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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3999 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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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.

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.

Non-European immigrants vote D by supermajority numbers

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.

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.

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. SWe 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.

This is interesting to me because I have almost the exactly the opposite view of Ilhan Omar. I view her clothes an an exotic costume but hse herself is deeply deeply American, wherever her "Somali tribalism" would conflict with progressive orthodoxly, she caves to progressive orthodoxy. How does she pray? I suspect like most progressives she doesn't. She wears a hijab but I doubt she looks down on women who don't and her daughter certainly doesn't. She acts from public speaking like dozens of Americans I met in university and very little like a proper actual foreigner. The progressiveness that drips off her is incredibly Western. And she's married to a non-Muslim white man, that's enough to get a proper Somali woman killed. She is in every sense of the word totally assimilated.

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