How Does This Make Us Safer?

Yesterday, the Trump administration rounded up 680 probable illegal immigrants from their jobs and is processing them for deportation. It’s likely most of them are guilty of the misdemeanor offense of being in the country illegally. Comparable misdemeanors include public intoxication, simple assault, and reckless driving. So yeah, these are crimes, but the perpetrators are not hardened criminals or risks to society. They were employees–productive tax paying members of society. Many had children, and many of those kids are citizens who have now been effectively orphaned in this country.

Sure, in one sense justice has been done. But in a practical sense what has been gained?

There’s no reason to assume any of these people were a danger to anyone, so we’re not safer.

Unemployment numbers are historically low and these people were working at jobs like deboning chickens. There’s hardly a waiting line of applicants trying to land these positions.

The families left behind have lost most if not all of their income. What happens to them? In some cases this action will likely push citizens onto public assistance. Some of the orphaned kids will become wards of the state. For the government, this is unlikely a financial gain.

The families left behind have also experienced an emotional trauma (especially the kids) and will likely resent the US and its government for this action. How does this aid in the assimilation of 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants?

The companies these people worked for, the landlords they rented from, the bodegas they shopped in all benefited from their employment. They will all take a financial hit.

Justice must serve a societal purpose. If meting out justice doesn’t further the well-being of the citizens, then it’s just malice.

I’m not advocating “open borders”, but there is a reality to people who are already here. They’ve built a life here. You can argue that they shouldn’t have, but that’s water under the bridge. These are people who are productive citizens in every respect, excepting the paperwork. This is the citizenship equivalent of common-law marriage. By and large, most of these people worked way harder and sacrificed more to be American than you or I ever will. Are these really people we want to purge from society? Does their absence make us better?

…the Cogitorium Twitter Feed

As of November, 2023 the TimsCogitorium Twitter has been deleted. I was hoping Elon Musk would cave to greed and return Twitter to a useful public forum. Instead, he’s apparently willing to lose tons of money in an attempt to create a forum for his own warped world-view. This somewhat completes a full-circle that started in 2019 when most of this blog’s content was pushed to social media. I’m now fully off of social media, so any thoughts I need to share will have to be here.

For historical purposes, the old Twitter feed has been exported and the content is now available within this site.

To men still defending Brett Kavanaugh

A few points to ponder:

Sure, it’s possible this is a political shift where all nominations will now be dragged through the mud and slandered by baseless allegations. But consider that since Trump came to office there have been 135 federal judgeships plus Gorsuch’s SCOTUS seat filled with barely a whimper from the left. Maybe this isn’t a sea-change. Maybe it’s just this guy. Maybe Kavanaugh is just a deeply flawed candidate.

Sure, it’s possible #MeToo places every man at risk of being brought down by a sexual assault allegation. But consider that there’s nothing magic about sexual assault. People have been brought down by allegations of bribery, drug use, plagiarism, infidelity, lying, insider trading, theft, and a host of other crimes. In the vast majority of cases, those allegations turn out to be true. Not that false accusations don’t happen, but there’s no historical precedent for them being the norm. If you’re panicked about being accused of sexual assault but unfazed by the prospect of hearing you shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, maybe that says more about you and your past than you’re admitting to yourself.

Sure, it’s possible we should dismiss any sexual assault allegations from the past that didn’t get reported to the police at the time. But… no, wait. That’s not possible, and you’re a colossal ass-hat if you think it is. Sexual assault victims, especially young girls, typically don’t report the abuse. They are humiliated, embarrassed, terrified, and traumatized in ways that leave lifelong scars. There’s a disturbing likelihood that one or more women in your life have been assaulted, maybe more than once. Maybe she hasn’t told you. Maybe she hasn’t told anyone. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, and it doesn’t mean it was no big deal.

And none of this even addresses all the other baggage this guy is hauling on his back including lying to Congress on multiple occasions, trafficking in stolen emails, and other partisan hackery that would ordinarily be disqualifying for a SCOTUS nominee all by itself. It’s not like Kavanaugh is the last conservative justice on Earth. It’s not like if he goes, Trump will nominate an RBG clone next. Is this really the hill you want to die on?

The Polar Vortex

TFW you’re trying to talk to your political polar opposite and just feel like you’re hopelessly spinning…

I often find myself in a situation where useful dialog with a hardcore conservative isn’t really possible because we don’t share enough reality. I doubt we disagree substantively on what we want for the country. We likely disagree on what policies will get us there, but that could be a useful discussion topic. However, and most importantly, we disagree on what’s actually happening and/or has happened. That’s problematic. Without a shared reality, conversation just becomes noise. They think I live in fake news land, and I think they live in a conservative bubble.

Still, I think there’s progress to be made if we can stop seeing each other in extremes. The vast majority of the left does not want a Socialist country any more than the vast majority of the right wants a Fascist one. As an example, it’s wrong to conflate someone’s desire to socialize medical insurance with a desire to turn us into Venezuela. This country has lots of socialized sectors already (schools, roads, military, pensions, etc.) and largely we’re all fine with that because it’s been that way for a very long time. There are good reasons for and against adding medical insurance to that list, but it’s wrong to think that socializing medical insurance is suddenly a gateway to full-on Socialism for all industries. Virtually no one wants that. The key is to stop seeing each other’s policies as nefarious apocalyptic goals, but as different means to the same goals.

This is complicated by the reality that there do exist politicians and interest groups pushing policies with nefarious goals, but selling them as supporting voters’ goals. It’s in everyone’s interest to expose these disingenuous Trojan policies. But again, doing so is predicated on a shared reality—on agreeing about what has happened—on what is happening. As long as reality remains a construct of the side with the best marketing, it’s hard to see how we get there.

“America cannot be intimidated” – Bullshit

On 9/11, we all take a moment to remember the tragedy of that day so many years ago, and the sacrifice of the victims, first responders, soldiers, and others who were lost as a result. It is a time for solemn reflection, but also maybe a time for a reality check.

America fancies itself the Chuck Norris of nations. Our cultural identity is tightly wrapped in our being mighty, righteous, and unshakable. But if we’re truly honest with ourselves, if we dig under that facade of bravado, we see that we are scared as hell… and 9/11 made that possible.

Fear has always been a tool for control. It’s baked into the human condition. But 9/11 was a gateway that turned fear into a political industry. The fear that 9/11 was only the beginning was used to conflate a fear of Al-Qaeda into a fear of Muslims and the Middle East, which sold the war on Iraq. That same fear was exploited to strip away many of our rights to privacy and personal freedom. That worked so well, it spawned an entire media empire dedicated to making us afraid.

Today we are still afraid of Islamic terrorism, but we’re also afraid of North Korea, socialism, gun laws, climate scientists, taxes, immigrants, PoC, the LBGT, drugs, China, non-Christians, gluten, and even our own government. America cannot be intimidated? Bullshit. America has institutionalized intimidation.

The objective of terrorism is to instill fear. Fear is debilitating. People make poor choices when they are afraid. The 9/11 terrorists made us momentarily afraid. But opportunistic Americans have turned that into a state of perpetual fear. The terrorists have succeeded beyond bin Laden’s wildest dreams, but only because of what we’ve done to ourselves. The terrorists lit a fire, but we fed it and fanned it.

If you want to truly honor the legacy of 9/11, conquer your fear. If you want to make America great again, conquer your fear. Fear is the mind killer.