Worst possible response to the Paris attacks…
Now maybe the whining adolescents at our universities can concentrate on something other than their need for "safe" spaces…
— Judith Miller (@JMfreespeech) November 13, 2015
Yeah, like not printing false information to gin up a war. Would come in handy tonight. https://t.co/NC5R5NU444
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) November 14, 2015
The recent anti-racist protests at Yale seem to be getting less general media traction than the ones at the University of Missouri — depending on your vector, because nobody outside a few deluded alumni cares about Yale’s football team, or because the Mizzou students could point out actual threats against their physical well being (however incompetent the threateners). The East Coast bias of our “important” media, however, ensured that the Eli grievances would not be overlooked. (A tweet I can’t find joked that coverage of the Yale protests gave more than one reporter a chance to humble-brag about their own Ivy-League connections.)
Back in the early 1970s, I was acquainted with some feminists from the first wave of women permitted to enroll at Yale. My Yale acquaintances were very outraged that they could not consider their university a safe space, but in that less enlightened era they got little sympathy for what was media-branded as “much ado about nothing” — ugly graffiti in the dorms, vulgar chants by fraternity gangs, an icy absence of understanding from the university administrators and professors authorized to bring the vandals to order.
From what I gathered, I got the impression that these were very smart and extremely engaged individuals who’d dedicated their whole conscious lives to working hard enough that they’d finally be granted the freedom of an intellectual nirvana where petty concerns of gender would no longer be the defining structure of their daily lives. But that admission proved to be grudging, and the continued barriers to equality gleefully flaunted by those on the powerful side of the power divide. One quote I remember being passed around like a relic or a totem: “You can force us to give you a seat at our table, but you can’t force us to explain our jokes.”
My feminist friends knew, all too personally, that worse things had happened. But these terrible things were happening to them, right now.
Our social media, such as it was, consisted of mimeographed fanzines and newsletters, ‘alternative’ campus papers, word of mouth. I went to a big state university; our most public battle over “safe spaces” involved a largish anteroom to the women’s restrooms in the union building, outfitted with some couches and a few study tables and known as the Women’s Lounge, which some prototype Mens Rights Activists decided was a gross violation against EQUALITY, MAN! For some weeks, one couldn’t pass through it without stumbling over one or a couple of unprepossessing men “reclaiming” the space, uneasy under the death glare of a group of female separatists who looked more than capable of ejecting them if necessary.
From what I gather now, on our much more copious and swift-moving news/opinion sources, some things haven’t changed all that much in the ensuing forty years. Which is why I would like to highlight a very smart piece from Professor Daniel Drezner, in the Washington Post, on “the trouble with 21st century campus politics“:
… The problem is that for those of us not at Yale, it is all too easy for the most absurd, theatrical and controversial elements of this dispute to blow up on our social media, and to have those aspects of the incident frame how we perceive the current state of play. The larger context does not mean that outside observers should say that students have every right to scream at administrators. Nor does it mean that free speech issues shouldn’t be of paramount concern on college campuses. But it is just too easy to take the most extreme incidents, caricature them even further and then conclude that today’s college students “just don’t get it” — when, in point of fact, there is probably a lot more that external observers aren’t getting.
An additional problem that affects the current generation of college students even more is that it is so easy for these contretemps to balloon so quickly into national debates. That’s extremely unfortunate. One of the purposes of college is to articulate stupid arguments in stupid ways and then learn, through interactions with fellow students and professors, exactly how stupid they are. Anyone who thinks that the current generation of college students is uniquely stupid is either an amnesiac or willfully ignorant. As a professor with 20 years of experience, I can assure you that college students have been saying stupid things since the invention of college students.
The difference today is that because of social media, it is easy for college students to have their opinions go viral when that was not the original intent. As Rossler noted in his Facebook post, “I recognize that we published the article with only a Yale audience in mind and that many readers outside of Yale took issue with the article’s perspective.” If you are older than 22 and reading this, imagine for a second how you would feel if professional pundits pored over your undergraduate musings in real time.…
bluehill
Now maybe the whining conservatives can concentrate on something other than the design of Starbucks cups …
BruceFromOhio
Now maybe the former NYTimes reporters on Twitter can concentrate on something other than their need for repeating endless bullshit.
Matt McIrvin
Judith Miller is more wingnut than I realized.
Goblue72
@Matt McIrvin: I think she’s revealing herself to be more wingnut than most people realized.
Cynical stenographer careerist with right leaning tendencies? Sure. But this much a wingnut? Wow.
The Ancient Randonneur
Miller’s is pretty pedestrian. Go look at Newt Gingrich’s Twitter response. He’d fit right in with this current batch seeking the GOP nomination.
Gian
@Matt McIrvin:
Rude comment about Judith and Dick Cheney.
My fear out of this is that Europe closes its borders to refugees and the religious kill tens of thousands.
My sorrow is for the innocents killed to try and make change through violence.
http://www.raqqa-sl.com/en/
(this site was on NPR earlier this week) I expect that the French/NATO response won’t be silent, even if it’s the wrong place.
David Koch
Yale football = White = Okay
Mizzou football = Black = Uppity
That’s why they’re losing their shit. When white loony Christians protest Jewish run Starbuck over trumped up xmas, that is Okay. Blacks protesting anything = Nat Turner is coming to kill us!
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
There’s a problem with this bit from Drezner:
The demand for safe spaces and much of the drive to eliminate racism on campus is precisely to pin big consequences on students for certain kinds of of stupid arguments and comments. There is a dichotomy in making this sort of response to protesters against racism going over the line on what is acceptable, while also demanding suspensions and other sanctions against those who make racist comments that go over the line.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t penalize racism heavily, because we should. But it is an uncomfortable double standard to then give a pass to those who inappropriately shout down others. It may be a double standard that we have to live with as the best of a bunch of imperfect alternatives, but it should at least be acknowledged.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@David Koch: Huh? What about the Yale situation gets it labeled as “White” while the events at Missouri get labeled as “Black”?
Mike J
Cabs in Paris turned off meters tonight, gave people free rides home.
