OliveTapenade
No bio...
User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I'd argue that you're indulging in word games more than I am - in this case, comparing Koreans to weeds while implying that resources in Georgia are scarce, or that the presence of Koreans reduces prosperity for others. I think this is a misrepresentation of the scenario. Is the state of Georgia like your garden bed? Are the Koreans choking out native Georgians? That's not clear at all.
It's not even clear how race or ethnicity is relevant - if the issue is that Koreans consume more resources, wouldn't it also be a problem if native white or black populations increase? All people consume resources. We just generally don't view this as prohibitive because Georgia possesses ample natural resources (nobody is starving!) and because people produce resources as well.
The metaphor you're making just doesn't make any sense.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
What does that have to do with the point under discussion?
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Why do you say 'native white' specifically? I said myself that I think a community has the right to determine its own conditions of entry, but in the case of Georgia, that existing community is not exclusively white. Wikipedia tells me that about a third of Georgians are black, which sounds about right for a former Confederate state. Judging from this it sounds like it's been like that for a long time, and I'd bet that most black Georgians are descendants of people who've lived in the state for centuries. So I find it a bit odd that you specify 'the native white population', since the native population of Georgia in this context seems like it would include an awful lot of blacks as well. Do they not count, for you? If not, why not?
On a side note, I also notice that, per Wikipedia's chart on live births by race of mother, the black birthrate in Georgia is going down faster than the white birthrate, though the overall number of black residents is increasing slightly faster, presumably due to immigration. Notably comparing 2010 to 2022 on USAFacts, the populations of every racial group in Georgia have increased, including whites. It seems hard to say that Georgian whites are being 'replaced' if they are increasing in number.
Anyway, what would happen if you submitted a referendum to all native Georgians on immigration policy? You might have to define 'native Georgian', but I see no way of defining 'native Georgian' that would restrict it only to whites, since there is clearly a very large non-white population whose ancestors have been resident in the state for centuries. But let's say we poll everybody who is resident in Georgia and who had at least one ancestor resident in Georgia in 1950. What would they vote for?
The answer is that I don't know. I don't think you know either. Georgia is a red state, but not that red - Stacey Abrams won 45% of the vote in 2022, and 48% in 2018. Its house of reps is 100 Republicans to 80 Democrats. There's clearly a left in Georgia and we might expect them to be more sympathetic to immigration - and of course, many on the right, including moderate Republicans, are sympathetic to a level of immigration as well. I'm not convinced that Georgians would overwhelmingly vote to kick Koreans out. There's clearly an appetite in Georgia for cracking down on illegal immigration, and Brian Kemp has signed bills to that effect, but I can't find much recent about legal immigration. This 2025 poll suggests that most Georgians want illegal immigrants to have some path to residency - if true I can't imagine them being more hostile to legal immigrants.
What position do you think Georgians would all vote for? Ending all immigration? Banning all Asian immigration? Nonwhite immigration? What is it that you think Georgians want?
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I mean, my take on the broader question is that it's undoubtedly true that migration changes the character of a community - it changes its make-up in terms of ethnicity, language, religion, genetics, custom, and much more.
I also think that it is entirely reasonable for a community to have an internal discussion about how they want to change in the future, if at all, and to take organised action to ensure that they only change in ways they want, rather than ways they don't want.
That means that, for instance, if a community values being ethnically, linguistically, religiously, etc., homogenous, it can pursue policies to that effect.
The relevant question in most Western contexts is whether any given we does value that, and perhaps more importantly, whether we should value that. When we as a community make migration policy, what are our priorities? What goals are we serving?
In practice I think it's usually economic growth, and that tends to overwhelm everything else. But often people do claim different goals or motivations - the right often talks about cultural compatibility, or the left talks about compassion and hospitality. At any rate, this is a good internal debate to have.
I pressed NYTReader a bit because what that situation looked like was a community that was changing in terms of overall make-up due to an influx of Korean immigrants, and it wasn't clear that the natives were opposed to that immigration, or that the immigration was contrary to the wishes of the Georgia legislature. (Granting, hopefully, that the legislature is the preeminent forum in which the internal discussions or debates that I mentioned happen.) Hence my wanting to ask - what should be the priorities here? Why? What values or principles motivate your reasoning on this subject?
