Shit that Pissed me Off – 6/22/18

Apologies for missing the last couple of weeks. I was on vacation.

Let’s Just Talk About the Children

The last few installments of STPMO have been focused on a single issue and this week is likely to do the same thing because holy shit is this country fucked up.

I mean, we are fucked up in a lot of ways. But when we are having a debate over whether or not it is OK to forcibly separate children from their parents for months or years, I don’t even know who we are any more. We seem overly concerned with the fact these are immigrant children as if that somehow makes it a different conversation than if these were anyone’s kids.

Never mind whether or not it is legal. I mean, it kind of is but it kind of isn’t and I try to keep this blog to about 1500 words or less so there’s no way we have that kind of time. We shouldn’t be asking if it is legal. We should be asking if it is ethical.

I imagine it would surprise several members of the Trump administration to learn that they are, in fact, two separate words with two separate definitions.

And before I go too much further, I should note that our magnanimous President signed an executive order indicating that we won’t be separating children from their parents any more. He did it after claiming he couldn’t change the law (he could) and blaming Democrats (who aren’t in power) and saying it was a policy of the Obama administration (which it wasn’t).

He figured if he signed an executive order that said, in effect, “this is bad let’s not do it anymore,” it would solve the whole problem and he could get back to talking about his space force. But we need to talk about this because the executive order doesn’t really solve much and, more to the point, the fact any of us disagreed about this in the first place is embarrassing.

Let’s take a look at this meme, shared by more than a few folks this week:

First point of order – the picture is from a porn movie! I’m not trying to be anti sex. If you want to watch porn, that’s fine. But if you want to show a woman in jail for committing a crime, maybe you shouldn’t pull your picture from a porn movie!

I’m sure they just did a Google search for “woman in jail” and they didn’t like the first result, which was this one:

This, in all fairness, could also be from a porn movie. There are a LOT of porn movies set in prisons.

So instead of picking the first option, they picked the fourth. But maybe finding a picture that wasn’t from a porn movie should have been part of their meme generation process.

So let’s move on from the bad image choice. Have liberals really been silent about the foster care system? Not according to Google. Maybe there is a liberal bias there, just like at Snopes (because trying to find out the truth is clearly something that is super liberal.)

But of course the meme is really saying that liberals don’t have a problem with children of convicted felons going into the foster care system.

We do (or at least I do), actually, but that isn’t even the point.

The point is that these kids aren’t in the foster care system. They are in a gymnasium (it’s actually a lot more complicated than that and you can find out more on this incredibly biased link to NPR that actually seems to be pretty concise and clear but we all know NPR is fake news because LIBERAL BIAS).

The foster care system has problems. But at least it has a lot of good (and some bad) people trying to care for the kids.

This is worse than your normal false equivalence because the foster care system is supposed to give a fuck about the kids placed within it. The system of family detention at the US border doesn’t give a fuck about anyone. Except Americans who don’t like brown people.

So here’s the next part of the problem – the meme above equates a convicted felon with someone who illegally crosses the border. So, in fact, do a lot of Trump supporters (whom I separate from “conservatives” or even “Republicans” because I’ve met a lot of conservatives and Republicans who are still capable of critical thought).

They say “hey – these families are breaking the law so their kids deserve to be treated this way.”

But let’s remember that the meme above is referring to convicted felons and crossing the border without the correct documentation is a misdemeanor.

Like jaywalking.

It’s like saying “well, Tim, you got this speeding ticket so until we manage to process you, we’re going to take your kids away.”

But even that isn’t really a fair comparison because I can just pay for the speeding ticket. Undocumented immigrants are being prosecuted at such a high rate (due to the Trump no tolerance policy) that it takes months or sometimes years to process every one of them.

Even though it is just a misdemeanor.

Oh yeah – and many of these families are requesting asylum which, it may surprise you to learn, is not illegal at all.

So, to recap:

The picture is from a porno. Liberals actually do care about the shitty foster care system. These parents are not convicted felons and in fact haven’t been convicted of anything. Their kids are not being placed in to a foster care system.

So the answer when someone puts up this meme is to calmly ask “do you think kids should be separated from their parents?”

And if the answer is anything but “no,” there is no conversation to be had. You have already learned that the asshole you are talking to doesn’t give a fuck about these kids but rather they give a fuck about the “illegals” who are entering our country. Never mind that anyone who has every driven over the speed limit is an “illegal” by their definition.

And specifically, they have a problem with the brown illegals who are entering our country. An Englishman who has overstayed their work visa isn’t really a big deal.

I mean, unless they’re Muslim or something.

We can have an argument about the damage undocumented immigrants are doing to our country and while I will disagree with Trump and his supporters vehemently, at least we aren’t talking about fucking over their kids.

I don’t give a fuck if someone has a problem with undocumented workers. Blaming the parents for the treatment of the kids by the United States is the worst kind of victim blaming. And it actually comes off as if they are really blaming the kids for, somehow, choosing the wrong parents.

It’s like every single one of these kids is in A Series of Unfortunate Events and the US Government is Neil Patrick Harris

So look – hate immigrants if you want. And in the case of undocumented immigrants from central and South America, you do hate them so stop pretending you don’t. But stop trying to defend being awful to kids by, among other things, calling them god haters.

This isn’t an Obama era policy but that doesn’t matter. Stop fucking over the kids.

The Democrats aren’t in power and can’t do shit about this but that doesn’t matter. Stop fucking over the kids.

These people are almost all decent people and last I checked, the people shooting up schools aren’t undocumented immigrants anyway but THAT DOESN’T MATTER. Stop fucking over the kids.

Any time someone obfuscates the issue, they are showing their true colors. And those colors are: I don’t give a fuck about any kids who aren’t mine.

Dickweeds from 4chan want to call White People “People of Light”

One more subject so I don’t write an entire blog on one thing. Besides, this is

I wanted to believe this was parody but it isn’t. There is a movement by people claiming that since we are trying to call people who aren’t white “people of color,” it is racist to call white people white.

Because racism.

So the proposal is to call white people “people of light.” Because that somehow doesn’t sound elitist as fuck.

It does, though.

Also, light contains all colors so people of color would also be people of light. Science, bitches!

I can’t really even find enough words to explain the stupidity of this movement, which won’t go anywhere but shouldn’t have even been brought up in the first place.

Instead, I’m going to urge you to watch Sir Paul McCartney on carpool karaoke, which is simply delightful.