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No, I'm serious. 😅 I mean, I know that I'm not going to convince anybody, but I want to learn what you think, because of my statement here:
"I do believe that he [Trump] will make the lives of almost everyone worse, including his own supporters, except for the direct beneficiaries of his authoritarian rule."
I genuinely think that Trump's policies are going to harm you, who seems to support him. That is why I can't quite make sense of why you're supporting him. As mentioned, I'm humanist, I do not want you to be harmed, because you are a human being, that's why I'm posting in the first place. Essentially, I'm asking myself "Why are you going to hurt yourself?" 😅 You're probably seeing this differently, and that's fine — all I can hope for here is to gain some more insight into your thoughts.
To pick on this point: The problem is that you can't voluntarily choose to not have immigration — people who are desperate enough will try to come and take very high risks. I mean, seriously, which human being in their right mind wants to risk being shot for walking over a border? You'd only risk that if your current live is worse than this risk. This means that if situation on the other side is terrible enough, you will have immigration — and then it's better policy to invest into integration, because that ameliorates follow-up problems later on. "Nah, I don't want to invest into integration because I don't want immigration in the first place" doesn't work out.
This goes against my core value, humanism. Do not inflict bodily harm other human beings, regardless of whom. (There is a subclause on what happens when other people want to inflict bodily harm on you, which I will not go into here). That is why leftists do not condone attempts at assassinating Trump and there was no Jan 6th equivalent. Do not inflict bodily harm.
Do they become "scum" voluntarily? Or is it because they are not allowed to work? If you can't work legally — you have to work illegally, because you have to buy food. The policy of not allowing immigrants to work is actually causing them to work illegally. Duh.
Genuine question: From this answer, I take it that you are not humanist? That's it's ok to inflict bodily harm on other human beings if they qualify for some criteria? Not sure I'm ok with that, but it seems to me that this a core value that I should check with you.
The thing is this: Whether "my ideology" is destroying your country or not is up to debate. But that's not what I'm really concerned about when posting here — the point that I'm genuinely concerned about that Trumps is destroying your country in a way that you don't realize.
Look, if I wanted to destroy your country, I would do it exactly like Trump — throw random nonsense at the internet, stick to the things that people believe in ("Huh, apparently they care about immigration, sure, let's go with that"), make up some policies that work or do not, I don't care, as long as they are flashy — while enriching myself and those most loyal to me. I would play the difference between what you think is a good idea ("restrict immigration") and what will improve your life in reality ("UBI", universal health care, … — I think so, up to debate), and you would never know the difference. I would use your own beliefs against you.
I'm sorry, are you saying that there is no criteria which justifies bodily harm on another human being?
OF COURSE it's OK to inflict bodily harm on other human beings if they qualify for it! That's what it means to qualify! That's what it means to have criteria!
There's a whole lot else I have problems with in your post, but that part stuck out the worst.
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How authoritarian that will be, as far as I know, remains to be seen. He certainly did not install himself as dictator for life the last time around, and life, for what I know, continued without death camps, monuments to the dictator, the construction of a new palace of Versailles, wars over petty slights, deadly purges or any of the other hallmarks of authoritarian rule. Of course he will work for the benefit of his cronies, he's a democratically elected politican after all and that's what they all do, but I don't see why one should decline to elect the crook who's likely to have desirable side-effects if all the alternatives are liable to get up to the same self-serving shenanigans while offering nothing beneficial in return.
Well, big caveat up front - I'm German, not American, and I favor Trump not as a voter and citizen but purely as a commentator, for his effects on the Culture War. So his negative impact on me is...tariffs? I'll take that. Go Trump. Every since he was elected non-leftist politicians in Germany seem to have found one or two extra vertebrae that were previously thought missing, much appreciated. Would I vote for him if he were running for Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany? Yes actually. He can't do more damage than the decades of leftst control of the narrative have already done, and if it shifts the overton window back towards a more reasonable place, then I'm happy to pay whatever price the Americans are currently about to pay for their electroal misdeed. Why am I going to hurt myself? It's a small sacrifice for a shot at a very necessary change in direction.
Should one stop to enforce the law if only because law-brakers are more persistent than the legally and politically hamstrung enforcers who are being actively sabotage by ideologically motivated agents who desire immigration at any cost? Are you in favor of private gun ownership because people will always find ways to arm themselves? The greedy and the duplicituous will always find ways to enrich themselves at the expensve of the gullible and the shortsighted, so should you make your peace with that? What if I see immigration as something that can absolutely be controlled, provided that there be a will to do it, and not a deeply entrenched culture of sabotage and subversion?
Great. Let's pick them up very gently and also very gently drop them off on the other side of a heavily fortified border. No need to do bodily harm. This is fine. Bodily harm is not my terminal value here. We can reach a practical compromise I'm sure.
There's a huge market for all kinds of under-the-table work that isn't dealing drugs. Someone who deals drugs in a first-world country isn't doing so because it's literally the only thing he can do to avoid starvation. Hell, good luck on managing to literally starve in America or Germany. I doubt you'll find anyone who succeeded at that, unless he's tooo drugged up to drag himself to the closest welfare service point.
Of course I'm not a "humanist". I'd say it's okay to inflict bodily harm for sufficiently good reasons, and outright stupid to bend yourself into a pretzel to avoid it at any cost. I'd say we can do fine without inflicting bodily harm very much most of the time, but a principled refusal to employ violence ist just an open invitation to abuse by others. See exactly what we are discussing - our refusal to enforce our own rules on the people who break them leads to the rules getting broken increasingly fragrantly, because we'd rather make excuses than risk being called "inhumane".
Is that...concern trolling, I think it's called? I strongly doubt that is actually your concern. Trump cannot possibly do more damage to Germany than progressive ideologues have done. There's not enough left by now - even were he to literally nuke it to the ground, he'd have only a small share in the country's demise. I realize very much what is going on in my country, even as I keep being told by media and many endlessly "humane" compatriots that my lying eyes deceive me.
Then you would be a smart self-serving politican and very uninspired and uneffective in destroying my country. My country is not a machine for handing out welfare.
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