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Sure, that's why I was probing you a bit about what the lines are, in order to precisify what your concerns actually are. I didn't want to leap to conclusions and assume the worst.
That said, I'm not particularly keen on you outsourcing your opinions to someone else. Dean is a very articulate poster here, but one thing Dean cannot do is tell me what NYTReader thinks.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
If the concern is cultural change, I think that's valid, and I'm open to a discussion about that.
That is, though, I think a different concern to 'demographic replacement'? I take demographic replacement to suggest an agenda of, well, replacement - that is, not just a community changing through migration and integration of people of new cultural backgrounds, but rather the elimination of the existing population, and new people taking its place.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Oh, sure. I expect both Democrats and Republicans to make up rules on the spot to justify whatever it is that's in their advantage to do. Neither side is particularly scrupulous or principled.
What I mean is just that, in this context, I don't see any reason why the Democrats shouldn't try to do things that they think their voters might want, or which will obstruct their political opponents. Trump winning the presidency in 2024 does not imply that the other side ought to sit down, shut up, and let him do whatever he wants.
Jonah Goldberg often criticises the concept of a 'mandate', and I think he's broadly correct. If we're going to invest a lot in mandates, every individual member of a congress has a mandate, and in the case of Democrats, that seems a lot like a mandate to oppose the Republicans, or oppose Trump. "You lost fair and square" is a bad objection to Democratic congressmen pursuing their own mandates. Politics is always going on all the time, power is always being renegotiated, and no side is entitled to their enemies laying down arms.
Just reversing partisanship isn't always a good tool, but it is helpful sometimes. If it were a Democratic president and obstructive Republicans in congress, would the same people agree that Republicans lost fair and square and ought to just let the president do what he wants? I don't think so. I think they'd want congressional Republicans to use all the leverage they have to extract concessions or limit what the president can do.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Is the native population declining? Your quotes didn't say that, and as noted I can't read the article.
I think degree matters as well. If a native population goes down by 1% while at the same time some migrants move in, I wouldn't consider that replacement. I think the word 'replacement' suggests a wholesale removal. Is anything like that going on?
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
You said in place of. What's your evidence for that? I just distinguished between addition and replacement.
I don't have a Wall Street Journal subscription, so I can't read the article itself, but I would be very shocked if the WSJ was pushing a line about demographic replacement - especially since the portions you've quoted sound sympathetic to the Koreans.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I think most of it is just economic, to be honest. The two-party consensus is that large-scale immigration is necessary for economic reasons - more workers enable more economic growth, and it fills out the bottom of the population pyramid, which is declining due to demographic transition. (For non-conspiratorial reasons - no one's scheming to reduce the native birthrate, and in fact the birthrate decline is global.)
When asked, neither party usually says that's the reason, though if pressed they will usually mention it as one among others, but I think it's the core reason and most of the rest is rationalisation.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
The unpopularity of the Democrats is part of Klein's point, though. Their own base is unhappy with them, it seems partly because they are not perceived as doing enough to fight or to interfere with Trump's agenda.
And... they would seem to have a reasonable mandate to do that. Opposition parties are, in fact, supposed to oppose the government party and hold it responsible. The Democratic members of congress have obligations to represent the people who elected them and to make decisions that they perceive as in the interests of the country as a whole. The American constitutional system does not ask representatives to shut up and roll over just because the president is from a different party.
I don't think a government shutdown is a good idea myself, or a good move for Democrats, but Democrats absolutely should use the positions they have to do things that their voters want, or that they think is good for the country, and both those principles mean opposing some of what the government is doing.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
You're going to have to spell that out for me.
Koreans, really? It's demographic replacement by the least fertile demographic in the world?
At any rate, it's not clear to me that addition constitutes replacement.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
See below - I think that precision when it comes to identifying an opponent is instrumentally good.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I'd argue that factional differences among one's opponents are relevant for understanding those foes, even if for only tactical reasons. If nothing else, if you approach this particular drama by concluding you need to attack Christians, you're likely to be quite ineffective, because they weren't the ones who got this done.
For what it's worth, my view on the object level issue is:
It's rather shady to go after payment processors specifically, as a way of putting pressure on other platforms. Collective Shout would have been better or more honest to make their cases to Steam or Itch.io directly.
