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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32032 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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When we consider the lie that America is a nation of immigrants

Starting with this assumption, you really need to prove it. I find it hard to read the rest when you start with such an incorrect premise. Especially when you say things like:

To begin with, it’s important to note that immigrants have never been the dominant force in American society.

If you read your American history, you should know that all of the white folks here in the U.S. were immigrants. Immigrants were absolutely the dominant force in American society during the most pivotal period - when American society was actually being built. That's what people mean when they say we are a 'nation of immigrants.' On top of that, we have have multiple waves of immigration Throughout our history, in the early 19th century and around the turn of the 20th.

When you say immigrants do you really mean 'non-whites' or 'non-British?' If so you should just come out and say that, it would make much more sense based on the argument you seem to be making. The premises you are taking to start this argument right now makes me not very interested in reading past the first bit.

You have failed to engage on even a cursory level with the distinction the OP is drawing between settlers and immigrants. If you think this distinction is specious or lacks explanatory power and utility, that’s fine and you should make an argument for it, but you appear to just be accusing OP of lying, whereas the failure here is on the part of your reading comprehension.

I don't see any need to argue minor details of architecture when the foundation of the structure is so clearly unsound.

I felt I argued my point well. I do think the distinction is spurious enough that he needs to lead with it. Especially when using such inflammatory statements as calling it a lie, he should clarify that he's using a specific definition of the word up front, not 3-5k characters into his argument.

but you appear to just be accusing OP of lying, whereas the failure here is on the part of your reading comprehension.

OP starts by accusing a fairly large group of people to be lying, and does not give any indication that they're interested in arguing for their claim at all. Moreover, when they do get around to making something resembling an argument, it's largely a definitional dispute. Calling someone lying because they might have used a different definition of a word strikes me as less-than-charitable. If anything, it reminds me of radical trans activists who scream their lungs out if you suggest that "woman" is defined by, say, genetics.

He's not accusing anyone of lying, except in the Lies My Teacher Told Me way of reexamining or recontextualizing common misconceptions, trite phrases, just-so stories, and other assorted myths.

"America is a nation of immigrants" is a thing that a lot of people explicitly say outside the context of a school history class. E.g. https://www.brookings.edu/product/our-nation-of-immigrants/ and https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/03/29/nation-immigrants and https://iamla.org/docs/Nation_of_Immigrants.pdf and you can find lots more examples by Googling. I agree that it's ambiguous and somewhat cliched, but that doesn't make it a lie. It's at least arguably true, I think most of the people saying it believe it to be true, and, in my opinion, it points at something important.

Saying "this is a lie" is in fact accusing people of lying. It cannot be otherwise. For there to be a lie, there must be a liar who initially put it out there.

In defense of TheDag, OP does not make that distinction until the umpteenth paragraph.

And that is because at first we did not begin as a nation of immigrants. We began as a nation of settlers. And that’s, I think, a critically important distinction.

That’s the end of the sixth paragraph. If you couldn’t make it to paragraph six, that’s on you.

  • -10

Well, I did in fact get to the end of the 6th paragraph. But, if the OP buried the lede, that is actually on the OP.

If OP is drawing a distinction between "settlers" and "immigrants" which is not immediately obvious, then it's on the OP to lead with that. As @TheDag said: OP needs to start by demonstrating that America is not in fact a nation of immigrants. Furthermore, OP has to demonstrate that it is in fact a lie (the term "lie" means it must be a deliberate falsehood, rather than an innocent misconception). OP doesn't do either of those things though, instead just hand waving them away. Well fine, but then the rest of his argument is built on quicksand and holds no water.

He establishes the “settlers vs. immigrants” dichotomy at the end of paragraph six. I don’t think expecting people to read six paragraphs is an unreasonable burden.

It absolutely is an unreasonable ask when the OP is leading with an unproven, apparently false, argument.

He's starting with his thesis.

Then he needs to make it clear that it's his thesis, and not something he is taking as given in his argument.

The entire essay is an exercise in proving the controversial thesis which he lays out in the early part of the essay. This is a bog-standard way to approach to political/philosophical writing. Honestly, it seems like his thesis struck an emotional chord of disgust or epistemic injury in you, which rendered you unable to invest even the five-ten minutes needed to read through his entire essay to determine whether or not he satisfactorily developed an argument in favor of his thesis. I certainly think he ably defended his thesis, but even if he didn’t, it’s not like this essay is a particularly long, difficult, or high-investment read.

So now I'm feeling smug for seeing the first poorly written paragraph and then the monstrous wall of text and then skipping the post entirely.

Life is too short for shittily written monster posts.

Make your point clearly, and succinctly, meeting your readers where they are, and not clothing it in unnecessarily verbosity in an attempt to sound learned.

Or don't, but I'm not going to bother reading it otherwise, nor will most others.

[I know it's not your post, but I'm tired of poorly written posts]

Life is too short for shittily written monster posts.

lol I think you are on the wrong website. a lot of monster posts, some of which are shittily written

More comments

What are you? His publicist?

Can't speak for @SubstantialFrivolity but I certainly didn't have an emotional chord struck by this argument. I'm actually very interested in American history, and tend to be pretty anti-immigration at this point in time (at least immigration of mass low skilled people as the left tends to push.)

If anything based on this comment it seems like you are the one who has come in here with an epistemological bias, since you have already heard this person's argument in a podcast.

I read the essay and was still disappointed, maybe even disgusted. “Epistemic injury” had nothing to do with it.

I'm not in the habit of reading a long, hard to follow essay (because yes, it is both of those things contrary to your assertion otherwise) to see if OP is going to at any point defend the incorrect foundation of his argument stated in the first paragraph. You say that the entire thing is OP developing that thesis, but in no way is it clear that his thesis is the very claim "it's a lie that America is a nation of immigrants". To me, it read as though he was taking that claim for granted and building an argument based upon that very unproven claim as if we all accepted it.

Honestly, it seems like his thesis struck an emotional chord of disgust or epistemic injury in you, which rendered you unable to invest even the five-ten minutes needed to read through his entire essay to determine whether or not he satisfactorily developed an argument in favor of his thesis.

You can fuck right off with the smug statements like this. I am neither disgusted nor injured by OP's poorly written argument. I didn't even reply to OP, in fact. What I have taken exception to is you coming in here, arrogantly telling TheDag "well you obviously didn't bother to engage with the post" in response to his quite reasonable criticism of it.

The OP is a poorly written argument. Either it's poorly written because it attempts to take a controversial position as given, or it's poorly written because it fails to make clear that the controversial position is the thesis which will be addressed. It's not a question of reading comprehension, it's not a question of failure to engage, it is simply a badly written argument. Stop blaming the people pushing back on it as if it's somehow their fault.

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