Open Thread and Link Farm – The Wild Election of 1800 Edition
- A discussion about what a men’s movement that isn’t horrible might look like. (I agree with some but not all of what’s written here.)
- And, related: How to Do Men’s Rights Rightly
- Is 90% of All EvoPsych False? Richard Carrier criticizes evolutionary psychology in significant depth. Not a quick read, but a worthwhile one, and a link worth remembering next time evopsych (aka sociobiology) comes up.
- The real-life election of 1800 was even wilder than Hamilton the musical lets on – Vox
- This amazing mom updated her tattoo to reflect transgender teen’s transition – Gay Star News Thanks for the link, Grace!
- Ask Your 2016 Candidate These Questions on Drone Warfare – Defense One
- Similarities between anti-gay and anti-sex work arguments | topherhallquist
- Donald Trump is getting all the press, but the Bernie Sanders movement is more important for the future – Vox.
- Yes, Donald Trump’s dad really is the reason he’s rich | topherhallquist
- ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: Today’s Small Thought. On Class Privilege as an Example of Problems in the Privilege Concept.
- Dilapidated Schools and Race – Lawyers, Guns & Money
- An explanation of the climate deal (or sort of deal) in Paris – Vox
- Is Corporate Media a danger to Society? Coverage of Trump v. Sanders | Informed Comment I don’t agree with everything here. But that Sanders has as much support as Trump, but barely gets covered at all, is illustrative of how media coverage shapes the race.
- The Crazy Story Of How “Clue” Went From Forgotten Flop To Cult Triumph Madeline Kahn’s transcendent “flames, flames, flames on the side of my face” moment is the only improvised bit in the entire movie.
- Shutting Down Conversations About Rape at Harvard Law – The New Yorker This criticism of the “I believe women” slogan, by a woman of color who is a Professor at Harvard, is a better-than-average member for its genre, because it doesn’t ignore the real reasons the slogan was created. I also liked The Unit of Caring‘s critique of the same, because it’s nuanced and acknowledges competing needs.
- “When did three or four twitter posts become something to write a news article about? We are rapidly reaching peak outrage culture.”
- That town that rejected solar energy is not as stupid as people are reporting.
- Horizons: How Gun Control Plays Out in Red State Elections
- Another Day in the Life – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money
- Trumpeting The Right Not To Be Called A Bigot | Popehat
- Job Sprawl – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money
- The Unit of Caring “I think if she changed her communication style it’d be way healthier for you, and for me. But maybe it’d cost her more than we’re anticipating, and there are other needs at play that are hard to quantify.”
- Sentencing Law and Policy: “Negotiating Accuracy: DNA in the Age of Plea Bargaining” False convictions and plea negotiations.
- Laquan McDonald and The Corrupt System That Killed Him – The Atlantic
- Randall Kennedy on race and racism at Harvard Law School (and elsewhere) – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money. Although I don’t disagree with Kennedy’s critique, I’m also not certain that anything new is going on on campus. Students seemed pretty similar to me when I went to college in the late 1980s; the difference is, we didn’t have social media making what we did and said accessible nationwide.
- Posner v. The Arbitrary Abortion Obstacle Course – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money
- Not Even Scientists Can Easily Explain P-values | FiveThirtyEight
- Atlantic Readers Debate the Protests at Mizzou and Yale – The Atlantic
- ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: The Global Gender Gap Report, 2015 The US ranked 28th (which is to say that, by the report’s measures, 27 countries did better than the US).
- How America’s rejection of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany haunts our refugee policy today – Vox
- Copyright Is Abused to Censor Political Ads | Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Kate Beaton on refusing to let women be forgotten and increasing audience diversity of a comic convention | Features | Culture | The Independent
- Networks May Be Preparing To Wean Themselves Off “Pure Heroin” Of Netflix Money – Consumerist. Which is one reason Netflix has been moving so strongly into original content.
- How a heroin epidemic among white Americans led to a softer war on drugs – Vox
- Mein Copyright: Controversy Erupts Over The Reprinting Of Hitler’s Infamous Work | JONATHAN TURLEY Keeping Mein Kampf unavailable isn’t possible, because internet. But they might succeed in keeping annotated scholars version out of print. Keeping the responsible edition out of print means that the main copies available might be distributed and edited by modern-day Nazis; as a Jew, I don’t feel it benefits me to have only antisemites editing and contextualizing Mein Kampf.
