I think the OP ought to do a little more research into police militarization and how use of force incidents often unfold before writing these posts. Start with Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko.
A common thread is that once someone is known to have committed a major public act of violence for which they're sure to be caught and/or clearly have a death wish the police are at their most careful. The notorious example is Columbine where SWAT teams waited outside for hours because A. it was considered too dangerous to enter and B. the police knew they were being watched in what would be a highly publicized event where everything would be subject to intense scrutiny. A week later the same officers might crash through a door at 4 AM to serve a warrant for a non violent misdemeanor or immediately resort to deadly force in a confrontation needlessly created and escalated by the police.
The reason is in the latter scenarios the courts are least likely to second guess the police and 99% of the time the incident will barely register in the media (though that seems to finally be changing).
The above does not mean we don't have a problem with police use of force nor does it mean that the problem does not disproportionately harm minorities and poor people. It does mean this post is just as lacking in insight as the last time the same type of comparisons were made.
If you're passionate about this subject I think that's great. More people need to be. But this 'well how come this random white suspect survived arrest when this random black suspect didn't' is such a gross oversimplification of the issue as to completely miss the point.
I think the science issue has to do with a combination of broad ignorance about how science works and the incentives of those who write about it. Few people understand the context and limitations on what we can understand from any given study. Getting into that level of detail for a journalist is also both hard and has no relation to number of clicks or whatever else is driving their compensation.
I think there might be some similarities but I don't think it's a particularly apt comparison. Yes there are certain aspects of modern politics that the Catholic Church tried to insulate it's adherents against in the not too distant past and there were even some wars where it was an aspect of the conflict (Ireland, Spanish civil war). Still it isn't clear to me that Catholics were coming straight from sectarian battlefields to culturally Protestant countries whose governments and cultures they believed were illegitimate for religious reasons, regardless of what the official position of the Church was.
You can find some nasty rhetoric from the past but I also don't think that the economic and cultural gulf was as large.
I don't think we can turn them into anything. It's more a matter of what they decide to become combined with us not doing things that are counter-productive to that end.
Doesn't that contradict where you were going with your previous statement a bit though? I mean, Americans eat pork sausage and drink beer too. We also have a political system contrary to what a strict interpretation of Islam would seem to demand. Other religions seem to have largely made their peace with secular government in a way that I'm not sure many forms of Islam have.
That helps along with the fact that regardless of their status their children are born citizens. We have plenty of cultural hypocracies about who is and isn't a real American but I think there's still enough cultural push towards tolerance and economic opportunity that immigrants don't end up alienated in the same way they can be in Europe.
There might also be an important distinction to be made between immigrants and refugees. I wonder if a person who comes to a new country with the intent of being assimilated isn't a bit different than a person who ends up in a new country primarily because they are fleeing some catastrophe in their homeland. I undestand that these things can and often do overlap (I think of the Irish fleeing famine) but it may make refugees less likely to abandon certain cultural traits or beliefs that are inconsistent with liberal democracy.
It's a terrible way to do things but its also a great illustration of why good intentions with regard to human suffering isn't enough when it comes to responding to the refugee crisis. There are a whole host of cultural and legal requirements that need to be in place to make mass resettlement work. On balance the US has done a better job than most countries when it comes to assimilating large waves of immigrants. I think there's a lot of ahistorical and America-centric thinking on this issue. Just because it has tended to work out for us doesn't mean that's the natural state of affairs everywhere.
And that's the rub. The United States has done a pretty good job of assimilating immigrants. Not every culture/society is like ours and even other Western countries with a lot of similarities don't have the same experience with it that we do. I also think Lee makes some important points below about technology and how assimilation may be easier to avoid or delay.
The best comparison to this situation is the Gastarbeiters, mostly Turkish, who were brought in during the decades immediately after World War 2 to assist in reconstruction efforts. I wouldn't say it went disastrously but it also hasn't been great either. Because of the way Germany used to determine citizenship (my understanding is the system has changed some in recent years) they ended up with a couple generations of ethnically non-German people who were born and raised in Germany but weren't citizens. You can imagine how challenging this made assimilation.
