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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38806 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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What, exactly, would you have considered the appropriate response?

Pool some of the massive amount of wealth available. Put them up in hotels for a week. Give them (and the MA authorities) an actual chance to figure out a real plan for them moving forward.

Honestly, I can even imagine a version of that article that didn't offend me so much. But the actual article reeked of poverty/suffering porn and self-satisfied fart-huffing over what is objectively extremely minor amounts of aid.

So "Republican governors" can organize a plan to ship them cross-country. And red states can pay tax dollars for the travel. And DeSantis can bluster and make political hay and otherwise ensure that it gets massive news coverage...and you're blaming the residents?

I'm obviously talking about the incredibly dangerous hike of 4000 perilous miles, not the last thousand traversed in a commercial, first world airplane. I am positing that people who support lax (or non-existent) border security bear some moral responsibility for the suffering endured, and the 2/3s who died along the way. Every "In this house" sign is a marginal incentive for people to risk their lives.

The calculus changes if your roommate calls your friends, coworkers, and pastor and hints that you're going to lose your shit. Might you feel a little...constrained? A little incentivized to prove him wrong in front of your social circles?

I would probably let him stay for more than 44 hours, in that case. And the calculus changes yet again if I've been openly championing "Unhoused Persons Rights", and supporting my city accepting homeless people from other areas. If the best I could do to "prove him wrong" was a single night before I had the homeless guy escorted out by the police, while I wailed for the reporters about how deeply I was moved by the experience, I would fully expect to be slammed for being a huge hypocrite.

Yes, the article was cringeworthy and the overall aid was mediocre. Slam them for being champagne socialists; I can argue degree but not direction.

I don’t see how that cashes out into moral blame for incentivizing migration. Those migrants made their 4K mile trek on the promise of steady work in Texas or California, not a full-size snickers. There was no expectation or plan to come park on an island and eat $26 hamburgers until certain politicians got involved. DeSantis wants to stunt make his opponents pay their “fair share,” fine. Assigning that blame to the residents for being too nice (while also complaining that they ought to have done more?) is ridiculous.

Those migrants made their 4K mile trek on the promise of steady work in Texas or California, not a full-size snickers.

Right, and who is making that promise? If people were met at the border with a wall, and told to go back home, very quickly no one would be risking a 4000 mile death trek. If you are encouraging people to make the trek, you deserve some blame for people making the trek. If you didn't know the trek was dangerous, you deserve scorn for being ignorant about your own policies.

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