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iSteve commenter NYT Sailer Reading Club writes:
[The NYT] also published a big Sunday mag piece that basically shadowboxes your immigration views.
The Open Borders Trap
Trump won’t stop talking and tweeting about them. But when it comes to immigration, what do Democrats actually believe?By Jason DeParle
Mr. DeParle is a reporter for The Times.March 5, 2020
“The Open Borders Trap,” which makes it sound like it’s going to be standard auto-generated NYT opinion page drivel about, how, like, even arguing about open borders is a mistake because it accepts restrictionist framing, and what even are borders anyway?
Instead, it’s a more sophisticated than usual apologia for (legal) immigration that concedes several of your points. It also does a good job of letting immigration activists ramble towards the reductio ad absurdum of their sillier arguments in a way that makes it clear that the author despises these people.
“Immigrants May Be Bad For Native-Born, But They Deserve It:”
Nothing propelled Mr. Trump’s rise more than his attacks on immigration, yet some progressives reject the notion that immigration needs to be defended at all. If natives don’t have to justify their existence, why should the foreign-born?
“I think the question of good versus bad misses the point,” Cristina Jiménez, the director of United We Dream, a group that supports immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, told me. “Human flow is the reality as more people get displaced by globalization and climate change and people are fleeing poverty and oppressive countries.”
Our diversity is our strength!
By contrast, progressives defend immigration with bland abstractions — “our diversity is our strength” — if they defend it at all.
A proudly innumerate political class: why we can’t have nice things, like Canada or Australia:
Yet some on the left say economic arguments commodify immigrants or denigrate the native work force. “That frame pits workers against each other,” said Mary Small, the legislative director of Indivisible, a political organizing group. She prefers solidarity-based appeals that explain how “everyone’s humanity is tied up in the way immigrants are treated.”
“If you want me to give you some top-level G.D.P. number, that’s just not my voice,” said Lorella Praeli, a former Dreamer who is president of Community Change Action, a political organizing group that works with immigrants. “I would start with the story of self.”
…
However beneficial immigration may be, it can complicate other progressive goals, like expanding the safety net. The more poor immigrants the United States admits, the more expensive it is to provide free college or health care.Yet few progressives see a need to consider trade-offs. “If your frame is that ‘there’s not enough resources,’ I’m just rejecting the question altogether,” said Ms. Praeli, the president of Community Change Action. “Our movement is grounded in abundance rather than scarcity.”
He even Notices the Late Obama Age Collapse radical turn towards incipient Chavismo.
Few immigration narratives have inspired more sympathy than the story of the Dreamers — who are frequently described as children illegally brought to America “through no fault of their own.” But many Dreamers now reject that phrasing, for fear it implicitly faults their parents (just for seeking a better life). They have also shed their image as academic achievers to avoid elitist overtones. The logo of United We Dream once featured a diploma. Now it shows a bullhorn and a clenched fist.
“We grounded the organization in a much deeper analysis of racial justice,” said Ms. Jiménez, the group’s co-founder. “We do not separate our experience as immigrants from the experiences of brown and black people in this country.”
Immigration poses a moral dilemma: There are more potential migrants than the country can accept. To the extent that they’re fleeing poverty and violence, it’s unfair to keep them out. But with nearly two billion people living on less than $3.20 a day, it’s impossible to let them all in. Hence the need to set limits and enforce them humanely.
That at least was the Democrats’ previous position. “We cannot continue to allow people to enter the United States undetected, undocumented and unchecked,” argued the 2008 Democratic platform, in what sounds like an artifact of a long-ago age. “We need to secure our borders.”
Today, many progressives offer only a hazy sense of how to grapple with limits. Indivisible is among the groups that favor a moratorium on deportations. Is that the same thing as open borders? “Hmm, that’s an interesting question,” said Ezra Levin, the group’s co-founder, before saying the answer is no.
Are deportations ever justified? “Folks are still trying to figure out where they’re at,” said Ms. Small.
Even La Raza thinks the the young turks are taking things too far:
Charles Kamasaki of UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza) warns that equivocation is a mistake. “We can’t make progress without acknowledging the legitimacy of basic immigrant enforcement, and that means some people who come here unlawfully will have to be returned,” he said.
The problem for Democrats is that once they admit that Open Borders are an awful idea, then they’ve admitted they don’t have actually Truth, Justice, and the American Way on their side, they just have a policy stance which is morally open to negotiation and compromise based on facts, logic, and open debate. And the Democrats don’t like those odds.
iSteve commenter Wilkey elaborates:
Because once you admit that open borders are bad and that there has to be limits, all you are arguing over is a number.
And once you admit that the government (of the people, for the people, etc) has the right to place a limit on the number, you’re admitting that the government has control over who gets to come here, and the right to enforce laws against people who violate those limits.
What number of immigrants is “racist,” and what number is “not racist”? A limit of 350,000 immigrants per year (about what we averaged during the 1970s)? Racist. 450,000 (about what we averaged during the 1980s)? Racist. 600,000? Racist. 800,000? Racist. 1.2 million (the current level)? Still sorta kinda racist.
All you are arguing over is a number, and numbers aren’t racist. They are just numbers. And what really matters is what effect you think any given number of immigrants will have on the country – economically (both at the individual and national level), environmentally, and culturally. And the reality is that any immigrant limit you set that would be politically palatable is far, far lower than the number of people on this planet who would like to come here, so there isn’t even any pretense that we can “save” all of the people living in misery.
Jason DeParle wrote one of the biggest black pills on the absence of magic dirt in America:
The rest of the article describes how the kids of Salvadoran immigrants essentially assimilate into a copy of the black underclass.
Give up you guys lost.
1. imigration is continuing
2. mouments are getting taken donw
3. the 1619 project is getting taught in schools
4. most white "people" are old and dying off
5. genetics science is against racism
6. angela saini and adam rutherford are clebratedReplies: @interesting, @Unladen Swallow, @Reg Cæsar, @Ron Mexico
Very interesting statements from this article:
Yet few progressives see a need to consider trade-offs. “If your frame is that ‘there’s not enough resources,’ I’m just rejecting the question altogether,” said Ms. Praeli, the president of Community Change Action. “Our movement is grounded in abundance rather than scarcity.”
As the global markets are melting down tonight, how interesting that this abundance was all illusionary anyway.
People--and the world economy they generate--are simply way more productive than before. We simply know how to do stuff better than we once did. And the coming automation\robotic revolution is going to create even more abundance.
The issues are
1) Looting
Wall Street and Washington demanding continually larger shares of production be rerouted into their pockets, in the process spinning up bad incentives, misallocations, disruptions and crisis.
2) HBD
Not everyone--nor every group--is equally suited to be productive, or well-suited at all.
But in a well-run nation--i.e. run in the interests of its people--of more or less competent people, abundance is quite achievable, and will be getting more and more achievable with improvements in technology.
"Climate refugees," as the Sanders campaign calls them, would help the planet much more by staying in their home countries where they'll consume far less than the average Western citizen
And another money quote:
I once asked a leading scholar of immigration what benefits it had brought America, beyond good food and affordable child care. “Don’t underestimate the value of good food and child care,” he replied.
It’s funny that these people know all the stuff on the inside.
As for food, my obesity theory is that it’s caused by Asian and Mexican food. It’s a massive carbohydrates, low protein diet, guaranteed to cause weight gain.
It’s just rice noodles beans tortillas wonton and egg roll wraps with a few scraps of meat and vegetables. 2,000 calories worth of carbs, an ounce of meat scraps per plate.
S. Italian , basically noodles and bread doesn’t help either.
I advocate the American/N European diet. High high protein as few carbs as possible. Meat served in big 8 -12 ounce pieces. Boiled eggs if you must eat breakfast.Replies: @Jack D
Native-born Americans have it too nice anyway. Once someone states it that baldly, we might get sanity in our immigration system.
Because once you admit that open borders are bad and that there has to be limits, all you are arguing over is a number.
And once you admit that the government (of the people, for the people, etc) has the right to place a limit on the number, you’re admitting that the government has control over who gets to come here, and the right to enforce laws against people who violate those limits.
What number of immigrants is “racist,” and what number is “not racist”? A limit of 350,000 immigrants per year (about what we averaged during the 1970s)? Racist. 450,000 (about what we averaged during the 1980s)? Racist. 600,000? Racist. 800,000? Racist. 1.2 million (the current level)? Still sorta kinda racist.
All you are arguing over is a number, and numbers aren’t racist. They are just numbers. And what really matters is what effect you think any given number of immigrants will have on the country – economically (both at the individual and national level), environmentally, and culturally. And the reality is that any immigrant limit you set that would be politically palatable is far, far lower than the number of people on this planet who would like to come here, so there isn’t even any pretense that we can “save” all of the people living in misery.
Basically there are two strands:
1) People have a right to come here-- i.e. open borders.
Basically this is just the Jewish middle man minority ideology--the goyim exist for us to exploit. How dare you keep us out. (Cue "pale of settlement" or golfocaust.)
Core minoritarianism. It's been propagandized into the dominant ideology of our age, and the article is full of it. This Cristina Jiménez character oozes it from her pores. Her people are entitled to go anywhere to take what the white man has built.
Some (Jewish) "libertarians"--e.g. Bryan Caplan--propagandize this. Basically it's a denial of the idea that you can have any shared property right. It's obviously an anti-liberty ideology. If people are free, they will--of their own free will--group up with folks of like race, culture, creed and create their own "group spaces"--essentially create mini-nations. It takes state police power to *stop* people from protecting themselves from invaders. (I.e. what states in the West do now.) That's what Bryan and his ilk really want--elite control of the state to keep the people from being able to live as they would like.
It's a weird ideology. I never had any thought i was entitled to plop my ass down in someone else's place, much less someone else's nation--not even the ones my ancestors came from. And a vile ideology--the ideology of the parasite, the home invader, the rapist. You must let me in!!!
And ... people reject it. If the globalists and minoritarians try and sell it straight up, honestly, pretty much everyone normal--not a middle man minority, not an immigrant trying to get in to someone else's patch--rejects it as nonsense.
2) Immigration is good for you!
Once people reject the "right to come" case ... they have implicitly grabbed onto the moral truth that people do have the right to control who can join their nation. So then the immigration cheerleaders need to claim immigration is good the natives somehow. And indeed they blather like crazy--"the economy" and "restaurants" and "affordable child care" ... blah, blah, blah.
But it's simply innumerate nonsense that immigration is actually good for natives. Continual immigration means that either:
a) your nation becomes more and more crowded, until it's a shithole that no one wants to come to.(You have condemned your posterity live in a crowded shithole.)
or
b) your population stays in check, which means the native's genetic legacy is continually being reduced and reduced in favor of foreigners until it is ... gone. (Your posterity--if any--isn't related to you.)
(I'm leaving out the work-the-immigrants-to-death Caribbean sugar planation option, but yes i know it exists mathematically. Suffice it to say, that's not on offer.)
The only caveat here would be some sort of taking someone who is so useful, and sufficiently compatible with the natives, that the upfront competitive/security benefit that would accrue to future generations is sufficient to cover the costs to future generations. Essentially a "national security" caveat. Suffice it to say such people are very rare. Maybe in a nation of 300m you might come up with a few thousand a year? And even then, simply promoting eugenic fertility--which your nation must ultimately do to have a decent future--is a better option.
Immigration is giving something limited--space in your nation--to foreigners. There's no way around it.
Boiled down all arguments that "immigration is good for you" are fundamentally arguments that you--stupid native--should not care about your own posterity, about your own genetic and cultural legacy. Which, of course, is not surprising given who is making them.
Señor Kamasaki appears to have stumbled into the wrong raza.
Kamasaki laisse les bons temps rouler!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvg0qKfksLs
I had little interest in being one of the cool kids, but somehow I thought that's what they were like.
