Brian Peacock wrote:
Again, it's pretty clear what condition you're putting on the criticism of a policy here, the question was why does, should or must that condition apply?
I've not placed a condition. I've pointed out a hypocrisy. Why don't the other walls just encourage the building of taller ladders? Is there something different about those walls? What?
Brian Peacock wrote:
What's the policy difference? Why do they get to have walls without being racists, even though they're keeping out folks from brown countries, but if the US wants effective border control and a wall too, it's a big fucking problem?
I guess Trump's wall is tainted with racism because he justified it on the basis that Mexicans were rapists and murderers.
Of course he did not say that. What he said was that those crossing the border are not Mexico's best, and that among those coming over are rapists and murderers. His point was much like the Cuban boat lift of the 1980s, when Castro emptied his prisons. Of course most Cubans (and Mexicans) are just as good and bad as anyone else. But, it's not an even cross section of the country's demographics that are hustling across the border. There is a disproporationate number of gang members, criminals and others running from the law in Mexico that cross over.4
Brian Peacock wrote:
You'd like to shift the burden of justification onto the objectors to that kind of political motivation and challenge them on as to why building the wall, or even the wall itself, is racist, when it's the reasons for building it that are at issue. Didn't Trump promise to have rounded up and deported all the illegals by now btw?
No no. The walls are built for the same reasons. To keep people out. To keep people who are not desired in the country out. In Greece and Bulgaria it's to keep out Africans and Asians. It's not to keep out an even number of whites and blacks and browns. It's to keep out the economic migrants and refugees from poorer countries.
Brian Peacock wrote:
And, why do all these other folks from around the world focus on what the US does with it's border, but not focus on other countries? After all, as you and others have made clear - it's obvious the US sucks anyway, people starve in the streets, we don't care about the poor, so they'd not want to come here anyway, right?
Now you're playing the victim card: Poor done-down America, the nation built by immigrants and the defender of freedom, liberty and inalienable rights, is being singled out and picked on again. Just how many countries, political systems, and individual policies must we criticise before we can rightfully turn our gaze to the US? Seems to me that only when the rest of the world is perfect do we earn the privilege of examining America and/or critiquing this administration.
No, I'm just parroting what you and others have said. We have no real social welfare net, no health care, except that which is substandard even to Cuba and the Dominican Republic. People starve in the streets. It's racist and discriminatory against the poor and the brown. Am I not right about that?
Just how many countries and political systems and policies? How about just a few? Is your gaze ever not on the US? The US is the most highly scrutinized country out there. Surely there is something going on in the UK, Australia, Fance, Germany, Russia, China, India, Brazil, etc. that might deserve some attention?
It's not a question of "only when the rest of the world is perfect," it's a question of prioritizing the imperfection. Why must the US be so much closer to perfect than anywhere else? You're not even recognizing the that the US is even a first world country, hardly. We have Scot Dutchy running around saying that according to his peer group in the "civilized world" it's the US that is the real shithole - the biggest shithole on the planet, actually.
I mean - there is nothing at all wrong with criticizing the US, but how about some perspective. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I say it, but I'll say it again. It's not that US is "better" than other western European first world countries, and Canada and Oz. There are many ways that the US can learn from other such countries. But, let's at least put in perspective how life is in the US. And, let's put in perspective that when certain folks say the US is at the bottom in the world, it's in reference to the "world" consisting of about 10 or 12 other countries in the first world, because the "rest of the world" really is full of countries that are not great examples of the conquest of poverty. Only what the US gets is accusations that we're actually worse than Cuba. Worse than banana republics. Worse than South American despotisms.
Translate that to the wall issue, and you've got a wall that's been under construction for going on 25 years, and NOW it's a big racist problem because Trump. Only, the EU has a convenient wall on the main land crossing from Turkey to Bulgaria/Greece and that's not racist. Nothing wrong with that, right? Nobody has even gone on record here either way as to why it's either right or wrong about THAT wall. Who is being kept out? Why? Why is it different from what is considered so appalling on the part of the US.
The reality is that the wall is bad in the US simply because it's the US that's doing it while Trump is President. If Obama said "we're going to complete the border barrier because it is part of our overall plan to bolster border security while welcoming legal immigrants through proper procedures" then I doubt anyone would be suggesting there is any issue with it. Yet, that wall would keep the same people out.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
