Ghost lives

I've been kicking around trying to condense some thoughts on this for a few weeks after a few "debates" went... poorly, sometimes with a certain breed of human male (the types I usually try to avoid). The most frustrating of which have been with more sexist versions of people like myself though, who think they're being rational and skeptical. So I've kept unwinding my thoughts and winding it all back up not thinking there's much that can be said by me. There's a bunch of disclaimers I feel like I needed to make that I mostly won't make here.

Because I think it has become clarified in the last week that it suffices to focus in on one thing that keeps coming up in almost every forum this is discussed.

Male obliviousness of how women are living, and the ability not to have to worry about that ignorance or its consequences.

Where that intersects here lately. I don't walk into a room outnumbered by women, or simply alone with a single woman, with one or both/all of us perhaps in some degree of inebriated state and suddenly start to worry about my physical safety. Or being molested. I don't have to. I have been groped or grabbed or simply stared at by a relative stranger with some level of sexual interest before. But I am a rather large human male. I'm not sure I'd have to worry about this as a real threat in almost any room under any scenario, and I can't think of an occasion that I have done so (I experience other anxieties being in a room with a lot of people, but none involve my actual safety). I am not sure very many men if asked on the spot could come up with a concept of what kinds of defenses would be necessary to reduce or prevent this from happening, what kinds of precautions to take, and finally have any understanding that there probably is still a last line of thought for "this could go sideways anyway, no matter what I do, what would I do then?". Because it's not something we've ever had to consider.

There's a general concept for men of "this isn't a friendly neighborhood, I will walk with my guard up a bit to discourage a fight and make sure my car doors are locked up when I park/leave". But that's very different than "I'm in a room with 4 other men, I need to make sure I know where the exits are, be careful where I put a drink, try to decide which of them I can trust not to be a dick", and on down the line of precautionary elements. It's a different level of specificity and passive/active mental practices to inhabit. This is a serious cost to pay for what often amounts to, for men, normal social interaction. The relative freedom to engage with other human beings without worrying about security or physical abuse is something I can take for granted. And that's all being imposed as a mental and physical tax upon women for safety and security in ways that will probably always exist (it'd be nice if rape or sexual abuse could be abolished... but that's not the point here). It's why some women probably won't go in that room with 4 men. It's also why it can be convenient to play a "boyfriend/husband on TV", as it were. To discourage some other asshole from bothering a friend. The larger point though is there's a bunch of places and situations I can walk into and never have to think twice or think about how to structure the experience to make sure I come away safely at all that almost every woman I know does to some degree consider this.

A related but far less pressing problem here is that it deprives men of the company and input of women in certain situations at work or in some social setting. And that's unpleasant for us too. That's a cost we're all paying for because some of us are dicks. This is low hanging fruit as a space for room of improvement is to get men to behave a little bit better and be aware of this as a cost imposed on the women around them when they do not. There are ghosts around us where there should be a person, or these are people who have to deal with some very angry and ugly ghosts just to get through the day. That's not unusual, but the particular flavor and its widespread nature should be concerning.

Especially if we are to come to consider how common it is that virtually every woman a man knows; his wife or girlfriend, his daughter, his friend from work or school, his mother and grandmother, has had a small to large mountain of sexist bullshit to wade through, daily, for most of her life (at least teen on, if not prior). From more innocent seeming comments than intended to overlong glances and stares assessing her entirely as a physical sexual specimen on the lowest end of the scale (what might be called the pornification of women) to creepy guys exposing themselves or randomly asking for photos of her breasts, to a boss or coach molesting them. Some women will manage or avoid portions of that ugly continuum far better than others. But it's a universal experience. At some point, possibly daily, hopefully rarely, she will feel like she is an object. No longer a person. The person is a ghost, dismissed from the scene. Most men have little feeling or consideration of this as it relates to themselves I expect. I do not think other people are assessing me as an object. I am not certain any people are assessing me much at all frankly, but certainly it does not cross my mind to contemplate being seen as an object of fantastic desires, nor am I made to feel that bad about it if I am not fulfilling any social demands and expectations that I should be so considered.

