Tara writes: "the town of 59,000 has received roughly 20,000 Haitian newcomers since 2020, straining the housing, healthcare, and education systems." Henley laments that the problem can't be solved with "a calm, rational conversation." The policy of the Biden admin to open the borders for years was not "a calm, rational" decision; it was a calculated political maneuver with intended destructive consequences.
Like your stuff, Tara, but America is a mess right now. The policies of the Biden-Harris Administration are destroying our country. It's unraveling at the seams. Sugar-coating hard conversations with bromides about how we need to have "civil" discourse, only perpetuates the problems. Calling others racist and xenophobic for talking about what is really going on is disingenuous and sanctimonious.
Not doing yourself any favours here, Tara. That debate was a debacle and not really worth discussing, but lip service to Harris' 'sanctimoniousness' does nothing to disguise your own. Yes, Trump was a disappointment even by MAGA standards, but don't be using the sludge heap of American political theatre as soap box to preach about manners.
The real story here is that Trump is drawing attention to an Ohio town of 58000 people that has had TWENTY THOUSAND HAITIANS descend upon it. WTF? Think about the ramifications of that! I live near a medium-sized town, and it would be catastropohic if that happened. You call it rapidly-increasing population. What a euphemism. And you have the gall to link to an NBC article debunking the cat-eating (haven't we established that the MSM fact-checkers are liars too?) and mentioning David Muir trying to nobly debunk in real time (as if referring to the CIty Manager's statements are somehow proof), when it's pretty obvious to everyone with a brain that the moderators acted in a biased manner. Do you still actually think that ABC and NBC are not bought and paid for? It wasn't just the cat-lady's Facebook post; there was a police report and also testimony at a Springfield Council meeting. So the PEOPLE are describing what they're seeing, not the media outlets. But according to the media, the people aren't credible reporters.
It's widely known that Haiti's got some interesting eating habits, including cats and dogs, and people in some extreme, deprived cases. Hearing these reports made me think of that 1950's novel The Lonely Londoners, in which immigrants from the West Indies resort to catching pigeons - not only because they were hungry and impoverished, but because they didn't realize that pigeons are actually revered in London. So it's not an implausible story; I wouldn't be surprised if definitive proof came out that a goose or two did get cooked.
And why is calling Harris a Marxist outlandish? The founder of BLM is Marxist, and she took her funding and bought a mansion with it. The Bolshevik Revolution was funded by Wall Street. You can be a Marxist and be a corrupt hypocrite at the same time.
You keep falling into this trap, Tara. We don't need you to compose lefty opinion pieces we can find in the Globe and the Star. Who doesn't know large parts of the right are uncouth? How is the left talking out of both sides of its mouth any worse? Try to avoid this left-vs.-right paradigm, and wake up to the fact that both sides are rotten to the core. Avoid deliberating on how the system is going to fix itself, because it isn't. It's quite happy with the way it is. Start wondering how we - the people - are going to fix our governmental systems.
This was a disappointing post Tara. I do agree that we need a more civil discussion in the United States, and I am not a fan of President Trump's often unfortunate debate style. However, all you are doing is echoing the knee-jerk reaction of the mainstream media that insists on shoehorning reality into their preconceived notions. I do not know if Haitian residents of Springfield ate cats or not, and honestly I feel we have more important problems to worry about in both of our countries. But cultural differences are real, and conflicts between groups who adhere to different value systems are real. As a member of the educated elite of a still very prosperous Western country you are just very insulated from these conflicts. But as you mentioned yourself many times, diversity does not mean simply working in a group of people whose skin tone is of a different shade than yours. Instead, cultural diversity means dealing with fundamentally different notions of behavior, family structure, the role of women, and yes, dietary preferences.
I myself have become an American by choice, and I have learned to navigate the often unwritten rules that underlie the culture of mainstream America. However, I grew up in the working class community of a city that experienced these sort of conflicts decades before most middle class North Americans ever heard of them. This is what I learned: Diversity means livid fights to segregate or not segregate the local tax-payer supported swimming pool by sex (not just the changing rooms, but the entire pool), endless conflicts over the menu of school lunches (some dishes that are beloved expressions of one groups' culture are considered offensive by another ), and friction in the work place especially in the context of what is considered respectful to women or the sort of duties menstruating women should perform. To dismiss these conflicts as non-existing and to smear anyone who notes any of these differences as meanspirited and "racist" is entirely unproductive and does nothing but increase the friction. It also shows a certain level of narrowness in the accuser's worldview. Just because you find a notion unacceptable (e.g. the consumption of animals that are not traditional sources of food in North America), does not mean that other cultures are of the same opinion. The majority of the residents of my home country would be considered perfectly "white" in both Canada and the US, but the consumption of horse meat is considered acceptable and a delicacy there, whereas many Americans find it revulsive and it is banned in many US states. If I were to start slaughtering horses for meat on my small Pennsylvania homestead, my neighbors would undoubtedly complain about me, but this would have nothing to do with race. In fact, I do not eat horse meat now and I believe respecting the traditions of my native-born neighbors is a small price to pay to be able to live in what is still one of the most welcoming and freest countries on the planet. I know there are no simple solutions to the tension between assimilation and individual freedom, but I am certain the crazed identity politics and faux collectivism peddled by the Biden/Harris administration is not the answer.
