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Notes -
More on Trump's tariffs.
I ran into a very interesting comment on reddit last night:
To which I respond... yes. That's exactly right. Suppose ICE actually deports enough illegals to cause significant shortages in farming, roofing, factory work, construction, etc. Suppose that Trump's tariffs contract the economy to the point that lazy unemployed 20-30 year old men find it much more difficult to comfortably survive off their standard combination of day trading, intermittent gig work, and freeloading off their families. Suppose it gets to the point that their only option is to begin filling the vacancies left by the deportations. Isn't that just... wonderful? Isn't that exactly what Trump's base voted for? Isn't that, quite literally, how you make America great again?
The author of this comment would immediately answer with "well, he's so fat and lazy that he ain't gonna, so there". To which my response is, very well! Then we shall all go without roofs. Now of course, people are capable of far more than you expect them to be once their backs are actually up against the wall. People will leap into action if there's no other choice. But, supposing he's right and it does turn out that no one answers the call, then we shall simply go without. A nation, a culture, a race that does not provide for itself, should go without. This, I imagine, is one of the core ethical commitments that separates MAGA from its opponents.
Are we actually going to deport enough illegals to make a difference? Probably not. Is anyone in the administration consciously implementing the program I've described here? It may have occurred to someone in passing, but it's probably not written down in a secret master plan anywhere. But still, you can see here, dimly, the outline of a program that would actually give Trump's base exactly what they wanted, in a very direct way. Which is pretty neat.
Sure. Let us crash the economy so that the PMC will have to work in the fields instead of designing iPhones or being a DEI compliance officer or living from day trading. The basis for a prosperous nation is honest, back-breaking work, not fancy technology.
Sure. If cocoa beans do not grow in a country, its citizens should go without chocolate. If they don't have oil, they shall go forgo petrochemicals and combustion engines. If they can not support a semiconductor production chain, they shall not have computers. The population shall acquire disease resistance the hard way until they can develop a vaccine, just as God intended.
After all, this is kind of the program which turned Cambodia into a superpower when it was implemented by the Khmer Rouge, so it will surely Make America Great Again as well.
The tariffs discussion has made me realize that some people who praport themselves as intellectual, above the average redditor, are just as childish in there understanding of how the world works just in different ways, often interpreting reality through overly idealized or abstract neoreactionary frameworks instead of lib marvel ones.
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