This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Are the rich really so attracted to the idea of cheap servants that they would see their communities destroyed? I think there are some true open border believers in the far left, and that the rest of blob is just sort of going with the flow.
The dominant theme of the post Covid period has been that incentives don't matter and we can't enforce rules on anyone. So maybe we are theoretically against open borders, but we also can't actually enforce any rules (that's mean!), so we end up with defacto open borders.
2024 will be the true Red Wave if Democrats can't get their shit figured out on immigration quick. "Biden's border crisis" has a nice ring and it also happens to be true. Biden looks weak as hell here.
This touches another one of those thoughts that would coagulate into an effort post if I had the will. I watch people believing obviously absurd and horrible things ("We should let infinite numbers of people across the border", "Trans women have no advantage in sports" while staring at a 250-pound "female" rugby player, etc.) and my conclusion, from being in a pretty Blue bubble with mostly leftist friends, is that you are underestimating both the number of true believers and the degree to which normies don't notice and don't care until their schools are actually being taken over by illegal immigrants.
Yes, a lot of lefties (and not just the "far" left, but mainstream liberals) literally cannot imagine that letting more people across the border is anything but good. It's a combination of "They are poor refugees fleeing oppression and it would be immoral to turn them back" and "We need more people who will become good productive American tax payers." Any suggestion that a lot of these people becoming criminals and/or net drags on the social welfare system? That's racism.
When I was younger, even on the left, "I support immigration but not illegal immigration, we welcome new Americans as long as they come the right way" was the mainstream position. Now that's racism and dangerous Trumpism.
And the normies who don't pay much attention except when a picture of people flooding across the borders hits the news? They vaguely understand that there are poor people who want to come here, as there always have been, and we have some sort of immigration system that's supposed to filter them, but to speak up and say that there seem to be some problems and maybe too many people are getting through would make you sound like a MAGA or something.
From talking to a number of my true blue Democrat-voting friends (but who would not describe themselves as "leftists"), yes, this is pretty much the case. Ask them if they are literally in favor of open borders and they will say no. But ask them what sort of restrictions we should have, and what measures they would consider acceptable to keep undesirables out, and the best they'll come up with is "Well, maybe not someone with a violent criminal record." (As if we have access to that information for hundreds of thousands of people coming from dozens of countries.) Like, in theory they'll allow that letting Cartel soldiers just come across the border is probably bad, but anything that resembles strict enforcement makes them cry about children in cages.
Do you have statistics to back this?
Bluntly, this is a perfect example of the obnoxious "Cite?" demand that isn't really expressing skepticism or a desire for evidence, it's just saying "I dislike your argument so I will try to force you to waste time looking up citations which I can then dismiss."
I do not believe that you actually believe that the statement "a lot (illegal immigrants) become criminals and/or net drags on the social welfare system" is false. You might disagree with me over how much "a lot" is (a number I made no effort to quantify, but let's stipulate that I implied it's large enough to be a significant problem, and you could reasonably disagree), but you don't actually disagree that it happens with measurable frequency. You are just testing me to find out if I keep bookmarks handy for my arguments, or how much time you can get me to waste Googling something.
I actually started to do this. But I'm not going to post the links (you can use Google as well as I can) because I realized that you wouldn't actually care.
(Unsurprisingly, what you will discover is that in raw numbers, it's pretty indisputable that illegal immigrants are a net loss economically. Groups that are anti-immigration highlight the raw numbers and dismiss potential long-term benefits (how many of them eventually become citizens, or produce children who become citizens and taxpayers), while groups that are pro-immigration highlight the fact that illegal immigrants aren't technically eligible for most social welfare programs, and downplay the fact that many receiving benefits either married a US citizen or have children here who then become eligible, as well as ignoring things harder to quantify like downward pressure on wages, increased presence of organized crime, etc.)
Did more searching and found this: https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-migrants-take-the-jobs-of-native-workers
It's been a while and you still haven't responded to my follow up, so I now doubt that you do have sources and am now more convinced that immigration is actually a positive for jobs and economy.
More options
Context Copy link
It takes time and effort to find good sources. If you have good resources to share, I will read them and maybe learn a thing or two about immigration in the US.
"you wouldn't actually care"
Even being pro immigration, I would want to know if immigrants are far more likely to be criminals or net negatives because that would influence the kind of policies I would want to see pursued or how I would argue.
