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Wishing each and every American a blessed 4th of July. The United States is an exceptional country and no American should take for granted the lottery of life that they won merely by being born in that country. Regardless of your political affiliation, a president is temporary and will never define the country any more than the robust private sector as well as the accomplishments, ambitions, charity, altruism, warmth, and resilience of the American people. America remains the global hub of innovation, entertainment, and academia. When I think of a dynamic society that is readily transparent about its flaws to a fault, receptive to change and development, I think of America. Unlike most European states, America isn't under the illusion that endless subsidies, bureaucratic bloating, and clientelism can keep the ball moving. America is the world's sole meritocracy, where diligent and conscientious work is all but guaranteed to yield a comfortable life in a safe, upper-middle-class suburb where people keep their garage doors open and allow their children to play outside until midnight. American research infrastructure, budgets, connections, corporate R&D, venture capital, and job markets are unparalleled. Billions of people on this planet would sacrifice anything to set their feet on American soil, let alone be born and raised there. Many people put their lives at jeopardy by doing so on a daily basis, making or attempting to make the treacherous journey through the Darien Gap of the Colombian-Panaman border.
My family comes from a third-world dictatorship and I've had the privilege of witnessing them reaching the American dream first-hand. Things I take for granted today were precious commodities for them. I was raised in a 70% Republican neighborhood in the South, and at all times, I was viewed solely as an individual who happened to have a non-Anglo-Saxon name and a member of the community, judged by my character and work ethic rather than my caste or creed. I am enamored with many aspects of life in Norway, but I will never earnestly feel a sense of belonging in the society here, I hit a dead end by constitutionally failing to fit the Norwegian mold. On paper, I did everything right, I speak Norwegian an at C2 fluency, Knausgaard's My Struggle series are one of my all-time favorite reads, yet the country has an idiosyncratic social code I've yet to fully decipher, there's an invisible barrier between ethnic Norwegians and me that has led my social circle to consist of fellow American or continental European expats. Western Oslo is home to several upper-middle-class communities with 1-2 million USD homes making it some of the most expensive real estate in the country. People there believe that their postal code is a referendum on their self-worth and are content to live in a dated wooden house that can be found for a third of the price on the opposite end of town, and the vast majority of people residing there would not be able to purchase a house in 2026; they typically pool in resources from their extended family, have inherited a residence, secretly live in a condo, or entered the housing market in the 1990s when it was not this oppressive. Despite Norway priding itself on being an egalitarian country, "keeping up with the Joneses" is much more of a thing here than virtually anywhere in the US. People here believe the opportunity cost of going into debt for some puffy vest and quarter-zips outweighs that of using their wealth for edifying and intellectually stimulating experiences. They vacation in the same tacky Spanish resorts that the lower-middle-class scourge 15 miles away does, rather than saving some funds for a trip to Cuzco or Singapore. The wealth in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Detroit, Columbus, Houston, and Dallas, which also share the same reputation of being flashy and stuck up in their respective metropolitan areas, feels much more meritocratic, as I know it is possible to be a homeowner there as a common man who righteously ascended the social ladder. Paradoxically, the average income in those communities is much higher than anywhere in Norway.
My time abroad in 26 countries has made me realize that every country has its fair share of pros and cons, and in that regard, grasping the extent to which America’s pros outweigh the cons has reinforced my American exceptionalism. America's cons are reversible and tractable, but the solid foundation remains intact. I dream of the day I get to return to the United States. I will drive a camper van from coast to coast, staying at KOA campgrounds. I will see the multitude of landscapes that the American national park system has on offer. I will marry a cute blonde Utahn girl at BYU before I begin my postgrad in an Ivy League institution. I can't wait to pay a measly $100 out-of-pocket monthly for world-class medical care.