Interesting to note the 'let the good times roll' was actually a reference to an older commercial, probably to hook the parents. Neat.
Incoherent jackass Trump refused to send the DACAs home so now x number of these “dreamers” are becoming hard left immigration activists.
WINNING.
And MAGA nation will be happy when zio-puppet Trump gives us the Kushner Amnesty after the election. Amirite? The illegals will be overjoyed. But will the MAGAs be overjoyed? Maybe he will do it in the lame duck session this fall. Another beautiful Christmas gift. Just not for his own voters. All of Trump’s gifts go to people who don’t vote for him.
Yet few progressives see a need to consider trade-offs. “If your frame is that ‘there’s not enough resources,’ I’m just rejecting the question altogether,” said Ms. Praeli, the president of Community Change Action. “Our movement is grounded in abundance rather than scarcity.”
As the global markets are melting down tonight, how interesting that this abundance was all illusionary anyway.Replies: @Mr McKenna, @Hypnotoad666, @bigdicknick, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
This will quite possibly be the week when the defaults start hitting.
Fortunately, everyone here was well-advised in advance 😉
I like the cut of this guy’s jib. Mr. DeParle seems to have solved the riddle of how to secretly smuggle logic and common sense into a NYT article: You just accurately quote the wackadoo leftards and let the readers draw their own conclusions.
Btw, as a practical matter, how do these woke outlets ensure that they keep on message with their narrative? Is it because they only hire woke reporters to begin with? Or do the editors train them on how to write woke? Or do the reporters just figure out how they need to write up woke stories to get ahead in their careers?
Can a guy like DeParle last at the NYT?
The real point of all this ‘open borders’ dogshit is usually lost amongst those critiquing it.
The real truth – the real kernel of truth buried in the lies, falsehoods, deceits, duplicity, obfuscation, hysteria, dogma, propaganda etc – is that purely and simply ‘open borders’ is a naked and blatant expression of pure anti-white hatred. Nothing more nothing less. Propagated by persons who hate, revile and despise white people and wish them – but not their money – to be eradicated and destroyed, if not turned to vassal slaves.
Of course, an awful lot of gullible fools fall for the deceit without understanding the real animus behind it.
As Jared Taylor stated, the ‘open borders’ crowd fully understand the concept of borders and nationality when it comes to non white nations.
1) America was stolen. Therefore, Americans have no right to say who comes in.
2) The Irish built America. Therefore, we owe them big time.
Naturally, the second point contradicts the first. If the Irish built America, then they were in receipt of stolen property and are complicit in a crime. But the Irish have never been accused of being rocket scientists, have they. When it comes to immigration, they're just as bad as La Raza. And the Irish are as white as a fish's belly.
WINNING.
And MAGA nation will be happy when zio-puppet Trump gives us the Kushner Amnesty after the election. Amirite? The illegals will be overjoyed. But will the MAGAs be overjoyed? Maybe he will do it in the lame duck session this fall. Another beautiful Christmas gift. Just not for his own voters. All of Trump's gifts go to people who don't vote for him.Replies: @snorlax
Uh, he is trying to get rid of DACA, but the Democrats have managed to tie it up in court for years.
Ok boomer.
The “problem” for Democrats?
What problem? Texas goes the way of çalifornia añd Georgia falls and Florida and nc join Virginia as permanent blue states.
All because conservative cucks like Steve Sailer praised evil like desegregation and the civil Rights acts and explicitly hostile Jewish overlords.
But hey, it’s all ok. Steve just wants us to be “reasonable” like him and get on our knees for! The Jewish establishment of civil rights
“Citizenism.” Get it through your heads, goyim. A citizenism boot stamping on your head–forever
Yet few progressives see a need to consider trade-offs. “If your frame is that ‘there’s not enough resources,’ I’m just rejecting the question altogether,” said Ms. Praeli, the president of Community Change Action. “Our movement is grounded in abundance rather than scarcity.”
As the global markets are melting down tonight, how interesting that this abundance was all illusionary anyway.Replies: @Mr McKenna, @Hypnotoad666, @bigdicknick, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
Rejecting the concept of tradeoffs is simply another way of saying you reject reality. Leftism in a nutshell, really.
When I look at comments sections on left wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how right wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to leftists how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
When I look at comments on right wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how left wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to the righties how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
As for myself? I see lots of magical thinking and wishful thinking and follow-the-leader thinking from both sides, and way too little rational thinking on either side. And, amazing but true, the follow-the-leader ideas seem to be exactly what the zillionaires who own the megaphone want people to think.
There are exceptions to the rule. There are people who can think rationally, and who don't follow the zillionaires on their side of the political spectrum.
Once, in reply to one of my posts on the iSteve Unz comments section, a rational right winger suggested starting a Reality Party. I suspect there is a sizable minority on the left, the right and the center who believe in reality, but not enough to win an election. Worse, the zillionaires would spend as much money as possible to destroy such a party if it ever threatened power.Replies: @res, @Altai, @Hypnotoad666
Are you sure that’s the correct link? I don’t see that passage anywhere in the article you’ve linked to.
Btw, as a practical matter, how do these woke outlets ensure that they keep on message with their narrative? Is it because they only hire woke reporters to begin with? Or do the editors train them on how to write woke? Or do the reporters just figure out how they need to write up woke stories to get ahead in their careers?
Can a guy like DeParle last at the NYT?Replies: @Charon
Good insight, and in response to your question, no one gets hired without a published track record. And sometimes people do get fired. But 99% are “true believers” and need little guidance.
One of the most tedious tropes in the article is the “just seeking a better life” nonsense.
Are thieves not seeking better lives?
What about murderers? If you kill your spouse to move in with your mistress, arent you fundamentally seeking a better life? Obviously.
Any immigrant, legal or otherwise, who comes to a nation and takes handouts from a foreign tax base is a thief, no different than if he stole your car from the driveway.
“We believe in abundance not scarcity.” Uh, ok, well give me your abundant house then. 90% of people are too smart to fall for this insulting line of argument. Saying borders are just an imaginary construct works better on AWFLs because they have already been trained to lie to themselves that they don’t see race or feel nauseated watching a gay pride parade.
Pathetic attempt. 2/10.
I once asked a leading scholar of immigration what benefits it had brought America, beyond good food and affordable child care. “Don’t underestimate the value of good food and child care,” he replied.
It's funny that these people know all the stuff on the inside.Replies: @Pericles, @Alden
It sure is worth destroying one’s country for a few fat tacos and cheap child care, Professor Caplan.
Professor Caplan is not destroying HIS country, he is destroying YOUR country.
The prime directive of all present USG policy is:
If it harms the goyim, then it's good for the Jews.
This happens in London, as you may know English are a minority in their own capital, but areas like Richmond are still very White
https://cdn.thestage.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Richmond_Riverside_London_-_Sept_2008.jpg
Many people in these sorts of areas do unironically gush about diversity because from their viewpoint, it is pretty good as they get to indulge in things like the Notting Hill Carnival or grab an 'authentic' kebab or get a Turkish haircut periodically.Replies: @Altai, @Anonymous
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NbgkkvIvswUReplies: @SFG
You know, I always had *this* commercial from 1990 stuck in the back of my head for a few days as a teenager.
I had little interest in being one of the cool kids, but somehow I thought that’s what they were like.
Interesting to note the ‘let the good times roll’ was actually a reference to an older commercial, probably to hook the parents. Neat.
You’ve got the premise backwards.
Professor Caplan is not destroying HIS country, he is destroying YOUR country.
The prime directive of all present USG policy is:
If it harms the goyim, then it’s good for the Jews.
I find it easy to argue with democrats on this topic. I ask questions like: how much longer their commutes are from 10 yrs ago? How much do they appreciate the high density housing on 100 yr flood plains, wet lands, and steep slopes? When was the last power plant built? How many coal power ones were shutdown in the last decade? Where’s the water supply going to come from? You then sit back and literally watch them shudder their brains. The positive is they heard what I was saying, and couldn’t argue with it. They do know, but the hissy fit about the bad orange man is their only priority.
Yet few progressives see a need to consider trade-offs. “If your frame is that ‘there’s not enough resources,’ I’m just rejecting the question altogether,” said Ms. Praeli, the president of Community Change Action. “Our movement is grounded in abundance rather than scarcity.”
As the global markets are melting down tonight, how interesting that this abundance was all illusionary anyway.Replies: @Mr McKenna, @Hypnotoad666, @bigdicknick, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
not acknowledging the concept of opportunity cost is a cornerstone of the progressive world view.
If you can afford to live in a cushy neighbourhood that resembles 1960s America, while sometimes going into town during the day for exotic food, then yes.
This happens in London, as you may know English are a minority in their own capital, but areas like Richmond are still very White
Many people in these sorts of areas do unironically gush about diversity because from their viewpoint, it is pretty good as they get to indulge in things like the Notting Hill Carnival or grab an ‘authentic’ kebab or get a Turkish haircut periodically.
Question for Ezra Levin of Indivisible: Before trying open borders with a big country like the United States, wouldn’t it be wise to test the idea on a small country, say Israel, and see how it works?
But our native underclass is spoiled and basically worthless. They need to be replaced, no?
Steve Sailer must have been eating his oatmeal with extra blueberries and sliced apples because he hit a 500 foot home run with that one.
I noticed the NY Times guy popped in a Ezra Klein reference in acknowledgement of Bernie Sanders’ now infamous attack on open borders as a “Koch Brothers proposal” to lower wages for workers and reduce bargaining power for workers in an interview with Klein.
Also the New York Times writer put this in there:
This reluctance to articulate immigration’s benefits is especially striking given how readily its critics cite its supposed harms. They say immigrants increase crime, lower wages, threaten jobs, spread disease, strain government budgets and abet terrorism. The point isn’t that these claims are all true — immigrants have crime rates lower than natives — just that critics make their case in clear, concrete terms.
I like to go full spectrum on immigration also:
Mass legal immigration and mass illegal immigration combine to increase housing costs, lower wages, increase income inequality, overwhelm hospitals, swamp schools, harm the environment, bring crime and infectious diseases to the USA and make it harder for young White Core Americans to enjoy AFFORDABLE FAMILY FORMATION.
https://www.unz.com/anepigone/slender-imagery-is-everywhere-yet-corpulence-is-still-king/#comment-3672310
See, the whole time I thought that importing workers to compete mercilessly with the native born for dwindling wages was what pitted workers against each other.
Line drawing is something that the legal system has to deal with all the time – possessing x grams of pot is a misdemeanor, x+1 grams is a felony. Stealing $X is a misdemeanor, stealing $X+1 is a felony. Driving while having a blood alcohol level of x% is OK (x keeps getting smaller), having a level of x+.01% is a crime. And so on, endlessly.
The fact that you have to draw a line somewhere and that somewhere is somewhat arbitrary does not mean that you can never draw lines. You can and you should because that’s the only way to construct a workable real life system. Real life is lived in shades of gray. Only ideologues demand absolutes. (This cuts both ways – Zero Immigration is just as unworkable as Open Borders. In real life you have to set some level that is greater than zero and less than infinity – the whole purpose of the political system is to determine what that level will be and when our political system functions there is a compromise number that can be reached that leaves both sides equally displeased.). And whenever the ideologues gain control and attempt some absolutist “logical” system (the French Revolution, no cash bail in NYC) the result is invariably a mess. Binary logic does not suit an analog world.
Reminds me of the old joke, where a company is seeking a new CFO, so they ask each candidate to tell them what 2 + 2 adds up to, and they reject all those who answer 4 and hire the one who replies, “What do you want it to be?”
The correct link for the story is: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/19immig.html
Probably because Black Men are irresistible to women
Give up you guys lost.
