"Priddy Explorers: Dinosaurs" (good dinosaur book for babies)

Book cover for "Priddy Explorers: Dinosaurs." Image source.

My kids have this book, Priddy Explorers: Dinosaurs, and it's great.

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It's a board book

The main reason I like this book is the pages are strong enough that my toddler can't tear them. I guess it's not *exactly* a board book because the pages aren't as thick as a typical board book, but they *are* cardboard rather than paper. 

She hasn't managed to tear this book or bite parts off of it, like she does with other books. She has bent it up quite a bit though, but that's okay.

The content is too advanced for babies, but I'm just happy she hasn't managed to tear this book.

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Lots of good content about dinosaurs

Every page has cool illustrations and a lot of information scattered about in various boxes and sidebars. I don't read all of the words- usually with my little toddler, I read 1 sentence and then she is already turning the page. For my older kid, it's nice that this book has a lot of stuff he can learn too.

And for me, it's nice being able to read something to the kids that's more interesting than the average baby book. A few example sentences: "Dinosaurs were reptiles that first appeared many millions of years ago. There were at least 1,000 different species of dinosaurs that are now extinct, and there might be many more that we don't know about yet."

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Anyway if you're looking for a fun book about dinosaurs to give to a little kid, I recommend this one.

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Related: 

"Bizzy Bear" (these books are great for babies)

"I Want a Popsicle" (a bilingual book for Asian children, about feelings)

Reviews of Christian Children's Books

"The Case for Open Borders": The birthright lottery

World map. Image source.

I want to share another quote from the book "The Case for Open Borders." This is from pages 11-12:

Today, where one is born-- on what side of what political line-- disproportionately determines one's income, wealth, and longevity. There is more than twenty-five years' difference in life expectancy between a woman in Somalia and one in Switzerland. There is a decade's difference between a woman living in Honduras and a woman living in New York. There is a 1,000 percent wage gap between workers with practically identical jobs in Haiti and the United States. Who wouldn't want a few extra years, an extra decade or two to live, or decent wages for their hard work? Instead of offering that chance, wealthier states build walls and relegate billions of people to premature death and destitution. Those who have won the so-called birthright lottery and enjoy the immense privileges of wealth, liberty, nutrition, education, and longevity, and who believe they have the right to bar people from those unearned entitlements, should imagine themselves in the position of those who have "lost" the birthright lottery.

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Related:

That's What Radicalized Me (a post about immigration)

Blogaround

 Links not related to the antichrist:

1. One Last Time, Discord Is Not A Suitable Replacement For Forums (May 12, via) "Discord, meanwhile, is a river that never stops running. It has some forum-like features, sure, and a search bar, but its conversations are supposed to take place in real time, which is fantastic for people who are around and talking at the same time, but far less useful for anyone coming around later. Like, say, those with tech support issues, which make up a huge percentage of video game community posts."

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Political cartoon which shows Nixon saying "I'm not a crook" and Trump saying "I'm a crook, so what." Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. First of all, if you're American, make sure you contact your senator and tell them to vote against the Republican budget bill. Calling on the phone is best, but if you have phone anxiety you can email them- search for your senator's web site and look for a "contact" page.

2. Here's some good news- a few weeks ago, I linked to an article about how funding for the Women's Health Initiative had been cancelled. I just found out that this decision was reversed: In a reversal, the Trump administration restores funding for women's health study (April 25)

So be loud, protest, tell the government what you think. It does make a difference.

3. Trump’s Lie About Dead “White Farmers” Just Got Even More Grotesque (May 24) "But there’s another ugly irony here that shouldn’t pass unnoticed: The Trump administration has suspended foreign aid to Congo and the resettlement of refugees from that nation, thus abandoning countless victims of the very same real-life humanitarian catastrophe that he’s cherry-picking imagery from to portray an atrocity against whites that isn’t actually happening."

4. Federal judge blocks immigration authorities from revoking international students’ legal status (May 23) "The order by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White in Oakland bars the government from arresting, incarcerating or moving students elsewhere based on their legal status until the case is resolved." This is about the international students across the country whose legal status was suddenly terminated for unclear reasons. 

It's a separate issue from what's going on with Harvard. Here's a link about that: Trump again blasts Harvard over international students as judge blocks revocation (May 25) "Trump's latest attack against Harvard comes two days after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the administration from being able to revoke the university's ability to enroll international students."

5. The Greatness Paradox (May 26) "And yet, every day we see Trump tear down the things that have made America great: scientific excellence, the rule of law, trade, alliances, our open society, and the soft power that comes from the attractiveness of our vision. How does that make any sense? Is it just hypocrisy? Is “greatness” just a buzzword to exploit? A false banner for the gullible to flock behind?"

6. When the abuse of power is assumed (May 26) "That’s the weird bit. What does it matter if Trump — the guy who personally and arbitrarily created this problem with his weird and dumb tariff hobby — says mean things about you in late-night posts on his personal social media platform? How could that possibly be meaningful enough to weigh against the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars that would come from “eating” his tariffs and selling a third of your inventory at a loss?"

7. With Tariffs Paused, China’s Holiday Goods Hub Races to Fill Orders (May 27) "To reach U.S. shelves in time for Halloween and Christmas, goods must leave China by July, giving factories just a few weeks to restart production, clear backlogs, and move inventory before tariffs potentially return." An article about what's going on with the tariffs, from the perspective of Chinese retailers.

"Genesis for Normal People": Separating "what the writer meant" from "what is true" and "what it means for us"

Book cover for "Genesis for Normal People"

I recently read Genesis for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible, by Peter Enns and Jared Byas. I really enjoyed this book. Here's my review of it.

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"Normal people"?

What does this mean, "Genesis for normal people"? The authors of this book, Enns and Byas, are biblical scholars, and the purpose of this book is to present a biblical-scholar view of Genesis to a "normal people" audience. 

So, everything in this book is informed by what actual academic scholars know about where the bible came from. For example- Moses didn't write the Pentateuch- it was written much later, after the Israelites were in exile in Babylon. For example- comparing other creation stories, from the other nations nearby, with the creation story in Genesis. Same thing for the flood story- looking at the story of Noah's ark with an awareness that many ancient societies had flood stories.

There's something really fascinating to me about how the title "Genesis for Normal People" exposes the divide between academic research on the bible and what the average Christian believes about the bible. Typically, if you're a "normal person," and you go to buy a book about the bible, the selection available to you will be books written from an evangelical "biblical inerrancy" perspective. You don't really have access to actual grounded academic work about the bible. 

And, actually, if you're a good evangelical and you do happen to come across academic scholarship on the bible which says things that good evangelicals are certainly not allowed to believe (Moses didn't write the Pentateuch, etc), you know that you're not supposed to read it. Evangelical leaders warn people that those arrogant scholars are going against God, that they refuse to believe the bible is true, they refuse to believe in miracles, and they're spreading their deceptive ideas in the academic articles they write. Don't listen to them! You'll be led astray!

So we don't have access to writing from actual knowledgeable biblical scholars- and if we did happen to stumble upon such information, we've been trained by the anti-intellectualism in evangelical culture that we must not listen to them and be "led astray."

Very interesting that some of these ideas about the actual reality of the bible are starting to escape from academic circles and become accessible to "normal people."

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The biblical writer's reasons for writing Genesis

"Genesis for Normal People" says that the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the bible, starting with Genesis) was put together some time around 539 BCE, when the Israelites were returning to their land after being in exile in Babylon. It wasn't *written* at that time- the stories had been passed around for a while- but this is when it got assembled into the Scriptures we know today.

As they were returning to their own land after being conquered by Babylon, the Israelites were thinking about their identity as a nation- who are we, where did we come from, how do we relate to God, is there hope that God is still with us and things will get better, etc. The Pentateuch was written to provide a narrative that addressed those questions.