Uber canceled service.
magurakurin
@Mike J: Fuck Uber. Greedy San Francisco techies.
? Martin
I thought this take on the campus protests at The Atlantic was pretty good.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@? Martin: That article is fine as far as it goes, and is absolutely correct that protests are justified. However, it doesn’t look at all at the part of the Yale protests that has some of us on the left complaining.
No. This is not the objectionable part of the protests. That part is the loud demands to fire people who are in perfect agreement with the protesters as to what constitutes an offensive display, but disagree as to whether or not offensive displays (in this case Halloween costumes) should be discouraged and treated as being offensive, or outright banned. Simply claiming, as Sally Kohn does, that the precipitating incident does not produce consternation grossly misrepresents what the objections are, unless you think the precipitating incident is not the wearing of offensive costumes, but rather the disagreement about how to handle them.
A ban moves into the territory I mentioned above, of putting significant sanction upon certain kinds of stupid behavior by young people, unless you think that the ban the protesters have in mind doesn’t have any sort of punishment attached to it, which I doubt.
If having a disagreement about how to deal with offensive actions is also entirely out of bounds and demands sanction, then the movement has gone off the deep end.
David Koch
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I’m not labeling it that way. the wingnuts are. both campus protests are diverse and broad based, but with mizzou the msm has focused on the football team. But the team isn’t as diverse as the general student body so the wingnut media painted the protest as black only to whip up resentment and fear with their archie bunker viewers.
TheMightyTrowel
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: as a yale alum perhaps i can clarify a little… as far as I’m aware – and I’m a decade and 2 continents away from mother yale – the students aren’t looking to get anyone fired (ie removed from employment by yale) they wanted to have the head of a college – an admin appointment held by a tenured faculty member and heavily concerned with student welfare – removed from this admin position because it was felt that his and his wife’s positions re minority students being too sensitive are incompatible with a student welfare role. I haven’t heard anyone seriously asking yale to fire them from all employment. But i haven’t followed this closely as I’ve been traveling.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@David Koch: Maybe. I’m not really sure that that’s what is driving the coverage. I think it was the involvement of the football team that drew attention, and everything after that has been . . . “incidental” isn’t the right word but the one I want isn’t coming to me. If the protests at Yale got any attention, for any reason, they’d produce the exact same kind of backlash.
And, for what it’s worth, I’m ambivalent about the involvement of the football team at Missouri. It isn’t that football players can’t be activists or that they shouldn’t get involved. So, my ambivalence in no way means that I disapprove of them getting involved. It’s more that I think that there was a lot less triumph for the protesters in forcing Tim Wolfe’s resignation than a lot of other people around here do. My guess is that his departure had very little to do with the sort of moral suasion or embarrassment that would constitute a victory for activists, and a lot to do with the enormous financial penalties the school was facing if they didn’t play tomorrow.
I think the takeaway by most of the population, of which the folks here are not at all representative, is that the football team forced the resignation. I would hope that people would recognize why setting the precedent that a university’s football team can force such major changes at a university by threatening not to play has the potential to turn very sour. Major athletics already had too much power at universities, and this pushes it in a lousy direction. If it was moral suasion that caused Tim Wolfe to quit, I really wish he had done it before the football team became involved.
Steve from Antioch
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Quite right.
The fact that the resignation was clearly caused by the concussing ball players threatening to not play just underlines what a shit stain school Missouri is. Those are the fuckers that are calling the shots? God help us.
Betty Cracker
@TheMightyTrowel: Have you read the email that precipitated the foofaraw?
? Martin
@Steve from Antioch: That’s not a fair criticism of Missouri. At quite a few public and private schools, the football team exercises more financial leverage than any other agent. That’s true at USC, UCLA, GaTech, Michigan, and so on. Not playing one game costs the institution millions.
The football team drew that ire because it flipped the privilege script. Young athletes, particular those of color, are not supposed to be granted that kind of power, and if they are granted that power, they’re not supposed to recognize they can use it. So yes, these athletes that earn millions for the university but earn nothing themselves dared to go on strike? How dare they?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@TheMightyTrowel: I guess one question I’d have is how large these colleges are. Beyond a few dozen people, and it’s very hard for one of them to be equivalent to a home, as the people protesting Christakis want them to be. I would never have considered the dorm I lived in for the first two years of my college life to have been a home in that sense. At that point, there are just too many people to be able to make it safe, as that term is being used, for everyone who is assigned to live there. What individuals require for a space to qualify as that are too varied and too contradictory. There really is no choice but for at least some of those students to have to deal with things that are not comfortable within its confines, and expecting it to be otherwise is expecting an impossibility.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@? Martin: Do you really not see the problem with granting the football team the power to dictate university policy? Are you really so clueless that you think that this is a power that would always be exercised in the interests of racial justice?
Yes, we should find a way for the players in such programs to be compensated, though you are probably going to be disappointed if you think that that could be done in any sort of equitable fashion. The real economic value of football players is that a tiny percentage of them are worth huge amounts of money to the university, but the majority of players at all Division I schools are probably worth less than the value of their scholarship. (I emphasize that I’m using a limited definition of ‘worth’ here to mean how much revenue and profit they generate for their schools, and not anything having to do with their worth as human beings.)
That doesn’t mean that this is the right way to go about compensating them.
ThresherK (GPad)
Has the right wing used the literal term “safe space” to mean “a college history course where TX high schoolers aren’t confronted with slavery” yet?
xenos
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: in the increasingly neoliberalism university the students are thought of as consumers rather than community members.
But the flip-side of that thinking is that the customer is always right. These students are buying their education with decades of debt. They have a right to be pretty picky about what they are getting.
? Martin
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
I honestly do not care why they exercise that power. The imbalance of power is one created by the university and which the university can remedy. The only reason it worked in this case is because the institution had so much more to lose than the students. That’s a pretty clear indication that the students are being exploited.