1. imigration is continuing
2. mouments are getting taken donw
3. the 1619 project is getting taught in schools
4. most white “people” are old and dying off
5. genetics science is against racism
6. angela saini and adam rutherford are clebrated
Then why do you spew it (racism) nonstop? Serious Q. You seem totally obsessed over race AND especially black cock....it's fine that you're a homosexual as it's a fee country and nobody, especially whites, don't care but jeez dude, not everything is A: about race and B: your obsessions about sexual conquests by black men.
But here's the thing. The liberal can not have it both ways by talking about "climate change" as being "our WWII". The leading cause of climate change (according to a liberal) are people, more people, more climate change......less people less climate change, so by that measure they should be preaching an END to immigration.
A government can NOT give something to one person without first taking it from another.
That being said, it's nice to see you using your main moniker rather than your many sock accounts.
>a former dreamer who is now a professional activist heading a societal disruption agency
Helicopter, please, immediately!
I think the language emerging around the issue of ‘over-tourism’ is useful here. Infact, the term ‘over-immigration’ should be developed.
In the last few years the term ‘overtourism’ has become more prominent to critique mass tourism. There have been a lot of editorials. One I remember had a progressive comfortably calling it ‘social pollution’.
In many cities (Such as Dublin, London or Brussels) they cause the same problems, only the tourists go home and the immigrants stay.
Take this statement from a progressive left wing commentator.
https://www.independent.ie/life/travel/travel-talk/pol-o-conghaile-overtourism-is-the-new-normal-get-sustainable-or-get-used-to-it-36077035.html
Is any one immigrant a problem or responsible for 100,000?
Replace ‘tourist’ in any of these with immigrant and suddenly you’re irredeemable. And yet I wonder do old stock Cockneys, Dubs or Parisians would feel about trading all the immigrants for the same number of tourists?
At the end of the day what’s happening in these countries is without precedent and people have a normal human right not to be ethnically displaced in their own ancient homelands within their lifetimes. You’d think that would infact be the primary right to be expected.
I would say that ‘social pollution’ doesn’t only mean more traffic, crowds and higher rents, it’s meant to evoke the disruption of the local ‘culture’ (read: people) being able to be alone with itself and have ownership of it’s own public space and territory. It produces an unsettling unease and ennui aptly captured by Putnam’s studies.
It’s like going home every night to your family and having strangers walking in and out of your house, you’re never allowed that shared group intimacy.
Lots of other articles by progressive left-wingers saying much the same thing about over-tourism but not noting the irony of never mentioning over-immigration.
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/tourists-please-pack-up-your-wheelie-cases-and-go-home-i-want-my-city-back-35222456.html
https://www.dublininquirer.com/2018/08/08/how-should-the-city-judge-whether-its-tourism-strategy-is-working
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/some-cities-near-breaking-point-from-city-breaks-1.3751567
https://medium.com/@christa.adams/overtourism-is-killing-barcelona-57f0ca4042d4
https://www.thelocal.es/20180704/overtourism-in-barcelona-are-the-battle-lines-drawn
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/aug/30/why-tourism-is-killing-barcelona-overtourism-photo-essay
https://www.news.com.au/news/spains-antitourist-movement-is-reaching-boiling-point/news-story/185b003fb1b355f923fec21c31a2b75a
Historically left-wing club ultras being unironic.
I once asked a leading scholar of immigration what benefits it had brought America, beyond good food and affordable child care. “Don’t underestimate the value of good food and child care,” he replied.
It's funny that these people know all the stuff on the inside.Replies: @Pericles, @Alden
We had excellent affordable childcare before mass immigration. Why was it affordable? Decent wages for the average person. But that was in the olden days
As for food, my obesity theory is that it’s caused by Asian and Mexican food. It’s a massive carbohydrates, low protein diet, guaranteed to cause weight gain.
It’s just rice noodles beans tortillas wonton and egg roll wraps with a few scraps of meat and vegetables. 2,000 calories worth of carbs, an ounce of meat scraps per plate.
S. Italian , basically noodles and bread doesn’t help either.
I advocate the American/N European diet. High high protein as few carbs as possible. Meat served in big 8 -12 ounce pieces. Boiled eggs if you must eat breakfast.
As for your dietary theories, if you go to Asia, (until recently when they adopted a more American diet) Mexico and Italy, you'll find that the locals are quite thin. The real Asian and Mediterranean diets (not the American versions) feature a LOT of vegetables flavored with a little meat and eaten with a little starch. This is much healthier than eating big slabs of meat. It's also much tastier than eating nothing but vegetables. This is the diet of the poor everywhere (and once was in America too) because they can't afford a lot of meat, but a little bit of smoked meat or sausage in a pot of beans or soup can lend flavor to the whole pot.Replies: @ben tillman, @UK, @indocon
Interesting.
When I look at comments sections on left wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how right wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to leftists how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
When I look at comments on right wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how left wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to the righties how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
As for myself? I see lots of magical thinking and wishful thinking and follow-the-leader thinking from both sides, and way too little rational thinking on either side. And, amazing but true, the follow-the-leader ideas seem to be exactly what the zillionaires who own the megaphone want people to think.
There are exceptions to the rule. There are people who can think rationally, and who don’t follow the zillionaires on their side of the political spectrum.
Once, in reply to one of my posts on the iSteve Unz comments section, a rational right winger suggested starting a Reality Party. I suspect there is a sizable minority on the left, the right and the center who believe in reality, but not enough to win an election. Worse, the zillionaires would spend as much money as possible to destroy such a party if it ever threatened power.
We are by no means perfect, but I think you are equating (i.e. making a false equivalency) very different magnitudes of problems with lack of rationality.
P.S. It would help your case if you would give an example or two of "if anyone points out to the righties how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant" happening HERE (there are certainly examples, but consider both prevalence and absolute numbers compared to a typical NYT article and its comments). And then we can discuss how the rest of the commenters react.Replies: @Paleo Liberal
The first trick for a Centrist-Reality Party would be to agree on basic popular objectives: say, national health insurance (with emphasis on cost-reduction and rational resource allocation); a free market backed up by a robust safety net (with means testing and work requirements to prevent excess freeloading); a strong defense, but only in proportion to actual foreign threats (with no foreign adventures or military-industrial lard); secure borders with legal immigration criteria set solely to benefit America, not the rest of the world. Etc.
If the reasonable goals were agreed upon, reasonable people could roll up their sleeves and figure out how to make them work. (One non-negotiable issue would be to drop the obnoxious identity politics of the left.)Replies: @Jack D
In the last few years the term 'overtourism' has become more prominent to critique mass tourism. There have been a lot of editorials. One I remember had a progressive comfortably calling it 'social pollution'.
In many cities (Such as Dublin, London or Brussels) they cause the same problems, only the tourists go home and the immigrants stay.
Take this statement from a progressive left wing commentator.
https://www.independent.ie/life/travel/travel-talk/pol-o-conghaile-overtourism-is-the-new-normal-get-sustainable-or-get-used-to-it-36077035.htmlIs any one immigrant a problem or responsible for 100,000?
Replace 'tourist' in any of these with immigrant and suddenly you’re irredeemable. And yet I wonder do old stock Cockneys, Dubs or Parisians would feel about trading all the immigrants for the same number of tourists?
At the end of the day what's happening in these countries is without precedent and people have a normal human right not to be ethnically displaced in their own ancient homelands within their lifetimes. You'd think that would infact be the primary right to be expected.
I would say that 'social pollution' doesn’t only mean more traffic, crowds and higher rents, it's meant to evoke the disruption of the local 'culture' (read: people) being able to be alone with itself and have ownership of it's own public space and territory. It produces an unsettling unease and ennui aptly captured by Putnam's studies.
It’s like going home every night to your family and having strangers walking in and out of your house, you’re never allowed that shared group intimacy.
Lots of other articles by progressive left-wingers saying much the same thing about over-tourism but not noting the irony of never mentioning over-immigration.
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/tourists-please-pack-up-your-wheelie-cases-and-go-home-i-want-my-city-back-35222456.html
https://www.dublininquirer.com/2018/08/08/how-should-the-city-judge-whether-its-tourism-strategy-is-working
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/some-cities-near-breaking-point-from-city-breaks-1.3751567
https://medium.com/@christa.adams/overtourism-is-killing-barcelona-57f0ca4042d4
https://www.thelocal.es/20180704/overtourism-in-barcelona-are-the-battle-lines-drawn
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/aug/30/why-tourism-is-killing-barcelona-overtourism-photo-essay
https://www.news.com.au/news/spains-antitourist-movement-is-reaching-boiling-point/news-story/185b003fb1b355f923fec21c31a2b75a
Historically left-wing club ultras being unironic.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNCV8k6UEAEc4ZH.jpgReplies: @Alden, @Jack D
I’ve noticed it’s not “Asian” tourists raping young teen girls and knifing random pedestrians in the UK. Just “Asian” immigrants and their welfare spawn.
In the last few years the term 'overtourism' has become more prominent to critique mass tourism. There have been a lot of editorials. One I remember had a progressive comfortably calling it 'social pollution'.
In many cities (Such as Dublin, London or Brussels) they cause the same problems, only the tourists go home and the immigrants stay.
Take this statement from a progressive left wing commentator.
https://www.independent.ie/life/travel/travel-talk/pol-o-conghaile-overtourism-is-the-new-normal-get-sustainable-or-get-used-to-it-36077035.htmlIs any one immigrant a problem or responsible for 100,000?
Replace 'tourist' in any of these with immigrant and suddenly you’re irredeemable. And yet I wonder do old stock Cockneys, Dubs or Parisians would feel about trading all the immigrants for the same number of tourists?
At the end of the day what's happening in these countries is without precedent and people have a normal human right not to be ethnically displaced in their own ancient homelands within their lifetimes. You'd think that would infact be the primary right to be expected.
I would say that 'social pollution' doesn’t only mean more traffic, crowds and higher rents, it's meant to evoke the disruption of the local 'culture' (read: people) being able to be alone with itself and have ownership of it's own public space and territory. It produces an unsettling unease and ennui aptly captured by Putnam's studies.
It’s like going home every night to your family and having strangers walking in and out of your house, you’re never allowed that shared group intimacy.
Lots of other articles by progressive left-wingers saying much the same thing about over-tourism but not noting the irony of never mentioning over-immigration.
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/tourists-please-pack-up-your-wheelie-cases-and-go-home-i-want-my-city-back-35222456.html
https://www.dublininquirer.com/2018/08/08/how-should-the-city-judge-whether-its-tourism-strategy-is-working
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/some-cities-near-breaking-point-from-city-breaks-1.3751567
https://medium.com/@christa.adams/overtourism-is-killing-barcelona-57f0ca4042d4
https://www.thelocal.es/20180704/overtourism-in-barcelona-are-the-battle-lines-drawn
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/aug/30/why-tourism-is-killing-barcelona-overtourism-photo-essay
https://www.news.com.au/news/spains-antitourist-movement-is-reaching-boiling-point/news-story/185b003fb1b355f923fec21c31a2b75a
Historically left-wing club ultras being unironic.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNCV8k6UEAEc4ZH.jpgReplies: @Alden, @Jack D
At one time, when mass tourists were mostly fat Americans in Bermuda shorts or drunken lower class Brits, it was OK to hate on tourists as just one more type of deplorable. But what do you do now when the same people (Chinese) show up BOTH as mass tourists and as immigrants?
BTW, the phenomenon of Chinese mass tourism would have been unimaginable a few decades ago. I remember reading a Reader’s Digest article as a kid about a man who had escaped starvation in Mao’s “Red China” by swimming to Hong Kong. China was behind the Iron Curtain, as locked down as N. Korea is today. The idea that Chinese would be able to afford package tours, that their government would allow them to leave and that after leaving they would be willing to get back on the plane and go home – this was all unimaginable not so long ago. China may still be a Communist dictatorship but it’s not one in the same way the N. Korea still is.
