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This Week in Terror
On Sunday night, President Obama gave a rare Oval Office address. These are reserved for occasions of great seriousness, and this was no exception (although said seriousness was flawed a little by weird staging, which had the president standing at a podium set up in front of his desk; most Oval Office addresses are delivered while sitting at the desk).
But his topic was terrorism, and his tone was solemn. The intent was to reassure the public that the effort to fight ISIS is ongoing, and that events like that in San Bernardino last week remain incredibly rare. He acknowledged the difficulty of the struggle, and said that victory would not be swift or easy. But he said we will win, and ISIS will be destroyed.
Destroying ISIS is a good idea, and everyone pretty much agrees with it. Republican candidates wasted no time in saying that the president's speech lacked specifics, that it was more of the same, and that what we really need to do is to destroy ISIS.
Saying it and doing it are two different things, though.
ISIS is an organization. In some respects, it's a state. In others, though, it's an ideology. And you don't defeat an ideology through warfare. You can defeat the political manifestations of that ideology--we defeated the Nazis in WWII--but the fascistic strain, the racism, of which the Nazis were the political embodiment are with us still, and growing stronger in some places.
To defeat an ideology is a much more complicated process. It has to be replaced, in the hearts and minds of those who hold it. Ideally, it would be replaced by a more enlightened ideology, but that's not always the case. And we don't always get to decide how it'll happen, or what will replace it. We can work to make America an example the world wants to emulate, and that'll help.
Or we can be Donald Trump and his fellow Republican candidates for president.
Trump is, of course, the worst of the lot. His policy prescription was announced in a press release: "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." He further clarified by saying that the temporary ban would extend to Muslim tourists and American Muslims who are currently anywhere out of the country (though he might be hedging on that). The only exception he would allow for sure is for current American servicemembers who are Muslim. He says it's temporary, just until we can "figure out what is going on," but what he means by that isn't clear. Since he continually says there is no vetting process whatsoever, which we know is a lie, and that the administration wants to bring in 200,000 Syrian refuges--another lie--it's a little hard to accept his word on anything else.
Some of his fellow candidates weren't much nicer to that idea than to the president's speech. But the end result is the same--all they have are talking points, not workable alternative solutions. Ted Cruz hinted at using nuclear weapons. The rest seem to think ISIS would go away if the president would only call them "Radical Islam" or talk about them with more "intensity."
The president's approach--which the Republican Party seems determined to reject--is what most experts agree is the best course of action. As the New York Times reports:
“It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s our responsibility to reject proposals that Muslim-Americans should somehow be treated differently. Because when we travel down that road, we lose. That kind of divisiveness, that betrayal of our values plays into the hands of groups like ISIL.”
Mr. Obama also repeated his insistence that he would not send large numbers of ground troops to the Middle East.
“We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s what groups like ISIL want.” He added: “But they also know that if we occupy foreign lands, they can maintain insurgencies for years, killing thousands of our troops, draining our resources, and using our presence to draw new recruits.”
Referring to ISIS thugs as "Radical Islam" and talking about banning Muslims from the US is exactly the sort of thing ISIS wants to be seeing from us. Trump couldn't be a better propagandist for them if they were paying him. Again to the NYT:
As the debate on how best to contain the Islamic State continues to rage in Western capitals, the militants themselves have made one point patently clear: They want the United States and its allies to be dragged into a ground war.
In fact, when the United States first invaded Iraq, one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the move was the man who founded the terrorist cell that would one day become the Islamic State, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He excitedly called the Americans’ 2003 intervention “the Blessed Invasion.”
His reaction — ignored by some, and dismissed as rhetoric by others — points to one of the core beliefs motivating the terrorist group now holding large stretches of Iraq and Syria: The group bases its ideology on prophetic texts stating that Islam will be victorious after an apocalyptic battle to be set off once Western armies come to the region.
Should that invasion happen, the Islamic State not only would be able to declare its prophecy fulfilled, but could also turn the occurrence into a new recruiting drive at the very moment the terrorist group appears to be losing volunteers.
