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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   33288 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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Do you genuinely think I'm not aware of the failures of America? The fent addicts nodding off next to piles of human feces? Ghettos where everyone knows not to go, where shampoo and baby food is kept under lock? Rust Belt towns that have denizens so devoid of hope that they cling to welfare and opioid addictions?

How much of that is "3rd world imports"? Not much. A certain underclass in the country has ancestors who came over, rather unwillingly, several centuries back.

Did the Chinese, Korean and Indian immigrants, probably two or three generations in the country, who fled conditions as bad as the worst of the 3rd world today, show the same dysfunction? Did they fail to assimilate and live off the dole?

I expect to see a lot of awful things in the States. I also expect to see much more good. And of the awful I see, very little of it has anything to do with skilled immigrants. Hell, there are no end of people with kids and grandkids in the middle and upper class now who themselves came over destitute and unable to speak a word of English. Origin matters, and so does filtering.

I guess this is why we are just talking past each other. You see a dead America, corpse being picked clean and future kingdoms taking root, and think it's still a fantastic place to live. "That's it?" you think.

The only immigrants I'd want are ones who see what is become of America, and would prefer to fortify their own homeland from the rot.

There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. Those bemoaning the fall of the Roman republic would have been surprised to hear that Rome would endure for another five centuries (fourteen if we count the east) and that the height of her power and glory was yet to come. Tocqueville's America was killed by Lincoln, Lincoln's America was killed by FDR, and now FDR's America is being fed into the woodchipper by Elon Musk, but all of these struggles are orthogonal to the interests of prospective immigrants. What they care about is technological and material prosperity. Tanner Greer put it best:

Americans often think that constitutionalism, liberal democracy, and universal truths about the equality of man are the United States’ most significant gift to humankind. But from the start of the 20th century to its close, foreigners in the mold of Wang Huning have honored the United States as the land of Edison, not the land of Jefferson.

It is this America, the America that pioneered the greatest transformation the human species has experienced since foragers began farming 12,000 years ago, that so awed the young Wang Huning.

The idea that an America that is head and shoulders above every other nation in technological innovation is in any way ruined (compared to whom?) is laughable to the billions that want to move here.

I guess this is why we are just talking past each other. You see a dead America, corpse being picked clean and future kingdoms taking root, and think it's still a fantastic place to live. "That's it?" you think.

That's laughable hyperbole at best. Seriously? Do you know what a truly dysfunctional, ethnically and politically divided nation looks like? You haven't even engaged with my rebuttals, or the clear evidence that I am aware of the warts on America's ass cheeks.

The only immigrants I'd want are ones who see what is become of America, and would prefer to fortify their own homeland from the rot.

Well, you're a citizen, and I'm not, so you're entitled to that opinion. That Republic you consider a rotten corpse is still yours, provided that you can keep it. You don't even seem to want to.

I mean, you're a doctor. How would you react if summoned to a corpse squirming with maggots, and passers by went "Why aren't you trying to save it? Don't you ever care? Look, he's even still moving!" Yes, technically there is life (the maggots) that can be seen making parts of the body squirm, but the body is dead, and there is nothing to save.

A (hypothetical and not at all how real maggots work) maggot might walk by and say "Oh my god, how dare you declare them dead?! They're alive and thriving you monster." But they aren't talking about the same thing you are talking about, except to the extent it shares the same space as the thing you are talking about.

This pure rhetoric and hyperbole that is not worth addressing. I can only wish you well when you conquer your hangups and decide to move to Japan.

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