TheMightyTrowel
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: they run between 350 and 550 students and they very much are small communities and ‘homes’ to a certain degree. Yale structures them that way and the majority of students accept and welcome that. The college masters and deans play a key role in cultivating these little communities within the university. You can argue about safe spaces till the cows come home but if you’re not committed to treating all students with respect then you shouldn’t play a role in student welfare.
Betty i did see the email from the master’s wife and i thought it was ugly stupid and embarrassing – not to mention lacking in empathy. A university office concerned with minority students’ needs made a suggestion that yale students consider not wearing offensive costumes and this lady freaked out. Frankly i agree with the students who don’t want her or her equally agrieved spouse in an advisory position. I don’t get why defending a lady who thinks it’s a-okay for white kids to wander around in black face is a thing liberals are doing.
Betty Cracker
@TheMightyTrowel: That interpretation of the email is just wildly off base, IMO. I don’t think Christakis was saying it’s okay for white kids to wear black face but rather questioning the role of the university in policing the behavior of alleged adults. That’s a valid question, not an implicit endorsement of racist costumes, FFS.
BGinCHI
I’d say “fuck Judith Miller,” but the horse is already out of the barn on that idea.
What a loathsome person, with blood on her hands but no conscience.
At least Lady Macbeth had the decency to go mad.
Keith G
@TheMightyTrowel:
Wow. Erika Christakis’s email seemed thoughtful and measured. Once finally read it, I found myself laughing that this was the epistle that led to a student screaming a profanity-laced tirade in public and had also led to so much public hand wringing.
Ugly? Embarrassing?
Oh my.
Where do you see such ugliness living in what seems to be a rather gentle communication?
mai naem mobile
@TheMightyTrowel: I read the email. Seriously, this is Yale, a premier college. I have to agree with Christakis. Some people will do dumb stuff and its okay. I seriously doubt people will be doing blackface or KKK costumes,and if they do, they will be appropriately dissed on social media. I’m with Bill Maher on this. People need a little leeway on this stuff. Somebody who continually does inappropriate stuff will get called out soon enough.
Germy
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, that was my first reaction! Now that the truth is out, and she’s an “ex-NY Times journalist” she’s really letting her freak flag fly.
bystander
Speaking of the Yale story as an opportunity for teevee guys to humble-brag, the opposite sure seemed true during the Paris attacks as they unfolded. Brian Williams and Kate Snow let everyone know how many years of French they had yet were unable to translate a simple declarative, non jargonized headline on French television about hostages having been taken at Bataclan. Williams and Snow were awful. Williams kept trying to wrap his mind around what this strange neighborhood waaaaaaay out in the 11th…wait, I’m going to grossly mispronounce this despite many, many years of French lessons….arrondissement?
I googled Le Figaro which was reporting on the hostage situation about an hour ahead of NBC’s coverage.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@mai naem mobile: Funny, I took the original email as a warning to the students that there will likely be social consequences for things like blackface and redface. And that Christakis had a problem with that warning. And appears to be advocating a university as an environment where stupid decisions don’t have consequences.
The only way Christakis’ letter makes sense to me is as a reaction to the assumption that the original request for sensitivity was a heavily veiled threat instead of a mild suggestion. And while I can come up with a way for her to think that, it ain’t a pretty reflection on her or on her suitability as an Associate Master.
Elizabelle
I don’t want to talk about Judith Miller.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: OK.
debbie
@bluehill:
Starbucks has gift cards in the shape of the red cups. If I had the money, I’d load a ton of them and hand them out at my local evangelical nutteries.
ETA: Judith Miller’s got plenty of competition:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/11/twitter-paris-attacks
debbie
@Steve from Antioch:
I think the coach’s support of the team also played a big factor.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: Heh.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I think it’s reasonable to infer that Christakis had a problem with that warning or is at least calling it into question — the whole point of the email is to question the propriety of the uni administration policing students’ Halloween costumes. But I don’t understand where you’re getting this:
I think it’s pretty clear she’s saying that rather than top-down rules from administrators, maybe it would be better if the uni trusted students to police themselves and learn the bounds of appropriate behavior via social norming since they are young adults.
While I can understand why some folks would disagree with the email’s premise — that grown-ass people at an elite university should be able to dress themselves for Halloween without administrative input — I’m actually kind of astounded at how that email is taken as proof positive that Christakis approves of white students going around in black face.
David Koch
Hollande says Islamic State committed “Act of War”
Don’t think France can go to general war in Syria. Their standing army is only 115K and that’s not enough to occupy Syria. They would need a draft, fast build up, and considerable expenditures. Plus, they haven’t been to general war since Dien Bien Phu – 61 years ago – meaning they’re really rusty.
Marc
We seem to have hit a point where people go around determined to interpret what others say or write in the most offensive way possible in order to feed an outrage habit.
p.a.
Per CNN ISIS is claiming credit for the attacks. If this is true, for the sake of the French Muslim community, I hope they didn’t recruit from French residents, but obviously speakers of the native language make these things easier.
I addad the following comment yesterday at the end of a moribund thread where there was no pushback, so I’ll add it here and see what results;
no true Muslim…
And before I get trashed, can we have thought experiment?
Would one rather be an out gay person in a majority Christian country or majority Muslim?
Open atheist?
Feminist?
Christian in a Muslim majority country or vice-versa?
Would one be safer as a minority sect Muslim in a xtian country or a Muslim country?
As an atheist I have no warm cuddlies for any religion, and I see the fundy paranoia here, but when the answer is “well Uganda and maybe Russia” are Christian countries as intolerant, one can’t say a miniscule minority is the problem. If it were this wouldn’t be happening like clockwork.
JMG
@David Koch: France has considerable experience in military intervention abroad, most recently in Mali in 2013,.
debbie
@Marc:
There’s also a difference in how complaints are taken. Why is it easier to disregard a complaint about racism than it is one about anti-Sem*tism? Why do the same people who roll their eyes at complaints about blackface are outraged over a N*zi costume?
tybee
wasn’t there a republican political rally just a few days ago where the speakers were advocating death to the gays and the presidential candidates said nothing about that?
the only reason the talibangelicals don’t kill the sinners is due to the rest of us not letting them, not because they exercise any sense of tolerance.
