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Let's get this thread rolling with something interesting. I happened to come across this clip on Twitter of a post-midterm interview with Trump, posted by America First Post. I'm just gonna transcribe the whole thing here:
Trump is Trump of course so take everything with a massive grain of salt, especially since he announced Stephen Miller would be taking over as his chief of staff, but this is crazy? Perhaps Trump's "Only Nixon can go to China" moment will be an Eisenhower-esque amnesty for illegals. I have heard other commentators suggest that Trump would be open to adding Puerto Rico and D.C. as states from a self-glorifying kind of way. "President Trump, you could be remembered as the first President to add states to the union since 1950! What a legacy!"
As a quick update, Trump just tweeted that there will be no amnesty: https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2119912485751017686 Skeptics are quick to point out that acktually letting the illegals stay isn't an amnesty.
I do think that it was always a nothingburger, but also I guess since Trump's team is plugged into twitter, they probably saw half the base chimp over it as well.
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My hot take is that it’s nothing burger. Seriously the guy just appointed Stephen Miller to be his chief of staff.
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I think what the US needs is a grand bargain between the two sides on immigration: one big amnesty for those already there, obviously excluding criminals, etc., and to then start actually enforcing the law.
I do feel it is unfair that people who've lived in the US for years or decades under the understanding that the law will not be enforced have had the rug pulled out from under them. No, you can't just say "but it's the law!". Imagine a teenager smokes some weed on the understanding that the prohibition is not enforced, and then a tough-on-crime district attorney starts enforcing it and suddenly he's spending a year in jail (the maximum sentence) and will never be able to get a good job. People act differently based on how and whether laws are enforced, and suddenly changing that retroactively is unfair.
Make second-class citizenship great again.
I know plenty of multi-generational Dubai residents who are doing far better than they would have in their country of origin, and yet still have no real pathway to citizenship. Nothing wrong with that model.
Dubai is a monarchy. This is completely unstable in a democracy. It's the equivalent of dangling a huge, juice steak in front of a dog and asking it not to eat it. Sooner or later the dog is going to wolf it down. And sooner or later some faction is going to realize they could win bigly if they just naturalized the disenfranchised.
"They are doing far better than they would have in their country of origin" is not an argument that neurotypicals respond to; if it were, the minimum wage would not be so popular. Normal people run on Copenhagen ethics.
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A significant amount of anti-immigrant sentiment stems from a sense of cosmic unfairness when people are rewarded for not following the law. The Economist proposed that, as immigrants come to America because they think they will make more money than they would at home as a basic concept, immigrants should pay a special income tax on all earnings which would eat into that delta. I think a great many Americans would be satisfied with that kind of arrangement: illegal immigrants pay, literally, for their crimes.
To engage with your example, maybe we don't want to ruin a young stoner's life, but a lot of people will feel anxiety around the anarchy of not punishing him at all. Community service provides a path by which he can be publicly punished, while also being productive for society rather than destructive.
Laws built around reducing turbulence for young stoners have also massively eroded the West's ability to deal with the Junkie tier of user. Criminals aren't all Aladdin and whenever enforcement is reduced on paper then administrated by light-touch judges then the whole thing rapidly snowballs past functionality.
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I give you: everything you want on the issue
You give me: you promise to follow the law, which you have already promised to do, and which already gives me everything I want on the issue
Wow great, what a deal, sign me up
Oh look, one paragraph later the I am being told that you are just going to ignore the law if you think its unfair.
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Reagan did this in 1986. We've fallen short on "actually enforcing the law" since then: do you think another round will go any better?
That would be the bargain: the pro-immigrant side actually agrees to actually enforce the law. This would be a major concession from their side, which is why they would get a total amnesty in return.
I will concede that this does require a degree of good faith that probably doesn't exist in American politics in the current year. Maybe they could enshrine it in the constitution, in a very clear and unambiguous manner to avoid interference from the courts.
These particular "actually"s are indistinguishable from the historical "not actually"s.
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So you want me to press "cooperate" on the prisoner's dilemma despite a clear history of one side hitting "defect" basically as hard as possible (see: Biden)?
I'm not even particularly opposed to reasonable levels of immigration and I think that sounds dumb. What could you feasibly offer in return? Mandatory nationwide E-Verify? Residency checks for all hotel and apartment rentals (this is common in other Western nations)? Also bank accounts and transfers? Massive taxes on remittances? Not that any of those are on the table, but would that be enough, even?