Of course this was a choice of the German people and their leadership. It sounds xenophobic to an American ear but it was and remains common in Germany to say that they are not an immigrant country. Unless the consensus about what it means to be German has changed dramatically I would be very hesitant to have pursued Merkel's initial policy regarding the refugrees. They're running the risk of exacerbating the social and political problems they've already got with poorly integrated communities.
Well I don't want to thread jack this into a debate about him personally. I think his analysis provides a good counterpoint to the cultural assumptions (circle jerk is IMO more accurate) of a subgroup of college educated blue tribers who dominate social media.
Maybe it only rings true to to me because I'm a fellow heretic, despite being pretty liberal in the small 'l' sense and demographically right in there with the educated urban crowd who I believe is the target of the critique.
I think that the substance of the article has been said better numerous times by Freddie deBoer and some other writers. I see it in many ways as analogous to right wing radio. Seeing what that approach to discourse has done to the mainstream right ought to give a lot of progressives reason for pause. Play with themselves too much and they might forget how to play with others, much to the detriment of us all.
I think what you're describing is the phenomena best illustrated in The Guns of August. The nature of bureaucracies matters just as much as ideology, maybe even moreso.
It's what happens when identity politics and similar theories come completely untethered from actual events where those ideas might provide some insight and turn into a religion. One wonders if there would have been a positive review had Oaks said 'this is awful but I guess we had this coming, given how we treated the Indians and all..' or if the airman chuckled as he died from radiation poisoning saying 'well this sucks for me but at least whitey got his come uppance!'
Yea I did a bit more poking around his reviews and I agree with your assessment. If I didn't know better I'd almost think it was a really well done satire.
I feel like Berlatsky's review completely misses the point of the film. It was to show how easily a small confrotation with the USSR could quickly escalate into a nuclear exchange, and honestly depict what that would look like for the average American. No heroes, just panic, desperation, and slow death from fallout for those who survived the initial blast.
I am too young to have understood The Day After when it was politically relevant. Having seen it since it does have the cheesy made for TV vibe of its era. The characters have Leave It To Beaver values which I'm pretty sure everyone on TV did until roughly the time the Simpsons became popular. That just makes it a product of its time.
Maybe Berlatsky needs to open his mind to the possibility that art can be good (and effective) without genuflecting to modern academia's various dogmas, many of which didn't exist or were far outside of the mainstream when this particular movie was made. The reference to the Iraq war is also particularly bizarre given that Desert Storm wouldn't happen for almost 10 years after the movie came out and the next invasion for another 20.
I think @damon is right. I get that the comments are crude, but I'm really not seeing the outrage as particularly principled. I keep asking myself, if a recording of Bill Clinton surfaced making comments to a friend that all he had to do to get an intern to have sex with him was demand it, how would people react? My guess is that most of the people most outraged by Trump would be downplaying it, or saying that comments behind closed doors don't reflect on his ability to do the job.
My politics I don't think are too weird. Maybe I'm a bit more of a civil libertarian than average but I'm quite comfortable with liberal democracy and a republican form of government. I don't even mind some socialism when necessary to keep the boats afloat.
What I'm not comfortable with is the type of authoritarianism and elitism our particular system has started to produce. There's nothing abnormal about that. If there was we wouldn't have one major party overrun by populism (albeit an ugly and nationalistic variety that I reject) and another party whose adherents are increasingly defensive about its capture by elitist interests.
@saul-degraw what I think you're missing is that the resume card is meaningless for people not committed to or frustrated by tribalism and the status quo. For a lot of people (myself included), her resume is her biggest flaw, namely because it's a record of her support for many of the most disastrous tendencies of our political establishment, from foreign policy to criminal justice to big finance. References to it arent a counter argument, they're an attempt to change the subject.
Your point about Sanders can neither be confirmed nor denied. I'm not a Democrat so I didn't vote for him. I can't say that he personally would've been transformational towards the change Id like to see, or what the polls would look like had he been nominated. I can say I respect him for at least trying to force a conversation, which as far as I can tell the party leadership, political establishment (including HRC), and MSM would prefer never occurs.
