Alarming — Is This Future Possible?

7 thoughts on “Alarming — Is This Future Possible?”

1. Donald Trump is certainly the worst and most corrupt president America has ever seen, and perhaps the most dangerous world leader (if one can call him that) alive today. That said, the tent cities planned for suspected illegals and others, though very concerning, are not by any stretch of the imagination concentration camps. Proper descriptions would include detention camps, detention centers, internment camps (such as America shamefully set up for Japanese Americans in WWII), or possibly refugee camps (since many entering the USA are seeking asylum). But not concentration camps. For a journalist to (needlessly!) use such a loaded phrase seriously undermines their credibility at a time when the news media is already under sustained assault and needs to maintain the highest standards of reporting.

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2. The Trump administration acknowledges planning on mass detention camps designed, initially, to hold 20,000 people.

   That is tiny relative to the number of illegal aliens actually in the U.S. And I can hardly see enforcing immigration law as a bad thing.

   However, it is worth noting that Trump has not actually been all that tough on illegal immigration, mostly due to his natural passivity when it comes to anything but message. The rate of inflow of illegal aliens into the U.S. is as high as it was during the Obama administration.

   Why is Honduras such a scary place? The failed but ongoing American war on drugs, which corrupts some of our police, prosecutors and judges

   Nope. Consult any 19th century traveler whether Honduras was a scary place then.

   None of those events scared me the way my travels to Honduras, the most recent in 2015, where gangs shoot people with impunity even if they give up the money in their pockets. Owners of nice homes, not safe behind their iron gates, pay men with shotguns to patrol 24 hours a day and hire servants just to go to the bank and the grocery store.

   That is an argument for stronger interior enforcement, not weaker.

   Donald Trump is certainly the worst and most corrupt president America has ever seen

   That would be incorrect; ISIS has not spread under his watch, unlike with the last two presidents. Much the contrary. The Trump administration’s incompetence is breathtaking, but so was that of the Bush, Wilson, and Buchanan administrations. As to corruption, there can be no doubt the Trump administration is highly corrupt, but this level of corruption is quite within the norm for an American presidency.

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   1. ” ISIS has not spread under his watch, unlike with the last two presidents. ”

      The last two were supporting ISIS in Syria. Since the Syrians and Russians have been crushing ISIS in Syria, the Trump regime has taken to moving the ISIS leaders to other places.

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3. I can mention at least two troubling moments in the American history, and the fact that the USA was able to recover after them: the japanese-american internment, and the mccarthyism. I am still optimistic for the future, but I regret the time lost in this derailment.

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4. “The official statements and the memo, whose contents the Navy did not deny, show that the Trump administration is preparing to round up as many people as it suspects because they are not Anglo or African American, but appear to be Latino or Middle Eastern.”

   That is actually funny. Rounding up the Latinos in California? The author is using scare words. Please take the mayor of LA while you’re at it 🙂

   I object to slamming the military, as if it is some deep conspiracy to take away anyone’s rights. The author is obviously oblivious to how the military works. Their basis of operation is to generate contingency plans, regardless of the likelihood of the scenario actually happening. Refugee holding camps on military reservations are common practice. End of the Vietnam War saw Camp Pendleton Marine base used to house thousands of reguees, while they were being processed. The key words are, “while they are being processed”, not “while they are waiting for the gas chamber”.

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5. Gary, of course I know that our military does contingency plans on a vast variety of possible scenarios. This was not a war game, however.

   That said, in the context of Donald Trump’s campaign promise to find, arrest and expel more than 11 million people the Navy memo and other actions are more than the out-of-the-box thinking that the military engages in. (Do you know about the ~1961 Rod Serling war games, discovered and made public by his only serous biographer, one of my daughters? They were quite prescient in light of bin Laden’s writings and 9/11.)

   Neil Godfrey, thank you for drawing attention to this DCReport.org piece.

   Note that I carefully wrote of “the advancing Trump administration plans to build mass detention facilities, which could fast be turned into concentration camps to hold opponents of Trump policies.” The operative language is about how things built for one purpose could be repurposed.

   Given Donald’s repeated admiration for societies where protest is banned and in some cases punished by execution and his utter contempt for me and others he calls “enemies of the people,” it is not unreasonable to warn people about how camps can be quickly put to other uses.

   Donald is a dictator in waiting who I wish had been asked, during the campaign, to articulate the powers, duties and limitations on the position he started talking about in 1985, a position he believes of course should be his because no one has ever been so qualified and everyone else is not fit to shine his boots. Just as Donald didn’t know what the nuclear triad is (Marco Rubio schooled him during the Fox debate), he has no idea of our constitution and, as I have shown, sometimes doesn’t even know his own deals very well.

   I urge people here to also read our report on how kids torn from their parents were put in cages, but dogs are sent to a “pet resort” that advertises “daily maid service” and twice as much outdoor daytime as they children got.

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   1. Thank you for taking the time to reply to my comment. Although there are many issues that could be debated on this subject, I am going to hold my tongue (actually fingers), in respect for you.
      Although I would be interested in more info about:
      1. “1961 Rod Serling war games” – I know many military scenarios, but never heard of this one.
      2. “I urge people here to also read our report on how kids torn from their parents were put in cages”…where is this report located?

      Thanks.

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