ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
No Iranian called me an incel
User ID: 812
I'm not going to relitigate myself, we're talking over each other.
I agree with you on YooKay and France, the situation is frankly eye watering. The Islamic extremism, grooming gangs, retrograde parallel societies that liberal and even "right wing" governments have failed to curb (or allowed to fester) have unraveled the social fabric. I don't have a "workable" solution, maybe we keep relentlessly injecting heavy doses of 5th wave feminism into minority communities until their TFR falls well below the native average.
On Singapore, you're missing my point. Your contention is "antiracism is racism" but mind you, I made a straight-forward point about racism against minorities, then you hit me back with whataboutery. Is there any format or a template for a conversation about garden variety racism a la "fuck the darkies" "those smelly browns don't belong" that you would be comfortable allowing? Because frankly, the vibes I'm getting is "well, sure it exists but why are you talking about it!" Singapore's multiracialism and integration aren't mutually exclusive, they explicitly pursue both. More importantly, the Singaporean government is perfectly willing to identify and condemn racism against minorities when they encounter it, without writing a dissertation on anti-majority discrimination. That was my original point, which seems to keep getting lost.
Regarding your final paragraph, saying that governments necessarily restrict rights is a truism, not a defense of any particular restriction. Social Security reform involves difficult fiscal trade-offs, true. But your proposals track compulsory cultural conformity, expanded policing, and potentially extraordinary coercive measures against tens of millions. The relevant questions are proportionality, scale, administrative feasibility, and whether less intrusive alternatives exist. I believe American gun culture is dumb, and that school shootings and gun violence can be ameliorated by taking away the guns! But think about the logistics of pursuing this, and since Americans would sooner claw off their fingers before they surrender their guns, it's a non-starter.
Editing to add, I also think social media has been destructive for mental health and the social fabric. Zoomers are posting nostalgia slop for the pre-internet days... on social media. I strongly believe dismantling the entire social media ecosystem, and reducing it to a purely direct-messaging service will have amazing long term outcomes for mankind. But again, logistics, and severe disruptions in the short-medium term.
We've wandered so far from my original point that the right has a large constituency quite comfortable with open racism that it's becoming difficult to remember what we're even disputing. You grudgingly concede that "fuck the darkies" is contemptible, but apparently I'm not permitted to acknowledge its existence without first performing an elaborate ritual of throat-clearing about how antiracism has also been used to justify discrimination against whites. A point I've conceded repeatedly, by the way. How many more disclaimers am I expected to append before I'm allowed to discuss the actual subject?
I believe I explicitly asked "not just what people tell themselves to feel better about it".
You don't get to dismiss a distinction as merely "what people tell themselves to feel better about it" and pretend you've refuted it. You're trying to settle a descriptive question about what Americans find acceptable by repeatedly announcing what you personally find indefensible.
I mean, it does? I suppose you're trying to rescue it with "anti-minority"
Is there any qualifier for racism against non-whites you'd be willing to acknowledge without immediately pivoting to institutional discrimination against whites? Can we not hold both observations to be true simultaneously, or must every discussion of one be derailed by an obligatory disclaimer about the other?
If it did "liberals" would have the same response to all things that pattern match to opposing principles, but they only have this issue with the right-wing view on identity.
Let me reiterate, yet again, that I'm talking about the credibility of these accusations among normie voters, not their moral consistency. You keep returning to some liberal double standards, when did I deny this? You may be entirely correct about the hypocrisy, but that goes in both directions. If I were a woke activist constantly railing against "MAGA Nazis", would you generously assume I might unironically agree that affirmative action is discrimination against whites and therefore should be unconstitutional? Of course not. The online discourse has gone on for way too long that people can recognise the rhetorical scripts and the ideological commitments they usually signal. Sure, the "noticing" is not infallible, but neither is it arbitrary. It's literally how the woke left squandered so much of their credibility, and I suspect you'd have no difficulty recognising the phenomenon if I were criticising them instead.
Now is perhaps a good time to mention I'm a European living in Europe
See, your nativist argument has a much stronger historical foundation in the European context, where your identities often predate the modern state and are more closely intertwined with ancestry, language, and ethnicity. But America is a rather different proposition.
if someone does airdrop 100K Haitian voodoo priests on your home town, and hands out passports to them, you'll have zero recourse.
If your concern is mass immigration overwhelming a community, we can tighten the rules governing admission. Nothing about legally recognising existing citizens as equally American prevents that. You're inventing a failure of immigration policy and presenting it as an indictment of civic nationality, when the former can be addressed without abandoning the latter.
