Not Getting to Know You

It is not a trivial activity to learn what another human being is really like. It usually takes time and effort.  The  time and effort can be well spent when selecting friends, lovers, or certainly a husband or wife.  However there are many other times when it is not  necessary or worthwhile  to expend them because something else is fully sufficient.

Suppose you are listening to your local superintendent of schools pitching a bond issue. You know she has said things that were false when she argued for bond issues and other funding in the past.  You  do not know if she was lying, careless, stupid, or simply honestly misinformed  when she did so. You do not know enough about her character and intelligence even to have an opinion,  but you do know  what you need to know to make a decision. You know enough not to accept her new claims and promises without separate verification and guarantees.

Consider an American president who fairly consistently behaves as though he despises the country, its basic principles, and most of the people in it, including you. From following him in the news and reading things he has said or written, you have evidence that leads you to believe those are his actual sentiments.  However  you have never met the man. You realize that  some people you respect who know him  think he is only  misguided and  not ill-intentioned.  You might like to know definitely  what sort of person he is, but for  the important purposes of guessing what he might do,  deciding whether to oppose him politically, or making  plans  to protect yourself, you do not need to know.  It is enough to know his pattern of behavior.  You don’t need to peer into his soul, and you probably wouldn’t want to anyway.

Similar things are true for many of life’s interactions.  There are  no general obligations and often no need or good reason  to analyze and draw definite conclusions about people’s  overall motivations and character.  (Which is good thing, because many times neither are there means for doing so fairly, validly, and rationally.)  It is usually enough to learn  what  you need to know about people to decide or accomplish what you want to and let it go at that. Besides one of the benefits of minding your own business is that it leaves you more time to see  to your own business. 

Restrictions on Travelers

The impositions placed by Trump’s administration on travelers arriving  from seven admittedly pretty rough places  have been controversial except in one respect. Almost everyone seems to agree the thing was bungled operationally.  At one time it seemed the order would require people with green cards to be held up until investigated in depth. Then it seemed  they would be subject only to a more vigorous than typical  “screening”  at their time of arrival. Lately it appears travelers with green cards who had been eligible  for fast processing under the Global Entry program will able to use it as before.  However this sorts out, the important question to ask is why people with permanent legal status in this country were to be treated any differently from citizens in this regard. People with green cards have legal permission to live in this country permanently, something which surely implies a right to come back home  after a trip overseas.  

It is probably true that some risky or dangerous people were given green cards or issued visas by officials in Obama’s administration who were less concerned with security than other objectives.  However those cards and visas were issued legally.  Those in the new administration should have honored them and only changed policies on  issuing  green cards and issuing or renewing visas in the future if they desired.   

The attacks on September 11^th, 2001 were horrible, but the harm they did to this nation  is smaller than that from  the self-inflicted wounds of years of futile and pointless wars in the Middle East. Similarly the crimes committed in America by  jihadists since that time are less damaging to this country than the expansion of  the powers and reach of governments in the name of homeland security and the costs, the loss of liberty and privacy, and the simple burdensome inconvenience we have experienced because of it. That is something Trump seems more likely to make worse than better.