"Genesis for Normal People" says over and over that we need to read Genesis "with ancient eyes." We have to think about it from the perspective of its original audience. We have to read it with an awareness of the reasons it was written, and what the writer was trying to say to the people back then.

So, in particular, don't go looking for arguments about evolution or the big bang. That's not what Genesis is about. It's not about how the world was actually made, or where people actually came from- it's about the mindset that the ancient Israelites had as they were trying to figure out their identity as a nation.

Read it with ancient eyes.

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This book is ONLY about what the writer of Genesis meant

The thing that's really surprising to me about this book is it's ONLY about what the writer of Genesis meant to say to the original audience. That's it. 

Reading with "ancient eyes" means we don't get tripped up by things the bible says which we now know (thanks to science) are not true. Just put aside questions about what's true and what's not- we're not talking about that right now- we're only talking about what the writer wanted to say.

And indeed, "Genesis for Normal People" points out a few places where the bible says something that is contradictory or anachronistic. For example, Genesis 10 lists the nations which were descended from Noah's sons, and says these different nations had their own languages. But then Genesis 11 starts out with, "Now the whole world had one language and a common speech," and tells the story of the Tower of Babel and how God made the people speak different languages, to sabotage their work.

So, wait a minute, the various nations which were listed in Genesis 10 had their own languages, but suddenly in Genesis 11 there's only 1 language? What's going on?

Back when I was evangelical and believed the bible was inerrant, I would have immediately responded like this: Genesis 10 lists the different nations that would *eventually* come from the descendants of Noah's 3 sons. It lists them there because it's wrapping up the story of Noah's ark- but actually at this point in the story of Genesis, they didn't have different languages. Genesis 11 is not set *after* Genesis 10, it's sort of happening some time in the middle of Genesis 10. The different nations had different languages, as Genesis 10 says, because of what happened in Genesis 11.

As I've said in other blog posts, this evangelical habit of being extremely quick to explain away biblical contradictions means we're not actually reading the story that's right there in front of us. We're reading an imaginary version of the story where everything happens in the same universe, and little details from different parts of the bible are harmonized together to make it make sense.

This is like if you watched one of the Tom Holland Spiderman movies, and all through the movie you were understanding it as being in the same universe as the Toby Maguire Spiderman movies- that everything that happened in those movies is also true in this movie... and you end up with a really bizarre understanding of what happened. Because, you weren't really watching the movie that was right there in front of you.

Anyway, "Genesis for Normal People" says (p 64):

Chapters 10 and 11 give us two different explanations for why people are spread out around the world and speak different languages. ...

These two explanations of the disbursement of humans with their different languages were clearly not a problem for the writers and editors of the Old Testament. And we should not make it one-- insisting that they both need to say the same thing.

Reading the bible to see what the writers meant- not looking for something that makes sense as one connected and true story.

Another example- Genesis 26 refers to Philistines living in Gerar. But at the time when the story is set, the Philistines did NOT live there. Page 83 says,

The writer simply took for granted that the Philistines had always been there, which makes perfect sense for a culture that could not consult a library or do a Google search.

!!!!! So there's a mistake in the bible. There's a little minor detail that's just not true.

If you believe in biblical inerrancy, you have 2 options here:

1. Claim that actually there were Philistines living in that place at that time, and the biblical scholars who say otherwise are godless heathens. Claim that you, a person who has spent 0 time studying ancient history, know this fact, it must be true because the bible says it is, while the scholars who spend their entire careers studying actual artifacts from the ancient world are wrong.
2. Tweak the definition of "Philistine" or "inerrant" a tiny bit. Maybe when this verse says "Philistines" it didn't mean the group of people that we understand to be the Philistines, but meant some confusing different thing- and therefore in some sense it *is* correct to say the Philistines were living there at that time. Or maybe this is just 1 little word in the bible that was copied wrong, and that's okay, that doesn't really *count* as an error- the bible is still inerrant.

But anyway, "Genesis for Normal People" doesn't get into that. It's not about whether the stories are true or not. We're just looking at what the original writer meant.

Also, "Genesis for Normal People" doesn't get into the question "What lessons is this bible story teaching us, that we as modern Christians should apply to our lives?" 

This is really interesting to me- because yes, evangelicals who believe in biblical inerrancy often *do* talk about the question "what did this mean to its original audience" and about reading the bible in the context of the ancient culture where it came from- but this is done as a way to better understand how the commands of the bible apply to our lives now. 

I don't think I've ever seen anyone talking about what the biblical writers meant and then just leaving it at that. But that's what "Genesis for Normal People" does, and I think it's great.

For example, "Genesis for Normal People" compares the creation story from Genesis 1 with creation stories from other cultures at that time. What they have in common is they portray the world before creation as a dark and chaotic ocean, and the act of creation is about bringing order to the chaos. But a key difference is: Other cultures' creation stories had various gods fighting, but in the bible, it's just one God, who simply speaks and the world comes into being. So, the point that the writer of Genesis was making is, our God has power over the whole world. Our God created the world on purpose, the way he wanted it to be, unlike those other gods in the other stories who created the world accidentally through their fighting.

And I've heard this interpretation before- Rachel Held Evans talks about it in her book "Inspired"- but the point was always "the writer of Genesis was saying that God is powerful and organized, and so the lesson we should learn from this story is that God is powerful and organized." It was about learning what the bible meant to its original readers, because what the bible meant to them is what it really means, and that's what it means to us.

Really fascinating to just look at the bible in terms of "what did it mean to them back then" and just leave it at that. To not try to connect it to scientific facts we know about the world, to not treat it like it has to be a true story, to not look for moral lessons we can apply to our lives. And yes, I think Enns and Byas probably do have ideas about how the bible lends itself to those discussions, but they didn't talk about that at all in this book. The point of "Genesis for Normal People" is that the first step is understanding what the writer meant to say- and the book is only about that.

This is great. I love this. 

I think even if you're trying to focus on "what the biblical writer meant", if you're coming at it from the mindset that everything in the bible is true and has something meaningful to say to us now, it affects your ability to see "what the biblical writer meant." Reading "with ancient eyes," as I understand it, means to completely put aside the idea that we read the bible to find truth and to find something meaningful to apply to our lives.

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Characters "telling Israel's story in miniature"

For many of the bible characters discussed in this book, Enns and Byas point out the ways that they "tell Israel's story in miniature." For example, Abraham went to Egypt, and his wife was taken as Pharaoh's "property", but then God brought them out of Egypt- kinda similar to how the Israelites were slaves in Egypt and then God brought them out, huh?

Genesis portrays the Israelites' ancestors as having a lot of problems and drama and often doing a bad job of following God. Actually, the name "Israel" means "wrestles with God." This shows the original audience that even though their nation has disobeyed God, even though they were conquered by Babylon as punishment for their sin, God hasn't abandoned them. 

I don't really like this- at least, I don't like the way that Christians typically frame it, which is: These bible heroes weren't perfect, but God loved them anyway, isn't that great news for all of us because we're not perfect. I hate this because... if you actually read the bible... the "bible heroes" raped and murdered people. If you read that and the message you get from it is "isn't it great that God loves us anyway even though we're not perfect"... my god. Where's the compassion for the victims? And this is a serious thing- here in the real world, Christians really do respond to sexual abuse by supporting the abuser and telling the victims that they need to forgive and "no one is perfect." Really.

So reading this part of "Genesis for Normal People," I tried to keep in mind that this is just what the biblical writer was saying- it doesn't mean it's the message that we should take from Genesis. Because I want to read the bible in a way that cares about the victims, rather than only looking at how everything turned out fine for the main character of the story because they trusted God.