It would be reasonable for platforms themselves to make decisions about what they want to host, including NSFW content; there would be nothing in principle objectionable about Steam or Itch.io making such decisions.
I think it would be best for society overall if a platform like Steam made a decision not to host porn. This is because I think it's socially beneficial for porn to be at least somewhat taboo or embarrassing; since Steam is the default game platform, what it hosts helps to set the standard. So I think Steam shouldn't host NSFW games for the same reason that YouTube doesn't host porn. Itch.io, on the other hand, is pretty heavily into the pornographic/NSFW space already, and it makes more sense for it to lean into its niche.
That said I do not think the government ought to compel Steam or other companies to offer or hide certain content, from the top down.
I am willing to accept tactical compromises on issues like this - for instance, Steam hosts porn currently, but Steam tries to avoid hosting 'hateful' content, and if the definition of hateful continues to expand, I could see a case for total content-neutrality as a compromise. However, at present I think total content-neutrality is unlikely to happen. In principle, though, I agree with you that total neutrality would be a decent Schelling fence.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Some people have blamed activist religious groups on aggressively lobbying the payment processors for this crackdown.
Can we look for specifics here? This comes from Collective Shout, which is not a religious organisation, and in their FAQ claim that the accusation that they're "easily offender, prudish, moralisers, or religious fundamentalists" is a deflection tactic used by others in bad faith.
As a prudish religious person myself, I don't think there's anything bad with being one, but the idea that we specifically were behind this seems false.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I'd argue that media coverage is misleading, though - Collective Shout and Melinda Reist are best understood as feminists. Their own self-description is entirely secular, and their feminism tag suggests some crossover with the movement. I searched their website with the tag 'Christian' and most of what I found was references to the male lead in Fifty Shades of Grey.
I can see no evidence that Collective Shout are a Christian organisation of any kind. Reist herself is a Christian, but that on its own hardly seems like an issue.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I think this is fair. He's a powerful disruptor, but not a builder. It is safe to say, I think, that the old GOP is dead and gone, but Trump provides no central ideas or organising principles for the new one. The centre of Trump's movement is Trump himself, and his most distinctive policy preferences (e.g. tariffs) seem idiosyncratic to Trump, rather than penetrating more widely into the base. My biggest concern with the GOP or Red Tribe is what they will become after Trump. There is clearly a lot of energy and organisational power there, even if there is a void of actual beliefs. If anyone, after Trump, is capable to capture most of that energy - and that's a big if - then whatever direction it goes in will reshape America again.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I'm not sure how much I qualify as 'scared' of Trump, but I at least dislike and oppose him, which I suppose makes me a minority here? The thing is, though I think he's a terrible president and generally a disaster for America, I spend most of my time talking about him trying to calm down people to my left, who I think have fixated too much on the wrong comparisons (re: fascism, Nazism, etc.). To me the more productive comparisons to Trump are more like a Latin American strongman, or perhaps like Jonah Goldberg's metaphor of Trump as a Mafia boss. He's corrupt, self-centered, unprincipled, and deeply transactionalist - he is motivated by Trump as a brand, not by any concept of American national welfare, or even American ideals.
I feel more 'resigned', I think, rather than afraid or indifferent. To me the case for hope around Trump is that, in his corrupt flailing, he destroys that which ought to be destroyed, or inadvertently opens up a kind of space for new growth. The case for fear or despair is that he destroys that which much must be preserved, or opens up a space for more organisedly malignant actors in the future. Personally I am not strongly invested in either reading.
That might give me a more mundane view of Trump, I suppose? What I see is a petty individual who has great talents for communication and self-presentation, but very little talent for organised governance, who's in power but doesn't have a strong vision for what to do with power beyond use it to establish "I am the greatest!" over and over. In a sense, I think many on the left and on the right make the same mistake in attributing him too much power, making him either devil or saint.
