Leroy XIV
48p88 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - U.S. Immigration Polic... · 0 replies · +1 points
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - U.S. Immigration Polic... · 0 replies · +5 points
I agree that it is a description of a policy that led to the death of a child. Ambulances driven on freeways by good, sober liberals in service to a noble cause can also directly lead to the death of a child, and in fact do. This poor little girl was seen by a bona fide US licensed pediatrician before her condition appeared to warrant hospitalization. This is an awful, sad story, but were are talking about transmission of viruses that children are rife with. You have probably had an adenovirus infection yourself recently... when was the last time you had pinkeye? When you had it, did you call the local elementary school and demand that it be shut down? It was concentrating children while adenovirus was in town, where were you then? This isn't like the bubonic plague making its way through an internment camp while the management debates whether or not Mexican lives are worth buying some streptomycin.
Of all of the arguments against detention facilities for migrants, "kids can get croup there" is just about the weakest sauce imaginable. Kids can get croup anywhere there are other kids. Period. You don't win baseball by swinging at every. single. pitch. You also don't convince any observers that you are playing a solid game of baseball, or have any particular idea of what you are doing.
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - U.S. Immigration Polic... · 8 replies · +6 points
With that disclaimer lodged, and with the further disclaimer that I am not yet a doctor... I'm not totally sure I follow the causation chain here. Croup due to adenovirus and parainfluenza virus is typically a self-limited viral illness AFAIK. We send our children to day care centers knowing full well that they have a higher chance of getting croup due to the exposure to other children. Some day care centers make some basic attempt to keep sick kids away from other kids, but really, who are we kidding here. If I send my child to a crowded day care center and they become one of the very unlucky few to die of the croup, did my parenting policy kill them? I mean I guess it did, but what is the real moral force of that statement?
Maybe I am being small-minded, and as I said I am definitely not a doctor yet. Convince me.
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - How big a problem is h... · 0 replies · +1 points
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - How big a problem is h... · 3 replies · +2 points
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Immigration · 0 replies · +1 points
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Immigration · 2 replies · +1 points
Racism is quite obviously abating. 40 years ago a black president would have been unimaginable. 20 years ago, probably the same. The membership rolls of white supremacist groups have been collapsing precipitously for the last century, breathless media coverage of very small assemblies of inbred morons notwithstanding. There are basically none of them left. I think it is worth noting that Trump stopped the birtherism before the 2016 campaign. Sure, I suppose he had already gotten his name into the minds of those clowns with his earlier bullshit, but I am not just going to forget about the fact that he specifically dropped that line when it was time for the campaign. Trump did NOT run an anti-African American campaign. He barely mentioned African Americans at all. He ran a nativist (anti-hispanic) / islamophobe / populist-protectionist / reality TV campaign.
This reminds me of seeing a CNN commentator claim with 100% confidence that the election of Trump represented a "whitelash" against African Americans. What a joke. The last two elections before it involved a black guy against white guys, and he won in both of those. Then in the next election we have a white guy versus a white woman, and the fact that he won shows... anti-black racism? A lot of the people who voted for Obama voted Trump, and Obama still had really high approval ratings as Trump was winning the campaign. I don't particularly understand how people could be so stupid, but I'm not buying this facially absurd framing of HRC vs. Trump as a white versus African American issue, because that just doesn't make a god damn bit of sense. If anti black racism were going to be a huge factor in a presidential election, IT WOULD BE ONE OF THE ONES WITH THE BLACK GUY IN IT. I really, really am surprised at how people seem to blow right past this. Some have gotten so used to screaming "racism!" that they see it everywhere and in everything, even when it makes no sense at all.
I am sure the wealthy try to build voting blocks out of racists. I admit, that (or something like it, just basically raising his profile, I think Trump had almost no expectation of winning) is what Trump was doing with the birtherism crap, but really... this can easily be taken too far. I never claimed the rich don't try to build voting blocks, I claimed that the average wealthy rightist is not a racist. And as for the absurd things that were said about Obama, ok, sure, but do you not remember liberals walking around openly saying to each other they hoped Bush Jr. would be assassinated? Do you remember some of the things that were said about him and, even if you are down with all that, do you remember what lefties were saying about people like general Petraeus? Remember how before there was birtherism there was truferism? You can sit here and tell me that conspiracy-minded bullshit hyperbolic attacks on the government started when Obama was elected, but I ain't buyin it.
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Immigration · 4 replies · +1 points
It is true that America has an overtly racist history and, as overt racism has receded, a history of uncorrected economic inequality perpetuated through mechanisms such as redlining... but I think you are making a conceptual error in trying to apply these facts to the behavior of adolescents. I also think you are making a conceptual error in your view of the behavior of the rich in modern times. In my opinion, the modern rich are better understood as being highly rational amoral actors engaged in the naked pursuit of self-interest, rather than somewhat rational immoral (racist) actors. Put another way, I think highly affluent right-winger Caucasians feel as though they have more in common with other self-interested rich people of any color than they do with dirt-poor Caucasians.
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Immigration · 6 replies · +1 points
5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Immigration · 8 replies · +1 points