Mean America

[JackA]

What happened to the America famous for being welcoming and generous? Donald Trump happened, for one thing, though Trump clearly struck a chord waiting to be struck and in a little more than a year we have become famous for being closed off and selfish. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times this morning about Ivanka's disappointing performance as first daughter. But her broader theme is the deadening of the American spirit we used to know under the leadership of her father. Read it. Here is one line.

"As a former top Trump administration official recently told me, “Donald Trump is the meanest man I’ve ever met.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

 

[humbolt]

From the article: "Why had she stayed mute for so many days about the torment her father was inflicting on thousands of immigrant children?"

Makes you wonder why Michelle didn't say something to her husband when he was doing exactly the same ****ing thing. Where were you then, Maureen? Let me guess. Off sipping vodka with editors, right? Maureen?

 

[Phys251]

What happened to the America famous for being welcoming and generous? Donald Trump happened, for one thing, though Trump clearly struck a chord waiting to be struck and in a little more than a year we have become famous for being closed off and selfish. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times this morning about Ivanka's disappointing performance as first daughter. But her broader theme is the deadening of the American spirit we used to know under the leadership of her father. Read it. Here is one line.

"As a former top Trump administration official recently told me, “Donald Trump is the meanest man I’ve ever met.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Cue the now-famous scene from The Newsroom pilot.

 

[Floridafan]

What happened to the America famous for being welcoming and generous? Donald Trump happened, for one thing, though Trump clearly struck a chord waiting to be struck and in a little more than a year we have become famous for being closed off and selfish. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times this morning about Ivanka's disappointing performance as first daughter. But her broader theme is the deadening of the American spirit we used to know under the leadership of her father. Read it. Here is one line.

"As a former top Trump administration official recently told me, “Donald Trump is the meanest man I’ve ever met.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

We are a welcoming and generous nation, so long as you are white and arrive with enough money to contribute to the Republican Party.

 

[SoCal]

What happened to the America famous for being welcoming and generous? Donald Trump happened, for one thing, though Trump clearly struck a chord waiting to be struck and in a little more than a year we have become famous for being closed off and selfish...

Trump is like a magnet who attracts racists and xenophobes and just like they do to real compasses, this magnet is screwing up our moral compass...

 

[Amelia]

From the article: "Why had she stayed mute for so many days about the torment her father was inflicting on thousands of immigrant children?"

Makes you wonder why Michelle didn't say something to her husband when he was doing exactly the same ****ing thing. Where were you then, Maureen? Let me guess. Off sipping vodka with editors, right? Maureen?

It is telling how so many Trump supporters force themselves to believe the falsehood that Obama did what Trump did.

They know what Trump is doing is horrific. So they put up the "Obama did it too" wall to protect themselves from admitting how bad Trump is.



No, Obama didn't do it too. Obama didn't separate children from families in order to send a message not to come to America.

Obama had children in detention, but that was because the minors were coming here without their parents. When the minors were with their families they were not separated unless it was suspected they were in danger.



Trump is the one who made the decision to be cruel to children in order to make parents second-guess coming here. Not Obama.



Think about why you need to believe Obama did it too.

No need to answer. I have already moved on to the next person using that lie to desperately deflect from Trump's cruelty.

 

[Mycroft]

The bleeding heart snowflakes, with their faux outrage, hyperbole and hypocrisy FINALLY have a target because they were not allowed to satisfy their urges against Obama or Hillary.

Come on, darlings...let's see who can ratchet up the rhetoric to the highest level.

 

[Lutherf]

What happened to the America famous for being welcoming and generous? Donald Trump happened, for one thing, though Trump clearly struck a chord waiting to be struck and in a little more than a year we have become famous for being closed off and selfish. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times this morning about Ivanka's disappointing performance as first daughter. But her broader theme is the deadening of the American spirit we used to know under the leadership of her father. Read it. Here is one line.

"As a former top Trump administration official recently told me, “Donald Trump is the meanest man I’ve ever met.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Identity politics happened. The more you get people to believe that they're not getting their piece of the pie the more "mean" they get.

We used to be a country where the idea was that there would always be enough pie for everyone because everyone had the right to bake their own pie, bake it as big as they liked and serve it to whoever they felt should have a slice. Then, along the way, more and more politicians started whispering in people's ears that that group had fancier ovens and the other group was stealing flour. They started telling us that so and so wasn't handing out enough pie and wanted the rest of us to starve. They started telling us that the people making apple pie had a leg up on the people making peach pie and that peach pie had to get a better place on the counter while apple pies needed to be stored away just to keep things fair. Basically, the politicians got everybody looking at everyone else's pie with a suspicious eye.

