non-american here, what is an “alien” in this context? i imagine it doesn’t mean “extraterrestrial”
edit: actually nvm, i just searched it up. why are people being called aliens? does this word even fit that role?
Where did you think the scifi term alien came from?
It just means foreigner, people will even use it as a verb
Something is alien (unknown) to me
Alienate is to exclude
Comes from here https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/alienus#Latin
I think it’s the original definition of the word alien, but I might be wrong. Kinda derogatory now but still used in legal contexts
I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien. I’m an Englishman in New York
yes it’s the appropriate term with the same meaning dating back to its original latin meaning, well before the concept of extraterrestrials
Bill Clinton used the phrase “illegal alien” to refer to immigrants without legal status like a green card, Regan and Bush were very pro immigration and both gave amnesty to immigrants in the US without legal status so they could stay in the US work, and apply for legal status, Clinton beat HW Bush by attacking him for the right on immigration, stoking racist hate towards Mexicans, Chicanos, and other Hispanics, which beat Bush badly, the GOP has been as hard line anti-immigrant as possible ever since, in fact Bod Dole lost a lot of votes by saying he wanted military all along the southern boarder, and as stupid as it was then it still is today, even though the average racist American views all Hispanic peoples as Mexicans who illegally enter on foot or swimming, the vast majority of undocumented or authorized immigrants enter on planes, with legal status. Staying Legal in the US is like going to the DMV and getting your car registered, except the rules always change, your job at work can lie and say they are sponsoring you, or processing paperwork for you until you are illegal and face zero consequences, the enforcing officers can make up rules on the spot and process deportation and imprisonment against your legal rights, and even if you have a lawyer, you might never get resolution on any matter, you could end up stuck in prison without any way to sort of what got you there as “they were suspected of a crime, so we won’t be processing anything” using the unjustified arrest or detainment AS the pretext for the continued legal abuse.
where was I? oh yeah. Clinton used to say it a lot in the 90’s was a whole buzzword.
Clinton beat HW Bush by attacking him for the right on immigration, stoking racist hate towards Mexicans, Chicanos, and other Hispanics, which beat Bush badly
Bill Clinton is a racist, sex pest? Sounds a lot like Trumpy.
Annie got a gun but not a brain. Without the right to due process for EVERYONE, the state can just snatch anyone they want off the street and claim the person they snatched is a member of a group that isn’t entitled to due process. The person, even if they are a citizen, will have no hearing or trial, no right to contact anyone, and be whisked away to a secret prison labor camp or even a death camp. Hey Annie, I’m from the government and I’ve decided you look like a foreigner. No phone calls, no judge, no jury, straight to the camp with you. #Fascism #PoliceState #MagaIdiot
It states all ‘persons’ not all citizens. It comes off as them not knowing this. Blatant ignorance of the constitution.
“Don’t care.”
Not just blatantly ignorant, willfully choosing to ignore the Constitution even when confronted with it.
Probably a White House official then
ahah, but you see, to them only us citizens are persons,
That’s demeaning
that’s the point
People in my country complaining that the world hates us. Me stuck and broke can’t go anywhere, but I had renounced my citizenship, not formally, years ago. Atleast the allegiance part.
This is why US concentration camps are in Guntanamo Bay and El Salvador
I mean the us has never followed due process in the way advocates frame it. As well as this originalists like Thomas and Scalia have always opposed it. Look at dred scott for a history of this. Even in theory due process is not the greatest. This person is wrong and almost certainly extremely bigoted but not as " out there" as some of these comments think.
The lady said that in retort, but autocorrect, you know?
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If “due process” only applies to US citizens, then no one has due process. Because all they have to do is claim you’re not a US citizen and then there’s no due process by which you can refute their claim.
Yes but understanding that requires second order reasoning skills, and most Americans don’t even have first order.
I just got a few days ban from reddit for saying it’s the people’s responsibility to overthrow tyrannical governments and that there’s a blurry line, but it’s on the deep end when people are being detained without due process.
That’s because the fascists control all mainstream media, “social” and otherwise. The sooner people properly internalize the implications of that fact, the better off we’ll be.
