Author Archives: SheritaClune

Calling Someone Crazy Is Not an Insult to the Mentally Ill

by SheritaClune Posted on August 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy is tired of people diagnosing Donald Trump:

What I do know is that we ought to stop casually throwing around terms like “crazy” in this campaign and our daily lives….When that language is commonplace, it becomes that much harder for those experiencing mental illness to openly seek treatment that works. It discriminates, in subtle and overt ways, and extends its reach into schools, workplaces and the health-care system, where we still don’t provide routine mental health exams. When we use that word the way we have, we perpetuate the dangerous, “separate and unequal” treatment of these illnesses, and continue to pretend that the brain isn’t part of the body.

No. Just no. There are lots of words that have both ordinary meanings as well as technical medical meanings. When I say that Donald Trump is a cancer on our society, it’s not an insult to people with leukemia. When I say that Donald Trump is stupid, it’s not an insult to the mentally retarded. And when I say that Donald Trump is crazy, it’s not an insult to people with mental illnesses.

This is the kind of thing that helps power people like Trump in the first place. Sure, a lot of people who gripe about political correctness are just upset that people get on their case these days if they call blacks lazy or Asians inscrutable or women hysterical. There’s not much we can do about this except keep fighting the good fight and wait for them to all die off.

But there are also people who aren’t especially racist or sexist, but nonetheless feel like they have to walk on eggshells around us liberals. Call someone crazy and you’re insulting the mentally ill. Talk about someone “suffering” from an illness and you get a stern lecture about not making assumptions. Ask any number of possibly dumb but innocent questions and you’re committing a microaggression. Wear a sari in a music video and you’re engaging in cultural appropriation.

This kind of hypersensitivity does little good and plenty of harm. We should focus on the big stuff and settle down about the rest of it. It won’t help us win over the racists or sexists—who we don’t need or want anyway—but it will help a lot of other people to feel like it’s not such an emotional trial to hang around liberals, watching their every word in case something new has popped up since the last time they visited. Most people, after all, are neither as plugged in to lefty culture or as hyperverbal as your average university student. Hell, even I sometimes have trouble remembering the approved language to use about things, and I get to sit at the keyboard until I figure it out. Your average schmoe talking in real time hardly has a chance.

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Calling Someone Crazy Is Not an Insult to the Mentally Ill

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Donald Trump Is Right: The GOP Primary System Is Rigged

by SheritaClune Posted on April 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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I hate to agree with Donald Trump about anything, but he’s got a point: the Republican primary process is really unfair. Just look at New York: Kasich and Cruz won 40 percent of the vote but only 4 percent of the delegates. It’s an outrage.

And it’s been that way all along. In the early contests, Trump’s opponents won 68 percent of the vote but only 38 percent of the delegates. On Super Tuesday they won 66 percent of the vote but only 57 percent of the delegates. In early March they eked out a fair result: 63 percent of the vote and 66 percent of the delegates. But on Super Tuesday II it was back to business as usual: they crushed Trump with 60 percent of the vote but won only 38 percent of the delegates.

I’m glad Trump is helping shine a media spotlight on this gross inequity—and he deserves special credit since he’s the one benefiting from it. It’s a pretty selfless act. Maybe someone will finally start paying attention to the way the Republican establishment is so obviously in the bag for Trump.

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Donald Trump Is Right: The GOP Primary System Is Rigged

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Yes, One of the California Shooters Was an Immigrant. No, Don’t Blame Refugees.

by SheritaClune Posted on December 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Syrian refugees were already bearing the brunt of American security fears after the Paris attacks. The news that one of the suspected ISIS-linked shooters in Thursday’s mass murder in San Bernardino, California, was an immigrant isn’t likely to help boost support for the process used to resettle those refugees in the United States.

But applicants for the K-1 visa that Tashfeen Malik used to enter the United States undergo different and less rigorous screening than the one refugees encounter.

Malik, a 27-year-old immigrant from Pakistan, died in a shootout with police on Thursday along with her husband, 28-year-old Syed Farook. She entered the United States in 2014 on a K-1 “fiancé visa,” which gives the soon-to-be spouses of Americans 90 days to enter the United States and get married.

The State Department told Mother Jones that K-1 applicants go through “extensive” counterterrorism screening. “The counterterrorism check draws on information from the full range of U.S. government agencies that may have relevant information, including thorough biographic and biometric screening against U.S. law enforcement and counterterrorism databases,” said Katherine Pfaff, a State Department spokeswoman.

But the department also acknowledged that the refugee process is more stringent than the K-1 application. “It’s longer in duration. It’s a more thorough vetting,” said State Department spokesman Marc Toner in a press briefing on Thursday.

The vetting process for Syrian refugees takes a minimum of 18 months. Applicants undergo multiple security screenings and in-person interviews conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, and their records are checked throughout the process against databases run by the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Obama administration officials have called it the most rigorous security screening given to anyone trying to enter the United States.

The K-1 process is much shorter. Once an applicant submits a petition to the State Department, the government collects background information from both that person and his or her fiancé in the United States, including information about their relationship and financial status, and conducts a medical exam of the applicant. When the background file is complete, the applicant is interviewed at the US embassy in her country. If all is in order, the visa can arrive within days.

That’s what happened to Khara Persad, a 31-year-old from Trinidad and Tobago who received a K-1 visa last year. She told Mother Jones the process took her and her now-husband about six months from start to finish. Both had to submit extensive documentation, including Persad’s Trinidadian police records, and Persad felt the process was stringent. “I feel like they did do their due diligence to background check everyone,” she said. US Citizenship and Immigration Services did not immediately respond to a request to detail the security procedures for K-1 applicants.

But unlike the refugee process, the screening also seemed geared toward verifying the couple’s relationship and intent to get married. After submitting the paperwork, she says, she was interviewed at the US embassy in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, in May 2014. “I did have to put my hand on something, I think, and swear that I had never done anything illegal,” she remembers. Less than a month later, she was in the United States. The couple was married last July.

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Yes, One of the California Shooters Was an Immigrant. No, Don’t Blame Refugees.

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