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[Frumple]

I mean, like. Sessions has apparently shown/managed to show every evidence of blatantly lying under oath, just as a representative example of what sort of train wreck the hearing seems to be being evaluated as. Probably going to have scope the transcript (tomorrow or something, I'm barely good for reading summary and discussion right now) and some other reactions, but at least the initial feel I'm getting is that sessions has attempted to advance the field of quantum self-fornication today.

[sluissa]

Sounds like he basically walked in with a small script and generic cover your ass answers to a couple of expected questions and everything else was "I do not recall." Standard politician tactic.

He also thought he could get away with "I can't talk about that in an open hearing." Like Comey did. Except there was no closed hearing afterwards in which to answer those questions. Like Comey had. Except he did it much less charismatically with a sort of "The president is my friend and I'm sure he'll back me up I don't have to answer that."

Also the exchange between him and McCain would have been hilarious if these people weren't running our country. Two confused old men mumbling at each other, unable to hear what the other is saying clearly.

[Flying Dice]

Because something downplayed (which happens with everything) in some shithole overseas is not defending or ignoring it relative to treatment of other issues, it's ignoring it just as much as people do when it's christian groups doing it in similar areas (which hey, more likely than not, will be pointedly not noted as being christian, where that damn sure ain't true for muslim groups).

Unless you're talking with Muslims which will claim their bad guys aren't really Muslims. Some things are sadly fucking annoyingly universal.

Not even just Muslims. I'm more aggravated by westerners who play the No True Scotsman Muslim.

My central thrust is twofold:

1. Blindly defending Islam is fucking idiotic. We need to be supporting reasonable, moderate Muslims and assisting them in integrating into our countries if they choose to immigrate here while simultaneously opposing radical assholes and despicable practices. I've seen too many gorram people pretend that there aren't plenty of Muslims happy to lop off infidel heads, that even in Western Muslim communities there aren't double-digit percentages who think suicide bombing is acceptable (thanks again, Pew!).

2. We live in secular states. When residing in a state, you tacitly accept the social contract. When you immigrate to one, you are overtly accepting the same. In secular states, this includes the awareness and acceptance that religious doctrine cannot (or, perhaps more accurately in some cases, should not) be the basis of your laws and government. Moreover, you are accepting that in return for enjoying the benefits and rights of citizenship you must shoulder the burdens and responsibilities of the same. You do not get to enjoy infrastructure, benefit from public services, be protected by laws, &c. , but then refuse to pay taxes or obey those same laws. For a religious individual in a secular state, this includes placing secular law above religious principles.

This means that you don't get to form an insular little community where you quietly ignore the laws of the state and follow your religious teachings even when they violate the law. That's what's called a "cult" in the vernacular. More broadly, going onto a patch of a state's territory and trying to form the people's republic of fuckyouistan is the sort of thing that tends to result in a small army of heavily armed federal agents reminding you of what the phrase "monopoly of force" means. Y'all might recall the cattle baron yahoo and his band of idiots who tried that over here not too long ago. Or, for that matter, a little shindig in the 1860s.

In other words, if you're totally fine with sovereign citizen assholes getting theirs when they try to pull that shit to dodge traffic tickets, why would you be okay with it when a larger group of people do it on a broader scale with more severe issues?

If someone genuinely wants to participate in our society, they are fucking welcome. Please, come. But if someone wants to leech from social services while pretending that they're still living somewhere else and refusing to acknowledge our laws, they are welcome to fuck off to somewhere else where what they want is the law of the land.

[Sheb]

Nice strawman you got there. No one is supporting the right of Muslim to ignore laws.

Edit: Oh wait, I forgot about that retarded Swedish judge. Okay, no one here is supporting that at least.

[Neonivek]

The thing is Flying Dice is we do not treat all Muslims as a seditious element... or even Most... or even the vast majority.

We do not need to be blindly suspicious of them and to act like each and every Muslim is a ticking time bomb and that all they want, as a whole, is to make America uniquely theirs.

I know the UK believes quite strongly that Muslims have no loyalty and are a "separate" from society (Yes... I looked this up!)... But I have no idea if the US so strongly believes that Muslim immigrants are "working against the system" or "would work against the system if given opportunity"

Nice strawman you got there. No one is supporting the right of Muslim to ignore laws.

It isn't Strawman it is a different context.