- More Evidence that Fat Stigma is Killing Us | And, of course, the more that stigma makes fat people less healthy, the more that statistics show that being fat is unhealthy, which in turn is used to justify the stigma. (I’m not saying that there are no health effects of fat aside from stigma. I am saying that stigma should be included as a contributing factor in studies of fat and health.)
- 6 Experts on How Silicon Valley Can Solve Online Harassment | WIRED “Solve” is hyperbole, but how to mitigate is still a worthwhile discussion to have.
- “Cabinet Battle #1,” explained – Vox An interesting article looking at the musical “Hamilton” in the context of changing understandings of US history.
- Transit Infrastructure and the Temptations of Techno-Autocracy | Natasha Plotkin | The Hypocrite Reader Why does it cost so much more to build a subway train in the USA than in Europe?
- Why Richard Sander’s “mismatch” hypothesis is proved wrong by the evidence. (pdf link). (Sanders argues that affirmative action causes minorities to do less well in college by putting underqualified students in colleges that are too hard for them.)
- Smart People Saying Smart Things About The Abigail Fisher Affirmative Action Case | Alas, a Blog This is a post I wrote in 2012, which is suddenly current again.
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A couple thoughts on the (useful) Echidne article about privilege:
1. One thing that always seems to be challenging to me about talking about privilege is that it usually conflates things that everyone should get (like freedom from police harassment) and things that nobody should get (like the ability to harass others with impunity) with a few things that seem to be advantages that are potentially impossible to get rid of, but which one should be aware of. This makes it hard to take “privilege” as a general concept into account when crafting policy.
2. One possibility, and one that strikes me as particularly plausible, is that privilege actually is of limited use when it comes to actually effecting change in favor of social justice. Echidne is right that it’s better to address the problems directly.
3. Where it does seem to be most useful is as a reminder to try to by more humble when it comes time to think about (or talk about) matters of social justice, since I really don’t suffer from many injustices on account of my various privileged characteristics (white, het, cis, male, et c.), and that I may not even be aware of how other people are treated and mistreated on account of not having those characteristics.
You know, I’ve never actually watched Clue. I didn’t get to see it in the theater when it came out due to circumstances beyond my control. But I rented the video (Video! Actual videotape. From a small video rental place around the corner. Can you imagine?) several years later because it’s just the sort of thing I love full of actors I love. I was unable to stay awake for the damned thing either of the two times I tried to watch it.
Maybe I should try it again.
Jake Squid: It’s really not that good.
I mean, it’s better than its previous reputation. And I like it. But, good? No.
yrs–
–Ben
I’ll take Murder by Death for comedy-mysteries any day.
Solid link farming. My boss does not thank you. :)
Re: a men’s movement that isn’t awful: I’ve seen those sorts of proposals a few times before, and there’s a reason they ring hollow. It’s just male feminists telling men that the solution to their problems is … feminism. It may come with different points of focus or swapping out some pronouns, but it’s basically little more than applying the same concepts to different people, which makes it not so new at all.
While they’re right that a good dose of feminism (esp. w/r/t gender roles and strictures of masculinity) would benefit any man, it feels disingenuous to say it’s anything different from regular old woman-centered feminism. It looks like a nutritional supplement salesman who will tell you that his product will cure you no matter what health problem you complain about.
When push comes to shove, there are some zero-sum games that will pit a real advocate for men against the priorities of feminism. The gender imbalance at many universities for one. The way the “always believe victims” has gone from something you should do in your interpersonal interactions to essentially a legal theory (see link 15). I know nothing about family court (thank goodness), but I can imagine situations there where the “feminist answer” may not lead to the best resolution for a man.
Any real men’s movement will have to do more than piggyback on feminist theory and scholarship. It will have to come from people who aren’t just seeking feminist permission or ally cookies for talking about men in a way that carefully avoids challenging a single thing about mainstream feminism. It most certainly can’t be done out of the bitterness and rage that the current MRA/MRM crowd lives and breathes.