But another thought I had about this is: So, the Pentateuch (including Genesis) was written as a way to present the Israelites' identity as a nation. And maybe this "there have been a lot of problems, but we still have hope that things can get better" is kind of similar to the way I feel about my country. I'm American (I've lived in China since 2013 so it's complicated, but still) ... I really believe in the ideas about freedom and equality, and the United States has always talked a big game about that but has never ever lived up to it. Like Langston Hughes said, "America never was America to me." So, hmm, maybe I can kind of understand the idea of wanting to frame your nation's identity as "have hope, we can be better."

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I want to read all these books

Back in 2015, I wrote a blog series reviewing Peter Enns's book "The Bible Tells Me So." One of my posts was called Peter Enns Makes Me Want to Actually Read the Bible Again, and yeah, I stand by that sentiment.

After reading "Genesis for Normal People," I feel like I want to read all of Enns's books (there are a lot of them) and also all the books in the "Bible for Normal People" series.

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Don't read the bible to find moral heroes

I like this quote from page 87:

It doesn't take a lot of effort to see that Jacob will be the focus of the story [in Genesis 25-35]. As it turns out, Jacob is also a liar, and so is his mom, Rebekah. There is nothing to be gained from trying to make excuses for either of them. And it's not like Jacob's father and grandfather were models of virtue, either, as they passed off their wives as sisters in order to save their own necks. Reading these stories for the moral virtues of the main characters, like one might read a fable, is a misreading.

!!!!!! This is so real and honest- and it's so rare to see people talking about bible "heroes" in this way. Love it.

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Conclusion

This book presents biblical scholars' view of what the writer of Genesis was intending to say. That's unique because there are a lot of things that biblical scholars know about the bible, that good evangelicals who believe in "biblical inerrancy" aren't allowed to know about, and because this book only talks about what the writer meant, and does NOT say anything about reading the bible to find truth or to find lessons that are meaningful to our lives as modern Christians. It has made me realize how much those assumptions- that the bible is true and meaningful to our lives now- distort our understanding of the bible, causing us to read things into the story which totally aren't there, and to ignore what the writers were actually saying.

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Posts about "Genesis for Normal People":

"Genesis for Normal People": Separating "what the writer meant" from "what is true" and "what it means for us"
God Made the Firmament 
When the Bible is Racist

Related:

No One Can Take The Bible From Me 

The Worst Bible Story 

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" (book review) 

Children's Bibles and the 2 Creation Stories

Womanist Midrash 

"Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles" (I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Doctors urged to treat pain for IUD insertion and other procedures (May 20) Hey, this is great. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is now saying that doctors need to inform patients about the possible pain of procedures like IUD insertion, and give patients options about anesthesia/ pain management. I'm all for that. Informed consent in a medical setting.

2. The Chicago Sun-Times Published an AI-Generated Summer Reading List Full of Fake Books — And This is Just the Beginning (May 20) "Let's connect the dots here. Media company cuts 20% of its staff, including experienced editors. Two months later, AI-generated nonsense makes it into print without anyone catching it. Are we really surprised?"

3. Gatsby’s Secret (April 7, via) "The more Thompson read, the more convinced he became that Gatsby was about a man “passing” for white."

4. Supreme Court sidesteps religious charter school question for now on 4-4 deadlock (May 22) "No religious charter schools. For now."

5. No more pennies: In big change, Treasury will stop minting them (May 22) "The Treasury Department has placed its last order for blank pennies and plans to stop minting the one-cent coins as soon as that's exhausted."

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Political cartoon that shows the White House (with a flag that says "King Donald") with a sign out front that says "Please wipe your feet!" pointing to the Constitution laying on the ground. Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

We've got a lot of links today. If it's too stressful, you don't have to read all of them, but here is an important action item: Contact your senators and tell them to vote no on the Republican budget bill.

1. Supreme Court says Trump can strip protected status for Venezuelans for now (May 19) "'From what we can tell, this is the single largest action in modern American history, stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status,' Ahilan Arulanantham, the co-director for Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, and one of the lawyers representing the Venezuelans, told reporters Monday."

2. DHS secretary misstates meaning of habeas corpus under Senate scrutiny (May 20) "Responding, Senator Hassan corrected the secretary, stating, 'Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.'"

3. Judge says Trump administration violated court order on third-country deportations (May 21) "'No meaningful opportunity at all was provided to him to express a fear of being sent to South Sudan,' Ryan said."

And an update on that: White House agrees to keep migrants in Djibouti for now, blasts federal judge's ruling (May 22)

In this specific case, the immigrants being deported actually have committed serious crimes. I think people have a tendency to think "well why does it matter if they're sent to some random other country, since they are violent criminals?" No, not cool- if people commit crimes, you sentence them according to what the law says. We have laws for this! The government can't just make up whatever punishment they want.

4. Charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver spark backlash after incident with ICE agents (May 21) "'This administration will never stop me from working for the people in our district and standing up for what is right. I am thankful for the outpouring of support I have received and I look forward to the truth being laid out clearly in court,' she added."

5. U.S. sends 68 migrants back to Honduras and Colombia in first voluntary deportation (May 20) 

6. These students protested the Gaza war. Trump's deportation threat didn't silence them (May 21) "'All of us international students, we had this thought of, 'what if it was me?'' she said of her reaction to the first few students that ICE agents arrested. 'Students that were higher risk, they all started to talk to their lawyers and make arrangements for if that were to happen.'"

7. Alliance Defending Freedom Sues Minnesota To Mandate Trans Discrimination (May 22) "While the immediate impact would be limited to Minnesota, an appeal could escalate the case to higher courts—and if the Supreme Court takes it up, this fringe legal theory could become the basis for mandating anti-trans discrimination in schools nationwide, from bathroom bans to sports bans and more."

8. These Are Not My Thoughts On Banning GAC (May 22) [content note: violence against intersex children] "So when the GOP includes intersex exceptions to genital reconstruction laws that ban gender affirming care for trans kids, This is what they’re preserving. Not care. Not concern. Not empathy. They are preserving the right of parents to rip apart children’s bodies with pliers, and the right of doctors to support them in their demented, evil efforts."

9. Trump administration revokes Harvard's ability to enroll international students (May 22) Holy crap. 

10. Lawsuit challenges USDA demand for food stamp data as some states prepare to comply (May 22) "'If you're trying to design a public benefits program that supports the most vulnerable people and makes sure that nobody in our country goes hungry, this is obviously not the way to do it,' said Ami Fields-Meyer, a senior fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University specializing in the intersection between civil liberties and technology, and a former senior policy adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris. 'But if you're trying to integrate critical assistance into a machinery for hunting immigrants and breaking up families and deporting people without due process — this is exactly how you do it.'"

11. Educators fear their homeless students could become a target for Trump cuts (May 22) "Amid all the moves, one thing has been constant for Dayana: her school. That's because a federal law, known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, allows students like her to stay in their school even when their housing takes them far from where they originally enrolled."

"The Case for Open Borders": 911 calls in the desert

Desert. Image source.

I recently published my review of the book "The Case for Open Borders" by John Washington. I also want to share some quotes from the book. Here's a section from pages 7-8:

In Southern Arizona, humanitarian organizations have extensively documented emergency services' consistently disparate responses between presumed citizens and noncitizens who make 9-1-1 calls when they are lost in the borderland wilderness. When those calling are presumed to be citizens, rescue teams across multiple agencies are summoned, mobilized, and deployed, with a nearly 100 percent rescue success rate. With just a couple vague landmarks to guide their search, helicopters, quads, and the cavalry will come out to search for distressed citizens. When presumed noncitizens call, they get transferred from the sheriff's office to the Border Patrol, who might patch them to the next county over, which then patches them back to the sheriff in a potentially deadly cycle of telephonic handwashing. No summoning, no mobilization, no deployment. No rescue.

