Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Accountability, motherfuckers.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Daesh Is Not The Biggest Threat

Daesh Is Not The Biggest Threat

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Yesterday I said the next thing you know, they’d be recommending internment camps. I WAS FUCKING JOKING to make a point to some hateful people.

I should have known better:

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Earlier today, the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, Mr. David A. Bowers, in the attached letter, joined several state governors in ordering that Syrian refugees not receive any government assistance, or be relocated to their jurisdiction. Apart from the lack of legal authority to do so (under the Refugee Act of 1980, only the President has authority to accept or deny refugees), his resort to fear-based tactics, and his galling lack of compassion for people fleeing these same terrorists, Mayor Bowers made the following startling statement:

“I’m reminded that Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”

Mayor Bowers, there are a few key points of history you seem to have missed:

1) The internment (not a “sequester”) was not of Japanese “foreign nationals,” but of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. I was one of them, and my family and I spent 4 years in prison camps because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It is my life’s mission to never let such a thing happen again in America.

2) There never was any proven incident of espionage or sabotage from the suspected “enemies” then, just as there has been no act of terrorism from any of the 1,854 Syrian refugees the U.S. already has accepted. We were judged based on who we looked like, and that is about as un-American as it gets.

3) If you are attempting to compare the actual threat of harm from the 120,000 of us who were interned then to the Syrian situation now, the simple answer is this: There was no threat. We loved America. We were decent, honest, hard-working folks. Tens of thousands of lives were ruined, over nothing.

Mayor Bowers, one of the reasons I am telling our story on Broadway eight times a week in Allegiance is because of people like you. You who hold a position of authority and power, but you demonstrably have failed to learn the most basic of American civics or history lessons. So Mayor Bowers, I am officially inviting you to come see our show, as my personal guest. Perhaps you, too, will come away with more compassion and understanding.

— George Takei

 

Someone please tell me this is fake…or a mistake…or that I stumbled into an alternate universe. Because I’m having difficulty accepting that this is still end of 2015 in America. 

Reader Interactions

117Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    , I am officially inviting you to come see our show, as my personal guest. Perhaps you, too, will come away with more compassion and understanding.

    Well, now I wish I were more racist. I’d love to go see a show with Takei.

  2. 2.

    ThresherK

    I’d love to see the National Guard assigned to forcibly protect Syrian refugees who transition to Richmond. Simply to rub Richmond’s nose in it. Although there is a lot of competition for the honor.

    Has anyone repurposed the Norman Rockwell painting yet?

  3. 3.

    Trentrunner

    Love how George gets a plug in for his show. Always be closing!

    About to watch Chris Matthews freaking out, wondering why Syrian refugee men aren’t staying home to defend their country.

    Like Brave Sir Chris did during Vietnam, of course.

  5. 5.

    jl

    IIRC, it was known in the FDR administration that most of the support for Japanese internment in California was about grabbing their land. But the refugees don’t have anything, so I doubt they are serious. No pay out.

    Anyway, they should contact Jerry Brown, California is taking refugees, and we already have a lot from Syria and Iraq. Though I think most of the Iraqis are Assyrian Christians. But, we are doomed anyway, and some more won’t make any difference.

  7. 7.

    scav

    Will all the brave brave governors be unilaterally calling out their national guardsmen to break into peoples houses and reassure them that there are no monsters under their beds or in their closets?

  9. 9.

    beltane

    This is America, the America that has been and maybe the America that will always be. I wonder what would have happened if the US was subjected to blitzkrieg warfare the same way Great Britain was. We have no tradition of “Keep calm and carry on” here.

  10. 10.

    beltane

    @A guy: It’s a shame your parents provided you with an inferior education. You may be proud of this but it’s really nothing to brag about.

  11. 11.

    scav

    @beltane: Presumably his parents did their very very best. Doesn’t reflect well on their inherent quality if that’s all they could manage, but they worked with what they had. Nature and Nurture can only go so far.

  12. 12.

    beltane

    The wingnuts have a long list of people they would like to dispose of in camps. Otherwise they don’t feel safe emerging from their basement arsenals.

