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I mean, is it not? If it bleeds it leads. As for the morality of it, our government was/is brutally oppressing them. We are the baddies and those representatives had a direct hand in the situation. I’d feel differently if they attacked anyone other than congress.
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I’m amazed they don’t have vastly more backing from the right, based on their respect for 2nd Amendment solutions.
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I doubt that Orwell would have recognized it as Orwellian.
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If you have enough faith to transcend the bounds of morality, great things are indeed possible.
From a pal in San Juan: “The oil dock is working and the container barges are in full operation. The ship ahead of us was slinging cargo ashore.”
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That’s good. So we can chalk this up to the Trump administration ignoring reality, as per usual?
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Yes, although I am sure they keep a close eye on reality, so they can warp it on it’s way to our ears.
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I suspect if Bernie Sanders had written that he would have immediately followed up with “…and that’s why we owe Puerto Rico debt forgiveness to give them a chance to recover from a century of economic injustice!” or “we must suspend the Jones act NOW so Puerto Rico can get the aid it desperately needs!”
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I’ll pass your doubts onto him next time we talk.
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I wouldn’t count on “justice”; but I do find it a trifle surprising that the fact that Puerto Ricans can legally move to the continental US hasn’t inspired slightly more urgency among the ethnic nationalist types in the task of making their lot sufficiently endurable to discourage emigration.
A naive observer would assume that, when faced with people they like about as much as Mexicans; but who aren’t illegal if the immigrate, there would be more enthusiasm for ensuring that home is reasonably cosy. So far, empirical observation suggests otherwise.
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Why would you want to do that?
Never give fascists the benefit of the doubt. They’ll use it against you.
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Think of this way—
George Orwell was familiar with colonialism. (burma)
He was familiar with fascism, and stalinism (catalonia)
and yet, in 1984, he was compelled to write something that went beyond all that, and to imagine the totalitarian impulse embedded into language itself.
I contend that the United States, as an occupying power, wasn’t taking a step beyond what had been done before by colonizing powers to their (rebellious) colonies.
That doesn’t make it right, or just, or proper, but to call it Orwellian is a hyperbolic misreading of the situation, and as Orwell noted
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
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Ehm, I try not to become like them?
Also by getting all riled up about everything trumps says gives his supporters the chance to dismiss you as ‘just a hater’.
They’re going to do that anyway.
This isn’t about convincing fascists to become decent people. It ain’t gonna happen.
You beat fascism with numbers, not persuasion.
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It’s not only about die-hard fascists. There are tons of people on the fence. Who do you think FOX news targets with their propaganda? Lot and lots and lots of poor people in the US who used to make a living in coal or steel and who are now out of a job and hope Trump is going to bring them back to more prosperous times.
Those are the people you need to convince. And those are the people who will lump you in with the ‘librul whiners’ if you lose track of the bigger picture.
You beat fascists with numbers. You beat fascism by not taking over its treats. Absolutism is dangerous.
You appear to be framing the situation as Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right, and a big group of undecided in the middle.
That is not what’s happening.
The GOP represent the 30% extreme right of the country. They aren’t all overt fascists, but essentially all of them are authoritarian white supremacists.
A whisker to the left of the GOP (still well right of center, though) are the establishment Dems. These represent, at most, about 15%. Probably less; much of their previous support was extremely reluctant. There are very few uncommitted people between the GOP and the Dems.
Next to the left are the Berniecrats (probably somewhere between 15% and 30%); left of them are BLM and the DSA; left of them are the hardcore radicals.
When you measure on the issues rather than tribal affiliation, the center of American political opinion is roughly in line with the Berniecrats. Half of the country are neither Democrats nor Republicans, and most of those people are to the left of both parties.
The conception of Trumpist support as being based in the white working class is also inaccurate. Ta-Nehisi Coates covers that aspect well:
TLDR version: Trump was supported by all groupings of white people, but his support was weakest amongst working-class whites. And the overall working class (which is very much not white) were the only economic group to oppose Trump.
Fascism is a middle class pathology, based in the suppression of the working class and the defence of fading privilege. The working class are not the fascist base; they are the fascists’ intended prey.
So is collaboration.
Fascism can be beaten. The fascists are not the majority.
But they will only be defeated if they are vigorously opposed.
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The brutality continues. The government is forcing evacuees to pay for their transportation.
Anyone evacuated on U.S.-government coordinated transport, including charter and military flights, must sign an Evacuee Manifest and Promissory Note (Form DS-5528) note prior to departure.
The promissory note obligates an evacuated person to repay the cost of the transportation to the U.S. government.
Upon evacuation, a Department of State official must limit an evacuee’s passport. In order to obtain a new passport, an evacuee must arrange payment as agreed upon via the promissory note.
Source:
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It’s all very nice that the majority of the US citizens have opinions to the left of Bernie. Somehow Trump still got enough support to be president.
Trying to stay objective is not collaboration.
All I’m saying is to take a steep back sometimes and look at the bigger picture.
By attacking everything your opponent says, you loose credibility in the eyes of the uninformed masses. Riling up the uninformed masses is what Trump c.s. are very good at and the ‘left’ is helping him do it by deriding everything he says.
If Trump says “Puerto Rico has debts.” the left goes “Oh noes! He is mean in saying that! What an absolute asshole!” This is exactly what he wants the left to say, because he can frame it to his supporters as being blamed for telling the (harsh) truth.
What needs to be said is: “Puerto Rico indeed has debts. What is the underlying reason for those debts and how do we fix that after we first repair the Hurricane damage?”
Or how about:
“Puerto Rico indeed has debts. But talking about those debts right now is beyond distracting. It shows a callous, depraved indifference to the real misery and actual danger that virtually everyone on the island is currently suffering.”
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