After immigrants are detained by ICE, there are probably records somewhere of who has an attorney, and who is calling family members or an attorney.
For the immigrants who aren’t calling any family or lawyers, the poorest of the poor, people with little to no connection to anyone, who may not even say which country they are from, if the administration were actually trying to kill as many disconnected immigrants as possible in secret, would society know?
For example, if the administration was composed of all types of conservative people, but 30 percent were secretly Nazis or wanted racial genocide, could there be a campaign to not just remove, but kill, immigrants, and the public doesn’t find out?
If they’re prisoners, then slave labor is legal under the 13th Amendment. I think that’s the ultimate outcome. Imagine how much more profitable American corporations could be with free labor, like before the Civil War.
We were supposed to be worried about Brown people taking our jobs, but we really have to be worried about Federally-managed slaves taking our jobs instead.
Yet another thing about the Constitution that needs changing. The state shouldn’t benefit from a prisoner class, otherwise it would be inclined to perpetuate incarceration.
Yeah the 13th Amendment is easily the biggest problem in the Constitution. Everybody has pretty much ignored it, because it hasn’t become much of an issue outside the prison world, but it is becoming apparent that MAGA intends to exploit the shit out of that monstrous loophole.
“Perpetuate incarceration?” These psychopaths are going to expand, corporatize, and monetize incarceration, and literally revive the American Slave Economy on a national scale.
Their dream is an entire national workforce that is 90% AI, robotics, or Federally-supplied slave labor (managed by a private, Trump-owned corporation, of course). Imagine how much more profitable corporations could be under such a system? Imagine how much wealthier they could get if labor was nearly free (although they’ll still complain about costs, and demand government bail-outs, tax breaks, etc)? There is no possibility that the craven psychopaths can resist the lure of such riches. They have been moving toward this objective for decades, and now it within reach.
Of course, there will be a devastating Depression as millions PERMANENTLY lose their jobs (it won’t bother the wealthy, they fly above all that), and with unemployment and homelessness deemed illegal, they will go straight to the work camps. Need government assistance to feed your family, now that you are permanently unemployed? All assistance recipients have to work off their debt to the government by residing in the work camps, where you will be leased out to a corporation to do whatever they tell you to do. You are a slave.
Once this slave-based economy is established, it will be impossible to turn it back, without crashing the economy AGAIN, launching another devastating Depression like the one that hit the South following the end of slavery.
And as an epilogue: What do you think will happen to the most recalcitrant of resistors, who refuse to cooperate with a slavery-backed economy and government? If you can’t work, or won’t work, you are an enemy of the state, and you will be eliminated, along with anyone close to you that you may have influenced. After a while, resistance evaporates.
And that how Trump and Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller are going to turn us into North Korea. Why do you think Trump loves them so much? He’d LOVE to be that guy, and slavery is the key.
Yep. And if you think they will stop with brown people, Martin Nemoller might have a thing or two to say. Once our elections go full Russia they’ll come door to door for the guns. Every dictator disarms the population. Every dictator has labor camps. Every dictator has death squads. They will have lists of agitators, enemies of the state, and domestic terrorists. Trump has already talked about depopulating the US by 100 million people.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this comment slid across an interrogation table at me one day.
You don’t give up your gun when they show up and not only will they all get automatic weapon boners until you’re dead, you will be labeled a domestic terrorist and family will be punished. You will be LUCKY if your loved ones simply get chained to a drone factory. Worst case?? Wives and daughters become comfort women.
Please… please… tell me I’m crazy and that this isn’t the North Korea hellscape we’re headed for.
They are already building Concentration Camps around the country, supposedly to temporarily house the immigrants they want to deport. But what happens to those Camps, and this wealthy, nearly untouchable agency when they’ve accomplished their immigration goals? Is it realistic to think that MAGA would surrender that power? Or will they expand it, and expand their mission?
Ita becoming clear that the ultimate goal is to create a population of slaves, which then can be forced to provide free labor for American corporations under the 13th amendment, boosting the economy and their profits, making their stock prices increase for those Sociopathic Oligarchs whose money is tied up in stock. Bringing back slavery is their ultimate goal, and the 13th Amendment gives that to them. They just need prisoners, and pretty soon, EVERYTHING will be illegal, and EVERYBODY is a potential criminal, and thus, a potential slave.
I’m pleased to see this, not a lot of people know about this, but he was actually saying that he had been speaking with Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller, and it was Peewee Himmler who said we should reduce the population TO 100 million people, and that they should look like him (God forbid). That would be about a 70% reduction in population from the current 335 million. It would be interesting to hear how PeeWee Himmler plans to accomplish his dream.
