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You are here: Home / Open Threads / The United States Is Running Concentration Camps

The United States Is Running Concentration Camps

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This is OUR government, doing it in OUR name.

Is anyone organizing protests? I have to do something – I’ve already donated to some of the organizations that help refugees, but we must stop this.

If we don’t stop these camps and the policies that are leading to them, we are no better than the Germans who knew about their camps and ignored them.

Reader Interactions

119Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Whenever I see some pundit on TV saying something about “they like his policies, but not his personality”, especially when they’re talking about their totally non-racist trump-voting relatives (usually their parents) I want somebody to say: “So they like the fact that babies are being put in cages?”

    And the sad fact is, they do. “Those people” are getting what they asked for by coming here “illegally”. But I wish he would tweet less.

    ETA: I’m glad you front paged this. Maybe the fact that he’s sending people to Fort Sill will help get this back into the discussion, overcome the recency bias of the news cycle.
    )edited to take out effect of early morning twitter overload and half a cup of coffee

  2. 2.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    And the sad fact is, they do. “Those people” are getting what they asked for by coming here “illegally”. But I wish he would tweet less.

    That is simply not the entire truth. T admin is making life impossible for visitors, those on long term visas like students or workers, GC applicants, Applicants for citizenship, you name it.

  4. 4.

    Your Standards Are Slipping

    “Concentration camps” ?

    No, these people are no going to be worked in slave labor camps, and then gassed when they can no longer lift a shovel.

  6. 6.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Amir Khalid:

    Will these obscenities never cease?

    Hopefully at noon on January 20, 2021, but there’s going to be a massive mess to clean up – AGAIN!

  7. 7.

    rikyrah

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Whenever I see some pundit on TV saying something about “they like his policies, but not his personality”, especially when they’re talking about their totally non-racist trump-voting relatives (usually their parents) I want somebody to say: “So they like the fact that babies are being put in cages?”

    And the sad fact is, they do.

    You aren’t the only one. And, because they like the fact that babies are being put in cages…

    DON’T ASK ME TO UNDERSTAND THEM.

    WE HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON.

    THERE IS NO COMMON GROUND.

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @schrodingers_cat: That is simply not the entire truth.

    I meant that from the perspective the white, suburban trump voters who tell themselves, and sincerely believe, they don’t have a racist bone in their body, “but really we have to do something about this invasion at the southern border”.

  9. 9.

    rikyrah

    THANK YOU

    for FrontPaging this.

    Everytime I see a story about what’s happening down at the border, I just wanna scream. I get enraged. And, then, I have muthaphuckas trying to tell me that I’m supposed to understand muthaphuckas who think this is ok.

    NO. IT’S NOT OK.
    IT’S PHUCKING EVIL.
    And, I can call it PHUCKING EVIL without hesitation.

  11. 11.

    rikyrah

    That is simply not the entire truth. T admin is making life impossible for visitors, those on long term visas like students or workers, GC applicants, Applicants for citizenship, you name it.

    Keep on telling the truth

  14. 14.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @rikyrah:

    Everytime I see a story about what’s happening down at the border, I just wanna scream.

    Me too. We have to do something about it.

    I’ll ask again: Anyone know about protests being organized?

  15. 15.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah:Student visas have a year of practical training built into the visas. But you have to apply for that temporary employment authorization.
    It used to be a fairly routine matter. Now USCIS is taking 4 or more months to approve what used to be a one page form. Hence increasing the anxiety students feel and making them unattractive to companies seeking to hire them.

  16. 16.

    rikyrah

    You know, when this all started, there were those of us who brought up concentration camps. And, we definitely brought up the Japanese Internment Camps during WWII. But, you had folks, especially in the media, who poo-pooed us, and told us that we were exaggerating, and being melodramatic.

    UH HUH
    UH HUH

  21. 21.

    Lapassionara

    Seeking asylum in the US does NOT make a person illegal.

    This post is especially fitting because today would have been Anne Frank’s 90th birthday.

  23. 23.

    Amir Khalid

    @schrodingers_cat:
    My social media interactions are limited to using WhatsApp with my family. Would I have to report that? Would they believe me if I said I made to other regular use of social media, beyond looking up a tweet once in a while?