When I google, all the top results (from Penn Wharton, from CBPP, from AIC, from NBER) say immigrants are good for local economies. I would share links except I don't know if any of them are actually good sources or not.
More options
Context Copy link
Bad faith accusation. Takes a simple request to provide evidence for inflammatory claims as a personal insult.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I tend to agree as my personal journey on the issue was pro-open borders. If we let the migrants in today then tomorrow they are more wealthy American citizens.
One thing to not is there is I believe a Milton Friedman type school of thought that illegal immigration is better than legal migration. Illegal provides a selection effect for the hungriest immigrants willing to do the work Americans don’t want to do. And from a selection effect the illegal immigrant today has more selection effect for the American characteristics (prior immigrant waves having a much harder journey so selects for entrepreneurship etc).
My journey on immigration likely went from a “Why Nation’s Fail” type mindset where the primary reasons some nations fail are bad institutions, lack of property rights, corruption etc. My guess is this is still the dominant elite view and therefore more immigration into a society with good institutions translates into a huge net positive for humanity. You then summarize into some sort of Yglesias thesis of “One Billion Americans” who I believe is considered slightly a center right writer.
The work of Garret Jones on national average IQ being the driving force of a national wealth drives my thinking much more, but George Masons Econ department sits outside elite consensus. Even at that school he can’t specifically make hbd arguments. If you want to explain why some countries always have poor institutions then you end up using Jones arguments.
In summary I completely agree it’s very tough in America to make strong anti-immigration arguments especially in elite circles. The very best you can do is find agreement that the border needs to be secure enough to limit the pace of illegal migration to allow our economy to have enough low-end work and public resources to turn migrants into American citizens.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But who is going to landscape their estates if they have to pay grubby white Americans to do it, darling?
Landscaping is actually one of the easier things to replace illegal labor in; the American elite reticence towards mass deportations goes much farther down the social ladder than people who have estates landscaped precisely because everyone middle class and higher understands that there aren't enough parolees(yes, parolees. No Americans will do those jobs without being required to by law) to replace the illegals picking fruit and killing chickens and digging ditches.
Might they prefer Hondurans to be flown into their meatpacking plant in the midwest or rural south, and then flown right back out when their contract ends, UAE-style? Yes. But American income inequality being what it is, their children don't compete with each other economically, so it's not that big a deal.
I do realise that agricultural work is the huge soak-pit of illegal immigrant labour, and the farm owners who have the supply cut off are now looking to mechanisation, rather than raising wages to attract native workers, because they claim they will go under if they have to pay going rates.
But my view of "why don't the rich care?" is because the truly rich don't interact with the illegals competing for jobs with native working-class, and if they do encounter them it's in the aspect of 'working on the landscaping crew' or 'contract cleaners who arrive to clean the house every week' - that is, their staff hire them to do the jobs so the rich only glimpse them as figures toiling in their peripheral view but never around for a long time. So it's easy to be compassionate in the abstract, about "no human is illegal", like the Martha's Vineyarders with their signs - until those same immigrants and refugees start physically turning up in the community, and then it's a different question.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
C'mon. You know better than to talk like that.
You might be able to justifiably claim that the "rich" may consider poor white Americans as being somehow worse than illegal Hispanic immigrants. You can't get away with being condescending to someone you disagree with, not when it's a habit.
I won't construe this is a formal warning or anything, but you got 5 AAQCs last month, surely you can adhere to better standards.
Edit: Never mind, I'm taking the mod hat off this thing, it's not an infraction that is worth it really.
Mod hat on, mod hat off? I'm sorry to be confusing you at this early stage in your moderatorhood, I wasn't intending to be condescending, more referencing this meme.
Welcome to dealing with the Awkward Squad! And believe me, I'm even more confused than you about how the heck I managed to garner five AAQCs, I genuinely never set out to deliberately write anything that might be nominated, so it's a mystery to me!
I did take the mod hat off by my own initiative, it's not like the others yelled at me haha.
You're a regular here, we might bicker but I can't ever deny that your net contribution is very positive, even if you have your own quirks that make me raise an eyebrow, or on certain topics, want to claw my eyes out.
So my initial annoyance that motivated me to put the mod hat on was swiftly overruled by me sighing deeply and accepting that it wouldn't make a difference plus it wasn't a big deal in the first place. I suppose the fact that you were referencing a meme from a show that I haven't watched does make sense!
