a very dramatic and unsupported claim, geared toward getting people upset (and keeping yourself upset) more than understanding the issues involved. I have a dozen things to be angry about when it comes to U.S. policy on immigration and travel. Almost weekly I am either angry or ashamed. But the world does not exist to conform to my emotional state. I have been angry about many of these things for a long, long time. None of that has anything to do with Bob. Picking out a new victim every week and publicly shaming them isn't going to bring people together to solve problems. This behavior is creating a world in which problems and conflict are just going to get worse, not reach resolution. These folks are not helping the very causes they claim to support -- one of another half-dozen things that drives me nuts about watching this idiocy. Want to fix this? Me too. Stop trying to keep exacerbating it.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  Do you even understand what ethnic cleansing is? Clearly you don't. The current administration is unquestionably undertaking a racist policy of deporting non-whites in service of demographic change. The idea that anyone could apply "both sidesism" to that sort of vile and horrific act is itself pretty vile. You may be reluctant to think that people who you think are just normal people (or even people you know and like) with (seemingly) good intentions who are "just doing their jobs" are actually key participates in crimes against humanity. But it has always been this way. Crimes against humanity are rarely committed by movie villains, they are committed by ordinary folks just like you and me, people you would think are good honest people if you judged them by their ordinary day to day activities. But those people are still capable of committing atrocities. And if you can watch an ordinary person commit an atrocity and still think they are a good, honest, ordinary person, then you are complicit. A lot of pretty ordinary people have done some horrific things throughout history, while even more ordinary people watched and did nothing.
  - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
    Do you want to talk immigration or internet shaming and productive conversations? I'd love to talk about immigration. I know a lot about it and would love to learn more. But the question here is whether or not this kind of internet behavior is productive or not. The title of the article is "Maybe We Should Go Easy On Uncle Bob". So the topic at hand is how we treat one another, especially people that say things that drive us nuts. I've allowed myself to get a little more emotional than usual on this because I know a lot of the people involved and I care about the issue. I need to ask myself, just like everybody else needs to ask themselves: how do I publicly treat people I feel to be acting immorally or saying things I find horrible and/or disgusting? Especially when I'm upset. It's a simple question, and it forms the foundation of this topic, whether it's immigration, Bob, whatever. For five years I kept on my office wall a picture of SWAT team members taking little Elián González from his family in Florida in the 90s. There's this false dichotomy that political weasels want you to believe: if you don't speak out and publicly moralize, it's because you don't care enough. That's complete crap. I believe in open, civil, and honest discourse exactly because I care so much about these issues. I don't want the internet to operate like some giant church group. I don't want to go back to the 1950s where there were some things that were okay to talk about in polite society and some things that weren't. Too many people have struggled for far too long to make speech open for us to head back into that abyss again. https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1440,w_2561,x_0,y_0/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_740/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1494008894/articles/2017/04/28/the-saga-of-elian-gonzalez-a-lost-boy-who-was-finally-found/170427-zimmerman-tribeca-tease_nx9wef https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placehol...

by olefoo 8y ago

DanielBMarkham 8y ago

I'm an open borders guy. I have been for years. I have no problem with vastly liberalizing immigration policy. I also have direct experience in immigration, having worked at ICE for a couple of years. I know how it works on the inside. I've worked with immigrants and have done my best to help them my entire career. I've been very fortunate to have worked with great people from all over. Finally, I know a lot of people on both sides of this issue. If you are willing to accept new information, I'd like to share with you that the U.S. is not carrying out ethnic cleansing operations. To me that appears a very dramatic and unsupported claim, geared toward getting people upset (and keeping yourself upset) more than understanding the issues involved. I have a dozen things to be angry about when it comes to U.S. policy on immigration and travel. Almost weekly I am either angry or ashamed. But the world does not exist to conform to my emotional state. I have been angry about many of these things for a long, long time. None of that has anything to do with Bob. Picking out a new victim every week and publicly shaming them isn't going to bring people together to solve problems. This behavior is creating a world in which problems and conflict are just going to get worse, not reach resolution. These folks are not helping the very causes they claim to support -- one of another half-dozen things that drives me nuts about watching this idiocy. Want to fix this? Me too. Stop trying to keep exacerbating it.

InclinedPlane 8y ago
Do you even understand what ethnic cleansing is? Clearly you don't. The current administration is unquestionably undertaking a racist policy of deporting non-whites in service of demographic change. The idea that anyone could apply "both sidesism" to that sort of vile and horrific act is itself pretty vile. You may be reluctant to think that people who you think are just normal people (or even people you know and like) with (seemingly) good intentions who are "just doing their jobs" are actually key participates in crimes against humanity. But it has always been this way. Crimes against humanity are rarely committed by movie villains, they are committed by ordinary folks just like you and me, people you would think are good honest people if you judged them by their ordinary day to day activities. But those people are still capable of committing atrocities. And if you can watch an ordinary person commit an atrocity and still think they are a good, honest, ordinary person, then you are complicit. A lot of pretty ordinary people have done some horrific things throughout history, while even more ordinary people watched and did nothing.
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  Do you want to talk immigration or internet shaming and productive conversations? I'd love to talk about immigration. I know a lot about it and would love to learn more. But the question here is whether or not this kind of internet behavior is productive or not. The title of the article is "Maybe We Should Go Easy On Uncle Bob". So the topic at hand is how we treat one another, especially people that say things that drive us nuts. I've allowed myself to get a little more emotional than usual on this because I know a lot of the people involved and I care about the issue. I need to ask myself, just like everybody else needs to ask themselves: how do I publicly treat people I feel to be acting immorally or saying things I find horrible and/or disgusting? Especially when I'm upset. It's a simple question, and it forms the foundation of this topic, whether it's immigration, Bob, whatever. For five years I kept on my office wall a picture of SWAT team members taking little Elián González from his family in Florida in the 90s. There's this false dichotomy that political weasels want you to believe: if you don't speak out and publicly moralize, it's because you don't care enough. That's complete crap. I believe in open, civil, and honest discourse exactly because I care so much about these issues. I don't want the internet to operate like some giant church group. I don't want to go back to the 1950s where there were some things that were okay to talk about in polite society and some things that weren't. Too many people have struggled for far too long to make speech open for us to head back into that abyss again. https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1440,w_2561,x_0,y_0/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_740/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1494008894/articles/2017/04/28/the-saga-of-elian-gonzalez-a-lost-boy-who-was-finally-found/170427-zimmerman-tribeca-tease_nx9wef https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placehol...