Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Prepare to see a lot more where this came from

This from cleverly-named NYT commenter "A. Taxpayer," of - of all places! - Brooklyn:

It is highly probable that they came at an early age to become citizens to become familiar with American customs and major east coast cities in order to conduct terrorism/treason later. Their trip home was for training on bomb building.
Note that not only has this commenter decided both brothers - not just the older one - went back on a possibly suspicious trip to the old country, and that both, not just the younger, became U.S. citizens. But also, a kid who came over at around eight - as per the very article this genius is apparently commenting on, and in principle read - did so with intent to pretend to be an all-American stoner, with the intent to fake speaking American English, while secretly, underneath it all, at eight, this plan was in the works.

Meanwhile. If your great fear is foreign terrorism (and we'll set aside the relative danger of that vs. being shot by some idiot with bad coordination and no particular ideology), shouldn't you be more wary of playing up the foreignness/unassimilability of immigrants? Wouldn't that sort of thing seem to encourage alienation and then whichever % of the alienated will radicalize? Am I missing something here?

******

Speaking of self-doubt, I have an easy answer for David Brooks re: gender and confidence: it might be better for society if there were more self-doubt, but it sure is better for the individual to be self-promoting. And there are plenty of cases where good things get done only because an individual wants to put himself (on occasion, herself) out there. I'd also send him this, but I might be too demure to be that self-promotional.

3 comments:

caryatis said...

Cue article by a neurotic mother worrying that her eight-year-old is a terrorist.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

Not bad! But wouldn't mom be foreign as well, if not more so?

caryatis said...


Maybe he was radicalized at the local public school. Which makes it the mother's fault. She should have homeschooled.