OK, now I'm hungry.

 

[iliveonramen]

Identity politics happened. The more you get people to believe that they're not getting their piece of the pie the more "mean" they get.

We used to be a country where the idea was that there would always be enough pie for everyone because everyone had the right to bake their own pie, bake it as big as they liked and serve it to whoever they felt should have a slice. Then, along the way, more and more politicians started whispering in people's ears that that group had fancier ovens and the other group was stealing flour. They started telling us that so and so wasn't handing out enough pie and wanted the rest of us to starve. They started telling us that the people making apple pie had a leg up on the people making peach pie and that peach pie had to get a better place on the counter while apple pies needed to be stored away just to keep things fair. Basically, the politicians got everybody looking at everyone else's pie with a suspicious eye.

OK, now I'm hungry.

I don't think that's true at all. People have always been coming to the US for a better life and the people coming over have always been faced with angry people that don't want them here. People have always been this way. Blacks migrating to the north from the south, Irish and Italians coming to the US, the story is on constant repeat. I have no idea your ethnic background but unless your family was English your relatives probably faced that same type of anger that Hispanics face now.

 

[holbritter]

I don't think that's true at all. People have always been coming to the US for a better life and the people coming over have always been faced with angry people that don't want them here. People have always been this way. Blacks migrating to the north from the south, Irish and Italians coming to the US, the story is on constant repeat. I have no idea your ethnic background but unless your family was English your relatives probably faced that same type of anger that Hispanics face now.

The difference might be how they got here. Most immigrants came through Ellis Island, the legal way, back then.

 

[holbritter]

What happened to the America famous for being welcoming and generous? Donald Trump happened, for one thing, though Trump clearly struck a chord waiting to be struck and in a little more than a year we have become famous for being closed off and selfish. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times this morning about Ivanka's disappointing performance as first daughter. But her broader theme is the deadening of the American spirit we used to know under the leadership of her father. Read it. Here is one line.

"As a former top Trump administration official recently told me, “Donald Trump is the meanest man I’ve ever met.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

I think we still are. We welcome legal immigrants all the time. We have public celebrations when they achieve citizenship and applaud their desire and work towards it. I personally, don't welcome line skippers, or those that think the law and work to become a citizen doesn't apply to them. It's a slap in the face to those who did it the right way.

 

[Kal'Stang]

What happened to the America famous for being welcoming and generous? Donald Trump happened, for one thing, though Trump clearly struck a chord waiting to be struck and in a little more than a year we have become famous for being closed off and selfish. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times this morning about Ivanka's disappointing performance as first daughter. But her broader theme is the deadening of the American spirit we used to know under the leadership of her father. Read it. Here is one line.

"As a former top Trump administration official recently told me, “Donald Trump is the meanest man I’ve ever met.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

America has been in some sort of military action for longer than I've been alive, including killing innocent children. And THIS makes America "mean"?

 

[ttwtt78640]

This is simply the necessary line to keep 'laser focused' on current immigration law and its enforcement woes while assuring that no legislation is able to be passed to change it. The alternative would be to 'give Trump a legislative victory' and move on to promises to raise taxes when (if?) more demorats are elected.

 

[SoCal]

I think we still are. We welcome legal immigrants all the time. We have public celebrations when they achieve citizenship and applaud their desire and work towards it...

"...The furor over President Trump's language about immigrants from "****hole countries" has partially obscured the substance of what he was demanding and the profound shift among Republicans beyond opposing illegal immigration to also pushing new limits on legal migrants, particularly of color...

...The mounting total is a policy reversal for Republicans, who until recently insisted that welcoming new arrivals was vital not just to the fabric of American life but in boosting the domestic economy. Now, many Republicans in Congress have shifted to a more restrictionist position, following Trump's lead..."

 

[Lutherf]

I don't think that's true at all. People have always been coming to the US for a better life and the people coming over have always been faced with angry people that don't want them here. People have always been this way. Blacks migrating to the north from the south, Irish and Italians coming to the US, the story is on constant repeat. I have no idea your ethnic background but unless your family was English your relatives probably faced that same type of anger that Hispanics face now.

So what you're saying is that it's always been this way and people have overcome racial and/or ethnic bias. I'd agree with that. Now, why is what we have going on now different and why, if it's happened forever, is it Trump's fault?

I'll give you the answer, politicians are playing those natural biases for their advantage. The LAST thing a politician wants is a self sufficient constituency. Politicians WANT you and I to be at each other's throats so that they can justify their position and their influence.