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.: Coming from where I live, I fail to see much difference.
Barry
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: “I would hope that people would recognize why setting the precedent that a university’s football team can force such major changes at a university by threatening not to play has the potential to turn very sour. Major athletics already had too much power at universities, and this pushes it in a lousy direction. If it was moral suasion that caused Tim Wolfe to quit, I really wish he had done it before the football team became involved.”
This is not ‘major athletics’ exercising power, it’s the players.
If there’s one Supreme Commandment of college athletics, it is that the players must not have any power whatsoever.
Barry
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: “I guess one question I’d have is how large these colleges are. Beyond a few dozen people, and it’s very hard for one of them to be equivalent to a home, as the people protesting Christakis want them to be. I would never have considered the dorm I lived in for the first two years of my college life to have been a home in that sense.”
Please note that Yale has a house system; these are supposed to be more intimate places – ‘homes’, if you will – within the university.
BGinCHI
@p.a.: Now, please offer a discussion of Colonialism, its origins and consequences in the Middle East and North Africa.
No actual thinking about the big picture can take place without a thorough understanding of the geopolitical history of these regions.
Go and learn something.
Matt McIrvin
@p.a.: I think that if you’re trying to imply something about differences between the fundamental tenets of these religions, which could be used to say things about individual Muslims, you need to look at a broader sweep of history. Most majority-Christian countries eventually adopted freedom of religion and more or less secular government precisely because Christians had spent so many years slaughtering each other wholesale in sectarian wars. Majority-Muslim countries aren’t there yet. I think it’s a fact but it’s also a contingent accident of history.
Barry
@Matt McIrvin: “Judith Miller is more wingnut than I realized.”
She had six front page stories at the NYT retracted due to those being lies.
She was considered by Cheney and Libby to be a useful agent to launder their attacks on others as ‘objective journalism’.
She always was a right-wing sh*t.
Matt McIrvin
@BGinCHI: That too.
Amir Khalid
@p.a.:
I don’t see the point of your thought experiment. If you draw the conclusion that one religious group is less tolerant of minorities than another, then what? Are French Muslims to be regarded as having more disposable rights? Treated with more suspicion? First to be rounded up by the police? Offered less sympathy when they are the victims of sectarian bigotry or violence?
Matt McIrvin
@Barry: She sold that shit with a façade of objectivity, though, and the mask seems to be dropping.
Barry
@p.a.: “As an atheist I have no warm cuddlies for any religion, and I see the fundy paranoia here, but when the answer is “well Uganda and maybe Russia” are Christian countries as intolerant, one can’t say a miniscule minority is the problem. If it were this wouldn’t be happening like clockwork.”
To the extent that this is true, it’s because a bunch of people whom the right doesn’t consider to be ‘Christian’ worked very hard to make it so.
Barry
@Matt McIrvin: “She sold that shit with a façade of objectivity, though, and the mask seems to be dropping.”
The facade was rather thin back in the day. It was the sort of ‘facade’ that only believers were (not really) fooled by.
Satby
@p.a.: Sectarian violence between differing sects of Islam with resulting spillover to countries that have backed one side or the other in the Mideast is a mostly Gulf phenomenon. But anywhere that human beings use the differences between themselves as an excuse to stir up hatred there are terrible consequences for their fellow humans. Eric Hoffer in The True Believer pointed out that fanatics are always alike in their ability to dehumanize others. We’re living in True Believer times.
Matt McIrvin
@Satby:
That’s an important observation, too, which I was not sufficiently careful about in my own comment.
ThresherK (GPad)
@debbie: You can buy them, use them, and then hand em out. They are very decorative.
OzarkHillbilly
@Barry: It also completely ignores the toll of daily violence that occurs in this country, a violence that is more often inflicted upon minorities- blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, and yes even atheists- than it is upon Christian white males.
Satby
@Matt McIrvin: and this too. How quickly down the historical memory hole do the glory days of Catholic-Protestant wars and forced conversion disappear, even though the Tudors are constantly disinterred for entertainment purposes.
p.a.
@OzarkHillbilly: You’re a regular here and I’ve read many of your posts and I’ll admit you bring more to the conversations here than I ever have, but this one is way too facile. Baptists burn down any Catholic churches lately? Any atheists hacked to death? Branson tourists gunned down watching Reba?
Satby
@Matt McIrvin: ISIS has slaughtered many more of their fellow Muslims than they have anyone else. Other Muslims, especially Shia, are apostate in ISIS eyes.
My one exchange daughter is Shia, her mother was originally from Iran; my other is from Indonesia, where distinction between differing flavors of Islam is pretty much an academic exercise only.
Satby
@p.a.: Well, you have been answered here. If you want to insist that humans killing other humans is a strictly Muslim phenomenon, I’m sure others will join me in inviting you to take that bigotry over to Red State, where I’m sure you’ll be able to settle in comfortably.
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.: Read- @OzarkHillbilly:
STL just had a spate of church fires. Did you notice that?
Did you already forget the shootings in the Charleston church?
As far as atheists, I am drawing a blank right now, but we all know atheists are among the most reviled people in this country.
Branson tourists? How about Colorado movie goers? Or maybe Oregon college students?
It seems the only violence that you find worthy of getting upset about is that which comes with religious intent.
Matt McIrvin
@Satby: The Troubles in Northern Ireland lasted until, what, the late 1990s? It wasn’t a purely religious conflict over Catholic vs. Protestant doctrine, but I suspect many of these wars aren’t.
BGinCHI
@OzarkHillbilly: Bigotry is always a “ignore the plank in your own eye” kind of thing.
Hill Dweller
I made the mistake of tuning in to cable news last night for the first time in nearly 2 years, and quickly realized it was a mistake. Thankfully some here let people know France 24 was being broadcast on CSPAN. In my brief viewing of Maddow’s show, Richard Engel said if ISIS is responsible for the Paris attacks, President Obama’s strategy against them is a failure. Brian Williams came on to give his perspective, and said this is our World War. Another terrorism analyst came on and implied the terrorists were justified because France joined the fight against ISIS. I’ll give Maddow credit for pushing back, albeit gently, against some of the stupidity, but she’ll likely continue to have every single one of those people back on her show regularly.
p.a.
