If by my own actions could go to Washington DC and stop this madness I would. But no one person could do one iota to stop this madness. Not even one thousand nor one million. No for this tyrant to be stopped and removed from power we need the combined strength of all the American people and the steel of our military to exert the necessary force to put a stop to this. BUT where is everyone? We are sitting typing on our phones thinking that is going to be enough. This is nothing but an exercise to make ourselves feel as if we gave done something. NO, if we want this stopped WE THE PEOPLE need to march on Washington not by the thousands but by the tens of millions then and only then do we have a chance. And if the military does not obey their oath and sides with rump and company then sure all is lost. Today's politicians no matter their beliefs are not going to help. They are as corrupt as any in DC. Unfortunately we need a real miracle and I don't think that is going to happen. The Americans of the 1940's or the 1960's or even the 1970's would know and have the back bone to stand and fight this travesty but Today's Americans with their noses stuck in their phones and not able to organize an independent thought are no match for rump, the entire republican party and the white Christian Nationalist armed with Project 2025 and all the brainwashed magaits who think he is so wonderful. No my friend I fear we are doomed to suffer the armies of darkness who will now march unopposed for the next thousand years. Not enough people listened before the last election to sway the tide. Now there will be no more elections here, at least not ones that stand a chance of doing away with the trash in Washington. They have a firm grip on the throttles of power with no intention of relaxing their grip not even for a second. No my friend, baring a true miracle there us little to hope for. We tried to raise the alarms but to few were listening and now we must bear witness to our own destruction by our own people. I think that is what hurts the most. This disaster did not come from foreign shores this was home grown treason. We only have ourselves to blame. We allowed this to happen either by not being concerned or thinking they cannot do what they intend. But looking back now we see that they have been working on this as far back as the 1870's. But it's modern roots started in the 1950's with McCarthy then with Reagan inches 1980's. The final nail was the internet when we stopped listening to one another when we stopped getting independent news when the rich bought the radio stations and the newspapers and the magazines when they started spoon feeding us what they wanted us to think instead of us thinking for ourselves. The only way out now would be an abrupt stop with the entire republican party with rump, musk and the rest of them put behind bars the entire realignment of our country our news and our education and strict laws protecting our freedoms then maybe but even that might not be enough. We are so far off the tracks I don't see a way back.
My issue is were we ever all in on the America we were taught. I firmly believe that canceling reconstruction and the failure to truly come to terms with the aftermath of the civil war…the can just got kicked down the decades to where we are today cancelling DEI, still marginalizing people of color and groups that roll differently,still talking states rights, except this time they followed Adolf Hitler’s plan to take over a constitutional government by democratic means and remake it into his own image. Although the techno-fascists may have a different agenda.
I would argue that we were taught a “Vision of America”. The Constitution is, and always has been, an aspirational document. We have failed to reach that goal in many ways and many times, but the objective is always there, more or less. After we played a major part in defeating the Axis powers in WWII, we took the lead in building a post-war world that was recognized not only our Allie’s but the defeated nations as well. A good part of the peace that has largely existed since the 1940’s and through the Cold War, is due to our efforts (and money). We helped build free democracies throughout Western Europe that today comprise a major portion of the developed world economy. History will look back at the early 21st century and wonder “what the Hell were they thinking?” We are the first and only world power to voluntarily walk away from a position of power, opportunity and profit. Other than some perverted sense of “America First”, we have chosen to turn over Great Power status to some undetermined other nation —- China perhaps, maybe India. That may not be the intent of the Trumpenfuhrer and his cronies, but it certainly seems like ultimate result. Some academic should write a book about what we are doing now.
HuskCrump are looking for world dominion, not just to control our wee country. We are just the stepping stone and by determining we are expendable weak and will no longer exert power, they believe they can leap to a gold plated (?) fortress maybe in space. I promise I didn’t get to that idea due to Star Wars.
I wake up every day, still, amazed that someone of so sick a psyche has managed to capture the hearts & minds of millions of Americans & convince them that actions of lawlessness & dehumanization such as this are somehow making American great again. “I am your retribution” is being treated as legitimate policy. Retribution against what - decades of slow progress toward a more just society? This is truly government by the worst.
