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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   31790 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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Recently @RandomRanger accused me of strawmanning the Right:

Turok was being banned for being overtly aggressive and obnoxiously creating imaginary narratives like "The "Woke Rightist" looks at his race, sees a mostly imaginary mass of helpless unemployed drug addicts and demands tariffs so that they can rise to the lofty heights of sewing bras, picking fruit, hauling equipment, and digging ditches in the rain."

That's not what the 'woke right' thinks and he surely knows it. He need only check the MAGA rhetoric from Trump about good factory jobs, or the rhetoric from the right about the need to mechanize dull fruitpicking jobs and raise productivity. Why, they say, should millions of people be brought into the country if AI is going to destroy everyone's jobs? Or the need to have American wealth kept in America rather than sent off in remittances. Or them hating H1Bs as cost-cutting that interferes with developing talent. Or them not seeing the country as purely an economic zone but having responsibility to native citizens. It's an insanely uncharitable and aggressive butchering of other people's ideology.

Did I strawman the Right? Let's ask Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the United States secretary of labor:

FOX: I think American citizens are willing to do the jobs that illegal immigrants are willing to do.

LORI CHAVEZ-DeREMER: Americans are willing to do the job. What we have to give them is the opportunity to have those jobs.

DeRemer refers to "Americans," the online racialist Right is talks about whites, but in both cases the vision is the same, uplifting the ingroup means getting them the opportunity to do the jobs currently done by the guy standing in the Home Depot parking lot. Is there any wonder high-income whites are moving away from the Republican Party? Working-class whites, too, don't want their sons working casual labor, which is why in the video DeRemer goes on to talk about how Americans will be given opportunity through being "skilled, upskilled, re-skilled" and how the Trump administration is increasing apprenticeships. Of course, few illegals do those high-skilled jobs, so upskilling Americans won't replace many illegals, but it's not like the Fox News host is going to point out the apparent contradiction.

Given that I've given an example from a cabinet-level Trump administration official, (not "nutpicked" from some rando on Twitter) I expect that @RandomRanger will withdraw his claim that I "obnoxiously created imaginary narratives" in the interests of truth and courtesy.

  • -38

There are reasons to “uplift the in-group” and you need to articulate why this is an innoble goal in and of itself. They are citizens; they have more in common with you if you are a wealthy white person; for evolutionary reasons, it is natural to have an interest in uplifting those that are similar to yourself; for reasons of national security, you do not want so many citizens who believe that the American project is not worth investing in; they may have a higher IQ than Hondurans; they may have different levels of compassion or a different taste in aesthetics which may be informed by genetics.

Is there any wonder high-income whites are moving away from the Republican Party

College-educated White males lean toward Trump. It’s just women who shifted a lot toward Harris.

Working-class whites, too, don't want their sons working casual labor

This may have something to do with the millions of migrants brought in to undercut wages, the exact thing we’re talking about. No, you can’t ever compete with them, because —

  • Remittance payments mean that they can afford a higher quality life while temporarily living a lower quality life in America

  • They are raised with values that are de-socialized by our ridiculous mandatory education culture, and this isn’t the kind of thing you can arbitrarily re-socialize at will

  • They often live in illegal accommodations, requiring less funds, and these require a network that natives aren’t a part of

  • They live within a culture where the women expect to marry laborers

I’m also not sure if you’re agreeing with him that it would increase wages, and just disagree that this is important, or if you think it won’t increase wages.

There are reasons to “uplift the in-group” and you need to articulate why this is an innoble goal in and of itself

I never said it was. I think uplifting the in-group by getting them jobs sewing bras, picking fruit, hauling equipment, and digging ditches in the rain is pathetic.

They are raised with values that are de-socialized by our ridiculous mandatory education culture, and this isn’t the kind of thing you can arbitrarily re-socialize at will

The fundamental difference between me and you is that I like white people more, which extends to liking first-world societies that white people built. I'm not concerned that these Guatemalans coming across the border are going to out-compete whites because they have a "better" culture.

  • -13

Its really hard to believe that you or anyone would actually hold this position.

if you are as racist as you claim, then surely you would prefer to live in a place where all jobs were done by white people, if only because it would mean that you would only have to interact with white people. But instead your position is that for abstract reasons, it offends you to allow white people to do manual labor, so its better to import brown people to do it, even though it means that you and your friends and family have to interact with brown people all the time? And you now risk brown people becoming a meaningful voting block in your society that can never be expunged. Like it would be one thing if you said you were in favor of the migrant work laws used by UAE and not america, or you like rhodesia, but your position doesn't seem to be divided like that. Those of us who live in the modern west, live in the modern west. Is you position based on a fictional alternate reality?

Your position seems really counterintuitive. I strongly suspect you are lying because your stated beliefs and policies are so wildly out of sync with each other - when taking into account the real world as it exists now.

if you are as racist as you claim, then surely you would prefer to live in a place where all jobs were done by white people, if only because it would mean that you would only have to interact with white people. But instead your position is that for abstract reasons, it offends you to allow white people to do manual labor, so its better to import brown people to do it, even though it means that you and your friends and family have to interact with brown people all the time?

Without anti-discrimination law people would be able to choose whether or how much they want to interact with brown people.

And you now risk brown people becoming a meaningful voting block in your society that can never be expunged.

A reasonable concern. But it's worth looking at the impact on America so far. In Florida and Texas, the majority of Hispanics voted for Trump. Hispanics nationally still voted slightly more often for Democrats, but if you account for the fact that Hispanics are more likely to support centrist than far-left Dems, (just look at the melanin content of a pride rally or a DSA meeting) it doesn't seem like they're moving America to the left at all.

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