That movement should be able to find common cause with feminists on many issues because it would have its own foundations instead of being reactionary. It might also differ on some issues, since it wouldn’t be the men’s auxiliary to mainstream feminism. And that would be OK. Link #1 tiptoes close to suggesting this, but doesn’t really cross the precipice.
The problem is that progressive men who think about gender issues would never run the risk of starting such a project, lest they be lumped in with the AVFMs of the world the first time a feminist disagrees with them about anything. It’s the kiss of death.
There may be a need (or just a niche) for a men’s gender ideology with its own theory and foundations, but the dreadful behavior of the angry reactionaries who currently carry that banner means that anything better will be dead on arrival.
I’ve always thought of “Clue” as a sequel-in-spirit to “Murder By Death.”
Yeah, Murder By Death has always been a favorite of mine.
Yeah, MRAs have poisoned a lot of wells. Which is very frustrating.
Re: #30
The refusal to permit German Jews to enter the U.S. as refugees is certainly a stain on American history. But I think the comparison to the current situation with Syrian refugees fails. It seems rather clear to me (and I see nothing in that posting to contradict it) that those German Jews were refused on the basis of anti-Semitism. But while opposition to admitting Middle Eastern refugees may be in part based on racism or general anti-Muslim sentiment, it seems to me that there is a very legitimate fear that among those people there are violent Islamist extremists. Events in Boston (my daughter was 1.5 miles away from that site and headed towards it on the T when the bombs went off) and Greensboro indicate to me and to a whole lot of people that the much-touted refugee/immigrant screening process is not as effective as the claims being made for it. Whereas I have seen no allegation that anyone in 1939 thought that any of those refugees were coming to the U.S. to commit terrorism, ISIS has announced that their objective is precisely that – and ISIS seems to be fairly reliable in at least attempting to fulfill their boasts.
Another issue is that there seems to be a presumption that refugees should be treated as immigrants – that once here, it should be presumed that they are eligible to stay. Why should the presumption not be that they at some point will be repatriated, and that the State Department will keep careful track of their whereabouts and put restrictions on their right to travel about the country?
The refugee and immigrant screening processes are very different. Here’s a summary from Time. Among the points to note, about half of people applying for asylum are refused; the process takes 1.5-2 years; and to answer this point:
the people for whom repatriation would be easy are not referred for possible resettlement at all. And what would be the point of restricting their right to travel about the country, by the way?
Here’s a first-person account from a Bosnian refugee resettled into Iowa about what was involved. The process for Syrian refugees is more extensive than this.
DIY Christmas Cards from the past! I am a big, big fan of V.M. Winggate and Figaro.
RonF, there were several reasons for earlier waves of refugees to be turned away from US borders, in addition to explicit antisemitism. During WWII, people said, “We’re at war with Germany. Why should we let Germans into the country, when they might be spies or saboteurs?” During the cold war, there was a lot of fear of letting communists into the US. (A couple of boys, brothers, started at my elementary school in the 1970s. (They taught us soccer and we taught them English.) Their family had recently gotten out of the USSR, and apparently they had to convince the US officials they weren’t communists before they could get in.)
That’s in addition to what Harlequin says about refugees being screened more rigorously than immigrants. It’s worth noting that the immigration system is vastly more complicated and time consuming than it was in the 1930s. And the refugee system is likewise more complicated and time consuming.
hias.org
The thing about Syrian refugees is that our country is currently involved in the Syrian civil war, and our goal there, near as I can tell, is humanitarian; we’re fighting against several factions in order to try to create a better life for Syria’s innocent people.
If that’s our goal, admitting refugees into the country is a way to partially accomplish that.
If that isn’t our goal, then I’m not sure what we’re even trying to accomplish in Syria.
The situation in Syria is something our leaders chose to involve us in of their own volition. That changes the moral calculus for me.
I have absolutely no problem with admitting actual Syrian refugees into the U.S. My concerns center on separating Syrian refugees from people who simply want to come here because the U.S. provides a better economic situation for them and from people who are intent upon coming here to cause harm.
Here’s a first-person account from a Bosnian refugee resettled into Iowa about what was involved. The process for Syrian refugees is more extensive than this.
