MathWizard
Good things are good
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User ID: 164
MathWizard
Good things are good
4d ago
If someone with a (D) after their name wanted to enforce lawful immigration policy, we wouldn't see anything like this.
This is too heavily entangled for this claim to be meaningful. They like the Democrats largely because the Democrats are obsessed with optics and placating the extreme left and being on "the right side of history". If someone with a (D) after their name wanted to enforce lawful immigration policy we would see complaints and pushback and then the Democrats would back down and not do it. Or do a much lesser version of it. They would surgically come in and get the pedophiles and stuff and deport them and the left would allow it as long as they credibly promised not to deport anyone sympathetic.
But they would not have ramped up ICE activity the way Trump has in the first place, so of course the protests wouldn't have escalated like this, but it's hard to disentangle that from the protestors being nicer to the Democrats, or the Democrats being nicer to the protestors and giving them what they want sooner.
MathWizard
Good things are good
4d ago
I definitely think that would help reduce the flow inwards, because if they can't get easy jobs then they won't expect a better life here. I definitely approve of that as a low-hanging fruit that we should be doing in addition to everything else. But it doesn't actually deport anyone who's already here. If anything it would turn them even more underclass and thus strain any welfare systems they might have snuck themselves into, or turn them to crime or homelessness. Which I suppose might make them easier to detect and thus deport, so isn't a fatal flaw in a system that was actually deporting them, but is not going to give good outcomes if we just keep playing catch and release.
MathWizard
Good things are good
4d ago
I would be sympathetic to this (because I find it quite plausible that ICE are behaving in an undisciplined manner) if "blue tribe doesn't want immigration policy enforced" wasn't literally true. Every single claim they make, every video they post, every action they take, is tainted with the confounder that they also don't want immigration policy enforced. The world where ICE is completely professional and competent would have near identical protests and complaints to what we're seeing now, although probably with fewer deaths. I don't think most people are actually protesting ICE misbehavior, I think they're protesting "enforcing lawful immigration policy" and the ICE misbehavior is just a cherry on top for them to retroactively justify their protest. For many of them, the point of being annoying and obstructive is not to actually hinder the functioning of ICE but to trigger them into retaliating and thus create more viral videos to complain about. I strongly suspect that if the protests were not happening then all the issues would vanish and ICE could just arrest and deport illegal aliens like they're supposed to.
Maybe they actually are overstepping their bounds and arresting legal migrants they don't have a legal right to arrest, but I would take such accusations more seriously if they weren't mixed in with complaints about any immigration policy enforcement. If the claims were "we should deport every single illegal immigrant, but make sure to minimize collateral damage along the way" (which is what I believe), and then claims that ICE has too high collateral damage mixed in with their legitimate duties, then I would take that seriously. But if the claim is "All ICE behavior is illegitimate" then I'm just going to treat it like wolf crying. Come back when you have a better plan which contains deporting all the illegals as an axiom, and less collateral damage. It's probably possible. But if the choices are (deportation + limited misbehavior) or (total non enforcement) I'd prefer the former.
The thing about Amelia that doesn't apply to the previous meme is that Amelia originated from the left. The left made a propaganda piece so out of touch and unpersuasive that it made the right seem more appealing rather than less. The left tried to make a cautionary tale warning people to stay away from the dangers of right wing extremism and accidentally made their fantasy instead. This is not the right saying "come join us, we have cute alt girls", this is the left saying "stay away from those dangerous cute right wingers, they'll seduce you and convince you to rebel against the system" and the right saying "wow, that sounds even better than what I was expecting, sign me up!"
Every Amelia post is a troll against the left wing. The left can't meme so badly that they accidentally spawn right wing memes. (Almost) nobody actually thinks Amelia is real. She is a fantasy. But she's a fantasy that the left considers to be a cautionary tale propaganda piece (at least the subset that made the silly game) and put her in there as an antagonist. It's a dismissal of the left wing's warnings and concerns, saying "your worst case scenario is my fantasy". Her purpose is not to actually convince people to join the right to get cute girls but both to troll the left for warning against cute right wing girls, and also celebrate the idea of right wing girls and hopefully inspire more to step up and stand up for what's right while still being cute and alt at the same time.
There ARE girls on the right wing. There are going to be some who decide to cosplay as Amelia to show their support (Calling it now, next ShoeOnHead video has her purple wig at least cameo in reference to this even if it's not the main topic of the video). They're almost certainly not single: girls like that get snapped up immediately by high status men, but they do exist. Maybe if Amelia memes stick around there will be more of them 5 years from now. Maybe not. It is a fantasy after all.
That would be a massive political win for the right. Not sure about Trump specifically. I have no idea what his actual utility function looks like, but I suspect he did it this way on purpose in order to "own the libs" and bolster the flames of the culture war. I still voted for him, because he was the better of two bad options: at least he's doing something, but he is definitely not the ideal candidate to be getting things done in an effective manner.
The far left and the far right seem to have this sick sort of codependency where they need the other to exist and seem powerful as a boogeyman in order to create enough viral content to fuel their own flames. While Trump is not exactly far right, not on every issue, he copied this particular technique to great effect.
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