  24. 24.

    AM in NC

    And every story covering this should point out #1. the number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border has absolutely plummeted since GWB was in office, and if it wasn’t a crisis then, why is it a crisis now when the numbers are so much lower? #2. The issues with asylum seekers overwhelming our system is 100% due to the Trump/GOP policy not to process asylum seekers and let them live in the USA until their hearing-as has been done until now ( approximately 98% of asylum-seekers show up to their hearings – they don’t simply “disappear into the heartland” as rightwing liars would have us believe). Trump is locking up asylum seekers until their hearings – completely overwhelming a system that was not set up for that. This was not a crisis until Trump made it a crisis, and now we are caging children away from their parents and making permanent orphans of who knows how many kids. We are gross. We are deplorable. And it is WE, because this is being done by our government in our names.

  26. 26.

    BlueDWarrior

    This is what the 40 years of right-wing propaganda was supposed to do. Allow space for them to crash the system, and then when the riots start, they believe they’ll finally bleach the nation clean of ethnic and ideological impurities.

    I continue to believe that there are forces in the right, both domestic and international, that wants a cataclysmic war that’ll finally usher in thier ‘utopia’, and they hate, in some measure, the relative peace of the major nations post-Communist collapse.

    They want thier Purge, and by God (to them) they’re gonna get it.

    Don’t be surprised if the next plan is to revoke basic legal protections for acussed immigration violators for the sake of more efficient processing.

  27. 27.

    MattF

    It’s fortunate that recent Biblical research by the faithful has demonstrated that the whole ‘strangers in your midst’ thing is really just a little joke.

  29. 29.

    schrodingers_cat

    @AM in NC: T has made it a crisis with help from the media. Also we should not forget that child separation to deter asylum seekers was the idea of Gen Kelly hailed by the media as one of the adults in the room.

  30. 30.

    Bruce K

    Don’t tell me to understand people who approve of children being put into concentration camps. I understand them just fine. They’re evil.

    You don’t want me to understand them. You want me to normalize them. To approve of them.

    I can’t.

    (Not “you” as in the jackals here, more in general.)

  31. 31.

    currants

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    There’s one at 2 pm TODAY (and others this week, I gather) against the Homestead (FL) camp protest today (via American Friends Service Committee). See link for locations and info.
    ETA today’s is re: Homestead camp but I don’t know about the others

  32. 32.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    It’s a shanda, and a human rights violation. I’m sickened, having just watched And Then They Came for Us followed by a discussion from one of the lawyers who worked on pro bono team for the Fred Korematsu case in a federal district court on the basis of government misconduct, where his conviction was overturned. It’s a heartbreaking film.

    This administration’s conduct will be as great a stain on our history. We need to say “not today, motherfuckers” because we’re better than that collectively, even as many clearly are not.

  34. 34.

    The Moar You Know

    but we must stop this.

    The time for that was before election day 2016. Too late now.

    If we don’t stop these camps and the policies that are leading to them, we are no better than the Germans who knew about their camps and ignored them.

    I will never understand the mindset of Americans who think “we’re better than this”. From Andersonville to the WWII Japanese camps, we have always been a nation to round people up and put them in concentration camps. Pretty sure we invented them in the Civil War, if not earlier.

  37. 37.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @currants: Good. I intend to research some of the likely organizations. I just posted this without much research because I have been getting angrier and angrier about this the past week or so.

  40. 40.

    AM in NC

    @schrodingers_cat: Yes. Kelly should definitely be called out and shunned wherever he goes for purposely initiating this inhumane policy of child separation as a form of deterrence. It is just so horrifying that these kinds of people are (or have been) in positions of power. And I don’t know how to fight against the misinformation/disinformation that the rightwing puke funnel has been dispensing for decades now (Fox, Clear Channel radio; Sinclair broadcasting for local TV news; the Koch-funded think tanks and university centers and newspapers and magazines). They really have adopted Stalinist tools of totalitarianism – call all facts into question so as to establish the false notion that there is no knowable reality or truth, and then you can do anything you want and not have to worry about being called to account for it. I don’t know how bad it is going to have to get before we strip these people of their ill-gotten wealth and power, but I’m guessing climate change is going to force the issue sooner rather than later. And I’m not at all sure they won’t win.

