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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32200 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

Let me demonstrate how irritating you're being.

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Sam Brinton."

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Anthony Weiner."

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Jasmine Crockett."

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask AOC."

You are not strawmanning. You are weakmanning. You are not giving your political opposition the benefit of the doubt. I have a whole list of leftist politicians, intellectuals, and academics that have said embarrassing and stupid things I'd like you to defend, if you'd care to play at this particular joust.

If AOC says something and isn't broadly getting a lot of pushback from her party, that would be quite indicative that at least a major fraction of the left believed something, or at least doesn't disagree with her. This is not weakmanning.

So, does that mean the lack of broad, vocal denounciations of Newsome's take here means that the Democrats support illegal immigrant child slavery on drug farms?

Have any Democrats spoken up about the dozen antifa who organized that pathetic mass murder attempt on ICE agents?

How many of these questions could I throw at you before you reject the premise?

that the Democrats support illegal immigrant child slavery on drug farms?

Is this controversial? The Democrats support having lots of illegal immigrants working at below market rates by violating labor laws. I don't think many mainstream Democrats would deny it, although they would probably phrase it differently. That naturally includes underaged workers.

It's the logical conclusion of having a large population of undocumented people. I think pretty much every Democratic politician who has any interest in illegal immigrants is at least aware that it's happening. Presented with a choice between allowing them to operate without the protection of labor laws or getting law enforcement involved and likely getting them deported, they are choosing the former in full knowledge of the consequences of that choice because they think it's the option that causes less harm.

Have any Democrats spoken up about the dozen antifa who organized that pathetic mass murder attempt on ICE agents?

This is a poor comparison. AOC is an elected official, the perpetrators of the "pathetic mass murder attempt" are a handful of deranged crooks.

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