I wonder whether Covid has permanently killed off the cruise ship industry, or at least until an effective vaccine is found? Personally, I never found the thought of being locked on a boat with several thousand strangers and being served large quantities of mediocre food by a 3rd world crew to be appealing (notice how quickly the Diamond Princess transformed itself into a floating prison), but apparently many people (especially older people) did. On an intellectual level I can understand why people liked them but I never did.
I grew up on an egg farm (where the chickens are kept in crowded conditions) and one thing I knew is that if one chicken got a disease they would all get the disease. Cruise ships are like giant chicken coops floating on the water. In the past, there have been many stories about norovirus epidemics breaking out on cruise ships, but this didn’t seem to dissuade people – norovirus doesn’t kill you. But Covid does. And airplanes are even worse – humans stuffed in a tin can like sardines.
How’d Steve miss this? Or did it just not make the cut?
A Southern Reckoning: She finds Trump racist, cruel, and immoral. He can’t win without women like her.
Now that’s diversity.
Robert Lee Frost. Talk about problematic.
Frost, like Norman Rockwell and Samuel P Huntington, grew up in the big city, and later moved to the New England of his ancestors to become “Yankier and Yankier” [sic]. Frost, like Jay Leno, Ethel Merman, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Donald Trump, had a Scottish mum.
And, like Trump, he believed good fences make good neighbors.
This was driven home to me in a recent conversation with a friend. There is always more money for doing good. And if you need even more just take it from the military budget.
As for food, my obesity theory is that it’s caused by Asian and Mexican food. It’s a massive carbohydrates, low protein diet, guaranteed to cause weight gain.
It’s just rice noodles beans tortillas wonton and egg roll wraps with a few scraps of meat and vegetables. 2,000 calories worth of carbs, an ounce of meat scraps per plate.
S. Italian , basically noodles and bread doesn’t help either.
I advocate the American/N European diet. High high protein as few carbs as possible. Meat served in big 8 -12 ounce pieces. Boiled eggs if you must eat breakfast.Replies: @Jack D
I guess you mean mom staying home to take care of the kids. This is not what most people mean by “affordable childcare”. Even putting aside the economic necessity in modern times of women working outside the home, I think that as women became more educated they were not going to be willing to spend their days watching soap operas and playing blocks with junior every day. Last night I saw a documentary about Julia Child and her niece (she had no children- either she or her husband were infertile) said that Julia told her that if she hadn’t found a cooking career she would have become an alcoholic (and indeed many housewives did).
As for your dietary theories, if you go to Asia, (until recently when they adopted a more American diet) Mexico and Italy, you’ll find that the locals are quite thin. The real Asian and Mediterranean diets (not the American versions) feature a LOT of vegetables flavored with a little meat and eaten with a little starch. This is much healthier than eating big slabs of meat. It’s also much tastier than eating nothing but vegetables. This is the diet of the poor everywhere (and once was in America too) because they can’t afford a lot of meat, but a little bit of smoked meat or sausage in a pot of beans or soup can lend flavor to the whole pot.
https://chrisruden.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/BMI-over-time.png
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2013/11/turkeyweightslaughter/9aa81660d.jpgLook at that upsurge starting in 1980's! The Reagan years really did start to rut we are in today
This happens in London, as you may know English are a minority in their own capital, but areas like Richmond are still very White
https://cdn.thestage.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Richmond_Riverside_London_-_Sept_2008.jpg
Many people in these sorts of areas do unironically gush about diversity because from their viewpoint, it is pretty good as they get to indulge in things like the Notting Hill Carnival or grab an 'authentic' kebab or get a Turkish haircut periodically.Replies: @Altai, @Anonymous
You have to remember for a certain kind of person in Britain, it’s still 1066 and the proles are a hostile alien people. They never felt at home anywhere outside their little enclaves anyway.
When I look at comments sections on left wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how right wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to leftists how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
When I look at comments on right wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how left wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to the righties how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
As for myself? I see lots of magical thinking and wishful thinking and follow-the-leader thinking from both sides, and way too little rational thinking on either side. And, amazing but true, the follow-the-leader ideas seem to be exactly what the zillionaires who own the megaphone want people to think.
There are exceptions to the rule. There are people who can think rationally, and who don't follow the zillionaires on their side of the political spectrum.
Once, in reply to one of my posts on the iSteve Unz comments section, a rational right winger suggested starting a Reality Party. I suspect there is a sizable minority on the left, the right and the center who believe in reality, but not enough to win an election. Worse, the zillionaires would spend as much money as possible to destroy such a party if it ever threatened power.Replies: @res, @Altai, @Hypnotoad666
Please point me to a left wing discussion site which has as much rational thinking (about the controversial topics we discuss here) as iSteve and its comments.
We are by no means perfect, but I think you are equating (i.e. making a false equivalency) very different magnitudes of problems with lack of rationality.
P.S. It would help your case if you would give an example or two of “if anyone points out to the righties how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant” happening HERE (there are certainly examples, but consider both prevalence and absolute numbers compared to a typical NYT article and its comments). And then we can discuss how the rest of the commenters react.
Starting with res' reply:I agree that "iSteve and its comments" constitutes a rather unique site, which is why I am happy to participate. There may well be a left-wing equivalent which I don't know about. I also don't know of any right-wing sites which are more or less the same. Point taken.
That being said, look at the comments section on some of the center-left (NY TImes, WaPo) or left wing sites (Slate, Salon, Mother Jones). It is quite common for some writer to come up with politically correct garbage, and get torn apart in the comments section. And the PaleoLiberal who comments on Mother Jones is the same as the PL on this site (me. Duh). The difference being the comments on iSteve are in reply to one fairly rational person, while the comments on, say MoJo or WaPo or whatever are to a slew of politically correct writers.
One of my pet peeves about MoJo, and in fact the entire Left in general, is that in the pre-Trump era it was possible to intelligently discuss immigration. These days the official Left position is something worse than open borders. In one comment I described it as outsourcing our immigration to Mexican drug cartels and Chinese tongs.
However, there are some immigration receptionists in the comments section, admittedly some are right wingers there to troll the liberals.
That's about the best I can come up with. The comments by left wingers saying in effect "THIS IS UTTER BOVINE EXCREMENT!" shows me that there are some free thinking liberals and leftists in this world.
And iSteve shows me there are some free thinking conservatives and rightists in this world.Well, whenever I bring up global warming, there are some who reject IR spectroscopy and Ben Franklin's albedo experiments, and somehow think the temperature is rising by magic, and scientists who just happened to predict the rise in temperature are fools.Replies: @res, @Charles Erwin Wilson
When I look at comments sections on left wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how right wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to leftists how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
When I look at comments on right wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how left wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to the righties how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
As for myself? I see lots of magical thinking and wishful thinking and follow-the-leader thinking from both sides, and way too little rational thinking on either side. And, amazing but true, the follow-the-leader ideas seem to be exactly what the zillionaires who own the megaphone want people to think.
There are exceptions to the rule. There are people who can think rationally, and who don't follow the zillionaires on their side of the political spectrum.
Once, in reply to one of my posts on the iSteve Unz comments section, a rational right winger suggested starting a Reality Party. I suspect there is a sizable minority on the left, the right and the center who believe in reality, but not enough to win an election. Worse, the zillionaires would spend as much money as possible to destroy such a party if it ever threatened power.Replies: @res, @Altai, @Hypnotoad666
Exactly, rejection of global warming and criticism of the effects of immigration are both ideological rejections of reality. (Rejection of global warming isn’t even really much of a goer outside the US but American academia does export ‘anti-racism’ abroad) It wasn’t Greenpeace who invented the notion of CO2 being an atmospheric insulator, it was Sailer-like chemists and physicists many decades ago and the logic underpinning this effect is the basis of IR spectroscopy with the effect validated by it.
Yet few progressives see a need to consider trade-offs. “If your frame is that ‘there’s not enough resources,’ I’m just rejecting the question altogether,” said Ms. Praeli, the president of Community Change Action. “Our movement is grounded in abundance rather than scarcity.”
As the global markets are melting down tonight, how interesting that this abundance was all illusionary anyway.Replies: @Mr McKenna, @Hypnotoad666, @bigdicknick, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
The abundance is not illusory.
People–and the world economy they generate–are simply way more productive than before. We simply know how to do stuff better than we once did. And the coming automation\robotic revolution is going to create even more abundance.
The issues are
1) Looting
Wall Street and Washington demanding continually larger shares of production be rerouted into their pockets, in the process spinning up bad incentives, misallocations, disruptions and crisis.
2) HBD
Not everyone–nor every group–is equally suited to be productive, or well-suited at all.
But in a well-run nation–i.e. run in the interests of its people–of more or less competent people, abundance is quite achievable, and will be getting more and more achievable with improvements in technology.
In talking immigration with liberals, I’ve gotten traction when I frame it using the word “regulation.”
I find this is more effective than the open/closed border frame. Libs are historically attached to the word “regulation,” and (equally important) they’re emotionally attached to viewing “DE-regulation” as an evil. When I say that the Reagan-era loosening of immigration was part of the deregulation policies of the time, I can sense them putting the economic arguments together for themselves.
I ask why they insist on regulation in every other facet of government policy, except when it comes to immigration?
And the context of *regulating* the border opens a window onto the essential questions regarding immigrants, namely:
1. How many do we accept?
2. At what rate of entry?
3. What mix of nationalities? (Definitely know your audience with that one, but some libs do grudgingly get it.)
4. Who decides 1, 2 and 3: The citizens, or big business?
That last is a big one with American liberals of a certain vintage. The ones I bother to talk to are not overly doctrinaire. For them, the regulation framing seems emotionally persuasive because it helps them step out of the media framing involving race and “compassion,” and moves them towards a frame involving control by the people against profiteers.
for what it's worth, Boomer Libs in real life--even the affluent ones--still don't like the idea of Open Borders. i spoke to a few rich NYT readers this weekend (read: my mother-in-law and her friends) and their response to this article was uniform disgust at the "activists" claiming that defending immigration on merit is simply unreasonable.
related: Tucker Carlson's "Ship of Fools" is worth getting progressive friends to read...i've gotten several to do so by telling them they would be shocked at how much Tucker uses progressive arguments about war/labor, and once they check it out the immigration pieces really aren't what get them disagreeable (it's the feminism and pro-choice parts that trigger progs)
And once you admit that the government (of the people, for the people, etc) has the right to place a limit on the number, you're admitting that the government has control over who gets to come here, and the right to enforce laws against people who violate those limits.
What number of immigrants is "racist," and what number is "not racist"? A limit of 350,000 immigrants per year (about what we averaged during the 1970s)? Racist. 450,000 (about what we averaged during the 1980s)? Racist. 600,000? Racist. 800,000? Racist. 1.2 million (the current level)? Still sorta kinda racist.
All you are arguing over is a number, and numbers aren't racist. They are just numbers. And what really matters is what effect you think any given number of immigrants will have on the country - economically (both at the individual and national level), environmentally, and culturally. And the reality is that any immigrant limit you set that would be politically palatable is far, far lower than the number of people on this planet who would like to come here, so there isn't even any pretense that we can "save" all of the people living in misery.Replies: @ben tillman, @gregor, @AnotherDad
Or you can look at things from an immunological perspective. An immune self discriminates between self and non-self to protect self against aggression by non-self. This function of our societal immune system has been turned off and pathologized to such an extent that our immune function has actually been inverted. Our societal immune system now discriminates between self and non-self to allow non-self to live off of self’s resources.
The greatest crime in our society is to act as an antibody protecting self. This crime is called “racism”.