About two years and a few thousand dollars? To get a green card, I spent seven years and more than $30,000, because I wanted to maintain my independence from a particular employer. Most of my friends spend about as long, if not as much.
And the humiliating interviews were there too, especially every time I had to leave the country, because you could not renew inside the US. And the screening process was a joke. I had stated that I had worked in Citizen Defense department of Military Counter Intelligence of the Bulgarian People’s Army, as early as my application for MIT. At least three times, the interviewer was flabbergasted to hear it, and made me leave, to come back a week or so later… and I would hear from friends in the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense, usually to the tune of “What do you want us to tell them?” The truth was “I was investigating and discrediting Islamic fundamentalists at the time when you guys were still funding them” but even if it had been something else, it would have been trivial to have myself whitewashed.
The truth is, it is absolutely impossible to root out a well-prepared infiltrator. No one has the resources to vet tens of thousands of refugees who are actually fleeing a war zone, especially when even a 100% real refugee may have the US downfall in mind. Note that they let me in – an atheist who worked for the Commies, who comes from a traditionally Muslim ethnicity and whose life was upended by the fall of Communism which came as a direct result of Western pressure… one that has been educated for six years in counter terrorism, which, of course, includes terrorist tactics. I want nothing but raise my American daughter in a safe country that lets me earn a great living. But how would the people who gave me a Green card have known that? I waited for the Green card to propose, let alone to have a daughter.
The real question is, how much of our liberties are we willing to shit on, to increase our safety a little bit? Money would be a lot better spend on infrastructure, education, mental health, and even preventative medicine, rather than on vetting refugees.
As for whether we have a duty to give refugees assistance? I’d much rather spend these resources on my neighborhood. Or my city. Or my county. Or my state. But I can accept the argument that our society will benefit from the feeling of self-righteousness some of us will experience from helping some Syrians. I know no Syrians, myself, but every atheist coming from any Muslim background has been a lot closer to my way of thinking on most subjects than most random Americans, and any Southerner. As for the true believers? Most do not look to me any worse than white supremacists or some evangelical Christians I’ve met in the South Carolina.
@ Ron #9
Adding to what Harlequin and Adrian said, I’m almost positive the Boston marathon bombers didn’t come to the US via the refugee process – they came on tourist visas then requested asylum once they were here. So I don’t think that’s at all relevant to the question of admitting Syrian refugees.
As far as Greensboro, I feel embarrassed to say this because it sounds like something I should be familiar with but I’m not, but I couldn’t find anything relevant via a quick google search. (Unless you’re talking about events there related to and soon after 9/11, in which case that’s also completely irrelevant – immigration policies, including for those claiming refugee status, have gotten hugely more rigorous and time-consuming since then.)
There’s a great segment the Daily Show did a little while back (and I spent way too much time trying to find it – I guess I just suck at google). Jon Stewart pointed out how many international and national agencies potential refugees have to go through, how low the likelihood of success is, and how long it typically takes. It all matches what’s in Harlequin’s Time link. And based on all that, he makes the point that trying to get into the USA through the refugee process would be incredibly stupid when you can get in a lot faster and easier with a tourist visa and (if necessary) a fake identity.
If I’m not mistaken (damn, I wish I could find that link), based on what Stewart said – and I won’t pretend I have a way to verify this – of the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve come to the US via the refugee process since 9/11, a grand total of three have been linked to terrorist plots, and none of them involved any harm within the US. No system is going to be perfect, but when we’re talking about helping people fleeing an absolutely nightmarish situation abroad vs. getting-struck-by-lightning-while-being-eaten-by-a-shark odds* of actual harm, I’d like to think my country would lean toward the former. I want to think my country is a place that welcomes and helps others in need into our societies while taking reasonable precautions to protect its citizens. And I think we’ve more than done the latter.
*I don’t actually know those odds; I figure they’re pretty low….
PS – On a related note, Donald Trump is a thoroughly loathsome human being, in part because of his plan to ban all Muslims from coming here until we can “figure out what’s going on.” He’s loathsome for a number of other reasons as well, but he managed to throw another log on the fire earlier this month.