In the UK the belief is that Muslims do not integrate into society and are essentially opposing elements. This is believed by about 50% of people in the UK (No really!)

Thus it isn't "Strawman" to bring up that Muslims are trying to force America under Sharia law (Again I am not saying they are -_-). Yet it isn't something that Americans really think about.

[Flying Dice]

Nice strawman you got there. No one is supporting the right of Muslim to ignore laws.

Edit: Oh wait, I forgot about that retarded Swedish judge. Okay, no one here is supporting that at least.

See, that's the thing. When you say "Oh, nobody will ever let Muslims ignore secular law and practice Sharia law" or "Oh, nobody will vote for Trump", a whole bunch of nobodies who actually want that will gladly prove you wrong. You have to head off destructive stupidity actively, not wait to react after it's all said and done.

e: It's also not just about "hurr durr they want to put us under Sharia law" -- there are some Muslims who want that, but a larger portion just want it to bind themselves... which still does not mesh with how a secular nation-state works. And if you have one side of an issue really wanting something and the other side split between "Yeah, let 'em do it!" and "Meh, it won't actually happen"...

[Neonivek]

When you say "Oh, nobody will ever let Muslims ignore secular law and practice Sharia law" or "Oh, nobody will vote for Trump", a whole bunch of nobodies who actually want that will gladly prove you wrong.

You mean like the UK where it didn't happen but everyone believes it did?

[EnigmaticHat]

Because something downplayed (which happens with everything) in some shithole overseas is not defending or ignoring it relative to treatment of other issues, it's ignoring it just as much as people do when it's christian groups doing it in similar areas (which hey, more likely than not, will be pointedly not noted as being christian, where that damn sure ain't true for muslim groups).

Unless you're talking with Muslims which will claim their bad guys aren't really Muslims. Some things are sadly fucking annoyingly universal.

-snip-

Even putting aside that no one is saying this... we have several Christian sects here that blatantly ignore our laws.  Like if this is the hill you want to die on, should Quakers serve in the military?  Amish go to normal public schools?  Mormons be mass deported for, you know, several things really?

People have been saying "their ways aren't our ways" for centuries, but ok.  Its not like the Irish or Catholics or Italians or the Chinese, its different this time.  They aren't secular like all those other ones.  Well, if secular America is the standard, why are churches tax exempt?  Why are they even allowed to exist if they cause so many traffic snarls.  Hell knows a non-religious building that affected traffic like a church, and brought in zero tax revenues to boot, would never make it past any city zoning board in the nation.  Yet somehow churches aren't a purely rural phenomenon.  Its almost like religious freedom is the American way.

And don't say we should only let the moderates in.  We ARE vetting the dangerous Muslims.  Anything other than dangerous, well... why should the government be able to make that choice?  Should Obama have only let liberals into the nation?  Like what's the line between blocking the unamerican and blocking what you don't like?

There was a time where huge amounts of people were against Catholic immigration.  Because they're loyal to the European religious tyrant in the Vatican, and we made America to get away from the corrupt ways of Europe.  And let let's be honest, "we came here to escape Catholics" is so much more historically supportable than "we're a secular nation".  Yet somehow Catholics didn't do anything to erode our nation.  Why are you any different than the old anti-catholic faction?  I mean really, would you ban people from coming into the nation because they're anti-abortion?  If your answer is no, then why is telling other people what they can do with their bodies OK but wanting Sharia law to apply only to yourself, that's not OK?

[Neonivek]

we have several Christian sects here that blatantly ignore our laws.

We do? I mean in the "Clearly, in plain sight" not in the "Cult, secret illegalness behind closed doors" sort of way.

[Max™]

I saw someone propose the use of "jihadists" to better distinguish relevant groups of interest from ordinary folks who get tarred with a far too broad brush by the use of "muslims" as some sort of remotely monolithic bloc of beliefs and behaviors.

first 32nd of the term: even if trump goes full nixon, his cult of personality + the dem broken base makes me think two-terms (if he isn't impeached.) As a professional pollster, I think it'll go to Trump if it's an election, or the dem if he's impeached. Basically, coin flip.

As a professional pollster, I think it'll go to Trump if it's an election, or the dem if he's impeached. Basically, coin flip.

As a professional pollster

professional pollster

O.o

Wait, really, or are you being ironic here?

