This is for topical issues effecting our fair world... you can quit snickering anytime. Note: It is the desire of the leadership of SFDebris Conglomerate that all posters maintain a civil and polite bearing in this forum, regardless of how you feel about any particular issue. Violators will be turned over to Captain Janeway for experimentation.
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2019 8:47 pmGovernment doesn't have much interest in me as an individual no matter how many microphones they put in my laptop.
Until, of course, they do. That's what always makes these things so difficult.
Well we were all around for the Patriot Act, which was a time when you probably knew someone who knew of someone that got sent to an offsite prison camp in Cuba.
Weird enough about that stuff, as sketchy as it sounded I've thought about now and then about how my game handle online was Jihad and how it was freshly in 2002 when I adopted it. Playing Counterstrike I saw a person on the terrorist team using the name and I just chuckled at the nuance and took it up myself. It's possible the CIA ran a profile on me or something.
G-Man wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2019 2:53 am
Well, Fuzzy, you can blame Judge Dolly Gee. Her decree that Flores applies to children who are traveling with adults (basically, a child cannot be held in custody more than 20 days; previously this only applied to unaccompanied children) and the freakout over separating children from the adults with them at the border means that anyone who wants to cross the border illegally or to do human trafficking knows that if they bring a kid with them, they get into the country more easily. Bring a kid, and in 20 days the kid will be released and you with them.
It makes a good deal of sense to use DNA testing to make certain that people aren't taking someone else's child as a way to ease their entry into the country.
Yes they are just doing this because they care about the poor children. Totally. Definitely. Child welfare is the reason for this. Yup. I believe you and that you are arguing in good faith.
"Believe me, there’s nothing so terrible that someone won’t support it."
— Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
Again, child trafficking is a real thing, and added to that is now an incentive for an illegal border crosser to bring a child. What do you propose to do about it Fuzzy?
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2019 8:47 pmGovernment doesn't have much interest in me as an individual no matter how many microphones they put in my laptop.
Until, of course, they do. That's what always makes these things so difficult.
Good point - this is why logical fallacies are not arguments in and of themselves. And today's fallacy that isn't automatically right or wrong is the slippery slope.
Fuzzy Necromancer wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2019 10:21 pmYes they are just doing this because they care about the poor children. Totally. Definitely. Child welfare is the reason for this. Yup. I believe you and that you are arguing in good faith.
Maybe it isn't, but in practice this is not going to keep people out who bring their own children. Also, as I recall, the tests are to be destroyed after the children's identities are confirmed and can't be used in unrelated criminal proceedings (not certain if they could be used as evidence in a case of, e.g. kidnapping if the adults are not the parents' child).
"You say I'm a dreamer/we're two of a kind/looking for some perfect world/we know we'll never find" - Thompson Twins
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2019 8:47 pmGovernment doesn't have much interest in me as an individual no matter how many microphones they put in my laptop.
Until, of course, they do. That's what always makes these things so difficult.
Good point - this is why logical fallacies are not arguments in and of themselves. And today's fallacy that isn't automatically right or wrong is the slippery slope.
I've always considered slippery slope to be inherently disqualitative just by definition. Unfortunately though the case of draconian style governments isn't really a speculation, but just a precedent that history has set forth with authoritative ruling parties.
And I'm not forgetting what was just said about McCarthyism and the Patriot Act, but it's not for nothing that the standard set forth by the American Republic is a pivotal development for representative bodies.
Shouldn't the issue of DNA testing only come up with immigrants who have a criminal history after a background check? I dunno, I'm not against DNA testing, but doing it all willy-nilly to random people... feels too much like the blood tests debate in DS9's "Homefront/Paradise Lost" two-parter, tbh.
"A culture's teachings - and more importantly, the nature of its people - achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves, or find themselves lacking."
— Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
Yukaphile wrote: ↑Sat May 11, 2019 12:10 am
Shouldn't the issue of DNA testing only come up with immigrants who have a criminal history after a background check? I dunno, I'm not against DNA testing, but doing it all willy-nilly to random people... feels too much like the blood tests debate in DS9's "Homefront/Paradise Lost" two-parter, tbh.
I believe the DNA testing is only for family units, and only to confirm relatedness. It's not for background check purposes. The goal is simply to prove that someone is not taking someone else's child in order to get released into the country faster.
"You say I'm a dreamer/we're two of a kind/looking for some perfect world/we know we'll never find" - Thompson Twins
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2019 8:47 pmGovernment doesn't have much interest in me as an individual no matter how many microphones they put in my laptop.
Until, of course, they do. That's what always makes these things so difficult.
Good point - this is why logical fallacies are not arguments in and of themselves. And today's fallacy that isn't automatically right or wrong is the slippery slope.
I've always considered slippery slope to be inherently disqualitative just by definition. Unfortunately though the case of draconian style governments isn't really a speculation, but just a precedent that history has set forth with authoritative ruling parties.
In many cases, people identifying something as a slippery-slope is actually salami tactics or death by a thousand cuts. It looks like one act leads to the next when in reality an end goal is in mind but baby steps are taken to get there.
A future dictator may start out smearing his opponents, then arresting them, then arresting journalists, then padding/destroying the court, then neutering the senate, then re-writing the constitution before finally giving up all pretenses and declaring themselves dear leader.
People that want a gun ban will start by labeling certain types of guns and suggesting they are different and should be banned, certain accessories should be banned, magazines should be banned, bullets should be banned, before finally going for a universal ban.