Are we saying Islam is going through European-type wars of religion? Which, lest we forget, ran (on and off) from the 16th thru the 20th centuries (Ireland and Balkans)? And which now involve modern weapons and international mobility? And our reaction is, what? Sit back while this gets worked through? And innocents of any/all/no religious persuasions get slaughtered?
I sure as hell don’t have an answer, but “let the old colonial lines in the sand get replaced via violent conflict and terrorism” is pretty goddamn cold comfort.
debbie
@Satby:
Good point, but I think this has always been true, just to differing degrees. The violence now in the Gulf Region is more barbaric (for lack of a better word), but there’s sectarian mindlessness everywhere. I remember reading a New Yorker article in the early 1990s about fighting in the Balkans. The author was with a group of Armenians who were fighting Azerbaijanis at pretty close quarters, and at some point he remarked that it was difficult to tell who was on which side. An Armenian turned to him and told him it was easy to tell who was a Azerbaijani because their noses were bigger. Seriously.
If it’s not fighting over religion, it’s going to be something else — something even stupider. Like which end of the egg should be cracked open.
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.:
You used a lot of straw to build that man.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: The Troubles aren’t over yet either, the heat has just been turned down to simmer. The latest news on politics in N. Ireland has been more than a little disturbing.
max
@p.a.: Baptists burn down any Catholic churches lately? Any atheists hacked to death? Branson tourists gunned down watching Reba?
Well, there were certainly a lot of white guys attacking black churches. And a Sikh temple, and so on. Not to mention a spate of MRA fuckheads trying to prove stupid shit. Our violence is just decentralized (‘leaderless resistance’).
Hardcore Sunni fundamentalism is definitely a problem, but that’s one faction of a sect.
This sort of thing always reminds me of 9/11 and the guy who wanted to retaliate, so he decided to announce he was fantasizing about going to a gas station nearby and killing the (female) Persian attendant. And never you mind that all the hijackers seem to be Sunni Arabs.
max
[‘Feh.’]
Matt McIrvin
@p.a.: I’d also echo Amir Khalid’s question: given that, at this particular moment in history, religion-framed political violence is more likely to be Muslim than Christian, then what? Where are we going here? Do we regard Islam as a dangerous memetic virus and try to extirpate it? That’s just more religious intolerance, just with atheists or Christians or secularists or whoever doing it.
The French right (and some of the left) is undoubtedly going to make hay over this, calling for crackdowns on Muslim immigrant communities and bans on Muslim religious expression in public, in the name of secularism. (Especially if it turns out French Muslims did this.) And if they do that, it’s probably just going to lead to more alienation among French Muslims leading to more violence. If there’s one thing I will actually give George W. Bush credit for, it’s that after 9/11 he explicitly rejected general demonization of American Muslims. A lot of his fans were upset that he did that, though.
Satby
@debbie: See also Hutus-Tutsis in Rwanda. When an “other” can be scapegoated as the source of all ills, it’s a quick hop to dehumanize them.
p.a.
@Omnes Omnibus: Isn’t that really what’s happening now in GW’s Iraq petri dish? Pakistan and India kinda-sorta settled theirs, but that was an effing mess at the time (don’t know how much the US press reported compared to the BBC; that was their baby) and is still probably the most dangerous flashpoint on the planet.
Elizabelle
@Hill Dweller: NBC is the war profiteers channel. Has been for a long, long time.
Agreed re France 24. That was the best thing to come out of last night. Enjoyed our threads, as events played out.
Now cable is inuring people to the event, with misdirection and sheer repetition.
The best response to events like last night: go out and be kind, in your own community.
debbie
@Satby:
Yes. There was a great Frontline special, “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero,” which came out ion the first anniversary n 2002. It’s covers all kinds of territory, but there’s a segment on how people could do this kind of thing to each other. Vladimir Putin, of all people, stated it was easy for the bombers because they didn’t see other people as human beings.
Sadly, I’d bet there are plenty of RWNJs who don’t see Democrats/Liberals/Progressives as human beings either.
Commenter2
@Amir Khalid:
In a liberal society, it should not affect the rights or dignity of existing citizens and legal residents. But it can certainly affect immigration policy.
Elizabelle
@Satby: Rwanda, indeed. So much of current broadcasting and email chain memes reminds me of Radio Milles Collines. Hate radio, with a euphonic name.
Commenter2
@Matt McIrvin:
If “religion-framed political violence is more likely to be Muslim than Christian,” then it is a very fair question whether Europe should be accepting hundreds of thousands of people into its territory from regions rife with extremism, without at least some chance for careful vetting.
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.: No, you offered your cute little “thought experiment” about how Muslims were more violent and intolerant than Christians (while conveniently staying above the fray by proclaiming your atheism). You got pushback saying that the world is far more complicated than your “thought experiment” allowed for. Then you came back with the “let the old colonial lines in the sand get replaced via violent conflict and terrorism” bit. I am going with straw man.
Satby
@OzarkHillbilly: @Matt McIrvin: Yes, since it’s come up: my own ethnic group contributed their share of terrorism to the world tally, including blowing up mounted troops and killing the horses as well as the men in London in 1982. During the IRA’s terrorism in England alone 125 people were killed and over 2000 wounded. Terrorists aren’t just Muslim.
amk
@p.a.:
This was the kill list in 2013.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Betty Cracker: From this:
Even if the only censure the guy in the minstrel show costume faces is social, that still means there’s “no room … to be a little bit obnoxious”.
Personally, I’d argue that the things the writers of the first letter had in mind was more like a lot obnoxious, and that probably plays into my reaction as well.
Matt McIrvin
@Satby: My ethnic group, too!