And, I can’t help but feel that the country is a tinder box ready to explode into an all out conflagration before long. Nothing would please this so-called President more, as he has already shown, than to see conflict & bloodshed in the streets in his name. Nevertheless, we must do what we can, while we can, to resist our country being dragged down into a mire of barbarism.
I can’t watch but I have read. Sadists will love the world these monsters are creating for them to play in. The rest of us are just made to suffer their consequences.
And then we have a Press Secretary labeling these videos as "fun". Cruelty should not be a trait associated with a civilized country. Unless that's the plan, no being a civilized country anymore.
The UK government has now issued a warning to all UK citizens against visiting the United States. As someone who spent a career travelling - usually alone - through the Middle East, in Israel, Syria, Turkey, Iraq (in the days of the regime of Saddam Hussein), Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Oman, I'm used to checking for warnings about travelling in most of those countries. Never, in more than fifty years, have I even known any country to issue a warning against travelling to my own native land. 'How have the mighty fallen' (2 Samuel 1:27).
Amen on everything you wrote. Having some experience, as a former criminal defense attorney, with how the government can arbitrarily, and with little or no evidence, place individuals on a list of gang members, I have absolutely no doubt that there are some innocent people whom this country has wrongfully transported to El Salvador without due process to be abused, tortured, and likely killed. A dark day for the U.S. Constitution and the United States.
It is pretty clear that Trump--no spring chicken--has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk, who is spearheading a techno-fascist takeover of the government financed by a group of billionaires hoping the whole deal will somehow enable them to avoid paying taxes. The plan appears to be to morph America into a totalitarian state under the control of a system of artificially intelligent-drive algorithms that the Musk crowd thinks will be more effective than experienced civil servants, or for that matter, any human being. Musk thinks electronics is the way to go. Fail to receive your Social Security check? Take it up with a computer and see how far that gets you. We're already half way there with major corporations subcontracting their customer service to call centers in India and the Philipines. Computers can deal with complaints without the emotional trauma of having to listen to a citizen shout over the telephone. Let's be clear, no one voted for Donald Trump and his transmogrified Republican Party to throw out the American system of government, but that is what is happening. The question now is, who will stop them? Not Trump. He is gloating over his gold-plated fixtures at Mar a Lago. Congress is silent. The courts depend on the courage of a small band of Federal District Judges who might as well be swimming in an Amazon filled with piranhas. Where is the courage of the Greatest Generation, who fought fascism during World War II rather than aiding and abetting it?
Truth is there are gangs and terrorists and other criminals inside the United States that should not be here. Frankly, we could deport them better, but they broke the law when they came in without permission.
"We could deport them better," he says—a masterpiece of moral vacancy disguised as pragmatism. What precisely would constitute "better" in your estimation? Perhaps we could shave the sobbing barber's head more efficiently? Slap him more thoroughly when he pleads that he's gay, not a gang member? Ensure his cries for his mother are more quickly silenced?
This throwaway acknowledgment of imperfection—this bureaucratic "room for improvement" note in the margin of systematic cruelty—reveals the true obscenity. You recognize something is wrong with men being stripped naked, with their designer clothes thrown in garbage bags alongside their dignity, yet your concern isn't with the fundamental barbarity, merely its execution.
It's the moral equivalent of saying, "Yes, we're waterboarding people without trial, but frankly, we could be using cleaner water." The problem isn't the implementation—it's the entire enterprise.
Your position manages the remarkable feat of being both monstrous and banal simultaneously. You stand before evidence of state-sanctioned brutality—men aging a decade in two hours, transformed into ghosts before a journalist's eyes—and offer what amounts to a customer service complaint. History will not look kindly on those who saw human beings treated like animals and whose only response was to suggest operational improvements.
So tell me, "Alpha Liberal," did you come here to waste my time, or do you have something resembling an argument that I can contend with here? Because thus far you've offered nothing but the moral reasoning of a concentration camp logistics manager who thinks the trains could run more punctually.