This state of affairs — which is the foundation for everything the Left does — depends on a complete prohibition of self-interested discrimination by whites as a population. Once any such discrimination is permitted, it becomes a matter of where to draw the line. And the Left knows that the biologically and morally correct place to draw the line is at zero. Zero subsidy of non-self.
The parasitic Left feels it must draw the line at absolutely no defense of self by the host despite the fact that, ultimately, the host will die.
As for your dietary theories, if you go to Asia, (until recently when they adopted a more American diet) Mexico and Italy, you'll find that the locals are quite thin. The real Asian and Mediterranean diets (not the American versions) feature a LOT of vegetables flavored with a little meat and eaten with a little starch. This is much healthier than eating big slabs of meat. It's also much tastier than eating nothing but vegetables. This is the diet of the poor everywhere (and once was in America too) because they can't afford a lot of meat, but a little bit of smoked meat or sausage in a pot of beans or soup can lend flavor to the whole pot.Replies: @ben tillman, @UK, @indocon
That’s irrelevant.
When I look at comments sections on left wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how right wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to leftists how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
When I look at comments on right wing sites, there are often cogent descriptions about how left wingers reject reality. And the descriptions are correct. Of course, if anyone points out to the righties how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant.
As for myself? I see lots of magical thinking and wishful thinking and follow-the-leader thinking from both sides, and way too little rational thinking on either side. And, amazing but true, the follow-the-leader ideas seem to be exactly what the zillionaires who own the megaphone want people to think.
There are exceptions to the rule. There are people who can think rationally, and who don't follow the zillionaires on their side of the political spectrum.
Once, in reply to one of my posts on the iSteve Unz comments section, a rational right winger suggested starting a Reality Party. I suspect there is a sizable minority on the left, the right and the center who believe in reality, but not enough to win an election. Worse, the zillionaires would spend as much money as possible to destroy such a party if it ever threatened power.Replies: @res, @Altai, @Hypnotoad666
That’s a tantalizing idea. In the past, third parties have always been chimerical. But perhaps the internet might eventually change this by allowing new coalitions to form. Also, you can see glimmers of a populist leftism that could make some common cause with Trumpists. (See e.g., The Hill, Matt Taibi and Glenn Greenwald, etc.)
The first trick for a Centrist-Reality Party would be to agree on basic popular objectives: say, national health insurance (with emphasis on cost-reduction and rational resource allocation); a free market backed up by a robust safety net (with means testing and work requirements to prevent excess freeloading); a strong defense, but only in proportion to actual foreign threats (with no foreign adventures or military-industrial lard); secure borders with legal immigration criteria set solely to benefit America, not the rest of the world. Etc.
If the reasonable goals were agreed upon, reasonable people could roll up their sleeves and figure out how to make them work. (One non-negotiable issue would be to drop the obnoxious identity politics of the left.)
Yup. Those nasty trade-offs at the intersection where cognitive dissonance crashes occur. By avoiding the intersection, progressives don’t need to consider the trade-offs.
Yet few progressives see a need to consider trade-offs. “If your frame is that ‘there’s not enough resources,’ I’m just rejecting the question altogether,” said Ms. Praeli, the president of Community Change Action. “Our movement is grounded in abundance rather than scarcity.”
As the global markets are melting down tonight, how interesting that this abundance was all illusionary anyway.Replies: @Mr McKenna, @Hypnotoad666, @bigdicknick, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
The same people who called global warming climate change now climate crisis now climate catastrophe and have been hysterical about the dying planet for years suddenly believe 1st world countries have abundant resources that can sustain millions of 3rd worlders without end. Even though those 3rd worlders would be much better off in their home countries where they’ll cause less personal pollution (less meat, less fuel for cars or public transit) than they otherwise would in the 1st world.
“Climate refugees,” as the Sanders campaign calls them, would help the planet much more by staying in their home countries where they’ll consume far less than the average Western citizen
I’m so weary of 50 years of ice age/global warming/climate change bullshit. The change that triggers POCs to head north to EU or USA is when the weather changes from the doldrums of usual governmental corruption to a hail of cartel lead and raining of terrorist IEDs.
I don’t blame them for fleeing, I just don’t want them here.
But I’ve been thinking recently I’d rather live with illegal Central American immigrants than Californians fleeing California. Fuck them.
What irrelevant is, decide I. (translated from the German).
The first trick for a Centrist-Reality Party would be to agree on basic popular objectives: say, national health insurance (with emphasis on cost-reduction and rational resource allocation); a free market backed up by a robust safety net (with means testing and work requirements to prevent excess freeloading); a strong defense, but only in proportion to actual foreign threats (with no foreign adventures or military-industrial lard); secure borders with legal immigration criteria set solely to benefit America, not the rest of the world. Etc.
If the reasonable goals were agreed upon, reasonable people could roll up their sleeves and figure out how to make them work. (One non-negotiable issue would be to drop the obnoxious identity politics of the left.)Replies: @Jack D
What you are describing is what used to be our system of national politics. I don’t know how we get back there when so many people are committed to (make a good living from) the extremes.
There were movements on the left and right to maximize personal power by maximizing conflict.
On the left, of course some of the truly radical movements.
On the right, things like the Christian Coalition and Moral Majority found it easier to get their goals through by polarization rather than cooperation.
Not to mention there are plenty of politicians in both parties who thrive on conflict.
On the GOP side, there was the famous meeting where GOP leaders, I think led by Mitch McConnell, decided they would simply refuse to cooperate at all with Obama. The goal being to help him fail so the GOP could cash in.
For example, Obama stole Republican ideas for health care, so the GOP ran against ObamaCare, which was stolen from RomneyCare. It was amusing, if sickening, to see Romney run against ObamaCare in 2012.
On the other side, SOME of Trump's immigration plans were very similar to Bill Clinton's proposals. It was amusing, if sickening, to see Hillary Clinton run against a Clintonian immigration plan.
One of the starker examples -- Diane Feinstein accused Trump's immigration policies of being ":white supremicist". She wrote an editorial about the Czar sending Kosacks against her grandparents' village as the reason why. (I can't figure it out either). Back in the 1990s, she enthusiastically supported some of the same policies, because Clinton.
Yet one more example -- I have sometimes pointed out how Trump and the Squad use each other to further their political popularity. Bad for the country, but good for them.
On the Dem side, there is the anti-Trump Resistance.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @vinteuil
Give up you guys lost.
1. imigration is continuing
2. mouments are getting taken donw
3. the 1619 project is getting taught in schools
4. most white "people" are old and dying off
5. genetics science is against racism
6. angela saini and adam rutherford are clebratedReplies: @interesting, @Unladen Swallow, @Reg Cæsar, @Ron Mexico
“5. genetics science is against racism”
Then why do you spew it (racism) nonstop? Serious Q. You seem totally obsessed over race AND especially black cock….it’s fine that you’re a homosexual as it’s a fee country and nobody, especially whites, don’t care but jeez dude, not everything is A: about race and B: your obsessions about sexual conquests by black men.
But here’s the thing. The liberal can not have it both ways by talking about “climate change” as being “our WWII”. The leading cause of climate change (according to a liberal) are people, more people, more climate change……less people less climate change, so by that measure they should be preaching an END to immigration.
A government can NOT give something to one person without first taking it from another.
That being said, it’s nice to see you using your main moniker rather than your many sock accounts.
We are by no means perfect, but I think you are equating (i.e. making a false equivalency) very different magnitudes of problems with lack of rationality.
P.S. It would help your case if you would give an example or two of "if anyone points out to the righties how THEY reject reality, well, that gets them rather indignant" happening HERE (there are certainly examples, but consider both prevalence and absolute numbers compared to a typical NYT article and its comments). And then we can discuss how the rest of the commenters react.Replies: @Paleo Liberal
I received several very intelligent replies (and no dumb replies) to my post. It may take a while to answer all of them. I apologize for that.
Starting with res’ reply:
I agree that “iSteve and its comments” constitutes a rather unique site, which is why I am happy to participate. There may well be a left-wing equivalent which I don’t know about. I also don’t know of any right-wing sites which are more or less the same. Point taken.
That being said, look at the comments section on some of the center-left (NY TImes, WaPo) or left wing sites (Slate, Salon, Mother Jones). It is quite common for some writer to come up with politically correct garbage, and get torn apart in the comments section. And the PaleoLiberal who comments on Mother Jones is the same as the PL on this site (me. Duh). The difference being the comments on iSteve are in reply to one fairly rational person, while the comments on, say MoJo or WaPo or whatever are to a slew of politically correct writers.
One of my pet peeves about MoJo, and in fact the entire Left in general, is that in the pre-Trump era it was possible to intelligently discuss immigration. These days the official Left position is something worse than open borders. In one comment I described it as outsourcing our immigration to Mexican drug cartels and Chinese tongs.
However, there are some immigration receptionists in the comments section, admittedly some are right wingers there to troll the liberals.
That’s about the best I can come up with. The comments by left wingers saying in effect “THIS IS UTTER BOVINE EXCREMENT!” shows me that there are some free thinking liberals and leftists in this world.
And iSteve shows me there are some free thinking conservatives and rightists in this world.
Well, whenever I bring up global warming, there are some who reject IR spectroscopy and Ben Franklin’s albedo experiments, and somehow think the temperature is rising by magic, and scientists who just happened to predict the rise in temperature are fools.
- How extreme a level of idiocy is needed to produce those responses.
- How little a change in framing seems necessary to get the objectors to go along. (sometimes it seems like the writers are being intentionally inflammatory to shift the Overton window)
- How rapidly the Overton window is changing for so many things.Global warming (both the general idea and the anthropogenic specific kind) is a good example of rejecting reality by some (many?) on the right (Thanks for engaging with a good response). My experience is the comments on iSteve concerning global warming run a pretty wide gamut (it actually seems like a bit of a fracture point for a commentariat which is fairly like minded on most of the usual topics).
To my mind there is much room for disagreement on the general topic of global warming. I think it is hard to argue with these observations:
- Global temperatures have been trending sharply higher since the industrial age really got going.
- The most likely (primary) cause of that is human industry. In particular, greenhouse gases from combustion or other sources.
More arguable are things like:
- The temperature measurements are completely accurate beyond a reasonable doubt (e.g. heat islands near sensors).
- The feedback mechanisms are more likely to produce runaway effects rather than stabilization.
- The measures typically proposed in response to global warming would be both affordable (e.g. in the not destroying the economy sense) and effective.
- The climate models are believable.
Then there is the question of what is the ideal temperature (range) for the Earth? Over the historical record (say last 2-3000 years) we see evidence that lower average temperatures have been more of a problem than higher temperatures.
FWIW I think there are more people taking any objection to the "global warming would be the end of the world so you have to do what I say right now" dogma as heresy than there are people objecting to the less controversial points above.
P.S. And this is without getting into the phenomenon of our "elite" flying about the world in their private jets while lecturing the rest of us.
A Southern Reckoning: She finds Trump racist, cruel, and immoral. He can't win without women like her.Now that's diversity.Robert Lee Frost. Talk about problematic.
Frost, like Norman Rockwell and Samuel P Huntington, grew up in the big city, and later moved to the New England of his ancestors to become "Yankier and Yankier" [sic]. Frost, like Jay Leno, Ethel Merman, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Donald Trump, had a Scottish mum.
And, like Trump, he believed good fences make good neighbors.Replies: @David
Frost seems to believe that “good fences make good neighbors” is harmful as a principle, though likely true where cows and corn would otherwise meet. He compares the neighbor that repeats it to a primitive. Today he might have said he was deplorable.
It comes and goes in waves. We are still not quite as polarized as we were in the 1770-80s and the 1850s-70s. There was a bit of polarization when we were younger — riots in the streets sort of polarization — but the party leaders could at least work together.