  42. 42.

    mali muso

    @schrodingers_cat: Not to mention the fact that their drivers license expiration date is tied to the graduation date on their I-20 and so they can be stuck with an expired license while waiting for the OPT approval. Every step of the process is seemingly designed to make life difficult if not impossible.

  45. 45.

    mali muso

    @schrodingers_cat: In my experience, for students on an F-1 visa, drivers license expiration is tied to the date on their I-20, which is typically the “end of program” or graduation. Maybe it’s different from state to state, but I doubt it.

  48. 48.

    dmsilev

    @mali muso: Yep. Had that conversation with someone at work a couple of days ago. She’s going through the I20 dance now, and is worried that it won’t get processed before her driver’s license expires. There isn’t a vast amount we can do to help, but are doing what we can.

  50. 50.

    Tazj

    Not a march but there are installations(actual cages) being put up in NYC today to protest the horrible conditions migrant children are held under in this country. Of course the police are quickly dismantling them.

  51. 51.

    rikyrah

    A historian brought proof of family’s ancestors voting before Jim Crow to some of the Congressional Black Caucus:

    “That was the last member of John Lewis’s family to vote until the work that he did crossing that Edmund Pettus Bridge [in Selma, Ala.,] and all the work he did on voting rights,” said Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.), referring to the infamous “Bloody Sunday” civil rights protest in which marchers — including then-organizer Lewis — were beaten by police. Clark described the emotional scene in the caucus at Democrats’ weekly news conference after the meeting.

    Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) stood up and showed the room a scarf she wears almost every day: a lightweight piece of fabric imprinted with a blown-up picture of her own great-grandfather’s voting card. She had it created when she became the first black woman to be elected to Congress from Delaware.

  52. 52.

    schrodingers_cat

    @OzarkHillbilly: Will their opinion change when they find out the decimal system, and the idea of zero originated on the subcontinent and was brought to Europe by Arab traders. I think not. RWNJs in India are putting orange Pepes on their Twitter avatars. Morons.

  53. 53.

    tobie

    Casa Annunciación will have a march in El Paso on 22 June. I’m out of the country right now but would like to find out whether there will be protests in DC or NY when I return. It’s not lost on the world that the US is now a country that puts children in cages.

  55. 55.

    burnspbesq

    I’m surprised we haven’t heard about Trump reprogramming appropriated funds to reopen Manzanar. I guess that’s next.

    Shit.

  56. 56.

    Just Chuck

    @BlueDWarrior:

    Don’t be surprised if the next plan is to revoke basic legal protections for acussed immigration violators for the sake of more efficient processing.

    Already happening. They’re making 5-year-olds defend themselves in court.

  57. 57.

    FlipYrWhig

    IMHO “the border” is a trigger or stand-in for a whole host of conservative American fears and phobias in the 21st century, including not only the presence and visibility of more kinds of brown people than people were accustomed to seeing outside of The City but also terrorism and disease. I feel like the 2014 midterm elections were the precursor of a lot of the shit we’ve seen since, including EBOLA! and CARAVAN! and ISIS!

  60. 60.

    kindness

    The US has more ‘good little Germans’ here in the US now than I ever imagined. My WWII vet father is spinning in his grave.

  61. 61.

    Gin & Tonic

    @OzarkHillbilly: I thought this floated around the intertubes a month or so ago and was shown to be a joke or a hoax, but I’m too lazy to do the research.

  63. 63.

    schrodingers_cat

    Husband kitteh confirms that I-20 was not required for the issuance of driver’s license. In fact many states would let you use an international driving license that you had from another country.

    ETA: However you got a better deal on insurance if you had a US driver’s license.

  64. 64.

    rikyrah

    Trump Has Received Money from 22 Foreign Governments
    June 12, 2019

    Representatives of at least 22 foreign governments appear to have spent money at Trump Organization properties, an NBC News review has found, hinting at a significant foreign cash flow to the American president that critics say violates the U.S. Constitution.