In Arizona, it is illegal to drive a distressed border crosser to the hospital. A recently proposed bill in Florida would make driving an undocumented immigrant anywhere punishable by up to five years in prison.

These are just a few examples of how migrants are marginalized into the corners of rightlessness and lawlessness: fewer rights, no vote, little safety, no home. Borders in full effect.

A political system that implements different laws for different groups of people is, by definition, a system of apartheid.

I'm trying to find a source for the claim "In Arizona, it is illegal to drive a distressed border crosser to the hospital" - there's a law called 13-2929 which is related to this but doesn't quite spell it out that explicitly. I'm guessing that this is a matter of how it gets interpreted- maybe there are cases where people have actually gotten in legal trouble for giving undocumented immigrants a ride somewhere, because of this law. But also, maybe the law could be interpreted to say that's not what it meant.

At any rate, though, I believe we have a moral obligation to help people who need help, and it's ridiculous that there are laws that restrict this normal human behavior of helping people who need help, because of some imaginary lines.

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EDIT: Here's an insightful comment from venatrixlunaris on Pillowfort:

Afaik (I am in Arizona) it’s not so much that driving an undocumented immigrant to the hospital is illegal, more that having an undocumented immigrant in your car when you pass a checkpoint is illegal because that makes you human trafficking and/or aiding and abetting unlawful entry. “I’m not helping them cross the border, they already crossed the border, I’m just driving them to the hospital” was the argument of some No More Deaths volunteers, which is an organization that provides water and medical aid to undocumented immigrants in the desert. Border Patrol did not accept that argument and arrested them for transporting migrants. There was a huge outcry and the judge in the trial ultimately dismissed the charges, though. So they didn’t actually end up going to jail for it. I bet that’s what the book is referring to though.

But yeah, it’s unbelievably fucked up what they’ll do to people who are trying to help undocumented immigrants. 

The Bible and Polygamy

Lego scene of Leah telling Jacob to have sex with her slave Zilpah. From the Brick Testament.

[content note: In the world where the bible was written, there wasn't really a concept that women should have a choice over whom they married and/or had sex with. A lot of what is discussed in this blog post is not really consensual- or rather, it's hard to say, because they didn't have the concept of consent.]

In my post The Bible and "Purity", I presented the idea that, contrary to what I had been taught in purity culture, it is *not* true that the bible teaches it's a sin to have sex outside of monogamous hetero marriage and that this rule is the same for both men and women. Instead, what we see in the Old Testament can be better explained like so:

Basically, it goes like this: A girl who's in a good family, with a father who can protect her and have high standards about whom she's going to marry- she is a pure girl. On the other hand, there are plenty of girls and women whom anyone can have sex with, and nobody cares. Slaves, sex workers, girls who don't have their father protecting them, prisoners of war, etc. 

So don't think of sex as being "1 man + 1 woman." It's either "1 man + 1 pure woman" or "1 man + 1 impure woman." 

If she's an impure woman, well, whatever, a man can have sex with as many impure woman as he wants, and why should anyone judge him for that? (Some people would say it's good and normal for a man to be sexually experienced in this way.) Even if he's married, he can still have sex with slaves and sex workers, whatever.

But if she's a pure woman, oh gosh, well a man might actually get in trouble for that- watch out for her father. That would actually be a serious thing, to have unmarried sex with a pure woman. But, still you can't judge the man as harshly as the woman because maybe it's just an honest mistake and he didn't know which kind she was.

In the ancient world portrayed in "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent," women were treated better if they were in the "pure" group rather than the "impure" group, but most of the time they didn't have much control over that. Try as hard as you can to stay as one of the "pure" ones, because we all know it's totally fine for men to rape the "impure" ones, that's just the way it is.

Here's the follow-up post about polygamy.

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There's a lot of polygamy in the bible. A lot of male bible heroes who have multiple wives and "concubines."

The way I've always heard Christians talk about polygamy in the bible was like this: Yes, there is a lot of polygamy in the bible, but it's always portrayed as a bad thing. The bible always shows that it leads to problems, like a man unfairly favoring one wife over the others, the rival wives being jealous, all kinds of family drama. Yes, there is polygamy in the bible, but it's OBVIOUS that the bible is teaching us that God doesn't want it to be that way. In the beginning, God made Adam and Eve- marriage is supposed to be 1 man and 1 woman. Even though many many people in the bible did not follow God's plan for marriage, it's clear that the bible portrays that as a bad thing. It's clear that the bible is teaching that polygamy is a sin.

I disagree with this. I do NOT interpret the bible as consistently portraying polygamy as a bad thing. In ancient times, people viewed it as a positive thing for a man to have multiple wives- it was a sign that he was rich and successful. And some of the biblical writers also thought this way- there are bible passages about a man having multiple wives which make a lot more sense if you read them with the assumption that this was a sign of success rather than a sin. 

There are many many bible stories that show problems caused by polygamy. Even so, I don't read these as meaning that the biblical writers believed the entire concept of polygamy was always bad, and no one should ever do it. In some cases, the bible portrays the problems as not necessarily being caused by polygamy itself, but by other issues. And in other cases, there are aspects of the situation which are portrayed positively- I read this as saying that even though there are some common pitfalls you have to watch out for, it doesn't mean the whole thing is bad and wrong.

And, when the bible gives rules related to polygamy, it never comes right out and says "polygamy is a sin, don't do it." It gives rules for how a man should treat his wives fairly if he has multiple wives. And there are certain circumstances where the bible commands that a man should not have many wives- but this only applies to men in those circumstances, not all men.

Buckle up, I have receipts. We're going to look at polygamy in the bible, and we're going to see that it's NOT consistently portrayed as a bad thing.

I hope you woke up this morning and said, "I want to read 10,000 words about polygamy in the bible."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. We Need to Remember Problems We Solved (May 14, via) "The pesticide DDT caused birds that eat fish that eat bugs to have thin eggshells, and the birds’ nests failed. It took a lot of science and journalism and public outrage, but we banned DDT and the eagles are back."

2. Famine imminent in Gaza if Israel doesn’t lift blockade, hunger monitor warns (May 12, via) "'Families in Gaza are starving while the food they need is sitting at the border,' said Cindy McCain, executive director of the WFP."

3. Quigley's Village Preview - Cooperation Yeah this is the song "Build It" from a Christian children's video series I used to watch 30-some years ago and it's very catchy, I like it.

4. Help spread the word about We Hunted the Mammoth! (May 12) The blog "We Hunted the Mammoth" took a break for a few months but now it's back to regular posting.

5. ‘We tried to save those kids’: Texas doctor watched children die of measles. Now it’s back in Texas (May 14) About a doctor's experience in the 1960's in Chile, treating kids who had measles- and it was so bad. The good news is, we have a vaccine for measles now. Everyone, vaccinate your kids.

6. Texas Bans Being Different Around Children (May 13) From the Onion (parody news site)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Capitol Police arrest 26 as Medicaid activists interrupt committee (May 13) "'I think hopefully everyone understands that these demonstrations, these people feel very strongly because they know they’re losing their health care and the cruelty that comes from the Republican proposal,' Pallone said."

2. Georgetown researcher released from immigration detention on federal judge's order (May 14) "Suri, who was never charged with a crime, was detained at the Texas facility for two months, following his arrest by masked federal agents after he returned to his Virginia home on March 17."

3. RFK Jr. says people shouldn't take his medical advice when asked about vaccines at hearing (May 14) Okay first of all, I agree with all the witty people on the internet who said "wow I agree with RFK Jr on something!"