I largely agree with you that, for whatever reason, the Democrats have become more small c conservative while the Conservative Movement has radicalized. There is certainly an illiberal Left out there but I don't think it has much influence outside of college campuses and parts of the new media. What I find most frustrating about the nomination of HRC is that she is one of the least credible people for pushing back on Trumpism, including the tiny kernels of truth in some of the things he says/sentiments he represents.
I see Trump's recently discovered statements as quite unsurprising given his persona. He's the jackass that I'm sure most of us have rolled our eyes at while he spins bullshit after a beer or 10 at the local watering hole. However, it's hard for me to take the outrage seriously when most of the people who are opposing Trump are about to vote for the return of a notorious hound dog to the White House as first husband, and who argued that this kind of thing wasn't relevant back in the 90s (a point I agreed with). See also notme's comment above.
Maybe I expect too much of the Democrats, but seeing as how they're the only bulwark against the type of nihilism Trump represents I can't help but wish they'd be a little less cautious and a little more principled.
Even if it's true that it's less of a stretch to match a fingerprint than a casing I think your post underscores the problem with a lot of forensic science when used to obtain a conviction for criminal conduct. There's a big difference between what humans and our technology are theoretically capable of doing in ideal circumstances and what tends to happen in big bureaucratic systems with limited resources and all kinds of incentives that are inconsistent with scientific rigor.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Alleged Cop-Killer Captured Alive”
I think the OP ought to do a little more research into police militarization and how use of force incidents often unfold before writing these posts. Start with Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko.
A common thread is that once someone is known to have committed a major public act of violence for which they're sure to be caught and/or clearly have a death wish the police are at their most careful. The notorious example is Columbine where SWAT teams waited outside for hours because A. it was considered too dangerous to enter and B. the police knew they were being watched in what would be a highly publicized event where everything would be subject to intense scrutiny. A week later the same officers might crash through a door at 4 AM to serve a warrant for a non violent misdemeanor or immediately resort to deadly force in a confrontation needlessly created and escalated by the police.
The reason is in the latter scenarios the courts are least likely to second guess the police and 99% of the time the incident will barely register in the media (though that seems to finally be changing).
The above does not mean we don't have a problem with police use of force nor does it mean that the problem does not disproportionately harm minorities and poor people. It does mean this post is just as lacking in insight as the last time the same type of comparisons were made.
If you're passionate about this subject I think that's great. More people need to be. But this 'well how come this random white suspect survived arrest when this random black suspect didn't' is such a gross oversimplification of the issue as to completely miss the point.
On “Morning Ed: Science {2016.10.26.W}”
I think the science issue has to do with a combination of broad ignorance about how science works and the incentives of those who write about it. Few people understand the context and limitations on what we can understand from any given study. Getting into that level of detail for a journalist is also both hard and has no relation to number of clicks or whatever else is driving their compensation.
On “Geopolitical Futures: Merkel Doesn’t Blame the Voter [+1]”
I think there might be some similarities but I don't think it's a particularly apt comparison. Yes there are certain aspects of modern politics that the Catholic Church tried to insulate it's adherents against in the not too distant past and there were even some wars where it was an aspect of the conflict (Ireland, Spanish civil war). Still it isn't clear to me that Catholics were coming straight from sectarian battlefields to culturally Protestant countries whose governments and cultures they believed were illegitimate for religious reasons, regardless of what the official position of the Church was.
You can find some nasty rhetoric from the past but I also don't think that the economic and cultural gulf was as large.
"
I don't think we can turn them into anything. It's more a matter of what they decide to become combined with us not doing things that are counter-productive to that end.
"
Doesn't that contradict where you were going with your previous statement a bit though? I mean, Americans eat pork sausage and drink beer too. We also have a political system contrary to what a strict interpretation of Islam would seem to demand. Other religions seem to have largely made their peace with secular government in a way that I'm not sure many forms of Islam have.