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That worked out great with "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
I contend that you can get much more explicit and unambiguous than that.
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There would have to be an enforcement mechanism. Because the left broke the deal so flagrantly last time, they would have to make an additional concession.
A couple possible suggestions:
Social security checks are docked if immigration exceeds a certain amount
20% tax on remittances plus $100,000 annual fee for H1b with all income generated going to ICE
There was no deal of the kind I'm describing with the Reagan amnesty. At the time, the Republicans were pro-immigration because they thought it was good for business and the Democrats were anti-immigration because they thought it was bad for US workers.
And to be clear, I'm only talking about illegal immigration. Legal immigration is an entirely separate question.
I think pigeonburger is on the money: if a Constitutional amendment plainly stating "shall not be infringed" and multiple Supreme Court rulings establishing common use and historical precedent over many decades don't stop progressives from trying to ban guns, what makes you think you'll be more successful with your dealings?
Guns haven't been banned yet, unlike in most of Europe. The vast majority of states allow you to carry a gun, either open or concealed. For sure it's not perfect, but it's much better than the rest of the world. 2A isn't useless.
If you were to get immigration restrictions passed in such a way that they would actually be followed 90% of the way 90% of the time, you really would have immigration restrictions worthy of the term.
2A has been entirely useless as a formal legal mechanism to protect ownership of guns in America. Multiple victories in the supreme court have proven entirely incapable to overturn gun control or ban laws in Blue-controlled regions. It is true that many places in America allow gun ownership; they do this because Reds won and maintain political control of those areas. Where Blues control, 2A is a dead letter, much like the rest of the Constitution.
You are appealing to a formalism that does not actually exist, and has not existed in living memory. There is no way to get immigration restrictions 90% followed 90% of the time under a Blue-controlled federal government. It does not matter what laws you pass, or even whether you pass a constitutional amendment, were such a thing possible. Blues are not willing to be constrained by law.
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The closer to the [American] Anglosphere you are, the worse the gun laws get.
This is because the illiberal/progressive faction in those countries takes their marching orders wholesale from American media and turn them loose on countries that have far less rule of law (NZ -> AUS -> UK -> CAN from least to most restrictive, if you were curious. For the UK, Northern Ireland is a notable exception; I don't think Oranges would tolerate London demanding them disarm.)
Continental Europe is generally more liberal than Anglo countries are; the most liberal countries in Europe were part of the Soviet Union (and arguably because they were part of the Soviet Union).
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Guns haven't been banned due to the concerted efforts of a lot of right-wingers. Enforcing a new deal like that would become a new branch of the conservative movement, best case scenario. Is it possible? Maybe, but they'll make you prove that every step of the way, and you've got a whole load of people who would be legal who weren't before.
You'll notice that no deals are being negotiated with Democrats right now in the gun sphere. There is no "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" arrangement, no suggestion that we repeal the NFA in exchange for universal background checks. Both sides want it all, and why shouldn't they? Neither side trusts the other, and why should they?
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I think an inherent weakness here is either trusting that the left won't sidestep your stipulations, or trusting that your design cannot be sidestepped. I have seen enough sidestepping that I would question that either one is possible.
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No bargain is actually possible. The left isn't unified enough to be able to offer that. There is enough demand for open borders, or more charitably not being too cruel to illegal immigrants, that the left would, uh, find a way to not live up to an agreement. Amnesty would be giving up territory for no gain whatsoever, just like last time.
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Immigration was a winning issue. You need to deport the most sympathetic cases in order to instill a strong deterrence effect, because lawfare prevents enforcement in large numbers. This means rounding up grandmas here for 20, 30, 40 years and keeping them in jail for a month before deporting them so that no illegal ever feels safe. If you fail to deport abeulita, 10 chicas will plan to vamanos on over with the expectation that if they just have uno chico and wait 10 years they’ll get to remain safely forever. It’s just that good to live in America compared to South and Central America.
There’s no way America will survive with an eternal unrelenting flood of 80-90iq foreigners from below. Either it balkanizes into competing racial groups or we become just another Brazil, with world history being played out by nation states like China and Japan until the end of time. There’s no coming back from this.