One of the things that's come up often after the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings, such as they were, is the volume of men talking to and hearing from women around them who have similar stories and the overwhelming reaction of these men has been along the lines of "I had no idea". The point here isn't "all men are creeps". That's not the issue. The issue is that most men are unaware of how widespread this is that women have had to figure out how to deal with this wide variety of creepy and sexist behavior, up to and sometimes including physical or sexual violence against her personally. Firsthand, not simply through some talk their parents gave them as a child. And then probably never told any of the men around them about it after it happened. We don't know about the catcalling because it never happens when we're standing right there. We don't know about getting random dick pics because they get deleted (and it's not like we'd want to see them either). We do not know who was beaten by an ex. We don't know which of our friends were raped or had some guy in college or at a party force himself on her that she fought off and escaped.

I do not think all of these stories and events are equally terrible. Nor is the point that women are equally as innocent as men are in some manner guilty. I do not think all of these events will be handled in some way that every woman involved in it won't respond by handling it herself and not needing any man to fight any part of the battle for her. The point here isn't that women can't do some things to improve. That however isn't a very interesting question for me, a human male, to try to understand is what is it that women can do to improve the behavior of men, much less what we could do to improve the behavior of women.

The question that has nagged at me for months, years now, is what is it that men should do. Not just to improve behavior toward women, but amongst ourselves.

I'm not always sure what it is that we are going to do next to deal with these as societal concerns. Shame and shunning does not seem to have any prominent effect anymore. The assholes among us keep coming on anyway now, without apology or recognition. Indeed, they are sometimes clustering together in damaging, sometimes violent ways. Due process doesn't always apply in some formal legal sense, leaving informal and inconsistent quality measures instead to evaluate claims and defenses. Which is all very messy and probably less effective at providing some context of what someone did that was wrong and what they need to learn not to do in the future. The methods and tools at hand for social and cultural change are, thus far applied, weak, inconsistent, and probably not favored to be used by many still yet anyway. What has become clear is this is not something that men can pretend doesn't happen anymore; to claim that sexual harassment and gender inequality was resolved decades ago and now a gender peace in the workplace reigns. Or claim that because he didn't touch you or didn't penetrate you, or if he did that he didn't use his penis to do it or didn't "finish", it doesn't really matter. Or make broad claims that women are making up rapes, or idiotic claims about how female physiology works. Or to claim that "boys will be boys" and find that a compelling defense.

There's been a wide variety of responses to this sudden sunshine over blissful ignorance by men. Some of which are outright sickening or pathetic. "We can't flirt or tell a dirty joke anymore", said by idiots, up to "I need to record all my sexual encounters to make sure she can't accuse me of rape", said by monsters. We are not monsters, or at least, I'd like to set the bar at least that high for most of us as human beings. That leaves doing something else besides complaining about the behavior of half the population in order to improve these circumstances. Nominally it is not the half of the population actually committing these sexual assaults and misconducts and disrespectful attitudes and speech coming up for introspective analysis at that. Introspectively trying to understand "what is the problem", "is there something I can do about it", and then where possible go do that is a big start. Being aware of these issues and listening to women, compassionately as people, not because they're "my wife/girlfriend/daughter", which is merely an object state in relation to ourselves, happens to go over really well. At least according to some women around me. Men are capable of exercising this faculty. Maybe not very well, but it's a possibility. I would recommend we improve upon that.