The right of the US to establish and enforce any law is implicitly dependent on a fundamental right of people to reject the authority of a tyrannical government. Otherwise the legitimacy of the US as a sovereign nation is invalidated.
Bold of you to think that the US has ever had legitimacy as a sovereign nation.
I mean yes but also this is literally an argument that was used to deny african americans rights that they weren’t citizens of any country so had no for example “due process”.
When your knowledge of the constitution is based on vibes.
“The new trend ‘Vibe Governing’ is sweeping the nation as lawmakers just ask racist AIs with no knowledge of the bills they’re actually writing”
I… I did not have “Idiot politicians backed by bigoted LLMs” on my 2025 bingo card. This way too plausible to be ignored. So… thanks?
What’s embarrassing here is that I’ve been saying “co-bots not robots” for a while now. But no, not like that.
A reminder about your rights. If the government can declare you to have an attribute that negates your rights, then you have no rights.
In laymen’s terms, if ICE arrests you and fast deports you, whose going to stop them? Okay but you get to a consulate in the foreign country and get back home. When you come out of your lawyer’s office (because you’re suing ICE), ICE arrests you again, this time as a criminal illegal alien because you came back in. They tell no one they have you, they tell no one where you are. You have no rights according to them. You are sent to an El Salvadoran prison in contravention of a court order not to deport you.
These are all things that have happened separately. We’ve accidently deported Americans. We’ve deported Americans on purpose. (Trump sent American kids away so he could deport their parents too) We’ve deported someone to an El Salvadoran prison in contravention of a court order.
If they don’t have rights, then neither do you because the government can just declare you a member of that group and as long as the guys with guns maintain that fiction, nobody can stop them.
A reminder about your rights. If the government can declare you to have an attribute that negates your rights, then you have no rights.
Any time someone claims that some group of people should have no/reduced due process, I respond essentially the same way: “If you believe that $GROUP shouldn’t have due process then you are a $GROUP_MEMBER. Prove you’re not without any due process.” Before this year, it was mostly people accused of sexual assault, but illegal immigrants are the new target of choice as people who allegedly don’t deserve due process rights.
This is also why the attacks on identification documentation for transgender people should concern everyone. We used to consider ex post facto laws unconstitutional - even things like sex registry acts have been historically controversial because they were adding a punishment that had not been previously ordained.
I spent $5500 that I could not afford (as in, I ended up having to do sex work to pay for it) - to get my “irreversible and permanent” surgery that the state I lived in said would qualify to have my legal sex changed. Like, I would have preferred to wait until I was in a more financially stable situation or might not have even bothered because I didn’t even really need to bind to pass - but the drivers license with an “F” is a problem once you have a full beard.
I followed their rules, I played their games. And now they get to say, nope, doesn’t count anymore. That’s not how the law is supposed to work.
I’m so sorry, I don’t think we live in a country subject to rule of law anymore though.
I’ve gotten the excuse to read both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself, out loud, with teenagers several times recently. Jefferson was a hypocrite and fuckwit that made money off of the back of child labor and raped the women he owned, but those words do have meaning. Any government calling itself the US that does not heed those words is not legitimate.
Yeah legitimacy is a thing so many people don’t understand. And it’s why they want to cloak their actions on official language and procedure. We would riot if they just disappeared people. So they make it seem like they aren’t just doing that.
I think I just caught a glimpse of the suffering of Americans who use, well, American social media. Y’all have it rough.
We would have taken all of this a lot more seriously if we broadly understood that this group doesn’t seek outcomes.
I know it seems loaded, but it solves so much of our bafflement. They don’t care about outcomes, they don’t want solutions or leadership or policies or better futures for themselves or anyone else.
They’re just mad and stupid and the left did nothing to manage and redirect this toddlerish rage and incompetence, instead we pretended the system was fair and the idiots wouldn’t have power because how could they. Naive and foolish on both sides.
If we worked harder to give these people better stories and targets to hate (hint: the rich really don’t want a class war) then maybe they would have made better choices.
Yeah argue with one long enough and they basically just admit they don’t care what happens what they love is “owning the libs” the more facts you show them that they can not respond to the more they think they are pissing you off and the more they get their rocks off. 100% they could not care less about any of the things they claim to revere, like the Constitution. Literally the only thing that makes them change their mind is when they realize the policies they voted for apply to them too.
