I haven’t gotten around to discussing the effects of the ban yet as that seems to be a point of contention with conservatives posting that Trump’s finally doing what needs to be done to make us safe. Which is fucking crazy and which I will address in a future post but, for now, rather than engaging in a retracted argument involving a lot of hypotheticals, I’ve focused on summarizing the way the ban, and Trump’s recent changes to the NSC, are troubling with regard to the rule of law and The Constitution and our democracy. As with all of my social media posts regarding Trump, I’m targeting a bi-partisan audience, trying to get conservatives and Trump voters to remember a lifetime of core values and beliefs in the hope they will turn against him.
I’m sharing it here in case it’s off use to anyone. In the comments I linked sources, focusing on either respected neutral sources or conservative sources to highlight that opposition to all of this should be bi-partisan:
Trump starts out by criticizing McCain and Graham on immigration - but can’t resist wandering over to Russia Today talking points, 'cuz gotta keep Vlad happy.
So… I’m betting if you tally up every fatality that we can ascribe to foreign terrorists, over the past twenty years, and compare that to the number of Americans killed in just, say, Chicago, the home-grown killers would win by a large margin. Certainly, domestic murders pose a far, far greater threat to the average American than nebulous shadowy terrorist groups, lone-wolf fellow travelers, or what not. Yet, it’s so, so easy to whip people into a frenzy about something that statistically is utterly insignificant.
Now, yeah, foreign terrorism is not the same thing emotionally or psychologically as plain old murder. I suspect a lot of it has to do with white America’s utter unfamiliarity with being targeted just for being who they are–something all other groups in American society have experienced to some extent or another already, often for many years and often with fairly great intensity at times. The idea of a “they” who are gunning for “us” is, naturally, scary as hell, more scary than the thought of random criminal violence. But it doesn’t make the security (and I use the word very loosely) theater any more convincing, or useful.
And when you couple security theater with public xenophobia, tinged with racism, and add in a dollop or seven of contempt for due process and the law, well, “shit show” doesn’t even come close.
Show me a warrant, I’ll show you my Facebook accounts. Waiting for more corroboration on this - not that I think any given person is lying, but it could be from someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing/didn’t understand the scope of the added scrutiny.
As soon as Americans started to freak out about hearing Arabic spoken on planes, it was clear that something like this was going to happen. No matter how effective judges are in stopping it, I don’t see the trend changing anytime soon either. Whether removed or not, all it takes is one terrorist action in the future to justify any absurd extreme measure to ‘combat terrorism’. Trump will provoke them as much as it takes, and when things go bad the TV will be broadcasting shrill exclamations of “see! see!” until 2020 when footage of the Democratic nominee for President shaking hands with a Muslim in religious dress while smiling is found and his campaign unravels while his most ardent supporters are busy helping twitter make more money through anti-Trump ventilation.
Trump and the GOP would absolutely love it if HRC stepped back into the limelight to visibly oppose him - they’ve spent decades building her up as Satan and having her back as the bogeyman would energize Trump’s base, generate donations, etc. Which is why (unfairly, but life isn’t fair) she shouldn’t do it.
Meanwhile Trump’s flying monkeys gave the game away today by making it quite clear this is meant to be seen as a Muslim ban.
Michael Flynn Jr. - the guy who was bounced out of the Trump White House for retweeting Pizzagate stories, and who is also the son of Trump’s National Security advisor Sr. - tweeted a bunch this weekend with #Muslimban as a hastag (“Temporary #Muslimban is necessary.”) Daddy has since made him delete his Twitter account.
And today on Fox News Rudy G flat-out admitted this is just an attempt to repackage a Muslim ban to make it look legal if you’re not really paying attention:
Even a student visa has a vetting process, and it’s not a quick process. How the hell can so many people in our country not understand that green cards and Visa’s are not things you get at the last minute without some lengthy process.
I don’t even understand the point he’s trying to make. Maybe it’s because I don’t speak fucking stupid? I mean, I guess he’s saying that if there weren’t Muslims in Quebec City then there wouldn’t be people there who had to shoot them so, really, it’s the Muslims’ own fault?
I don’t get it so instead I’ll post something I do understand.
