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I would like to spotlight this comment by @urquan in last week's thread because it touches upon something that I feel warrants it's own discussion seperate from all of the drama surrounding the death of Renee Good. Specifically this line here...
Over the years I have often heard cosmopolitan liberals express a sentiment to the effect "the United States has no culture". I used to find this deeply frustrating, and even as a teenager it seemed obvious to me that there were clear cultural distinctions between the East Coast and West Coast, North and South, never mind between the US and UK or the US and France. We have an entire host of uniquely American, myths, stories, heroes, sports, holidays, figures of speech, etc... How could anyone be so blind as to think that the United States has no culture? It was as I got older that I came to understand that what they really meant was something more like "the United States has no culture worthy of consideration". The more I think about it, the more I think it is this distinction that the modern culture war is really being fought over.
In the blue corner we have liberals and post-modernists who seem to view the idea of nationalism and a national identity as something distinct from one's political, racial, and sexual identity as either "fake and gay" or something to be deconstructed and dismantled. To the extent that the existence of a distinct American national identity is acknowledged, it is as something to feel embarrassed about and apologize for.
...and in the red corner we have this guy. Yes I am aware the commercial itself is for an electric car, but let's be real, its a Cadillac, and I think we all know who that character would have voted for in 2024.
This ties into the rest of @urquan's post and what I see as the core appeal of Trump. I think that a large part of the reason that Trump evinces such strong reactions, both positive and negative, is that he gives off this vibe of being quintessentially capital-A AMERICAN in a way that I don't think any US President really has since the Cold War.
I have been accused of "trolling" and "rage-baiting" by users here for quoting Teddy Roosevelt's "Hyphenated-American" speech, but its something I stand by, and that I feel bears repeating.
It is that sense of one's real heart-allegiance that I feel is sorely missing from much of the modern immigration debate.
I largely agree with your points, and think integration is important. But also, living in the Twin Cities and watching how ICE is harassing a lot of our Hmong neighbors (my wife’s native-born coworker’s native-born children were detained) underscores just how stupid and racist the kind of Trump supporters that would seek to move through the get-50-days-of-training-and-join-ICE-on-street-rips-in-Minnesota are.
The Hmong fought with us in Vietnam and there was some danger posed to them after our withdrawal. Many got refugee status, but did so decades ago. A bunch settled here in Minnesota. A few are still anamist, but most have converted to Christianity. They like hunting and fishing. The growth of the local Hmong middle class has resulted in more Minnesotans, unhyphenated, owning bass boats. We’re on the third and fourth generations born here in the States. The previous generation owned pho and bahn mi restaurants. The current attend the U of M and have middle class corporate jobs.
There is no significant ongoing illegal immigration issue related to our Hmong community. But the ICE agents being bussed in to our metro from red tribe America genuinely have zero conception of any of this. If they’re at all representative of MAGA, I promise you they also believe in hyphenated Americans.
So, your coworker. She was born in the US, right? But not her parents. So counting her, and her parents, she's 1/3 people born here? And then adding her grandparents she's 1/7? And great-grandparents she's 1/15? Presumably she is not included in the "ourselves and our posterity" that opens our constitution, since all of her ancestors were on the other side of the world, speaking foreign languages in a godless jungle at the time. In what world is that person, in any way, an American? That's a man born in a barn, not a horse.
What about her children? Did she intermarry with an American, or did she marry another foreigner in order to have foreign children? As if I even have to ask. Those kids, assuming they're 3/3 through parents, they're still 3/7 in grandparents and 3/15 with great-grandparents?
I don't care how polite and law-abiding they are. I've got my own model Asian minorities (they're always Asian, almost like biology dictates impulse control) in my neighborhoods. They're still foreign, they still change the character of the nation, and they should still only be allowed in small number and not allowed to form ethnic enclaves. They certainly should not be used as a shield for the abominable minorities (africans, muslims, and african muslims, I can't believe we let them in, my grandchildren will be cleaning up this mess), or as some example to be followed rather than an aberration that worked out.
Fifteen years ago the argument was legal vs illegal immigration. Now it's American vs Foreigner, and the paper citizenship of the foreigners don't carry any weight. I do not care where these people were born. They are not American, they are not native, and they do not belong here. If they are gracious guests, they may be allowed to stay, but they are guests and may be removed.
This world. 14th Amendment, baby. You don’t get to pick one line from the Constitution and ignore the rest. Citizenship is more than a paper guest pass.
You can’t help but equivocate between counting ancestors and “character of the nation” bullshit. I think you’re just parroting any excuse you can find. There is no coherent threshold that keeps the people you like in America while driving out the nasty foreigners.
Maybe you’re far enough up your own ass to have your own Ariernachweis going back to 1788. Which of the 28,000 voters was your meal ticket? Who secured the blessing of liberty for you?
