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https://genuinerealist.substack.com/p/welcome-to-universal-university
One of my excursions in thinking outside the box.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
Your sensitivity to the human rights element of this problem does you credit, and I mean that without irony. But there was a Newsweek/NYT columnist, Anna Quindlen, who used to write columns that ended, I don’t know what the solution is, but this surely isn’t it. The formulation drove me nuts. I’m afraid you’ve joined that club.
So you’ve got these Venezuelan gang members, extremely dangerous individuals, who came to the country illegally for the purposes of social predation. You’ve identified and arrested them. What are you going to do?
Try them here and imprison them? Great. Not only expensive – btw, it is dangerous as a juror to participate in those trials. -but the last thing the beleaguered American prison system needs is another well organized ethic gang. The Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerilla Family, Mexican Mafia and La Familia – all thrive in prison.
Plus you satisfy the ultimate bottom line. They stay in the US.
Deport them to Mexico or Canada? Are you kidding? You think those nations want these problems?
Deport them to Venezuela? Venezuela won’t take them back.
So, faute de mieux, you end up making a deal with an impoverished nation willing to house them for the money. It’s the same reason Obama ended up droning Awlaki, referenced above. It has all sorts of negatives, but it’s the best of the bad alternatives.
And, whether I appear cold blooded or not, from a deterrence perspective, it IS useful. Knowing you won’t end up in a US prison with various civilized practices, but rotting in a foreign hell hole, is a fairly good motivator not to come – illegally – in the first place.
Because the whole mess began with excessive tolerance.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
Wrong, Mick.
She was not a particularly good prosecutor. Loathed by most of her colleagues..
I left the DAs office in 2007, but long enough to have heard of Kamala Harris and be aware of the dislike of most of the others.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
I think Silicon Valley support is not that certain.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
I made a post on the cardboard about the disaster in California. Forestry policies have been, for 50 years now, taking pains to distance myself from Trump’s partisanship. (The fault lies with environmental dilettantes who can be found on both sides of the aisle.) I was amazed to find this characterized as too political, although the Post still up there.
I don’t know how you remember your experience on the covid board during 2020, but I was frankly appalled at the level of arrogance smugness and groupthink that prevailed. I think this is a phenomenon that dates back to 1990 or thereabouts. It’s a major contributor to the resurgence of the Republican party and the general polarization of American society.
Many of the posters would benefit enormously from a pie in the face.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
I could not disagree more. Trump the Bogeyman is the only thing holding the DEMOCRATIC Party together, since Obama and Hilary abandoned the working class and turned it over to academic liberalism a decade ago. Without Trump, they’d go down on transgender issues alone – and t that’s just for openers.
I’m not going to be casting a Presidential vote in this election.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
I think you mean ‘descended.rom slaveowners.’
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
Mick,
Thanks for the kind words.
The proposal has nothing in common with the fashionable idea of a wealth surtax, which is a non-starter for so many reasons – actually, just a political ploy by Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden,
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
Associating the recent crime wave issue with causes that arose in the 80’s ignores the remarkable drop in crime statistics in the 90’s. There were many causes for this, including demographic, but one of the major reasons was the adoption of the ‘broken windows’ theory of policing. I wish I could link John Wilson’s original article in 1982 in the Atlantic Monthly, which I read at the time. The best I can do is this Wikipedia article
Wilson’s approach has been under attack the last few years, because elevated levels of enforcement lead to racially disparate results. That these are based on the spectacularly different levels of violent crime – 4x to 6x the rate of Caucasians, which is itself too high when compared with Asians, immigrants (the legal kind), and so on.
And there is a counter narrative that has some validity, that these arrests for comparatively minor crimes set up the youthful offender for steady progress (or regress) into the criminal justice system, That’s the reason why all these progressives come to office determined not to prosecute low level crimes.