    The extent and amount of foreign spending at Trump’s hotels, golf clubs and restaurants is not known, because the Trump Organization is a private company and declines to disclose that information.

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    As Jim said at #1, maybe the symbolic impact of the use of Fort Sill will get this outrage back into the headlines. The daily parade of outrageous behavior makes it difficult to focus on any one atrocity, which is part of the strategy, if there is one besides evil.

    The crises are often interrelated too. Climate change is driving up migration from Central America. The US had a program to help farmers in Guatemala deal with changing weather patterns, but the Trump idiots dismantled it, of course. The Trump morons also sabotaged a UN program to address rampant political corruption in Guatemala, which also contributes to the poverty and dysfunction in that country and drives emigration.

  68. 68.

    schrodingers_cat

    Oh and before coming a citizen I have held a driver’s license in four states but they were all blue. Never was I asked to produce immigration documents, only my passport and/or my old license.

  71. 71.

    MomSense

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I’m old enough to remember candidate Mitt Romney’s immigration proposal – which was let’s make life so terrible they self-deport. He was the fucking moderate according to the pundits. He also was perfectly happy to have birther trump endorse and fundraiser for him. Whenever Republicans want to pretend this is trumpism and not the mainstream of the Republican Party I like to remind them how horrible the audiences were at those GOP debates in 2012.

    I’m so sick of being told I need to be civil with these people or that I need to understand them. Fuck off with that BS. These are monsters. I do understand them perfectly well. I want nothing to do with them.

  72. 72.

    Amir Khalid

    @rikyrah:
    I suppose with Trump, anything in the US Constution or federal law that regulates presidential conduct is now a dead letter.

  73. 73.

    Jinchi

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I had a similar reaction even before he was elected, when people were writing off his offensive comments as campaign hyperbole and pretending that he would pivot and become presidential in office.

    Anyone who supported Trump in November 2016 was making a clear statement that bigotry, racism and sexual assault were not deal breakers. Saying they only supported him on taxes or judges or abortion doesn’t exonerate them on that point.

  74. 74.

    rikyrah

    @MomSense:

    I’m so sick of being told I need to be civil with these people or that I need to understand them. Fuck off with that BS. These are monsters. I do understand them perfectly well. I want nothing to do with them.

    CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP

  75. 75.

    rikyrah

    @Jinchi:

    Anyone who supported Trump in November 2016 was making a clear statement that bigotry, racism and sexual assault were not deal breakers. Saying they only supported him on taxes or judges or abortion doesn’t exonerate them on that point.

    As our Kay says…

    They showed THEIR lack of character through their vote for him.

  76. 76.

    montanareddog

    @schrodingers_cat:

    That distinction belongs to mummy, in the Boer war IIRC

    From the LA Times:

    The term “concentration camp” is itself a euphemism. It was invented by a Spanish official to paper over his relocation of millions of rural families into squalid garrison towns where they would starve during Cuba’s 1895 independence war.

  77. 77.

    schrodingers_cat

    @MomSense: And immigration reform that rolled back the family based sponsorship of permanent residency, which passed the Senate and had W’s blessing could not make it through the Republican held Congress in the mid aughts. They have been like this for a long long time.

  78. 78.

    mali muso

    @schrodingers_cat: Yeah, things have definitely changed. I think you can still drive on an international license (or get a reciprocal one) depending on what country it’s from, but I’m not sure if you can go for the full 4 years of study with that or if it’s temporary. In any case, there is definitely an issue with that gap of time after graduation and before OPT kicks in where even though the immigration regulations state that students have a 60 day grace period before they have to be in another status or leave, the DMV is not always on board with making that possible. Don’t get me started on the issues that international students face when trying to rent an apartment and being asked for a social security number…

  79. 79.

    Missouri Buckeye

    @Your Standards Are Slipping:
    The Nazis didn’t start with cyanide gas.

    They started by seizing Jewish children and putting them in Gentile homes, while publicly calling Jews animals.

    Don’t believe that “It Can’t Happen Here,”

  81. 81.