I have a principle that has been proven over and over again from the Charlotteville "fine people" lie, Trump-Russia collusions hoax, the Hunter Laptop denial, the COVID was a lab-grown virus denial, the mRNA novel drugs were vaccines hoax, the hoax that masks and social distancing and shelter in place where effective deterrents from infection and death (death came to the old and people with pre-existing health issues), Jan-6 was anything but a protest with civil disobedience... that anything the mainstream media puts out today or denies today... if you take the opposite position your odds of being correct are greater than not.
So since the MSM is claiming the Hattians eating pets is fake news, I will take the position that it is probably more true that not.
We are seeing the drip, drip, drip of Tara and Bari back to their soft cocoon of left media love. It reminds me of the story of spousal abuse where the abused keeps returning to the abuser.
You raise a really good point, Frank. I dropped Bari about a year ago. Time to do the same with Tara. Anybody who can go rah-rah for David Brooks is obviously captured by the liberal media.
I agree with the need for the right to clean up its act. I work in Cambodia and it is only in the last few years that the government here is discouraging the people from eating dogs. To think that people from outside western countries don't eat or use what we consider pets for other purposes is naïve. However, bringing that up as a debate point for the presidency of the USA is just stupid.
“let’s hope he’s right”. In Canada, too. Cheap slogans and calling your opponent whatever brand of whatever horrible thing … are handy ways to ignore the long list of real challenges we face as a nation.
Agreed. Both the Right & the Left use divisive language. Both slander those who they do not agree with. Both are inaccurate in their use of terms.
For instance, to be "fascist" is to merge government with big business, and examples of this would be Mussolini in Italy, Pinochet in Chili, Franco in Spain. On the right people call people communists who are actually fascists, and on the left they call anyone they disagree with a fascist when they are not. What I find weird is how the left uses Marxist language to justify what I would call fascist policies.
I could go on for a long time on the misuse of language and slanderous discourse for a long time.
The comments really nailed some of the things I was going to say.
My suggestion to you is to really look at your own biases. It's hard. Read Kahneman. Seek out reasonable people with TRULY different opinions than yours. Opinions that you may not understand at all. Then, work to understand them.
I originally subscribed to you because you covered a lot of gender subjects. How young women were getting bad advice. How men were being vilified and becoming isolated and leading meaningless lives. I loved that. Very educational and value-added.
I agree with your critics in the comments. When you get into the Presidential politics you are 10% "disappointed" in Harris, and 90% raging against Trump. And, Trump is an awful person; but, the Left, to whom you still choose to belong, wants to strip people of basic rights like Free Speech; institute CSJ Theology as de-facto Law. (Don't you find it amazing that all these policies in EVERY institution were implemented w/o a single vote in Congress??) Congress and the Courts should have protected us from the new CSJ Theologians, but they didn't, so people turn to an alternative; and the only one they see is Trump. (I personally think he'd be a big disappointment on anti-CSJ, not because he believes in it, but because it's all about him, and if CSJ doesn't affect him, it's not on his radar. So, yeah. He's awful. But, the Left is breathtakingly dangerous. I'll take the narcissist, and see where it goes....)
You've become sort of a Cdn female David Brooks. "Well, Kamala is deeply disappointing, but <insert 1000 word discussion about how awful Trump and the US right are.>. No value added there.
Trump knows what he's doing. The real problem with immigrants is that corporations are bringing them in to lower wages. Criminality is a sideshow. "Importing voters" is another sideshow. Those are not the REASON for mass immigration.
Trump works for Wall Street, so he wants us to avoid thinking about the real Wall Street purpose of immigration.
Tara writes: "the town of 59,000 has received roughly 20,000 Haitian newcomers since 2020, straining the housing, healthcare, and education systems." Henley laments that the problem can't be solved with "a calm, rational conversation." The policy of the Biden admin to open the borders for years was not "a calm, rational" decision; it was a calculated political maneuver with intended destructive consequences.
