Sure. Y’know, I’ve read a time or two that people tend to more liberalism in their youth, and gradually become more conservative as they age. I can recognize certain small aspects of that in my own mindset, but generally not when it comes to politics. As a kid, I thought high taxes were terribly unfair, but the older I got and the more I started to think about all the nice things we enjoy in a civilization, from public education and infrastructure to law enforcement, emergency services, public parks, all that shit, and how impossible it would be to pay for all that if we were completely reliant on voluntary philanthropy from private parties. The more I learned, the more I believed in government as a collaboration of all citizens toward the common good, even though that ideal still sits pretty far from actual practice.
I think that comes from the more classical version of liberal/conservative where conservative isn’t so against change/new things just maybe we shouldn’t test the water by jumping in head first.
I think I’m living my life backwards.
[quote=“doop, post:81, topic:69440, full:true”]
And the implication that “some percentage of their children… will become terrorists,” as if this is a natural and unavoidable progression (50% will be male, 10% will be left handed, 0.1% will become terrorists) is pretty asinine.[/quote]
Unless you have some realistic way to eliminate the problem that “there’s plenty here for a poor young muslim with no job and no prospects to lash out at and blame for his misfortunes”, the idea that some will be radicalized is simply a result of looking reality in the face. Short of a practical way to eliminate the “casual, day-to-day racism” first, letting their future parents into France (or any other racist society, like the US) will result in poor young Muslims who lash out at that society.
Give the refugees jobs and integrate them into society then. I’ve met quite a few refugees, and that’s what they want. If you keep people at arms length and think only about their risk to society, you miss out on a lot of the benefits that they offer.
Same here. I was Bennite Labour in my teens, Green in my 20s and now I’m in my mid 30s I’m borderline anarcho-communist.
So basically you’re saying that racial segregation is the only sure solution? It’s not that you don’t like them, it’s just that you don’t like them over here? You are a cliché.
What do you want, zero deaths? Lets ban cars. Immigrants are like cars, they drive economic growth. Even supposing they do occasionally cause deaths the idea that you would do away with them altogether is a massive overreaction. If somebody wanted to ban all cars they would obviously be some sort of technophobe. If somebody wanted to ban all refugees, they would obviously be some sort of …
Also, if you’re worried about immigrants into your country becoming marginalised, why on earth would you think it was a good idea to declare all of them persona non grata? That is the worst kind of thinking. “I don’t like it, so I’ll ban it, so it will go away.” A fantastic rationale that has turned, what, gotta be at least a couple of million Americans into marginalised felons over nothing more serious than recreational drug use.
However unlike cars, refugees are people. Their homes are burned to the ground. Their friends disappeared after a visit from some men in uniform and nobody’s seen them since, and they are deathly afraid that they are next on the list. If I have to take on some hypothetical, low-level future risk so that they can be relieved of very real, very serious threats to their lives in the present, then I will do so gladly. Have some fucking compassion.
Well, let’s see …
Humanitarian migrants “reported a higher proportion of income from their own unincorporated businesses, and this income increased sharply after five years of residency,” the ABS said in a press release.
Refugees, the most enterprising migrants in Australia
So, nope, not really.
To be fair, most of them aren’t allowed to read it either, as it turns out.
Another thing that doesn’t just relate to refugees - money sent back by migrant workers is three times as high as money from aid.
Where it’s not taken by bankers in fees, this money more efficiently reaches the people who need it - why would you send money back to a rich relative? You don’t lose huge amounts to western salaries, administrative fees or foreign workers, and the money isn’t tied to certain projects or equipment.
This can be particularly useful for refugees, as often young men are sent by families as they will be safer on the journey and more likely to be able to get a job and send money back to the family (it’s very expensive to make the journey to Europe, so sometimes families have to make a choice). If you give refugees a job, not only are you helping them become more independent and integrated, you may also be indirectly supporting their family abroad.
So, is that the conclusion you jump to from a simple attempt to point out that there is, in fact, a real (low-level) risk associated with a particular policy, rather than supporting the pretense there is zero risk?
Here’s the thing. If you convince people there is zero risk from a policy, and then the actual risk materializes, you’ll lose the people you lied to forever. They will conclude that the Trumps and LePens are the only people who will dare tell the truth, and that charges of racism are made only to hide the truth. It is a terribly foolish, counterproductive strategy that feeds bigotry rather than fighting it.
[quote=“doop, post:107, topic:69440”]
If I have to take on some hypothetical, low-level future risk so that they can be relieved of very real, very serious threats to their lives in the present, then I will do so gladly.[/quote]
That’s a much better argument than denouncing someone as racist for nothing more than pointing out the existence of a risk. It’s still not a good argument, however, because people will, quite correctly, point out that the refugees who make it to Turkey are safe from what is happening in Syria. “So why not send money to the camps in Turkey rather than invite them into the West?”