There were movements on the left and right to maximize personal power by maximizing conflict.
On the left, of course some of the truly radical movements.
On the right, things like the Christian Coalition and Moral Majority found it easier to get their goals through by polarization rather than cooperation.
Not to mention there are plenty of politicians in both parties who thrive on conflict.
On the GOP side, there was the famous meeting where GOP leaders, I think led by Mitch McConnell, decided they would simply refuse to cooperate at all with Obama. The goal being to help him fail so the GOP could cash in.
For example, Obama stole Republican ideas for health care, so the GOP ran against ObamaCare, which was stolen from RomneyCare. It was amusing, if sickening, to see Romney run against ObamaCare in 2012.
On the other side, SOME of Trump’s immigration plans were very similar to Bill Clinton’s proposals. It was amusing, if sickening, to see Hillary Clinton run against a Clintonian immigration plan.
One of the starker examples — Diane Feinstein accused Trump’s immigration policies of being “:white supremicist”. She wrote an editorial about the Czar sending Kosacks against her grandparents’ village as the reason why. (I can’t figure it out either). Back in the 1990s, she enthusiastically supported some of the same policies, because Clinton.
Yet one more example — I have sometimes pointed out how Trump and the Squad use each other to further their political popularity. Bad for the country, but good for them.
On the Dem side, there is the anti-Trump Resistance.
Did Romney's program have this quirk?
Decoding the Obamacare 'marriage penalty'
I encourage progressives to continue pushing the open borders narrative, and continue to shame their presidential candidates into pushing for it. Trump could use some help right now with this coronavirus menace.
The black plague spread without planes or mass immigration.
Give up you guys lost.
1. imigration is continuing
2. mouments are getting taken donw
3. the 1619 project is getting taught in schools
4. most white "people" are old and dying off
5. genetics science is against racism
6. angela saini and adam rutherford are clebratedReplies: @interesting, @Unladen Swallow, @Reg Cæsar, @Ron Mexico
t ny dck cantd spledd, and is a moron.
There were movements on the left and right to maximize personal power by maximizing conflict.
On the left, of course some of the truly radical movements.
On the right, things like the Christian Coalition and Moral Majority found it easier to get their goals through by polarization rather than cooperation.
Not to mention there are plenty of politicians in both parties who thrive on conflict.
On the GOP side, there was the famous meeting where GOP leaders, I think led by Mitch McConnell, decided they would simply refuse to cooperate at all with Obama. The goal being to help him fail so the GOP could cash in.
For example, Obama stole Republican ideas for health care, so the GOP ran against ObamaCare, which was stolen from RomneyCare. It was amusing, if sickening, to see Romney run against ObamaCare in 2012.
On the other side, SOME of Trump's immigration plans were very similar to Bill Clinton's proposals. It was amusing, if sickening, to see Hillary Clinton run against a Clintonian immigration plan.
One of the starker examples -- Diane Feinstein accused Trump's immigration policies of being ":white supremicist". She wrote an editorial about the Czar sending Kosacks against her grandparents' village as the reason why. (I can't figure it out either). Back in the 1990s, she enthusiastically supported some of the same policies, because Clinton.
Yet one more example -- I have sometimes pointed out how Trump and the Squad use each other to further their political popularity. Bad for the country, but good for them.
On the Dem side, there is the anti-Trump Resistance.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @vinteuil
America isn’t Massachusetts. What works (or fails more slowly) in one place might not elsewhere.
Did Romney’s program have this quirk?
Decoding the Obamacare ‘marriage penalty’
Give up you guys lost.
1. imigration is continuing
2. mouments are getting taken donw
3. the 1619 project is getting taught in schools
4. most white "people" are old and dying off
5. genetics science is against racism
6. angela saini and adam rutherford are clebratedReplies: @interesting, @Unladen Swallow, @Reg Cæsar, @Ron Mexico
Is this Tiny’s Geritol moument? A bit overblonw.
Clebration can lead to cancer, though.
As for your dietary theories, if you go to Asia, (until recently when they adopted a more American diet) Mexico and Italy, you'll find that the locals are quite thin. The real Asian and Mediterranean diets (not the American versions) feature a LOT of vegetables flavored with a little meat and eaten with a little starch. This is much healthier than eating big slabs of meat. It's also much tastier than eating nothing but vegetables. This is the diet of the poor everywhere (and once was in America too) because they can't afford a lot of meat, but a little bit of smoked meat or sausage in a pot of beans or soup can lend flavor to the whole pot.Replies: @ben tillman, @UK, @indocon
Mexicans are fat. They are as wide as they are tall. Fun and raw people but their diet is terrible. When they used to be thin it is probably because they laboured in the fields all day.
What’s worse than a Becky? How about a Super-Becky:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-boys-reveals-the-first-look-at-aya-cash-as-stormfro-1842211969
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/rlq6qfv4vpfyyrswdd8m.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DyIrh6kUUAAKiu1.jpg
https://twitter.com/GranTorinoDSA/status/1168914863533502466Replies: @syonredux
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/xkygxqlvrlk8rdrfozxv.jpgReplies: @Pop Warner, @Forbes, @Anonymous, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Rotten
Prepare for her to say a ton of reasonable things the writers expect the audience to be repulsed by before doing something outrageously evil, in the same vein as American History X where Derek makes a bunch of honest, rational points right before flipping out and getting violent. It’s all about associating reasonable views with unreasonable actions
Open Borders in the Time of Pandemic? (w/ a hat tip to Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his Love in the Time of Cholera title.)
That is a recipe for genocide. Self genocide.
Whether you like immigrants or not, that is an insane idea right now.
It isn’t racist or xenophobic (as the crazed Left reflectively starts yapping) but observable scientific fact. You know the same “science” the alt Left/eco goons are always demanding we obey unquestioningly.
I guess some science is irrefutable, others not.
And if any wants to argue that the low COVID-19 figures from south of our border are somehow reassuring, I have a Nigerian Prince you should meet. The current socialist Mexican government is nearly totally dysfunctional in most respects. Why would anyone believe their medical stats?
Am I the only one who sees this? Prediction: we will soon have plenty of evidence in San Diego, southern Cali, and perhaps El Paso to confirm this suspicion. It won’t just be beloved “migrants” but many who have come and gone from Old Mexico. Once it starts there, it will make Italy and Iran look like paradise in comparison.
The Open Borders Dem mania isn’t just confined to Mexicans/Central Americans either. Imagine if we had that right now? The entire country would be one big Princess Cruise liner.
Let’s all hear from Bernie and Crazy Joe about that.
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/xkygxqlvrlk8rdrfozxv.jpgReplies: @Pop Warner, @Forbes, @Anonymous, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Rotten
So here’s out take–a first look–at the character that represents our ideas. Now, don’t you go getting any ideas at home. This is for professionals only.
The real truth - the real kernel of truth buried in the lies, falsehoods, deceits, duplicity, obfuscation, hysteria, dogma, propaganda etc - is that purely and simply 'open borders' is a naked and blatant expression of pure anti-white hatred. Nothing more nothing less. Propagated by persons who hate, revile and despise white people and wish them - but not their money - to be eradicated and destroyed, if not turned to vassal slaves.
Of course, an awful lot of gullible fools fall for the deceit without understanding the real animus behind it.
As Jared Taylor stated, the 'open borders' crowd fully understand the concept of borders and nationality when it comes to non white nations.Replies: @Bragadocious
I mostly agree but let us not forget the position of the Republic of Ireland on US immigration. Their politicians and press actively meddle in the debate here — if you don’t believe me, read some Irish media coverage of the issue. The Irish believe several things that may come as a surprise to most Americans.
1) America was stolen. Therefore, Americans have no right to say who comes in.
2) The Irish built America. Therefore, we owe them big time.
Naturally, the second point contradicts the first. If the Irish built America, then they were in receipt of stolen property and are complicit in a crime. But the Irish have never been accused of being rocket scientists, have they. When it comes to immigration, they’re just as bad as La Raza. And the Irish are as white as a fish’s belly.
Starting with res' reply:I agree that "iSteve and its comments" constitutes a rather unique site, which is why I am happy to participate. There may well be a left-wing equivalent which I don't know about. I also don't know of any right-wing sites which are more or less the same. Point taken.
That being said, look at the comments section on some of the center-left (NY TImes, WaPo) or left wing sites (Slate, Salon, Mother Jones). It is quite common for some writer to come up with politically correct garbage, and get torn apart in the comments section. And the PaleoLiberal who comments on Mother Jones is the same as the PL on this site (me. Duh). The difference being the comments on iSteve are in reply to one fairly rational person, while the comments on, say MoJo or WaPo or whatever are to a slew of politically correct writers.
One of my pet peeves about MoJo, and in fact the entire Left in general, is that in the pre-Trump era it was possible to intelligently discuss immigration. These days the official Left position is something worse than open borders. In one comment I described it as outsourcing our immigration to Mexican drug cartels and Chinese tongs.
However, there are some immigration receptionists in the comments section, admittedly some are right wingers there to troll the liberals.
That's about the best I can come up with. The comments by left wingers saying in effect "THIS IS UTTER BOVINE EXCREMENT!" shows me that there are some free thinking liberals and leftists in this world.
And iSteve shows me there are some free thinking conservatives and rightists in this world.Well, whenever I bring up global warming, there are some who reject IR spectroscopy and Ben Franklin's albedo experiments, and somehow think the temperature is rising by magic, and scientists who just happened to predict the rise in temperature are fools.Replies: @res, @Charles Erwin Wilson
That is encouraging. What is less encouraging is:
– How extreme a level of idiocy is needed to produce those responses.
– How little a change in framing seems necessary to get the objectors to go along. (sometimes it seems like the writers are being intentionally inflammatory to shift the Overton window)
– How rapidly the Overton window is changing for so many things.
Global warming (both the general idea and the anthropogenic specific kind) is a good example of rejecting reality by some (many?) on the right (Thanks for engaging with a good response). My experience is the comments on iSteve concerning global warming run a pretty wide gamut (it actually seems like a bit of a fracture point for a commentariat which is fairly like minded on most of the usual topics).
To my mind there is much room for disagreement on the general topic of global warming. I think it is hard to argue with these observations:
– Global temperatures have been trending sharply higher since the industrial age really got going.
– The most likely (primary) cause of that is human industry. In particular, greenhouse gases from combustion or other sources.
More arguable are things like:
– The temperature measurements are completely accurate beyond a reasonable doubt (e.g. heat islands near sensors).
– The feedback mechanisms are more likely to produce runaway effects rather than stabilization.
– The measures typically proposed in response to global warming would be both affordable (e.g. in the not destroying the economy sense) and effective.
– The climate models are believable.
Then there is the question of what is the ideal temperature (range) for the Earth? Over the historical record (say last 2-3000 years) we see evidence that lower average temperatures have been more of a problem than higher temperatures.
FWIW I think there are more people taking any objection to the “global warming would be the end of the world so you have to do what I say right now” dogma as heresy than there are people objecting to the less controversial points above.
P.S. And this is without getting into the phenomenon of our “elite” flying about the world in their private jets while lecturing the rest of us.
Give up you guys lost.
1. imigration is continuing
2. mouments are getting taken donw
3. the 1619 project is getting taught in schools
4. most white "people" are old and dying off
5. genetics science is against racism
6. angela saini and adam rutherford are clebratedReplies: @interesting, @Unladen Swallow, @Reg Cæsar, @Ron Mexico
TD, are you a speech writer for Joe Biden?
The freeloaders have nothing to lose.
Without whites they just go back to racial baselines.
Their hate is based on envy, and theft of resources.
The parasites as well as their proxies.
There can be no progress in such a state.
