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> If Republican voters actually have a moderate view of immigration, that's great, but they voted for a guy who is putting migrants in cages. Therefore, they al

> If Republican voters actually have a moderate view of immigration, that's great, but they voted for a guy who is putting migrants in cages. Therefore, they all support putting migrants in cages. They could fix that by changing who they vote for, but they haven't done so. I consider this policy to be reprehensible, so how can I not consider Republican voters to be reprehensible? Except the previous President did the exact same. It's already long since come out that the people in cages photos that so enraged everyone last year were from 2014. Democrats voted for a guy who did that too then. How do you reconcile this hypocrisy?

nomoreofthis 7y ago
How can anyone make this argument in good faith? The people being caged, the reasons they're being caged, the conditions they're kept in, the utter depravity of it all are on completely different scales. I don't recall simple asylum seekers or American citizens being caged under Obama. Furthermore, one side is loudly advocating against it as a practice, now, because its horrible, not simply because it is Trump doing it. It was bad when Obama did it too. And yet, the other side is actively encouraging it and often outright cheering it. Furthermore, and this highlights an ideology that I've rarely seen hold untrue, liberals are more than happy to openly, vocally criticize Obama. And yet, in this case, faced with abject horror all we hear from the right is "whatabout Obama". In my opinion, this argument is completely disingenuous and is merely a gotcha-style deflection.
- busterarm 7y ago
  How can you? (Oh, that's why you made the throwaway. Maybe I could take your argument more seriously if you used your actual account.) It's not like operating these centers doesn't cost money. Our party (I'm a registered Democrat, thanks) had to concede this point after letting the situation get as bad as it did by blocking funding for so long. We have record rates of illegal immigration right now. The answer isn't simply to let everyone through -- there's largely bipartisan support for legal paths to immigration...and also under this presidency we also have (recent) record numbers of legal immigration as well. How many Republicans do you actually know, because I haven't seen any of them (like in my family or in any of the media they consume) cheering and encouraging putting people in cages. They want deportations and to stop them at the border completely, turning them away. I'd be interested to know where you live, because here where I live there was virtually no internal Obama criticism that I'm aware of. Even the 20% illegal Section 702 wiretaps and drone campaigns in places we weren't at war with got a pass.
  - teucris 7y ago
    I am in an extremely liberal city, my community were all major Obama supporters, and we were furious about these things.
  - agreed8282 7y ago
    You’ll care more about the argument itself if the person used an anonymous but long lived handle to post it with? This seems to be a bit of a part of the issue. You’re focusing on the credibility of the messenger which can be obfuscated by your emotions and in the political realm by mainstream media. You’re using a pretty reductionist set of tools for vetting a person is age of an anonymized web forum account.
daenz 7y ago
>How do you reconcile this hypocrisy? It's like when a toddler has a hard fall and looks to the parent to see how to react. As a parent, if you look horrified and make a big deal about it, the child starts bawling. If you look normal and brush it off, the child has a minimal reaction. It's the same fall, but the network of people they take leadership cues from dictated the nature of their response. It's the same with people (on both sides of the aisle), their social networks, and the press. People underestimate the power of the press and the influence it has on giving cues about when and what to be upset about. It's not so much that the hypocrisy is reconciled, it's just ignored.
tootie 7y ago
The migrant cage issue is really besides the point. I'm not trying to start a debate specifically about immigration. I could pick any topic, even something innocuous. My point is that if you claim to support a policy and then vote the other way, do you actually support it?
- changchuming 7y ago
  You're assuming that every voter voted for Trump for the positions he hold on the issues you care about. What if Trump was just the best candidate for the issues THEY care about? Also most of Republicans voted for Trump ergo all of them support all the policies by Trump is the same logic I can use to say most Americans voted for Trump therefore all Americans support all the policies by Trump. In reality, most Americans I've met are perfectly good and rational people, they just care about different issues, that's all.
  - tootie 7y ago
    That's a lot of hypotheticals, but I think that it was pretty obvious what kind of character they were voting for. And he has consistently held over 90% approval from Republicans during his term, so they are evidently satisfied with the results. When it comes to issues that I (and many liberals) feel strongly about, he was always very clearly a complete 180 from what I'd consider sensible policy. I've read that over 50% of Republicans now consider climate change to a major issue that should be addressed, but Trump repeatedly declared it a hoax. So, it stands to reason that at least tens of millions of people who claim to think climate change is a critical issues deliberately voted for someone who will expressly move the country backwards in its response. I'm being somewhere reductive in my position and clearly people had some other incentives in how they voted, but I'm just saying that the premise of this article is meaningless. While Republican voters may not be as strident as they let on, they have placed an army of extremely strident representatives in power and haven't wavered in their support. That's what the country now has in hand and it wasn't by accident.
agreed8282 7y ago
I see hypocrisy as commonly thought of as a logical fallacy. Relativity and neuroscience plays a role in all of this: we all have emotional blinders given the messages and “facts” that have been emotionally reinforced the most over time. Especially from our childhood. I’m under no obligation to reconcile what you see as hypocrisy. Hating Trump for putting people in cages doesn’t mean anyone forgives Obama for the same. That sort of reasoning is peddling a task you conjured up and is a contrived as a elementary arithmetic word problem. It proves nothing about how a person would act tomorrow. Here’s how I reconcile it: society gives me a choice of shit sandwich and utter waste. I’ll vote for shit sandwich and loath my culture for being myopic. Which is basically how we’ve always reconciled it and pretended we cared in public to keep up appearances.
whatshisface 7y ago
Nobody is in favor of putting kids in cages, but at the same time nobody can agree on who is at fault or how to stop it. I heard one person use the cages as support for the border wall, saying that if nobody could cross the border nobody would be caught by ICE. Almost everybody can agree on most of the same morals but as far as facts and deductions we might as well all be living in different universes.
- busterarm 7y ago
  I don't want to hear any of that. I want to hear OP reconcile his claim that the other side of his claimed side are all guilty of reprehensible behavior when it's factually correct that his did the same. This isn't about blame or fixing it, it's about how dangerous it is when we broadly paint those we disagree with as "enemy" and ignore the facts, decency and reason that bind us together in society.
  - agreed8282 7y ago
    Their comment was clearly not an explicit denial they don’t hold the other side accountable. Grow up. It’s a public web forum and no one is obliged to sooth your sensibilities. Americans, right? All so tough but all shouting like a bunch of babies when someone else doesn’t fully sooth them. This country needs to learn how to self sooth instead of expecting a quick fix to their problems be handed to them. A sure fire sign of a society on decline: looking for everyone else to fix me cause I’m too clueless about myself to fix myself
MaxBarraclough 7y ago
Some background: there are photos of immigrants in cages, taken in Obama's time. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/42228/ https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/42228/
- teucris 7y ago
  This is awful and as someone who generally supported Obama I consider this one of several shameful moments in his presidency. The issue with the Trump administration isn’t just about putting people in cages - that’s the sound bite, and one that should have been used with Obama - it’s how Trump’s zero tolerance policy puts so many people in cages, even if they’re seeking asylum.
scruple 7y ago
> How do you reconcile this hypocrisy? Why stop there? President Barrack "Drone-Strikes-For-Freedom" Obama certainly has an interesting legacy on his hands and yet it seems to me that the entire world has given him a blanket pass on all of the atrocious things that went down under his terms.
- bassman9000 7y ago
  Or the fact that Obama left the Presidency with the US involved in 7 wars, 3 of them started during his mandate.

