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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24828 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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Great post. The simple truth is that unless…

  1. Trump wins
  2. The GOP get a trifecta with a very comfortable senate majority
  3. They abolish the filibuster
  4. Trump is suddenly hugely more competent at wrangling Congress

…there will be no better deal than this one. That is to say that even if Trump wins, the chance of a better border control bill is minimal at best. If this hill had passed under Trump, he would have signed it. Of course it wouldn’t, because there’s no way Democrats would vote for it in that case.

There is no way this isn’t a mega black pill. But the ultimate black pill is that it’s really all about Trump. There is no ‘national conservative’ movement. There is no ‘Trumpist’ party with a coherent, European-style nationalist policy platform. There’s a Trump personality cult with very little genuine infrastructure behind it, sitting on top of the carcass of the post-Tea Party GOP, which itself is a hollowed-out shell of what it once was even ten years ago. The fact that Trump was personally able to kill this bill is testament to the extent to which service to his personal whims and (perceived) self-interest are now the sole metric by which congressional Republicans are and wish to be judged.

There is no plan, and if there is, Trump doesn’t even seem committed to following it. Sure, I’ll still vote for him, that’s the reality of a two-party system. But no Trump voter should be under any illusions that his second term won’t be him attempting some (likely unsuccessful) crusade against those he believes have wronged him (personally) while behind the scenes very little changes.

“Buh buh buh this doesn’t deport 10/12/15 million illegals”. Yeah, and neither will anything that Donald Trump can, let alone will, accomplish in office. Moreover, if by some stroke of luck this bill had passed and Trump won and decided to become competent, it would afford him MORE power to reduce inflows and impose ZERO meaningful restrictions on additional actions by the president or congress to increase deportations.

Moreover, 50,000 additional immigration visas a year is nothing compared to the current numbers of legal and illegal immigrants, so focusing on this was especially retarded.

Few things make me seethe more than what happened with this bill. As many on the right acknowledge, immigration is the only thing that matters. It is the central issue upon which every other issue ultimately depends. Even a minor shift in the right direction, even something that delays demographic destiny by a few more years buys the right more time. Every single measure that reduces total inflows must pass. Unless, apparently, it might make it a little harder for Donald Trump to win the presidency and accomplish nothing, again.

Thank you for being the only person in this thread who actually agrees with me. It's nice to have at least one person who agrees to make sure I'm not going crazy.

I agree with all the points you wrote.

The American right is not actually very focused on the country’s demographic makeup, and unless a portal to Nigeria opens up across the southern border I think that’s the right call; migration is mostly people who easily can be productive citizens if they assimilate and care.

I live in Texas. Assimilated Hispanics are everywhere. They’re underrepresented among engineers and doctors and over represented among janitors and that’s fine- the lower average IQ doesn’t stop them from contributing to society because nearly all of them are capable of doing productive non-math heavy work. Lots of Hispanic blood in a future American population isn’t an HBD-wrecking catastrophe.

The issue isn't Hispanics, but the people all over the world that seek to use Latin America as a route to the United States.

Not saying you in particular, but if right-coded Americans embrace Latin American immigrants (illegal or legal) primarily because said right-coded Americans believe LatAm immigrants can be decent janitors and an ally in the abortion wars (despite, "never ask a Latin American father about his teenage/young adult daughter's 'social' life"), perhaps they deserve to lose and get replaced.

I'm sure Latin American... American... janitors are more productive than a mannequin or dead body. However, net-productivity is what matters when evaluating potential countrymen, and one would need to be substantially above the median US income to be a net-taxpayer. Assimilation is a negative value-add if latinos are but assimilating to the free real estate that lies between the white and black Bell Curves.

"never ask a Latin American father about his teenage/young adult daughter's 'social' life"

Never ask a Latin American father about his teenage/young adult daughter's 'social' life.

Lots of Hispanic blood in a future American population isn’t an HBD-wrecking catastrophe.

But you just acknowledged that the Hispanics are underrepresented among engineers and doctors. If the broader population becomes more Hispanic, would you not also expect that population to produce fewer people who are capable of becoming engineers and doctors?

An immediate corollary of HBD is that a Brazil-like population leads to Brazil-like conditions.

White and mestizo citizens of Brazil are mostly productive. Brazil’s dysfunction is due to a very high black population(the USA’s is shrinking in relative terms) and institutional factors. We have better institutions and can function with a lower average IQ than we currently have because not everyone needs to be a doctor or an engineer.

Brazil’s dysfunction is due to a very high black population

Wikipedia says their black population is 10%, i.e. a smaller percentage than what the US has.

We have better institutions

But institutions are made of people. They can only be as good as the individuals that comprise them. There's no magic dirt, no magic paper.

If you import the population of Central/South America wholesale, the people who staff your institutions will increasingly resemble the inhabitants of Central/South America, and they will begin to reproduce Central/South American conditions.

and can function with a lower average IQ than we currently have

But why would we want to?

Institutions have some weight - the difference between North and South Korea isn't their genetics.

