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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   28382 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.

  • -37

AlexanderTurok, You claim that you are "anti third-worldism", but if that is true, why have you consistently aligning yourself with those who are trying to make the US more like a third-world country against those who want to make it great?

It wasn't MAGA that turned San Francisco into a fecese-strewn open-air drug market. It wasn't MAGA that worked behind the scenes to put a dementia patient in the Whitehouse. And it is not MAGA that has been marching in solidarity with HAMAS, shooting at federal officers, or trying to put a Communist in Gracie Mansion. It is your "Elite Human Capital" doing all of that.

The whole "Immigrants are just doing the jobs Americans wont do" is a blatant lie. There is no industry in these United States where the majority of workers and illegal/undocumented. Not even seasonal agriculture during the height of the Biden surge. The truth is "American don't want to do those jobs for those wages" and that is what this is (and has always been) about, wages.The Plantation owners don't want to pay the help, and once again the Democrats (who have always been the Party of the Plantation Owners) are threating civil war if they are not allowed to continue importing and exploiting thier non-citizen underclass.

The truth is "American don't want to do those jobs for those wages" and that is what this is (and has always been) about, wages.The Plantation owners don't want to pay the help, and once again the Democrats (who have always been the Party of the Plantation Owners) are once again threating civil war if they are not allowed to continue importing and exploiting thier non-citizen underclass.

Whenever committed ideological conservatives* hear about a minimum wage worker complaining about his low wage, they talk about productivity and demand curves and all that jazz. But mention that the worker is an illegal immigrant and all that logic goes out the window and he starts sounding like Bernie Sanders saying that the employer has infinite resources (to pay an American, not the illegal) and that only malevolence and greed stops the lowest-paid workers from getting 65$ an hour.

And even if the government could arbitrarily order wages to increase, why not order wages to increase for the better and cushier jobs Americans are more likely to do? Seems to me like it's a weird fantasy where Americans are supposed to work Bangladesh-level jobs (crop picking, textile sewing, etc) but get American wages for it because I guess the Bengali government is too stupid to just order wages to increase.

Also, most farmers vote Republican and the CSA constitution forbade the international slave trade.

*Not to be confused with normie GOP voters

Obviously the market is distorted by access to illegal labor, as much as a market would be distorted if people were allowed to own slaves. There is no inconsistency here. People want to compete in the legal framework of their country, under the same laws. An army of scabs willing to work for less in shittier conditions (that would be illegal for any citizen) would depress the labor market.

Obviously the market is distorted by access to illegal labor, as much as a market would be distorted if people were allowed to own slaves.

This reminds me of the "libertarian" on Twitter who thought "the government opening the border" was "statism."

  • -13

I'd be obliged if you wouldn't treat the Motte as some sort of twitter offshoot, where you pithily dismiss your opposition with short, one-line messages.

How do you think immigrant fruit pickers get so good at picking fruit, fast enough to do it for a living? They've been doing it since childhood. American children obviously can't do it (it's literally illegal for them to do so, child labor.) Why is a Mexican meatpacker hired over the American one? Is it because he is illegal and can't ask for breaks or agitate for a union because he'd be immediately turfed across the border?

You either are completely unaware of the reasons why illegal labor is hired, or you are aware, and are acting dumb. Either way, the manner of which you speak with such utter confidence on matters of which you know nothing is infuriating to an incredible degree. Your priors are wrong. The conclusions you derive from those priors are wrong. It's pointless to debate you because you utterly refuse to acknowledge anything that even resembles material reality.

An American worker cannot compete with a Mexican agricultural worker for the same reason he can't compete with a Chinese industrial factory worker: both work in conditions that are illegal in America! If your conclusion is 'let them work at the global median of worker's protection and compensation' then I would take a good look into a mirror and think on the morality of your politics: that is, if you still cast a reflection.

Why is a Mexican meatpacker hired over the American one?

Why are you beating your wife?

My whole contention here is that illegals are doing that work because both illegals and Americans do not want to do it but only the latter have the skills to do better jobs.

An American worker cannot compete with a Mexican agricultural worker for the same reason he can't compete with a Chinese industrial factory worker

Odd, then, that American workers make far more money than Chinese industrial factory workers or Mexican agricultural workers on either side of the border.

It's the woke left vs the woke right. The woke left demands affirmative action for blacks so they can work in business, law, medicine, and government. Envy is felt toward whites for their higher-paying and better jobs. "The test is culturally biased!" The woke right demands set-aside jobs for Americans so they can pick fruit in the summer sun, being envious of illegal aliens for some reason.

  • -11

Americans do not want to do it...

...for the wages being offered

That's my point.

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