Memes that annoy you

[GenYus234]

How about we melt/smash all the statues and use them to build the wall?

ETA: The "suddenly offensive" is a very common theme for racists/sexists/homophobes defending their world view. (A subset of this is the "you are racist for talking about racism".) It reminds me of the South Park episode dealing with Catholic priest molestation:

Priest: Yes, but we've got to find out why these children are suddenly finding it necessary to report that they're being molested. Stop the problem at its source.

[DawnStorm]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

How about we melt/smash all the statues and use them to build the wall?

There's already a GoFundMe campaign to build the wall using surplus Left Behind books.

[smittykins]

Originally Posted by smittykins

"Closing our borders isn't heartless. If I close my door, it doesn't mean I hate the people outside. It means I love the people inside."

From the same person:

“A wall doesn’t say “Keep out.” It says “Go in through the door(legally).”

[crocoduck_hunter]

Yeah, it's the looked, barred door that says "keep out."

[Mouse]

Originally Posted by smittykins

"Closing our borders isn't heartless. If I close my door, it doesn't mean I hate the people outside. It means I love the people inside."

In fact, you love the people inside so much that you are willing to starve them, so as to buy weapons to fight your so-called outside enemies. You have to do this, y’see, ‘cause they simply don’t know any better, and if you have to get a little forceful to drive the point home...Well, it’s their fault for getting you so mad in the first place.




I myself prefer the house metaphor that goes something like this: suppose someone is fleeing for their life from a serial killer and in a Last-ditch effort to save themselves, they take advantage of an unlocked door and run into your house for protection. Would you call the cops on them for breaking and entering, open the door and shove them back outside into the serial killer’s clutches, or acknowledge that the poor schmoe was under extenuating circumstances and protect them?

Of course, the house metaphor really is an imperfect one. A house isn’t the equivalent of a country. A house belongs to one person/persons, whereas the truth is that a country doesn’t belong to any one person, be they me or Donald Trump. But I felt I ought to play around a bit with the house metaphor, despite its obvious limitations.

[ASL]

Countries are sovereign, households are not, unless you’re one of those sovereign citizen nut jobs. And yet you still get to be secure in your property, with the force of the government to back you.

The US is under no obligation to take all comers. No country is. Sorry.

[NobleHunter]

Given the metaphor, the US is obligated to let people in who are running from the serial killer. They've signed up to take in refugees.

[ASL]

It’s unfortunate that the current administration has chosen to conflate the issues of asylum-seekers, refugees, and general immigration. Regardless, I’m not a fan of having an unchecked, fully open border. If I believed a wall would do much to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants, I would support it.

[NobleHunter]

There are pretty good reasons to control immigration. It's notable that the Administration and its supporters don't tend to use them.

[Beachlife!]

We are taking in asylum seekers, but doing it very slowly at the southern border at least. I can't say for sure, but I imagine the process is happening more quickly everywhere else in the country.

[crocoduck_hunter]

The current administration is, in fact, attempting to block asylum seekers in violation of the international treaties that the US helped draft in the first place.

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by ASL

It’s unfortunate that the current administration has chosen to conflate the issues of asylum-seekers, refugees, and general immigration.

They have done so because they're not anywhere near as interested in dealing with any actual immigration situation as they are in getting people worked up about The Other trying to break in to Our Space.

There are multiple problems with this, of course. Those supporting it (I don't mean you, ASL) should bear in mind that The Other is a moveable category, and if they keep electing people who like this tactic they may well eventually find themselves in it.

Originally Posted by ASL

Regardless, I’m not a fan of having an unchecked, fully open border. If I believed a wall would do much to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants, I would support it.

The best way to be able to check immigrants at the border is to actually let them come in through it. If it were easy to get through any of a large number of proper checkpoints, the only people trying to evade them could actually be assumed to be up to no good, and law enforcement efforts (not, IMO, including significantly more walls, which cause problems for the law abiding living in communities along them and even more drastic problems for members of many non-human species) could be concentrated on that group, while the people coming through the legal entries could be relatively easily screened for contagious disease, duress, and serious terrorist connections, because it wouldn't be necessary to catch them first. But as long as it's difficult to get in legally, people who only want safety and/or jobs are going to make up most of those working their way around barriers, and most of law enforcement's time and energy is going to be taken up on such people: which almost certainly actually makes it easier for the few who really want to make trouble to get in.

[RichardM]

Instead of sending thousands of troops to the border, send State Department workers to the southern part of Mexico to start the paper work on asylum seekers there.

[ASL]

Unfortunately, the State Department is currently unfunded.

[RichardM]

This could have been done before the shut down. However, the State Department was decimated in the early days of the Trump administration.

Trump trusts his gut more than experts. The only person whose guts I trust is a fictional member of the NCIS, Gibbs. But then I trust his guts because the director says so. Trump doesn't have a director.

[smittykins]

1955: “Timmy has measles. Go over and play with him so you can get them and get it over with.”

2015: “Timmy isn’t vaccinated. If you play with him, you might DIE!”

(Note to self: Don’t read the comments of any anti-vax meme. One lady mentioned that she’d had the measles(and other childhood diseases)and “it wasn’t fun,” and someone else replied “But you didn’t die and you never got them again.” )

[GenYus234]

I bet they wouldn't be so keen on 1955 if they knew that the tax rate was 91% of income over $200,000 - $400,000.

[Dasla]

Originally Posted by smittykins

1955: “Timmy has measles. Go over and play with him so you can get them and get it over with.”

2015: “Timmy isn’t vaccinated. If you play with him, you might DIE!”

(Note to self: Don’t read the comments of any anti-vax meme. One lady mentioned that she’d had the measles(and other childhood diseases)and “it wasn’t fun,” and someone else replied “But you didn’t die and you never got them again.” )

Tell them that I got one of them, I think it was rubella, several times as a child. The doctors did all sorts of tests. It isn't common but it happens.

I still got the vaccine, with the rest of my classmates, as a teenager.


But then again I have worked in vaccine research so I may have an agenda.

This reminds me a woman who I meet on the street*. Who started talking about vaccines and how bad they were. "I have worked in vaccine research" said I "So you know all about it then" She said "Yes I DO!" (more then she does the fool)

*I catch public transport, I do, at time chat to strangers I meet on the street.

[thorny locust]

The thing I really don't understand is that it seems to me that 'go play with Timmy so you'll get the measles now instead of later' is really a sort of vaccination in itself. People understood that measles was a more dangerous disease if contracted after puberty than before; that's why they tried to make sure their children caught it while still quite young. They were effectively creating immunity by exposure to the live and active virus -- which made sense, so long as that was the only technique available. It doesn't make sense any longer, because now you can vaccinate instead, thereby not only sparing the child feeling sick but reducing the danger even further (measles is less dangerous at 5 than at 15, but there's still some danger to small children).

If you're willing to use the old exposure technique, why be unwilling to do effectively the same thing except by exposure in a controlled fashion to a form of the virus that won't make the child sick?

[crocoduck_hunter]

Because that's what Big Pharma wants you to think?