    MomSense

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Exactly. One of the dirty secrets is that undocumented workers are very good for the economies and Republican donors. So many of those pesky rules and regulations disappear when you pay undocumented workers to build your McMansions and other construction projects. Hell, you don’t even have to pay them. Those that do work on false papers know the timing exactly – it takes about six weeks for those employers to find out that social security number is being used by someone else. They could crack down pretty easily by going after employers but they don’t do that.

  82. 82.

    Aleta

    Four women were convicted in January of a misdemeanor, charged with leaving “disposables” in an Arizona nature refuge (they left canned food and water), and with entering the refuge w/o a permit. They’re in the same activist aid group No More Deaths that Scott Warren is in.

    In Warren’s case he was charged with a felony as well; they accused him of smuggling migrants because they observed him meeting with two people from Mexico. (He said his intent was only providing food and medical.)

    No More Deaths says that the felony charge was to punish or intimidate the group. And that his charges were brought after they released video to the press of agents dumping water out on the ground that had been left.

    The women’s names are Natalie Hoffman, Oona Holcomb, Madeline Huse and Zaachila Orozco-McCormick. I don’t know if they’ve been sentenced, but the length for that misdemeanor is up to six months in prison. There are some others from the No More Deaths group who have also been charged. I don’t know if they’ve been to trial yet.

  83. 83.

    Tazj

    @Jinchi: I couldn’t stand being out in public before the 2016 election, like at the dentist or at the grocery store, and hearing people complain about what a terrible election season it was. And it wasn’t people complaining about how horrible Trump was, but people bemoaning what a poor choice they were left with.

  85. 85.

    Immanentize

    @montanareddog:
    That the word “concentration” was used first in the Spanish/Cuba context is a bit beside the point, no?
    Andersonville (Georgia) and Douglas (Illinois) were certainly both “concentration camps” thirty plus years before the term was officially coined.

  86. 86.

    schrodingers_cat

    @montanareddog: I stand corrected, Mummy used concentration camps in the second Boer war of 1899-1902.
    ETA: Also many of the experiments Mengele did were tried out by Mummy in New Zealand on the Maoris.
    A lot of rationale of discrimination based on the relative superiority races used by Hitler came from Victorian intellectuals.
    That’s reason I found all the recent gushing about QEII wearing those blood rubies from Burma a tad nauseating. She may be better behaved than T but what she represents is pretty ghastly. A celebration of loot and plunder and humanitarian failures of an epic scale under the name of the British Empire.

  87. 87.

    Immanentize

    @Aleta:
    I wonder if any of them defended based on the fact that their firmly held religious beliefs required them to break those laws?

  88. 88.

    H.E.Wolf

    @PaulWartenberg:
    As a person who had relatives interned in the USA camps during WWII, I am struck by the assumption that a person of color would (of course) murder a white man.

    That was among the “reasons” behind the WWII USA camps: that white people would be at risk from their neighbors of Japanese ancestry.

    I’m not criticizing this commenter specifically. “Kill” and “murder” and their ilk, in the metaphors used in social discourse, are so prevalent as to become almost invisible. Their toxicity is real, nonetheless. We normalize such language at our peril.

  89. 89.

    Aleta

    @Immanentize: Yes, I believe the four women did defend themselves based on religious conviction and other beliefs (survival? giving aid? not sure).

  90. 90.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    There is an excellent TV Series on BBC1 at the moment called “Years and Years”, which is set in various years in the future. In last night’s episode, supposedly set in 2028 one of the characters, a political activist, was tracking down where “The disappeared” were going, and the term “erstwhile” kept coming up to describe them. Turns out the Government of Britain (under a manically crazy Emma Thompson) is putting them in Concentration Camps known as Erstwhile Camps (as they are in former army bases, former hospitals etc.). During basically an auction for various private companies to bid on running them she came into the room to explain the purpose of Concentration Camps. You throw all the “unwanted” populace into them and then let natural selection take them out with various epidemics of disease. One of the bidders at the “auction” explained to his employee that the whole purpose of their role was “bricks and mortar” property management and letting the inmates rot. Reading this stuff today it would appear that the Trump Administration is years ahead of schedule.

