Comment: But of course, we’re not allowed to notice why we can’t have nice things like civilization and tolerance. From today’s paper:
Father accused of fatally shooting son because he was gay
Jim Key, spokesman for the Los Angeles LGBT Center, said late Friday. “Despite all the civil rights victories we’ve had in the last few years, we still live in a society where people face violence or even murder by their parents, simply by being open about their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Name of the father: Shehada Khalil Issa.
Headline on most news stories identify the killer as “California man” or “LA man”.
The headline on the original CBS story subversively read, “LA man Shehada Issa charged with killing son for being gay” but was quickly changed to “LA man charged with killing son for being gay”
[LF: “Issa” usually means “Jesus” so I assume this man was a Christian. There’s a lot more to this story than just a father killing his son for being gay.]
* I get why people don’t like Trump’s idea of banning all Muslim immigration–that’s probably overbroad and maybe unconstitutional. But how on Earth do you condemn that as evil and Hitleresque, but then support a plans to continue bombing the hell out of the Muslim world? Surely refusing someone a visa is a lot less bad than blowing them up!
Also, refusing visas is something that doesn’t require any new government powers, and that is inherently hard to use as a mechanism for controlling dissent within the U.S. In my cynical moments, I suspect that’s why it’s the unthinkable counterterrorism policy, while spying on everyone all the time, disappearing people into secret prisons, fighting endless wars, incinerating people with drones for looking kinda guilty, etc., are all the counterterrorism policies of choice.
* I will say that squeamishness about this sort of stuff is a function of how stable a society is and how far removed it is from daily violence. I spent 18 years of my life in a country with a very serious terrorism problem and you would be surprised at the measures that meet broad social approval once the problem is widespread and disruptive enough. Collective punishment, extra judicial killings and torture all work very well. In fact they are the only thing that work. Trump stands out as a pragmatist in a political class of utterly deluded buffoons.
