Sometimes I use this forum to work out ideas. This one comes from Sam Harris, but I don’t remember which of the many Harris videos it was. He was talking about where we put our energy, how we work toward a more moral world. He is willing to give some ground to people who want “more”, who want to not think about the problems of some starving kid in Africa, but, he says, even if you just want to enjoy lunch while sitting outside in a busy place, how much can you tolerate? If you can’t feel safe having that sandwich, then maybe it’s time to think about what’s going on that created that unsafe feeling. If you can’t walk down that street without stepping over someone who is suffering some great ill in their life, at what point do you consider that it is an illness of society and there’s something you need to do?
I tuned in to the NY city celebration just before midnight, and they were interviewing police and sanitation people. I usually avoid thinking about cops and clean-up when I’m partying. We can’t do things that were once normal and pleasurable because we are exceeding our capacity to police them.
I lived in the Twin Cities when Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped and watched how quickly the culture shifted to not allowing kids to go play in parks and undeveloped areas. What important part of daily existence will we lose next?
And I agree with both of you. But I also wonder if we just hear about the bad things more because of the modern media.
And also whether, as a percentage, bad actors might actually be decreasing - sort of like NYC which, with its many crimes, is actually very safe on a per person scale.
There is a book, Last Child in the Woods. Crime is down, but it is also more random, so you can’t just avoid the “bad neighborhood”. And what parent wants to play the odds? So, I can say it’s an overreaction, but it’s not my kid.
We all do it. I often long for the days of when you turn on the TV, it’s already starts playing the station you want. Now, we have to scroll through apps after we turn on the TV. I miss the days you turn on the TV and there’s your channel, already playing and this was late 60s/early 70s. Didn’t have to wait for all TV to warm up by that time.
Yes, we do! And hey, we were the ones who were there right?
Boy, all I remember about TVs is constantly messing to get the horizontal hold to work.
We have actually time traveled from around 1953 (for me) to now. That’s kinda cool!
As usual there is a lot of bad information about this incident.
The perpetrator is not an immigrant, but a Black American muslim who was struggling with personal issues. That fact makes the FBI’s explanation of a purely faith-based motive less likely.
So far, it looks like he acted alone, and he had nothing to do with the truck blowing up in Las Vegas.
Trolls introduce issues that aren’t issues like this. Nobody has mentioned anything about immigrants in this thread. It is NOT bad information. It is a red herring.
To magnify the trolling aspect, @thatoneguy implies by his second post that immigrants cause difficult complexities that progressives are responsible for.
This progressive is proud to welcome immigrants and sees segregation as an old, worn out, discredited idea upheld and propagated by racists.
Let’s not forget Trump has raised the idea of eliminating birthright citizenship. If you think immigration is the actual problem that people are complaining about, you are missing the boat.
I mean bad information in general online. Not specifically in this thread.
As for immigration – it’s a problem and will be dealt with harshly in one way or another, but it has nothing to do with this crazy Black muslim. He was driven over the edge by personal problems that were made worse by social complexity.
Not understanding the connection you are making from immigrant to faith-based. The US has a spectrum of people who are motivated by faiths and beliefs from around the world. They are born into one culture and radicalized by something else.
Right, which is why it was a bad idea to bring the topic of immigration into this thread. I have seen no news outlet saying that Jabbar was an immigrant (quite the opposite, actually). And I have no social media account like X, Facebook, and the rest because I don’t want to see the ignorance.
And regarding the social complexities that you say progressives create, that’s just another red herring.
The world is complex. Progressives generally try to deal with these complexities by providing a space in which these complexities can work themselves out rather than forcing others to be like us or “go back where you came from,” while ignoring the fact that we simply killed those who were here to begin with. And then we shipped in slaves that we used relentlessly.
After most of us realized that slavery was a rot of an idea that we created, conservatives began saying, “go back where you came from” to those who they shipped in! Yes, those conservatives who created slavery - once slavery was abolished - fought to keep slavery. When that didn’t work, conservatives blamed (still blame!) African Americans for being here. This is why progressives often think conservatives are ignorant.
All of it is closely related. While it’s true that blaming immigrants is missing the ultimate problem of our elected officials allowing the immigrants to flood in, the conversation has to start somewhere.
I’m not making any connection like that. I said this guy was driven crazy by his personal problems rather than his faith.
Your link shows that Fox News and Trump said he was an immigrant. I listen to neither seriously. It is nice that a progressive paper exposed these lies but I hadn’t seen it in my newsfeed.
And regarding complex society, which of the myriad topics in that field do you think progressives/liberals harm?