Or one of them, at least. People of one of the others instead busied themselves exterminating most of the Jews in Europe back in the mid-20th century. They thought of it as a racial conflict, but religion was a marker, and some churches were enlisted for support.
And, of course, there were all the ways that white Americans justified eradicating Native Americans and kidnapping and enslaving black Africans on Christian grounds.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: And here’s the rest of the paragraph you quoted:
The entire point of her email was to question the source of the censure, not the necessity of it. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to disagree with her stance on this. It’s the excoriation of Christakis as indifferent to racism at best, a racist at worst and in any case unfit to serve as residential adviser that bothers me.
hoodie
One of the worst things about these kind of events is that it brings out all the cockroaches from under the woodwork. Channel surfing on CNN and that shit for brains Smerconish has Bernie Fucking Kerik on as a “security expert.” That guy’s expertise is limited to scamming nookie on the NYPD payroll. Now, we have wall-to-wall morons clamoring for war in Syria, like any of these mooks will set foot there and put their lives in danger. American television is fucking awful.
ThresherK
@hoodie: Shouldn’t Kerik be wetting his pants, again, in a bunker somewhere?
Marc
@Matt McIrvin: There is a difference in terms of what is happening today, and the fact that everyone did terrible things in the past doesn’t change that. ISIS murders gay men by throwing them off tall buildings; they enslave non-Muslim women in a literal, not figurative sense; they crucify Christians, blow up ancient monuments, and stone adulterous women to death. Today. Not a thousand years ago.
Matt McIrvin
@Marc: A thousand years ago? Some of the stuff I was talking about was done within living memory by people who are still alive today.
Again, I ask, granted all this, where are we going with this? Yes, ISIS does all that stuff. Does that mean we should get a wrecking ball and knock down the mosque down the street? Because Americans today are talking about that, I assure you.
Schlemazel
@Marc:
Whereas we send national armies, special forces, CIA saboteurs and billions in resources to blow the shit out of their homes in the name of ‘freedom’ Its called asymmetrical war for a reason. The people of Iraq, Syria and Libya could not stand against the most powerful military in the history of the world but they can strike back. Would you stand by and do nothing if South Africa invaded the US, bombed it into rubble and/or destroy the government with no plan to replace it and fix the damage. If they killed members of your family and friends would you be even a tiny bit interested in revenge? I believe I would and if SA were the most powerful military on earth my options are limited. That is happening NOW not a thousand years ago.
p.a.
@OzarkHillbilly:
No that’s not accurate, but I admit violence in god’s name seems to me to deserve a special circle in hell. As for American violence, I’ve almost no hope anymore of effective national gun control in the forseeable future. The NRA has won this fight for now. Incremental change by locality, hopefully close the gun show loophole, and an eventual win via the funeral effect is the only way forward I see.
Much of the violence against minorities is state supported police violence. Has to be fixed by the DKos solution: more better Democrats in office to change police culture no matter what the local population may think. And Dem weakness on the state & local level is not promising.
It at least seems the FBI is making headway against white supremacist groups, although I’m wary that a lot of these undercover stings/arrests are creating a potential crime where none may have existed without FBI prompting.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: They don’t count Matt. And your saying they do is just distracting from the main problem facing civilized society today: High taxes.
NorthLeft12
Pardon me if I missed something in the thread, but Fuck you Judith.
Thanks, just needed to get that off my chest.
amk
@Marc:
Illegal iraq war, killing hundreds of thousands of civilian iraqis, happened a thousand years ago?
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.:
MOST of the violence against blacks is committed by other blacks, but it comes from the marginalization of blacks by the larger (white) society. MOST of the violence against women is committed by their partners. I am not near smart enough (or knowledgeable enough) to propose solutions for the vast majority of the violence that afflicts our society. What happened in France yesterday is truly horrible, but is otherwise known as another day/week in America.
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.: And yes, violence in the name of religion does deserve it’s special place in hell.
Mandalay
@debbie:
Well that is a pretty loaded comment. How can you possibly know that the same people are involved? Do you have a link to back up that claim, or do you just feel that it must be true?
NorthLeft12
@amk: In the right wing consciousness embarrassing/criminal/unethical events in the past that were committed to forward conservative goals and ideas are all ancient history and people just need to move on and forget about them, let alone hold anyone responsible or accountable.
They are odious human beings who need to disappear from any civil and adult discussion of the issues of the day. Complete and utter failures at everything they touch.
p.a.
@OzarkHillbilly: Black on Black crime is as much about who you live around, housing discrimination, and our stupid drug laws (TNC the go-to on this) and, not being flip here, “violence is as American as apple pie”. White crime is committed against whites ’cause that’s who’s there. I don’t know of a particular strain of American violence against women. Isn’t it a result of age-old paternalism.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: I have a hunch that what set off the Christakis commentary — which I honestly didn’t have a problem with; then again, I’m white — was the concept of “cultural appropriation.” Blackface is clearly over a line. We’ve seen people object to costumes that are Mexican caricatures or gangsta or rasta or Indians. Seems reasonable. He used the example of a non-Asian person dressing as Mulan. Is that offensive the way blackface is offensive? I would say not. But if you’re going to rule out anything that could be considered an appropriation of another culture, you’re going to end up having to police these things.
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
But remember, no religious community can clam innocence in this. And “this religion is guiltier than that one” comparisons ignore the fact that violence rises and falls as time goes on.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Declared atheists heve their share of blood on their hands. It’s almost like violence is related to humanity not religion.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Betty Cracker: The email that started all this came from the Intercultural Affairs Council. Which BTW includes a student board; it’s not just faculty. This sort of “please stop and think” notice is a big part of the IAC’s job.
So what I’m seeing in that entire paragraph, including the part that you quoted, is a rejection of the IAC and it’s mission, a mishmash of “boys will be boys” and “why do we even have sensitivity training?”
Yes, by all means, let’s revert to the old status quo of expecting the minority students to hunker down and just look the other way while boys do what boys do. Because that’s what I hear when she says people offended by the costumes should employ “your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you” and when she quotes her husband as saying “if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended”.