I do also think that nations have some ability to absorb foreign migrants without dramatic change. America remains America, and I believe retains some fraction of it's original spirit, despite the native WASP stock having been diluted severely by Irish, Italians, and even G*rmans. But that capacity isn't unlimited and was founded on assumptions that no longer exist.

and I believe retains some fraction of it's original spirit

can you define its "original spirit"?

Wikipedia says their black population is 10%, i.e. a smaller percentage than what the US has.

But Brazilian pardos have much more African ancestry than mestizos elsewhere in latin America, including many who would be called black in the USA. Only those with entirely black ancestry- which isn’t the majority of the AADOS population- are considered negros(the Brazilian term; ‘black’ is considered offensive there).

There’s no magic dirt, but mesoamericans assimilate much better than anyone else does. Culture matters. Just go look at Russia- high average IQ, culture that inhibits fixing institutions.

Wikipedia says their black population is 10%, i.e. a smaller percentage than what the US has.

Going deeper into this, the Wikipedia article on the Demographics of Brazil makes it seem as though only those with almost entirely African ancestry are counted as black (at 7.6% of the population) and then indicates that 42% are classified as Pardos (with a mixture of white, indigenous, and black ancestry). The article on Pardo Brazilians includes some genomic analysis that indicates between 10 and 30% African genomic ancestry for Pardos in most areas, and that in many areas, those classified as black have at least 40% European genomic ancestry.

I'm not sure I understand if HBD has some unified perspective on this. While I see darker hispanics, most hispanics I see are majority European. Is the idea that having too many different races in a country will cause division? Brazil would support that hypothesis, but if it's just about skin color, Chile is reasonably dark and doing pretty well for a LatAm country. Better than Argentina, which is 90% white. If hispanics are underrepresented among engineers and doctors, I'd guess they don't go to college as much, probably because they are poor when they come in from their home countries.

I'm not sure I understand if HBD has some unified perspective on this. While I see darker hispanics, most hispanics I see are majority European.

It's because Hispanic is a linguistic category, not a racial one.

But simply having too many cultures, too many languages, religions, ethnicities in a country (to the point they, put together, outnumber the former dominant group) is bound to make it weaker, IMO, because there will no longer be a consensus on values. There will no longer be anything to hold the country together and it will essentially cease to be a nation in any real sense at all. Every group will have its own shibboleths and taboos which it will lobby its political representatives to codify in law - which will probably get shot down except in all-Muslim (or whatever) towns, but the time and energy wasted on this stuff is time and energy which cannot be used to work on the nation's real problems.

I, for one, would rather euthanize myself than live in such a corpse of a country.

(This situation, multiplied by a million, is also why I firmly believe that no world government can ever work.)

But simply having too many cultures, too many languages, religions, ethnicities in a country (to the point they, put together, outnumber the former dominant group) is bound to make it weaker, IMO, because there will no longer be a consensus on values.

I mean, this has been the reality in American urban areas for the past 150 years at a minimum.

Also, "consensus on values" happen after lots of arguing and sometimes blood over what that consensus actually is. Go ask a WASP on the Upper East Side and and a Italian in Brooklyn in 1869 if there's a consensus on values in New York City.

If that makes America corpse of a country, it's been one since the 1850s

Now I know the response to this from some is, "well, we stopped immigration for forty years," but I don't think that's the reason for what people think happened. If there was truly this massive assimilation, it's more due to the Depression followed up by World War II than a lack of new immigrants from Eastern Europe or China showing up in 1934.

And Americanization programs in public school systems.

I'd make the argument that there 3rd generation woke immigrants and 3rd generation far-right immigrants proof that Americanization still works, just not the same way it worked in 1959.

Basically every Muslim politician of note in the US is uniformly left-wing on social issues. Sounds like those people are assimilating into society just fine.

Every single measure that reduces total inflows must pass

what part of the bill forces a hostile administration to reduce immigration at all? the bill may as well be a sieve with all the ways a hostile administration could legally ignore and excuse explicit limits; every single section of the bill which allegedly reduces immigration is actually not mandatory and is able to be set aside under vague, undefined language, like "operational circumstances"

this bill does nothing at all to force a reduction in immigration; it still relies entirely on a friendly executive to reduce immigration, but a friendly executive could already reduce immigration right now and they have for decades under status quo laws by simply enforcing them

which Trump demonstrated with his court upheld policies: require all migrants to be detained or remain outside of US while they await asylum hearings while you reduce and/or eliminate any government money available to support them

it's odd you claim there is no plan when the Trump admin already created a plan, they implemented the plan, and even waited out the court process for it to be upheld, which it was almost entirely

what part of the bill forces a hostile administration to reduce immigration at all? the bill may as well be a sieve with all the ways a hostile administration could legally ignore and excuse explicit limits; every single section of the bill which allegedly reduces immigration is actually not mandatory and is able to be set aside under vague, undefined language, like "operational circumstances"

this bill does nothing at all to force a reduction in immigration; it still relies entirely on a friendly executive to reduce immigration, but a friendly executive could already reduce immigration right now and they have for decades under status quo laws by simply enforcing them

So to reiterate, according to your own comment the bill makes things easier for a friendly executive but doesn’t make anything easier for a hostile executive, and the GOP voted against it because…? That a hostile Dem executive could still keep the doors open is the status quo. Nothing about this bill would make anything worse from a rightist anti-immigration perspective, it would just make things the same to easier for a conservative executive.