I think the value of feminism ultimately comes down to helping men (and sometimes women too) behave a little bit better toward each other, across and within genders, by being slightly more aware of the lived experiences of other people, and thus offering a marginal space to improve how they relate to women around them, and sometimes to other men around them. People they purport to care about might be better treated and respected. But more importantly, people they don't know and don't care about at all might be accorded a level of respect. If we are having issues with teenagers and college students trying to navigate sexuality and consent, and I think there's broad agreement that this has been a problem for decades, if not centuries, maybe we should be doing a better job allocating our social and political capital and trying to figure out what to do with it instead. How can we prepare each other to try to make difficult decisions and take any actions required gracefully, and behave responsibly and compassionately. We will not abolish the worst aspects of human behavior. That's not the point. It's how can we help each other avoid and manage those horrible things as best we can. That cannot happen if there is a veil of ignorance pulled over it by half the population. This is also not a simple problem with a simple solution. There's probably 50-100 major factors filtering into all of this sludge of toxic masculinity and sexism, and some of the results of that will never really wash away no matter how diligently we try. That does not absolve us the responsibility of looking at it and trying to improve. If not for ourselves, for children or their children.

Russia talks, Trumps lips move

As with DPRK, the point of objections isn't (or shouldn't be) to the existence of talking to the Russians. We have substantive diplomatic issues with which we should be talking to them, leaving aside the questions of hacking and election and news meddling. The people making this argument, "that why are they mad that we're talking" typically suggest no similar argument is valid for Iran, which makes it hypocritically stupid. It is possible to set aside difficult and intractable policy goals and rivalries with other nations to make agreements on specific issues (like nuclear weapons policy, or Syria).

 It's also not an objection to say well even if Russia meddled in our elections and democratic processes, we did that too in other countries. This has rarely redounded to American interests to have done so. It was not a good thing that we did it, and most of the countries that were meddled in have had very mixed and poor results in their stability or even their allegiance to American hegemony (Iran most prominently figures against this idea being a good one, South Vietnam would be another good example, or most of Central America).

 Russia or Putin may have reasons to think this was a good idea. We do not have to.

 The point of the objections is largely in three areas:

 - That it was far from clear Trump was capable of addressing these substantive topics on his own, and in a way that would result in any deal, much less a deal favorable to US policy goals. He rarely credibly talks about anything in a way that suggests he has reached a well formed opinion or an informed position. This is fine if the deals and their details are to be worked out by others. He believes they are being worked out by himself alone.

 - That Trump is himself heavily compromised via the continued Russia/Mueller investigations, and that any agreements or attempts at agreements would be labored by this weight and unlikely to hold up. Indeed, it was extremely likely they would backfire with Congress (again) attempting to pass sanctions and other restrictions on Russia. These passed easily before, and aren't some liberal plot. Russia's actively doing stuff we don't and shouldn't like or tolerate.

 Trump seems at best purposefully oblivious to this, and more likely purposefully obstructionist over the whole issue. The better phrasing of objection here is less that he will appease Putin, but that he's a Manchurian Candidate. A Putin puppet. 

 - That Trump would obsequiously and favorably address yet another murderous dictator with a fawning admiration. Stylistically and diplomatically, this is wholly unnecessary. It is possible to conduct talks without telling horrible people they are awesome, and possible to tell relatively decent people that we share their major values even as we disagree about some particular issue. It all presents the position to other nations that our disagreements with our actual allies (EU, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, etc) are with rivalrous foes while our disagreements with our actual rivals (DPRK, Russia, China) are more cordial affairs. This makes little sense even from a game theory perspective. Theoretically it is about unpredictability. Unpredictability is potentially useful for a game of chicken type approach to foreign affairs. But this is repetitively predictable and unsurprising. Trump pisses off a bunch of American allies, and makes nice with some really terrible people. It is not unpredictable. It's boringly obvious. He has a long standing history of thinking some really awful and horrible regimes or the people running them were "tough" and "strong". This is not news. And it should surprise no one that he behaves more favorably toward such regimes now. 

DPRK talks

“I think he will do these things. I may be wrong. I may stand before you in six months and say, hey, I was wrong. I don’t know I’ll ever admit that. I’ll find some excuse.” If Narang and Panda are right, and Kim Jong-un proves as unwilling to follow through on his vague promises as his predecessors given the credibility and legitimacy they now provide him, the president finding some excuse to cover up what will then be a failed summit will likely be the best case scenario.

I've been trying to figure out what to make of all of this for a few weeks now.