Yeah, I’m gonna go up to a gang of frat boys and tell them I find their redface offensive.
I have absolutely no problem understanding why students would not want to live in Silliman College.
Princess
@Mandalay: One of the complaints at Yale was that the president made an instant reaction to a swastika (which, in the context was pretty clearly directed against Jews, unlike the one at Missouri) that appeared there a year ago but crickets for a long time on the race issue.
Marc
@Schlemazel: I really, really hope that you aren’t saying that machine-gunning kids in France at a rock concert is OK because the US invaded Iraq. I think that you’re trying to say that our hands aren’t clean either. But it can veer into territory where you can’t condemn the indefensible. I think that it’s worth calling out barbarism without equivocation. I opposed the war in Iraq. But I don’t need to inject “on the other hand” when talking about something like what ISIS just did. They really do challenge general ideas that I support – like nonintervention – in serious ways. Because standing on the sidelines while they slaughter people is making a choice too, one that kills people just as much as acting does. Seriously – France didn’t invade Iraq. And they just had a bunch of civilians, mostly kids, slaughtered in the streets.
Another note – people really do think differently about being machine gunned at a concert in a different way than they think about car accidents, and it’s really not productive to tell them otherwise.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: The problem is ideology, not religion per se. A susceptibility to extremist ideology seems to be part of the human condition.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: I would go further and say that the problem is fanaticism.
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.: Black on black crime has as it’s birth in the ghettoization of blacks starting a long long time ago but reinforced by our federal gov’t with housing policies after WW II. Violence against women has it’s roots in… The deep dark past that is probably the origin of our species, but is reinforced by many things existent in society today not the least of which is religion, including Christianity (and Islam and Hinduism and…)
I have long said that America is a sick and violent society the solutions of which go way beyond gun control. And as always, most of the violence is inflicted upon the weaker members of society.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: It can be considered a disease. Just as cholera flourishes in certain conditions, so does fanaticism.
Frankensteinbeck
@p.a.:
Your thought experiment is useless, because it addresses only one factor. Hardly any Christian countries were just invaded by a foreign power of a different religion, for example, had their infrastructure destroyed, and then were abandoned to rot. Those that have been facing the same kind of economic and military pressures are responding very similarly to Muslim countries. There is plenty of intolerance in turbulent Catholic countries of South America, and far more tolerance in North African or East Asian countries that have seen less recent outside-inflicted upheaval. The ‘Christian countries’ for your thought experiment are first-world countries, behaving like, say, Japan, a non-Christian first world country does.
debbie
@Mandalay:
I know people with that attitude.
ETA: I can’t stick around to debate this, but I assume you’re not literal enough to condemn me for implying ALL PEOPLE instead of SOME PEOPLE. No one knows every person.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: Living where I live, having lived the life I’ve lived, when I think of religious intolerance and violence, the religion I picture is Christianity. Comes of my atheism and my own Catholic childhood. If I lived in the Middle East, I’d probably think of Islam first(Sunni or Shia dependent on circumstances) if I lived in India, it would probably be Hinduism.
Frankensteinbeck
@Omnes Omnibus:
The Russian and Chinese Marxist revolutions were both militantly atheist, and one Hell of a lot of deaths can be laid at their feet. Atheism has only been relatively (still not completely) peaceful in Western countries in the last couple of generations.
Elizabelle
Come on NYTimes website.
Ray Charles would be able to see the headline that’s up. If he were not dead.
Except it would have to be in screamingly large font.
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: The Khmer Rouge were atheists. So was Stalin.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frankensteinbeck: Those were exactly what was on my mind. Also Baader-Meinhof, Sendero Luminoso, and the like.
Matt McIrvin
@Marc: We were ultimately responding to a comment from p. a. who was suggesting that the fundamental problem here is Islam itself, perhaps some inherent characteristic of Islam that is not present in other belief systems. I was trying to argue that this analysis is both historically narrow and likely to lead us in bad directions. I don’t think we want a campaign to wipe out a religion; I think that notion is extremely dangerous.
I don’t see anyone in this thread excusing ISIS or describing their behavior as justified. Not yet, anyway.
p.a.
@Amir Khalid: But how to minimize the violence, suffering, and death? Do we simply let the fever run its course?
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes, I know.
ETA: What did you think my point was?
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: As an atheist, I felt the need to say “I know this” too. I do not like it when people say “Religion caused this,” Like the Dawkins and Harrises and Majers do. Religion can be a force for good or evil depending upon whom is wielding it. Just like every other construct of humanity.
Mandalay
@debbie:
You were the one who presented your personal experience as a generalization.
The reality is that you happen to know some people who “roll their eyes at complaints about blackface are outraged over a N*zi costume”. It’s purely anecdotal, but you presented that information as though it were generally true.
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly: Got it. I wasn’t sure if I’d been unclear and you’d gotten my intent backwards or if you were adding examples.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I respectfully disagree with your interpretation of Chistakis’ remarks, but thanks for taking the time to explain your perspective.
Amir Khalid
@p.a.:
What would you suggest, euthanasia?
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: What about the Youth in Asia specifically? I really think we need more details.
tybee
@Frankensteinbeck:
show me where the atheists killed in the name of atheism.
Cervantes
@BruceFromOhio:
Can something endless be repeated?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Unfortunately, yes.
p.a.
@Amir Khalid: No. I don’t know. Hence the question.
Cervantes
@BGinCHI:
You said it all.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Bear in mind that many of them really are still kids.
Not saying Yale (or anyone) should act in loco parentis, just stating a fact about college populations.
Cervantes
@Barry:
I agree that it’s old hat.
On the other hand I realize, or rather, see, things every day that others knew ages ago.
p.a.
@tybee: Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Shining Path, Hitler were atheists, but also true believers in their ideology (Nazis blood/race ideology) (Stalin, I just get the impression he liked killing.) And their history is not good.
The current crop; ISIS, Qaeda, The Lords Army, I wonder about the leaders. True believers, or using religion to recruit? IRA, UDF? Not sure.
