2rafa
2hr ago
What are you reading? In an effort to improve my German, I'm reading Zweig's 'Die Welt von Gestern', The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European. I rarely read non-fiction, but this book, which is a kind of autobiography but is really a deeply melancholy memory of the collapse of the European civilization that preceded the first world war and its aftermath, is extraordinary. If you have any interest in what Europe was like at the end of the 'long 19th century', in the belle epoque that preceded 1914, you must read it.
Zweig began his life in 1882 as a bourgeois Austrian Jew whose father had made a fortune in textiles. He became one of the most widely-translated authors of the early 20th century. He submitted the draft of this book on the eve of his suicide, in exile in Brazil, some sixty years later, when the second world war seemed like the final end, the stamping out, of the German civilization he had cherished and to which he was devoted.
The book covers the rapid and interesting developments in wealthy Austrian society in the closing decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. Zweig was well-connected; he meets Herzl as his literary editor at a newspaper, encounters Rathenau in 1922 on the eve of his assassination, petitions (successfully!) Mussolini to spare the life of a close Italian friend. He travels to America and India, but he spends most of his time in the bourgois, cosmopolitan circles of pre- and inter-war Europe, describing extensively the customs, sexual morality, education, worldview and politics of many of the people(s) he meets.
His writing about the rise of Hitler is interesting, how he was largely written off by many people in cultured Viennese circles. And his thoughts on what caused the frantic, bizarre culture deterioriation and degeneracy of postwar urban Germany and Austria, particularly after 1922, have value too. But what sticks with me is something else; Zweig killed himself out of despair (he had money and was famous and safe in exile) for Europe. For the last thirty years of his life he had seen the world he knew get worse, again and again, consistently and almost without respite. He writes about how the quality of products declined, how the train schedules worsened, the quality of everything reduces. How the masses were whipped up into rage. And then you return to the exquisite summer of 1914, where it seemed as if all of that - the nightmare of the following decades - was impossible, because things had been improving for so long.
When I looked up modern Anglophone writing about Zweig I was saddened that there had been some pathetic articles published during the Trump presidency that took his writing about fascism out of context. Zweig was largely apolitical - about politics as diverse as zionism, socialism and fascism - and Hitler himself praised and attended the performance of one of his operas in 1935. The value in his narrative is not about politics, it is about how faint the loss of peace and prosperity are, how fragile civilization is, how savage war makes men, how it empties culture, and how things can really get worse, much worse, for a very very long time before they get better.
2rafa
4hr ago
Fair enough, I just think conservatives should own up to the ways in which politicians they elected are in part responsible for the dramatic escalation in state surveillance of financial transactions and other data in search of allegedly malicious actors.
2rafa
5hr ago
This is just cons complaining about the lib version of 'noticing'. Pattern recognition applies to everyone. If they've detected specific transaction patterns highly predictive of possible mass shootings, why is it wrong to acknowledge that? Would you have the same sympathy with some Muslim garden supply business owner regularly profiled and investigated for his high-volume fertilizer purchases? I know for a fact that this kind of transaction analytics is responsible for preventing a lot of successful terrorist attacks, and I also know that conservatives don't care when it's used on their outgroup.
2rafa
6hr ago
Surely the number of people buying 3D printers is far too high to perform meaningful background checks on all of them.
2rafa
6hr ago
I thought both of them had murky alleged ties to sex work but might be mistaken.
2rafa
18hr ago
Marjorie Taylor Greene
The biography From Prostitute To President: An American Tale will be worth it.
2rafa
18hr ago
breeze right through the process to a "legal" path to permanent residency and citizenship.
The bill hands Democrats exactly what they want, and enshrines a permanent increase in "legal" unrestricted immigration forever. Doing nothing at least leaves all these people in limbo, with no path to legal status forever, and the possibility of eventual deportation
Again, you do realize all these people’s kids get passports anyway, right? Birthright citizenship renders ambiguous status, doing nothing, limbo blah blah arguments complete bullshit. Any of their children born on US soil are 100% unquestionable Americans under the law. Whether their parents do or don’t get a green card means nothing, these people (quite rightly) care about their descendants more than whether their lives in the US might be slightly easier or not.
What this bill did was allow a future GOP president to create a little more friction. It didn’t make things any easier or harder for the Dems, who can already (and have) left the fence open anyway. But it improves the selection of options a Republican might have.
2rafa
18hr ago
One, illegally allow in tens of millions of people into the United States; two, trick the (hopefully) absolute morons in the GOP to pass a "compromise bill" which allows a hostile administration to staff a army of bureaucrats which can more quickly adjudicate asylum claims under a "more strict" standard (it's really not) than one which could be adopted by executive fiat and then quickly stamp "approved" on large percentages of the illegally released people who now get automatic work permits. And it would have worked if it wasn't for that stupid Trump who is just so bad, doesn't care about immigration or the country, and opposes it because he just doesn't want Biden to get a win. And thank God for that
Literally none of this matters.
