A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It’s a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.
Be patient with your grief.
We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called “technology” at all. As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers — as if steel saucepans with copper bottoms and fleece vests spun from recycled glass grew on trees, and we just picked them when they were ripe…
One way to illustrate that most technologies are, in fact, pretty “hi,” is to ask yourself of any manmade object, Do I know how to make one?
It’s been almost 30 years since I spent time in Los Angeles. I contemplated a move. It would’ve been a different life. Seeing places I remember burned to the ground is surreal and too on the nose.
The Laken Riley Act passed 84-9 in the Senate and 251-170 in the House.
What problems will the Laken Riley Act help fix?
The acute issues at the US-Mexico border are:
The first issue could be addressed by adding staff to process applications; the second by helping would-be Americans settle in areas where there is adequate housing supply, school capacity, etc. The latter is a real issue. Even if money were no object, there are material limits on the goods and services that can be provided to people seeking them. There are finite number of homes, schools, doctors and nurses, etc. and additional ones can’t be created immediately on demand. Infrastructure takes time to build. It takes time for people to learn the skills that make them capable professionals. Exceed the capacity of the system and it breaks down. With that in mind, fewer people might seek to immigrate if the quality of life in their home country was more favorable, e.g., better economic and educational opportunities, less authoritarian government and/or social environment, lower crime. Towards that end, foreign aid to the countries that people are leaving might be helpful.
The Laken Riley Act addresses none of these things. One thing it will do however is deprive some people of due process based on their immigration status. Nothing good will come of that. Overall, it is a cynical, hateful piece of legislation. I thanked my Senators and Congressman for voting No. (The motivation for this post were the Yes votes from craven Senate Democrats.)
Our community welcomes new neighbors and most of us are fine with some change, but communities have a finite capacity for growth before growth becomes disruptive. Most of us are also quite willing to provide resources to other communities when they’re trying to lift themselves up, but our resources are finite. Acknowledging preferences and limitations doesn’t prevent us from doing good. We have goodwill and the capacity to help people who fear for their and their families’ well-being in their home community. Let’s figure out how best to help them and get about doing so.
References:
2025 Word of the Year will “quisling”. Language Innovation of the Year will be its adoption as an adjective. Use it in a sentence:
“Wow, why is Fetterman turning into a quisling shitstain?”
Overheard:
We’re not all in the same boat. But we’re in the same storm. And all boats sink.
We survive the storm together or not at all.
From Dan Drezner’s, My Extremely Brief Take on January 6th:
Folks are going to point out that today marked a peaceful transfer of power, overseen by the loser of the last presidential election, and isn’t that a great thing for democracy?! Usually, it is. But the fact remains that the only reason for the peace is because the guy who has threatened or fomented political violence for the last ten years won the election this time around. America’s political elite appeased a bully, the American people endorsed that strategy, and now America’s economic elite is falling all over itself to appease the bully some more.
And when you think about that dynamic for more than half a second, you realize how pathetic it makes this country sound.
RFK Jr. is a grifter and a crank. Unfortunately, Sens. Sanders and Fetterman are apparently open to supporting him for HHS Secretary. Many will die if he is empowered to put his malevolent ideology into practice. He must be stopped. It would be depraved indifference for them to vote to confirm.
RFK Jr. has apologists beyond Sanders and Fetterman. Give them no quarter. From Dr. Benjamin Mazer, The Sanewashing of RFK Jr.:
Let’s be clear: Many scientists consider Kennedy to be a fool, and a ludicrous pick to run HHS, because the evidence supports that assessment. [Former Baltimore Public Health Commission and former Planned Parenthood President Leana] Wen nods to this in passing—Kennedy has a “long history of antiscience propagandism,” she writes—but otherwise she’s focused on the nitty-gritty of one particular public-health debate. So allow me to fill in some gaps: According to his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, RFK Jr. believes that Fauci and Gates are members of a “vaccine cartel” trying to kill patients by denying them hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. He argues that this cartel secretly funded doctors to produce fraudulent studies showing that the drugs were ineffective against COVID—and that it did so in order to orchestrate global lockdowns and accelerate the construction of 5G cellular networks, which, in Kennedy’s understanding, are very, very bad.
From Gabriel Schoenfeld, Before Crackpot RFKism There Was Crackpot Lysenkoism: Continue reading