There are vastly more gangs and other criminals (I’ll set aside the overwrought “terrorists”) in the United States that are American citizens. Would you ship them off to a prison in El Salvador that would violate the 8th Amendment if it was in the United States? You know, the one that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment? Would you do so without due process? Would you do so _with_ due process? That would be unconstitutional, wouldn’t it? But the Constitution applies to all people, not just citizens. And do you really support destroying people just because they entered this country illegally, just to make a better life for themselves?
We have a criminal justice system to deal with bona fide criminals, citizens and otherwise. Why do you oppose that system? Why do you think that system shouldn’t apply to certain people? Do you actually support sending people to any prison, let alone this one, just because a dictatorial President decides they should be there? If you don’t, then why the equivocation?
What strikes me is the fatal flaw in 'The Alpha Liberal's' reasoning: if the government can simply declare someone a 'gang member' without evidence, judicial review, or due process, then vanish them to foreign prisons where they're stripped and beaten—what exactly protects American citizens from having this summary status visited upon them?
The answer, of course, is nothing. It's already happening—American citizens have been wrongfully detained and deported by ICE (https://www.propublica.org/article/more-americans-will-be-caught-up-trump-immigration-raids). The constitutional protections "Alpha Liberal" thinks shield him exist precisely in the due process he's so eager to deny others. When you cheer for the machinery of state violence to operate without restraint against the vulnerable, you're applauding the dismantling of the only thing that would protect you if that machinery ever turned in your direction.
Yes, I wrote my reply just before reading yours. And there are certainly two levels here. First, it’s pure evil and un-American.. Then second, it can be done to any of us if it can be done to “them,”, if being pure evil and un-American isn’t enough to dissuade someone from supporting it.
Maybe not. If they came and applied for asylum, that would not be illegal. Besides, the whole point is that this was done with no process to find out whether the assigned “titles” are accurate. We would all like to tell our side of the story when accused of something. That’s a basic value of fairness.
German here, the Holocaust didn’t start with concentration camps and gas chambers. It started with dehumanizing people, followed by mass deportations.
It’s not the same country I grew up in. It is definitely not the country for which I served 24 years in the Air Force.
Thank you for your service!
The dehumanization that many innocent Muslims experienced at the hands of the US when they were rendered to "secret" black sites is parallel.
If by my own actions could go to Washington DC and stop this madness I would. But no one person could do one iota to stop this madness. Not even one thousand nor one million. No for this tyrant to be stopped and removed from power we need the combined strength of all the American people and the steel of our military to exert the necessary force to put a stop to this. BUT where is everyone? We are sitting typing on our phones thinking that is going to be enough. This is nothing but an exercise to make ourselves feel as if we gave done something. NO, if we want this stopped WE THE PEOPLE need to march on Washington not by the thousands but by the tens of millions then and only then do we have a chance. And if the military does not obey their oath and sides with rump and company then sure all is lost. Today's politicians no matter their beliefs are not going to help. They are as corrupt as any in DC. Unfortunately we need a real miracle and I don't think that is going to happen. The Americans of the 1940's or the 1960's or even the 1970's would know and have the back bone to stand and fight this travesty but Today's Americans with their noses stuck in their phones and not able to organize an independent thought are no match for rump, the entire republican party and the white Christian Nationalist armed with Project 2025 and all the brainwashed magaits who think he is so wonderful. No my friend I fear we are doomed to suffer the armies of darkness who will now march unopposed for the next thousand years. Not enough people listened before the last election to sway the tide. Now there will be no more elections here, at least not ones that stand a chance of doing away with the trash in Washington. They have a firm grip on the throttles of power with no intention of relaxing their grip not even for a second. No my friend, baring a true miracle there us little to hope for. We tried to raise the alarms but to few were listening and now we must bear witness to our own destruction by our own people. I think that is what hurts the most. This disaster did not come from foreign shores this was home grown treason. We only have ourselves to blame. We allowed this to happen either by not being concerned or thinking they cannot do what they intend. But looking back now we see that they have been working on this as far back as the 1870's. But it's modern roots started in the 1950's with McCarthy then with Reagan inches 1980's. The final nail was the internet when we stopped listening to one another when we stopped getting independent news when the rich bought the radio stations and the newspapers and the magazines when they started spoon feeding us what they wanted us to think instead of us thinking for ourselves. The only way out now would be an abrupt stop with the entire republican party with rump, musk and the rest of them put behind bars the entire realignment of our country our news and our education and strict laws protecting our freedoms then maybe but even that might not be enough. We are so far off the tracks I don't see a way back.