 

[MrPeanut]

One of the big changes is how we talk about immigration. It is always about the most effective way to keep people out of the country, and not about the best way to safely accept people into the country. Trump may be particularly loud about it, but the conversation has been bad for years.

 

[OscarLevant]

What happened to the America famous for being welcoming and generous? Donald Trump happened, for one thing, though Trump clearly struck a chord waiting to be struck and in a little more than a year we have become famous for being closed off and selfish. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times this morning about Ivanka's disappointing performance as first daughter. But her broader theme is the deadening of the American spirit we used to know under the leadership of her father. Read it. Here is one line.

"As a former top Trump administration official recently told me, “Donald Trump is the meanest man I’ve ever met.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

The twisted Trump family dynamic was on lurid display this past week, hitting a Marie Antoinette high point as the echoes of sobbing children snatched from parents fleeing violence collided with images of a whining, pampered child-president bragging about his crowd size and his bank account, all while he callously used helpless kids as hostages to get his wall.

Her [Ivanka's] father is the all-consuming maw, what Fox calls “an infinite pit of need — a time-sucking vampire who fed off those around him to sustain his own vanity.”

Frickin' brilliant.

For those who do not know, Maureen Doud is a no liberal, she's hurled as many fireballs at the Clintons and Obama just as much as she has at the Trumps.

 

[iliveonramen]

The difference might be how they got here. Most immigrants came through Ellis Island, the legal way, back then.

The immigration "process" for people coming to the US through Ellis Island was nothing like it is now. They showed up on a boat, got a medical check up, and became US citizens. Most of the people that landed on the boat had nothing, knew no one, and sometimes barely spoke any English. They would of never been able to go through a complicated, expensive, multi-year immigration process.

There were also no limits for a lot of these immigrants. Limits on the number of immigrants was passed in the 1920's. The only limits were typically passed to stop specific groups (Chinese) from coming over.

 

[iliveonramen]

So what you're saying is that it's always been this way and people have overcome racial and/or ethnic bias. I'd agree with that. Now, why is what we have going on now different and why, if it's happened forever, is it Trump's fault?

I'll give you the answer, politicians are playing those natural biases for their advantage. The LAST thing a politician wants is a self sufficient constituency. Politicians WANT you and I to be at each other's throats so that they can justify their position and their influence.

I think one main difference is just the immigration process itself. For most of US history...you came to the states, lived her for a few years and became a naturalized US citizen. That was it. It's only in the 20th century that you start seeing caps on numbers and a more restrictive immigration policy. The result of that, people are now illegal immigrants and the process is laborious. I'm not saying that we should have the old policy but these type of restrictions have led to a large number of people here that aren't document citizens that builds up over time.

 

[lefty louie]

We are a welcoming and generous nation, so long as you are white and arrive with enough money to contribute to the Republican Party.

My wife, her mother, sister 2 aunt's 1 uncle several cousins were all welcomed here the legal way and they are all very, very, brown. Millions from the mid east are here legally, they aren't white, matter of fact most people that has a name ending with a vowel aren't "White", they are Latin or olive skinned. If you look around my area the NY/NJ/ metro area I'm sure that browns/yellows and blacks all outnumber whites and most are here legally.

 

[Floridafan]

My wife, her mother, sister 2 aunt's 1 uncle several cousins were all welcomed here the legal way and they are all very, very, brown. Millions from the mid east are here legally, they aren't white, matter of fact most people that has a name ending with a vowel aren't "White", they are Latin or olive skinned. If you look around my area the NY/NJ/ metro area I'm sure that browns/yellows and blacks all outnumber whites and most are here legally.

Trump is very welcoming of those from the Middle East isnt he, and Africa as well

 

[TobyOne]

Womp. Womp.

 

[veritas1]

We give out more aid than anyone in the world. We take in more asylum seekers than anyone in the world. There is nothing above #1. So, no, I wouldn't say we are mean at all. If we are, why are so many beating a path to our door?

 

[Port & Starboard]

One of the big changes is how we talk about immigration. It is always about the most effective way to keep people out of the country, and not about the best way to safely accept people into the country. Trump may be particularly loud about it, but the conversation has been bad for years.

I don't see the talk as being against legal immigration at all.

I see people wanting it done right.

When the left and right speak past each other, we end up where we are now.

 

[veritas1]

Trump is very welcoming of those from the Middle East isnt he, and Africa as well

Do you have any evidence that people from the ME and Africa are being unfairly kept out of here? Perhaps you consider vetting unfair. Just wave 'em all in I guess.