I think before this is nightmare is over we will be measuring death tolls in multiples of the Holocaust. It really is time to leave if you can. The midterm elections will be the fulcrum point. In November they will know if they ever have to worry ever being voted out again.
It’s literally the fucking Confederacy. The civil war never ended for them. They hid in plain sight for a century and a half. How many people know that the “GOP” stands for “Grand Old Party”? They stopped calling themselves Republicans 30 years ago. We all think this coup is a sudden thing. Yeah… the frogs are just now feeling the water get hot.
The next step is punishment. Plain and simple.
I think you are 100% right on every count, especially about the Midterms being the “fulcrum point.” Whatever happens in November, America will change greatly as a result, and it’s future path will be set. If Democrats win, it will be the start of taking our country back, and crushing and purging MAGA from our government and our society. The American people will accept nothing less from our Democratic losers, I mean “leaders.”
But if MAGA prevails, the future of America is going to be a giant prison slave labor force managed by a Trump corporation.
I’m getting old, and I have come around to the idea that my life may have a twist ending it wasn’t expecting. In fact, I have come to believe that dying in my sleep as an old man would be a waste. If America goes full MAGA, and Democracy ends, I will not be cooperative.
I’m not going down in a blaze of glory, however. I have people very close to me that I love more than life, and they are members of very vulnerable groups that MAGA hates, and will eventually be on their hit lists. If ANYTHING were to happen to any of them, I’m going to become a very dangerous person indeed.
Again, I won’t go down in a blaze of glory, I will be much more cautious and surgical about it. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Finally someone mentions the fucking loophole in the 13th Amendment. Slavery is still legal in the US. It’s just illegal when anyone other than the prison-industrial complex does it.
https://www.buycott.com/campaign/companies/504/boycott-companies-that-use-prison-labor
CostCo, John Deere, and AT&T are all on this list.
CostCo does? That sucks!
Yep, Trump and Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller are going into the slavery business.
Add it to the list of reasons I’m disgusted with my country, and disgusted with myself for ever being proud of it.
Yeah, I grew up in a military family, steeped in patriotism. I’m still patriotic toward Democratic America, but I despise MAGA America.
As a kid, I never would have thought about questioning the basic decency of America, but now I find myself seriously considering leaving.
Wow…you guys always come back to this Constitution that government completely ignores.
That’s right, because THAT’S the LAW. We don’t throw it out because the bad guys won’t follow it, because that’s STUPID.
Does your country throw out the law because there are criminals who refuse to follow it? Do you just say “What’s the point of having laws, if a few won’t follow them? I guess the solution is to have NO LAW AT ALL?” Of course not. You FORCE the law breakers to follow the law, OR ELSE.
That’s what we want, for MAGA to follow the Constitution like every other administration for the last 250 years. And if they won’t, we’ll FORCE them to.
Personally, I think the Constitution as we know it is starting to resemble the Articles of Confederation: not fit for purpose.
It WAS an useful document, but we don’t have enough people upholding it, and the overall design of the thing is filled with poison pills to democracy. The 13th Amendment’s slave labor exception, electoral college, the lack of ranked-choice voting, not considering one’s body and devices to be ‘effects’ for warrant purposes, and so forth.
That is one of the reasons why I favor preparations for a civil war, because a true successor to America would need a fresh document to light the path towards a better future. It would be a painful thing, but I don’t think we have the luxury of a peaceful reformation anymore.
Of course, I would like to be wrong. But it ain’t prudent to believe that the Donorcrats and Turdpublicans would have a revelation and fix themselves.
Again, get rid of the he Constitution, and then what? This is is a typical MAGA strategy. They hate something, so they point out a flaw, and use that to rationalize getting rid of the whole thing, and replacing it with nothing. Like Obamacare.
Yeah, there are flaws in the Constitution, and MAGA is going to use the 13th Amendment to revive legal slavery, and like they do with EVERYTHING, we can expect them to exploit the shit out of it. But the foundational promises of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill.of Rights - that all people are created equal, and ALL people have the INALIENABLE RIGHTS to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - are STILL worthy goals upon which to build a government, and a society. What foundational promises would you replace them with?
You can just just throw away the entire car because it needs some repairs as it ages, or you can recognize that the old girl just needs some basic maintenance, a few new parts, and maybe some upgrades, and she’ll go another century. That’s what our Constitution needs, just a little attention under the hood, and she’ll be good as new.
