Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Hanslanda]

Sweet Jesus.

I'm going to post it again, I'm seriously pissed about what you guys just did to the former PM of Norway, because he went to Iran to speak at a human rights conference. It's third-world dictatorship level treatment. You just don't detain foreign heads of state (even if former) and question them like criminals for an hour.

And this is what I mean the times I've talked about how thin the line is between "normal operating procedures" and fascism. There you have people blindly "just following orders" in the system. In a system where such a thing was literally unthinkable two frikking weeks ago. That's how quickly it can unravel and you end up with people "just following orders" as they lock up innocent people, based on arbitrary rules.

If a former Prime Minister of a NATO TREATY MEMBER gets treated like that, how do we suppose people without that advantage are going to be treated. This guy ran a country with a formal alliance treaty with the USA, now they're treating him like a dogshit criminal. And that's how normal business works now, apparently.

It's probably a moot point, but if it's any consolation I apologize on behalf of any sane citizen of the United States. What happened is unacceptable, so yes, please be pissed.

This is entirely and utterly absurd.

 

This, so much this.

I am deeply, entirely ashamed to be an American today. Our country wasn't so bad once upon a time, but now I can see the thin line between us and the Nazis we professed so much hatred for so long for. I cannot believe the state of our nation today. I can't believe this person we've elected. It's like a bad dream that you don't wake up from. And the worst part is, people are me are so fucking vocal about supporting this shit-slinging fuckmonkey that somehow bullshitted his way into the most respected office in the land.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

You're Metalsplaining again.

But here's a good trick. Copy/quote the post here, shove it in Gender then put a redirect notice here. Then by some magic, when people respond they get teleported to the Gender thread.

Huh? "Shove it in Gender"?

[Reelya]

I mean that a conversation can be shifted over via cross-thread quoting, and you leave a note saying you did so, easy way to redirect derails into the right thread. Metal was complaining about gender-related derails.

[ChairmanPoo]

"Shove it in Gender"?

When you are a star they let you do it.

[Reelya]

Trump tweet just reported

The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!

"So called" Judge? WTF Trump. He's an actual judge, are you saying actual judges aren't the arbiters of the law now? What exactly are you implying? He's basically calling for an abolition of the judicial branch and rule by presidential fiat now, openly.

[Flying Dice]

No, his position is just an alternate fact. Everyone knows that Trump is the only judge America needs. He's absolutely the best judge, really great.

"Shove it in Gender"?

When you are a star they let you do it.

i r8 this a perfect 5/7

[Reelya]

The scary part of this is how Trump's bypassing everyone, Judicial branch, Legislative Branch, everyone. But the likely outcome is a yuuuuge debate on the actual powers the President has.

[Frumple]

Not that it's surprising. Trump's never exactly had much respect for the law. And by that I mean if he didn't have the financial resources he was born into, he would have probably been in jail several times over :V

The dial-up access to the BBSes must have severely crippled the conversations, though, back in the '80s...

Nah, not really. Even pre-picture sub-56k internet was really damn good at facilitating discussion; it just doesn't take much bandwidth at all to transmit raw text, and the whole way-text-based-discussion-works is easily more solid than just about any other format we have for large(ish) scale discussion. It was slower than it is now, but the biggest limitation (such as it was) was easily saturation rather than anything involving connection speed and instability. Just wasn't nearly as many people using the thing, and the ones that did tended to be much more limited in terms of demographics and available time.

I well remember sub-56k modems costing like 200 USD, and that was when prices were going down, before a good chunk of inflation, and during a period where it was actually kinda' difficult to even find the things unless you had education/academia or tech/military connection of some sort. Took a fair bit of time before you could really just kinda' swing by a best buy or somethin' and pick up the required hardware. Meant that most of the folks that had meaningful access were a relatively small subset of the population, most of them with (significant) other obligations and often facing fairly notable usage costs. Did make things pretty different, but it wasn't terribly much to do with dial-up performance that caused it.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

"What are you, the law police??"

[Hanslanda]

The scary part of this is how Trump's bypassing everyone, Judicial branch, Legislative Branch, everyone. But the likely outcome is a yuuuuge debate on the actual powers the President has.

Yeah, he's certainly trying to overstep his bounds pretty seriously. It's only been what, a week or so? I really hope he gets impeached.

[Reelya]

Man, when I wrote my doom and gloom predictions about the effects of his immigration policy, I thought I was going out on a limb there, but my worst-case prediction is like 5% as bad as things are already looking.

But you know the silver lining: they tried a massive power grab, but they've basically fucking botched it, big time, by being too hasty and full of themselves. Now, the push back is gonna be yuuuuge.

e.g. Hitler didn't burn down the Reichstag a week after getting into office, no he carefully planned and quietly placed his people into important officers, then burnt the Reichstag down. If Trump had done that, e.g. waited for his big power grab until after securing his people in Supreme Court etc, then it would have been much worse, perhaps.