My issue is were we ever all in on the America we were taught. I firmly believe that canceling reconstruction and the failure to truly come to terms with the aftermath of the civil war…the can just got kicked down the decades to where we are today cancelling DEI, still marginalizing people of color and groups that roll differently,still talking states rights, except this time they followed Adolf Hitler’s plan to take over a constitutional government by democratic means and remake it into his own image. Although the techno-fascists may have a different agenda.
I would argue that we were taught a “Vision of America”. The Constitution is, and always has been, an aspirational document. We have failed to reach that goal in many ways and many times, but the objective is always there, more or less. After we played a major part in defeating the Axis powers in WWII, we took the lead in building a post-war world that was recognized not only our Allie’s but the defeated nations as well. A good part of the peace that has largely existed since the 1940’s and through the Cold War, is due to our efforts (and money). We helped build free democracies throughout Western Europe that today comprise a major portion of the developed world economy. History will look back at the early 21st century and wonder “what the Hell were they thinking?” We are the first and only world power to voluntarily walk away from a position of power, opportunity and profit. Other than some perverted sense of “America First”, we have chosen to turn over Great Power status to some undetermined other nation —- China perhaps, maybe India. That may not be the intent of the Trumpenfuhrer and his cronies, but it certainly seems like ultimate result. Some academic should write a book about what we are doing now.
HuskCrump are looking for world dominion, not just to control our wee country. We are just the stepping stone and by determining we are expendable weak and will no longer exert power, they believe they can leap to a gold plated (?) fortress maybe in space. I promise I didn’t get to that idea due to Star Wars.
I wake up every day, still, amazed that someone of so sick a psyche has managed to capture the hearts & minds of millions of Americans & convince them that actions of lawlessness & dehumanization such as this are somehow making American great again. “I am your retribution” is being treated as legitimate policy. Retribution against what - decades of slow progress toward a more just society? This is truly government by the worst.
And, I can’t help but feel that the country is a tinder box ready to explode into an all out conflagration before long. Nothing would please this so-called President more, as he has already shown, than to see conflict & bloodshed in the streets in his name. Nevertheless, we must do what we can, while we can, to resist our country being dragged down into a mire of barbarism.
It was barbaric. Hitler did it behind closed gates but we are showing it off.
Here's a video: https://youtu.be/3o-PI8S9BbA?si=Mlcv_WigVZgtBjHj. It is sickening.
I can’t watch but I have read. Sadists will love the world these monsters are creating for them to play in. The rest of us are just made to suffer their consequences.
And then we have a Press Secretary labeling these videos as "fun". Cruelty should not be a trait associated with a civilized country. Unless that's the plan, no being a civilized country anymore.
The UK government has now issued a warning to all UK citizens against visiting the United States. As someone who spent a career travelling - usually alone - through the Middle East, in Israel, Syria, Turkey, Iraq (in the days of the regime of Saddam Hussein), Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Oman, I'm used to checking for warnings about travelling in most of those countries. Never, in more than fifty years, have I even known any country to issue a warning against travelling to my own native land. 'How have the mighty fallen' (2 Samuel 1:27).
Amen on everything you wrote. Having some experience, as a former criminal defense attorney, with how the government can arbitrarily, and with little or no evidence, place individuals on a list of gang members, I have absolutely no doubt that there are some innocent people whom this country has wrongfully transported to El Salvador without due process to be abused, tortured, and likely killed. A dark day for the U.S. Constitution and the United States.