I find the idea that no talks should occur, ever, a bit strange. It's very clear there are reasons to engage with DPRK along with South Korea and probably China to resolve the issues involved non-militarily if possible. The danger to US allies is substantial, as is the probability of the regime collapsing and a massive humanitarian and economic crisis emerging in a very rich corner of the world, a corner which would be largely demolished. The bar should be set pretty low that anything could happen for such talks. But talking is preferable to threatening words being exchanged or destructive warfare.

I do think the idea that any talks involving Trump would be productive, particularly for the US and our allies, is correct to bring up as a serious problem. This was never very likely. Trump is a terrible negotiator as but one obvious problem. And there did not even appear to be agreement over what the terms of the deal could even be. Spiking the football when you're at the two yard line is an interesting game plan for conducting diplomacy. I would not call it a winning one.

It's really strange to think talks will be productive after nuclear deals to prevent proliferation with Iran are being scrapped. This should put a very low ceiling on the prospect of what "denuclearization" actually means to the North's regime. Many Trump decisions on foreign policy have this quality of own-goals being scored rather than forward progress being made toward these goals. (This is before considering if those goals are worthwhile, which they are often not).

The most self-aware admission is the quote above. This is correct he will find someone else to blame rather than admit fault if these talks go nowhere or produce no tangible result. As we should expect for the time being.

The amount of praise heaped upon Kim is disgusting and unnecessary. This is not the only authoritarian regime Trump has obsequiously complimented and admired for little or no diplomatic benefit, effectively unprompted gushing and fawning swoons over some of the most terrible people on the planet. This is probably the most disturbing trend that continued.

The most optimistic reading is that talks and relations between North and South Korea improve or are able to have productive outcomes without the added attention of the US nuclear demands for a time. Presumably those US centered talks will continue, but without Trump's attention, they are less likely to be important to anyone in the region, allowing for attention to be spent on more productive things. This would be a net boon. The nuclear deal itself is unlikely to materialize in any practical sense, but relative peace in Korea and the possibility of trade or economic freedoms offered through reform of the North's authoritarian system of repression and starvation would be welcome (basically a smaller version of what happened in China in the 1980s and 90s).

This is to keep in mind, again, that Trump's Iran policy purportedly offered as a framework here is not helpful. That policy will ultimately destabilize the region and made it more likely Iran, and Saudi Arabia if not others, would become a nuclear power, all while achieving no humanitarian aims or diplomatic advantages and weakening relations with the US's European allies necessary to achieve any harsher goals on nuclear powers (including North Korea).

Not so Open Borders

Observing immigration debates, particularly with the border issues over asylees currently. Something that occurs to me is there's a very poor public understanding of what "open borders" actually means and the propensity of any Americans to think it to be a good idea or ideal (there are few who do).

This is a typical canard faced by people who oppose nativist restrictionist policies intended to reduce legal immigration from current low levels, not just illegal immigration is this claim they favor an open borders policy. Sanders complained about this too, so it's not just Trump types that do it. The actual debate is something more like the following: We don't have open borders, or very open borders, and what we are mostly arguing about as a country is the level of how closed we wish them to be, whether it is closed or open enough and how or whether to adjust that. Not whether it should be thrown open entirely to allow for the most possible free movement of people.

The US has fairly restrictive immigration policies by comparison to the rest of the globe and has had them in place for a long time, going back at least a century, which make it difficult to move here and become a legal citizen or worker/resident, particularly from non-favored places on the globe. This restrictive approach didn't start with Trump or Obama, and wasn't undone by Reagan (or Obama). It started during the Arthur administration (if we don't want to go back further to restrictions on the Transatlantic slave trade as a means of reducing "immigrants" from certain places on the globe). Anti-immigrant fervor was for a time a major political movement of its own during the antebellum period, and existed throughout the early days of the American republic, but did not succeed in surging into broad and major legislative restrictions until the early 20th century.