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Saw the Mayor’s letter on FB a short while ago, and was hoping (no, knowing) that George Takei would have something powerful to say about it. He didn’t disappoint.

  16. 16.

    A guy

    Global warming is irreversible so I say let all the Muslims in. We will all be dead from rising oceans in a couple years

  17. 17.

    Iowa Old Lady

    Our political leaders have descended into such absurdity that I keep thinking I’ll wake up and things will be different. Trump, Carson, Fiorina, actually every R candidate–that was bad enough. Now keep out the threatening toddlers, put them in camps, “we’re letting in hundreds of thousands and there’s no paper trail!” Honest to god, what log have these people crawled out from under? Surely they sound as preposterous to a lot of other people too? But how many?

  18. 18.

    Yutsano

    @jl:

    IIRC, it was known in the FDR administration that most of the support for Japanese internment in California was about grabbing their land.

    Have you seen the black line memorial in Little Tokyo in LA? It’s an amazing piece of art work and it’s so amazingly powerful, especially since it documents the land grabs that happened right there in that block. You can see the thriving Japanese businesses that are completely destroyed by the interment camps. It also records the white businesses that took over. The somewhat good news is it’s in a section of LA that is doing fairly well right now. I highly recommend Little Tokyo in general but especially that part.

    @A guy: So much fail, so little time.

  20. 20.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Trentrunner:

    Well, the show is currently running and is specifically about the internment of Japanese-Americans, so it would be kind of weird for Takei not to mention it.

    Unfortunately for Takei, he probably knows he’s going to get run over by the “Hamilton” juggernaut at next year’s Tonys, so he’s gotta get as many butts in the seats as he can.

  22. 22.

    Cervantes

    @A guy:

    Well at least if we let the Muslims in we won’t have to deal with women drivers.

    I can’t wait to see how you explain Cairo’s all-day traffic jams …

  24. 24.

    jl

    @Yutsano: It was pretty naked land grab. I knew oldster white teabagger types, some in my own family, who sound like bleeding heart lefties complaining about what happened in the Central Valley. I guess they perceived their Japanese farmer neighbors as friends and not threatening ‘other people’, so their usual tendencies didn’t apply.

    Edit: and I’ll look for the memorial next time I am there.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    @Yutsano:

    I highly recommend Little Tokyo in general but especially that part.

    And the “Go For Broke” monument makes a nice contrast. I am constantly amazed at the way minorities in this country have stood up and helped out rather than telling whites to get bent.

  27. 27.

    Schlemazel

    George is a limitless well of optimism if he thinks this asshole is capable of gaining understanding or compassion.

  29. 29.

    Patricia Kayden

    @A guy: The Native Americans should have kept racist idiots like you out of this country. I don’t get why you get to spew your racism on this website though. Why don’t you go to Stormfront where you’d be welcomed with open arms?

  30. 30.

    Patricia Kayden

    @beltane: Yet Rightwingers are forever claiming that President Obama has FEMA camps set up and designed to put away his political opponents.

    One thing I’ll give to Rightwingers, they’re great at projection. And bigotry.

  31. 31.

    jl

    @Bobby Thomson: Drum column is sad concern trolling. Not helping with refugees is a national security threat since there are over a million of them in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon each. So, we are gong to take them or send those country a effton of money. Or maybe would be ‘tougher; to tell Jordan and Lebanon to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and deal with it, while they do whatever we want them to on our grand ME Crusade?

    TPM blog has provisions of the GOP House fix for refugee screening, and looks like BS to me. Want some pointless paper pushing and getting a list of government people to be scapegoats if they can gin up a scandal.

    Here’s The Screening Process For Refugees And The Changes GOPers Want
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/refugee-screening-process-gop-demands

    Edit: and IIRC, the US is taking the refugees from Jordan and Lebanon, not people streaming through Europe. So we are taking people who have been rotting in refugee camps for several years, doubtful any ISIL/Daesh plants there. The cowardice, idiocy of the reactionaries, and cynicism of the GOP presidential contestants, is beyond belief.

  32. 32.

