American Politics Thread VI: Can't We All Just Get Along?

[Thermodolia]

I approve. John Brown, Lincoln, or MLK will also work

Frederick Douglas would also work. Malcolm X if you wanna see Neo-Confederates cope and seethe.

Also true.

[Lady Victory]

Robespierre abolished slavery and gave citizenship to black people in 1794. And other examples were given not so long ago here. You didn't need to be prescient to know that treating people horrible because of their skin color wasn't right, even 200 years ago.

Sure but then ole Robey got a bit choppy choppy

There's a chance Robespierre might have been a scapegoat tbh. Not to say he wasn't involved, but his brutality may have been exaggerated and it may not all have been him directly.

[Shrillland]

Frederick Douglas would also work. Malcolm X if you wanna see Neo-Confederates cope and seethe.

Also true.

I'll take any of those but Sherman myself. As a proud Northerner, I'd gladly give the South a gentle reminder, as a Native American, however, I can't forget his refusal to let the Nez Perce go back home.

[Lady Victory]

Also true.

I'll take any of those but Sherman myself. As a proud Northerner, I'd gladly give the South a gentle reminder, as a Native American, however, I can't forget his refusal to let the Nez Perce go back home.

John Brown it is then.

[Kilobugya]

There's a chance Robespierre might have been a scapegoat tbh. Not to say he wasn't involved, but his brutality may have been exaggerated and it may not all have been him directly.

This is not the French politics thread so I'll be short, but yes that's definitely the case. Robespierre was initially against the death penalty, and while he did support using it in the difficult situation he was in, he was more of a moderating force, trying to limit its use to those who actively attempted to sabotage the Revolution or those like the accapareurs who voluntarily created food scarcity to drive prices up and make profits. He was far from the bloodthirsty tyrant he's sometimes depicted as.

[Kowani]

Speaking of Confederates
The Pentagon is now accepting the public's recommendations for what to rename bases currently named after Confederate Generals.

You can make your recommendations at the link above

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Speaking of Confederates
The Pentagon is now accepting the public's recommendations for what to rename bases currently named after Confederate Generals.

You can make your recommendations at the link above

Basey McBaseBase.

Watch that someone will probably suggest something similar just for the heck of it.

[Michel Meilleur]

I'm all for peoples deciding to no longer honor people they once did. But your anachronistic standard of "they should have done back then what is right by our standards today. And if they didn't they're cowards" is ridiculous.

Robespierre abolished slavery and gave citizenship to black people in 1794. And other examples were given not so long ago here. You didn't need to be prescient to know that treating people horrible because of their skin color wasn't right, even 200 years ago.

Robespierre along the Comité de Salut Public also attempted a religious / crypto-ethnic genocide in Vendée and Bretagne, not to mention the whole shitshow he made in Paris itself in the name of "defending the Republic (and his ass)".
We still have plenty of representation of him. Should we bring them down and burn his portraits?

There's a chance Robespierre might have been a scapegoat tbh. Not to say he wasn't involved, but his brutality may have been exaggerated and it may not all have been him directly.

He really, really, REALLY was not. There was about 40k executions (not counting the massacres perpetrated by the colonnes infernalles and other Republican armies through France which would bring that number to at the very least 100k deaths) and half a million peoples put into prison for a population of around 25 million during the Terreur alone.

[Kilobugya]

Robespierre along the Comité de Salut Public also attempted a religious / crypto-ethnic genocide in Vendée and Bretagne, not to mention the whole shitshow he made in Paris itself in the name of "defending the Republic (and his ass)".
We still have plenty of representation of him. Should we bring them down and burn his portraits?

Sputting lies from Puy du Fou doesn't make it the truth. Robespierre never attempted any kind of genocide. The war in Vendée was actually started by counter-revolutionary slaughtering republicans, forcing Robespierre to send an army to pacify. That army then committed atrocities, but that was nothing near a genocide, and Robespierre never gave any orders to behave that way, he actually recalled and fired the general when he learned what happened.

Robespierre is a great figure of our history, that did what he could in difficult times, saved the Republic, abolished slavery, ended famine, gave us the first hint of social welfare, gave voting rights to Black and Jew, ... and is absolutely noway near what the white propaganda and the Puy du Fou shows makes him to be.

[Michel Meilleur]

Sputting lies from Puy du Fou doesn't make it the truth. Robespierre never attempted any kind of genocide. The war in Vendée was actually started by counter-revolutionary slaughtering republicans, forcing Robespierre to send an army to pacify. That army then committed atrocities, but that was nothing near a genocide, and Robespierre never gave any orders to behave that way, he actually recalled and fired the general when he learned what happened.

