> This is like 947 on a list of terrible things happening because of this administration.
This is on purpose. Trump has been slowly pushing the Overton window. It seems everything is fair game and US citizens are largely apathetic, scared or favorable to Trump's action.
"Disappeared" in this sense refers to the manner in which he was abducted, not his ongoing status. The word is not subject to a strict legalese interpretation in these comments.
Though I'd argue both uses are acceptable in common use discussion since even if we know where he is since he's going to be incarcerated indefinitely with no due process, no access to lawyers, no civil rights. How long could he be dead without anyone knowing? Literally indefinitely?
> word is not subject to a strict legalese interpretation in these comments
Disappearing has been consistently used to refer to illegal and inconspicuous detention since WWII. The person was there and now they are not. There is no arrest record. There are no lawyers. There is certainly no case record where government officials are being questioned [1]. They may be detained, dead or on holiday. The ambiguity, which permits bystanders to assume normality, is the terrifying key.
Diluting the term, particularly on this precipice, is incredibly dangerous.
> How long could he be dead without anyone knowing?
Going off sworn statements to courts (again, something victims of disappearance do not get), a few hours.
> Diluting the term, particularly on this precipice, is incredibly dangerous.
It's already diluted, you've already lost the battle, but I neither believe it is dangerous nor do I believe it improper.
What I think is dangerous is this game of semantic precision you're playing where we lose the forest from the trees. I think we should be frightened of and wringing our hands about is not a dictionary definition, it's what we're literally seeing: never mind we know where they are at, we know that right now many are not being given due process and there are active attempts to subvert any attempts at them (i.e., rapidly moving to a more friendly district in LA, putting on planes faster than lawyers can respond).
If someone got black bagged and flown to a CIA black site in Yemen, would you "Well, actually" me if I said they'd been disappeared just because we know they're in a Yemen black site? Maybe you would, and I'd roll my eyes then too.
> Going off sworn statements to courts (again, something victims of disappearance do not get), a few hours.
The same courts whose authority is either being actively challenged AND actively ignored by the Executive branch, including so far in this exact case? The executive branch who has punished its DOJ lawyers for being candid with judges? The executive branch who fully controls the relationship with the government housing the detainment facility and who is the only route to fixing this issue? How many more breaks in normalcy and functioning governance do you need to see before you start doubting their good faith responses, much less effort?
> It's already diluted, you've already lost the battle
It’s not. The only place you see it being used this way is in a section of social media that blows everything out of proportion.
Where I agree is that the battle may be lost. In the same way “defund the police” (versus better regulate) kneecapped the criminal-justice reform movement, and bee-lining to “genocide” (versus the horrors of war and alleged genocide) hurt the Palestinian cause in America, premature extrapolation makes this look unserious. Because if the person who is calling what’s clearly not one a disappearance or concentration camp, why bother with habeus corpus?
> If someone got black bagged and flown to a CIA black site in Yemen, would you "Well, actually" me if I said they'd been disappeared just because we know they're in a Yemen black site?
No. That’s disappearance. The CIA doesn’t comment on its renditions, much less argue them in an open court.
> same courts whose authority is either being actively challenged AND actively ignored by the Executive branch, including so far in this exact case?
Challenged, not ignored. From what I can tell the administration is begrudgingly complying with the letter of the judges’ (and justices’) orders [1].
I agree with your examples of language dilution being harmful, but sorry I just don't agree with this one. I think we're seeing a smarter form of disappearance, one where we know who took them, we know where they end up, but there is a clear and - I think to most reasonable people - obvious bad faith attempt to place them outside of due process or monitoring for constitutionally compliant treatment.
> No. That’s disappearance. The CIA doesn’t comment on its renditions, much less argue them in an open court.
You didn't engage with the hypothetical and changed the situation since it's not representative of how things work today. One year ago, the current situation would have been similarly described. I don't think it was an unfair thought exercise given the circumstances.
> Challenged, not ignored. From what I can tell the administration is begrudgingly complying with the letter of the judges’ (and justices’) orders
I guess we'll see.
On this topic, I think reasonable people can disagree, which we clearly do. I think a smart administrative state would disappear people just like this, it feels like an evolution of KGB tactics that adds some documentation, but the outcome is precisely the same.
> we're seeing a smarter form of disappearance, one where we know who took them, we know where they end up
Nobody is saying due process was followed. But do you really not see why the government saying “we have no record of this person and do not comment on matters of national security,” to the press and to the courts, would not be worse?
> didn't engage with the hypothetical and changed the situation
How did I change the situation?
> On this topic, I think reasonable people can disagree, which we clearly do
On Trump defying the courts, yes. On the definition of disappearance, I don’t think so.
> it feels like an evolution of KGB tactics that adds some documentation, but the outcome is precisely the same
You couldn’t sue to get your family—and information about them—out of the Gulag. Disappearance is where detention blurs into execution. We’re simply not there. Nobody is able to claim Garcia is on vacation, we have to confront the fact that he’s been extrajudicially detained.
> On the definition of disappearance, I don’t think so.
Ha, well OK then! Well then we can make it one way: I understand what you're saying, I understand how a reasonable person might arrive at your conclusion, but I disagree. Whether you can do the same for me says less about me than you.
To me, your heels in the sand here feels like college-level semantic literalism and absolutism. Debates like this that focus on historical definitions rather than a discussion that considers the larger whole in evolving societies and changing contexts (technological, administratively, and others).
Yes, someone getting black bagged and executed in silence is clearly worse. It is the worst form of disappearance. But I don't think that's where the bar is for being "disappeared" - for me, that is when you are denied due process, prevented from receiving it, and all knowledge about you is now entirely reliant on the bad faith captors. This doesn't feel unreasonable or unfair to me, especially as it relates to everyday civilian discussions such as this one.
Will due process win out in the end, and I'm here wringing my hands like an idiot? Maybe so, we'll see how the next four years ago.
At any rate, I think we're clearly at impasse. Final shots are yours.
Supreme Court justice Sotomayor notes that nothing in the government’s reasoning about not returning Garcia is unique to noncitizens. President Trump says he wants to send “homegrowns” to the gulag in El Salvador, and is exploring his legal options. In court, the government has argued that they have no recourse to force the return of any prisoner from that gulag. This is neither false nor inflammatory; it is the administration’s stated goal.
It is probably not a bad idea for people that don't fit in to consider obtaining citizenship elsewhere for their safety. Some non citizens are returning, though many who are considering this are tied down by their work or other constraints.
