Abrego Garcia Was Beaten and Tortured in El Salvador Prison, Lawyers Say

I think this will be a veeeery unpopular opinion on this site. But I think the simple reality is this is the natural end state of unchecked capitalism.

The entire model the US has been on since Reagan has been a rapid, uncontrollable concentration of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer. The reality of that is of course, wealth translates (roughly) to power

On the reverse, in an authoritarian state you need to concentrate power in the hands of as absolutely few as possible. The loyal ones who keep the empire running

Of course you also need to convince the working class to "play along" with your game as you fleece the blind. So you enter the role of the fourth estate, particularly after Nixon. You just have to convince enough percentage of the population that you're "fighting for them"

So you create enemies. "The Gays" "The Trans" "The Browns" and all other cornucopia of manufactured enemies. Anything to divide and conquer and prevent the proles from rising up and obliterating your empire

Decent hypothesis, but fails when we compare America to other capitalist countries. (Or non-capitalist countries, extant and historically, with extreme wealth inequality.)

This has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. The police state we built internally, lack of trust we engendered externally, economic straitjacket trillions of useless spending caused to our livelihoods and then resulting collapse of the party of Reagan into the vindictive mess it is today, all of these trace from the Iraq War.

I was about to remind the person you replied to that we are on hacker news.

Judging by the name you'd think it would be a place where hacker ethics are prevalent (which would be most close to libertarianism in the original leftist sense, or anarchism). But of course we know that that's not the case, given how the site came to be and who runs it.

Personally I believe that the situation the US is in can largely be attributed to the failures of the democrats. When, due to material conditions, the voting population increasingly becomes accepting of more progressive ideas but instead gets neoliberal pseudo-progressives like Hillary Clinton as possible president, they become disillusioned with their party.

If you live in another country, let it be a lesson that neoliberalism can help the convergence to fascism by dismantling the leftist counter balance needed to be in place and try to stop it while you still can.

Under the first Bush and continued under Clinton, Haitian asylum seekers were interdicted at sea and sent to Guantanamo to avoid due process, which set the stage for its use in the war on terror. However, in these earlier uses it was for additional processing to give a chance at asylum for those claiming persecution and others not seeking it were deported back to Haiti directly.

But it was still used to avoid full due process. Under treaties that are supposed to be law of the land under the constitution, we are supposed to accept legitimate asylum seekers.

>Decent hypothesis, but fails when we compare America to other capitalist countries. (Or non-capitalist countries, extant and historically, with extreme wealth inequality.)

What countries other than the US have the sheer extreme wealth inequality the US does?

Really the only other comparison is China. Which went from an existing authoritarian state to an authoritarian state using its working class as effective slave labor for western capital. It's "state capitalism"

Note that this doesn't need to be neoliberals. Liberals/conservative do the same each time the status quo is at risk (see Spanish civil war). The most famous are Hindenburg and Papen making a deal with Hitler with the help of their midwife Shroder, because they were afraid of the agrarian reform supported by the left and saw the electoral decline of their 'center' and their right (including NSDAP) in the last free elections of 32. Nazi were given the power, they weren't voted into it.

> What countries other than the US have the sheer extreme wealth inequality the US does?

All of South America, Southern Africa and Southeast Asia [1]. Also every single pre-industrial society.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_...

Look at historical conditions in apartheid South Africa or pre-revolution France.

To the far left, Trump torturing people is because of the center left.

The reason this is happening is because people didn't vote to stop it. The far left are more OK with this happening than voting center left, as shown by their continuing to blame the center left for Trump's actions.

To the far left, their disillusion is more important than people being tortured. Truly disgusting politics at the expense of people's lives.

I'm not American and nor part of the far left. But to me it seems clear that the democrats made just painfully bad choices in the candidates they picked and repeatedly so. People not voting happens to be, although perhaps not understandable to you and me, a consequence of that.

Voting is a compromise. People knew what Trump would do. The people to blame are those that voted for him or 'kept' their moral high ground and didn't vote for Kamala. I mean all withholding their vote cost was some torture, millions losing their healthcare, etc.

You know how you get people more to the left in the Democratic party? You work at it. You get your people volunteering in the party. You turn out votes. That's how parties/politics work. And you have to keep at it. Not kinda try one time on Burnies team then switch to just criticizing the Dems.

Or you could do nothing and then... enable torture and the loss of healthcare for millions. Not sure what the next step in that plan is but I guess that's where the far left has chosen for us to go. The far left in the US are accelerationists, they want it to all burn down so somehow starting again things go more their way. But they won't. The will be horrible AND we will be coming from a much worse place.