James Dobson on the border camps
July 25, 2019 at 9:58 pm
(This post was last modified: July 25, 2019 at 10:05 pm by Rev. Rye.)
Some of us have probably seen this article, I only just discovered it recently, and I have to say, this is one of the most despicable things I've seen coming out of Focus on the Family.
Link here (sadly, there's some security problems with DoNotLink, and if my antivirus didn't block it, I'd gladly use it.)
I only quoted the first few paragraphs of the letter, and while it might not seem so bad at first (scare quotes when talking about refugees aside), it does get significantly more monstrous later. Yesterday, Three Arrows uploaded this video about the response by the alt-right to the latest news about the concentration camps at the U.S.-Mexico borders, juxtaposing it with a study of how Nazi Germany inured itself to the Final Solution:
Notice how Sargon of Akkad is going out of his way to downplay the horrors of these camps, even comparing the screams of these children to something his kids do when they don't get their way. James Dobson... he does not do that. He stares these horrors straight in the face and his big takeaway is "we need to send them back where they came from and build a big fucking wall to keep them out."
And for someone who created a huge fucking media empire literally called Focus on the Family, he really doesn't give a shit about the issues families have to deal with in these camps, even going so far as to say that many of these families are just fake. And, of course, he keeps justifying this with the same sort of rhetoric Trump used to dehumanise Mexicans for the last four years. Looking at it, the one thing that kept coming to mind was a little film called The Eternal Jew. It was a documentary... made in Germany in 1940. Now, imagine what you'd think a documentary with that title made in that time and place would look like. It was pretty much that, only a lot cruder. Several scenes were shot in the Warsaw and Lodz ghettoes, in the squalor the Nazis forced the Jews of Poland to live in while they sussed out the plans of The Final Solution. And the filmmakers who went into the ghettos to film these scenes still had the gall to treat this as the sort of shit Jews would naturally live in anyway. At several points, they compared the Jews explicitly to rats. It was crude enough that it even appalled the people who would be more inured to this sort of rhetoric. Clips of this film are hard to come by on Youtube, and I have to say, The Eternal Jew is not a film I would recommend, except maybe for people interested in how blatantly people can dehumanise others, and even then in small doses.
And if Dobson's letter is not quite at the level of Franz Hippler's opus, that's only because he's made some small concessions to human decency, like telling these refugees that "God loves them" (and he loves them enough that he's willing to put them into concentration camps for daring to look for a better life.) Regardless of these token displays of empathy, his biggest takeaway from all this is:
I'd say he should be ashamed of himself for something like this, but if he's so willing to ally himself with Donald Trump, it's clear shame doesn't enter into his way of thinking. Hell, it looks like those people who are condemning this letter are those who already A) thought these camps were horrible, and B) didn't hold much of a high opinion of Focus on the Family anyway.
I think I've found the perfect way. Well, you don't grow up in a Christian household with Christian teachers without knowing some scripture (whether it's the kind that gets inculcated into you or the kind you discover to try and send the religious leaders into a tizzy.) For Catholics, the following passage is the former, and in Evangelical circles, the kind James Dobson runs in, it's generally shortened to "‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels." I think this would be the best way to tell him off:
Link here (sadly, there's some security problems with DoNotLink, and if my antivirus didn't block it, I'd gladly use it.)
Quote:Dear Friends,
Several weeks ago, I was invited by White House staff to visit our southern border at McAllen, Texas, where federal agents are struggling to deal with a massive influx of poor and destitute human beings. They come in never-ending waves. Please believe me when I tell you that the media and leftist politicians have not been truthful about what is going on there. It is a human tragedy.
I promised the exhausted U.S. Custom and Border Patrol agents that I would go home and tell as many people as possible what I had seen “up close and personal.” Today, I am attempting to fulfill that commitment.
What It’s Like at McAllen
Approximately 5,500 people show up every day in districts organized along our southern U.S. border. McAllen is the site of only one of them, but it is the busiest and most besieged. The “refugees” arrive exhausted and ragged from walking hundreds of miles. Among them are large numbers of children, many of whom are unaccompanied by a caring adult. Last year, 382,000 aliens were apprehended for illegally crossing into this country and almost 100,000 of them were minors.
Some of the kids have been abused along the way. Many of them carry lice, scabies or other diseases. Currently, the facility I visited is experiencing a flu epidemic, and there are no additional beds on which to lie. Some of the women have been raped. More than 70 people of all ages are sent to local hospitals daily along the southern border. Doctors and medical staff are overwhelmed by their patient load. Remember that word, “overwhelmed.” It describes every aspect of the effort to deal with the situation there.
I only quoted the first few paragraphs of the letter, and while it might not seem so bad at first (scare quotes when talking about refugees aside), it does get significantly more monstrous later. Yesterday, Three Arrows uploaded this video about the response by the alt-right to the latest news about the concentration camps at the U.S.-Mexico borders, juxtaposing it with a study of how Nazi Germany inured itself to the Final Solution:
Notice how Sargon of Akkad is going out of his way to downplay the horrors of these camps, even comparing the screams of these children to something his kids do when they don't get their way. James Dobson... he does not do that. He stares these horrors straight in the face and his big takeaway is "we need to send them back where they came from and build a big fucking wall to keep them out."
And for someone who created a huge fucking media empire literally called Focus on the Family, he really doesn't give a shit about the issues families have to deal with in these camps, even going so far as to say that many of these families are just fake. And, of course, he keeps justifying this with the same sort of rhetoric Trump used to dehumanise Mexicans for the last four years. Looking at it, the one thing that kept coming to mind was a little film called The Eternal Jew. It was a documentary... made in Germany in 1940. Now, imagine what you'd think a documentary with that title made in that time and place would look like. It was pretty much that, only a lot cruder. Several scenes were shot in the Warsaw and Lodz ghettoes, in the squalor the Nazis forced the Jews of Poland to live in while they sussed out the plans of The Final Solution. And the filmmakers who went into the ghettos to film these scenes still had the gall to treat this as the sort of shit Jews would naturally live in anyway. At several points, they compared the Jews explicitly to rats. It was crude enough that it even appalled the people who would be more inured to this sort of rhetoric. Clips of this film are hard to come by on Youtube, and I have to say, The Eternal Jew is not a film I would recommend, except maybe for people interested in how blatantly people can dehumanise others, and even then in small doses.
And if Dobson's letter is not quite at the level of Franz Hippler's opus, that's only because he's made some small concessions to human decency, like telling these refugees that "God loves them" (and he loves them enough that he's willing to put them into concentration camps for daring to look for a better life.) Regardless of these token displays of empathy, his biggest takeaway from all this is:
I'd say he should be ashamed of himself for something like this, but if he's so willing to ally himself with Donald Trump, it's clear shame doesn't enter into his way of thinking. Hell, it looks like those people who are condemning this letter are those who already A) thought these camps were horrible, and B) didn't hold much of a high opinion of Focus on the Family anyway.
I think I've found the perfect way. Well, you don't grow up in a Christian household with Christian teachers without knowing some scripture (whether it's the kind that gets inculcated into you or the kind you discover to try and send the religious leaders into a tizzy.) For Catholics, the following passage is the former, and in Evangelical circles, the kind James Dobson runs in, it's generally shortened to "‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels." I think this would be the best way to tell him off:
Quote: Matthew 25:31-46 New International Version (NIV)
The Sheep and the Goats
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
![[Image: harmlesskitchen.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/yxR97P23/harmlesskitchen.png)
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
