| Are you proposing that increased surveillance of mosques is to protect them? That requires a certain level of imagination given the full context of the quote: > "Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy," he added. "We’re going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago." > "We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely," Trump continued. "We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully." ---- And once again, it kind of doesn't matter. An increased focus on monitoring places of worship is monitoring people based on their religious identity. I don't know a single Christian who would argue to me that monitoring churches isn't the same thing as monitoring Christians. Mosques and churches are not abstract concepts that are divorced from the people inside of them. When you monitor an institution, you are necessarily monitoring the people inside of it, and it is reasonable for them to be concerned about the government taking an interest in their religious-identity. To argue otherwise requires someone to completely divorce religious identity from the practice of religion, and that's just not a reasonable argument to make. ---- > Details are important. Not in the context of the original statement, "ordinary people often do have something to hide, and should care about privacy." Look, whatever, you trust Trump. You shouldn't, but you do. Fine. Do you trust Biden? Do you trust the current government not to attempt to monitor you based on your vaccine status? You're fighting over the idea that "your guy" wouldn't surveil ordinary people, but this also kind of doesn't matter because your guy isn't in the Whitehouse right now, and I can guarantee you that Republicans are never going to have permanent power over the government. No party wins forever. You have as much reason as anyone else to care about personal privacy, why are you fighting over who specifically is a threat? Does it change anything about the overall privacy debate? |