@ Pesho #15
Why in the world do you think it would/should be framed in terms of self-rightousness? That pretty clearly implies an unfounded, self-absorbed notion that we’re better than other people (which God knows a lot of people in the US think, but I really don’t think they’re the ones who are advocating for more refugees being taken in or making the process more straightforward, by and large). Couldn’t it just be helping those in need and benefiting from their contributions to our country?
Tell you what:
In the city of Mina, Saudi Arabia has 100,000 “tents” that are used to accommodate Hajj pilgrims. They are air-conditioned and are organized for food, water, sanitary and other needs. The area is expressly designed to take in 100,000’s of people (if not > 1,000,000). It’s a hell of a lot closer to Syria than we are, and unlike the U.S. the refugees will be surrounded by people who share the same language, religion and culture. And the Saudi’s certainly have plenty of money. The number of refugees currently living there? Zero. Let Saudi Arabia, the Guardian of the Two Mosques, exercise their religion’s doctrines of mercy and kindness and take in refugees before we are asked to do the same.
RonF:
I have a question. Do Baptists and Catholics and Methodists to share the same religion? How about Catholics and Jews?
What’s your point, Jake?
@ Ron #18
Why should Saudi Arabia’s lack of action prevent the US from taking in refugees? Do you really think it’s a reasonable solution to basically say “Sorry the Saudi Royal family are a bunch of dicks – good luck!”? Certainly applying whatever reasonable pressure we can to get more countries in the region (and in Europe) to take in more refugees seems like a very good idea, but it doesn’t have to be either/or. These people need help, and if Saudi Arabia’s not going to do it someone needs to.
My point is that the various sects of Islam are as friendly towards each other as the various sects of Christianity. Do you know whether or not the vast majority of Syrian Muslims are the same sect as that of Saudi Arabia?
My other point is that, from my POV, Catholicism and Judaism are the same religion. They differ in some details that seem totally insignificant to me but are clearly very important to Catholics and Jews. As an outsider, I’m not really qualified to determine whether one group shares culture & religion with another and neither are you.
I’d also hope that my country is more inclined to help outsiders than Saudi Arabia.
Ron, are you seriously suggesting that you consider Saudi Arabia to be the moral yardstick that the US ought to measure ourselves against?
I am ashamed that I’d never thought of that. Just because the Germans didn’t see the fleeing Jews as part of their country doesn’t mean the Americans didn’t either. Did you have any memorable quotes or citations in mind?
There is friendly, and then there is friendly. Friendly like the Catholics and Protestants during the night of Saint Bartholemy? Friendly like the Crusaders in Constantinople in the 13th century? Friendly like the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Teutons in 15th century Poland and Lithuania? Friendly like the Catholics and Protestants during the 300 years war?
I could go on like this for a few pages… I’m sure Jake could have, as well.
Because there are three experimentally detectable drives behind what is casually described as “altruism”. Self-righteousness is the one that applies best, in my opinion. Or, less inflammatory, the desire to feel good about oneself, for doing what we believe is right, as opposed to what brings the best outcome. Experimentally tested by observing reward centers in subjects which were presented with positive and negative outcomes from their ‘righteous’ decisions. When a negative outcome does not affect their feeling of self-satisfaction from their ‘selfless’ deeds, you know they are not doing it for the good of others.
And no, the other two motivations are not selfless, either.
Thanks, this is interesting. Do you have a link?
RonF:
Well, again: you are conflating temporary refugees with those who need resettlement. The ones who are coming to the US are those who need resettlement; such tents would be no more than a stopping point on the way to something more permanent (during those 1.5-2 years when they are vetted and background-checked etc).
I will note that this comment directly conflicts with your statement in #14, where you say you have no problem with refugees coming to the US, you’re just concerned about safety (despite the fact that there are multiple lines of evidence that our safety checks work well–though nothing can be 100% perfect). Also, we’ve gone over this before.
Lee1:
This is in the Time article I linked:
(I’m comfortable saying none have engaged in terrorist activities in the US, because I guarantee you if any had, every politician against accepting Syrian refugees would be trumpeting it from the rooftops.)
Pesho:
This is a fair point–of course you’re right, the immigration process can be very different depending on type of visa, country of origin, etc.
This tweet has some information, and the couple of tweets from the same account before and after this one have some more. https://twitter.com/HistOpinion/status/666820987929960449
Scott Adams, A Voter’s Guide to Thinking.