Just be thankful that the American NAZIs are morons.

[Reelya]

So are you saying that Trump, his cabinet, and/or his supporters are Nazis?

I never said anything about supporters. But Bannon definitely is. Conway suggested that Trump create his own personal secret police unit. They are basically nazis.

Trump is now effectively calling for abolishing the power of the courts, and he bypasses the constitution. His goons have also intimidated foreign world leaders who tried to visit for diplomatic purposes.

And there the fact that he's giving another 10000 people carte blanche to harass and extort all illegal immigrants - who have about 4-5 million children. About half of them are women - and that's likely to be a humanitarian disaster attracting the worse elements to do that job, and let's be frank - any agent in that area will have HEAPS of power over "young pussy". If you get 10000 non-employed "fake cop" guys and give them power over women and children, you WILL get sexual exploitation. Trump's executive order gives ICE agents vastly expanded personal powers and discretion in arrests. It will be abused. That's human nature.

comparisons to Nazis are now more appropriate than ever, when a strongman tries to bully the separation of powers into non-existence, and he gives vast enforcement powers to a group who will almost without a doubt end up having very little proper supervision of their actions.

[wierd]

This may come as a raging shock to a few people, but--

Corporate culture == fascist culture.

Fo' realz yo.

Trump lives in the corporate culture reality distortion field, and so believes that fascism is the correct way to run things.
However, because he *IS THE DAMN POSTER CHILD FOR DUNNING-KRUEGER*(ahem..) he is so gods damned incompetent that he does not even REALIZE he is a fascist, and is doing it really, really, badly!

[Dorsidwarf]

His goons have also intimidated foreign world leaders who tried to visit for diplomatic purposes.

Hey, he was the Ex-PM, by like 12 years. Just think of all the radicalisation that could have happened to a filthy non-american in that time.

[sluissa]

Sweet Jesus.

I'm going to post it again, I'm seriously pissed about what you guys just did to the former PM of Norway, because he went to Iran to speak at a human rights conference. It's third-world dictatorship level treatment. You just don't detain foreign heads of state (even if former) and question them like criminals for an hour.

And this is what I mean the times I've talked about how thin the line is between "normal operating procedures" and fascism. There you have people blindly "just following orders" in the system. In a system where such a thing was literally unthinkable two frikking weeks ago. That's how quickly it can unravel and you end up with people "just following orders" as they lock up innocent people, based on arbitrary rules.

If a former Prime Minister of a NATO TREATY MEMBER gets treated like that, how do we suppose people without that advantage are going to be treated. This guy ran a country with a formal alliance treaty with the USA, now they're treating him like a dogshit criminal. And that's how normal business works now, apparently.

It's probably a moot point, but if it's any consolation I apologize on behalf of any sane citizen of the United States. What happened is unacceptable, so yes, please be pissed.

This is entirely and utterly absurd.

 

This, so much this.

I am deeply, entirely ashamed to be an American today. Our country wasn't so bad once upon a time, but now I can see the thin line between us and the Nazis we professed so much hatred for so long for. I cannot believe the state of our nation today. I can't believe this person we've elected. It's like a bad dream that you don't wake up from. And the worst part is, people are me are so fucking vocal about supporting this shit-slinging fuckmonkey that somehow bullshitted his way into the most respected office in the land.

I don't know how many of you have had a routine secondary inspection at a border crossing, but an hour is pretty quick for them to get around to you. The questioning can seem like they're interrogating you, can seem like they're treating you as a criminal. And I'm not even saying I approve of this treatment, but it's pretty standard at the US border. The Iran visit may have triggered the secondary inspection, but if it only took an hour, and all they did was ask questions (and probably poked around in his luggage/vehicle) then that's absolutely standard treatment that can be triggered on any random cause. Former PM shouldn't get any leeway either. That's not a head of STATE position, that's a head of government position, one that should be treated just like any other government worker. Nor do I believe that heads of state, former or otherwise, should get any special treatment either, outside of maybe their questioning taking place in a private room. They're people like anyone else, capable of anything like anyone else.

Once again, I think that CBP does a horrid job of both enforcing the border and with their own PR and "bedside manner". Most other countries aren't nearly as openly hostile to visitors as the US is. They range from professional to bored, but not sheer hostility anywhere else I've been. But this is the way CBP has been for at least the 10 years I've been travelling in and out of the country. From Bush, through Obama, and now Trump. If anything I can salute their consistency of how they treat people. Everyone gets treated with a complete lack of respect and a sense of disdain.