I'd go with a couple of criteria:
Suppose we actually attempt this. How exactly do you propose administering it? What is The Assimilator supposed to do? I suppose you can make everyone undergo periodic CRT-style racial attitude tests. And if we're applying this consistently, does a naturalised Polish American expressing hostility toward blacks also fail your ingroup identification test and become eligible for deportation? Meanwhile, a black American with sufficient lineage can presumably express contempt for every other group with impunity. Even the author of your linked study cautions against drawing sweeping conclusions from these responses. We can just lie on surveys, though I suppose that's good enough.
You also invoke Singapore, but Lee Kuan Yew's government pursued an explicitly multiracial national identity, with policies designed to integrate different ethnic communities rather than establish hereditary grades of citizenship. You seem to want Singaporean social discipline combined with an ethnonational conception of belonging that Singapore's official ideology explicitly rejected. Just two months ago, a Singaporean minister condemned racist comments against Indians and called for solidarity. Which brings me back to my original point: can you acknowledge and condemn racism of this sort unequivocally, when it comes from the contemporary right, without first performing a dozen obligatory rituals to denounce liberal double standards?
By the way, why are you asking so many questions and providing precisely zero of your own?
I believe restrictive immigration policies, demanding naturalisation requirements, and integration through common civic institutions are adequate. We can demand for more rigorous enforcement. I'm asking questions because your proposals entail an extraordinarily expensive and intrusive administrative apparatus that will have a strong impact on ordinary people's livelihoods. There is a hard limit to what can be achieved through democratic politics, especially with modern day population counts.
First of all civil rights are a lie, they can be and have been, freely suspended to push throughva social agenda, as long as it's one liberals desire.
Once again, can we please dispense with the "but Suzy did it, so why shouldn't I?" Whatever the liberals did, what you're proposing is something considerably more sweeping and intrusive, and not practicable at all. Let alone marketable to the general electorate.
There's also the even more minor problem that if you do nothing your country is over.
Anything that involves impeding on the rights and livelihoods of 150 million people is a non-starter. So I'd think of better solutions if you don't want a repeat of the midterms.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
That those deep state connections and not much else are driving the foreign policy wrt Israel, is my point. Remember Genocide Joe?
Is there? Than explain to me what difference there is.
The difference is between the justification of a policy and the principle it purports to establish. Affirmative action is defended as a corrective to slavery and Jim Crow, not as an affirmation of permanent racial hierarchy. You can reject that justification as incoherent or discriminatory, but it doesn't follow that the public perceives the two propositions as morally equivalent. That distinction matters because my argument concerns cultural legitimacy, not whether progressive racial politics can survive a philosophical consistency test.
How is that different from "no, you don't understand, making the darkies pick our cotton is our way of life!"?
It is not, and I already addressed this:
Now you can argue that anti-white racism should be included in that vocabulary, and I bet many people will agree, that doesn't mean the underlying taboo against anti-minority racism has evaporated.
Yes. The point of the question is to establish which one of these makes you an American.
Okay, so what should the criteria be, in your opinion? A civic idea of nationality, a cultural idea, and an explicitly racial one entail very different political arrangements. Americans can disagree about the first two, and they will overwhelmingly reject the latter, so if that's what you're going for, you'll have to readjust your expectations.
From there it can at least be used to put forward the question if being born on a plot of land is enough to determine nationality.
If objectionable behaviour is enough to question someone's belonging, why shouldn't we subject Donald Trump to the same scrutiny? Americans gave him a historic victory, despite relentless attacks on his character and legitimacy from the left, and how did he repay them? An economy in tatters and a war that nobody wanted. We can apply your principle, but it will engulf a lot of people in your putative ingroup as well.
I doubt it. SocJus ideas are quickly pattern matched to all sorts of unpalatable ideas
Well duh. That doesn't answer whether the association is warranted in particular cases. Sometimes the accusation is lazy pattern matching, other times the speaker really does believe that ancestry should determine membership in the country. When was the last time you raised these concerns with someone who is 100% European and whether they should belong? You're not the only one doing the "noticing".
Citizenship? Open the borders
Closing the borders, and treating your citizens equally independent of their heritage are not mutually exclusive positions.
Cultural assimilation? Which culture do they have to assimilate to? What happens if they don't? What happens to all the people who have the passport, were born in the country, but have not fully absorbed the culture or are actively opposed to it? Can they be deported or denaturalized?
What do you want, exactly? What rituals should they participate in to prove their belonging? What are the practical policies that will ensure that 350 million people are conforming to the culture, without severely (understatement) impeding on civil liberties? Does this apply to everyone or just non-white people?
Shared historical identity, ancestry, or racial membership? Congratulations, you're a Nazi now.
