Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Barrister]

Okay, so focusing on my non-British ancestors...

-came to this country legally - yes.
-adopted it's culture?  SPoke their language for generations and even 5 generations later I still have kept some of their culture
-didn't spit on the country's traditions - how exactly does one do that?
-didn't cost a dime?  They only came because they were given FREE LAND, and several of my ancestors certainly did rely on social assistance of one form or another

[Valmy]

Yet your sisters came over and shit constantly over this country and its people and culture on Facebook all the time. Why can't we have the good hardworking America loving immigrants like Emma Goldman back again?

[HVC]

Wait, isn't/wasn't one of your sisters on disability benefits?

[Syt]

Wait, isn't/wasn't one of your sisters on disability benefits?

Not as far as I'm aware.

[Berkut]

So my wife's cousin has started posting vaguely right-wing idiotic memes on Facebook.  One of which was posted by (I think) Syt's sister and re-posted in this thread - about how cops don't need more training, rather that parents failed their child.

I haven't had a lot to do with this guy over the years, but he was quite kind to me when I was first coming to meet her family and has always seemed like a stand-up guy (his brother is also in law enforcement so a pro-cop POV is pretty understandable).  But more importantly he almost certainly is suffering from Huntington's Disease which is a neurological disorder that absolutely can affect your thinking and reasoning skills.

I guess I just ignore it.

Its all you can do...I think.

I have Trumpers in the family, and directly challenging them

1. Doesn't work and will not convince them of anything, and
2. Makes Thanksgiving kind of suck

You can whittle around the edges. Me and my sister did manage to at least partially get our niece to start thinking a little differently about things like BLM. Considering her brother is the deputy sheriff who was shot recently, I thought that was something of an accomplishment at least.

[The Minsky Moment]

I would guess that the ancestors for a majority of Americans arrived at a time when there no national restrictions on immigration, and hence it was impossible to enter illegally.
Had such restrictions been understood to be within the power of the national government and had been imposed, it is likely many people of Irish descent would not be in the US today.

[The Brain]

Country's traditions? What about Western's?

[Habbaku]

Country's traditions? What about Western's?

I am told we have the Best of those.

[Razgovory]

We didn't have immigration laws until 1876 and that was just to keep the Chinese out.  I don't know what "spit on our countries tradition" means exactly, but immigrants did rock the boat quite a bit.  The tradition of the Orangemen marching through New York City was curtailed by the Catholic Irish.  Quite a few people died in that process.  No justice, no peace.

[The Brain]

In many countries if something isn't illegal it's legal.

[Valmy]

We didn't have immigration laws until 1876 and that was just to keep the Chinese out.  I don't know what "spit on our countries tradition" means exactly, but immigrants did rock the boat quite a bit.  The tradition of the Orangemen marching through New York City was curtailed by the Catholic Irish.  Quite a few people died in that process.  No justice, no peace.

Yeah this meme is full of lies and meant to direct rage at current immigrants while pretending past ones were morally superior. And that is a charitable interpretation because it almost seems like it is full of racism sort of claiming past white immigrants were morally superior. That is kind of an awful thing to suggest but considering the whole "non-whites were the real slave owners!!111" stuff they have been posting lately....

[Duque de Bragança]

In many countries if something isn't illegal it's legal.

At least tolerated.

[Jacob]

Its all you can do...I think.

I have Trumpers in the family, and directly challenging them

1. Doesn't work and will not convince them of anything, and
2. Makes Thanksgiving kind of suck

You can whittle around the edges. Me and my sister did manage to at least partially get our niece to start thinking a little differently about things like BLM. Considering her brother is the deputy sheriff who was shot recently, I thought that was something of an accomplishment at least.

Yeah, I think the main thing you can do is the hard and thankless work of whittling around the edges. Provide them counterarguments they can choose to take, should they ever want them, and get them to acknowledge that your point of view is at least not based on the malicious lies projected on it by the social media they follow.

[Valmy]

In many countries if something isn't illegal it's legal.

Only if we are talking about time and space being a fixed thing. As soon as you remove that constraint and suddenly you can do the same act at different times well plenty of actions can be illegal and legal. I am sure in the past there were lèse-majesté in Sweden. Now today people can probably talk shit about the King and not be arrested. Now would these Swedes talk shit about the King if they suddenly existed 200 years ago or whatever? Are they morally superior to some Swede who was arrested for lèse-majesté 200 years ago? Wow Swedes today are so much more law abiding when they insult the King! Those King insulters from the past sure could learn a thing or two from them.

Now do I know if my ancestors would have come here if they knew it was illegal to do so? I have no fucking idea. I do not even know why they left their country of origin and why they decided to move to wherever they ended up moving to. So how can I praise them for not breaking 21st century laws? They might have broken those laws if they had been present at the time. I don't know. Seems weird to make a moral judgement on that basis. What we do know is that plenty of immigrants did not adopt the culture and caused a lot of social strife with their differing religions and ideas.

[The Minsky Moment]

Now today people can probably talk shit about the King and not be arrested..

The current King sure - but try and talk shit about Charles XII or Gustavus Adolphus and see what pushback you get.
Swedes may try to pass themselves off as balls of light, but some of them have weird things for monarchs who die stupidly in stupid wars.