No, you're both wrong and right at the same time, like Schrodingers cat.

Bonus internet point if you get it.

Schrodinger was into threesome and so are we?

Now... when you say we...

Nah, not going there, but Schrodinger hated when Heisenberg wanted to join in, when he had the time he didn't have the energy, and even if you got him into position you never knew when he'd have the momentum anyways.

No man is that stupid. Not even Trump.

Ok, you're definitely being ironic here... right? You can literally use literally unironically when saying "Trump is literally that stupid' in response to literally any hypothetical short of say "Trump wouldn't try to eat his own face after cutting it off with a shard of glass" type of extremes.

...probably.

[TempAcc]

To be honest the west has really turned a blind eye to political islam. Keep in mind political islam isn't islam as a religion, but, well, a political manifestation of it. Ironically enough, political islam is the closest thing to actual fascism thats accepted nowadays.

Islamic doctrine at its core is not only racially charged, but it strives for conquering of anything non islamic and the destruction of anything it perceives as an enemy. The killing of non muslims is quite literally defined as not as bad as the killing of muslims, and even forgivable. We've got to the point that there are people openly advocating beheadings and sharia laws on the streets across europe and people are pretending its somehow not a problem, and that its only a manifestation of an insignificant minority, in the most limp wristed and lazy manifestations of make-belief multiculturalism.

Forgive me for godwinning the thread for the 98290831th time, but the nazis used to be a casually accepted hateful minority once, too.

[Sheb]

I saw someone propose the use of "jihadists" to better distinguish relevant groups of interest from ordinary folks who get tarred with a far too broad brush by the use of "muslims" as some sort of remotely monolithic bloc of beliefs and behaviors.

Even jihadis is avoided by some to not grant those bastards the honors of being called jihadis. I've seen them reffered as takfiri (from the act of declaring takfr on someone, that is declare him an apostate that makes it a legitimate target: One of the main beef of hardcore wahabis vs. people like ISIS is that they shouldn't have the right to declare people apostates), or khawarij as an insult, from the name of a group in the first century of Islam that used takfr a lot and also seemed to believe that the only proper way to chose a Caliph was to go to war because God would favour the righteous side in battle.

[Playergamer]

can we stop with this "no one is saying this" bullshit. i mean maybe you guys weren't paying attention, but while the liberals were saying "sharia law isn't a thing in the US" the moderate muslims were saying "the white supremacists are saying sharia is bad, and it isn't." look at what linda sarsour said. i'm sure sharia isn't really as bad as alt-righters say, but it's pretty damn shitty, and people still defend it.

[misko27]

The West? Turning a blind eye? It tolerates it, at best, in some allies.

We've got to the point that there are people openly advocating beheadings and sharia laws on the streets across europe and people are pretending its somehow not a problem, and that its only a manifestation of an insignificant minority, in the most limp wristed and lazy manifestations of make-belief multiculturalism.

Even if that is true, can we please keep Europe out of this thread? I'm not going to litigate Europe's muslims in this thread. Europe and America can and will take different approaches for very good reasons; for example, the Middle East is adjacent to Europe, while it is oh so far from the US. "The West" is not a monolith, either politically, socially, or culturally. When you say "The West" and mean "A specific set of the American Left", there is a big freaking problem.

[EnigmaticHat]

we have several Christian sects here that blatantly ignore our laws.

We do? I mean in the "Clearly, in plain sight" not in the "Cult, secret illegalness behind closed doors" sort of way.

We do.

"Blatantly ignore our laws" is perhaps a harsh way of putting it.  But several sects essentially get away with being their own tiny autonomous government within America, or have been grandfathered in to ignore certain laws (such as being immune to the draft).  You know they only got away with that because they're Christian (see: what happened to the natives).

What i was pointing out with the Amish is like, imagine a world where instead of the Amish there was a non-Christian African religion that believed in exactly the same lifestyle, and they wanted to immigrate.  People would lose their shit.  What I said about Mormons was mainly a reference to polygamy, but there's a lot of small but significant differences between historical Mormon culture and the rest of America.

Edit: Also, this is getting into cult territory, but a lot of sects get away with murder because of the specific ways religious tax exemption is implemented.  Not small sects or secret ones either.  For example: televangelists that buy themselves private jets.  They aren't exactly mainstream but they certainly aren't a tiny cult with poison kool aid.