Wuhan-Chan, crime and rent-seeking cannot coexist either.
Will they have to close the borders for quarantine?
Can they open them again?
Questions asked.
Time will tell the answers.
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/xkygxqlvrlk8rdrfozxv.jpgReplies: @Pop Warner, @Forbes, @Anonymous, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Rotten
A Jew cast as a Nazi to show you how evil Whites are, perfect.
Agree. Bigly.
A Turkish haircut? Is that one of those perversions, like a Chicago sunroof?
Starting with res' reply:I agree that "iSteve and its comments" constitutes a rather unique site, which is why I am happy to participate. There may well be a left-wing equivalent which I don't know about. I also don't know of any right-wing sites which are more or less the same. Point taken.
That being said, look at the comments section on some of the center-left (NY TImes, WaPo) or left wing sites (Slate, Salon, Mother Jones). It is quite common for some writer to come up with politically correct garbage, and get torn apart in the comments section. And the PaleoLiberal who comments on Mother Jones is the same as the PL on this site (me. Duh). The difference being the comments on iSteve are in reply to one fairly rational person, while the comments on, say MoJo or WaPo or whatever are to a slew of politically correct writers.
One of my pet peeves about MoJo, and in fact the entire Left in general, is that in the pre-Trump era it was possible to intelligently discuss immigration. These days the official Left position is something worse than open borders. In one comment I described it as outsourcing our immigration to Mexican drug cartels and Chinese tongs.
However, there are some immigration receptionists in the comments section, admittedly some are right wingers there to troll the liberals.
That's about the best I can come up with. The comments by left wingers saying in effect "THIS IS UTTER BOVINE EXCREMENT!" shows me that there are some free thinking liberals and leftists in this world.
And iSteve shows me there are some free thinking conservatives and rightists in this world.Well, whenever I bring up global warming, there are some who reject IR spectroscopy and Ben Franklin's albedo experiments, and somehow think the temperature is rising by magic, and scientists who just happened to predict the rise in temperature are fools.Replies: @res, @Charles Erwin Wilson
(1) The data do not support the CAGW narrative (cf. the weather balloon data and the satellite data), (2) your fellow travelers say CAGW is true, but act as if CAGW is false (if you seek the truth, watch what they do, and not what they say), (3) if you and yours believed CAGW is true, you would build nuclear plants (no CO2 emissions) instead of opposing them, (4) if you had a strong argument you would not need to suppress dissent, (5) in fact, your argument is so poor you resorted to equivocation (“climate change”), (6) increasing CO2 has been a benefit to humanity, which you ignore, (7) your solution is (a) always a wealth transfer from people you dislike to people you like, and (b) a way for you to implement a Soviet system.
We reject your claims because they are false. No one believes the temperature is “rising by magic.” Your employment of that slur demonstrates your lack of ethics, your dishonesty, and exemplifies why we reject your narrative. Ply your dishonest ware to the gullible, the enthusiasts and the parasites living off the honest work of the people that make this country work.
You are an advocate for a political philosophy hatched by Old Scratch himself. Cast it off. Try a warm spring day out under a clear sky – maybe you can shake off your retinitis pigmentosa and photophobia.
“The problem for Democrats is that once they admit that Open Borders are an awful idea, then they’ve admitted they don’t have actually Truth, Justice, and the American Way on their side, they just have a policy stance which is morally open to negotiation and compromise based on facts, logic, and open debate. And the Democrats don’t like those odds.”
Neocon Republicans also do not like those odds. And Neocon Republicans, and some old style Country Club WASP Republicans who are not quite crazy enough for perpetual war for Israel to be true Neocons, are more important to cheating the white working class, and then the white middle class, with non-white immigrant floods than are Democrats.
Mass migration in the form of armies brought the Black Plague from China to Europe.
I find this is more effective than the open/closed border frame. Libs are historically attached to the word "regulation," and (equally important) they're emotionally attached to viewing "DE-regulation" as an evil. When I say that the Reagan-era loosening of immigration was part of the deregulation policies of the time, I can sense them putting the economic arguments together for themselves.
I ask why they insist on regulation in every other facet of government policy, except when it comes to immigration?
And the context of *regulating* the border opens a window onto the essential questions regarding immigrants, namely:
1. How many do we accept?
2. At what rate of entry?
3. What mix of nationalities? (Definitely know your audience with that one, but some libs do grudgingly get it.)
4. Who decides 1, 2 and 3: The citizens, or big business?
That last is a big one with American liberals of a certain vintage. The ones I bother to talk to are not overly doctrinaire. For them, the regulation framing seems emotionally persuasive because it helps them step out of the media framing involving race and "compassion," and moves them towards a frame involving control by the people against profiteers.Replies: @Hibernian, @Big Dick Bandit
Your approach will not work with younger liberals or their gerontocratic leaders.
For the rest (the ones that are not certifiable) I sense many are looking for some comfortable justification for their already-present misgivings about the radical “open borders” ideology, one that will still allow them to feel good about themselves. The Regulation frame might be a way to make a crack in the radical edifice.
Thanks for your reply, Hibernian.
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/xkygxqlvrlk8rdrfozxv.jpgReplies: @Pop Warner, @Forbes, @Anonymous, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Rotten
Phenotypically, she’s no Becky. She’s a Bekah. (See below.)
Oy gevalt. Looks like the sperg (((show runner))) took /pol/’s knowingly ironic adulation of a certain Ms. Shapiro’s “Khazar milkers” totally seriously:
http://insidepulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Earth-X-evil-supergirl.jpg
Perhaps they felt that that would be too on the nose....Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson
And once you admit that the government (of the people, for the people, etc) has the right to place a limit on the number, you're admitting that the government has control over who gets to come here, and the right to enforce laws against people who violate those limits.
What number of immigrants is "racist," and what number is "not racist"? A limit of 350,000 immigrants per year (about what we averaged during the 1970s)? Racist. 450,000 (about what we averaged during the 1980s)? Racist. 600,000? Racist. 800,000? Racist. 1.2 million (the current level)? Still sorta kinda racist.
All you are arguing over is a number, and numbers aren't racist. They are just numbers. And what really matters is what effect you think any given number of immigrants will have on the country - economically (both at the individual and national level), environmentally, and culturally. And the reality is that any immigrant limit you set that would be politically palatable is far, far lower than the number of people on this planet who would like to come here, so there isn't even any pretense that we can "save" all of the people living in misery.Replies: @ben tillman, @gregor, @AnotherDad
For many liberals, this topic is now seemingly too emotional for them to process these sorts of arguments. Being “pro” immigrant is a spiritual position for them. The more reasonable liberals will admit that the government has the right to set numbers, etc, and, if really pressed, many would acknowledge the need for some practical limits. But implicitly they don’t seem to think the public should have much say in the matter, nor do they like having the issue discussed or debated. Why? Because the public is too racist. Just as school desegregation couldn’t be decided democratically, neither can you have a white majority deciding on how many brown people they want to let in. Such decisions are the domain of the kritarchy, the federal bureaucracy, corporate interests, etc. It’s not our place to question if they are letting in “too many” immigrants.
I find this is more effective than the open/closed border frame. Libs are historically attached to the word "regulation," and (equally important) they're emotionally attached to viewing "DE-regulation" as an evil. When I say that the Reagan-era loosening of immigration was part of the deregulation policies of the time, I can sense them putting the economic arguments together for themselves.
I ask why they insist on regulation in every other facet of government policy, except when it comes to immigration?
And the context of *regulating* the border opens a window onto the essential questions regarding immigrants, namely:
1. How many do we accept?
2. At what rate of entry?
3. What mix of nationalities? (Definitely know your audience with that one, but some libs do grudgingly get it.)
4. Who decides 1, 2 and 3: The citizens, or big business?
That last is a big one with American liberals of a certain vintage. The ones I bother to talk to are not overly doctrinaire. For them, the regulation framing seems emotionally persuasive because it helps them step out of the media framing involving race and "compassion," and moves them towards a frame involving control by the people against profiteers.Replies: @Hibernian, @Big Dick Bandit
this is pretty excellent framing. progressives do, in fact, love regulation.
for what it’s worth, Boomer Libs in real life–even the affluent ones–still don’t like the idea of Open Borders. i spoke to a few rich NYT readers this weekend (read: my mother-in-law and her friends) and their response to this article was uniform disgust at the “activists” claiming that defending immigration on merit is simply unreasonable.
related: Tucker Carlson’s “Ship of Fools” is worth getting progressive friends to read…i’ve gotten several to do so by telling them they would be shocked at how much Tucker uses progressive arguments about war/labor, and once they check it out the immigration pieces really aren’t what get them disagreeable (it’s the feminism and pro-choice parts that trigger progs)
And once you admit that the government (of the people, for the people, etc) has the right to place a limit on the number, you're admitting that the government has control over who gets to come here, and the right to enforce laws against people who violate those limits.
What number of immigrants is "racist," and what number is "not racist"? A limit of 350,000 immigrants per year (about what we averaged during the 1970s)? Racist. 450,000 (about what we averaged during the 1980s)? Racist. 600,000? Racist. 800,000? Racist. 1.2 million (the current level)? Still sorta kinda racist.
All you are arguing over is a number, and numbers aren't racist. They are just numbers. And what really matters is what effect you think any given number of immigrants will have on the country - economically (both at the individual and national level), environmentally, and culturally. And the reality is that any immigrant limit you set that would be politically palatable is far, far lower than the number of people on this planet who would like to come here, so there isn't even any pretense that we can "save" all of the people living in misery.Replies: @ben tillman, @gregor, @AnotherDad
Immigration is one of those things that’s supposed to be obviously “good” or at least “complex”, but once subjected to any serious critique simply crumbles. It’s utterly empty. There is simply no case for mass immigration that is mathematically, logically sound.
Basically there are two strands:
1) People have a right to come here– i.e. open borders.
Basically this is just the Jewish middle man minority ideology–the goyim exist for us to exploit. How dare you keep us out. (Cue “pale of settlement” or golfocaust.)
Core minoritarianism. It’s been propagandized into the dominant ideology of our age, and the article is full of it. This Cristina Jiménez character oozes it from her pores. Her people are entitled to go anywhere to take what the white man has built.
Some (Jewish) “libertarians”–e.g. Bryan Caplan–propagandize this. Basically it’s a denial of the idea that you can have any shared property right. It’s obviously an anti-liberty ideology. If people are free, they will–of their own free will–group up with folks of like race, culture, creed and create their own “group spaces”–essentially create mini-nations. It takes state police power to *stop* people from protecting themselves from invaders. (I.e. what states in the West do now.) That’s what Bryan and his ilk really want–elite control of the state to keep the people from being able to live as they would like.
It’s a weird ideology. I never had any thought i was entitled to plop my ass down in someone else’s place, much less someone else’s nation–not even the ones my ancestors came from. And a vile ideology–the ideology of the parasite, the home invader, the rapist. You must let me in!!!
And … people reject it. If the globalists and minoritarians try and sell it straight up, honestly, pretty much everyone normal–not a middle man minority, not an immigrant trying to get in to someone else’s patch–rejects it as nonsense.
2) Immigration is good for you!
Once people reject the “right to come” case … they have implicitly grabbed onto the moral truth that people do have the right to control who can join their nation. So then the immigration cheerleaders need to claim immigration is good the natives somehow. And indeed they blather like crazy–“the economy” and “restaurants” and “affordable child care” … blah, blah, blah.
But it’s simply innumerate nonsense that immigration is actually good for natives. Continual immigration means that either:
a) your nation becomes more and more crowded, until it’s a shithole that no one wants to come to.(You have condemned your posterity live in a crowded shithole.)
or
b) your population stays in check, which means the native’s genetic legacy is continually being reduced and reduced in favor of foreigners until it is … gone. (Your posterity–if any–isn’t related to you.)
