Cable news people call them “prison camps” or “Trump prison camps,” but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is:
“[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”
But what do you call a place where people who’ve committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is “concentration camp”:
“[A] place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”
Because the majority of people in the US still think this won’t directly affect them.
Had my dad literally and unironically say “yeah but that stuff isn’t going to matter to us cuz we live in a small town, there’s only trouble in the big cities.”
My father in christ what do you think will happen if the single grocery store in your small town doesn’t get shipments anymore from the “big city”? Idk. They just think everything can crumble around them but they’ll be untouched.
The sad thing is they’re mostly right. Life under authoritarianism stays much the same for most people.
Life under authoritarianism stays much the same for
mostrich peopleWell, the downtrodden stay downtrodden. The middle-class work like they always do, clambering ever upward on the escalator to the bottom floor… It’s the vulnerable and targeted who we need to protect.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. " --Edmund Burke (maybe)
Many working class Germans saw their lives improve under Hitler.
Our current authoritarian regime is aiming to improve life for the rich, but that doesn’t mean that everybody else will be a victim. There will be some incidental benefits to some of the non-wealthy as well.