  94. 94.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    QEII wearing those blood rubies from Burma a tad nauseating. She may be better behaved than T but what she represents is pretty ghastly. A celebration of loot and plunder and humanitarian failures of an epic scale under the name of the British Empire.

    Back when Americans were gushing about Princess Di, I had the exact same thoughts. These British “royals” are not good people by birth. Their inheritance is one of blood and theft.

    Yet one of wife’s co-workers loved all Princess Di…

    While the modern princes seem to be good men, hard working when required, brave enough to volunteer for combat, still, their background is full of horror. I have no use for them, Trump with better manners and taste.

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    @schrodingers_cat: I’ve given to RAICES Texas in the recent past. They seem to be doing good work, as illustrated by their News page.

    I agree with everyone that Donnie’s minions aren’t going to stop doing stuff like this until the political price (protests, defeats in court, etc.) becomes too high. We have to keep fighting them.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    Kay

    I think I’m a (generally!) hopeful person and I can usually be rallied to try to change things, whatever, but sometimes the sheer nastiness of this country really does get to you.

    Mean-spirited. Ungenerous. Paranoid and defensive. Just so fucking nasty.

    How did we let it get this bad? Is there any possible way it can be fixed without some huge upheaval and a dramatic change not just in political leadership but in some kind of national character? I don’t think I anticipated this speedy a slide to the bottom, but I fear it wasn’t speedy, that is was a frog boiling situation and now it’s just too overt to ignore.

  98. 98.

    ruemara

    Never underestimate how little anyone will do in the face of pure evil. I hold out no hope for protest beyond sharing fucking memes.

  99. 99.

    schrodingers_cat

    @J R in WV: One of her crown jewels is the Kohinoor, which was a part of Shah Jahan’s peacock throne. Before the British, India was known for its riches, after the British were done with it, its known for its poverty. I will believe that the British are wonderful when they return at least some the stuff they have stolen from around the world for starters.
    ETA: The saintly QEII couldn’t bring herself to say sorry for Jallianwala Bagh. They are not sorry, they are proud.

    Seriously if Nazis had stuck to their genocidal ways outside of Europe none of the Allied powers would have had much trouble with them.

  104. 104.

    Betty Cracker

    @schrodingers_cat: I was responding to this specific comment:

    While the modern princes seem to be good men, hard working when required, brave enough to volunteer for combat, still, their background is full of horror. I have no use for them, Trump with better manners and taste.

    I’m no monarchist, obviously, but Prince Harry strikes me as a better man than Trump for millions of reasons, even if his ancestors were terrible. My ancestors were terrible too — they started participating in genocide against the Native American population in the 1600s and kept other human beings as property until the 1860s. I hope their evil behavior doesn’t mean I’m as bad as Trump!

  106. 106.

    Chris Johnson

    You look at Goya paintings, stuff like that… read about the Middle Ages… and you start to understand that this is not some collapse of civilization, this brutality we’re seeing more and more of.

    This is the norm. This is how it’s always been, back to the gladiators, probably back to the Cro-Magnons (does Neanderthal seem like a compliment to you?)

    And we are here to RESIST that, and we have always been there to resist that or there would have been no civilization.

    Think about how a Donald Trump would consider the Magna Carta (never mind American historical documents!) A hell of a lot of Western Civilization is based on checking the brutality of a king. Saying, stop that. We know you can do this and have the power. You’re not supposed to do it, we have empathy and our consciences are shocked by your use of power, we’re gonna take that power away from you. These ‘consciences’ are as much a part of humanity as the brutality is. The human animal is a social animal and that is how it is expressed. ‘consciences’ saying, these are people, they too are my kindred.

    We can sink to brutal domination, destroying everything that isn’t ‘us’ for a shrinking definition of ‘us’, and we can also widen that view until peasants count as human, until black people count as an entire human, until migrants count as human. As ‘us’. It is just as much a part of humanity to extend that empathy, like the lines on the Statue of Liberty.