One of my friends adult daughter is fully disabled mentally and physically and my friend can not even work the state pays her to be a caregiver for her child. They100% lives on state support programs. She voted for Trump, I told her before hand she is shooting everyone in the foot and shooting herself in the face with that vote,. She said she disagreed and things will get better for her that she is tired of liberals and “their immigrants” (???) taking part of the tax money that should be going to her and others like her. I was completely dumbfounded. I told her that is completely fabricated BS from Trump and it does not work that way but she told me I did not know what I was talking about, Trump wouldn’t just lie about this stuff… yeah. She said THAT.
Now she is telling me how she is so scared they are going to cut her benefits after all the targeting of Social Security and that she felt so betrayed and she thought there was no way Trump would betray his voters like this and there was no way she could have known Trump would have done something this terrible… I had to look at her and ask how she could have NOT known when I fucking told her multiple times. She finally realized after I said that that I was right. So she knows and will admit she was wrong now. None of my other friends have been affected yet but having talked to them none of them will change their minds until it hurts them or their family directly. Most of them are good enough friends they even admit that they don’t care (or even pay attention to) what Trump does as long as it is pissing off the liberals they are happy. At least the first friend realized she was dumb about politics. She told me from now on she was just going to ask me who to vote for… she is getting smarter about it at least.
She told me from now on she was just going to ask me who to vote for… she is getting smarter about it at least.
Really? I couldn’t handle that. She’s a fucking adult; she should be able to learn critical thinking skills and make her own informed decisions! I’d be down to talk about the issues, but if somebody said “Just tell me how to fill out my ballot”, I’d feel sorry for them and I couldn’t do it. She’s gotta take responsibility for her own actions.
I agree. But at least she knows she’s ignorant and isn’t Dunning Kruger-ing it like everyone else.
True, in an ideal world everything you say is correct. But too many people would rather die than think about what they do. And they are used by monsters like Krasnov to inflict misery on the rest of us. I’d just skip the discussions- which wouldn’t do anything other than waste your time anyway- and tell her how to vote. Someone so irresponsible as this person really needs to be guided.
This story reminds me of another point I want to touch on about this all.
When you believe in a thing you know isn’t real, it’s called cognitive dissonance. It’s easy to recognize in people who have supernatural or religious beliefs, but we all do this all day long about a thousand different things.
Cognitive dissonance is not a bug in human cognition, it’s a part of our architecture. We are not reasonable, logical beings. We have brains that do one thing and one thing only: write stories to explain our feelings. Nearly every major societal issue comes from this fact, from international wars to your own struggles with anxiety and depression.
I don’t know if it’s universal, but it seems a common memory many of us have about arguing with our friend who was convinced that WWF wrestling was real. They know that weapons and necromancy are probably not allowed in a real sport, but they also feel so strongly attached to the storyline that they also believe it’s real.
Our species is very, very good at holding ideas we know are untrue on some level. When you don’t have good language skills and can’t take complex ideas and make them abstract using language inside your head, you lack the ability to properly analyze an idea and have any critical thought about it. Language is our key to escape cognitive dissonance and we are being deliberately stripped of this power with a million different distractions. Social media that feeds us imagery and sounds with minimal interaction, AI that does your writing and reading for you. As well as of course, games and other electronic entertainment.
These aren’t bad things on their own, but we’re also being swamped with agendas and grifters and oligarchs who want split out the people most susceptible to influence in this way, providing them with stories that their brains can latch onto to explain their misery or pain. They may know that say, trans kids aren’t the reason that they’re broke, overworked and suffering, but it feels good to have a target who can’t hurt you. If you’re not really paying attention to what you’re thinking about what you feel, you can easily believe a hundred contradictory things.
And once they realize that it’s okay, that you CAN in fact believe in things that are objectively untrue, but you will get people supporting you and praising for believing that thing, you won’t let it go, your brain will even double-down and strengthen that pathway.
We have to get better about understanding our vulnerabilities, because there are systems coming online that are going to be even better at twisting our motivations and thinking.
Ok I know it’s not what your comment is about, but there is necromancy in WWF? How cool. I need to look into it.