We were explicit back in the Wilson administration when some of the first major and broad immigration restrictions were instituted that a significant goal was to severely reduce and strictly control immigration from, say, Poland or Russia or Japan, just as it is now sought to reduce and control it from Honduras or Nigeria or Syria. There is and was little reason to do any of this for the benefit of our residents and citizens, to keep people out from any particular nations or regions. It solely benefits nativist demands to reduce the need for their own assimilation to a more dynamic culture. Immigrants themselves tend to assimilate fine to the American system and ways of life; it's the nativists who don't keep up. This is evident by examining places with more dynamic economic growth (mostly places with more immigrants living there), or places that more strongly oppose immigration (mostly places with very few immigrants).

There are advantages to the overall US system, such as jus soli, that make it easier in certain ways for immigrants to get and stay here legally. But we actually receive fewer families as immigrants than even the supposed high-skilled worker-based immigration systems of Canada and Australia that (some) Trump type conservatives seem to want to emulate (other than Trump himself or Stephen Miller types). Those supposed advantages are being washed out by all the difficulties and impediments we throw up instead.

What seems needed to reform the situation in a more constructive manner, as a non-expert observing the issue.

- Understanding that the "illegal" immigration issue, such as this even matters, largely is one of people overstaying legally issued visas or coming in from Asia or Africa or Eastern Europe, and not anymore from Central America. Many people coming in from Central America at present getting much of the news attention are attempting to apply for asylum status. Almost none of this is anything like someone storming across the border with malevolent intent that it should require a harsh legal or military response as is being demanded.

- Walls are pointless to deal with those problems even if they are considered as seriously as issues related to these problems. Walls are a poor symbolism for a free democratic nation to use to boot as an additional reason to avoid them.

- Policies adopted by less democratic or less free nations with the intention of reducing the cultural, intellectual, ideological, and ethnic diversity of that nation are not to be emulated or considered a valid comparison as something we should wish to do. The very idea any number of Americans think it is a good idea to see what North Korea or Afghanistan or China does with people trying to cross their borders illegally and copy any elements of that, or to take a more representative example of actual policy, to look at what we did with Japanese Americans during WW2 and see that as an instructive and successful policy, is horrifying from a civic perspective.

- There should be a massive expansion of work visas in amounts and availability. These visas should be controlled by the workers themselves as much as possible so that companies can decide whether or not to employ someone without worrying about national origins or needing to apply and somehow justify that they need to hire someone from another country, and so workers can go from job to job relatively easily or start a company of their own if they wish/are able. Companies could sponsor specially talented workers as a means of generating loyalty among highly skilled employees, but otherwise should have to pay normal wages to everyone.

- Significant expansion of refugee/asylum programs should be undertaken. The global refugee population is at an all time high in the last decade. This is in part because of American policies; such as in Yemen or parts of Central America. Regardless of the blame we may ascribe to our policies abroad or domestically as they negatively impact other nations and people, we have a moral obligation as a rich country and people to help those in dire need. And we tend as a nation to benefit considerably by taking in refugees historically as a selfish reason to do this. There are no significant downsides to doing this. Other than that it annoys nativists who may elect more immigrant-restrictive public officials.

- Significantly easier citizenship applications and processes should be created. The cost and time involved is a significant impediment to making it easier for people to immigrate legally and become a permanent resident, if they wish. If it is easier to immigrate legally via citizenship or work status, it would be much easier to concentrate enforcement resources on those who continue to come with more dangerous and thereby illegal purposes than finding work or being with family and friends.

- As such, we should see reduced deportations of non-criminal immigrants, whether or "illegal" or not. If someone is not a terrorist, spy, or murderer/rapist, I'm not sure why it would be a useful exercise of the federal government's priorities or resources to deport them. Concurrent with that, abolishing checkpoints for immigration within a border zone, not at the border would be useful for US residents. Immigrants are not required to live in and are not necessarily concentrated in these zones anyway that monitoring visa status would be useful to do in this way. Such checkpoints appear to be mostly used for other dubiously legal purposes, such as checks on narcotics smuggling rather than arresting or detaining immigrants with dubious residential status