[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by rubecube

I guess I should have noted that I wasn't trying to say it was equivalent, just that the genesis began there. Hell, ICE was created back in 2003 and has always been a pretty garbage organization. My point was more that many of Trump's actions were him capitalizing on the groundwork laid by previous administrations.

Yes, direct result of the over-reaching powers of the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II. Every member of congress needs some roasting in hell for that draconian law dreamed up in a neo-con think tank.

I think one of the more telling admissions lately was Barbara Boxer saying she never would have voted in favour of creating the DHS if she had been able to envision its abuse against U.S. citizens, as if there's zero historical precedent for the U.S. taking egregious authoritarian actions against its citizens. Authoritarian policies are almost the Chekhov's Gun of U.S. history.

We are in complete agreement here. Too many members of congress were asleep at the switch after 9/11 and gave the neo-cons a free pass to implementing some of the most Machiavellian #### imaginable. People like to give Trump #### about taking the US back to 1954, but the Bush43 admin took us to 1984 - the Orwell version.

It was still horrible, racist policy and it's not unreasonable to think that maybe clearer minds should have prevailed. Canada deserves the same amount of criticism for doing the same ####.

But its context. This was long before civil rights and America was very much a homogeneous culture where racism was part and parcel to daily life. In today's context it was a horrible move. In the context of the day, it was completely acceptable. Ironically, after the end of WWII that context greatly shifted because of imagery that was shown from the Nazi concentration camps.

Where have I given Trump a pass on any of this? I've repeatedly said that Trump is a monster. My issue is with people treating the defeat of a Trump as return to the Garden of Eden. Trump represents the worst impulses of every American administration but he's still a product of those administrations, and removing him alone doesn't end the slide to authoritarianism that we've witnessed since at least the Bush years.

No one is suggesting that its going to be garden of Eden. In fact, it is likely to take years for the damage to repaired, if it can be repaired at all. But we have to start by cutting the head off the monster that is under all of our beds and getting people back into the system that actually believe in upholding the constitution.

There's a pretty good argument to be made that there still should have been due process, but I don't think you and I are in disagreement here.

Nope. Just like if a guy picks up a gun on the battle field and changes teams due process no longer exists. He was an enemy combatant and got what was coming. Citizenship and the protections afforded can be stripped at any time by the state with appropriate cause, and being a member of a terrorist organization tops those reasons.

If we're going to play the semantics game, it's the DHS in Portland and not the military.

No semantics involved. The National Guard is under the control of the state, not the federal government. It was the Ohio Governor who ordered the National Guard in, not the Feds. Trump has ordered Feds in and gone around the demands of the City and State.

I'm not the one who brought it up on a federal level. My point was that every Republican president has been a fervent supporter of it.

Still irrelevant because it is a states rights issue.

It's not exactly fringe thinking that theorizes that Clinton's 1998 bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Iraq was intentionally done to distract from the Lewisnky testimony. But I was wrong in that it wasn't a children's hospital. The U.S. has bombed a lot of ####. It's easy to get them confused.

Come on, you're way smarter than that. That's a well debunked conspiracy theory.

I'm more of a pastel-blue guy and my feet are way too flat and wide for Chucks.

Now THAT's funny!!! Made me chuckle. Well played sir!