Of course, none of that means that he's not dangerous. There are a lot of things a venal egoist might do that are bad, even if he has no vision. But what I expect to see, I suppose, is more American decline, mostly in the direction that America was already going, while Trump and his allies try to stand on top of the scrapheap. I see a bigger risk in neglect than in sabotage.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I notice this even in famous literature for men. Surely, say, the Iliad is a work that is in large part about men expressing emotion? Achilles sulks, he rages, he cries, and he generally bares his heart. If I think about cinema, men showing their emotions seem like some of the most beloved moments: Vito Corleone mourning his son, for instance. If you watch, I don't know, Breaking Bad, it seems to me that there are lots of emotions on display; Jesse in particular is very open with his feelings. The most iconic moments from that show - Walt's despairing laughter at his money being stolen, Walt crashing to the ground in devastated grief, Jesse's angry-crying "he can't keep getting away with it!", etc., they're often explosions of emotion. If we get more lowbrow, men love, say, Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, and the last I checked their male casts are quite emotive.
It seems more complex to me than just the rule that men shouldn't display emotion. I think the rule is that male emotional displays must be appropriate. A man who reacts emotionally to a small stimulus shows himself over-sensitive; a man who does not react emotionally to a large stimulus shows himself inhuman.
When compared to women, I think there are maybe three things going on.
Firstly, the kinds of emotions appropriate for men and women are different. Men are meant to react to some experiences that women do not, and vice versa. For instance, it would be appropriate for men to cheer, cry with joy, or hug each other if their sports team won the grand final, whereas stereotypically women might not react to that. Emotional reactions to competitive activities in general seem to code more masculine. By contrast, something like nurturing or tenderness codes more feminine and therefore is appropriate for women in a wider range of contexts. So each gender may have differently-shaped spaces of acceptable emotional expression.
Secondly, the modes of emotional expression appropriate for men and women are different. Take the sports example again - it's okay for men to cheer, dump containers of gatorade on each other, whatever, whereas that would look a bit more odd from women. If a woman is very happy, though, she has her own script for how to express that. Likewise for things like sadness or anger - a woman might go and cry in the bathroom, and a man might head out back and kick a rock, and those both seem like expressions of emotion, even though one is feminine and one is masculine. If you are only looking for feminine forms of emotional expression, you'll see that women do them and men don't, but that doesn't mean men aren't expressing themselves. They're just not expressing themselves in that way.
Thirdly, the line of appropriateness is in a different place. Above I talked about small and large stimuli. What's the line between them? Plausibly the threshold for acceptable emotional expression for a woman is lower than it is for a man; this would also mean women tend to express themselves more frequently. But once the threshold is exceeded, men can express themselves as well, and if they don't, something is wrong with them.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
If it helps any, when I get QCs I often feel like my best posts have been ignored entirely and mediocre posts have been nominated. Probably no one is very good at judging the merit of their own writing.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
AntiDem was a man of faith, and his religious convictions frequently informed his column. In "Down And Out In Christania", he imagined what a truly biblical approach to the welfare state might look like, while in "Femboy and I", his Christian love and compassion for the sinner manifested themselves even as he never stopped hating the sin.
For what it's worth, I was genuinely impressed by that latter piece - and predictably disappointed in the comments.
I suspect that I would find plenty to disagree with in this person's wider writings, and perhaps plenty to agree with as well, but I read that story and see a person with a kind of upwelling of compassion within him, and that instinct, that kind of moral formation, is to be commended.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
For what it's worth, my recollection from high school was broadly, "millions of Jews were killed, these are some of the ways in which it was done", and gas chambers were just one of the methods listed.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I believe I've had this argument with him before - it always comes down to quibbling minutiae, as if any individual crack in a story will cause a dam to burst forth.
I find it is helpful here to stay focused on the big picture. The specific details are trivia. "The Holocaust happened", in I think the minds of most normal people, means "the Nazis, in WWII, tried to kill all the Jews". There are a few details that are common knowledge past that, but beyond the six million figure or the idea that it involved death camps, I don't think most people know about or particularly care about the details or the process. The Nazis tried to kill all the Jews and they killed at least a couple of million. If that statement is true, then "the Holocaust happened" is essentially true.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I am not convinced that Holocaust deniers want a Christian government or state. If nothing else, when I've talked to the Motte's own local Holocaust deniers, they tend to respond badly to professions of Christian faith - Christianity is perceived as just another head of the Jewish hydra, and believers are taken in by the racial mythology of a foreign group.
In what way does Pelosi's comment have any bearing on that?
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