[I was going to illustrate this with a picture of the little Syrian boy who drowned at sea but looking at it was so painful that I couldn't.]
She really is loathsome.
Shorter Megan McArdle: Increasing immigration by .5% will lead to a "societal meltdown."
Shorter Unstated Megan McArdle: Since it is unthinkable for a non-Muslim woman to marry a Muslim man, we might let more Muslim women immigrate but increasing Muslim immigration .5% by letting in Muslim women to marry Muslim male immigrants will lead to a "societal meltdown" because Muslims will strain "both the political and social systems" they enter in anything but negligible numbers.
See also for context.
We can't help the desperate because it would destroy our way of life. We can't let the banks fail because it would destroy our way of life. We can't have single payer health care because it would destroy our way of life. We can't lower the financial industry's profits because it would destroy our way of life.
I'm beginning to think that perhaps Megan McArdle doesn't want to help anybody but Megan McArdle, and therefore her constituency of one makes her both a narcissist (Thanks, anon.!) and a danger to everyone else.
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We had to destroy our way of life to preserve our way of life.
Yes. Although McArdle would probably say that we have to destroy our way of life to preserve her way of life. (And not see the problem with that. I'm not sure other people are real to her unless she can physically see them.)
Interesting. My Muslim friends are the kindest, most compassionate people. They are people who understand the rules of hospitality and extend it selflessly. It pisses me off to no end how Muslims in the U.S. & abroad are demonized, scapegoated, by the bullshit of imperialist agendas. After my mom killed herself, the only people I knew who didn't flinch were my Muslim friends & my Pagan friends. And we all have to fight for our right to exist in this nation. Sad!
I am curious as to your thoughts about narcissism as it relates to the American overculture.
(Bear with me: I just had my eyes dilated, and, well: flashbacks.)
Do you think there is something specific to our overculture that creates lots of pathological narcissists? I am thinking yes, but you're a better thinker than I am.
Your thoughts?
"Do you think there is something specific to our over culture that creates lots of pathological narcissists?"
I'll give it the old armchair observation: American society, despite our mythology, is hyper-competitive. Although we pretend to be "proud of being American," which implies some sort of camaraderie with our fellow citizens, nearly all the things we celebrate as a nation are victories (or in the case of the Civil War confederates, defeat) in one confrontation after another. The traditional child-rearing approach is to "prepare children for the real world," which means individual competition for limited resources. Nearly all traits we admire in "successful" people are those of physical, intellectual, or social dominance over others. While it seems that tribalism is ubiquitous in this country, it is a very shallow, limited-liability sort of tribalism--as long as the Tribe is Winning, we belong, but as soon as the tribe falters, we do not seek to improve it but to abandon it.
I can go on and on reciting all the areas of American culture where competition is prized over cooperation--even fucking cooking shows, which one would think to be a joyful experience of creativity, have been corrupted into anxiety-inducing hatefests that seek to humiliate some "loser."
I'm thinking that this incessant deluge of Win Win Win plays havoc with our pathological national insecurities on a societal level, and that it just might have something to do with the normalizing of narcissistic personalities in American culture.
we cannot ever lose sight of the fact the our earliest immigrants were the strictest sort of religious fundamentalists, who pretty much stumbled into the greatest 'inheritance' ever bestowed on a people. that they misconstrued this as a blessing and a validation of their extremist views is a legacy still being played out to this day.
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