The only way to defeat ISIS on the ground in a way that doesn't fulfill their objectives is for Muslim forces from the Middle East to do the job. That means Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq, and probably Syria need to get involved. The socioreligious schisms on the ground there (not to mention the chaos that is Syria) might prevent that from happening; at any rate, it won't happen soon.
In the meantime, we may suffer more ISIS-inspired attacks here. We can hope not. We can try to make it harder for homegrown radicals to get weapons. We can remain alert. And as a wise person once said, "If you want to be safe, wear seatbelts and quit smoking." Or words to that effect. We would add admonishments not to drink and drive or keep guns in your home.
What we shouldn't do is prove to the whole Muslim world that ISIS is right about us. Yet that's just what Trump and his pals doing. It's a bad idea, and it's damaging our security, according to the Pentagon. The world watches our politics, and we should try to show our best face, not our worst.
Side Note 1: Ever wonder why people join ISIS? A new study offers some answers. Interesting to note this: "Foreign fighters from places like the United States and Western Europe were far more likely to be facing some sort of identity crisis, a desire for a personal sense of recognition that ISIS provides. They were also more likely to be motivated by a rejection of Western culture. A story in the New York Times over the summer, titled 'ISIS and the Lonely Young American' details how ISIS sympathizers who are able to make contact with curious and socially isolated Westerners and then manufacture a sense of community and belonging through constant online interaction (not simply one-way messaging, as some have suggested.)"
In our extensive research into mass murderers, we've found that a shattered sense of identity is one of the primary precursors to their acts of violence. People who are comfortable with who they are simply don't take weapons into public places and try to kill strangers. (The other two common precursors are some contact with mental health professionals, and access to guns). Terrorism can be motivated by religion or politics, but most stable people can hold strong views on those matters without feeling the need to kill over them. What this indicates is that those motivations are really justifications for acts that people might be inclined to commit anyway--only in this case, there's someone egging them on, encouraging them to go for it.
Side Note 2: Who loves Trump? White supremacists, among others.
Side Note 3: Dick Cheney said of Trump's Muslim ban, "It goes against everything we stand for." We're not sure the guy who turned the United States into a nation that tortures people has the slightest idea of what we stand for.
"We were founded upon a belief in human dignity -- that no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like, or what religion you practice, you are equal in the eyes of God and equal in the eyes of the law."
--President Barack Obama, December 6, 2015
Below the fold: inequality, racism, Benghazi, Fox "News," Pope Francis on climate change, and Pedals the Walking Bear!
This Week in Inequality
Income inequality, opportunity inequality, wealth inequality--however you choose to measure it, it's pronounced, and getting worse. Americans haven't been so unequal in terms of economic outcomes and standards of living since the Gilded Age (which, you may recall, led to the Great Depression). When we studied economics in college, the country had enjoyed decades of steadily rising incomes at every level, and though there were indeed different levels, they all gained ground at about the same rate. That trend looked, then, as if it would continue--nobody thought the rampant inequality of the 1920s would ever come back.
But that all changed beginning in 1979, due to a number of factors. Reagan's tax policies, the beginning of the end of labor unions, technological shifts, globalization--these and more all played into the change. The result, though, is striking--no matter which lens you view it through, more and more of America's wealth became concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, which leaves the middle class and the poor less well off than before. Productivity kept rising, but wages did not--which, in our college Econ days, was supposed to be impossible.
Today, the middle class is no longer the great bulge in the center of the nation. The Washington Post reports this week:
After more than four decades of economic realignment and creeping inequality, the U.S. middle class is no longer the nation’s majority.
The number of households that are middle class is now matched by those that are either upper or lower income, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.
This was not, we occasionally remind readers, the result of "natural market forces." It was the result of deliberate policy choices. And the people driving those policy choices were the ones who stood to benefit the most--the wealthy. The greater inequality becomes, the less responsive politicians are to the great bulk of the population and the more responsive to their wealthiest constituents and supporters. And inequality hurts economic growth, which hurts the middle class and the poor, compounding the problem.