Except that it doesn’t work. Wilson was right. More to the point, African-American communities are even less tolerant of disorderly streets than more upscale communi
The only one who doesn’t seem to get it is Joe Biden, who’s commencement address at Morehouse that was a flat out pandering to the African-American intellectuals who remain True Believers. As summarized by Andrew Sullivan on his substack blog – https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-being-in-a-minority. (Might require a subscription, but worth it – Sullivan is a real force for common sense.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
Not mine, Mick, as well you know.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
Caitlin Flanagan marches to her own drum, which almost defines centrist. She’s typical of the old Atlantic, which is oh-so-slowly reemerging from the dead weight of identity politics
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
Mick,
Sorry to disappoint, but as I live through my 78th year on this small planet, I’m not interested in doing controversy here. I’m more interested in what you did about Social Security, since – if my numbers are right – you have reached that age. If your experience is typical, you were at first tempted to forego the benefit, then took a look at all the money deducted over the years, and decided what the hell. FDR did not intend it as a welfare program, and ultimately that perspective prevails with most of us.
As for the rest, about the only prediction that I’d make with any degree of confidence is that the structure of elite education in this nation is doomed, and thank God. One reason is that we distribute information now so well and in so many forms that the value added of an elite degree is extremely dubious. An autodidact can acquire all the education he or she needs without the colossal expense. All you really get from your Stanford, Harvard, or Pomona’s is certification, that you are in fact Smart. (There’s a scene in the Wizard of Oz that showed up the farce much better than I could.) The Varsity Blues case is not a small matter – it showed up how rotten to the core is the admissions process, as did much of the evidence uncovered in Students for Fair Admissions, the affirmative action case. If the world were as it should be, Clarence Thomas’ paean to actual American pluralism would be read at every Fourth of July celebration. But the really killer opinion on how morally bankrupt the system is was Gorsuch’s. Here’s a link.
The real Constitutional issue that besets our nation is the complete failure of Congress to function in the way the Founding Fathers intended. I am hoping for the emergence of a Third Party.
If you are sick of both the New York Times/Washington Post/CNN agenda reporting – ‘progressive elites reassuring other progressive elites about the state of an America that has never existed’, to quote some articulate someone whose name I should remember, but don’t – and Fox News belligerency, head out to the substack platform, and subscribe to the likes of Andrew Sullivan and Barry Weiss. I have my own little blog there, to which I don’t contribute as often as I should.
The only thing preventing the Democratic Party from complete collapse is the odious personality of Donald Trump, completely unfit for any elected office, particularly the Presidency, I give a monthly contribution to Nikki Haley and hope for a voter’s rebellion in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Over and out, Happy New Year.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
Warning: there is considerable propaganda in this. Nonetheless, there’s enough certifiable fact to make it worthwhile.
Most striking is that Fryer came from an extremely disadvantaged background. His persecutors came from upper class families. Notably, Claudine Gay is Exeter and Stanford, and apparently has little or no experience with the actual lives of lower class African Americans.
If this were simply anecdotal, it wouldn’t matter. But I believe it’s the pattern. Class matters far more in this society than race, a fact that the Coates and Gays of the world would rather die than admit. A terrific town-and-gown feud is shaping up in the black community. Witness the rising Trump numbers in ethnicity.
BTW, I spent 15 years on the CEB, warning about the effects of the wealth gap. Well, the chickens have come home to roost. To my 2ay or thinking, the culture wars are being driven by middle class angst over the increasing difficulty of keeping up.
Now back to online chess.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
The Speaker of the House should learn about the principles of selective prosecution. Because the rule of law sure doesn’t seem to apply to political friends – or, indeed, to anyone but Donald Trump.
Which means, if you’re keeping score, that this isn’t the rule of law at all, but a political vendetta.
The resources of the Democratic Party in keeping Trump front and center are apparently limitless.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
The deranged opposition to Trump has done some extremely deranged things, but this leads the list. You’d think the party that includes Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy would know better.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