Second of all, what is the mindset behind "don't take advice from me"? It feels like he's trying to create this atmosphere where everyone can have their own opinion on vaccines and/or whatever kind of pseudo-scientific crap is being promoted, and that's fine, there are no right answers, everyone's opinion is equally valid. Uh, that is very much NOT how reality works. Talking about these real scientific facts with an air of 'well we can't possibly know one way or the other' is really harmful.

4. Trump Asks the Supreme Court for a “Catch Me if You Can” System of Justice (May 16) "'Your argument seems to turn our justice system, in my view at least, into a ‘catch me if you can’ kind of regime from the standpoint of the executive, where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights,' Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told Solicitor General John Sauer. 'I don’t understand how that is remotely consistent with the rule of law.'"

So the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the birthright citizenship executive order. But the weird thing is, they're not talking about birthright citizenship itself- the felon's executive order is so blatantly unconstitutional that no one is even trying to discuss that. Instead, the felon's lawyers are making this about whether courts can issue universal injunctions to block an executive order from being applied nationwide. Their argument is that the courts can't do that- they can only say the executive order doesn't apply to the people who are part of the specific case before the court. 

So their argument is, the president can issue illegal unconstitutional orders that apply to everyone, but courts (except the Supreme Court) can't put a stop to those orders which applies to everyone.

5. Justice for Kseniia Petrova (May 16) "I say “political prisoners” because that is precisely what they’ve now become. Petrova, Abrego García, and others are being held for purely political reasons, by or at the request of the U.S. government. It’s not because they’ve committed any actual crimes or are in any way deserving of the treatment they are receiving. Rather, it’s because the administration wants to telegraph strength and cruelty, just like any other fascist regime."

6. SCOTUS, in a 7-2 vote, blocks AEA removals from northern Texas during litigation (May 17) "'Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,' the court stated bluntly." Good news.

7. Turning Qatari 747 into Air Force One could cost $1 billion and take years, experts say (May 14) "The Qatari jumbo jet would have to be effectively dismantled, part by part, to ensure there were no listening devices, spyware or other security vulnerabilities that could allow foreign powers to eavesdrop on the president’s plane." Wow this sounds like a terrible idea.

8. The Video of Rumeysa Ozturk Being Detained by ICE Was Publicized By a Community Defense Network (April 30) "The hotline team dispatched “verifiers” in Somerville — people trained to verify hotline calls and social media rumors of ICE’s presence in a given area — who arrived within five minutes. They met with the caller, who was unsure who had taken Ozturk. The volunteers began knocking on doors and talking to neighbors, trying to find out if anyone might have information on what had happened, and also to calm any panic by giving out information about the hotline. A neighbor turned over the video, reportedly captured by a home security camera, that has now been seen by millions."

Also from Teen Vogue: Know Your Rights: Here's How to Defend Immigrants Against the Most Common ICE Tactics and Unconstitutional Actions (March 6) A video series about knowing your rights, and what to do if ICE agents come to your home.

9. Where's Plumpy'Nut? A lifesaving food for malnourished kids is caught up in U.S. cuts (April 25) I heard about "Plumpy'Nut" years ago- I'm glad to find out it's really effective for treating kids with severe malnutrition. Unfortunately, Elon Musk.

Dog Hotels and Poverty Existing at the Same Time

Person and dog getting their picture taken in a cute Valentine's Day photo frame. From the linked article.

I read this article from NPR, Luxury dog hotels give some people pause amid the inequality of South Africa (wait, has the title been changed? now it's "Where luxury dog hotels are all the rage, but half the humans live in poverty"), by Tommy Trenchard, and I want to talk about it.

It's about luxury dog hotels in Cape Town, South Africa. The article highlights the contrast between the nice time these dogs are having, and the poverty in Cape Town:

At the same time, more than half of the population lives below the government's "upper bound poverty line" — the level at which people can afford adequate food, clothing and other basic necessities. And huge parts of the city struggle with high unemployment, rampant violent crime and a lack of adequate housing and reliable services.

The article describes the fancy services that the dogs get at the dog hotels, and some of it is quite over-the-top, like dog weddings. Doesn't it seem like there's something wrong with that happening in a place where such a huge proportion of people live in poverty? Why are rich people's dogs getting all these nice things, when there are homeless people who don't even have enough food to eat?

What I want to say is, the article seems to be implying that the customers who bring their dogs to the dog hotels are doing something wrong. Or the owners of the dog hotel businesses are doing something wrong. I don't think this framing is right- I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with being a customer or employer in the dog hotel industry while people live in crushing poverty geographically close to you. 

How close do they have to be, exactly, for it to be immoral? Why is that article talking about this like well-off people in South Africa are the ones who should feel guilty about this- aren't the rest of us well-off people outside of South Africa also living nice lives while poverty exists in Cape Town? I guess we're far enough away that we're not morally obligated to feel bad about it? This framing is all wrong. It reads like the readers are supposed to think "Well, *I* live in the US [or whatever "first world country"], so it's fine for me to send my dog to a nice dog hotel. But if I lived in South Africa, it would be morally wrong for me to do the exact same thing."

The fact that luxury dog hotels and extreme poverty both exist shows that something is wrong with society. Something is very wrong. But it's not about an individual dog owner's choice to send their dog there- they are not doing anything wrong. This is about society.

The article says that many of the dog owners who send their dogs to the hotel work full-time jobs, and they don't want to leave their dogs shut in at home all day. (I suspect that only a small proportion of the customers are paying the extra money for the fancy luxury stuff that the article describes in so much detail.) Well, yeah, that makes sense. If you have a dog, and it's not good for the dog to be alone at home all day, and you have enough money to send the dog to a dog hotel, then why not? You should totally do it. There's nothing wrong with that.

But also, you should donate money to help people. If you're in a good position financially, you should donate an amount of money that's (at the very least) in the ballpark of what you spend for yourself for things you like but don't really need. I've talked about this on the blog before- my approach is to make a plan once a year about how much money I want to donate during the year. Make a deliberate choice. I think a lot of people donate haphazardly if they see some charity ad that makes them feel bad- if you are financially comfortable, you should do better than that. 

So for these individual dog owners, they're not going to help anyone by feeling guilty about having access to a dog hotel. It doesn't help anyone, even if they feel so guilty they stop sending their dog there. What can actually help is donating money. Really what's needed is changes at the societal level- but you as an individual can't really do that- but at least you can donate money. But feeling bad about your dog doesn't help anyone. How about doing both- send your dog to the hotel, and also donate a sizable amount of money to help people?

I don't think you're morally obligated to give up everything you possibly can, and donate all your money except the bare minimum. I don't think it's workable to live that way. I think you should look at the things you typically spend money on, and think about which ones give you more or less value. For example, something costs you some amount of money and makes you really happy, and something else costs the same amount but doesn't really do much for your happiness- maybe stop spending money on the one that doesn't make you as happy. No need to give up both of them though- I don't think it's workable to live that way.

The dog hotel is an indication that something is wrong with society. But the dog hotel isn't the thing that's wrong, in and of itself. If you want to avail yourself of the services offered by the dog hotel, there's nothing wrong with that. Either way, you still have to live in a society that has something terribly wrong with it. 

(Either way, I'm sure you can find something to make yourself feel guilty about.)

I like this quote, from the end of the article:

"We can't be prioritizing the 5% over the 95%," says Luyanda Mtamzeli, of the legal non-profit Ndifuna Ukwazi, which campaigns against inequality and the lack of affordable housing in Cape Town. "You've got a huge number of people who need accommodation in the city, and then you've got the 5% of the population who need luxury hotels for their dogs. This whole situation underscores the lack of genuine political will to tackle the structural and deep-seated inequality that persists in Cape Town."