Robespierre is a great figure of our history, that did what he could in difficult times, saved the Republic, abolished slavery, ended famine, gave us the first hint of social welfare, gave voting rights to Black and Jew, ... and is absolutely noway near what the white propaganda and the Puy du Fou shows makes him to be.

Why do you feel the need to lie to try and make the situation black and white when the reality was in shade of grey ? It's honestly not helping the argument you're trying to make.

The war in Vendée was started over religious persecution of the Catholic Church and protests over the mass conscription of the peasantry. It started just as a simple insurrection, no different from the ones that happened all over the rest of France for the very same issues. The reason it ended up getting so much worse was that both Royalists and Republicans decided to turn it into an "exemple" to show their own righteousness.

I'm as Patriot and anti-royalist as it goes but tell me how exactly raising Francilien regiments and then sending them to Bretagne to a General whose plan was made very clear from the get-go that it was to kill and burn to "frighten the locals into submission" can be understood as anything but an attempt of Genocide, especially when the Comité de Salut Public had made it its official policy to "purge" both cultural minorities and the Catholic Church to make a "unified national identity" ?

And don't even try and pretend that Robespierre was "horrified" after knowing the wanton war crimes perpetrated by Turreau. The Comité de Salut Public had supported him and his "honest intentions" from the get-go, and only recalled him once it proved that he was better at killing unarmed civilians than Royalists soldiers.
The fact that it took the death of """l'incorruptible"""" for the massacres to end and the generals to be punished is pretty telling that it wasn't the Republic that was at fault but the Comité and its bloodthirsty maniacs of members.

Robespierre was a great traitor to our first Republic, whose foolishness and ego led to its downfall, first to the hands of bourgeois and ultimately to Napoléon's ones.
No matter how many reforms he talked about and shuffled around, it won't change this fact nor clean the blood he had on his hands.

[Cannot think of a name]

Speaking of Confederates
The Pentagon is now accepting the public's recommendations for what to rename bases currently named after Confederate Generals.

You can make your recommendations at the link above

Basey McBaseBase.

Watch that someone will probably suggest something similar just for the heck of it.

If it hasn't already happened the internet is losing a step.

[CoraSpia]

I propose every statue of a confederate that gets taken down gets replaced with one of William T. Sherman.

I approve. John Brown, Lincoln, or MLK will also work

Wasn't John Brown also a traitor?

[CoraSpia]

Speaking of Confederates
The Pentagon is now accepting the public's recommendations for what to rename bases currently named after Confederate Generals.

You can make your recommendations at the link above

Basey McBaseBase.

Watch that someone will probably suggest something similar just for the heck of it.

I was thinking 'all about that' base

[The Alma Mater]

I propose every statue of a confederate that gets taken down gets replaced with one of William T. Sherman.

Why not a nice Baphomet statue, to show appreciation for the Satanic Temple making an effort to protect the rights of Texans ?

[Ifreann]

:lol:

So there is nothing anachronistic about judging people from the 1850s to have been racist pieces of shit when when non-racist positions were fully available to them and yet they chose to be racists.

"Yeah they followed the cultural norms of the time, instead of following the beliefs of a radical and extreme minority of the population." - says the person who grew up this side of the Civil War and Civil Rights era.


In 300 years they're really gonna let us have it for not buying into scientology.

I wouldn't have thought that Supreme Court chief justices are usually the type of people who just thoughtlessly go along with what's fashionable during their careers. These are well-educated people, whose whole job is thinking about stuff and reading about stuff and then thinking about stuff some more. We're not talking about the average person, going about their business, more concerned with the day-to-day challenges of their life than about civil rights or racial justice. We're talking about a man whose literal profession was to hear both sides of an argument, consider them both carefully, and come down on the side of one or the other. And he chose the racist side. That makes him a racist. It's not anachronistic to acknowledge that.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Sputting lies from Puy du Fou doesn't make it the truth. Robespierre never attempted any kind of genocide. The war in Vendée was actually started by counter-revolutionary slaughtering republicans, forcing Robespierre to send an army to pacify. That army then committed atrocities, but that was nothing near a genocide, and Robespierre never gave any orders to behave that way, he actually recalled and fired the general when he learned what happened.

Robespierre is a great figure of our history, that did what he could in difficult times, saved the Republic, abolished slavery, ended famine, gave us the first hint of social welfare, gave voting rights to Black and Jew, ... and is absolutely noway near what the white propaganda and the Puy du Fou shows makes him to be.