@ nobody.really #29
Thanks for the link, that was an interesting read. I’m not sure how to deal with #4,
because depending on how strictly you interpret it, that makes it pretty much impossible to judge any president or congress member*. One can certainly go by what person Y says they would’ve done in person X’s position, but we have ample evidence that’s a pretty sketchy yardstick. Year 2000 candidate Bush was a lot different from president Bush (granted 9/11 probably had a lot to do with that…), and 2008 candidate Obama was a lot different from president Obama. I think it’s fair to judge them on their own, even though it might take years or even decades before we can really make an accurate judgement. For example I think Clinton will eventually be remembered as one of our better presidents (despite his general sleaziness), Bush as one of our worst, and Obama as mediocre – below average, but he had a lot of shit to deal with from congress. But what do I know – we’ll find out in a couple decades as more information gradually comes out.
Also, I’m disheartened by the notion that Trump is a “master persuader,” and that he’s still considered the front-runner for the GOP nomination. He’s a clown. Everything and everyone is either the best ever or the worst ever. Everything he’s going to do will be huge and classy. He’s the best at everything (he has “the world’s greatest memory,” although he has no idea where those thousands of cheering Muslims in New Jersey on 9/11 were). He’s a carnival barker, and good lord I hope the GOP can do better than that.
*This is my childish cartoon version of anti-authoritarianism coming out – it feels viscerally wrong to me to call anyone my “leader.”
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point, but isn’t your argument essentially the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy?
That “doing something they consider morally right” makes people feel good about themselves is not evidence that those people are doing things they consider morally right because it makes them feel good about themselves.
—Myca
Ah, okay, rereading a couple times, I think I get what you’re saying, but it’s still somewhat unpersuasive – we’d have to talk about scope of effect as well.
I mean, as an example:
Action: I give money to a homeless child begging on the sidewalk.
Positive effect: That child goes and gets a sandwich and a bowl of soup.
Negative effect: The money fosters a sense of dependence in the child.
I don’t feel worse after learning of the negative effect. Why? Because I don’t particularly believe that the negative effect from my single action was very strong, and certainly not strong enough to outweigh the positive effect, which was very positive indeed. That doesn’t begin to imply that my action was motivated primarily by self-righteousness.
I’d be interested in seeing this study, though. There have been a lot of studies trying to disprove altruism over the years, and they’ve all sort of fallen apart in the same way that Sam Harris’ “science can too prove morality” arguments fall apart.
—Myca
Anti-altruism studies is a fascinating field. Some people really feel the need to prove that people can’t possibly help other people.
No, no, you got the experiment wrong. It is not a combination of two effects.
Some of the subjects are presented with positive outcome (got a sandwich, no longer hungry) some of the subjects are presented with a negative outcome (got alcohol, got hit by a car) In reality it was about prosperity trends in a neighborhood.
In some situations, the reward centers light up only when there is a positive outcome. Those are the situations in which ‘altruism’ can be explained through investment in the welfare of a broader set, typically inclusive of the subject. But in others, the outcome does not matter. Doing ‘the right thing’ is enough, even if the outcome is bad. Mostly observed when the affected set is NOT inclusive of the subject.
This is the “save the fetus” altruism. Feeling good about preventing the mother from having an abortion, even if her life and the life of the new born drop straight into the crapper. Or the “prime the contestants with their minority status, even if that will reduce their performance”, to look at the other side of the aisle.
——
By the way, it is not clear which side is the one desperately trying to change the accepted world view. My wife and my best friend’s wife are both psychologists, both MIT educated, both teaching in top ten institutions (one in a liberal art college, the other in a STEM place) I have yet to meet a proponent of ‘altruism is about caring what happens to others’ school.
RonF – if you put refugees in tents meant for Hajj pilgrims, what happens during next year’s Hajj? And the next? And the next? And what if tents made to house people (largely adults? I don’t think children go on Hajj?) for a few days or weeks prove insufficient for housing whole families for years?
Let’s cut through the “well what are the Saudis doing” smokescreen and just call that whole argument what it is: racial, ethnic, and religious separatism. You think Muslims belong with Muslims. Which, OK, is an argument, but it’s not one you should be very proud of.
