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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   32021 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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I agree Mexico is the much tastier target. In my personal assessment, Mexico is more culturally compatible with the US than Canada. The US could sort out the corruption and drugs, Mexico would get a massive infusion of cash. I’d gladly support a 10 trillion dollar buyout of Mexico, and it will come with a canal, so what’s not to love?

As to your question of Trumps seriousness for acquiring Canada… he appears to be quite serious. However, approximately no one else in the US body or government holds that position including other Republicans (as evidenced by that line in his speech getting notably no applause)… and as ever, I feel obliged to apologize for the shameful treatment of your country, assuming you are Canadian.

I agree Mexico is the much tastier target. In my personal assessment, Mexico is more culturally compatible with the US than Canada.

That's an... interesting proposition. To start, how do you expect the language integration to work out? Just have dual national languages? National languages on the state level? How do you feel about Spanish slowly (or not so slowly) creeping north, possibly displacing English in the southwestern states within a few decades?

Language is extremely important for the national consciousness. And unfortunately, both the old stock and the new citizens don't exactly have a great history/culture of bilingualism. The number of people being actually fully fluent in both languages is currently extremely low (when compared to existing countries with multiple national languages).

My prediction is you'd have independence movements solely based on language, and quickly.

The number of people being actually fully fluent in both languages is currently extremely low (when compared to existing countries with multiple national languages).

Is this true? Perhaps my perspective is skewed by living in San Diego, which is roughly one-third Latino and is deeply integrated with Mexican and Mexican-American culture. I personally know dozens of people who are fully fluent (in the sense of being able to competently converse about a wide range of topics) in both Spanish and English. When it comes to second-generation Latinos in most parts of the country, or at least in the Southwest, my perception is that bilingual fluency is actually very high. Sure, a given individual would probably struggle to write a novel or interpret a dense legal document full of technical jargon, but that’s true of a great many monolingual English speakers as well.

(And in fact in some cases, native Spanish-speaking Latinos may actually be more conversant with the formal grammatical structure of written English than they are with written Spanish, since they learned Spanish as a spoken language growing up, but didn’t receive any formal education in it since they attend English-speaking American public schools.)

Is this true? Perhaps my perspective is skewed by living in San Diego

Probably, it's the location I would expect to look the best in that respect.

I personally know dozens of people who are fully fluent (in the sense of being able to competently converse about a wide range of topics) in both Spanish and English. When it comes to second-generation Latinos in most parts of the country, or at least in the Southwest, my perception is that bilingual fluency is actually very high.

In my experience, many of those people actually can't e.g. do their standard white-collar job in their second language. If you want to have a country with dual national languages (as opposed to making Mexico an imperial possession as someone suggested below), you need a lot of people who can do that well, since a lot of national/federal institutions need to be run in both languages.

At least you would need those people, traditionally. A lot of that might shortly be superfluous, since language models work well across languages and federal institutions might be a thing of the past!

But just imagine being in the Army, and working alongside an integrated Mexican auxiliary battalion - or integrating US special forces into a Mexican-led theater. You'd really want at least everybody above O-2 being bilingual. Messing around with interpreters under fire is pretty much unacceptable.

The answer here is empire; Mexico wouldn't make sense integrated into the US, but would as a semi-autonomous imperial possession. For different reasons, so would Canada (probably multiple parts). The problem is I believe the US would be very bad at actual empire (as opposed to what is often called the American empire), so I don't support this.

The US could sort out the corruption and drugs,

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh citation very much needed.

It comes with a canal

Which canal is that?

It’s a nominal canal - see Mexico's Interoceanic Corridor project.

i would guess cozetcoalcos - salina cruz. it is 200km - so not that much for modern building. Suez is 193.

Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission for 1899–1901 pp. 69–70:

The Tehuantepec summit is in the neighborhood of 700 feet above tide water. It is, moreover, a broad summit which cannot be materially lowered by any excavation of practicable dimensions. It is doubtful whether a water supply can be found for a summit level. It would require 20 locks of an average lift of nearly 35 feet on each side of the summit. The cost of these locks alone, on the basis of the estimates considered in another chapter of this report, would be about $200,000,000, while the canal would probably at least double this estimate. Attractive as the Tehuantepec route is from its geographical location, it must be discarded as impracticable for a canal.

That's 400 M$ for the Tehuantepec route, versus 190 M$ for the Nicaragua route and 180 M$ for the Panama route (pages 261–262). (To convert to 2025 dollars, multiply by 37—so, 15 G$ vs. 7.0 G$ and 6.7 G$.)

Sure, but unlike the Suez, there's mountains/hills in Tehuantepec. Hundreds of feet of elevation difference, a canal would need many dozens of locks, maybe hundreds.

I can see a high capacity rail line, but digging a canal to rival the one in Panama is madness - especially as long as the one in Panama exists, and acts as economic competition.

Transshipment costs are so massive relative to extra ocean-miles these days that I can't imagine a short rail line ever making sense. Hell, the existing canal is fairly marginal iirc.

Reminds me, I wonder if anyone has a breakdown on how east/West Coast imports from china reach the middle of the country.

Edit: well I'll be damned, Maersk at least tried it for 5 months last year during the throughput restrictions. Rail link from Balboa to Manzanillo.
So it's not as crazy an idea as I thought. But still not currently viable even in the worse case situation for canal capacity.

I can see a high capacity rail line

You'd need pretty serious port infrastructure at either end for this -- there are ports there now so it's probably feasible, but I'll bet it would be expensive if you were going to handle significant volume.

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