    Archon

    My cousin, an African-American Christian (who is smart but given to hyperbole and narrow-mindedness like a lot of Evangelicals) thinks there is a good chance this all ends with Muslims in internment camps. He’s not morally opposed to that either, “if necessary”. I didn’t give him the 50 reasons why that was wrong all I told him was that any crazy domestic enemies list conjured up by Americans in future fascist America will eventually have “blacks” on it. Even now the incarceration rate of black America is only matched by Stalin’s gulags in the 20’s and most conservatives still think this country is too easy on black folks and that “black lives matter”, the group raising awareness on the murder of unarmed black people by police is a subversive hate organization causing the breakdown of law and order in America.

    So any black person in America not vociferously, even violently opposed to fascist solutions like mass deportation of illegals or the violation of civil rights for Muslims for “security reasons” is complicit in their own demise when they eventually “come for us”.

  33. 33.

    Corner Stone

    One of the smartest, most interesting and flat out 100% capable in just about any situation people I have ever worked with is from Syria. I’d take 1000 of that guy before one asshole Mayor of Roanoke or some dipshit from AZ like Sen. Jeff Flake.

  34. 34.

    HumboldtBlue

    @jl:

    Kate Brown in Oregon is on board as well but the fear mongering and the hatred and the ignorance will reign until something breaks on the right side of the aisle.

    These are for that fuckwit Mayor Bowers and for Cruz and for Huckabee and Trump and FOX News and the small time small-minded provincial fuckwits that dominate the political landscpae in this country. God motherfucking bless America.

    (That last photo is a picture of some of the men who served in this nation’s most highly decorated combat unit)

  35. 35.

    Patricia Kayden

    @lamh36: I’m disappointed that a Democratic politician would write a letter like that. Shame!

    @Archon: I’m glad you pointed out that somehow Black folks would end up as part of the rabble to be thrown into internment camps. Conservatives have made it pretty plain how they feel about Black people. They’d find a way to other-ize us enough to justify our internment. Hell, we all know what they’d do to the Black man in the White House if they could get away with it.

  37. 37.

    jl

    @Patricia Kayden: As soon as they finish abusing refugees, they will suddenly notice that, OMG!! hoocoodanode!, that most of the terrorists were European born, long term residents, not refugees.

    So, find an excuse to go after native born, citizen and long term resident Muslims, and then Nation of Islam. Round ’em all up.

  40. 40.

    Thoughtful Today

    You should have opened with George Takei’s name on top of his response … because it just sounds cooler reading it in his voice.

    “OH MY!”

  41. 41.

    Corner Stone

    @Cervantes: Point being, our scaredy cat BS reaction is infuriating. We’re turning tens of thousands of that guy away along with all the other people who simply need our help and compassion.

  44. 44.

    Patricia Kayden

    @jl: I wasn’t even thinking about the Nation of Islam but you’re correct to bring them up. Black and Muslim — two in one shot. They’d be in the internment camps pronto.

  45. 45.

    mclaren

    Because I’m having difficulty accepting that this is still the end of 2015 in America.

    There, fixed that for ya.

  47. 47.

    Poopyman

    Anyone who has been to Roanoke long enough to interact with the locals will know that this guy is pretty representative of Southern Virginia. The folks I know from that area got the hell out,to their all-around betterment.

    And bless George Takei! The guy’s earned a quiet retirement, but he’s still fighting the fight (although I get the feeling he rather enjoys it).

  49. 49.

    M. Bouffant

    @Trentrunner: Gawd-a-mighty, he was on about that yesterday or the day before. He just has no fucking idea at all.

    (Although it’s not as if going to Vietnam had anything to do w/ “defending” these United Snakes.)

  50. 50.

    singfoom

    I thought this was the home of the brave, not home of the bedwetters. Fucking morons. Don’t do what your enemy wants you to do. It’s called terrorism for a reason. Obama called them out correctly on this score.

    I’d like to think that all the fearmongers pushing this horseshit would pay some kind of price and have to retire from public life, but as I saw in 2003 and afterwards, that never actually happens. I need to get a shirt printed that says “Keep Calm and stop wetting the bed over imaginary terrorists”

  53. 53.

    bemused

    @Patricia Kayden:

    The Fema camp truthers have been around for a long time…through the presidencies of Bush and Clinton. I don’t know who they blamed when Bush was president.