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I think the reason this article rubbed me the wrong way is because of my experiences with the different ways one can make oneself feel bad for having money and privilege when poverty also exists in this world. 

One way of looking at it is, I could have stayed in the US and gotten a job that pays much more than the job I have here in China. But I didn't want to do that because there's a ... there's a discomfort in the experience of things being easy, having enough money, being in the majority culture, but also knowing that other people in the world are living in extreme poverty- knowing that's real, but it's so disconnected from your life. It feels wrong, to live in a way that you know is not consistent with the actual reality of the average person in this world. Like you're in a bubble. Like the morally correct thing to do is leave all that behind and go live somewhere that Americans think is a "third world country."

(Which is not the real reason I moved to China, but it is a lens that has been relevant to my thinking.)

But then, you move, and life still goes on. I'm still myself, I still have a degree in engineering and haven't had any problems with having enough money to live my life. Life is still as real and complex. I have an office job and I make more money than what the average person in Shanghai makes. It's not enough for really pricy stuff that I hear about some Chinese and/or international people spending money on, like buying a home or sending their kids to international schools, but it's much higher than the average person in Shanghai. I'm still in a bubble.

And if you're American and you like dogs, then you move to South Africa, you're still a person who likes dogs, who has experience having a pet dog. You're still that person, so you get a dog. (There's nothing wrong with being that person! Everyone's life is complicated and full of individual experiences like that.) And something that is normal in the US- sending your dog to a boarding or dog-walking service when you're at work- if you do the exact same thing in South Africa, suddenly it's this ethically-questionable thing, because you're geographically closer to poverty than you used to be?

(But, note that probably most customers for the dog hotel are South African, rather than being international people who moved there from other countries.)

So, in other words, you can feel bad for living far away from poverty, and also, you can feel bad for living close to poverty.

I don't think this "feeling bad" helps anyone at all. What really needs to happen is for society to change, so that everyone can get their basic needs met. To whatever extent we can advocate for that, or donate money to charities that are helping poor people, let's do it. But you can still buy nice things for yourself and your dog sometimes.

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Related:

My Weird Hangups About Charity

"The Case For Open Borders" (book review)

I recently read The Case for Open Borders by John Washington. Here's my review of it.

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My expectations before reading it

I'm an immigrant in China. I'm American; I moved to China because I wanted to. I later found out that other people can't just move to another country because they want to. Furthermore, they can't even move to another country when they need to, when their home country is not safe. I find this mind-boggling, staggeringly unfair. Everyone should be allowed to live in whatever country they want. *I* can live in whatever country I want, because I'm American- yeah there's bureaucracy to deal with, and you should do the work of learning the language, etc- but it's doable. It's hard work, but no government ever stood in my way and said "no, you just can't." I can't get over the fact that for millions of people in this world, they don't have opportunities like that. They just don't. This is so wrong.

Still, I thought, there are practical reasons why countries can't just let everyone in. Sure. My position was always, the US should let in WAY more immigrants, but I wasn't so extreme as to say we should totally open the borders. We should strive toward that, as much as we can, but sure I understand if it's not practical to literally open the borders. (And I don't have an opinion on what other countries should do with their immigration policies- I don't think it's my place to say anything there. I mean, lol, I might have things to say about the aspects of China's immigration bureaucracy that affect me, but beyond that, I don't want to tell other countries what to do.)

So when I heard about this book, "The Case for Open Borders," I was very excited! I always thought, well hey let's be practical, we want to help immigrants but we can't let an unlimited number of immigrants in. But what's this, there's a case to be made that we can???? Oh, I want to hear about that! This is great news!

At the same time, the term "open borders" is a politically-charged scare tactic. You can find lots of conservatives saying things like "Joe Biden totally opened the borders and millions of dangerous migrants streamed into our country" (which is not true). No shortage of people claiming the borders are already open, and that this is a horrible scary thing.

In the current state of US politics, we're not anywhere close to having a movement of people embracing the term "open borders" and advocating for that. But wow, wouldn't it be amazing if there was? I hope a lot of people read this book and start thinking in that direction.

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Borders are made up

The book talks a lot about colonialism- how powerful nations invaded other people's land and just declared that the land belongs to them, and drew lines to say where the borders would be. The way that colonial powers very much did *not* respect indigenous people's claim to their land- and then immediately turned around and drew new borders and acted like it was outrageous to suggest that migrants can cross those borders.

The book talks about cases throughout history where a powerful country moved its border a little bit, for various reasons- like Australia deciding that Christmas Island wasn't *really* Australian territory. You see, if it counted as *really* Australian national territory, then that would mean if migrants stepped foot there, the Australian government would be legally required to consider their asylum claims. If you do some creative stuff with how you define the border, you can just put the migrants in prison indefinitely, instead.

Borders are made up, and they are changed all the time when it suits the people in power to do so. (Look at how the felon makes such a big deal about migrants "invading" the US, but at the same time, he wants to take over Greenland and/or Panama and/or Canada.) So let's not treat this like borders are some kind of *absolute* thing, like crossing them without authorization is objectively wrong to do. No, the rules about borders are made by people in power, for their own reasons, and can be changed just as easily.

To treat someone as a completely different type of person- as an illegal immigrant with no rights- just because of some imaginary line- it's immoral. It's just straight-up immoral. In the southern US, there are literally laws against helping people who have crossed the border illegally. Really. You can get in trouble for giving someone a ride. Because of an imaginary line that someone made up.

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Borders are violent

All over the world, people die because of closed borders. Really. Borders are violent. At the extreme end, you have borders with actual armed guards who shoot anyone who crosses. But borders can kill in other ways too- the book tells the story of an 18-month-old girl, Iman Leila, who got sick because of the cold in a refugee camp for Syrians who were not allowed to cross the border into Turkey- and she died because her parents couldn't get medical care for her. Migrants die crossing the desert in Africa to try to reach the Mediterranean. Migrants drown when trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe. In the US, migrants die in the desert near the US-Mexico border. Adding more border security doesn't stop people from attempting to cross, it just makes it more dangerous for them- and more people die.

And yet, people continue to migrate. Because if they stayed in their home countries, they could die. When the situation is that bad in their home countries, there's no way you can stop them from trying. You can only make it more dangerous. More deadly.

Before I read this book, I thought "well it's not practical to literally have open borders" but now I'm thinking... any amount of restriction on crossing the border means people will die. How can you say what's a "practical" level of migrant death? Maybe it's not actually possible to make a case to be "reasonable" and "practical" and only let some limited number of people in.

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Borders are closed for poor people but open for capitalism

Companies do business across borders all the time. Companies outsource their factories, so they can manufacture their products in countries where wages are lower, and then sell them in countries where customers will pay higher prices. Actually, since poor workers are not allowed to get the benefits of crossing the border, big companies are able to exploit people on both sides. 

Why is capital allowed to flow freely across borders, but people are not? (Or, more specifically, rich people are allowed, but poor people are not.)

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Climate change

One of the big factors forcing people to leave their home countries is climate change. Some places in the world are becoming uninhabitable.

Rich countries are polluting the world and causing climate change, and then blocking climate refugees from entering. The book had some statistics about how the US spends so much money on border security- so much more than the amount of money spent on fighting against climate change. Rich countries like the US have a moral obligation to accept refugees from countries which are disproportionately affected by the climate change that we are causing.

Similarly, when the US causes political instability in other countries, and then migrants need to flee those countries, the US has a moral obligation to allow them to enter.

This is all connected. This is our problem.

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The economy

"The Case for Open Borders" has statistics about how immigrants help the economy. Immigration increases GDP and creates more jobs for citizen workers too. It's very common for illegal immigrants to pay taxes but not receive any government benefits (which is really not fair to them- but we bring this up to refute the conservative talking point that illegal immigrants are taking something away from US taxpayers).

