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If you think "We should have a dominant culture", "We should have assimilation" means "Deport Sam Seder", yeah, it's intractable. But if you hear what she's actually saying, brashly, it's that there should be no hyphenated Americans. You need to abandon your native land, your culture and your history at the door. Sam Seder needs to leave only in so far as he's incapable of dropping his distinctly Jewish identity.
And if this sounds like a horrific ask, well, that's what the White Europeans of this country have been forcefully subjected to the last 20 years with demoralization propaganda and the rewriting of our history, and the defamation of our culture.
It's not unreasonable to want born again Americans, not entriest who try to mutate the "idea" of America, or even hate the pre 1960's history and people of it.
It's not clear to me whether this is your view as well, or if you're just trying to correct the record. But if true, would you (or your interpretation of her views) welcome my immigration to the United States if I wholly identified as an American? Say I surrendered my previous citizenship, listened to the Hamilton soundtrack a couple times and passed the citizenship test? What if I weren't Christian? Or what if I weren't white? What if I supported trans children in choosing what to do with their body (which you see as sterilization and self-mutilation, I know, let's not get hung up on semantics)? Increased redistribution and welfare relative to what I expect you would want?
The above is more or less directionally true, even if I changed many details/positions. I am an immigrant, I do largely identify as American, I do love the history and origin story and culture of this country. But I also, broadly speaking at least, align with a set of values that clearly melt your brain. Yet those values are undeniably a valid set of cultural values in this country - have I assimilated, or not? Is 'abandon your native land, your culture, and your history' code for 'you need to adopt political positions that I like?'
I was correcting the record. I thought the cheap shot of "This woman doesn't want Sam Ceder, a jew, in her country" was a gross mischaracterization.
I mean, going from steel manning the woman in the video, to my own personal beliefs, I find myself nodding along with things I've heard Saagar Enjeti say. And his stance on immigration, at least at the time I heard him say this, was that America is in too much cultural turmoil for any immigration right now. He cites as the historical example that from the 20's through the 60's America had an incredibly restrictive immigration system, largely in backlash to how mass migration from other European nations was altering the make up and social contract of America. It took a solid generation or more for America to figure out who it was again, without further waves of mass migration causing even more chaos and social incohesion. It just took that long for the melting pot to melt, before American Chauvinism was destroyed by demoralization propaganda.
Like I said, I find myself nodding along to that. I think America needs 40 years to answer, for itself, what it's culture is going to be, without either side trying to import allies to tip the scales. And it needs more American Chauvinism to actually assimilate the people we already have, if that's even possible any longer. I can only imagine how much more fucked up prohibition would have been if the prohibition side began mass importing Muslims who don't drink, and the anti-prohibition side scoured the globe for alcoholics. And it's hard to imagine either approach making America better off long term, even if the short term culture war issue gets "settled".
You don't need to imagine. I can identify one very obvious example of this in US history i.e. Bleeding Kansas.
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