Why do you feel the need to lie to try and make the situation black and white when the reality was in shade of grey ? It's honestly not helping the argument you're trying to make.

The war in Vendée was started over religious persecution of the Catholic Church and protests over the mass conscription of the peasantry. It started just as a simple insurrection, no different from the ones that happened all over the rest of France for the very same issues. The reason it ended up getting so much worse was that both Royalists and Republicans decided to turn it into an "exemple" to show their own righteousness.

I'm as Patriot and anti-royalist as it goes but tell me how exactly raising Francilien regiments and then sending them to Bretagne to a General whose plan was made very clear from the get-go that it was to kill and burn to "frighten the locals into submission" can be understood as anything but an attempt of Genocide, especially when the Comité de Salut Public had made it its official policy to "purge" both cultural minorities and the Catholic Church to make a "unified national identity" ?

And don't even try and pretend that Robespierre was "horrified" after knowing the wanton war crimes perpetrated by Turreau. The Comité de Salut Public had supported him and his "honest intentions" from the get-go, and only recalled him once it proved that he was better at killing unarmed civilians than Royalists soldiers.
The fact that it took the death of """l'incorruptible"""" for the massacres to end and the generals to be punished is pretty telling that it wasn't the Republic that was at fault but the Comité and its bloodthirsty maniacs of members.

Robespierre was a great traitor to our first Republic, whose foolishness and ego led to its downfall, first to the hands of bourgeois and ultimately to Napoléon's ones.
No matter how many reforms he talked about and shuffled around, it won't change this fact nor clean the blood he had on his hands.

I think Robespierre even killed some of his own friends when they wanted to end the great terror. That's not normal either; Just imagine if George Washington executed Thomas Jefferson for his differing views on government or vice versa. The guy was a power hungry tyrant who got executed when he made a tactical error when threatening the Legislative Assembly.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Basey McBaseBase.

Watch that someone will probably suggest something similar just for the heck of it.

I was thinking 'all about that' base

I hate this so much. Go for it.

[San Lumen]

https://www.abc27.com/news/this-week-in ... -election/

Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse mulling write-in candidacy for upcoming election in November. He lost the primary to City Council President Wanda Williams earlier this year.

[North Washington Republic]

Speaking of Confederates
The Pentagon is now accepting the public's recommendations for what to rename bases currently named after Confederate Generals.

You can make your recommendations at the link above

Something tells me that MAGA is going to demand that base be named after Donald Trump.

[San Lumen]

Speaking of Confederates
The Pentagon is now accepting the public's recommendations for what to rename bases currently named after Confederate Generals.

You can make your recommendations at the link above

Something tells me that MAGA is going to demand that base be named after Donald Trump.

which base are you referring to? There are multiple ones on the site.

[Diahon]

I approve. John Brown, Lincoln, or MLK will also work

Wasn't John Brown also a traitor?

He was the only man of his time convinced that racial equality was worth dying for; in this, he was beyond the ken of even people two decades removed from him.

Forget Sherman -- torch the South as he did, he was still a Confederate sympathizer at the end of the day. When you want the Confederacy fucked, turn to the man who made the gallows as glorious as the cross, and honor those emptied pedestals with his representation.

[Kilobugya]

I think Robespierre even killed some of his own friends when they wanted to end the great terror.

Actually it's the over way around - Robespierre arrested (and they were later executed, although that's not something he personally decided) the more "radical" of his "friends", those who were behind the Terror going well beyond its intended scope of fighting against the traitors, saboteurs and acapareurs. Not because they wanted to end the terror.

That's not normal either; Just imagine if George Washington executed Thomas Jefferson for his differing views on government or vice versa.

It's not at all about "different views on government", it's about wining a war of survival against the League of Kings and when counter-revolutionnaries were actively sabotaging the war effort, organizing starvation to profit from scarcity, while other factions of the revolutionnary went almost Red Khmer like mad with a will to purge everything from the Ancient Régime. In that very delicate situation he did his best to soften the terror, to only execute those who were truly guilty, to protect the population and to win the war.

The guy was a power hungry tyrant

I wouldn't have made all the same choices he did, but he was definitely anything but a power hungry tyrant. That's the lies that royalists spread around, but no serious historian holds to that view of Robespierre.

who got executed when he made a tactical error when threatening the Legislative Assembly.