Like your stuff, Tara, but America is a mess right now. The policies of the Biden-Harris Administration are destroying our country. It's unraveling at the seams. Sugar-coating hard conversations with bromides about how we need to have "civil" discourse, only perpetuates the problems. Calling others racist and xenophobic for talking about what is really going on is disingenuous and sanctimonious.
Not doing yourself any favours here, Tara. That debate was a debacle and not really worth discussing, but lip service to Harris' 'sanctimoniousness' does nothing to disguise your own. Yes, Trump was a disappointment even by MAGA standards, but don't be using the sludge heap of American political theatre as soap box to preach about manners.
The real story here is that Trump is drawing attention to an Ohio town of 58000 people that has had TWENTY THOUSAND HAITIANS descend upon it. WTF? Think about the ramifications of that! I live near a medium-sized town, and it would be catastropohic if that happened. You call it rapidly-increasing population. What a euphemism. And you have the gall to link to an NBC article debunking the cat-eating (haven't we established that the MSM fact-checkers are liars too?) and mentioning David Muir trying to nobly debunk in real time (as if referring to the CIty Manager's statements are somehow proof), when it's pretty obvious to everyone with a brain that the moderators acted in a biased manner. Do you still actually think that ABC and NBC are not bought and paid for? It wasn't just the cat-lady's Facebook post; there was a police report and also testimony at a Springfield Council meeting. So the PEOPLE are describing what they're seeing, not the media outlets. But according to the media, the people aren't credible reporters.
It's widely known that Haiti's got some interesting eating habits, including cats and dogs, and people in some extreme, deprived cases. Hearing these reports made me think of that 1950's novel The Lonely Londoners, in which immigrants from the West Indies resort to catching pigeons - not only because they were hungry and impoverished, but because they didn't realize that pigeons are actually revered in London. So it's not an implausible story; I wouldn't be surprised if definitive proof came out that a goose or two did get cooked.
And why is calling Harris a Marxist outlandish? The founder of BLM is Marxist, and she took her funding and bought a mansion with it. The Bolshevik Revolution was funded by Wall Street. You can be a Marxist and be a corrupt hypocrite at the same time.
You keep falling into this trap, Tara. We don't need you to compose lefty opinion pieces we can find in the Globe and the Star. Who doesn't know large parts of the right are uncouth? How is the left talking out of both sides of its mouth any worse? Try to avoid this left-vs.-right paradigm, and wake up to the fact that both sides are rotten to the core. Avoid deliberating on how the system is going to fix itself, because it isn't. It's quite happy with the way it is. Start wondering how we - the people - are going to fix our governmental systems.
This was a disappointing post Tara. I do agree that we need a more civil discussion in the United States, and I am not a fan of President Trump's often unfortunate debate style. However, all you are doing is echoing the knee-jerk reaction of the mainstream media that insists on shoehorning reality into their preconceived notions. I do not know if Haitian residents of Springfield ate cats or not, and honestly I feel we have more important problems to worry about in both of our countries. But cultural differences are real, and conflicts between groups who adhere to different value systems are real. As a member of the educated elite of a still very prosperous Western country you are just very insulated from these conflicts. But as you mentioned yourself many times, diversity does not mean simply working in a group of people whose skin tone is of a different shade than yours. Instead, cultural diversity means dealing with fundamentally different notions of behavior, family structure, the role of women, and yes, dietary preferences.
I myself have become an American by choice, and I have learned to navigate the often unwritten rules that underlie the culture of mainstream America. However, I grew up in the working class community of a city that experienced these sort of conflicts decades before most middle class North Americans ever heard of them. This is what I learned: Diversity means livid fights to segregate or not segregate the local tax-payer supported swimming pool by sex (not just the changing rooms, but the entire pool), endless conflicts over the menu of school lunches (some dishes that are beloved expressions of one groups' culture are considered offensive by another ), and friction in the work place especially in the context of what is considered respectful to women or the sort of duties menstruating women should perform. To dismiss these conflicts as non-existing and to smear anyone who notes any of these differences as meanspirited and "racist" is entirely unproductive and does nothing but increase the friction. It also shows a certain level of narrowness in the accuser's worldview. Just because you find a notion unacceptable (e.g. the consumption of animals that are not traditional sources of food in North America), does not mean that other cultures are of the same opinion. The majority of the residents of my home country would be considered perfectly "white" in both Canada and the US, but the consumption of horse meat is considered acceptable and a delicacy there, whereas many Americans find it revulsive and it is banned in many US states. If I were to start slaughtering horses for meat on my small Pennsylvania homestead, my neighbors would undoubtedly complain about me, but this would have nothing to do with race. In fact, I do not eat horse meat now and I believe respecting the traditions of my native-born neighbors is a small price to pay to be able to live in what is still one of the most welcoming and freest countries on the planet. I know there are no simple solutions to the tension between assimilation and individual freedom, but I am certain the crazed identity politics and faux collectivism peddled by the Biden/Harris administration is not the answer.