I haven't even watched the show myself, it's just been floating around on social media for years about "people so far removed from the actuality of the situation they may as well be living on another planet".
It has also been a favourite gambit of media in the UK to ask politicians who try to lean too hard on the "man of the people" bit questions such as "so how much does a litre of milk cost?" and watch them squirm as they have no idea, never having gone grocery shopping themselves or if they have, never having to care about the cost of whatever they want to grab off the shelves.
Do most people who buy groceries every week know the current price, offhand, of every single one of the 30+ items they buy?
Of the staples like milk and bread? yeah.
More options
Context Copy link
Maybe not the exact price, but they do have a general idea of the staple groceries and will notice if the price of milk goes up by more than a few cents (and they can't switch to the cheaper version because that's gone up too).
More options
Context Copy link
Not to the cent, but they'd probably have a few brackets that they break items into and be able to say "a buck each, something like that" or "about $5", especially for frequently-recurring purchases like milk. Particularly people for whom the price of groceries is a meaningful fraction of their budget.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As TIRM notes, it's not their communities. I've seen plenty of libertarian types point out that one can find enclaves of "1st world" living conditions in most any destitute "3rd world" country — you just have to be rich enough to afford it. And if you're the right kind of rich, then importing a lot of "cheap servants" will make you even richer — or at least make this sort of gated community cheaper — even as the country as a whole declines.
(Again, I like to point to open borders advocate Nathan Smith's "How Would a Billion Immigrants Change the American Polity?", because I much appreciate his forthrightness about the outcomes he prefers — though I think a better comparison than the Roman or British Empires would be the UAE.)
The UAE is the ideal situation for American immigration policy because migrants get deported immediately when their economic use ends and have zero recourse to citizenship, ever. That’s hardly a cautionary tale, it’s an ideal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Adjacent communities perhaps. But their private schools and nice neighborhoods aren't being overwhelmed with false asylum seekers. They don't pay the price.
"Our local schools are being overwhelmed by this!" A few of the worse off public ones sure are. But that's not their community, not their problem.
More options
Context Copy link
Who said anything about their community.
The west's wealthy have long now abolished any covenant they had with nation or race.
The people getting hurt by this are just cogs in a system they are using. Cogs that aren't having enough children and are too expensive. So they're just swapping them out. Mechanical maintenance of the economic zone.
Funny thing really. The way you can tell that all the talk about "dysgenics" is bullshit is that it's not "the help" who are dying out, it's the fagot/tranny/elf brahmins.
Obnoxious, antagonistic, boo outgrouping, and whether meant ironically or not, clearly not the kind of argument we want to see made here. No, not because you used no-no words, but because you used them in a way calculated to be antagonistic.
I'm feeling mellow today, so 1-day ban. You really seem determined to once again see how many infractions you can accumulate before you get permabanned. Frankly, you only haven't been permabanned because as polarizing a figure as you are, a lot of people like you and you rack up a lot of AAQCs along with your shitposting. But the forbearance is not going to last forever. If your goal is just to push us to a final ban so you can go back to DSL or wherever to crow about how you finally "proved" something (whatever it is you think you're trying to prove) then just do your big flaming swan song and get it over with (and please make it worthy). Otherwise, knock this shit off - for someone who talks so much about discipline and being a grizzled NCO who's seen the world and survived some shit and knows what for, you do not get to pretend you can't help yourself or don't know what you're doing.
Is it not though?
I'll grant that my specific choice of words could be interpreted as uncharitable but at the same time I was specifically echoing the rhetoric used by others in this thread an elsewhere. @Hoffmeister25 is correct, and yes, a significant part of my motivation here is to highlight the contradiction.
The sort of rhetoric that you casually dismiss when aimed at the outgroup doesn't feel so good when it's aimed back towards the ingroup does it?
What rhetoric directed at the outgroup are you claiming I failed to mod?
Are you really claiming that I modded you because you attacked "my" ingroup?
Is that really what you're claiming?
Not you in particular so much as the community in general. To be blunt causal dehumanization and eliminationist rhetoric are pretty common here.
Someone here goes on a tear about how much normies suck, republicans are retarded, and the Jews deserved it, they're as liable to get two-dozen up votes and an AAQC because that's the outgroup.
Meanwhile if someone comes out against the race essentialist prog consensus or refers to a queer theater kid by anything other than xer preferred pronouns and suddenly the down votes and the mod-hats come out.