He didn't "make a tactical error", but he got back-stabbed by people plotting against his back taking advantage of him having gone through an illness. The fall of Robespierre, due to his illness, the White Terror and the dismantling of the Revolution by the Thermidorian is the worse tragedy that felled upon France in that troubled time. And it's what ultimately led to Napoleon, Restoration and all the woes of the 19st century.

But anyway this is about USA politics, not French history, so I won't answer more on that topic - just really, the dark legend of Robespierre the bloody tyrant is a creation of his political opponents and isn't taken seriously by historians.

[Cannot think of a name]

Basey McBaseBase.

Watch that someone will probably suggest something similar just for the heck of it.

I was thinking 'all about that' base

All your base r

[San Lumen]

I was thinking 'all about that' base

All your base r

all your base are belong to us.

[Kowani]

Metering asylum seekers ruled unconstitutional

Legal nonprofit Al Otro Lado and 13 immigrants turned back from making asylum claims at ports of entry along the U.S.–Mexico border proved the "metering" policy violates rights enshrined in the Administrative Procedure Act and Constitution, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Now U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant is tasked with deciding what kind of legal fix should be instituted to make up for the months — or years — thousands of mostly Central American immigrants spent “waiting their turn” to cross into the U.S. to seek international protections implemented globally in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

In a 45-page-order Thursday, Bashant — a Barack Obama appointee — found the policy, first implemented during Obama’s last months in office at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in 2016 in response to the influx of Haitian immigrants seeking to claim asylum in San Diego, was unconstitutional.

Bashant found U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials’ “agency action” of turning back asylum-seekers arriving at ports of entry to Mexico violated their mandatory duties to inspect and refer asylum-seekers.

She rejected the federal government’s argument inspection and referral duties were not unlawfully withheld — only delayed.

“The record contains undisputed evidence that in 2016, 2017, and 2018, CBP officers did not carry out their discrete statutory duties to inspect and refer asylum seekers to start the asylum process once they arrived at POEs; instead, defendants stationed CBP personnel at the limit line to ‘turn away’ or ‘push back’ asylum seekers as they reached POEs,” Bashant wrote. Bashant reiterated her previous finding the APA applies to those immigrants “in the process of arriving” but who are physically outside the U.S., noting finding otherwise would be contrary to the Department of Homeland Security’s own definition of “arriving aliens” as “attempting to come into the United States at a port of entry.”

She added: “If immigration officers can forgo inspection upon an asylum seeker’s first arrival and defer this duty to some unspecified future arrival without flouting the statute, the first arrival loses legal significance … if the statute is construed in this way, this would permit defendants to turn back asylum seekers any number of times — perhaps indefinitely — without running afoul of their statutory obligations.”

Turning back or “metering” asylum-seekers at ports of entry makes seeking protection through appropriate legal channels more difficult than if an immigrant were to enter the country illegally, Bashant wrote.

And creating additional logistical barriers to the asylum process through repeat trips to ports of entry, waitlists maintained by Mexican immigration officials and causing asylum-seekers to wait in dangerous Mexican border towns “resulted in asylum seekers’ deaths, assaults, and disappearances after they were returned to Mexico,” Bashant wrote.

The question of agency discretion was not one the court or immigration officials could take up, she added.

If immigration officials have “legitimate” constraints that prevent them from fulfilling their duties to inspect and process asylum-seekers arriving to the U.S. that's an issue which must be taken up by Congress, Bashant added.

Likewise, Bashant found turn backs of asylum-seekers violates their due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment because immigration officials unlawfully withheld their duties to inspect and process class members.

Bashant did reject the immigrants’ claim for violation of the international “norm” of non-refoulement enshrined in the Alien Tort Statute, finding the “norm” is not universally applied, as many countries — including in Europe and Australia — have “sealed“ borders from asylum-seekers.

The “norm” forbids the government from returning an individual to a country where they have a well-founded fear of persecution, torture or harm.

But because there has been international disagreement of how non-refoulement should apply worldwide, Bashant declined to make a judicial determination regarding how it applies to immigrants just beyond the U.S. border.

“Given both controlling case law and the ongoing debate over the proper scope of countries’ jurisdictions, the court regrettably cannot find that this norm is universally applied beyond borders. As such, the court finds that the duty of non-refoulement as it applies to migrants at the border but physically outside the territorial United States is not a norm from which no derogation is permitted,” Bashant wrote.

A spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represents Al Otro Lado and the immigrants did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did the Department of Homeland Security.

The parties were ordered to submit additional briefing on what relief should be instituted by the court by Oct. 1.