This makes me want to punch my own junk.
…
Wait, I just did.
I think you need a better hobby… plus if you don’t want to have offspring there are much more effective and less painful methods.
I know, right. I find myself thinking in a much more radical direction, the older I get, and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m more aware of how fundamentally tilted the world is, or if it’s because the world has gotten shittier. Maybe it’s grad school?
I’ve just got more left wing (starting out as a Tory wet in a middle class Telegraph reading family in a small village in the Tory shires) as I’ve learnt more about the world, lived in different countries and bigger cities. I think it’s about having broader horizons more than anything.
America has turned me into a commie. 
I’m not trying to convince “people”, I’m trying to convince you. Don’t start in with this “if you were a politician justifying policy, some people might say” bullshit. Your argument is rapidly disappearing up its own hypothetical arsehole. Do you think accepting refugees is a good idea, or don’t you?
Nope, that’s not it. I’m denouncing you as racist because out of all of the risks that we face on a day-to-day basis, this is the one you’re afraid of. The most deadly attack on French soil since world war two, and still it will only make up about 15% of this year’s murders, which in turn will make up some small fraction of a percent of all deaths. That’s the thing you’re afraid of enough to suggest a zero-tolerance policy over (or is it just something “people” might suggest, now?), and yet given a cursory glance at the breakdown of risk in the modern western world we can surely say that your fear is not rational. Don’t make me type out the fucking car analogy again. Scroll up, read it again, and explain to me how a guy who wants to ban all cars is a technophobe but a guy who wants to ban all refugees isn’t a xenophobe.
I want to say it again, I’m not fucking well strategising. I’m arguing over the right thing to do, now suddenly you’re arguing over the right way to argue for the right thing to do. Stop it, will you? Gives me a headache. Just tell me what you think. Me, I think the fact that you’re citing risks without properly understanding their magnitude, and assessing arguments based on their appeal to voters, says that none of this is particularly real to you. Listen:
That’s not a hypothetical, that’s a friend of mine. He’s a computer programmer from Iran. A couple of friends of his were budding young journalists, full of idealistic vigour. He helped them to set up and run a blog where they published citizen-journalism, truth-to-power type articles, hoping to make some small stand against an oppressive regime. Then one day, while my friend was visiting his uncle here in Paris, his two friends disappeared. Nobody knows what happened, except of course everybody knows what happened. They were detained. They were tortured. Now they’re probably dead, and their bodies are in a mass grave. He went to the French government and told them he feared for his life if he returned, and after a typically long bureaucratic turnaround he was granted citizenship.
He’s an electrician now. Says after what happened the thought of doing anything programming or IT-related makes him feel sick. To me he’s a hero who stood up to injustice, for him though I guess there’s a lot of survivor’s guilt and I can’t imagine what other dark thoughts. Still though he’s self employed, got his qualifications and a bit of business coming in, enough that he has a paid employee now. All in all his life here is going pretty well, except that he may never see his family again and he can’t contact any of his friends in Iran lest they be “questioned” over it.
Certainly as an Arab looking dude (Persians are basically Arabs, right?) with an Arab sounding name, I’ve seen this place weary him in a way that it doesn’t when you’re a white boy from Hobbiton. Still, the idea that I would say to such a guy “sorry but you can’t stay here. It’s nothing against you personally, there’s just some non-zero chance that your children will grow up to be violent radicals,” is so fucking stupid and bigoted that I can’t even countenance it. The idea that I would look every single person fleeing Syria in the eyes one at a time and say the same thing is horrifying. The idea that you would say it without looking any of them in the eye at all, that’s pretty fucking galling too.
That is some weasel-faced crap right there. Are you pointing it out, or aren’t you? Turkey can’t possibly be expected to sustain the full brunt of this crisis. They will necessarily put the majority of them into processing camps, and it has certainly happened before that the birth rate in such a camp outstrips the rate at which inmates can be properly placed into society, making a supposedly temporary camp permanent. What’s more the camp will necessarily be close to the border, meaning that if Isis continues to gain territory the processing camps could very suddenly turn into abattoirs.
To do what with? There are no fucking shops in a processing camp. There are enough refugees coming out of Syria to fill a reasonably large city. Are we going to build a city over there? In Turkey? In the desert? On the edge of a war zone? Going to need to send more than money to do that. Doctor Manhattan, maybe.
What a stupid idea. Glad you didn’t suggest it.
I hear extremism is on the rise in Canada, people in niqabs will be appearing on the streets over the next few months.
They’ve already taken over parts of hospitals:
Andrew Neil’s message to Paris attackers.
