Ilhan Omar: AOC said something stupid about Concentration Camps? Hold my Non-Alcoholic Beer.
It is a camp, they are concentrated. CONCENTRATION CAMPS!
If video was not available, I would have sworn it was a Babylon Bee post.
So that is why Joe Biden did not have a lot of people in his latest rally. He did not want to give the appearance of running a concentration camp.
This is what happens when Tribalism is the main tool for casting a vote. And yes, I mean tribalism as in African Tribalism.
On Faith.
Dear J. Kb.
Your faith cannot be destroyed. Faith is something personal, internal and held by your soul. Strangers waiving the flag of the same religion can come do and say things that makes you doubtful, but in the en they really do not have control over what is in your soul unless you let them.
I am a Catholic. If you want to talk about people having issues with faith, come and see us for examples. We have had some great Popes like John Paul II and a really shitty one sitting right now in the Vatican. We had sordid scandals and yet we are still here and a faith because we know we are the Church, not an edifice, not some guy in robes. Our faith is The Holy Church.
In Mathew 16:18, Jesus tells Peter:
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Even for somebody as dense as me when I was a kid trying to stay awake during catechism classes, I understood that Jesus was not speaking literally but founding what’s to come on man, not temples, not organization but the individual and his faith. I found a similar passage from the Torah online:
יִשְׂמַח יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּעוֹשָׂיו פֵּירוּש שֶׁכָּל מִי שֶׁהוּא מִזֶרַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יֵשׁ לוֹ לִשְׂמוֹחַ בְּשִׂמְחַת ה’ אַשֶׁר שָׂשׂ וְשָׂמֵחַ בְּדִירָתוֹ בְּתַּחְתּוֹנִים
“The Jews should rejoice in their Maker. Every Jew should share in G‑d’s joy, who rejoices and is happy in His dwelling in this world.” [Tanya Ch. 33]
Every Jew, no matter what sort of background or learning he has had until now, even until a minute ago, so long as he is a Jew, is a member of the Jewish people; and he should be happy and proud that Hashem has given him the special and greatest mission he could have — to make himself, make his home and make the world around him, a place where G‑d is at home.
And to close with a venial sin: F*** that asshole rabbi. You are the Faith.
PS: I had much stronger words, but I figure this required a delicate touch. That means my Delicate Tank is empty and doe not get refilled till next year.
There is one moral question that needs to be asked on the “are immigrant detention centers concentration camps” question, and everyone is ignoring it
An article from Hey Alma was recommended for review.
I read it. It missed the point by a Kentucky mile, written by another Jew with a moral compass that can’t find north.
AOC SAID THERE ARE CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN THE U.S. IS SHE RIGHT?
I’m going to skip past the Tweets for evidence and just bullet point the list.
ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF THE COMPARISON:
1. The historical argument
Let’s just look at history: Before there were ever death camps (where Jews were murdered), there were concentration camps. As Holocaust and genocide studies historian Waitman Wade Beorn told Esquire, “Concentration camps in general have always been designed — at the most basic level — to separate one group of people from another group.” Concentration camps are also part of American history — Japanese Americans were relocated and detained in them during World War II.
2. Semantics are B.S.
As many people have pointed out, this argument over semantics has significantly derailed the real conversation we should be happening about these horrific policies.
3. Let’s focus on the actual issue.
Speaking of semantics, if you’re more offended by a term used to describe a policy than the policy itself, it may be time to rethink your priorities. A pretty straightforward argument.
4. People are dying.
Just read any coverage of migrant children dying in Border Patrol custody. At this point, anyone trying to defend the policy is deeply misguided.
5. The Nazis didn’t invent concentration camps.
The English term “concentration camp” was first used to refer to camps set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years War in 1868. While many people now largely associate the term with Nazi concentration camps, this argument holds that you can compare what’s happening to concentration camps without referencing the Holocaust at all.
6. What’s happening is the literal definition of a concentration camp.
7. The Holocaust was evil, but not uniquely evil.
8. “Never Again is now.”
This is something that’s been floating around a lot — it basically means that “Never Again,” the phrase many Jewish communities echo when talking about the Holocaust, needs to be taken into consideration right now. We need to act now to prevent genocide from happening again in the future.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST USING THE COMPARISON:
1. By comparing this to the Holocaust, it lets the Trump Administration off the hook.
2. Invoking the Holocaust distracts from the real problem.
This is similar to the above argument — instead of focusing on the current horror, we’re getting caught up in a semantics debate. By not using the Holocaust/concentration camps, this problem is avoided.
3. The Holocaust was unique.
4. It’s a stretch, but we should still be outraged.
As this argument goes, what’s happening today is very much worthy of your outrage, but it’s simply not at concentration levels yet.
