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PaperclipPerfector  11d ago (text post)   33165 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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(Writing carefully here. I do have an opinion on this topic; this post is intended to be about understanding the conflict as opposed to my particular view.)

You may make better progress if you understand the other side's actual typical arguments more. Let me lay out the more common complaints I have heard:

There are some quibbles about the exact rates, and which immigrants are acceptable, but I don't think the median position is, "everyone except O-1A visas can fuck right off."

Said side sees ~all discussion along these lines as a motte-and-bailey argument:

Motte -> "unrestricted immigration prioritizing other places undesirables"
Bailey -> "restricted immigration of skilled workers we cannot get replacements for at any price"

Convince them otherwise and you'd make far more progress.

There's the issue of language barrier, but I find it non-salient.

Initial language barrier is not the issue here! Said side sees a perceived trend of immigrants that make no attempt to integrate, instead forming and maintaining foreign-language & foreign-culture clumps.

America has no shortage of land.

In much the same sense as the world has no shortage of water.

I don't think I can convince Zephr (or the median trump voter) that immigration isn't against their interests. Frankly, I agree with them that it probably is. It's just that by the same token, there's no way that they can convince me (or the median Harris voter) that immigration is against our interests. That's why I'm speaking in terms of the median american here-- or rather, of the compromise position that we get when we calculate a weighted average of every american's preferences via democracy. Some of the immigrants some of the time makes everyone unhappy, but it's worth recognizing that neither extreme is ever going to be a viable option (though of course us radicals will keep pulling on our end of the overton window.)

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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