Yes, there have been some cases where some subgroups of citizen workers saw their average wages decrease as a result of immigration. I think that we should care about this problem, and give extra help to people who are affected in this way. It doesn't mean we should ban immigrants from coming. Rich people have framed this like it's a zero-sum game, like immigrants and citizens are competing with each other for jobs and wages- when the reality is, the US has enough money to make sure all of them can have a good life. The rich people are to blame- not the immigrants.

(Also, there are a lot of numbers thrown around in this book, for how much GDP would increase if the borders were totally open, but I don't really believe them, because this hasn't been done in the real world in modern times- these are just extrapolations from smaller cases. I don't think we can be sure about how exactly it would scale.)

And also, I know people are afraid of how immigration will change their communities. But you know what else changes communities? When a company closes a factory in a small town, and outsources all the jobs to another country. This is a much worse change, and much faster than the ways that immigration changes a town- and yet nobody's turning it into a big political thing. Hmm.

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I'm a bit skeptical of the book's claim that all countries should just open their borders and everything will be great

"The Case for Open Borders" says that if a country totally opens the border, it's a win all around. The country will no longer have to spend millions of dollars on militarizing the border, so they can use that money for other things which will actually benefit society. And, when immigrants enter, they will help the economy. And, this is great for the immigrants themselves. It's so easy! All this stuff that governments are doing, working so hard to try to keep people out (even though that's impossible)- well, just stop it! And then everything will be wonderful.

I'm not sure about this- are there really no downsides? There must be some downsides. I mean, I agree that overall it would be a good thing, but isn't it a little naive to portray it as such a perfect solution for everyone?

I found myself asking, "Who benefits from restrictions on immigration?" Well, politicians who tell stories about the scary immigrants "invading our country"- getting their voters all scared, and using this to get power. If people decide that open borders are better, then those politicians will lose power. Is that it? Is that the only way that people "benefit" from closed borders? Is this really what's driving all the money spent on border control, and all the violence towards immigrants who are trying to enter- it's solely to benefit politicians who use fear and prejudice to get power? It doesn't benefit society in any actual ways?

... Yeah I can't really think of any.

But another thing... years and years ago, in the US, I didn't like interacting with immigrants because it's awkward and embarrassing when I can't understand what they're saying to me, or when they can't understand what I'm saying to them. I get that that's an uncomfortable situation to be in. If you live in a place where everyone speaks English well and is culturally similar to you, and then you happen to meet someone who is very different and you have trouble understanding each other, I get how that would feel like a bad experience that people would want to avoid. 

The thing is, though, for you in the majority culture, it's something that happens once in a blue moon and you try to avoid it, but for immigrants, it's every single interaction they have. Just going around doing the normal things you need to do to live, every interaction will have misunderstandings and confusion and possibly have people avoiding you because they don't want the embarrassment of that kind of interaction. When you go to buy groceries, when you open a bank account, when you rent an apartment, when you go to a job interview, when you go to the doctor- if you're the immigrant, you'll have those weird misunderstandings all the time, it's unavoidable. 

I say this as a white person who learned Chinese and lives in China. You just have to learn to not take these things too seriously. To laugh at yourself. Obviously learning a new language, you're going to make mistakes, so just laugh at yourself and move on from it when that happens.

And back then, before I became an immigrant myself, I think I was too focused on my own feelings about not understanding people's accents. Fearing that people would think I was doing something wrong, if I misunderstood and said the wrong thing, and being so scared of that, that I didn't want to try at all. But this misses the point. The thing that matters isn't whether the majority-culture person is judged for making mistakes and should feel bad for that. What matters is the immigrant who's going about their day and maybe needs to ask for help with something. Even if you're not able to help because you can't understand what they're saying, you should have enough empathy to at least see that they need help and hope they can get their problem solved, rather than just thinking about how they caused you the embarrassment of not being able to understand their accent.

Not sure if I'm explaining this well. Is this a common thing or my own weird quirk? Just want to talk about it because back then when I was uncomfortable with immigrants, that was the reason. Now I'm an immigrant myself though, so I have totally different feelings on it now.

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What an open border world would actually look like

In the book, Washington says that in some says, a world with open borders would be basically the same as the world now, but in other ways it would be completely different. 

It would be the same because people already do cross borders- it's impossible to stop this- migration is a very human thing. People already cross borders and make a life for themselves in another country, whether it's legal or not. And if there were no restrictions on immigration, it's not like every single person in a poor country is suddenly going to come to the US. It wouldn't be a huge dramatic wave like that. There are all sorts of complicated reasons that people choose to stay in their home country or to migrate.

But also, a world with open borders would be completely different, because it would mean we completely change how we think about these things. It would mean being honest about the effects of colonialism and climate change. It would mean rich countries actually have a responsibility to help the countries which have been affected by the damage we've done to them. It would mean society's priorities would completely change- instead of spending so much money on border control, we would spend that money to actually help the people who need help- wow, what a radical idea.

The book has some practical steps for what we could do to move in the direction of open borders. One idea is to let everyone enter the US, but require them to do some paperwork. And while they're waiting for their paperwork to be processed, they can go about their life in the US, they can find a job, etc. When people tell immigrants they have to "get in line" rather than entering the country illegally, perhaps they are imagining that the current system already works like this. It doesn't! Oh my goodness, it doesn't! For many immigrants, THERE IS NO LINE. 

But hey, if there actually was a line? If it was actually realistic to "get in line" and enter the US that way, that would be great. 

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No More Deaths

The author, John Washington, works with an organization called No More Deaths. This organization helps migrants who have crossed the US-Mexico border and are at risk of dying in the desert.

I'm glad organizations like that exist. If people are in the desert and they need water or medical care, we absolutely should help them. Regardless of whether they are "illegal." No human being is illegal.

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Conclusion

This is a very important book. Borders truly are violent, but most people don't realize that. It feels so straightforward and obvious to say that immigrants shouldn't be allowed to enter a country if they don't have the right documents- but no, it's actually violent to have a system like that. People die. I hope that more Americans see how bad it is, see our moral obligation to help people who need help, and advocate for allowing immigrants to enter.

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Posts with quotes from the book:

"The Case for Open Borders": 911 calls in the desert
"The Case for Open Borders": The birthright lottery 
"The Case for Open Borders": The wall is not impermeable
"The Case for Open Borders": There's nothing you can do to prevent it
"The Case for Open Borders": Remittances
"The Case for Open Borders": Keeping only some people out

Related:

That's What Radicalized Me (a post about immigration) 

On Immigration and Double Standards

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. 9 different density layers (April 18) 44-second video. Wow this is really cool! It's a science experiment about liquids with different densities, settling in layers on top of each other, and then you drop objects into it to see how far they sink.

2. Failed Soviet Venus lander Kosmos 482 crashes to Earth after 53 years in orbit (May 10) "Kosmos 482 launched toward Earth's hellishly hot sister planet in 1972, but a problem with its rocket stranded the spacecraft in an elliptical orbit around Earth. For the next 53 years, atmospheric drag pulled the probe down slowly but surely, leading to today's dramatic denouement."

3. Sell All You Have and Give to the Poor (May 3) "When Jesus then tells them that, effectively, none of the other rich and powerful are going to be persuaded to join them either, what is perplexing the disciples is how the Jesus movement can now possibly succeed."