That seems a more cautious and responsible choice than let the obviously crooked MAGA used car guys pick out your next ride. They be happy to put you in a new governmental vehicle of THEIR choosing. What do you think that will be like?
Considering that some Founding Fathers wanted the Constitution to be a living document, the answer is obvious: Keep the best parts of the original, incorporate the good ideas from the charters of other nations, remove the awful, and try out wild new concepts that may or may not work.
When it comes to ‘weird’ ideas, I would like economic promises and rules to be added. You cannot pursue happiness nor prosperity, if you are impoverished. A renewed American society should adopt UBI, free education (all levels and types), universal healthcare, the rights of workers to vote on their leadership and the pay that leadership earns, absolute wealth and income caps, ect.
Wealth is a Goldilocks problem, where too much makes people like Trump or Epstein a common sight, while too little creates a caste of people who cannot live their best lives. I feel that creating floors and ceilings on wealth would help make the next American democracy much more healthy.
In any case, MAGA will ‘pick’ our ride anyways. As we have seen in Minnepolis, they make their own law. They murdered Pretti and Good, kidnapped children, ignore the 4th Amendment, ect. So we should consider civil war, and the ramifications that come with that, is creating new laws and institutions of our own. An overhauled Constitution is both functional and symbolic - a statement of intent for what we want our nation to become.
Keeping the basic structure and philosophy of the Constitution, reforming and refining the things that have proved to be a problem, and adding things that have worked, makes perfect sense. That’s a plan I can support, over just tossing it out, and THEN starting to figure out something new.
We need to clearly spell out the roles of each branch of government, and reconfigure our election system so that it doesn’t filter out the intelligent, competent and moral candidates, in favor of the worst possible candidates. Very importantly, we need to add teeth to the Constitution, to punish those who dare to make serious attempts to exploit our system.
When it comes to teeth, I think 100% taxation should be imposed on people and companies whose wealth exceeds a cap. In the case of companies, their limit on wealth and assets should be based on employees. Someone makes 50k a year? Half of their income’s worth increases the cap for the business. O’course, incomes should be capped, workers voting on leadership, and so forth, to prevent stupid exploits for increasing a business’s wealth cap.
To keep the businesses honest about the book keeping, they don’t handle the accounting and employee records. The state and federal government should have rotations of overseeing them. They can roll a 1d4 dice each year, the first two rolls deciding which quarters of the year that the state government is responsible for. The federal government takes the other two seasons.
This helps prevent corruption, because a company and government observers can’t get too familiar with each other. If a company tries to offer favors to a randomized person, they will eventually be found out by someone honest, who can relate the issue to both the state and federal government. Also, both state and federal governments can compare their fiscal books on a company, to ensure that they match up. Each season a state or government observes, they use a different observer. So a total of four different observers each year to compare records with. Bigger companies, of course, should get more people watching them.
IMO, corruption in general is the biggest reason why America is becoming an awful place. Making it harder to do is crucial, and what I outlined above is just one of many approaches that will be needed.
A civil war would mean the Balkanization of the United States. We would become a collection of russias and North Koreas with a few Dubais thrown in. I cannot overstate how bad this would be. Millions dead. Unrecoverable economy. Oligarchs running city States. Do you want Jeff bezos to be a governor? Because that’s how you get Jeff bezos as governor.
The reformes you are suggesting would take a century and the 50 states would never be united again. I don’t disagree that you are pointing out serious and actionable flaws but you are calling for nothing less than the complete destruction of America and likely a third of our people. Civil war is… Jesus… I fucking hope we can hold our shit together.
The issue is, do we get a good choice? I suspect that isn’t possible anymore, so we should try to create the least awful one.
Great post. This is the stark reality among all the fantasies of glorious revolution we are hearing.
The Sociopathic Oligarchs are already making plans for “Freedom Zones,” large areas where the government has surrendered the land to some Oligarch/corporation for them to develop and operate as their own, largely free from government interference of ANY kind. They can operate under any conditions, with any wages, and no oversight at all, largely staffed by foreign workers, perhaps supplemented by slave labor from American Concentration Camps. They will be creating autonomous city states run by brutal billionaire warlords. Think Hong Kong or Dubai, but with the emphasis on slavery and human degradation.
MAGA is already on board with this plan, and nothing would assist more than to Balkanize America, so that there is so much chaos and violence, these monsters could establish their Fiefdoms in relative peace, without a functional court system, government, or media interfering with their new hobby.