nomoreofthis 7y ago

How can anyone make this argument in good faith? The people being caged, the reasons they're being caged, the conditions they're kept in, the utter depravity of it all are on completely different scales. I don't recall simple asylum seekers or American citizens being caged under Obama. Furthermore, one side is loudly advocating against it as a practice, now, because its horrible, not simply because it is Trump doing it. It was bad when Obama did it too. And yet, the other side is actively encouraging it and often outright cheering it. Furthermore, and this highlights an ideology that I've rarely seen hold untrue, liberals are more than happy to openly, vocally criticize Obama. And yet, in this case, faced with abject horror all we hear from the right is "whatabout Obama". In my opinion, this argument is completely disingenuous and is merely a gotcha-style deflection.

busterarm 7y ago
How can you? (Oh, that's why you made the throwaway. Maybe I could take your argument more seriously if you used your actual account.) It's not like operating these centers doesn't cost money. Our party (I'm a registered Democrat, thanks) had to concede this point after letting the situation get as bad as it did by blocking funding for so long. We have record rates of illegal immigration right now. The answer isn't simply to let everyone through -- there's largely bipartisan support for legal paths to immigration...and also under this presidency we also have (recent) record numbers of legal immigration as well. How many Republicans do you actually know, because I haven't seen any of them (like in my family or in any of the media they consume) cheering and encouraging putting people in cages. They want deportations and to stop them at the border completely, turning them away. I'd be interested to know where you live, because here where I live there was virtually no internal Obama criticism that I'm aware of. Even the 20% illegal Section 702 wiretaps and drone campaigns in places we weren't at war with got a pass.
- teucris 7y ago
  I am in an extremely liberal city, my community were all major Obama supporters, and we were furious about these things.
- agreed8282 7y ago
  You’ll care more about the argument itself if the person used an anonymous but long lived handle to post it with? This seems to be a bit of a part of the issue. You’re focusing on the credibility of the messenger which can be obfuscated by your emotions and in the political realm by mainstream media. You’re using a pretty reductionist set of tools for vetting a person is age of an anonymized web forum account.