-
Almost all illegals are eventually released or make it into the interior. That was true even with Trump’s remain-in-Mexico policy because there is no wall and Trump is no closer to getting Congress to build one than he was this time in 2016. That is to say even migrants turned back eventually make it into the interior, where they’re never deported unless they commit serious violent crime and ICE arrests and deports them which of course only happens to a tiny minority of illegals migrants, and even in those cases most return illegally.
-
Because of 1 (a fundamental issue which, again, Trump has zero realistic plan to fix), the only difference between handing every migrant a green card (or, hell a passport) and not doing so is one generation. Every child of every single illegal migrant in the US born on US soil is a full citizen of the United States. That’s the trick with ‘amnesty’; it means nothing, because the demographic impact is guaranteed in any case. Birthright citizenship is the ultimate incentive for illegal immigration. Talk about “work permits” is hilarious; their sons and daughters have the same rights and privileges as you.
So, yeah. The only two things that would do “more” than this bill would be a meaningful end to most illegal inflows (impossible without transnational coast to coast impenetrable wall, and even then asylum seekers could just come legally and overstay visas if they could get them) and an end to birthright citizenship (almost certainly impossible without constitutional amendment). So this magic alternative to this bill (which again, would allow a GOP administration to take minor incremental steps to somewhat reduce inflows) does not exist. There is no plan, there never was, and Trump killed it because he didn’t want to give Biden what he felt was some kind of ‘win’, whatever the cost.
2rafa
18hr ago
what part of the bill forces a hostile administration to reduce immigration at all? the bill may as well be a sieve with all the ways a hostile administration could legally ignore and excuse explicit limits; every single section of the bill which allegedly reduces immigration is actually not mandatory and is able to be set aside under vague, undefined language, like "operational circumstances"
this bill does nothing at all to force a reduction in immigration; it still relies entirely on a friendly executive to reduce immigration, but a friendly executive could already reduce immigration right now and they have for decades under status quo laws by simply enforcing them
So to reiterate, according to your own comment the bill makes things easier for a friendly executive but doesn’t make anything easier for a hostile executive, and the GOP voted against it because…? That a hostile Dem executive could still keep the doors open is the status quo. Nothing about this bill would make anything worse from a rightist anti-immigration perspective, it would just make things the same to easier for a conservative executive.
If the Republicans were willing to support a bill that made it harder for them to control the border while allowing a hypothetical Democratic presidency to print an unlimited number of extra green cards per year the Dems would be stupid not to vote for it.
2rafa
1d ago
In fact, he doesn't need Trump to pass the border bill. If this is a great bill that Democrats are happy to have, they can pass it in the Senate and leave it to the House.
Because the left faction of the Democrats hate it and oppose it, which is why they need GOP votes in Congress? I mean this isn’t in any way new. The real question is that if this bill really does nothing and wouldn’t stop any immigration, why did Liz Warren, Bob Menendez, Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey and others vote against it?
…Markey said in a statement released after the vote. "We need meaningful pathways to settlement and citizenship, full and fair processing of protection claims, and safeguards for our DREAMers. But in this package, Republicans instead demanded and secured provisions that are contrary to American values, eviscerating due process protections for countless people seeking a better life in the United States, expanding the use of inhumane detention for asylum seekers, and funneling scores of new arrivals into rushed legal proceedings that cannot adequately or fairly assess their claims. Republicans cynically walked away when Donald Trump admitted he preferred to campaign on a broken immigration system as a political issue. I voted no because I am not only against Donald Trump, but also against hateful Trump policies."
Hmm.
The people rallied and there was an extensive campaign by the family. Netanyahu was always opposed to these deals and had written about it. But the mob won out. Even now there are rallies about accepting any price to get hostages back, it’s just that for once more people have a desire for revenge than are willing to help the enemy to do so.
2rafa
1d ago
I’ve never argued against all immigration. Only against unnecessary and troublesome immigration with deleterious long term consequences. For example, half of London’s social housing stock is occupied by people born outside the UK. By contrast I have almost never used public services and pay three times the country’s median income (at least) in taxes every year. Even then, I would think it reasonable if I and every other immigrant had no right to citizenship, ever.
So there isn’t really any hypocrisy. I’ve even advocated for affluent, high-skilled immigration from other Western countries to the US to do things like break down the AMA’s cartel on physician pay, which is currently like 4x what it is in most other developed countries. It’s disingenuous to suggest that that’s the issue people have with mass immigration.