If the Republicans were willing to support a bill that made it harder for them to control the border while allowing a hypothetical Democratic presidency to print an unlimited number of extra green cards per year the Dems would be stupid not to vote for it.

You still haven't mentioned a single specific thing which the bill does to force a reduction in immigration; are you just not interested in talking about specifics of the actual bill?

no, my comment does not claim the bill makes things easier for a friendly administration

the bill makes it easier for a hostile executive to legally release migrants into the US and formalizes/codifies the regulatory scheme and legal interpretations of the Biden administration who have repeatedly been losing in court because the current laws make what they're doing illegal for whatever that's worth

it gives tools to a friendly administration which will not meaningfully reduces immigration beyond what is available under current law and in addition actually hamstrings a friendly administration in what they can do with immigration in some ways

(edit: for example, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, a laughably biased and corrupt court, is given sole and original jurisdiction for all judicial challenges from the validity of the law, to the policies written under it, to any decision made under the law; it will be this court which reviews any friendly administration's policies or invocations of these new alleged powers and good luck with that

this is a thing which is regularly overlooked, but it is just so painfully stupid to agree to this sort of thing and it's really telling the GOP couldn't even manage to avoid this)

the bill is worse than the status quo

the fundamental problem is the GOP are clowns, the Democrats realized under the Obama administration that their threats are empty, and this is why they've pushed the accelerator to the floor as soon as they got back into explicit power and the GOP can't even manage to stop expanding programs which explicitly fund Democrats to do it

the GOP voted against it because…?

The moment Republicans vote for the bill it will be touted as a bipartisan solution/compromise to fix the border crisis. Giving approval to the bill puts their reputation on the line and having it then fail to sufficiently fix the problem would catch them in the fallout and relieve pressure on Biden.

There’s a Trump personality cult with very little genuine infrastructure behind it, sitting on top of the carcass of the post-Tea Party GOP, which itself is a hollowed-out shell of what it once was even ten years ago.

The timeline is a bit of a mess here. 10 years ago it was 2014. The Tea Party protests were in 2010 and, as far as I know, were quickly co-opted by the mainstream GOP after contributing to its success in the midterms. It was a flash in the pan, basically. 10 years, ago, the GOP was already a post-Tea Party GOP. Also, weren't there periods/terms between 2010-18 when it had a majority in the Senate and the House? There was ample opportunity to do immigration reform.

The Tea Party wasn't coopted by the mainstream GOP, it became the mainstream GOP. When Ted Cruz could force a government shutdown and the Tea Party could force Boehner out of power, they're the ones with the whip hand.

Edit: Lest we forget, the big representative of the GOP 'Establishment' (a vacuous concept to be sure -- Trump is the establishment) this year, Nikki Haley, was elected as a Tea Party Republican, originally.

And, of course, Boehner himself was originally elected all the way back in 1990 as part of a micro-anti-establishment wave with particular bugaboos about corruption and the GOP Establishment being gentleman losers. But, of course of course, they actually were corrupt, gentleman losers when Boehner was elected, having not held Congress in 40 years, and there actually was genuine Congressional corruption he could attack, like the House Bank scandal. It's just an eternal cycle with the Republican Party.

Sorry, I meant that even ten years ago was already the post-Tea Party GOP.

I'm 100% with yah on this. Even my little city up here in the corner of the country is getting bankrupted by lying "asylum seekers" that are 100% economic migrants gaming the system. I hate it. I can't believe people are letting it happen and even cheering it on.

...because anyone who doesn't publically "support diversity" is shamed, made a pariah and possibly fired.

Observe the posts in subreddits for individual cities, inquiring about neighborhoods to live in. Every one is looking for a "diverse" area.

Try posting that you want to live in a white neighborhood, and see how quickly you get banned for "bigotry" or "hate speech", with a mod note referring to you as "scum" or some similar endearment.

I agree with most of what you said, but aren't you an American expat living in London? There seems something a bit off about someone in your position saying that immigration restrictions are the only thing that matters.

I’ve never argued against all immigration. Only against unnecessary and troublesome immigration with deleterious long term consequences. For example, half of London’s social housing stock is occupied by people born outside the UK. By contrast I have almost never used public services and pay three times the country’s median income (at least) in taxes every year. Even then, I would think it reasonable if I and every other immigrant had no right to citizenship, ever.

So there isn’t really any hypocrisy. I’ve even advocated for affluent, high-skilled immigration from other Western countries to the US to do things like break down the AMA’s cartel on physician pay, which is currently like 4x what it is in most other developed countries. It’s disingenuous to suggest that that’s the issue people have with mass immigration.

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