5. These kind of centers have existed for a while, including under Democratic presidents.
6. If you really think they’re concentration camps, do something.
This article is total and complete dog shit that missed the fucking point.
At this point, I believe that I have gotten too wrapped up in the semantic argument.
Here is the fucking point:
The Holocaust. The Armenian Genocide. Soviet Gulags. The killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. The Boer concentration camps of Colonial Africa.
I’ll throw in the Rwandan genocide, the Trail of Tears, and the Soviet Holodomor as well.
All of these events have something in common.
All of them centered around the deliberate and systematic, rounding up, imprisonment, torture, and mass slaughter of minority groups of people because of their ethnicity, religion, tribal affiliation, or political opinion.
The purpose was singular: collective punishment. To eliminate a minority group through extermination or total subjugation.
The internment of the Japanese by the US (and Canada) during WWII fit most of that mold but stopped before torture and extermination.
So when it comes to immigrant detention centers on our southern borders, here is (are) the question(s) that must be asked. This is the determination of where your moral compass points.
Do you believe that the immigrant detainment centers on our border fit the mold of previous genocides?
Do you believe that Border Patrol and INS are engaged in the systematic rounding up, imprisonment, torture, and potentially mass slaughter of immigrants from Central and South America because of their skin color, race, ethnicity, or national origin, and then the purpose of these camps is the collective punishment of Hispanic/Latino people?
Intention matters. Full consent of the will is one of the differences between a venial sin and a mortal sin. Is the intention of the detention camps to be the collective punishment and torture of minority people who come across our southern border?
If the answer to that question is “yes” then it is your assumption is that any and all supporters of any sort of law enforcement on our southern border are tantamount to Nazis.
At that point, the conversation is over. You have assumed that people on the other side of the aisle from you are all the worst sorts of human beings.
You have assumed that the poor conditions that these people experience is the result of racist maliciousness and not resource constraints.
This is why I find this question so offensive and this debate so hateful. It accuses the men and women of America’s Federal law enforcement and the people who support them of being morally equivalent to Nazis.
The reality is every month, there are more than 100,000 people crossing our southern border. Most speak no English. They have no money and no job skills. Many have communicable diseases that have been eradicated in the United States. How do these people integrate into the United States and not end up homeless on American streets? How much financial responsibility do American taxpayers and tax-funded social welfare programs have to take care of these people? What is the upper limit of new people we can put onto these programs before they collapse? Should there be a process to vet the people crossing our border to determine which ones are truly deserving of asylum and which ones are not?
The “detention centers are concentration camps” position allows the person making that argument to wave away all of those concerns as just evil, racist, white supremacists, Naziesque talking points because moral people do not support concentration camps. The only moral option is to set every single one of those people free.
I believe that making the assumption that American Federal law enforcement and the people who support border security are as evil as Nazis is the sign of a broken moral compass. It is wrong to assume the absolute worst of other people without evidence.
Congresswoman did this in her video when she said to the effect of “if you don’t agree with me that these are concentration camps you are a bad person and not worth talking to.”
This debate is a microcosm of the position we have seen Social Justice take on America as a whole.
Do you believe that America is an inherently racist nation, filled with irredeemably racist people, that engages in the systematic oppression of every non-white group all the time and everywhere?
Or…
Do you believe that America is a nation founded on good valued, that is inhabited by imperfect people and occasionally makes mistakes, and while there is always room for improvement, it is fundamentally a good place?
I have the feeling that most of the “detention centers are concentration camps” crowd believes in the former.
I believe in the latter.
Could the conditions for these people be better? Yes, of course. That requires funding and resource allocations. That is a discussion to be had.
To have that discussion, the first step is to stop calling detention centers are concentration camps and by extension presuming that every single person who supports any form of border enforcement is evil and a Nazi.
I’m tempted to run
From Fox News:
Scandal-scarred Roy Moore announces new Senate bid, despite GOP protests
Roy Moore, the scandal-scarred Republican who lost a 2017 bid for the U.S. Senate in Alabama, announced Thursday he will run again for Senate next year, despite President Trump and other conservatives in Washington insisting he can’t win.
“Yes, I will run for the United States Senate in 2020,” Moore said during a defiant announcement in Montgomery, after railing against the Republicans who have said they oppose him running.
As if the 2020 election wasn’t going to be a nuclear dumpster fire already.
I’m going to watch this for a bit, but I’ll tell you what.
I’m a United States citizen over the age of 30, a resident of the state of Alabama, and a registered Republican.
If nobody else worth a shit tries to stop Moore, I’ll run against him.
I think the biggest problem I’m going to have is that I’m too honest, and it’s going to be hard for me not to refer to other politicians as “that stupid fuck.”