Especially given that violence and conflict between sects of Islam is, if I understand things correctly, the major driver of conflict in the Middle East for the past several centuries, never mind the strife over colorism/racism in Africa, the Middle East, and South/Southeast Asia that adds levels of friction among Muslims.
Especially given that that’s EXACTLY what Daesh/ISIS wants: Muslims with Muslims, Muslims out of the West, Muslims segregated away from outside influence. So, nice plan there.
So, remember how people (IIRC Matt Yglesias touched it off) were saying that Hillary Clinton was the ruthless, underhanded candidate we needed who would take on the Republicans by any means necessary? I wonder if any of them will think that the recent data breach is a positive thing for Bernie Sanders.
So there are already a lot of Syrian refugees in Saudi Arabia. So, we have no moral high ground to criticize Saudi Arabia until we take a couple million refugees ourselves. And we certainly have no moral high ground to criticize their not diverting religious structures from their intended purpose to house refugees until we do the same.
I haven’t heard of any U.S. churches converting their fellowship halls, rectories, sanctuaries, basements, or Sunday school rooms into housing for those in need–not even for Christian refugees or homeless Americans (which would be the equivalent of doing the same with the hajj tents). The closest I’ve seen is Safe Nights, where churches do a weekly rotation of caring for a group of homeless people. The church I volunteered with did use their sanctuary, but because it was a Saturday night to Sunday morning program, everything was put back together in time for the Sunday morning service.
It’s highly unlikely that the Syrian refugees will have a permanent place to go before the next yearly pilgrimage comes around, so that’s a stopgap solution at best. And, as already stated, refugees coming to the US are the ones who need and want to be permanently resettled, so even if they did it, it wouldn’t really change the numbers that the US could/should take but doesn’t want to because Muslims are scary.
Another thing about Syrian refugees that can’t be stated enough: you don’t get to pick your country. They apply with the UN for resettlement and are given a slot…somewhere. If they’ve already got family in a country accepting refugees, that’s considered, but it’s not a guarantee. So ISIS members trying to sneak into the US could just as easily end up in Switzerland if they go the refugee route. Meanwhile, most of the people involved in the attack in Paris were citizens of one of the EU countries, so they could’ve come to the US easily, on a tourist visa, any time they wanted. Citizens of certain countries, like France and Spain, don’t even need a visa as long as they’re traveling for 90 days or less (or in the case of people coming in for nefarious purposes, claiming their stay will be short and then not leaving).
So trying to use the refugee program to get into the US to commit terrorism is about the longest, most convoluted way you could do it, and subject to much more vetting than other ways of getting into the country.
Plus, weren’t all or most of the attackers in Paris EU citizens? They’d be able to get to the US by pretty much just buying a plane ticket and a check that they weren’t on the terror watch list. Nowhere near the amount of scrutiny that refugees would get.
The solar reasons were pretty stupid. The town has no solar farms – aside from grass fields – and the design being pushed was one of the least-impact types.
All the reasons cited were stupid. It’s not like kids are going to stick around to watch the grass grow, or that it takes $7K to train people not to melt down transformers, or that land values would go down. (Well, now they are, since companies are going to look at the moratorium and sell their holdings.)
Crissa, at this point the value of the land in much of that town has gone down as a direct result of being surrounded by existing solar fields. At least, that’s what I took from the article. The property value decline has already happened for at least one of the residents.
For whatever reason, solar panels are considered an eyesore and bring down property values, at least right now. My relatives wanted to put solar panels on their roof and were blocked from doing so by their HOA precisely for that reason. I think the argument about kids leaving town isn’t very compelling, since you’re right, it’s not like they’d stay otherwise, but then, I’m not living in that town, so I don’t need to find it compelling.
What it amounts to is that the town wasn’t going to reap any benefits from the solar farm (other than a measly $7,000 a year, which is next to nothing), and it would be detrimental in a number of other small ways that nevertheless added up to more than “next to nothing” and tipped public sentiment toward voting against the solar farm.
I agree with you that the reasons aren’t good ones, but from the perspective of someone who was going to have to live in the declining property values of a dying town, they’re better than the reasons *for* putting in a solar farm, which seem almost nonexistent.