A Mite Warm in Paris these days...
..and they ain't the only ones.
Check that date... Nov. 8th.
For Huntsville, AL my collegiate home-away-from-home the high is expected to be 84 degrees Fahrenheit.
...it's the middle of fall, there are piles of leaves all around campus and I'm running headlong through them in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans seeking the nearest airconditioned room.
I hate the cold, but it really makes you think. I mean we're expecting record highs for the rest of the week.
What if they're right about Global Warming?!
Guess I shouldn't have left the car running all last night (hey, I wanted the air to be cold when I got in!)
..but enough of that, down to business.
The preeminent story right now is 12-day old riot in France (and a bit of Germany and Belgium).
Sparked after rumors that two teens were electrocuted after seeking refuge in a substation to avoid police have touched off a level of violence not seen in France for decades.
The operative questions are: Why the rioting? How to stop it? How to prevent it from happening again?
Sadly most people have no interest in answering any of those questions seriously.
As usual people have instead eschewed all pretence of impartiality and instead found the most convenient excuse.
Culture is the whipping-boy of all armchair sociologist, I'm convinced of that now.
Well, my dorm room doesn't have an arm chair so I'm exempt.
I suppose intellectual laziness is an easy trap for an ego-laden person ( or community or country, or me) to fall into.
After all, when its so easy to blame those jihad-crazy, "Allah Akbar"! toothless mullah following, wife abusing, disco-bombing Muslims....
Why even bother to look for flaws in a society that had before seemed able to cope?
In a continent that has so often stressed the importance of historical perspective and chided the youthful short-sightedness of the US, the shallowness of thought shown here is distressing.
After all was it not the hard-drinking, bar-room brawling Papists the Irish who caused themselves the be caught in the grips of poverty on the streets of New York in the early 20th century?
..and what of the shiftless, lazy, physically-active and intellectually dull blacks?
Why don't they just integrate with American culture?
..and speaking of Americans what's with those Indians?
...I mean Little Big Horn was like a thousand years ago. Why can't the Chief drop the fire water, stop blaming the truce-breaking white man and get on with his life?
..and those twenty-to-a-van, no speaka-de-Engrish dumb Mexicans?
Betcha their problem is that foreign Hispanic culture...
..now if they would all just act like hard-working, well-spoken, law-abiding Europeans the minute they crawl under the border fence with their twelve kids(man these foreigners breed like rodents), then everything would be alright.
Of course, not one of the tolerant souls who've merely been pushed to the limit by the degradation of their age-old European culture would ever say all of that in one sentence.
That would be racist.
..break those up into paragraphs and round off the rhetorical soft edge, however, and it's merely an unavoidable observation.
A vicious logical circle is being put to work here.
Definition: Assimilation is acquiring the skill for success in a host country.
Postulate:
An immigrant population that succeeds is assimilated.
Corollary:
An immigrant population does not succeed is not assimilated.
Conclusion:
Immigrants who want to succeed, must assimilate.
Question: So... how do we know when they assimilate?
Answer: When they succeed.
Question: ..how will they succeed?
Answer: By assimilating
Question: ..and how will they assimilate?
Answer: By becoming successful
....
I mean we've done all we can do... right?
Check that date... Nov. 8th.
For Huntsville, AL my collegiate home-away-from-home the high is expected to be 84 degrees Fahrenheit.
...it's the middle of fall, there are piles of leaves all around campus and I'm running headlong through them in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans seeking the nearest airconditioned room.
I hate the cold, but it really makes you think. I mean we're expecting record highs for the rest of the week.
What if they're right about Global Warming?!
Guess I shouldn't have left the car running all last night (hey, I wanted the air to be cold when I got in!)
..but enough of that, down to business.
The preeminent story right now is 12-day old riot in France (and a bit of Germany and Belgium).
Sparked after rumors that two teens were electrocuted after seeking refuge in a substation to avoid police have touched off a level of violence not seen in France for decades.
The operative questions are: Why the rioting? How to stop it? How to prevent it from happening again?
Sadly most people have no interest in answering any of those questions seriously.
As usual people have instead eschewed all pretence of impartiality and instead found the most convenient excuse.
Culture is the whipping-boy of all armchair sociologist, I'm convinced of that now.
Well, my dorm room doesn't have an arm chair so I'm exempt.
I suppose intellectual laziness is an easy trap for an ego-laden person ( or community or country, or me) to fall into.
After all, when its so easy to blame those jihad-crazy, "Allah Akbar"! toothless mullah following, wife abusing, disco-bombing Muslims....
Why even bother to look for flaws in a society that had before seemed able to cope?
In a continent that has so often stressed the importance of historical perspective and chided the youthful short-sightedness of the US, the shallowness of thought shown here is distressing.
After all was it not the hard-drinking, bar-room brawling Papists the Irish who caused themselves the be caught in the grips of poverty on the streets of New York in the early 20th century?
..and what of the shiftless, lazy, physically-active and intellectually dull blacks?
Why don't they just integrate with American culture?
..and speaking of Americans what's with those Indians?
...I mean Little Big Horn was like a thousand years ago. Why can't the Chief drop the fire water, stop blaming the truce-breaking white man and get on with his life?
..and those twenty-to-a-van, no speaka-de-Engrish dumb Mexicans?
Betcha their problem is that foreign Hispanic culture...
..now if they would all just act like hard-working, well-spoken, law-abiding Europeans the minute they crawl under the border fence with their twelve kids(man these foreigners breed like rodents), then everything would be alright.
Of course, not one of the tolerant souls who've merely been pushed to the limit by the degradation of their age-old European culture would ever say all of that in one sentence.
That would be racist.
..break those up into paragraphs and round off the rhetorical soft edge, however, and it's merely an unavoidable observation.
A vicious logical circle is being put to work here.
Definition: Assimilation is acquiring the skill for success in a host country.
Postulate:
An immigrant population that succeeds is assimilated.
Corollary:
An immigrant population does not succeed is not assimilated.
Conclusion:
Immigrants who want to succeed, must assimilate.
Question: So... how do we know when they assimilate?
Answer: When they succeed.
Question: ..how will they succeed?
Answer: By assimilating
Question: ..and how will they assimilate?
Answer: By becoming successful
....
I mean we've done all we can do... right?
posted by Turnea at
11:39 AM
2 Comments:
If this 80's in November is global warming, I say bring it on.
I want to commend you on the fabulous job you've been doing in the Paris Riots thread over at AD. I feel my naivity surfacing with these events. My assumptions about Europeans, including a number of my European friends, have been disrupted. It's so easy to stereotype them as more progressive and equate that progressivism to diversity-tolerant. I hadn't realized how rampant the nationalism is for so many. I'm frankly dissappointed with the positions some, well about half, have taken on AD. You're obviously excluded.
Shine on.
By
Anonymous, at 6:07 PM
Thanks Jaime,
I got a whiff of this type of thing the year France passed its relgious symbol ban.
I found that some of the European participants have some attitudes on immigration which most Americans would find antiquated and borderline racist.
Its prevelent enough in the US, but apparently more so in nation's with what appear to be too much history and culture for their own good :P
By
Turnea, at 3:28 PM
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