Forget not that Japan also managed to find a fun way to cripple itself via demographics, entirely without immigration for once, and China may well be on track to the same state.
Now their demographic decline isn't terminal at least. They can recover; unlike western countries. But until they stabilize their own TFRs, it remains open whether they really have history in hand.
China has a lot more leeway with the massive elderly overhang between state capacity, automation and not having to deal with them as a massive voting bloc plus such a gigantic existing population that losing some absolute numbers when large amounts of China's poorer population essentially doesn't exist economically already.
IMO if anybody is going to crack scalable robotic-assisted elderly care it's probably China.
'Yaddayadda population curve' also assumes fungibility of population and that certain demographics of immigrants aren't net drains over any reasonable time horizon.
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I don't think they've crippled themselves- judging by how wasteful their education system is, they're still overpopulated, and the more automation advances the worse that problem gets. They're many years ahead of the curve on the automation-induced wind-down.
At least it's not South Korea, who missed the economic boom [back when automation was unsophisticated enough to create a labor shortage- now it creates a surplus] and are as a result suffering from an overpopulation problem that's drastically worse.
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If I were dictator of America, I would deport the illegal abuelitas out of a sense of duty, justice, and fairness. Every single one of them goes back. However, I am not, you are not, and Trump is not a dictator, and never will be. In a realistic sense it is necessary to coalition build and compromise. The abuelitas are less damaging to our culture and economy than the average illegal, and they are more sympathetic and emotionally salient than the average illegal. If you deport the abuelitas the normies will get mad at you, even ones who lean right. If you make it your message to deport the abuelitas people will call you an evil racist and the normies will believe them and not vote for you, your policies, or politicians you like (and also won't listen to you on other issues). If you group the abuelitas and the rapists together and say "deport them all", the normies will see the abuelitas and say "no, give amnesty to them all". Therefore in pragmatic terms, promoting the message "deport the abuelitas" counterproductively causes fewer illegals to be deported.
I would like them all deported, but at this point I will take what I can get. If amnesty for anyone here for 20+ years is the cost we have to pay to establish an efficient machine that speedily catches and deports new illegals, I would suck it up and pay that cost. Now, they aren't offering that deal so there's no point paying the cost without getting that permission in exchange. I definitely do not want to give amnesty without getting a LOT in exchange for it. The incentives you point out are important, but they're not everything. I think it's a bargaining chip I think we should keep on the table IF we can more than we lose in exchange for it.
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I can't find it, but there's a graph floating around that lists the real changes in household net worth by quintile.
The long and short of it is that the top 20% (already the capitalized class) is going to the moon. That's assumed the same way that the bottom 20% has seen a massive negative "return" in real net worth. The more interesting part is that the 2nd and 3rd quintiles are close to flat and the 4th quintile represents a stair-step in terms of wealth accrual.
In other words; K-shaped economy split 40% to bottom 60%, with a massive albatross in the bottom 20%.
What this looks like every day; if you have a 40+ hr week job that is either skilled trade or white collar of any sort, you don't have horrific anti-social impulses, and don't abuse substances, you're probably fine.
Two major caveats; 1. a divorce can temporarily or permanently drop you into that 3rd quintile - the miserable middle. 2. AI might scramble a few of those white collar job classes.
The problem, however, is that that stair step I mentioned earlier. Goign from 3rd to 4th quintile isn't just a matter of keeping your head down and staying disciplined for five or even ten years. It's a leap of faith and a lot of people make it by starting their own business, taking a risk on equity comp in a startup, or swinging for the fences on a new job / job relocation. The risk is that, if something doesn't work out, you don't stay where you are in the third quinitile, but might tumble down to (nearly) the 2nd. (First quintile is reserved for the truly degenerate. Gotta be all about the game, homie).
And so the American economy turns more and more into risk-taker-winners and risk-taker-losers. That's a bad social position to be in because it rewards a lot of, well, risky behavior that, while necessary and potentially good in the aggregate, can go really sideways at a smaller scale. I love seeing SpaceX catch a rocket with robot chopsticks. High risk. Massive reward. Moves science and technology forward. I hate seeing Draft Kings exploit lonely, risk-on young men. But these two things will coexist if the overall concept of "risk" as wealth mechanism endures.
What does all of this have to do with immigration?