It is pretty clear that Trump--no spring chicken--has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk, who is spearheading a techno-fascist takeover of the government financed by a group of billionaires hoping the whole deal will somehow enable them to avoid paying taxes. The plan appears to be to morph America into a totalitarian state under the control of a system of artificially intelligent-drive algorithms that the Musk crowd thinks will be more effective than experienced civil servants, or for that matter, any human being. Musk thinks electronics is the way to go. Fail to receive your Social Security check? Take it up with a computer and see how far that gets you. We're already half way there with major corporations subcontracting their customer service to call centers in India and the Philipines. Computers can deal with complaints without the emotional trauma of having to listen to a citizen shout over the telephone. Let's be clear, no one voted for Donald Trump and his transmogrified Republican Party to throw out the American system of government, but that is what is happening. The question now is, who will stop them? Not Trump. He is gloating over his gold-plated fixtures at Mar a Lago. Congress is silent. The courts depend on the courage of a small band of Federal District Judges who might as well be swimming in an Amazon filled with piranhas. Where is the courage of the Greatest Generation, who fought fascism during World War II rather than aiding and abetting it?
If you’re looking for ways to fight for democracy & rule of law, you can study this list courtesy of The Contrarian.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/15-ways-you-can-fight-for-democracy
Well spoken
Truth is there are gangs and terrorists and other criminals inside the United States that should not be here. Frankly, we could deport them better, but they broke the law when they came in without permission.
"We could deport them better," he says—a masterpiece of moral vacancy disguised as pragmatism. What precisely would constitute "better" in your estimation? Perhaps we could shave the sobbing barber's head more efficiently? Slap him more thoroughly when he pleads that he's gay, not a gang member? Ensure his cries for his mother are more quickly silenced?
This throwaway acknowledgment of imperfection—this bureaucratic "room for improvement" note in the margin of systematic cruelty—reveals the true obscenity. You recognize something is wrong with men being stripped naked, with their designer clothes thrown in garbage bags alongside their dignity, yet your concern isn't with the fundamental barbarity, merely its execution.
It's the moral equivalent of saying, "Yes, we're waterboarding people without trial, but frankly, we could be using cleaner water." The problem isn't the implementation—it's the entire enterprise.
Your position manages the remarkable feat of being both monstrous and banal simultaneously. You stand before evidence of state-sanctioned brutality—men aging a decade in two hours, transformed into ghosts before a journalist's eyes—and offer what amounts to a customer service complaint. History will not look kindly on those who saw human beings treated like animals and whose only response was to suggest operational improvements.
So tell me, "Alpha Liberal," did you come here to waste my time, or do you have something resembling an argument that I can contend with here? Because thus far you've offered nothing but the moral reasoning of a concentration camp logistics manager who thinks the trains could run more punctually.
🎯
There are vastly more gangs and other criminals (I’ll set aside the overwrought “terrorists”) in the United States that are American citizens. Would you ship them off to a prison in El Salvador that would violate the 8th Amendment if it was in the United States? You know, the one that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment? Would you do so without due process? Would you do so _with_ due process? That would be unconstitutional, wouldn’t it? But the Constitution applies to all people, not just citizens. And do you really support destroying people just because they entered this country illegally, just to make a better life for themselves?
We have a criminal justice system to deal with bona fide criminals, citizens and otherwise. Why do you oppose that system? Why do you think that system shouldn’t apply to certain people? Do you actually support sending people to any prison, let alone this one, just because a dictatorial President decides they should be there? If you don’t, then why the equivocation?
What strikes me is the fatal flaw in 'The Alpha Liberal's' reasoning: if the government can simply declare someone a 'gang member' without evidence, judicial review, or due process, then vanish them to foreign prisons where they're stripped and beaten—what exactly protects American citizens from having this summary status visited upon them?
The answer, of course, is nothing. It's already happening—American citizens have been wrongfully detained and deported by ICE (https://www.propublica.org/article/more-americans-will-be-caught-up-trump-immigration-raids). The constitutional protections "Alpha Liberal" thinks shield him exist precisely in the due process he's so eager to deny others. When you cheer for the machinery of state violence to operate without restraint against the vulnerable, you're applauding the dismantling of the only thing that would protect you if that machinery ever turned in your direction.
Yes, I wrote my reply just before reading yours. And there are certainly two levels here. First, it’s pure evil and un-American.. Then second, it can be done to any of us if it can be done to “them,”, if being pure evil and un-American isn’t enough to dissuade someone from supporting it.
Maybe not. If they came and applied for asylum, that would not be illegal. Besides, the whole point is that this was done with no process to find out whether the assigned “titles” are accurate. We would all like to tell our side of the story when accused of something. That’s a basic value of fairness.