Talking Points Memo has been running a great series of articles by different writers, discussing different aspects of inequality. Rich Yeselson writes about the decline of the unions and how that loss of bargaining power (coupled with the fact that since 1979, we've only been at full employment 30% of the time--full employment also enhances bargaining power, since a person has a better chance of finding another job if a situation becomes untenable and management refuses to act) have contributed to inequality. John Judis explores how inequality affects our politics, and vice versa--and the hopelessness that people in the middle feel about the prospects of government ever solving the problem (which we alluded to last week). Jared Bernstein looks at the numbers, complete with handy graphs and charts, and shows that no matter how one measures in equality, it's real, it's persistent, and it's a problem. The final piece hasn't been published, at this writing, but in it Brad DeLong will examine Thomas Piketty's influential book Capital, to see how Piketty's theory that inequality is an unavoidable result of capitalism holds up to scrutiny.
Those pieces go deep into the weeds, to be sure. But inequality of opportunity, of income, of wealth--the hollowing out of the middle class and the increasing power of the very rich--is fundamental to understanding the America we all live in. And doing something about it is fundamental to a more secure, sustainable, economically healthy nation. They're worth an hour of your time
“Today in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of unreconstructed reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.”
--Presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952
Side Note: What happens to a family when food stamps run out before the end of the month? Causality isn't yet clear, but data suggest that children do worse academically, hospital admissions for hypoglycemia increase, and behavioral problems get worse. Also, people get hungry.
This Week in Racism
Donald Trump isn't the only blatant racist in the news this week.
One of the effects of long-term inequality--especially pronounced when it's exacerbated by other societal factors--is that it keeps poor people living in poor neighborhoods, where their children aren't privy to the tools--never mind the teachers and quality of schools, they don't even have the stuff--that wealthier kids have when they go to school. Even their diets are worse than kids from wealthier families, which makes learning harder and increases behavioral problems. Educational advantages in poor neighborhoods--which often, in this country, equate to segregated neighborhoods--are lacking from the first day of preschool to high school graduation and beyond.
So when the argument is made that good colleges should accept applicants on a strict performance basis--top students get in, the rest don't--the effect is to bar the door to minority students, with few exceptions. For some time, in many states we've had affirmative action programs in place that enable minority kids to overcome that structural disadvantage and gain access, at the university level, to some of the best faculties and resources in the history of the world.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia thinks that's all wasted on black kids.
"There are – there are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less – a slower-track school where they do well.
How bad is Fox "News" for America? Josh Marshall watches it so we don't have to.
This Week in the Worst People in the World
Back when Keith Olbermann used to have a TV show on MSNBC, before his career imploded (again) he had a segment called "The Worst Person in the World." It was often entertaining and informative, even if sometimes the title seemed a little extreme. But if that segment still existed, it should feature a man named Wolfgang Halbig and his followers, because they are folks who harass the families of survivors of mass shootings, like Lenny Pozner, whose six-year-old son Noah was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary. Halbig and co. insist that the shooting was staged by the government, and that Noah never existed. Their activities are utterly reprehensible.
This Week in Climate Change
Pope Francis is praying for action in Paris:
"For the sake of the common home we share and for future generations, every effort should be made, in Paris to mitigate the impact of climate change and, at the same time, to tackle poverty and to let human dignity flourish. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit will enlighten all who are called to take such important decisions and give them the courage to always use as their criterion of choice the greater good of the human family."
This Week in Bears
New Jersey's annual bear hunt is in full swing. It'll end on Saturday, unless rain reduces the "harvest," in which case it will be extended for four more days. Meanwhile, supporters of Pedals the Walking Bear (a category that includes TWiA) are worried about his safety. Because he walks upright and can't move as fast as other bears, he'll be an easy target.
Pedals video by Greg Macgowan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuJlsmTG2ik)
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