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Originally Posted by Kelhus999
Yeah, I think that whole cite is just an exercise in rhetorical dishonesty.
It does not appear to me that Trump cares about immigrants at all, in either a positive or negative direction. He is just pandering to his base. And I would argue Trump's base also doesn't have any particular malicious attitudes towards migrants specifically, they are just self concerned and playing out their evolutionary conserved tribal programming against the "other."
I think ascribing malicious intent, when the truth is probably closer to lack of empathy, and being caught in instinctual emotional feedback loops, isn't doing anyone any favors.
But you do you.
You don't have to have malicious intent for an indifference towards human life to have disastrous consequences.
Nobody would ask that you maintain a standard consistent with a middle class lifestyle but complete indifference implies....? Do you let them starve? I doubt many would argue for that, because most people accept there being a minimum duty of care because they're NOT indifferent.
If you were, your indifference would lead you to policies that are pretty much are consistent with actual Nazi death camps. That isn't hyperbole. If you were ACTUALLY indifferent you wouldn't spend anything to feed people except when sustaining their life allows them to be productive. It's exactly that kind of indifference that lead to what happened in ww2 concentration camps - you don't need to be malicious to go down that path.
And whether or not you think trump actually is a racist you'd have to be oblivious to doubt whether some of the people being appointed to manage these things are carrying those sentiments. and these attitudes are a very convenient justification to continually lower the bar in terms of duty of care.
How low does the bar have to be before drawing comparisons to pre ww2 concentration camps isn't even hyperbolic?
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But I've said before I care more about what's happening and what we should do about it than what it's called, so I'd rather not get too bogged down in semantics.
The semantics help put it into perspective to people who are numb to it because of how disconnected their lives are to the reality on the ground. It is a valid comparison even if it's not perfectly analogous. And i think deconstructing the ways in which it's similar/dissimilar is probably enough to make more people start caring where they'd otherwise just shrug it off.
Last edited by Abbaddabba; 06-25-2019 at 05:12 PM.