*Yes, it’s not Tuesday, but days of the week are mere social constructs. Get over it.
The devastation in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria isn’t merely extreme, but different than that which occured on the mainland. Look at the costs imposed by the Jones Act, which should be repealed, and at least suspended until the Americans on our isle are returned to normalcy, and the logistics of getting aid to PR given that it’s an island.
As an aside, this would be an opportunity to donate to a worthy cause. Not the Red Cross, but there are other, localized organizations, who can be trusted to put the money to its intended use.
And then came a twit from Fault Lines’ Ken Womble in response to a twit from his FL colleague, Caleb Kruckenberg.
Introduce a bill for Puerto Rican statehood. Now.
— Ken Womble (@BrooklynWomble) September 26, 2017
I’ve no doubt Ken is sincere in his belief both that Puerto Rico should be granted statehood, and that raising this now will force the nation to pay attention to the island, and hence its plight. Ken saw this as a two-pronged win. I heard Ken shouting “squirrel.”
All of this is offered not for the purpose of discussing PR, statehood, or how best to approach this problem, but as a prelude to a discussion about focus. In this example, PR is in extremis, in desperate need of aid. Will introducing statehood help to obtain that aid or will it deflect attention away from the immediate critical issue into a separate debate?
Would this help PR or doom it? Granted, FEMA will do its job anyway, but that’s not the point: does it further the cause to focus on the very narrow, very specific exigent problem that demands immediate attention, or would it be more effective to throw open the doors to an entirely different, very controversial debate where eyes would look away from devastation?
This question arose in the Black LIves Matter protests as well. Originally focused on cops killing innocent black men, it devolved swiftly into an open-ended litany of dubious causes, from cultural appropriation to microaggressions, and collateral causes such as BDS and feminism (because all marginalized and vulnerable communities need to obey the orthodoxy). And so, cops took a deep breath as the movement grew away from its initial purpose, and its adherents went about chasing squirrels rather than cops.
Does focus matter? Are we capable of staying on topic long enough to resolve anything? Are we doomed to watch as chaos theory and random associations seize control of every discussion?
Discuss. Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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It’s really simple. The problem with focus is staring us right in the face. It is that little thing that has become ubiquitous and everyone carries with them all the time.
It’s called the smart phone or tablet. Instant communication. Instant gratification or instant outrage right at our finger tips 24/7/365.
You bring a certain irony to the comments that can’t be denied.
The list of euphemisms has grown by at least a dozen since that cheap crack you made last week about my mother’s meatloaf sandwiches. I’ve been making a disciplined effort to abstain from tugging that chain, because she told me if I didn’t stop I would lose focus permanently. But I refuse to believe there hasn’t been some trolling going on.
SQUIRREL!!!
All this recent talk of Focus just warms the cockles of my heart. They’re one of the most underrated bands ever. I don’t think they ever had a song called Squirrel, though, but it does sound like something they would have done.
Just add music.
I can do that. I can even choose a song to impute a motive to the squirrel.
So you’re saying the squirrel wasn’t an NFL prospect at all?
Too small. He’d never be able to take the punishment.
On a different note, why in the hell didn’t the link display properly? I used the embed code.
There’s an extra space in there. I’ll fix.
Focus matters, and it’s a something that can grow or shrink like a muscle. If I’m idle for too long, my focus withers, and I feel a little bad too. When I break out of the doldrums and focus on something, it might be tiring at first, but it builds on itself and I feel better.
Focus is a good habit, though it seems to be one that’s getting rarer.
Focus is more than a good habit. It’s one of the primary things that distinguish effectiveness from efficiency.
As an unincorporated territory, populated largely by U.S. citizens, Puerto Rico should be receiving substantial federal aid without regard to “statehood.” Contrast the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti (a Caribbean nation completely unrelated to the U.S.), in which President Obama declared disaster relief for Haiti to be our country’s “highest priority.” Do the people of Puerto Rico somehow fail to rate because they are U.S. citizens? I find this puzzling.
Disclosure: My family’s from PR, and have relatives there.
The focus should be on what the Fed can and should do to help the island right now, and for the hard months that will follow. As far as I know, there are some area of debate, like the waiving/repealing the Jones Act, that might help right now. Otherwise I’ve not seen any explicit sign of the gov’t not doing what it can.
Bringing up statehood is not one of those things.
There was a plebiscite on the island a few years ago, where the residents voted to keep things just the way they politically are, rejecting the push for statehood. Maybe @BrooklynWomble needs a current events refresher.
A referendum was held on June 11, 2017. The vote was 97% for statehood. However, there was a boycott of the vote by those who wanted to maintain the status quo.
The issue of statehood is a complicated one, as it should be. The problem isn’t Ken’s view of the merits, but whether raising it now will help PR get food, water and its other necessities or deflect attention away from what it needs this moment to survive.
Focus.