Marc
@Matt McIrvin: That helps; I definitely agree that there is nothing intrinsic to Islam. Their fanatics just have a lot more power right now than fanatics of other systems.
Mandalay
@tybee:
Win.
Citing Pol Pot and Stalin as atheist mass murderers is as meaningful as citing Hitler and Stalin as mustached mass murderers. Factually true, but not particularly relevant.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mandalay:
Not at all. Atheism, specifically the evil of religion, was a major plank of the Communist revolutions of the pre-WW2 20th century. They didn’t happen to be atheists, they wanted to destroy religion and worked to do so.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: The Soviet Union did not have a policy of eliminating religion? Over a thousand Orthodox priests weren’t killed in the first years after the Revolution?
LAC
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: thank you writing that. Tired of always being told to have to it idone in a way that makes the comfortable white warm fuzzies come out.
p.a.
@Omnes Omnibus: Did the co-opting of Orthodoxy begin with the revolution, or later? Parish/diocese (not sure these terms apply to Eastern churches) officials who would keep a low profile were allowed to continue, even as church valuables were expropriated.
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.: I am by no means an expert, but I would presume it started later as means of control.
cermet
Bloody hands’ cheney and his sock puppet bush wack’s war of choice continues to spill massive levels of blood – don’t forget the poor victims in Syria (numbers in the tens of thousands of dead!) thanks to those two blood thirsty monsters need to expand war to all of the ME for their sick need to placate Israel.
Amir Khalid
@Marc:
Are you so sure of that? Remember who was in power in America for the first eight years of this millennium. And if President Huckabee or President Cruz were to be elected, would that still be true?
p.a.
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m not sure myself if I think there is anything intrinsic in Islam. What I do think is that whatever there is in Christianity that led to the Crusades, Inquisition, slavery, the Holocaust has currently been more successfully stamped out/muzzled. And I admit guilt to using first world bias in my examples. I should have probably said secular as opposed to Christian. Western Europe, or perhaps Protestant Western Europe, is successfully secular. Catholic Europe, the US, and Turkey (possibly Tunisia and Algeria?) are still waging those battles. (Ironically in the US it’s Protestants who are most vocal against secularism).
Amir Khalid
@p.a.:
Can you look at the far right in the West and seriously believe that? I can’t.
Villago Delenda Est
@p.a.: ISIL is all about “no true Muslim”. Literally. THEY are the only true Muslims. All others are apostates, and the penalty for being an apostate is death.
p.a.
@Amir Khalid: what they want vs. what they can currently do, yes they can’t accomplish much right now. Now mix up an unholy alliance of right win politics, terror attacks (the right’s strongest ally), and banksters imposing economic strangulation… not good. The steady if unspectacular economic growth in the US is a bulwark against right wing radicalism here.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Not stamped out but “more successfully stamped out.” You don’t buy that?
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
Leaving Pol Pot to another day, look up, inter alia, Stalin’s “Five Year Plan of Atheism” (May 15, 1932):
There may, or may not, have been “atheistic mass murder,” but atheism certainly was part of the program.
Watchman
@The Ancient Randonneur:
The really interesting part will be when Hillary says the same thing at tonight’s debate.
Goblue72
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Thank you.
D58826
Gen. MCCafery is saying to turn the air force loose to bomb any thing that moves in Syria and Iraq. Sen. Fienstein is also calling for a more muscular policy in Syria. The dogs of war are rapidly slipping their leashes and ISIS has achieved it goal of goading the west into doing something stupid. Nobody has explained why turning Syria into a smoking crater (more than it already is) will stop a dedicated terror cell in Paris.
Omnes Omnibus
@D58826:
Really? What stupid thing has been done in or around Syria since last night?
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
No, I don’t.
D58826
@Omnes Omnibus: Point taken. I should have phrased it that ISIS has succeeded in push the west toward doing something stupid. Hasn’t happened yet but the ‘we at war’ talk is certainly picking up. As has the accusation that Obama is a traitor. Santorium claims Obama is at fault for the rise of ISIS and Cruz is claiming that Obama has made a decision to not defend the US. Ben Carson wants to attack ISIS using weapons that they don’t know about.
Omnes Omnibus
@D58826:
So what? You knew they were idiots, right?
D58826
@Omnes Omnibus: Of course they are idiots. But 45% of the public will vote for one of those idiots to be president so there is a good chance that one of them will be sworn in as POTUS in 2017. Even if Hillary wins she will still have to deal with a hawkish GOP Congress, Democrats afraid of their own shadows and the very serious people in Washington who fell for the Iraq lies and very well might do so again in Syria..
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@p.a.:
To go back to the example of the killing fields in Cambodia, it was their appalled neighbors in Vietnam who brought an end to the Khmer Rouge’s reign by invading and overthrowing Pol Pot. IOW, there’s not much “we” can do if you mean the US, but there’s probably more that the other countries in the Middle East could be doing.
One thing the US might be able to do is use diplomacy to convince, say, Saudi Arabia and Iran to work together against ISIS, but that will be a tough row to hoe.
If you’re asking what “we” can do as ordinary Americans, I would say that we press Democrats to find a diplomatic solution and continue to be as welcoming to immigrants of the Islamic faith as we are to every other immigrant. Some commentators think that our society’s willingness to be open to new immigrant groups and include them in our society is one of the reasons we have had very few incidents of Islamist terrorism in the US compared to Europe. It’s more difficult for hard-line preachers to get converts in the US when it’s easier for Muslims to find jobs, get housing, etc than it is in many places in Europe.
throughout
The security company efforts to mimic the possible avenues that might be familiar with cause trouble.
The wired security setups do allow someone to place the cameras anywhere within the facility, you just need to have a long enough cable.
Other factors to consider could well be bandwidth limitations (if
any), and server location, that could affect
where your IP address comes from.
Once you’ve got chosen your gadget’s voice, settings and chores,
it can become almost such as a roommate – minus the annoying bits.
Starting having a traditional candy-bar form factor which is sure to turned into a classic, the E62 is available in two corporate-savvy colors: metal grey and golden aluminum.