  55. 55.

    Mike in NC

    Lived in Virginia for 20 years but never had a reason to go to Roanoke. Obviously missed nothing.

  57. 57.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Poopyman:

    I’ve followed Takei on Facebook for a few years now. His posts are a riotous mix of cat videos, smutty jokes, click bait listicles from Bored Panda and similar sites, out-and-proud rainbow posts, lots of Allegiance promotion, and a surprising number of serious, well-considered political posts. On occasion, though, he will post something that turns out to be offensive, or is simply thoughtless. The nice thing is, the minute his readers call him on anything that’s beyond the pale, he will issue a sincere and full apology. No weasel words, no “sorry if you were offended” shit. It’s one of the things I like best about him.

  60. 60.

    Trentrunner

    So so so so so so so so VERY glad Andrew Sullivan is not blogging anymore.

    I don’t think I could take being dubbed a fifth columner again.

  63. 63.

    Archon

    @bemused:

    He is naïve enough to think that his sincere Christian beliefs, his patriotism, and the fact our family has been in this country for 9 generations will spare him from the wrath of white America if they ever went crazy.

    Like I said, naïve.

  64. 64.

    lamh36

    @jl: I was just thinking what’s to stop these bigots from targeting NOI?

    Also too, the type of folk who want to do this, also will almost certainly believe that any “proof” folks provide could be fake…and then on and on…smh

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    I would just like to repeat for this thread that it’s fucking embarrassing that, even after the events of last week, France is going to accept 300,000 refugees, and we’re too fucking cowardly to take the measly 10,000 we previously agreed to? Are you fucking kidding me?

  66. 66.

    Matt McIrvin

    or that I stumbled into an alternate universe.

    You stumbled into Roanoke, Virginia. Same difference.

  70. 70.

    Gvg

    We need massive comedy attacks till they shut up. Make fun of them loudly and often. Whatever the good comics come up with, clip and send to every friend or relative who shows any support for this stupidity.
    I am so mad I could spit.

  73. 73.

    Poopyman

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Well, I’d like to point out that many so-called “leaders” in this country have outed themselves as cowards, but it’s still possible that there are about 300 million of us going “da fuk??” that the media is ignoring.

    Now of course there aren’t 300 million of that mindset if you assume (as I do) that Romney’s famous 47% rule still applies. Still, my Facebook feed is telling me that my wingnutty relatives are mostly subscribing to “da fuk??” rather than agreeing with those idiots, so I’m encouraged to believe the whack-a-refugee mindset is not as widespread a sentiment as we fear.

  75. 75.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    I remember your posting about that at the time. I do want to have a meal there at some point during my travels, but haven’t got around to it yet.

  76. 76.

    Boudica

    If/When Democrats talked about Bush the way repubs are talking about Obama, cries of unAmericanism rang out. If we are at war with daesh where is the support for our commander-in-chief? God, these people are horrible.

  77. 77.

    Poopyman

    Meanwhile, DWS is in my Inbox telling me she wants me to be a card-carrying Democrat.

    Sorry Deb, I’m just not that into you, nor the usual candidates you throw my money at.

  80. 80.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW:

    Absolutely! (And wouldn’t the POTUS be awesome as Cedric?)

    I really do think the only way, or at least the best way, to deal with these cretins is to make fun of them. Trolling as it should be done.

    Edit: What gvg said at #70.

  86. 86.

    Cacti

    I’m glad that (so far) a certain Democratic front runner hasn’t taken the opportunity to get in touch with her inner triangulating coward.

    Keeping my fingers crossed.

  87. 87.

    Tim C.

    Please Please please can this *redacted* be one of those Democrats who switches parties and makes a big huff about the him not leaving the party, but the party leaving him? Because really, we have our share of a-holes, but this kind of ignorance and hate needs to be GOP territory only.

  90. 90.

    Keith G

    @Corner Stone:

    Why is Chris Hayes in France? Why?

    Better wine, better cheese, better cigarettes, and hairier women. What’s there for a straight man not to like?

    Although, this is not my area of expertise.

  91. 91.

