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Ridiculous from either end.
Brazil didn’t get here from a stereotypical American democracy. Its current government only dates back to the early 90s, and I’m not sure it’s had an uncontroversial election since 2006. Police putting a thumb on the scale is more like a throwback to its junta days.
Nor does American partisanship drag us in that direction. The current squabbles over voter protections have more to do with putting a particular sort of strongman in office, and the ones over nativism and immigration are what happens when a big chunk of the population feels economically insecure. No patronage required.
The current squabbles over voter suppression have to do with the role of ethnic machine politics. They date back to before Trump, after all.
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Of course America is headed this direction. Non-European immigrants vote D by supermajority numbers which is why Democrats want to open the borders and give them amnesty. This does not require some outrageous leap. Biden let in something like 15 million illegals. It isn't some prediction for the future. It already happened. And it's already the stated position of most leading Democrats to give illegal immigrants amnesty and a path to citizenship. Please don't pretend this is some crazy conspiracy theory.
If only the Rs would stop pursuing policies detrimental to Non-European immigrants, they might end up voting more R, like how Latinos now do. No party is entitled to the vote of anybody.
Would you care to name the top two policies which (1) are generally pursued by the Republicans; and (2) are detrimental to Non-European immigrants?
Because I'm super-skeptical of your claim.
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The fact that immigrants don't assimilate, but instead demand assimilation of the native population to them is all the more reason to slam the door shut and keep it that way forever.
Non-European immigrants are fundamentally more liberal, and it's not because they were treated poorly by Republicans. They were that way the second they landed.
Too bad that there are plenty of others already in your country that disagree, and they'll vote against you and your policies for very justifiable reasons from their side.
The R's offer is basically "the beatings will continue until morale improves", and then they act shocked when voters completely rationally vote D instead.
And who says immigrants don't assimilate. Imagine they all assimilated fully into D subcultures and values and voted D even harder. Something tells me you wouldn't like that eithe.
Ilhan Omar, Abdul El-Sayed, Shri Thanedar, Rashida Tlaib, Zohran Mamdani, Pramila Jayapal. They didn’t assimilate, they don’t want to assimilate, they want to change America. You say that Progressives want to change America too but this is fundamentally and obviously different from Bernie Sanders.
Ilhan Omar acts nothing like a typical Somali woman. She's educated a divorcee, totally independent of her husbands or any man and supports Gay marriage and trans rights. She's incredibly assimilated!
Assimilation is about having progressive political beliefs? A lot of Canadians and Germans and Argentines might be American too.
More seriously Ilhan Omar is obviously within the mainstream of Islamic societies. They often quite highly value educating women. (It’s generally-correlated that women in feminist countries major in literature and arts, women in Islamic countries major in STEM.) To the extent that this is not Islam as your grandfather knew it, it’s because Islam is gradually modernizing, not because Somalia is a little America. But this is neither here nor there.
The problem is that this is an extremely shallow view of American culture. Being willing to get a divorce (after committing immigration fraud, lol) or have progressive social beliefs is meaningless. It doesn’t mean anything. It is a very weak vision of American culture.
We know that Ilhan Omar is not an American because she is a tribal person from a tribal society. She doesn’t dress like an American, talk like an American, eat like an American, pray like an American, or even think like an American. Moreover, she doesn’t want to. She wants to use her political power to extract kickbacks for her foreign tribal co-ethnics. She didn’t become an American out of any strong belief in the American Way, the American Dream, abiding future in the American way, etc. etc. She came to America because she wanted to personally benefit from it, i.e., literal welfare benefits, which liberals are happy to give her. (Although in fairness to libs most cons were happy to be marks too before Trump came along.)
And especially, she’s not grateful for any of this. Now that she’s rich she’s not interested in your welfare or America’s welfare. She’s interested in her welfare. Her highest political priority is aiding more of her Somali co-ethnics to scam you for benefits, because they’re her tribe and you’re not. Because she isn’t American and isn’t especially trying to be one.
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Why do you say Abdul El-Sayed doesn't want to assimilate? Yes he wants to change America, but his wishes to change America are quite similar to those of like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, no?
His mother worked for a an Islamic group that fronts money to terrorists. His sister endorsed October 7. He’s offended that you would ask.
What is he assimilating to? He’s not assimilating to American Protestantism or rural country life. He’s not assimilating to exaggerated American patriotism. He’s not even assimilating to a leftwing American patois where it’s totally normal and expected to denounce your family over politics. If he’s assimilated to anything, it’s to an extremely thin global identity that makes no demands on anyone. He’s proud to be the children of immigrants. He’s most proud of the parts of himself that make him different from us.
Why wouldn’t he be? American liberalism makes extremely thin demands of anyone who might assimilate. It used to be that immigrants felt shameful of their immigrant past and suppressed anything that wouldn’t fit into the American mainstream. You hear stories of immigrants only speaking English at home, changing names, letting the old recipes and customs die out. Shame is a bad thing now and nobody wants that. Nobody asks that Abdul become less Egyptian. It would actually be bigoted if you asked.
It seems that the only requirements to be considered American are to speak English and to be living in the United States.
His name is Abdul. He’s proud of his family and that it’s not from America. You’re not allowed to ask if he likes Hamas like they do. His dad is an imam. He campaigns with immigrants like Hasan Piker who think America deserved 9/11. He believes that we should let more foreigners, like him, into America to make it better. And he’s just as American as you or me.
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As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. Second best time is today.
We should have halted immigration long ago. But we didn't. So we'll have to cater to the demands of voters who are already here. But the point of winning elections needs to be to halt all future immigration so we won't have to make even more concessions to even more future leftists.
Your example of the Tories being a successful party (likely a troll comment, we get it) is perfect. If you only survive by losing on literally ever issue and floating with the wind, nothing of value was conserved. The Tories are a nothing party, just a hollow shell.
Likewise, no one cares about the Republican Party in itself. They care about America.
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Whenever I reflect on that it always rings in my mind as a throwback to Caesar giving Gauls citizenship in Rome (one of the things he was actually unpopular for), and the ensuing impact this liberalization had on native Roman’s negative attitudes towards them. Over a long enough timespan, we see where it leads. Odoacer (though he was German, not Gallic) served and was integrated into the Roman army himself. That still wasn’t enough for him to see himself as Roman.
I actually think more relevant is the change in power, first with the Antonines, then decisively with the third century crisis and Diocletian where the Italians lost control of their empire. Rome itself ceased to control things well before the state collapsed.
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Yeah, the patronage model was important in ancient Rome just like it is becoming today in America. Although back then, the patron-client relationship was personal and today it is based on ethnic groups, unions, and political parties.
Controlling citizenship was a BIG deal back then too.
For example, way back in 91 BC, Drusus tried to get Rome's Italian allies admitted as citizens. The Senate hated this because it would mean that these new citizens would view Drusus, already one of the richest men in Rome, as their personal patron. He would have so many clients that he would be unquestionably the most powerful man in Rome. And so naturally he was assassinated.
Today's Democratic Party is also seeking new clients, while the Republican party tries to block it.
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