Sunday, November 15, 2015

Good point

I was talking on the phone with Bro Paco today, and remarked on the irony of Obama's comment that ISIS has been contained, followed only a few hours later by the terror attack in Paris. He said, "Sure, they've been contained. But what Obama didn't mention was that the holding pen includes France."

Very true. In fact, the pen includes all of Europe, and perhaps the U.S. before too long.

7 comments:

Isophorone said...

This holding pen can only help Marine Le Pen!

Anonymous said...

I have a unique perspective on all this and you'll see why. First my wife looks a lot like a 63 year old version of Tatyana Ali who is actually her niece, and mine by marriage I guess:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004700/
So we have strong family interest on the American side of the world, Tatyan is just one of many family members there.
But my wife grew up in Germany, among former "Nazis" or WWII soldiers anyway. And this whole "right wing German" thing we know from experience is hollow, there is no more to fear from Germans than from Americans.
And my son works in a large German city, near where Hitler used to live, of all places. I don't want to be too specific because it's his life. And he's had no problems at all. His mum is visiting him now and has visited her old German friends whose family was actually very high up in the air force. The only "neoNazis" we know of are louts in the former communist east and a few street thugs, but if you speak German you can even reason with those. Especially if you basically agree with them as my wife does.
So I see all this as innoculation. See Islam is to Europe what Mexico and South America are to the US. More because dealing with Muslims goes back a thousand years there. I'm more worried about stability of the US than Europe. I do think the Euros should be left to sort themselves out and the US has been too generous to them, so they got spoilt. But they can manage if they have too. All this "Camp of the Saints" stuff is not what we see on the streets of Europe. It's much more complex, similar to your Mexican California problem. You can see why I see things a bit differently.
Look my son lives near the train station and saw few refugees, because "German efficiency" took care of the "problem". Also splitting them up is a good way to watch them. Certainly Europeans must know they have to get a lot tougher, and they will. As will the US, when you've dealt with current troublemakers.

bruce said...

Blogger is difficult today, it wouldn't put my name on the above.
- Bruce.

Anonymous said...

PS, I was going to write a letter to Mrs Merkel and say if anything happens to my son I hold her personally responsible. So there's that. But now her party (tough older men) has dragged her back to some sense we hope.

bruce said...

PSS, see what has worried me for a long time is, for example, Tatyana's parents came from poor countries, so she made a lot of money, and they said "get a college degree to fall back on" which fortunately she hasn't needed yet. Because what did she do? She got into Harvard, God knows how, and did "African Studies". My reaction was "wtf?" Has the world gone crazy?

RebeccaH said...

Bruce, it isn't that immigrants are coming in because every country can benefit from them (or at least the educated, skilled ones). It's their sheer numbers that's the problem. I do think right-wing organizations will spring up in Europe, probably including some radical ones, but I'm hoping the tilt toward the right will be just a much needed correction, not a cataclysm. But if the jihadis keep up their attacks, no one can say what will happen. After all, European Jews were nearly wiped out and they never did anything like what today's Muslims are doing.

Incidentally, we lived for three years in Munich, thoroughly enjoyed our time there, and generally made friends among Germans.

Paco said...

Thank you, Bruce, for your thoughtful commentary. I think the one big difference between migration from Mexico and Central America to the US, and the migration of Syrians, North Africans and others to Europe, involves the cultural and religious components. Not even the most absurd blowhards of La Raza really believe that there's a possibility of resurrecting the Aztec empire in the American southwest, whereas there is some probably tiny, but very dangerous, minority of Muslim immigrants who are in sympathy with the idea of the caliphate. Also, our immigrants from south of the border are mostly Christian, and so there's at least that element of our society that can potentially provide a path to some degree of assimilation. Muslim refugees must find Europe to be very alien from both the religious and cultural perspectives. Although, with the decline of religious belief almost everywhere in the "modern" west, and the increasingly unlovely trends in art and literature and pop culture, perhaps immigrants to the US and to Europe are all finding it difficult to figure out what they are supposed to assimilate to.

Also, there is the problem that so many people coming into the US are doing so illegally. If, as some politicians desire, the majority eventually become citizens, then this will result in significant changes across the board - demographic, cultural, economic, political - which will have been imposed on the American people without their prior consent. I presume, but do not know for sure, that most Muslim immigrants in Europe are there legally, so at least there is some degree of both acceptance and lawful control (at least, up until recently). Perhaps this varies considerably by country, I just don't know.

Another issue with large-scale immigration is that it serves as a safety valve for countries whose governments are corrupt, incompetent and dictatorial. Such countries will always be plagued by misery as long as the occasional exodus removes all significant internal pressures for beneficial change. To some extent, this is probably a good thing, since I like to believe that the people who are leaving are generally more enterprising than their fellows, plus I suppose it may also serve to reduce the sheer aggregate human misery experienced by the denizens of some of these foreign hellholes. But far better if there own countries were made more livable - although, not being either omniscient or omnipotent, I readily admit that I don't have any answers.