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Noah Smith @Noahpinion
, 15 tweets, 5 min read Read on Twitter
1/Between this wave of mail bombings and the 2017 Congressional baseball shooting, I'm starting to worry that the U.S. is entering a new era of politically motivated assassinations.

nytimes.com/2018/10/24/nyr…
2/The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy in the 60s undoubtedly destabilized American politics and society.
3/In the 1920s and 1930s, a wave of assassinations of major political figures destabilized Japan and eventually led to the military taking over the country.
ndl.go.jp/modern/e/cha3/…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osachi_Ha…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmen…
4/Fringe groups like the Proud Boys are openly paying homage to Japanese assassins, showing that I'm not the only one who sees a parallel: bedfordandbowery.com/2018/10/inside…
5/Assassinations, of course, are in addition to politically flavored mass shooting incidents. Since 2015 we've had:
Dylann Roof: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlesto…
Omar Mateen: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_n…
Micah Johnson: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shoo…
Farook and Malik: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_San_…
6/The Portland Train Attack of 2017: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Port…
7/Lane Maurice Davis: thedailybeast.com/youtube-trumpk…
8/William Atchison: santafenewmexican.com/news/local_new…
9/This guy: washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…
10/Of course, it's hard to tell how many of these incidents are actually politically motivated, and how many are just nutjobs who use politics as an excuse to kill people. If you're going to shoot up a nightclub and kill yourself, why not say it's for ISIS? Etc.
11/But on the other hand, there's the possibility that nationwide political hysteria and unrest actually stirs up the passions of nutjobs, making them more likely to kill.

Mass shooting deaths are up!
fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-ma…
12/Does a national mood of stress and fear and bad feelings and apocalyptic rhetoric contribute to stuff like the Las Vegas shooting that injured nearly a thousand people?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_…
13/I feel like this is how Cold Civil Wars are fought.

Extremists rile everyone up, hoping that a lone nutjob will take the hint and go wreak some havoc.

Lone wolf proxy wars.
14/Each act of political or possibly-political violence stirs the other side to greater hysteria. That hysteria percolates into the minds of unstable individuals watching through their computer screens. Eventually enough hysteria prompts them to grab a gun or bomb and attack.
15/Thus, the cycle of assassination/terrorism and hysteria continues until...what?

How do Cold Civil Wars end?

(end)
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One thing I think would help reduce elite Millennial burnout/disappointment/rage is for people to stop thinking that their job should save the world.

"Save the world" and "make the world a better place" are probably just things employers tell you to get you to work for cheap.
Maybe your job will give you meaning and purpose and a sense of doing good for the world.

Or maybe it'll just make you some money so you can raise some kids, have some pet rabbits, and be active in your local community.

There's more than one way to get meaning in life.
Also, people glorify saving the world when it probably just gives you PTSD.

We like watching Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and whatever, but we wouldn't want to actually fight Darth Vader or slog through Mordor. That would cause major burnout!
Read 3 tweets
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1/Since Trump's demand for his Wall is in the headlines, I thought it would be a good time for a thread about a history book I just read:

"Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America", by Daniel Tichenor (2002)

amazon.com/Dividing-Lines…
2/The book starts out with a chapter or two of dense, unnecessary political science jargon, saying that - essentially - U.S. immigration policy tends to move very slowly, because powerful politicians and officials resist the tide of public opinion.
3/But most of the book is an extremely readable, eye-opening history of U.S. immigration policy, from the founding through the 1990s.

It shows how the immigration debates we're now having have been with us, in some form or another, for a very long time.
Read 27 tweets
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Thread about why very high tax rates on very rich people don't raise much revenue (or reduce inequality much, even within the top tier).

Our system has a million loopholes. Closing them is more important than raising top rates.
That's not to say there's a trade-off between raising the top rate and closing loopholes! They are complements, not substitutes.

But if you just raise the top rate without closing loopholes, you'll likely be disappointed.
The fact is, raising effective taxes on the very rich will require a comprehensive sustained push on a large number of policy fronts. There is not going to be one silver bullet.
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