2016 Election Coverage: Aka Every Way You Look at it You Lose.

thethe said:
Is it not? I get the fear but what are the other alternatives aside from restricting Muslim immigration in totality. There is just no way to know if someone is a radical or not. No among of vetting will tell us that.

Now if this moves to registration of muslim us citizens then I agree.
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It's a really scary road to go down, and we already have a pretty lengthy application process as it is designed to spot potential extremists. A muslim is not the same as an extremist, so why not just go try to find people you could suspect to be one based on their history rather than religion?
 
mqt said:
It's a really scary road to go down, and we already have a pretty lengthy application process as it is designed to spot potential extremists. A muslim is not the same as an extremist, so why not just go try to find people you could suspect to be one based on their history rather than religion?
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What history is there to find. These people are living in the shadows. There is no terrorist phonebook. We have to be prepared to do unorthodox things to solve this unorthodox problem. Europe is a disaster right now. We cannot go down that road.
 
Since 9/11 I think there's only been 30 something terrorist related deaths in America. I feel like there are more pressing issues to deal with. Both sides do a lot of fear mongering when it comes to this topic.
 
thethe said:
What history is there to find. These people are living in the shadows. There is no terrorist phonebook. We have to be prepared to do unorthodox things to solve this unorthodox problem. Europe is a disaster right now. We cannot go down that road.
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To some extent I understand your point, but I don't believe that it's reasonable to equate Muslims with terrorism and call it a day. My bigger concern is what happens from there. If we say that we need to know which Muslims are coming into our country, is it really a reach to suggest the next step would be to find out which ones recently entered or have been here for years? Even if it doesn't, just the act of registering Muslims in a database is going to be a terrible thing for Muslims here in the US, be it from worries about the future or increased fear of Muslims from others.

There's also the question of usefulness. What would stop a Muslim from lying about it when trying to enter the country? It seems like a waste of money to start a registration program that can be bypassed by someone saying they aren't Muslim. Then where do we go from there? It's genuinely a terrifying prospect all around.

Edit: In the interest of fairness, I will point out that I'm aware I'm jumping the gun a bit by accepting the conclusion being drawn from this. I'm not going to assume right away that an extensive policy targeting Muslims will be created (or expanded upon from the Bush Era) but the underlying fear remains and is worthy of discussion in my opinion.
 
Wouldn't the ones who intend to harm us just lie though, say they are Christian or whatever? Why would they tell the truth of any kind?

On a different note, I was thinking about my own family. Three of my siblings voted (enthusiastically) for Trump and are chirping happily on Facebook about it, which I'm trying to reconcile in my mind honestly: My sister wants illegal immigrants kicked out and stopped at the border because her daughter has been fighting a heroin addiction this year, which she blames on drug runners coming from Mexico. My cop brother is suddenly all about Second Amendment and thinks Democrats are trying to take everyone's guns away. My other brother lives in his own imaginary world, preferring to live off the grid and thinks the government, big banks and the like are vast conspiracies working against us, and salivates over the thought of another US civil war (actually he didn't vote, and I don't think he ever has, just pushes his very fringe right ideology and thinks liberals are the scum of society....yeah, I live with this guy too, fun times). Trump's "deplorable" behavior during his campaign either fed into their reasoning to champion him (the conspiracy brother), or they were willing to dismiss it because of his position on the given topic (the heroin sister...not sure about the cop brother, probably thinks it's all funny).
 
ESP47 said:
Since 9/11 I think there's only been 30 something terrorist related deaths in America. I feel like there are more pressing issues to deal with. Both sides do a lot of fear mongering when it comes to this topic.
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Seeks lije a strange number when the fbi said the Orlando nightclub was inspired by Isis.
 
thethe said:
Seeks lije a strange number when the fbi said the Orlando nightclub was inspired by Isis.
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Omar Mateen is a tricky case because there was so much more at play. I feel like it's every bit as valid to suggest he was just an unbalanced person that wanted to hurt gay people. I don't think Islam was the driving force.
 
One other thing I will say is that this problem is not just going to go away. All solutions must be put on the table. We have been fortunate because of our natural boundaries but that should not keep us from keeping an eye on the true enemy to western civilization.
 
Hawk said:
100% agree with this - with small caveat: I don't find the alt-right to be a bigoted group.

I think it's the future of the Republican party, one of the most powerful grassroots movements in decades, and believe that the Democrats would be smart to build a similar digital base because if they stick to Facebook, Celebrities, and Twitter bots again in 2020 their outreach will be equally as supplanted as it was during this cycle.
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I'm sure you're much better acquainted with the movement's various threads and streams than I am, but a pretty sizeable proportion of the (at least nominally) alt-right chatter I saw had a pretty damn explicit anti-Semitic tenor comprising a big part of its melody.
 
jpx7 said:
I'm sure you're much better acquainted with the movement's various threads and streams than I am, but a pretty sizeable proportion of the (at least nominally) alt-right chatter I saw had a pretty damn explicit anti-Semitic tenor comprising a big part of its melody.
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Yeah. I've seen that too in some places.

The problem here is that if you had to place the alt-right ideology on a political spectrum it's more or less a form of national socialism or neo-Fascism. Therefore, naturally, I guess, there's a kind of fascination with Nazism baked in (and, in the greater debate, a lot of it is likely cultural and historical curiosity) resulting in a chasm where you have adherents to the racial ideologies of national socialism clearly saying one thing and others innocently using phraseology like lügenpresse (or worse, inadvertently confusing it with judenpresse) without truly grasping the history. So the whole lot gets a bad rep. Maybe deservedly so.
 
Jon Stewart weighs in...

“I thought Donald Trump disqualified himself at numerous points,” Mr. Stewart said. “But there is now this idea that anyone who voted for him has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric.

“Like, there are guys in my neighborhood that I love, that I respect, that I think have incredible qualities who are not afraid of Mexicans, and not afraid of Muslims, and not afraid of blacks. They’re afraid of their insurance premiums,” he continued. “In the liberal community, you hate this idea of creating people as a monolith. Don’t look as Muslims as a monolith. They are the individuals and it would be ignorance. But everybody who voted for Trump is a monolith, is a racist. That hypocrisy is also real in our country.”
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sturg33 said:
Well, they're just too stupid to know what's good for them
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Must be that because how could anyone vote for such a bigot?

Same goes for women. How could over 20 million voted for him? Maybe this media nonsense of being so quick to label people racists and sexists doesn't jive with most americans.
 
thethe said:
Must be that because how could anyone vote for such a bigot?

Same goes for women. How could over 20 million voted for him? Maybe this media nonsense of being so quick to label people racists and sexists doesn't jive with most americans.
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Obligatory reminder that the majority of Americans voted against Trump.
 
mqt said:
Obligatory reminder that the majority of Americans voted against Trump.
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Voting blocks aren't monolithic. I'm sure plenty of Clinton voters did not agree with media labeling people racists. Bill Maher and Jon Stewart are two prominent liberals who have saI'd as much recently.
 
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