2rafa
1d ago
Biden can deport 15 million people today? The law mitigates some percentage of the legal challenges by pro-migrant groups that would be inevitable (and will be) in any executive-led effort.
Great post. The simple truth is that unless…
- Trump wins
- The GOP get a trifecta with a very comfortable senate majority
- They abolish the filibuster
- Trump is suddenly hugely more competent at wrangling Congress
…there will be no better deal than this one. That is to say that even if Trump wins, the chance of a better border control bill is minimal at best. If this hill had passed under Trump, he would have signed it. Of course it wouldn’t, because there’s no way Democrats would vote for it in that case.
There is no way this isn’t a mega black pill. But the ultimate black pill is that it’s really all about Trump. There is no ‘national conservative’ movement. There is no ‘Trumpist’ party with a coherent, European-style nationalist policy platform. There’s a Trump personality cult with very little genuine infrastructure behind it, sitting on top of the carcass of the post-Tea Party GOP, which itself is a hollowed-out shell of what it once was even ten years ago. The fact that Trump was personally able to kill this bill is testament to the extent to which service to his personal whims and (perceived) self-interest are now the sole metric by which congressional Republicans are and wish to be judged.
There is no plan, and if there is, Trump doesn’t even seem committed to following it. Sure, I’ll still vote for him, that’s the reality of a two-party system. But no Trump voter should be under any illusions that his second term won’t be him attempting some (likely unsuccessful) crusade against those he believes have wronged him (personally) while behind the scenes very little changes.
“Buh buh buh this doesn’t deport 10/12/15 million illegals”. Yeah, and neither will anything that Donald Trump can, let alone will, accomplish in office. Moreover, if by some stroke of luck this bill had passed and Trump won and decided to become competent, it would afford him MORE power to reduce inflows and impose ZERO meaningful restrictions on additional actions by the president or congress to increase deportations.
Moreover, 50,000 additional immigration visas a year is nothing compared to the current numbers of legal and illegal immigrants, so focusing on this was especially retarded.
Few things make me seethe more than what happened with this bill. As many on the right acknowledge, immigration is the only thing that matters. It is the central issue upon which every other issue ultimately depends. Even a minor shift in the right direction, even something that delays demographic destiny by a few more years buys the right more time. Every single measure that reduces total inflows must pass. Unless, apparently, it might make it a little harder for Donald Trump to win the presidency and accomplish nothing, again.
2rafa
1d ago
Articles getting longer is a long term thing; read old newspapers from 100 years ago and a lot of news stories for smaller things were the length of tweets today, just very small box paragraphs of text.
2rafa
2d ago
A good move would be to appoint a president with absolute power under the constitution (ie to make any law except that which SCOTUS rules unconstitutional) for a single 8-year term, with Congress’ sole function being to approve a new debt ceiling every 5 years and - but only with a supermajority in both houses - to dismiss the president if necessary. A secondary mechanism could involve a supermajority of state governments doing the same. That’s enough safeguards to avoid an insane dictator while allowing for high capacity governance.
MMT covers a wide range of actual policy positions, some reasonable and some not. But in general it’s a retarded third world conspiracy that leads to stuff like Turkish and Argentine hyperinflation directed by idiotic leaders who reject any link between inflation and borrowing, not merely in theory but in practice. The unique situation the US and to a lesser extent other Anglo countries are in with regards to the effect of public borrowing on inflation is unique because of their balance of trade, foreign investment, very large service sectors and so on, just like Japan’s weird dynamic, and doesn’t prove MMT in any genuine way.
2rafa
2d ago
2rafa
2d ago
will burn New York City and DC down simultaneously
Why is that certain? This is a community that has a high rate of general crime, but is otherwise highly atomized. They have been drafted before. Most are very much apolitical. Drafting would likely only happen in the event of war with China, and they sometimes have a contentious relationship with Asians anyway.
2rafa
3d ago
Lots of this is tongue-in-cheek, however, the hinted at truth is that, beyond a basic level of fitness, you hit diminishing returns quickly save for those women who really geek out over biceps or something
This is a better stated version of what I was trying to say.
2rafa
3d ago
If he’s making $20m in a month I can’t see what’s so pressing about avoiding his kid’s birth.
2rafa
3d ago
It wasn’t even close to the same level, though. The FBI has hundreds, possibly a couple thousand people full time on Muslim extremism in the US; meanwhile they made a couple of reports and had a few agents look into the tradcaths. That’s not the same investment at all.
Again though, this is attacking the system rather than the rationale. I don’t agree with using this kind of thing to harass random gun owners, but do think this kind of analysis could help track down actual terrorists, or people undertaking illegal gain of function research or things like that. The problem is more that the entire federal government was co-opted by the enemy and the right went along with giving it the tools to do this.
More options
Context Copy link