There is that minor problem of ~150 million non-white Americans who are not going anywhere.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
I still don't believe it. There are things that a hostile public opinion cannot move. We're talking eight decades of military cooperation, intelligence integration, co-developed defense systems, congressional commitments, and bureaucratic planning that have created substantial institutional inertia. A Democratic administration could restrict arms transfers or adopt a more confrontational diplomatic posture without dismantling that architecture, but we've seen glimpses of this before even under Republican administrations (Reagan and Bush Sr). Israel simply isn't a client state waiting for Washington to withdraw its blessing.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
I'll push back on number 3. America's bonhomie with Israel goes beyond a handful of politicians, too many locked-in commitments to reverse in one election. Maybe they will slow-walk some munitions, but nothing else changes.
On number 4, we shall see. Democrats will certainly try to appear pro-immigration to counter the GOP's perceived bigotry, but I don't expect to see more H1Bs anytime soon.
We can only hope the GOP takes the midterms as a census on the economy and foreign policy, learn the right lessons. They will probably lose 2028 though.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
There is a difference between Americans tolerating racial preferences dressed up in the language of remedying historical discrimination and Americans embracing racial hierarchy as a positive political principle. The white racist has occupied the role of a stock cultural villain in American public consciousness for several generations now. From the civil rights movement onward, opposition to racial discrimination and fascism have become deeply embedded in the country's civic mythology, educational institutions, popular entertainment, and understanding of its own moral progress.
Whatever the inconsistencies of its application, antiracism is not some recent progressive affectation that can simply be discarded once people grow tired of DEI seminars. It is part of the moral grammar that mainstream America uses to understand its national identity. Now you can argue that anti-white racism should be included in that vocabulary, and I bet many people will agree, that doesn't mean the underlying taboo against anti-minority racism has evaporated. The initial rhetoric made sense, constantly injecting grievance literature will never allow black Americans to move on from racial consciousness and even unravel the social fabric. This is not what Bo French and the groyper right believe though.
but questions like "what is an American" are 100% valid in my opinion
Are we discussing citizenship, cultural assimilation, shared historical identity, ancestry, or racial membership? These are different propositions with different implications. Simply insisting that the question is legitimate doesn't establish that every proposed answer will be equally acceptable to the public. Vivek's conduct can be criticised without establishing anything about whether Indian-Americans (those born and raised in America, not H1Bs) can be legitimate members of the national community. That question draws so much ire because it is quickly pattern matched to white nationalists who are too shy to admit they believe in racial membership, and they're not at all a minority of right wingers.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
I mean, everyone thinks a pendulum swing to "their" side is the new consensus that will break the cycle. The cultural trajectory towards wokeness has invited some mainstream scrutiny over the years, but it's been largely undisturbed. White men "won" 2024, in a symbolic way, but still didn't deliver much of what was promised in defiance of the culture, and thunderously delivered a war that nobody wanted. Party of the white men failed, that's the price you pay for rejecting the black woman President!
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
There is "racist", then there is racist. The difference lies in whether normie voters find those accusations credible.
The GOP convincingly argued that woke activists had rendered the word practically meaningless. When everything from immigration restrictions to perfectly innocuous statements about affirmative action could attract the accusation, it became relatively easy to dismiss the charge as ideological overreach. You bring up perfectly fair criticisms of that rhetoric. My point is not that Democrats have been saying the same things for ten years. It's whether the conduct being criticised, and the public's willingness to believe the criticism, have changed. "Racism is based" is simply not a winnable position in a culture that prides itself for its multi-racial heritage. You could get away with it if you delivered on the economy though. Now it's a double whammy.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
Jon Rosenthal leads the race for Texas Railroads Commissioner
I'll drink one to Bo French's hail mary racism.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
It was right wingers themselves that were beating the drums about a "client's list" for years, and fanning blatant falsehoods. So chalk that up as another self-own.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
The Israel fetish is built into the system, it sucks for Americans but gotta get used to it!
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
It's gonna be the latter. They simply have no incentive to do any soul searching anymore. The party was in tatters in 2024, now the GOP has sawn off its own legs with a chainsaw.
Unlike 2016, 2020 and maybe even 2024, the GOP cannot escape the "racist party" brand. Groypers are no longer an embarrassing subset of Trump supporters in the distant boonies of the internet. Watch the Dems capitalise this "I told you so" and inject every future piece of cultural output with a primer on "how not to be racist!"
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
Jesus. Texas going blue in any capacity was a pipe dream for years. Never would've expected this after Trump's 2024 win.
I used to believe this as well, that ladies of the night offered a convenient "dark arts" shortcut to developing the social and sexual confidence necessary for conventional relationships, but that doesn't really bear out in practice. Often times, the johns (the incel kind in the literal sense of the word) end up developing feelings for the girl, only to leave feeling more alienated, and being reminded of the intimacy they cannot experience organically. You can throw on a nice jacket, make conversation, and attempt to charm her. Or not. You're still fucking her for the same price. There is no psychological barrier attached to the social cost of insinuating that you find her goonable and wish to goon inside her.
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