-Barbara
I have a principle that has been proven over and over again from the Charlotteville "fine people" lie, Trump-Russia collusions hoax, the Hunter Laptop denial, the COVID was a lab-grown virus denial, the mRNA novel drugs were vaccines hoax, the hoax that masks and social distancing and shelter in place where effective deterrents from infection and death (death came to the old and people with pre-existing health issues), Jan-6 was anything but a protest with civil disobedience... that anything the mainstream media puts out today or denies today... if you take the opposite position your odds of being correct are greater than not.
So since the MSM is claiming the Hattians eating pets is fake news, I will take the position that it is probably more true that not.
Henley devoutly swears that NBC News is a paragon of journalistic integrity.
We are seeing the drip, drip, drip of Tara and Bari back to their soft cocoon of left media love. It reminds me of the story of spousal abuse where the abused keeps returning to the abuser.
You raise a really good point, Frank. I dropped Bari about a year ago. Time to do the same with Tara. Anybody who can go rah-rah for David Brooks is obviously captured by the liberal media.
Fun while it lasted, Tara.
If Americans elect her, they deserve everything they're going to get, good and hard.
I agree with the need for the right to clean up its act. I work in Cambodia and it is only in the last few years that the government here is discouraging the people from eating dogs. To think that people from outside western countries don't eat or use what we consider pets for other purposes is naïve. However, bringing that up as a debate point for the presidency of the USA is just stupid.
Truly, Tara, the lunitics are running the asylum.
“let’s hope he’s right”. In Canada, too. Cheap slogans and calling your opponent whatever brand of whatever horrible thing … are handy ways to ignore the long list of real challenges we face as a nation.
Agreed. Both the Right & the Left use divisive language. Both slander those who they do not agree with. Both are inaccurate in their use of terms.
For instance, to be "fascist" is to merge government with big business, and examples of this would be Mussolini in Italy, Pinochet in Chili, Franco in Spain. On the right people call people communists who are actually fascists, and on the left they call anyone they disagree with a fascist when they are not. What I find weird is how the left uses Marxist language to justify what I would call fascist policies.
I could go on for a long time on the misuse of language and slanderous discourse for a long time.
Tara,
The comments really nailed some of the things I was going to say.
My suggestion to you is to really look at your own biases. It's hard. Read Kahneman. Seek out reasonable people with TRULY different opinions than yours. Opinions that you may not understand at all. Then, work to understand them.
I originally subscribed to you because you covered a lot of gender subjects. How young women were getting bad advice. How men were being vilified and becoming isolated and leading meaningless lives. I loved that. Very educational and value-added.
I agree with your critics in the comments. When you get into the Presidential politics you are 10% "disappointed" in Harris, and 90% raging against Trump. And, Trump is an awful person; but, the Left, to whom you still choose to belong, wants to strip people of basic rights like Free Speech; institute CSJ Theology as de-facto Law. (Don't you find it amazing that all these policies in EVERY institution were implemented w/o a single vote in Congress??) Congress and the Courts should have protected us from the new CSJ Theologians, but they didn't, so people turn to an alternative; and the only one they see is Trump. (I personally think he'd be a big disappointment on anti-CSJ, not because he believes in it, but because it's all about him, and if CSJ doesn't affect him, it's not on his radar. So, yeah. He's awful. But, the Left is breathtakingly dangerous. I'll take the narcissist, and see where it goes....)
You've become sort of a Cdn female David Brooks. "Well, Kamala is deeply disappointing, but <insert 1000 word discussion about how awful Trump and the US right are.>. No value added there.
A week ago I compared the election campaign to a Stiller and Meara skit. I retract that statement; the campaign is not that smart.
Trump knows what he's doing. The real problem with immigrants is that corporations are bringing them in to lower wages. Criminality is a sideshow. "Importing voters" is another sideshow. Those are not the REASON for mass immigration.
Trump works for Wall Street, so he wants us to avoid thinking about the real Wall Street purpose of immigration.
Good article. Here’s hoping as yes, I’m exhausted!