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I have a general political theory on the current Democratic Party that no matter what gift Trump gives them they will find a way to mess it up.
ICE has had a lot of bad vibes lately. Enter the Bad Bunny Super Bowl show. I had never heard of him before Trumps rants on the Bad Bunny being in the Super Bowl. I don’t know if he was picked by the wokes or simply the NFL trying to find away to grow the game outside the US.
I think a general view of the center-left is to be nice to immigrants (empathy) even if they are closer to economic migrants than asylum/desperate. This feels like a cooking the frog too fast type moment where the message seems to be we will replace your culture and you will like it moment. The Super Bowl to me is perhaps the American Holiday most linked to Americana and they did the event completely in Spanish. The performance was trashy with some sort of sugar plantation theme (which were never in America and most of Spanish-Speaking Americans are not sugar plantation culture).
My hope is that this has gone too far and even my liberal mother will have an issue with explicit replacement.
sugar plantation sex
I was also starting to consider Americans thoughts on what is generally referred to as LATAM which is basically anything south of the Rio Grande. Most Americans probably group them into one group even though they are distinct economically and in their ethnic makeup. I don’t think the other south of the border types would be happy with their presentation when we could have found other groups with positive cultural traits if the goal was marketing to LATAM. Maybe I am missing a group but when I think of south of the border I think there are a few broad groups.
If the NFL goal is to grow the game I don’t see how highlighting sugar cane field sex would be viewed as a good way to reach out. Groups from these regions only have significant presence in Miami and Puerto Rico within US territories. From what I can tell southern cone twitter hates the performance.
After viewing the performance I will rate it worse than my fears. Politically I will rate it as good for my side in the category of the wokes always find a way to ruin electoral chances for the Democrats.
Edit: Empire which America is should never degrade itself especially on the big stages. It’s actually one reason the stupid amount of money we spent on the new Fed I can understand. When Milei comes to Washington (any Leader) and signs some currency swap the building he meets with Bessent or Powell needs to loudly say Empire. In Dunk and Egg show the bad Targaryen gets it right the dragon never dies even in a puppet show. The Super Bowl is one of those stages for the US.
It was defiantly anti assimilation and pro replacement. It is really hard to ignore the Straussian read here.
An economic union with people who at best are indifferent is one I’m not interested in especially when we don’t need the immigrants. I like America. I like Americana. I unapologetically like things like Walt Disney World, cheeseburgers, and the Fourth of July. I love our reverence for our founding fathers and considered the founding documents incredibly thought provoking re political economy (eg Federalist and Anti Federalist Papers should be read by every high school class). I always feel something when I walk through the Mall. If I’m asked to give it up, the question is why. I’m far from convinced peculiarly we are enriched by LATAM immigration and I am very convinced whatever pecuniary benefits are not worth the cost of giving up the culture I grew up with.
I live on the fringes of an area that is best described as described "as a tiny fortress of blue beset on all sides by an encroaching jungle of red". I rub shoulders with a lot of professors, lawyers, executives, and other PMCs who either don't know about my upbringing and cultural ties, or think I'm "one of the good ones".
There's definitely a kind fetishization, or maybe more charitably, Scott's "outgroup/fargroup" distinction. They hate the people who live outside their relatively wealthy, liberal-progressive bunker. I've seen them laughing at people dying in car accidents. I've heard them wishing for mass casualty events. I've frequently heard that COVID didn't kill enough of them. They're wildly pro-immigration though, despite that the modal immigrant has more in common with the "cousin fucking rednecks" (their words, not mine) than themselves. The thing is, they never have to interact with those immigrants. There's always a clean cut, English-speaking general contractor between them and the laborers. Their grocery stores are far enough from public transit that they never see them there. Their houses aren't anywhere near public housing, so they don't have to hear breaking bottles and polka music at 3am. To them, immigration is an unalloyed good. Heck, it might actually be a good thing, since Cletus is dealing with all of that now, and his suffering is also an unalloyed good.
I've heard that described as 'a blueberry in tomato soup'.
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