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Bruce Schneier has written an article about Living in a Code Yellow World:
In 1989, handgun expert Jeff Cooper invented something called the Color Code to describe what he called the "combat mind-set." Here is his summary:
In White you are unprepared and unready to take lethal action. If you are attacked in White you will probably die unless your adversary is totally inept.
In Yellow you bring yourself to the understanding that your life may be in danger and that you may have to do something about it.
In Orange you have determined upon a specific adversary and are prepared to take action which may result in his death, but you are not in a lethal mode.
In Red you are in a lethal mode and will shoot if circumstances warrant.
Cooper talked about remaining in Code Yellow over time, but he didn't write about its psychological toll. It's significant. Our brains can't be on that alert level constantly. We need downtime. We need to relax. This is why we have friends around whom we can let our guard down and homes where we can close our doors to outsiders. We only want to visit Yellowland occasionally.
Since 9/11, the US has increasingly become Yellowland, a place where we assume danger is imminent. It's damaging to us individually and as a society.
He continues:
Those of us fortunate enough to live in a Code White society are much better served acting like we do. This is something we need to learn at all levels, from our personal interactions to our national policy. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, many of our counterterrorism policies have helped convince people they're not safe, and that they need to be in a constant state of readiness. We need our leaders to lead us out of Yellowland, not to perpetuate it.
What are my fellow Soylentil's views on Bruce Schneier's assessment?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Friday September 25 2015, @05:40PM
Diversity + Proximity = War
You don't have to like that, you can hate it all you like. Truth is. Truth does not care whether you like it, even whether you believe it. Disbelieve gravity, leap from a bridge and you shall see how much the universe cares about your beliefs. Your task is to discover the Truth and then do discuss ways to live with it and even prosper.
Why do you think we have the problems of eternal warning in the US? Because we lost the most basic thing that makes a nation a nation, the feeling of being "us" with a border between "us" and "them" outside. US being defined in the most fundamental way possible, the one the article discusses, as people who you can drop your guard around. As a -HOME-.
It is clear this is an intentional push by our masters because we see the same theme over and over, policies intended to lead to reductions in social cohesion and feelings of security. We import whole villages intact into our polity composed of people who believe we should all be put to the sword. We turn criminals out of our prisons without even the pretense of them being 'reformed' to prey on us. We closed the lunatic asylums and called it 'compassion' when it made the former inmates homeless bums and everyone else has to live in constant fear of them. We weaponized the underclass and now have an explicit policy of forcing them to be 'redistributed' into every neighborhood.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday September 25 2015, @07:56PM
Diversity is great, staple British foods like the curry have arrived due to recent immigration.
However it's only great when people adapt. In the 90s some of the worst culprits were Brits, who went off to Costa-Del-sol and demanded chippies, mixed with other ex-pats, never learned the language, etc.
Do the thousands of people flooding into Europe intend to live in harmony with their neighbours? Perhaps.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday September 26 2015, @08:14PM
The problem with your theory is that the "Us" you speak of are primarily descended from immigrants too. Give it another generation or two and the new immigrants will be just one more assimilated subculture that we celebrate in a stereotypical way that the original cultures will only vaguely recognize.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by jmorris on Saturday September 26 2015, @08:50PM
Three differences:
1. In the past when we hit the levels of immigrants we are now at we stopped accepting new ones for over a generation so that we could assimilate them. This time our masters seem determined to push the accelerator in their quest to remake the electorate more to their liking.
2. We used to believe in assimilation, the melting pot where all were 'nudged' to adopt the American Creed. Now our masters push the salad bowl theory where every group retains their past culture so they can all be set against each other, having their communities 'organized' to generate political power which can be passed up to the Democratic Party.
3. There is a difference in kind in the immigrants we now import. Before a mostly English derived culture had the usual (for reasons not entirely irrational) stereotypes against the Irish but they were basically culturally compatible and as you note, were assimilated. Same for the other Europeans, a generation of mild disturbance followed by assimilation. Now we are mostly importing Socialists from South of the border who come in expecting socialism instead of Americanism and are told they can have it, that we will learn Spanish instead of requiring them to learn English, that it is perfectly acceptable to fly the Mexican flag and boo American sports teams and that anyone who even raises an eyebrow is a bigot. Not content with that we now seem determined to import a million or two Muslims who simply want to kill us and have shown zero interest in assimilating. To the Christians in the Middle East being crucified by ISIS we avert our eyes and close our gates, to ensure we can bring in more Muslims.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday October 04 2015, @09:20AM
While various limitations have been placed on immigration over time, it was never halted.
There is some truth to assimilation vs. the "salad bowl", but for the most part, assimilation inevitably happens anyway when the immigrant's children grow up exposed to American culture.
I don't see much justification for a claim that immigrants have a socialist tendency. Some may be driven to it due to the relatively limited opportunity to get established these days.