As we can see, it does lend itself to a lot of grandstanding, tribalistic digging in and faux remedies.
The grandstanding takes some pretty nasty forms, such as what this Lavigne character did:
Or what the Democratic Socialists of America did:Yesterday, artist and academic Sam Lavigne scraped and released a database of the names of 1,595 people who list ICE as their employer on LinkedIn. “While I don’t have a precise idea of what should be done with this data set,” he wrote on Medium, “I leave it here with the hope that researchers, journalists and activists will find it useful.”The full data dump, “including profile photos, previous employment info, schools, and more,” was uploaded to GitHub, the widely used development tool recently purchased by Microsoft for $7.5 billion. For a brief window of time yesterday, the Twitter account @iceHRgov, satirically couched as an account celebrating the hardworking employees of ICE, tweeted out names, photos, and other personal details from the data set.
Activists with the D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America crashed Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's dinner Tuesday evening and appeared to chase her from the building.
According to a Facebook Live video posted to DSA's Facebook page, protesters surrounded Nielsen's corner table at MXDC Cocina Mexicana, located just a few blocks from the White House.
The activists chanted about Nielsen and the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy for illegal immigrants, called the DHS secretary a "fascist pig," and said they couldn't believe she had the "fucking gall" to eat at a Mexican restaurant while the administration is separating illegal immigrant families who seek to enter the country outside of certified ports of entry.
They also called for the complete abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency at DHS.The tribalistic digging in was pretty blatant, too, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer refusing to even consider Ted Cruz's proposal for resolving the crisis, saying he wanted to "keep the focus on Trump."
So Trump then enters the fray with his signature ham-handedness, saying he'll sign an executive order to keep families together. One has to wonder if he's given any consideration to the legal problem with this:
This is likely illegal; the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled about the Obama-era policy of keeping children together with parents that it violated the 1997 Flores settlement.
Then there's this factor: not all of these situations are about real families:
Yes, you heard Chief Border Patrol Agent Rodney Scott say human traffickers are "recycling children to different families" in smuggling people across the border. Prior policy has made children a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card and the human smugglers are using it as such. On the front lines border security agents are called to make determinations like this all day long. And mistakes in either direction can have serious consequences.
We're basically back to what has been the essential question all along: how to deal humanely with the immediate situation at the border while shutting off the overall influx of illegal aliens.
And ultimately, the knife that cuts this Gordian knot is the answer to this question: What would be necessary for Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans to be able to say, "My country is a great place to raise a family, start and grow a business, and generally enjoy life. I have no need to scramble up to the US border"?
We have organizations like the Peace Corps, but is that too leftist for you? Big money just wants to depredate these countries, doesn't it? Or is this no less a fiction than the existence of "Da Man?" Why are we always trying to turn other countries into us? As if we're the zenith of happiness? Hell, we gave them Miami....
ReplyDeleteKeep praying!
"In Latin America during the Cold War, Marxism was invoked by left-wing insurgents, as was nationalism by right-wing militias, in their attempts to seize control of the state. But with successful democratic transitions throughout the continent, states largely appropriated socialist demands by legalizing leftist parties and pushing a new brand of redistributive economics. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the moderation of socialist parties in countries made demands for a radically different political order seem unappealing (or unnecessary) to the vast majority of citizens. Meanwhile, secularization and declining levels of religious observance throughout Latin America meant a receding political role for Catholicism. In Michoacán, Mexico, one exception has been the criminal group La Familia Michoacana, which has made extensive use of Christian imagery. In 2009, before the state fought back, the group reportedly had influence over (or extorted anyway) perhaps as many as 180,000 gas stations, truck shops, street markets, movie theaters, and businesses."
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/terrorism-governance-religion/556817/
Your point in posting the excerpt from the Atlantic article is exactly what? Because it makes, to a large degree, an essential point of mine: increasing secularization is a real phenomenon in Latin America - I might add, an extremely harmful one. As for how much socialist parties have "moderated," I'd suggest we ask the Venezuelans, who are reduced to eating zoo animals, and the Nicaraguans, who are currently experiencing th worst civil unrest in 30 years over Ortega's abysmal rule.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, gangs are a huge menace in Mexico and Central America.
I would say that means that an examination of what kinds of fundamental cultural factors brought the area to this point. What is different about, say, the US and Canada that makes them comparatively stable and economically robust - and places to which people from further south want to come? What underlying principles and cultural norms did we have in place that they didn't?
You tell me, since you have all the answers. Why would you ask me what my point is in linking the Atlantic article? Seems like a stupid question.
ReplyDeleteAll I know is that the US Drug War had a lot to do with the shifting of the balance of money and thereby power from more industrious uses to the criminal down there and for whatever reasons, another American war on something just made matters worse.
ReplyDeleteI see where Canada finally severed marijuana from their part in the Drug War America pretty much foisted on them too. They can lay plenty of claim to being the better neighbor. Do you foresee their society failing now. Hasn't appeared to have hurt Colorado much yet.
ReplyDeletePot policy in Canada or Colorado has such a remotely tangential connection to the topic at hand that it would not foster a focused conversation.
ReplyDeleteDon’t know what I did or didn’t do to assume that mantle, but yeah, it’s me.
DeleteOKie dokie, Unknown. Thanks for setting me straight in your mind.
ReplyDeleteBut you sure sound like Barney Quick.
ReplyDeleteThe Gordian Knot seems likely to include so many employers which look the other way to employ aliens. I do not see this addressed in any proposed legislation.
ReplyDeleteThere are laws on the books to deal with that. It’s a matter of uniformly and rigorously enforcing them.
DeleteI think you would agree that a major problem with the lawlessness in Mexic over the past half century that makes it a less congenial place to live and raise a family is duee to the drug war. Legalizing marijuana here has made a dent in that.
ReplyDelete"Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-long drug war couldn't: taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels' profits.
"The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade. Agents snagged roughly 1.5 million pounds of marijuana at the border, down from a peak of nearly 4 million pounds in 2009."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/legal-marijuana-is-finally-doing-what-the-drug-war-couldnt/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.670061dc5a00
Canada Figured Out How to Win the Drug War
ReplyDeleteCanada finally figured out how to win the Drug War:
"Don’t fight it."
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/trials_and_error/2017/05/canada_figured_out_how_to_win_the_drug_war.html
It's a minor component in this, but the more underlying problems of Mexican culture and Latin American culture generally are the thing we really need to focus on. The governmental corruption. The constant political upheaval - coups, revolutions, civil wars, splintering of parties. The disregard for the Christian (Catholic) particulars of their cultures, as evidenced by the preponderance of common-law marriages.
ReplyDeleteThat was me. I don't know what the frick is up with this "unknown" crud, but if you respond, it's me you're responding to.
ReplyDeleteSo you're a known unknown.
ReplyDeleteI read in old musty books from Kerouac et al that dudes used to drive down to and through Mexico with no problem. Before the drug war. When priests are molesting children and living high on the hog, then the church has a credibility problem. Plenty of fundies were in the wings ready to scarf up some cash though. Just more depredation. What an abomination!
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sex_abuse_cases_by_country
ReplyDeleteThat is hardly the main reason Mexicans are coming to our border in droves.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's a reason for the church losing its hold and the results of that that make Mexico inhospitable
ReplyDelete