(I’m leaving out the work-the-immigrants-to-death Caribbean sugar planation option, but yes i know it exists mathematically. Suffice it to say, that’s not on offer.)
The only caveat here would be some sort of taking someone who is so useful, and sufficiently compatible with the natives, that the upfront competitive/security benefit that would accrue to future generations is sufficient to cover the costs to future generations. Essentially a “national security” caveat. Suffice it to say such people are very rare. Maybe in a nation of 300m you might come up with a few thousand a year? And even then, simply promoting eugenic fertility–which your nation must ultimately do to have a decent future–is a better option.
Immigration is giving something limited–space in your nation–to foreigners. There’s no way around it.
Boiled down all arguments that “immigration is good for you” are fundamentally arguments that you–stupid native–should not care about your own posterity, about your own genetic and cultural legacy. Which, of course, is not surprising given who is making them.
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/rlq6qfv4vpfyyrswdd8m.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DyIrh6kUUAAKiu1.jpg
https://twitter.com/GranTorinoDSA/status/1168914863533502466Replies: @syonredux
It is odd that they didn’t cast someone like, say, Melissa Benoist as the show’s Alt-Right Uber-Woman:
Perhaps they felt that that would be too on the nose….
I grant that point. However, the latter (gerontocrats) are influential but few. The former (callow youth) are mostly followers of a zeitgeist manufactured by others.
For the rest (the ones that are not certifiable) I sense many are looking for some comfortable justification for their already-present misgivings about the radical “open borders” ideology, one that will still allow them to feel good about themselves. The Regulation frame might be a way to make a crack in the radical edifice.
Thanks for your reply, Hibernian.
This is the context of the “mini-Mike could’ve given every American $1M” meme. It is a revelation that there are ostensibly adult individuals that think that sounds believable.
http://insidepulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Earth-X-evil-supergirl.jpg
Perhaps they felt that that would be too on the nose....Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson
She has the Schutzstaffel double lightning bolts – and perfectly placed!
As for your dietary theories, if you go to Asia, (until recently when they adopted a more American diet) Mexico and Italy, you'll find that the locals are quite thin. The real Asian and Mediterranean diets (not the American versions) feature a LOT of vegetables flavored with a little meat and eaten with a little starch. This is much healthier than eating big slabs of meat. It's also much tastier than eating nothing but vegetables. This is the diet of the poor everywhere (and once was in America too) because they can't afford a lot of meat, but a little bit of smoked meat or sausage in a pot of beans or soup can lend flavor to the whole pot.Replies: @ben tillman, @UK, @indocon
Americans have gotten fatter just as the turkeys they raise have gotten fatter…cause or causation?
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2013/11/turkeyweightslaughter/9aa81660d.jpg
Look at that upsurge starting in 1980’s! The Reagan years really did start to rut we are in today
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/xkygxqlvrlk8rdrfozxv.jpgReplies: @Pop Warner, @Forbes, @Anonymous, @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Rotten
Since Seth Rogan is involved with the show, I fully expect the racist white girl to get Blacked.
There were movements on the left and right to maximize personal power by maximizing conflict.
On the left, of course some of the truly radical movements.
On the right, things like the Christian Coalition and Moral Majority found it easier to get their goals through by polarization rather than cooperation.
Not to mention there are plenty of politicians in both parties who thrive on conflict.
On the GOP side, there was the famous meeting where GOP leaders, I think led by Mitch McConnell, decided they would simply refuse to cooperate at all with Obama. The goal being to help him fail so the GOP could cash in.
For example, Obama stole Republican ideas for health care, so the GOP ran against ObamaCare, which was stolen from RomneyCare. It was amusing, if sickening, to see Romney run against ObamaCare in 2012.
On the other side, SOME of Trump's immigration plans were very similar to Bill Clinton's proposals. It was amusing, if sickening, to see Hillary Clinton run against a Clintonian immigration plan.
One of the starker examples -- Diane Feinstein accused Trump's immigration policies of being ":white supremicist". She wrote an editorial about the Czar sending Kosacks against her grandparents' village as the reason why. (I can't figure it out either). Back in the 1990s, she enthusiastically supported some of the same policies, because Clinton.
Yet one more example -- I have sometimes pointed out how Trump and the Squad use each other to further their political popularity. Bad for the country, but good for them.
On the Dem side, there is the anti-Trump Resistance.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @vinteuil
What goals did the Christian Coalition and Moral Majority ever get?
They lost on abortion, they lost on school prayer, they lost on absolutely everything gay related…honestly, what are you thinking of?
Here’s what Bulgarian authorities did to help out the Greek government with the calamities at the Greek-Turkish border – a truly impressive measure!
https://twitter.com/john_wayne_gr/status/1237365651737583616/photo/1
Colonel Klink was played by a Jew.
We wanted to write an article about what Democrats thought about immigration, so we asked a bunch of wealthy liberals. We wanted to write an article about what progressives thought about immigration, so we asked a bunch of wealthy liberals. We wanted to write an article about what the left thought about immigration, so we asked a bunch of wealthy liberals. We wanted to write an article about what moderates thought about immigration, so we asked a bunch of wealthy liberals.
The NYT is loaded to the gills with wealthy liberals and wealthy neoconservatives, but they have as many leftists as they do populist conservatives: none.
If you want to understand the left, talk to leftists. Here’s a hint: anyone talking about GDP is not a leftist. The NYT and the class of people who own and patronize it are terrified that elements of the left hate them as much as the right does.
I do not like Trump at all – I’m a Bernie supporter. Liberals and neocons know open borders is wildly unpopular. If Trump was serious about this, he should have the FBI target the owners and managers of businesses knowingly employing undocumented workers. Schedule fifty televised perp walks 2 weeks before the election and he wins 45 states.
Focusing solely on the undocumented workers themselves is a mistake since these people are victims of their own bad governments and victims of exploitative US employers.
If Trump had the brains and balls to arrest or charge even one prominent, wealthy American capitalist for their role in this, he’d split some of the left from our increasingly fragile alliance with liberals. Luckily for the wealthy liberals, Trump has no clue what he’s doing and seems to be advised by some of the dumbest people in the history of the world.
Aya Cash is not really Jewish – her mother is Catholic, which makes her not a Jew. Also she is not hot, at least her face . They did a hell of a job with the makeup, costume, lighting and photography to get that shot. In real life she has a round face with a pointy chin and at 37 is past her prime.
Not just Klink. A number of the “Nazis” were played by German Jews. Klink was played by Werner Klemperer, the son of prominent orchestra conductor Otto Klemperer and an opera singer (oddly, Werner did not inherit any musical talent). His cousin was Victor Klemperer, author of a famous wartime diary.
The NYT is loaded to the gills with wealthy liberals and wealthy neoconservatives, but they have as many leftists as they do populist conservatives: none.
If you want to understand the left, talk to leftists. Here's a hint: anyone talking about GDP is not a leftist. The NYT and the class of people who own and patronize it are terrified that elements of the left hate them as much as the right does.
I do not like Trump at all - I'm a Bernie supporter. Liberals and neocons know open borders is wildly unpopular. If Trump was serious about this, he should have the FBI target the owners and managers of businesses knowingly employing undocumented workers. Schedule fifty televised perp walks 2 weeks before the election and he wins 45 states.
Focusing solely on the undocumented workers themselves is a mistake since these people are victims of their own bad governments and victims of exploitative US employers.
If Trump had the brains and balls to arrest or charge even one prominent, wealthy American capitalist for their role in this, he'd split some of the left from our increasingly fragile alliance with liberals. Luckily for the wealthy liberals, Trump has no clue what he's doing and seems to be advised by some of the dumbest people in the history of the world.Replies: @anon
f Trump was serious about this, he should have the FBI target the owners and managers of businesses knowingly employing undocumented workers. Schedule fifty televised perp walks 2 weeks before the election and he wins 45 states.
lol, not even. Before the first arrest hit CNN some Friend of Obama (FoO) judge probably in Hawaii would issue a national injunction to shut it down. Then Trump’s forces would have to do an appeal to the 9th Circus and eventually to the USSC, giving lots of time to the Cheap Labor Chamber of Commerce GOPe and the Ballot Box Stuffing DNCe to come up with alternate plans.
If Trump had the brains and balls to arrest or charge even one prominent, wealthy American capitalist for their role in this, he’d split some of the left from our increasingly fragile alliance with liberals.
Nah. Leftists are stupid, that’s why they are leftists. They talk big but they’ll all knuckle under to Obama’s steppin-fetchit, Biden, because they do what they are told on election day.
Muh solidaridy! Solidaridty ferever! Where’s muh free Election Day Union beer?
lol.
Liberals told us to wait for the courts to step in and overrule Trump on the wall (didn't happen), exposing Trump's tax fraud (didn't happen), the Muslim ban (didn't happen), and on and on.Just like we did when we leftists voted in President Hillary Clinton, right?
You'd rather open borders wins forever than abandon your pals in the Club for Growth. No wonder Trump has done so little, you lot are so delusional. I had hoped that, for all the bad stuff he's doing otherwise, Trump would at least achieve a lasting peace with Russia (nope) and slow down immigration.
His total unwillingness to address the demand side of the problem (US employers) shows that he was never serious about it in the first place, and the fact that you on the right haven't held his feet to the fire on this shows you never really cared about stopping excessive immigration, either.Replies: @anon
You sound like a liberal, promising that all of the awful stuff Trump wants to do are going to blocked by the federal courts. In this universe, the federal courts have delivered victory after victory after victory to the right. The federal courts are dominated by hard right judicial activists and they always side with the Republicans (except marriage equality).
Liberals told us to wait for the courts to step in and overrule Trump on the wall (didn’t happen), exposing Trump’s tax fraud (didn’t happen), the Muslim ban (didn’t happen), and on and on.
Just like we did when we leftists voted in President Hillary Clinton, right?
You’d rather open borders wins forever than abandon your pals in the Club for Growth. No wonder Trump has done so little, you lot are so delusional. I had hoped that, for all the bad stuff he’s doing otherwise, Trump would at least achieve a lasting peace with Russia (nope) and slow down immigration.
His total unwillingness to address the demand side of the problem (US employers) shows that he was never serious about it in the first place, and the fact that you on the right haven’t held his feet to the fire on this shows you never really cared about stopping excessive immigration, either.
This happens in London, as you may know English are a minority in their own capital, but areas like Richmond are still very White
https://cdn.thestage.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Richmond_Riverside_London_-_Sept_2008.jpg
Many people in these sorts of areas do unironically gush about diversity because from their viewpoint, it is pretty good as they get to indulge in things like the Notting Hill Carnival or grab an 'authentic' kebab or get a Turkish haircut periodically.Replies: @Altai, @Anonymous
Only rich people live in Richmond. (The clue’s in the name)
Liberals told us to wait for the courts to step in and overrule Trump on the wall (didn't happen), exposing Trump's tax fraud (didn't happen), the Muslim ban (didn't happen), and on and on.Just like we did when we leftists voted in President Hillary Clinton, right?
You'd rather open borders wins forever than abandon your pals in the Club for Growth. No wonder Trump has done so little, you lot are so delusional. I had hoped that, for all the bad stuff he's doing otherwise, Trump would at least achieve a lasting peace with Russia (nope) and slow down immigration.
His total unwillingness to address the demand side of the problem (US employers) shows that he was never serious about it in the first place, and the fact that you on the right haven't held his feet to the fire on this shows you never really cared about stopping excessive immigration, either.Replies: @anon
Just like we did when we leftists voted in President Hillary Clinton, right?
You gave it a good try, just as you were told to do. This time around your precinct captain will tell you to vote for Joe, and again you’ll do as you’re told like good NPC’s.