"The tenets of American democracy are particularly cherished when you are not born with them but with deliberation and conviction adopt them for your own." -Marjorie Lynch
Fair enough. Yes there are many good things to like about the US like its (imperfect, but still, extant) meritocracy. Now if only the people of the country would stop trying to prevent others from moving there to achieve the exact same goals and wishes the current population also wants. Regardless, the country still remains genuinely welcoming to others in a way (continental) Europeans are not and have never been.
In anticipation of the 4th of July 250th anniversary I was going to change my flair here to "Benedict Arnold did nothing wrong!", but then I took another look at the current state of the UK and what the US, despite it's flaws, is still like and thought better of it...
Sorry, but too many people have a completely incompatible epistemology and metaphysics. Please feel free to copy any of our institutional sourcing documents in your own nations if that makes your cope feel better, they're all available for free online.
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You can't have a de facto open borders policy that more than half the country disagreed with and not expect tremendous blow back. Biden and crew felt the necessity for workers far outweighed the need for public consent, so they bypassed it and relied on our hijacked institutions to label the dissenters as racist bigots. Now people of the left-leaning sort are coming online and complaining about the severe political correction as if it came out of nowhere.
Did Biden have an open borders policy? My understanding was that the policy was to turn away people trying to enter illegally, and deport them if they entered (recent arrivals, not people with established lives in the US), and there was no surge in the number of illegal immigrants entering and staying long-term.
Edit: I was wrong, see below.
The actual policy was to not enforce any laws, actively decline to find people entering, and help coach illegals through falsifying asylum claims if anyone accidentally did their jobs.
Clever wording. By the time Trump was elected, most of the Bidenwave had only been here a couple years at most.
Okay, I looked into it and there was actually an increase in the number of illegal immigrants staying long-term, but this was not due to relaxed enforcement, but due to an increase in the number of people attempting to enter illegally. They actually deported more during Biden's last year in office than in any year of Trump's first term. Regarding asylum:
The Wikipedia article Immigration policy of the Biden administration also has some interesting bits:
So it seems he tried to curtail the influx, but it was too late.
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Don't you think that the sorry state of UK may be caused by the type of massive immigration to uk, that the US people don't want?
No, the sorry state of the UK is caused by repeated and incessant pandering to the lower classes and the unproductive of all stripes and colours and ages.
And can you guess by the color of their skin and their religion which are the most unproductive lower classes and most pandered to?
Also mass migration is policy that is top down, which throws the argument about pandering a bit off. And especially the white working class in UK has been fucked over and not pandered to in the last 60 years or so.
It's not quite so simple. The white working class had immense power in the 50s-90s, especially culturally (albeit often mediated through establishment figures). That's why the Doctor Who reboot centered around a white working-class chav who failed school with no A-levels and worked as a shop assistant, and why reality TV had such cachet at that time. You can see that cultural power dying as worship of the white working class died out around the late 2000s: the next-but-one companion three years later was also a working class chav, but this was treated as a bad thing she had to rise above; then you had a succession of companions who were clearly upper-middle class and then 'working class' characters who were upper-middle-class with a London multicultural accent and mostly DEI in one area or another.
Working class power showed most clearly in the trade unions, but also in the ruinous taxes and the ruthless destruction of generational wealth.
My mother failed to get into the best UK university because the working-class academic at her interview heard her upper-class accent and literally refused to say a single word to her until she gave up and left; my father was spat on for having the same accent. There's a reason it's hard to get the upper classes to feel they have more in common with Dennis from the estate than the nice young Indian man who does their accounting (Digwa). Lots of bad memories.
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I remember going to the Saratoga Battlefield, where Arnold was shot in the leg. The interpretation was pretty clear that if he had died from that wound, he would have gone down in history as one of America's most beloved generals and patriots.
Instead, he received a nameless memorial. I wonder sometimes if that wouldn't have been a decent enough compromise to deal with the Confederate legacy, but I think everything is so poisoned that neither side would accept it anymore.
The settlement was already made. Attempting to renegotiate it now is bad faith.
It was a renegotiation in bad faith already. The settlement before destroying the confederate monuments had been mostly uncontroversial in the sense of few paying much attention to it.
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