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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   36634 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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I noticed there is a slow drible of talk about some of Trumps Executive Orders. I kinda wanted to talk about all of them as a package, and some of them more specifically. I would advise everyone to just go ahead and read all of the executive orders (there are about 50):

https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/

They are generally short, about a page long. The titles are descriptive of the goals, so you can even skip reading many of them. And you don't need to hear about them via a second hand source.

I got the general gist of all of them within an hour or two on Inauguration day (when they were posted).

My general impressions:

  1. I like the visibility and ease of reading these. Its nothing like most legislation that goes through congress that often require a law degree, and an in depth knowledge of regulations just to sort of understand them.
  2. I don't like this continuing tradition of using executive orders to run the government. From what I remember this started in earnest under Bush 2. But its also pretty clear that congress is increasingly non-functional and uninterested in their assigned role in the constitution. Congress has delegated away its power for almost 100 years at this point, granting law-making powers to bureaucracies that are run under the executive branch. So I don't like the executive order - ocracy, but it seems there is no alternative.
  3. I care less about the culture war type orders, like renaming things. I think it is probably good to have them in there from a strategy perspective. Let your enemies exhaust themselves on silly issues.
  4. My favorite Executive order: Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce. Basically people in the bureaucracy are supposed to carry out the will and directive of the president / executive branch. If they sandbag or fail to do this, then that is grounds for dismissal. They don't have to agree with the president or be loyal, but none of this "resist" stuff. It was a little ridiculous that this EO needed to be issued in the first place.
  5. The one that I think will actually personally impact me the most: Return to In-Person Work. I live close enough to DC. Traffic is going to get worse.
  6. Two executive orders have me worried. One is about cost of living: Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis. The actual text mostly talks about getting rid of barriers and harmful regulations. I hope that is where it stops. But populist politicians have often resorted to price controls to "fight" inflation. I strongly hope they avoid that pitfall.
  7. The other EO that worries me is related to trade America First Trade Policy. The basic economics case against tariffs seems air tight to me. Tariffs seem like a classic policy failure to me. The costs are distributed among all US consumers, but the benefits are often concentrated within certain sectors, or even specific companies. I was also hoping to see an end to the Jones Act, but this EO seems like it thinks that legislation is great.

Maybe this should go to the pardon thread, or even get it's own top level post, but I'm not summarizing the entirety of the drama.

In any case Ross Ulbricht is free and Trump is now the greatest president who has ever lived*. Blackpillers in disarray.

*) Ok sorry, not quite, there's still Snowden to take care of, and I don't know if there's anything that can be done for Assange, other than an official apology.

He publicly announced he would pardon Ulbricht as a favor to the libertarians months ago when they endorsed him.

Since you linked to me, and like I said, when Trump successfully deports a mere 25% of the illegal immigrant population (say 3.2 million people, and long-term settled in the US too, not border pushbacks) I’ll cease the blackpilling. Some things are easy, others are hard. It’s the difficult things that are most important.

I would also stop it if SCOTUS abolishes birthright citizenship, but I am very doubtful.

I predict far fewer deportations than expected. Same as in 2017 when everyone overestimated what Trump would do vs. what he was actually capable of doing ,which was not that much. Also, Elon and others in his inner circle are strongly pro-immigration.

I don't think Elon gives a shit about migrants crossing the border or deporting illegals.

The split over immigration that ended with Vivek exiled for criticizing American icon Ferris Bueller began over legal, skill-based migration.

Most of the party is already aligned on the illegal bit.

Dems need to ralize they have a very effective wedge against the GOP if they can just focus their efforts on supporting and increasing high skill immigration which pretty much every analysis finds are massively positive in expectation rather than presenting a weak flank through their advocacy for illegals crossing the border. "Shut down the border and quadruple the amount of legal migrants" is a winning formula, Dems just need to run with it.

I doubt this is all that effective of a wedge. It generates online buzz, but at the end of the day, there isn't a large constituency that's willing to go to the mat over work visas. I'm on the side that's very skeptical of importing Indian software developers as a net positive for the United States, but it's just not worth infighting over when getting rid of fake "asylum seekers" is correct, popular, and will take all of the resources currently available.

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