American culture is awesome. I don’t think you deserve it.
The paper citizens are the problem. Reminding me they are citizens does not make them any more American, it just highlights the problem.
You have devalued US citizenship rather than transmogrifying foreigners into Americans.
You haven’t articulated at all why exactly where somebody’s grandparents grew up or what language they spoke has any connection whatsoever to how “American” that person is. In which chromosome is it recorded whether or not somebody’s great great grandfather was American?
Because thier family and bloodline built the country.
I'm not being hyperbolic, or trying to invoke some sort of higher power or ethos or shared culture, like everyone else. It's just being sensible; People whom have family in America that can trace thier linieage back decades, if not centuries, are looking at a line of people who's decisions and choices and goals have had a massive knock-on secondary effects that have effected the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of others, and so on, and they in-turn been affected by others.
The son who's great-grand father ran for mayor in a town can track down the laws and see what long-term effects they had on it's development. The daughter who's great-great-great grandmother rescued a dying man from the battlefield and hid him from Johnny Reb of the devils in blue and married him, or just nursed him back to health and he went on to kill others. The grandfather that pushed for the first major business in a town, thereby changing the lives of hundreds directly, or the grandmother that pushed for them to head out west on Route 66 to pursue for better fortune elsewhere. The northen carpet-bagger that came down to the South and is the direct reason why parts of the Atlas V rocket and Space Shuttle were built in New Orleans.
(That last one is completely true, by the by. The others are generalities.)
You are presumably sitting in the results of those actions, piled on and on and on by what I would charitably call a unique group of individuals. I doubt the Earth could handle a second America lurking in the wings. We'd probably explode. Possibly literally.
Put another way, looking at it from a business perspective, if you have a buisness with a public IPO and you then conclude 'And those with the smallest shares will have identical voting power as to those with the most', they'd look at you as if you'd lost your goddamn mind.
So that's one arguement.
'But Eyes,' you might reply. 'That's begining to look suspiciously akin to what alot of Europeans refer to Class and Nobility and Lineage and whatnot. Aren't Americans virulently allergic to that?'
And I would reply, 'Why, yes. Yes it is. So I think it would be wise to look at the circumstances and reasons for such a thought to arise and perhaps correct the reason for it.'
But perhaps you're not convinced. Understandable. As they say, you don't pin others medals on your chest.
Though I wonder, sometimes. That blood tells, more than often, that we really are the results of our forefathers than we care to admit.
So! Second arguement.
Let's look at context.
I think it's fair to say that the majority of immigrants to America, up to a certain point, were what we would call settlers. People who risked it all - quite literally - to establish a better life. People with a certain attitude and grit whom were willing to wrestle civilization out of a land that, quite charitably, wanted to kill them, populated by potentially hostile locals that also wanted to kill them and each other, if not both, depending on thier mood. That there was, if you will, a certain gate they had to pass through, be it either via travel or sheer survival or grit or luck or all of the above to become the successful American Experiment.
Nor should we ignore that alot of people - especially during the early 20th century, in the period between 1900-1920 - flooded into the country, and if they could not sucede one way or another, they actually went back. 'Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor' is just really good propaganda tacked on way after the fact, that even after a large amount of threat had been wrested from the North American continent, there was still challenges to overcome. Modern infrastructure still hadn't been built, and in some places I know of, cities that are now seperated by a mere hour or so could take days to reach, because even up to WW2 there were still portions of America that, yes, really were still wild.
Times have changed. The people coming in now are not coming in to settle. They are not coming in to travel by train or horse or car to remote places to find a quite nest to live out their lives away from everyone else. Why they are coming can be interpreted in as many ways as you like, from the charitable to the uncharitable to the actively hostile, but the idea that people coming now, today, are similar in any way to the people coming to America pre-WW2(and I'm being generous with that for a reason) is utterly ludicrous.
If you wanted me to nail down a cut-off date, if I were feeling cheeky, I'd say 1965 for the Hart Cellar Act. But, no. Realistically, I'd say January 3rd, 1959. Why?
Because that was when Alaska was incorporated as a state. The last of the great frontiers, finally civilized.
No more lands left to conquer.
Look. I'm not going to sit here and say that I agree with the idea of Heritage Americans unequivocally. Though lord knows the past ten years are so have been rather testing for some of my previously held beleifs, so who the hell knows by this point.
But I do think it's silly to completely ignore all the above. Times have changed. The world as a whole is different. We need to adapt to that. How we adapt to that is an open question, yes, but I think it's fair to say that we have a slight problem that needs to get resolved, hopefully in a peaceable manner.
Fair disclaimer: The above was written while sleep deprived, with no references, and primarily because my brain would not shut the ever-loving hell up and I finally gave up and decided to put all this to paper. Maybe now I can crawl off and get some goddamn sleep.
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