That dichotomy and very clear double standard is what I'm referring to when I talk about "heightening the contradiction."
The Funny thing that I don't really think that Zorba or Trace ever properly grasped is that I sincerely believe in the sub's foundation, and I believe that Rome is worth a man's life.
Yes, I'm aware. But upvotes don't prevent someone from being modded.
I'm disgusted that you would say this and either believe it or try to make me believe you believe it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Honest question: is there an example of anyone using similar no-no words that isn't judged as being "calculated to be antagonistic"?
Use-mention distinction.
If you are referring to other people as faggots or trannies or niggers or whatever, it would be hard to convince me that your intent was anything other than to be insulting and inflammatory.
So when you started the phrase with:
You meant, "Not because you mentioned no-no words, but because you used them," and the following clause was superfluous?
I meant what I wrote. If you have any specific questions, and specifically if you would like to use words like "tranny"and "faggot" and are not sure whether your post would be considered antagonistic, feel free to run it past any of the mods and we will be happy to help you out. Have a good day.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Real world grim and stupid politics snipped, let us move to our favorite fantasy world (for the same thing, but WITH DRAGONS!)
Obssessive political crap is over, obssessive nerd crap starts now!
Can there be such thing?
Of course!
Ed Greenwood's fantasy kitchen sink world is place for everything and everyone, and place of pseudo-Hindu fantasy copycat culture are the Shining Lands.
Var, Durpar and Estagund are lands following the Adama faith, religion based on reincarnation, oneness of all things and strict caste boundaries.
And since Shining Lands are properly free of racism and speciesism (as it should be in these types of fantasy world to prevent them from being even bigger Grand Guignol charnel houses that they are)
yes, when Baldur Gate 4 comes out, you can legitimately and canonically play elf brahmin.
Yes, even DARK ELF BRAHMIN! Here comes Nivray the Rotspider, ready to save the world with his wise and brilliant advice!
edit: yes, the links work now
Finally some Tamil-Brahmin representation that isn't in theoretical mathematics 🙏
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know what he means by "elf"(I don't think it makes any sense as a slur for Williams syndrome in context) but it is literally factually true that the gays and trans have extremely low TFR and disproportionately come from not-poor backgrounds.
He’s making a reference to Curtis Yarvin’s “dark elves and hobbits” essay.
In that case it's just false; blue tribe conservatives seem like they have very similar TFR to the core red tribe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The super rich actually have more kids than almost anyone else in the US.
Right, they've set up policies that drive their competition extinct while multiplying their servants. Classic high-low vs middle.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Part of the donor class wants a new voting base especially in certain states, the other wants cheap labor. Their goals are closely enough aligned they can unite to easily overcome the few populists who get elected, since Regean's amnesty in the 80s.
I've been voting for border enforcement for nearly 30 years, I have no expectation that anything close to my wishes will ever be done about it. Of course I didn't think the court would overturn Roe either, so perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised someday.
More options
Context Copy link
That’s a massive understatement of the role of illegal labor in the economy; construction and meatpacking and agriculture all rely on huge illegal immigrant populations to function the way they do in the US.
A fair point, and a good reason why "the rich" aren't worried, because they're not seeing the masses of migrants who end up in those jobs, or have them living anywhere remotely near them. It's the abstract, theoretical numbers for them, which means it's not a problem they worry about, it's someone else's problem where they end up living and working.
More options
Context Copy link
It's a negative feedback loop -- illegal immigration makes a political settlement on legal immigration for those folks that actually work untenable. That in turn fuels further demand for illegal immigration to the point where it's too baked in to do much about.
One cautionary lesson of the last few years and the result of inflationary pressure is that the subjective wellbeing of Americans at all income levels is coupled to cheap goods. It's not just the rich that are attracted to the fruits of cheap labor, but it goes all the way down the income chart.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, I suspect people really don't consider the degree to which illegal labor props up some low prices. I suspect that a lot of stuff (like house remodeling, landscape jobs, etc.) would undergo decent price spikes if someone snapped their fingers and relocated illegal immigrants back to their home countries – at least regionally. But a regional spike in something like meatpacking can raise prices nationwide.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's not "their communities" that's the thing. The Rich can afford private schools and private security. They're rich, why would they give a shit about the plebs?
Edit: I continue to maintain that this here, is the core reason for all the derangement and freak-outery surrounding Trump. It's classism all the way down.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link