This fits into my theory that conservatives have an organic brain dysfunction that damages the ability of conservatives to have empathy. Because conservatives only give a shit about bad things happening when those things happen to them or to people they love.
They’re just mad and stupid and the left did nothing to manage and redirect this toddlerish rage and incompetence, instead we pretended the system was fair and the idiots wouldn’t have power because how could they. Naive and foolish on both sides.
Liberals did all that. The actual leftists have been saying for decades that this was exactly where liberal centrism was going to end up as the Democrats did everything they could to keep funneling money up to the top as well.
The actual leftists
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
I am speaking from underneath the shattered remains of whatever our overton window has been. I had a good idea of the differences between liberals, progressives, leftists and so on… but more and more I am realizing that in America at least, during this period of our history, that the definitions of who is what have been deliberately smashed and spread across the field like roadkill.
All that said, I have a lot of criticism against the left as well as liberals broadly, a lot of people have been duped into becoming re- er, mentally handicapped and are out there chasing the wrong problems and spending their energy in the stupidest ways.
Such as attacking people online who should be your ally but you’re too hung up on finding what separates you. This is literally handing victory to your enemies but people seem to delight in attacking their own team because spaces have cordoned themselves off and nobody actually engages with their real opponents anymore.
100%
Its either the liberals or the billionaires. Pick one
The rich already have the class war. They just want to make sure we don’t find out they’re the ones attacking. I remember some rich lady journalist put out some opinion piece warning the working class against seeking a class war, and to just keep fighting the culture wars.
Yeah, Alice Thomson wrote this for The Times back in July of last year, bitching about how the candidates in the UK Parliament elections were touting their working class roots.
definition of a bad actor right there.
People like her argue in bad faith.
Shun and ostracize people like her.
Remove them from your civil social circles.
Only side eye!
Without due process, we have no way to know for sure if they are ‘illegal aliens’ or just citizens with the wrong [fill in the blank].
That about sums it up. They don’t believe the outgroup deserves rights. But if the outgroup doesn’t have rights nobody does, they’re just privileges that can be taken away at any time
And, it should be noted, the purpose of due process includes to check if these people are breaking any rules and if they’re supposed to be here as well as if they’re citizens.
The rule of law…or even the Constitution of the United States…is what they say it is. Their rules, they make up the law to suit what they’ve already done. The constitution, courts, legal code, hell…even the Bible, can get fucked. They’re all petty kings, judge, and jury rolled up into one.
All of that without grasping that they, themselves- are members of an outgroup that won’t always have influence. Assuming democracy can make a come back and something changes in the next election they may find themselves in that “unpopular” group. Bet they’d change their tune for the 37th time in that case.
It makes me wonder for what purpose people think nations have courts. Sure, we want to punish murderers, why is there a court? Now, let’s talk about “illegal aliens”.
Rhetorical, just FYI. I’m an American in Germany and I’ve literally never met a native German speaker who wasn’t a linguistics professor who didn’t say “rethoric” though, so it’s not a big mistake at all. I do wonder if there was a misprint in a popular textbook or something though, because it’s weirdly consistent, even more so than I would expect from a word with a silent (in German) h somewhere.
It’s a lot more unusual to have an h after an r than an h after a t, even in German. So if you vaguely remember there’s supposed to be an h somewhere, it intuitively makes more sense after the t.
In German, “th” is uncommon (non-existent?) in words that aren’t overtly borrowed from Latin/Greek, so you get overcompensation like “Ethymologie”. “Rhythmus” trips me up every time.
Yeah, that’s definitely a reason for it, but it’s always this word. I don’t recall a German saying ethymology or rhytmic, but this is probably the most common mistake I’ve noticed among C1-C2 English speakers here. The other one might be German mtg players saying “viscera” with the accent on the e, but that’s probably because of a popular YouTuber who influenced local game store culture.
This is the first time in my life I’ve seen it spelled “rethorical” and I’ve never heard it said that way. I’m in a particularly stupid part of the US but I’ve travelled most of the country.
Do you hang out with a lot of native German speakers? They’re the ones who do it ime, not native English speakers, and probably not nonnative speakers who live in anglophone countries for a while or who went to anglophone schools.
I’m sorry, I misunderstood.