"
That helps along with the fact that regardless of their status their children are born citizens. We have plenty of cultural hypocracies about who is and isn't a real American but I think there's still enough cultural push towards tolerance and economic opportunity that immigrants don't end up alienated in the same way they can be in Europe.
There might also be an important distinction to be made between immigrants and refugees. I wonder if a person who comes to a new country with the intent of being assimilated isn't a bit different than a person who ends up in a new country primarily because they are fleeing some catastrophe in their homeland. I undestand that these things can and often do overlap (I think of the Irish fleeing famine) but it may make refugees less likely to abandon certain cultural traits or beliefs that are inconsistent with liberal democracy.
"
It's a terrible way to do things but its also a great illustration of why good intentions with regard to human suffering isn't enough when it comes to responding to the refugee crisis. There are a whole host of cultural and legal requirements that need to be in place to make mass resettlement work. On balance the US has done a better job than most countries when it comes to assimilating large waves of immigrants. I think there's a lot of ahistorical and America-centric thinking on this issue. Just because it has tended to work out for us doesn't mean that's the natural state of affairs everywhere.
"
And that's the rub. The United States has done a pretty good job of assimilating immigrants. Not every culture/society is like ours and even other Western countries with a lot of similarities don't have the same experience with it that we do. I also think Lee makes some important points below about technology and how assimilation may be easier to avoid or delay.
"
The best comparison to this situation is the Gastarbeiters, mostly Turkish, who were brought in during the decades immediately after World War 2 to assist in reconstruction efforts. I wouldn't say it went disastrously but it also hasn't been great either. Because of the way Germany used to determine citizenship (my understanding is the system has changed some in recent years) they ended up with a couple generations of ethnically non-German people who were born and raised in Germany but weren't citizens. You can imagine how challenging this made assimilation.
Of course this was a choice of the German people and their leadership. It sounds xenophobic to an American ear but it was and remains common in Germany to say that they are not an immigrant country. Unless the consensus about what it means to be German has changed dramatically I would be very hesitant to have pursued Merkel's initial policy regarding the refugrees. They're running the risk of exacerbating the social and political problems they've already got with poorly integrated communities.
On “Slate EVISCERATES Keith Olbermann and Our Vogue for Snide Political Monologues in an EPIC RANT”
Well I don't want to thread jack this into a debate about him personally. I think his analysis provides a good counterpoint to the cultural assumptions (circle jerk is IMO more accurate) of a subgroup of college educated blue tribers who dominate social media.
Maybe it only rings true to to me because I'm a fellow heretic, despite being pretty liberal in the small 'l' sense and demographically right in there with the educated urban crowd who I believe is the target of the critique.
On “Between Iraq and a Hard Place”
Lex Luthor?
On “Slate EVISCERATES Keith Olbermann and Our Vogue for Snide Political Monologues in an EPIC RANT”
I think that the substance of the article has been said better numerous times by Freddie deBoer and some other writers. I see it in many ways as analogous to right wing radio. Seeing what that approach to discourse has done to the mainstream right ought to give a lot of progressives reason for pause. Play with themselves too much and they might forget how to play with others, much to the detriment of us all.
On “Between Iraq and a Hard Place”
Nothing to add, just wanted to echo the positive feedback. I greatly enjoyed the post.
"
I think what you're describing is the phenomena best illustrated in The Guns of August. The nature of bureaucracies matters just as much as ideology, maybe even moreso.
On “Morning Ed: Society {2016.10.11.T}”
It's what happens when identity politics and similar theories come completely untethered from actual events where those ideas might provide some insight and turn into a religion. One wonders if there would have been a positive review had Oaks said 'this is awful but I guess we had this coming, given how we treated the Indians and all..' or if the airman chuckled as he died from radiation poisoning saying 'well this sucks for me but at least whitey got his come uppance!'
"
Yea I did a bit more poking around his reviews and I agree with your assessment. If I didn't know better I'd almost think it was a really well done satire.