4. Should A Woman Be Forced To Carry A Dead Fetus For Weeks? South Carolina Says 'Yes!' (May 9) "In an update, Weber explained that she was told both by the doctors and by a lawyer that the way the South Carolina law works is that, if she were to have gone to an appointment where the doctor detected a “heartbeat” (not a heartbeat), and then gone to a second appointment where they didn’t detect one, she would have been able to get the D&C or abortion pills right away. However, if you go to your first appointment and they tell you there’s no heartbeat and the fetus has been dead for three weeks, as happened with her, you have to wait two weeks to get one. If you go to the emergency room and get a more comprehensive diagnosis, they’ll shorten the waiting period to 11 days. Does this make sense? No, of course not. But it’s what happens when you have people with no medical background, who don’t know what they’re talking about, writing laws based on their own personal feelings."

5. Why Hospital Policies Matter in States That Ban Abortion (May 7) "ProPublica has documented widespread differences in how hospitals across the country have translated abortion bans into policy. Some have supported doctors in treating active miscarriages and high-risk cases with procedures technically considered abortions; others have forbidden physicians from doing so, or left them on their own to decide, with no legal backing in case of arrest."

6. The FDA approves first U.S. at-home tool as a Pap-smear alternative (May 10) !!!!!! This is great news! Instead of going to a gynecologist to have a pap smear, you can use this tool to collect your own sample and send it off to get screened for cervical cancer. Very excited to hear this, as a person who used to have vaginismus and has had a lot of problems and trauma related to gynecological exams.

(But also, I had complicated feelings reading this article, when it describes pap smears as "a procedure generations of women have dreaded and often found painful." Really? Generations of women? Since when? Then why did everyone act like *I* was the one being unreasonable when I found it to be painful and traumatic? ... I guess this is sort of a #metoo thing- it turns out that a lot of us have experienced this trauma, and we were all pressured to downplay it, and treated like something was wrong with us if we weren't able to pretend everything was fine. But it turns out that this is actually a widespread problem, and it's time to speak up about it.)

7. Pascal's Law (May 9)

8. The Moderate Case Against Transgender Sports Bans (May 12) Good article. I think for a lot of people, when they hear about the debate over trans women playing in women's sports, they imagine that the pro-trans side is saying that any man can just decide "I identify as a woman" and then immediately compete in any women's sport- and that seems really wrong. Well, no, fortunately, it doesn't work that way. That is NOT what trans people are arguing for. 

The guidelines should be different for different sports, and different for different levels (professional sports, high school teams, little kids just running around on a soccer field, etc). The sports organizations should be making their own rules based on what's reasonable and fair for their specific sport. That's not what these political trans bans are doing at all- they're just about hating trans people.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Zero ships from China are bound for California’s top ports. Officials haven’t seen that since the pandemic (May 10)

But here's an update about that: US and China agree to slash tariffs for 90 days (May 12)

2. MAGA melts down over ‘WOKE MARXIST POPE’ who is a ‘Never Trumper liberal’ (May 8) A reminder that normal human decency will have MAGAs shrieking that you are a "WOKE MARXIST"- so like, don't try to contort yourself in an effort to present yourself in a way that will not lead to them saying that- it's not possible, they're going to say that anyway.

3. Rümeysa Öztürk, Tufts student held by Ice, vows to continue legal action after jail release (May 11)

4. First, do no harm—unless you're intersex or trans (May 6, via) "Lurie, however, kept its “pause” in place even then. New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell removed references to gender-affirming care from its website—even striking puberty-pausing medication from its list of services—but still promotes surgery to reduce “enlarged” clitorises on intersex six-month-olds."

5. Alliance Defending Freedom: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (May 12) !!!! Really glad to see John Oliver doing an episode on ADF. I grew up evangelical- my family got the newsletters from Focus on the Family and ADF (back when its name was Alliance Defense Fund). I read them all. They sent us the book "The Homosexual Agenda" and I read it. I really believed all their bullshit back then.

ADF wasn't just about opposing the legalization of same-sex marriage. They opposed any kind of legal protections for LGBT people at all. Seriously. It is not just about same-sex marriage. It's about queer people existing at all.

When I was in high school in the 2000's, there was this thing called "Day of Silence" when some students who were LGBT/allies would not talk for the entire day, as a way to call attention to the struggles that LGBT people face. ADF came up with a competing event called "Day of Truth," where students could go to their school and hand out literature about how gay people need to just repress themselves and follow God's law, and God will help free them from that "lifestyle" and become straight. That's the sort of thing ADF was into.

This is why I'm so angry, whenever I talk about what evangelicals think about queer issues- because I really did believe all their bullshit propaganda back then. Gay people are one-dimensional villains twirling their mustaches and plotting to destroy marriage because they hate God and they are into disgusting obscene sex stuff. Then eventually- because of the internet- I started reading what actual gay Christians had to say, and it turns out none of that was true.

I had believed ADF because... we were Christians, right? The leaders of ADF were good Christian role models, working so hard to follow God, to live the way God wanted us to live, to fight for what was right. Just like little teenage Perfect Number. And then to find out that all of it was bullshit, that their entire schtick is spreading hateful lies about a group of people. They know it's lies. They know. Is that what Jesus would want? This is why I'm so angry, as a queer Christian.

So yeah, nowadays, every lawsuit that Republicans are involved in, trying to ban abortion or be mean to queer people or generally force Christian symbols on all parts of government/schools/society- yeah, it's ADF lawyers doing it. Of course it is.

(One thing I will say about John Oliver's take, though- about the part where the conservative cake shop guy says he won't make a cake for a gay wedding, just like he won't make a pedophile cake- and John Oliver is astonished at how bizarre of a concept it is, a pedophile cake. Uh, that's one of the huge talking points from evangelical anti-gay groups- that homosexuality is adjacent to pedophilia. That gay people are more likely to be pedophiles and therefore shouldn't be allowed near kids. That if same-sex marriage is legal, there's no reason it shouldn't also be legal to sexually abuse children- there's no actual meaningful difference that would lead society to allow same-sex marriage but draw the line at child sexual abuse. This is an extremely common anti-gay talking point. I am 0% surprised this cake guy talks about being asked to make a pedophile cake as if that's the natural thing that would happen next if he made a cake for a gay wedding.)

Oh, and in case it's not obvious: They also believe trans people don't really exist.

6. “They’re Trying to Kidnap Someone” (May 10, via) "Surrounding them are a few dozen community members who were tipped off about the ICE raid and got to it before the police did. Before I arrived, they demanded to see a warrant. The ICE agents refused to provide one, so they created a human chain, which the ICE officers eventually broke through."

7. Episcopal Church leader says helping Afrikaners over other refugees is 'unfathomable' (May 13) "And the idea that we would be somehow resettling Afrikaners at this point over other refugees, who have been vetted and waiting in camps for months or even years, is unfathomable to us."

8. Rabbi and Cantor Alums of Brown Write To the University: (April 17) "President Trump’s attack on Brown and other universities has nothing whatsoever to do with combatting antisemitism. It weaponizes antisemitism and could, ironically, evoke classical sentiments of resentment toward the Jewish community, whose name is being scapegoated as a conduit for an ulterior motive."

9. Trump administration's universal flu vaccine project puzzles scientists (May 13) At first I was like, "a universal flu vaccine? Hey, if it works, that would be great!" But then I read the whole article and now I'm like, "this sounds like a bad idea."

"'We're going back to technology that was used 40, 50 years ago or more. So this is a little surprising to me why you would go backwards to this technology? It's a very old technology,' Poland says. 'This is what influenza vaccines in the 40s, 50s and 60s looked like.'"

10. A matchmaking service with a twist: Connecting big givers to programs cut by USAID (May 13) "'I think it's clear that private philanthropy is not going to be able to fill all the gaps,' says Weiss. 'But what we can do is staunch the bleeding, keep projects functioning so that it's possible for local organizations or local governments to take them over.'"