daenz 7y ago

>How do you reconcile this hypocrisy? It's like when a toddler has a hard fall and looks to the parent to see how to react. As a parent, if you look horrified and make a big deal about it, the child starts bawling. If you look normal and brush it off, the child has a minimal reaction. It's the same fall, but the network of people they take leadership cues from dictated the nature of their response. It's the same with people (on both sides of the aisle), their social networks, and the press. People underestimate the power of the press and the influence it has on giving cues about when and what to be upset about. It's not so much that the hypocrisy is reconciled, it's just ignored.

tootie 7y ago

The migrant cage issue is really besides the point. I'm not trying to start a debate specifically about immigration. I could pick any topic, even something innocuous. My point is that if you claim to support a policy and then vote the other way, do you actually support it?

changchuming 7y ago
You're assuming that every voter voted for Trump for the positions he hold on the issues you care about. What if Trump was just the best candidate for the issues THEY care about? Also most of Republicans voted for Trump ergo all of them support all the policies by Trump is the same logic I can use to say most Americans voted for Trump therefore all Americans support all the policies by Trump. In reality, most Americans I've met are perfectly good and rational people, they just care about different issues, that's all.
- tootie 7y ago
  That's a lot of hypotheticals, but I think that it was pretty obvious what kind of character they were voting for. And he has consistently held over 90% approval from Republicans during his term, so they are evidently satisfied with the results. When it comes to issues that I (and many liberals) feel strongly about, he was always very clearly a complete 180 from what I'd consider sensible policy. I've read that over 50% of Republicans now consider climate change to a major issue that should be addressed, but Trump repeatedly declared it a hoax. So, it stands to reason that at least tens of millions of people who claim to think climate change is a critical issues deliberately voted for someone who will expressly move the country backwards in its response. I'm being somewhere reductive in my position and clearly people had some other incentives in how they voted, but I'm just saying that the premise of this article is meaningless. While Republican voters may not be as strident as they let on, they have placed an army of extremely strident representatives in power and haven't wavered in their support. That's what the country now has in hand and it wasn't by accident.

agreed8282 7y ago

I see hypocrisy as commonly thought of as a logical fallacy. Relativity and neuroscience plays a role in all of this: we all have emotional blinders given the messages and “facts” that have been emotionally reinforced the most over time. Especially from our childhood. I’m under no obligation to reconcile what you see as hypocrisy. Hating Trump for putting people in cages doesn’t mean anyone forgives Obama for the same. That sort of reasoning is peddling a task you conjured up and is a contrived as a elementary arithmetic word problem. It proves nothing about how a person would act tomorrow. Here’s how I reconcile it: society gives me a choice of shit sandwich and utter waste. I’ll vote for shit sandwich and loath my culture for being myopic. Which is basically how we’ve always reconciled it and pretended we cared in public to keep up appearances.

whatshisface 7y ago

Nobody is in favor of putting kids in cages, but at the same time nobody can agree on who is at fault or how to stop it. I heard one person use the cages as support for the border wall, saying that if nobody could cross the border nobody would be caught by ICE. Almost everybody can agree on most of the same morals but as far as facts and deductions we might as well all be living in different universes.

busterarm 7y ago
I don't want to hear any of that. I want to hear OP reconcile his claim that the other side of his claimed side are all guilty of reprehensible behavior when it's factually correct that his did the same. This isn't about blame or fixing it, it's about how dangerous it is when we broadly paint those we disagree with as "enemy" and ignore the facts, decency and reason that bind us together in society.
- agreed8282 7y ago
  Their comment was clearly not an explicit denial they don’t hold the other side accountable. Grow up. It’s a public web forum and no one is obliged to sooth your sensibilities. Americans, right? All so tough but all shouting like a bunch of babies when someone else doesn’t fully sooth them. This country needs to learn how to self sooth instead of expecting a quick fix to their problems be handed to them. A sure fire sign of a society on decline: looking for everyone else to fix me cause I’m too clueless about myself to fix myself

MaxBarraclough 7y ago

Some background: there are photos of immigrants in cages, taken in Obama's time. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/42228/ https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/42228/

teucris 7y ago
This is awful and as someone who generally supported Obama I consider this one of several shameful moments in his presidency. The issue with the Trump administration isn’t just about putting people in cages - that’s the sound bite, and one that should have been used with Obama - it’s how Trump’s zero tolerance policy puts so many people in cages, even if they’re seeking asylum.

scruple 7y ago

> How do you reconcile this hypocrisy? Why stop there? President Barrack "Drone-Strikes-For-Freedom" Obama certainly has an interesting legacy on his hands and yet it seems to me that the entire world has given him a blanket pass on all of the atrocious things that went down under his terms.

bassman9000 7y ago
Or the fact that Obama left the Presidency with the US involved in 7 wars, 3 of them started during his mandate.