    When we do, we are collectively stronger… and it becomes tougher to feel that kinship of ‘us’. We’re trading off a very primitive tribal need for a power of civilization, a power that can bring us wonderful things. Then we turn around, and the cages and fences built by that more enlightened, industrial culture, get used to tribalize again.

    This has always been the war and we are doing BETTER than we have done in the middle ages, in ancient times, in Cro-Magnon times. We are sustaining a civilization that maintains a broader ‘us’, a broader humanity, than anyone has ever done before (if nothing else, then in sheer numbers, which matter)

    It’s not supposed to be effortless. Never has been. Keep your eye on the prize.

  107. 107.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Betty Cracker: No both you and Prince Harry are better than T. I found the gushing about the ruby tiara from Burma kinda gross, especially since how Myanmar has ended up after the “benign” British rule.
    Supposedly, a gift from the people of Burma. That is as much a gift as all those countries spending money at T’s properties.

  108. 108.

    TenguPhule

    If we don’t stop these camps and the policies that are leading to them, we are no better than the Germans who knew about their camps and ignored them.

    I believe the current “strategy” is to wait till Trump is out of office in order to lose in court when the Supreme Court votes 5 to 4 that the old precedent stands and it is COMPLETEY LEGAL to hold innocent people in concentration camps.

  111. 111.

    TenguPhule

    @BlueDWarrior:

    Don’t be surprised if the next plan is to revoke basic legal protections for acussed immigration violators

    Too late. That already happened 2 years ago.

  112. 112.

    Suzy Fay

    Hi, Cheryl–thanks for your post. Here’s are some protest activities across the country sponsored by Shut Down Homestead Detention Center running from June 9-16. Still quite a few from June 13-16.

  113. 113.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @The Moar You Know: Bullshit on your argument that it is too late.

    And as far as the claim that we are better than this, it is an appeal to people’s consciences. We as a group see ourselves as better than this. Our actions contradict that view. It leaves two choices to a honest person. First, adjust behavior to match self-image or admit that you are okay with people doing monstrous things in your name.

  115. 115.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @J R in WV:

    While the modern princes seem to be good men, hard working when required, brave enough to volunteer for combat, still, their background is full of horror. I have no use for them, Trump with better manners and taste.

    NO! Seriously. “Brought up like Trump”? Sure, cool. With the same protected, privileged upbringing of a Trump, obviating the need for developing a conscience? Sure! But “Trump”?

    I mean, first, his lack of manners and class are not just bad habits – they’re part and parcel of the man he’s chosen to be. Moreover, Trump is a career criminal, who made lots of money stealing from contractors legally (in both senses of the word – using the courts to make the theft appear like a business dispute); is likely laundering money; is soliciting bribes more-or-less openly, possibly spying for Russia and multiple other foreign countries (and if not, we know he’s the kind of dolt who can let the cat out of the bag *and* provide confirmation, without meaning to) , and openly bigoted. And he’s throwing massive numbers of people into concentration camps because he thinks the suffering of people doesn’t matter, if it helps him maintain power and win reelection.

    Mark my words, someday, unless the GOP puts up someone worse (and we now know they could – because they Just Don’t CARE so long as he’s got an R after his name), someday “Trump” will be on a par with “Hitler” as an insult – something you just don’t *say* about a person. (I’m not equating Trump’s villainy with Hitler’s – I’m only equating the level of contempt one must feel to compare another person to either.)

  116. 116.

    pluky

    @Your Standards Are Slipping:
    “The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: “A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment#Defining_internship_and_%22concentration_camp%22

    “Work Camps” and “Death Camps” are subsets thereof.

  118. 118.

    Mary Ellen Sandahl

    @OzarkHillbilly: I bet very few of the “No” respondents had ever heard the common numerals referred to as Arabic. I don’t think I ever heard them called that in school – maybe high school, but I live in coastal elite country – but only from my own reading, to distinguish them from Roman numerals.

  119. 119.

    Bonnie

    To Cheryl Rofer: Do you have any concrete ideas on how to do the protests? I would like to know. I live in Tacoma, WA and am a bit old and feeble; but, I am up for doing protest about the migrant children. Very serious.

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