"
I feel like Berlatsky's review completely misses the point of the film. It was to show how easily a small confrotation with the USSR could quickly escalate into a nuclear exchange, and honestly depict what that would look like for the average American. No heroes, just panic, desperation, and slow death from fallout for those who survived the initial blast.
I am too young to have understood The Day After when it was politically relevant. Having seen it since it does have the cheesy made for TV vibe of its era. The characters have Leave It To Beaver values which I'm pretty sure everyone on TV did until roughly the time the Simpsons became popular. That just makes it a product of its time.
Maybe Berlatsky needs to open his mind to the possibility that art can be good (and effective) without genuflecting to modern academia's various dogmas, many of which didn't exist or were far outside of the mainstream when this particular movie was made. The reference to the Iraq war is also particularly bizarre given that Desert Storm wouldn't happen for almost 10 years after the movie came out and the next invasion for another 20.
On “What Trump has in Common with a Subsistence Farmer”
No one in his right mind would ever report that purchase to anyone.
On “Trump and the Conservative Disposition”
Quite right.
"
I think @damon is right. I get that the comments are crude, but I'm really not seeing the outrage as particularly principled. I keep asking myself, if a recording of Bill Clinton surfaced making comments to a friend that all he had to do to get an intern to have sex with him was demand it, how would people react? My guess is that most of the people most outraged by Trump would be downplaying it, or saying that comments behind closed doors don't reflect on his ability to do the job.
"
My politics I don't think are too weird. Maybe I'm a bit more of a civil libertarian than average but I'm quite comfortable with liberal democracy and a republican form of government. I don't even mind some socialism when necessary to keep the boats afloat.
What I'm not comfortable with is the type of authoritarianism and elitism our particular system has started to produce. There's nothing abnormal about that. If there was we wouldn't have one major party overrun by populism (albeit an ugly and nationalistic variety that I reject) and another party whose adherents are increasingly defensive about its capture by elitist interests.
"
That's the biggest irony of all.
"
@saul-degraw what I think you're missing is that the resume card is meaningless for people not committed to or frustrated by tribalism and the status quo. For a lot of people (myself included), her resume is her biggest flaw, namely because it's a record of her support for many of the most disastrous tendencies of our political establishment, from foreign policy to criminal justice to big finance. References to it arent a counter argument, they're an attempt to change the subject.
Your point about Sanders can neither be confirmed nor denied. I'm not a Democrat so I didn't vote for him. I can't say that he personally would've been transformational towards the change Id like to see, or what the polls would look like had he been nominated. I can say I respect him for at least trying to force a conversation, which as far as I can tell the party leadership, political establishment (including HRC), and MSM would prefer never occurs.
"
I largely agree with you that, for whatever reason, the Democrats have become more small c conservative while the Conservative Movement has radicalized. There is certainly an illiberal Left out there but I don't think it has much influence outside of college campuses and parts of the new media. What I find most frustrating about the nomination of HRC is that she is one of the least credible people for pushing back on Trumpism, including the tiny kernels of truth in some of the things he says/sentiments he represents.
I see Trump's recently discovered statements as quite unsurprising given his persona. He's the jackass that I'm sure most of us have rolled our eyes at while he spins bullshit after a beer or 10 at the local watering hole. However, it's hard for me to take the outrage seriously when most of the people who are opposing Trump are about to vote for the return of a notorious hound dog to the White House as first husband, and who argued that this kind of thing wasn't relevant back in the 90s (a point I agreed with). See also notme's comment above.
Maybe I expect too much of the Democrats, but seeing as how they're the only bulwark against the type of nihilism Trump represents I can't help but wish they'd be a little less cautious and a little more principled.
On “Linky Friday #187: Your Money Or Your Life”
Even if it's true that it's less of a stretch to match a fingerprint than a casing I think your post underscores the problem with a lot of forensic science when used to obtain a conviction for criminal conduct. There's a big difference between what humans and our technology are theoretically capable of doing in ideal circumstances and what tends to happen in big bureaucratic systems with limited resources and all kinds of incentives that are inconsistent with scientific rigor.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.