    Corner Stone

    @Keith G:

    Better wine, better cheese, better cigarettes, and hairier women. What’s there for a straight man not to like?

    You were right in the wheelhouse for a bit there.

  93. 93.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    (Trying again, with mo bettah formatting tags.)

    I don’t think Obama would be the least little bit interested in insulting Cruz to his pasty white face. But Cruz gets to call out the challenge, and then when Obama ignores him, he’ll say “See? See?? He’s a-skeered of me!! Nya-nya!!”

    Typical cowardly schoolyard bully.

  96. 96.

    srv

    By the middle of September, fewer than 3,000 Marielitos remained at Fort Chaffee. On September 20, the federal government announced plans to consolidate unprocessed refugees at Fort Chaffee to spare them the cold winters of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The American government transferred 643 Marielitos from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to Fort Chaffee and began moving what would total 3,236 refugees from Camp McCoy in Wisconsin. By October 10, 1980, Marielitos had also been moved from Pennsylvania to Arkansas, raising the Cuban population of Fort Chaffee to over 8,300.

    That month, a political commercial for Frank White, Republican candidate for governor of Arkansas, suggested that Governor Clinton had failed to protect the citizens of Arkansas from having dangerous Cubans in the state; the TV commercial included footage of the 1,000 Marielitos leaving Fort Chaffee on May 29. Though it is impossible to measure all the factors that determine the outcome of an election, Clinton is among those who felt that the association of the Cuban refugee problem with Clinton’s term as governor led to White’s victory.

    On January 4, 1981, 5,893 Marielitos remained at Fort Chaffee; the last twenty-three Cubans left the fort on February 4, 1982. Records report that 25,390 Cubans had been housed at the fort after arriving in Florida.

    Hillary should know better.

  97. 97.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Corner Stone:

    As far as I can tell, the entirety of every US news organization is in France this week. NPR (NPR!!) has made quite a big fucking deal of their presence there. I guess the good part of that is that it cuts down a bit on Eleanor Beardley’s airtime.

  99. 99.

    Bitter Scribe

    For Bowers and people like him who think “sequestering” Japanese Americans during World War II was such a great idea:

    Why wasn’t it done in Hawaii? That state had a far greater proportion of people of Japanese descent than California, it was far closer to Japan, and it had actually been attacked.

    Answer: Because the people of Japanese and other Asian descent in Hawaii would never have stood for it, and they had the numbers to back that up. Amazing how the “threat of harm” dissipates when the (bigoted) politics aren’t there.

  103. 103.

    Cervantes

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    This is probably unfair (to someone), but Cruz quite often reminds me of Major Frank Burns.

    Larry Linville, who was a classically trained actor, once said his Burns was a composite of “every idiot I’ve ever known.”

  104. 104.

    Thoughtful Today

    Why is Chris Hayes in France? Why?

    I’ll play!

    1) Free tickets and lodging.

    2) An expense account.

    3) Historical political winds.

  106. 106.

    rikyrah

    @Archon:

    So any black person in America not vociferously, even violently opposed to fascist solutions like mass deportation of illegals or the violation of civil rights for Muslims for “security reasons” is complicit in their own demise when they eventually “come for us”.

    tell that truth.

  109. 109.

    benw

    I see that this thread is allllllmost dead, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t tell David A. Bowers to go fuck himself. Go fuck yourself, David A. Bowers!

  111. 111.

    Matt McIrvin

    Michelle Malkin defended the internment several years back, and for a while saying it wasn’t so bad was a thing among right-wing bloggers. It was their favorite act of Franklin Roosevelt.

  113. 113.

    catclub

    @Roger Moore: I think the poem by Emma Lazarus should be removed from the Statue of Liberty if this crap keeps up.

    replace it with: “offer void due to cowardice.”

  116. 116.

    AxelFoley

    @Mike in NC:

    Lived in Virginia for 20 years but never had a reason to go to Roanoke. Obviously missed nothing.

    Same here. Never been to the western part of the state in all my 20+ years of living here. I see no reason to change that.

  117. 117.

    Shantanu Saha

    If we had one Takei for every Bowers, I would not be worried for America. Sadly, we have too many of the latter, and not enough of the former, especially in positions of power.

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