Two problems. One, aid for PR, is challenging to address but hardly intractable. The other, statehood, is a total pipe dream, because Republicans have absolutely no incentive to admit a state full of Democratic voters to the union. Ken, passionate fellow that he is, surely knows this, raising the question of why he’s wasting everyone’s time with twits like that.
SQUIRREL!!!
OOH WHERE
Focus matters if you want to resolve anything. It doesn’t matter if you just want to talk, but talk is cheap. It’s a task of defining the problem narrowly and then allowing only information relevant to solving the problem.
Define the problem and then limit responses to those things that are relevant to it. PR is a disaster zone in need of aid. The introduction of a bill for PR statehood in Congress has nothing to do with PR’s current plight. It’s irrelevant and detracting. Womble is trying to not let a good crisis go to waste in service of his pet issue.
There’s always room for a Womble. Everything is related to everything else, after all. It’s easy to justify saying whatever you want after the fact. The current problem is obviously connected to statehood, Womble will say. The lack of aid would have never have happened if PR was a state. Everything gets tinted by what Womble wants.
That’s the problem with partisans. They see the same problem regardless of what they’re actually looking at. PR statehood must be Womble’s cause. It’s apparently important to him.
Without focus you’ll have guys like Womble introducing mission creep. Now it’s not just about helping PR out, it’s also about statehood. Next it will be about self-determination. Then someone will bring up PR history. Then some asshole will talk about smoked meat. Nothing gets done even with good intentions.
The only solution is to make SHG the Czar of Focus, not just here but everywhere. It’s obvious. There’s your next job, Pa.
Don’t infer too much to Ken. As PR is on the radar, this aspect struck him as worthwhile, and his position is that statehood would simultaneously cause us to make aid a higher priority. As I said, I do not fault his motives at all. It’s the tactics I question.
Thanks for the context. I don’t know him.
So Womble expressly raised a side issue in the hope that others would be convinced that aid to PR is a higher priority. The tactic is dangerous, distracting, and manipulative. Good intentions make good pavers.
Uh no, you’re still not getting it. Go outside and play in the street.
You focus on boring things sometimes. That pretty pure white light goes through a prism and is now a rainbow of different colors. Who cares if it doesn’t light up the room as well?
I’ll be outside. There’s at least squirrels out there to chase.
I focus on boring things a lot. Even boring things matter.
It seems that most of the readers are in agreement that focus is important.
Are we capable of staying on topic long enough to resolve anything? Since the advent of the Internet (the largest time-waster ever developed, among other things) the country has largely settled the issue of gay marriage, so I’d have to say yes.
Are we doomed to watch as chaos theory and random associations seize control of every discussion? Yep. I would argue it’s not necessarily a bad thing, however, as it happens just as often (or more) to positions I disagree with.
[writer’s note: balance of comment deleted as irrelevant.]
The stupid part is often as worthy of deletion as the irrelevant. One example of a problem solved in the midst of hundreds may not exactly prove anything, give so many unresolved. Why this is a good thing because you disagree with some makes no sense. Resolution doesn’t mean they’re achieved, only decided. Sometimes the answer is “no.”
…Did you really just tell me that one example of us doing something doesn’t prove that we are capable of doing it?
You got me there, though even a blind squirrel, etc.
Thank god, I thought I was going madder. In answer to the other point, (and taking into account that “not necessarily bad” != “good”) however, there are some positions that I think are simply not worthy of serious discussion. The “the moon is a hologram” conspiracy theory, for instance. Or, for a more pertinent example, the way the multi-billion-dollar homeopathic industry inserted itself* into the ACA worries me, since there’s no evidence that most of it works.
* It claims to have done so, anyway.
My apologies, that last part was poorly put together. The point about homeopathy was supposed to include the point that not all decisions are made correctly, so forcing them now when there’s a good chance they will be decided badly would be a poor choice.
Like you, I agree that some positions are not worthy of serious discussion. Thus, I don’t discuss them.
Yes, focus is needed. But statehood for Puerto Rico? But as Uncle Screwtape would say, Focus needs a Demon, or someone to demonize.
Who you gonna Call?
Not Ghostbuster.
Who you gonna Demonize?
The focus dissapates itself and actually never occurs.
Starving people seem worthy enough of focus for me. But if some people can only focus on demons (and there seem to be many who are obsessed on just such a thing at the moment), so be it.
Well, statehood would remove that pesky “any ships with cargo have to have docked in the US first” rule, so I can’t see how granting PR statehood right now would not be helpful…
By the time the debate in Congress was halfway through, everyone on PR would be dead for lack of food/water. Focus.
What, there’s won’t ever be another disaster?
At least I’m thinking ahead, Greenfield.
“collateral causes such as BDS and feminism (because all marginalized and vulnerable communities need to obey the orthodoxy)”
Now why did my mind put in an extra M?
Yes, why did you?