The way to wean young men off of risk-on behaviors is to give them prestige and status within their communities for taking a longer term view of things. If stable, married men are seen as pillars of the community who receive status because of it, you've got a model for The Bros to follow. If stable men are not valued and given status, then we devolve to our animal selves and The Bros gamble away any and all extra pay.
An overly hetergeneous local and national culture makes risk-off behavior and life planning much, much more difficult. The more immigrants you have who do not have a natural respect and understanding of American Culture, the more you risk American boys rejecting the long term vision of community and family. This is because there is less and less of a community from which to derive respect and status and, following that, fewer and fewer opportunities to marry a woman of quality.
K-shaped economy + immigration + male-female relationships and family formation. All of this times the strength of culture, which, right now, is probably -0.65 and declining.
How are you defining the bottom 20%'s lack of net worth? LIke they probably own less real estate than they did historically, but they're also probably wealthier in random crap than they were 50 years ago. Condition in their commons is maybe hard to calibrate since probably more drug issues, but also genuine poverty and starvation has been largely stamped out in the West.
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How can 80-90 IQ people navigate the life of an illegal immigrant? Seems to me like they would likely run into trouble somewhere along the way.
Besides the obvious fact that they do run into trouble all the time, they also have NGOs and governments to help them with free housing, free health care, free education, free food, and direct cash payments.
Yeah, but most normal IQ illegal immigrants can't even get and manage all that let alone the 80-90 IQ people.
Consider those migrant truck drivers who can't read the road signs and crash into people. They manage up to a point...
I'd be terrified of driving a huge truck in a foreign country whose road rules I don't understand and whose signs I can't read. But clearly they're not, or don't foresee the issues that might come up or they're forced into it perhaps.
There are probably many more similar cases in other industry, food contaminations in agriculture. Whole countries seem to manage with 80-90 IQ, not great but they do manage.
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I don't think HBD is keeping Latin America back. Argentina is Whiter than the US, yet is still a shithole due entirely to cultural and political reasons. Meanwhile, El Salvador is now the safest country in the Americas, with a homicide rate well below that of the United States, following a radical shift in policy. It's still poor – that can't change overnight – but having the country run by gangs was a major impediment to growth that has now been removed.
Argentina isn't whiter than the US - most white Argentinians are somewhat mixed, not close to 100% white like white Americans. I won't comment on racial differences, but even cultural differences are pretty sticky and Latin American countries are noticeably dirtier and more dysfunctional than poorer European countries like Moldova and Ukraine, and it would be a shame for the US to become more like that.
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HBD sets the ceiling of a country. It does not set the floor. Retarded communists can wreck any country, no matter the national IQ. Just look at North Korea.
But no country has ever developed an advanced industrial economy without at least a large high IQ cohort.
I mean even North Korea seems a lot better organized than a lot of comparably poor states. I'd rather be the average North Korean than the average Liberian or Haitian assuming I wasn't able to migrate.
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I dare to believe that HBD made the culture and the politics, and that HBD is not « over here » whilst culture and politics is cleanly « over there ».
I don't see how this responds to the fact that Argentina is Whiter than the US.
Do you think HBD is just skin tone?
Right, the Argentinians are a different kind of White people. Mostly Italians and Spaniards. Yet neither Italy nor Spain is anywhere near as dysfunctional as Argentina, and Italian-Americans are well assimilated. As far as I know, New Jersey hasn't been governed by Peronists for the last 80 years.
Argentina used to be much richer relative to the rest of the West. (There was a Reddit post on this topic on a SSC/Motte-type subreddit that I'm unable to find right now.) They literally just came up with one terrible idea, Peronism, and ran with it, destroying their country in the process. But as other places populated by Italians and Spaniards show, this was a historical accident, not the inevitable outcome.
There are two gaps. The one you mentioned is HBD. You said:
Buenos Aires and Chicago received immigrants under the same resources, shipping grain and meat from fertile hinterlands, but Chicago drew Germans and Buenos Aires drew Spaniards and Italians. Chicago was over 95% literate from 1870; Buenos Aires was under half in 1869, 72% in 1895, and passed 90% only in 1939. Campante & Glaeser conclude that human capital explains « the lion's share » of the divergence between the two cities and their countries. Europe is the same. In 1900 the average adult had 1.7 years of schooling in Italy and 3.3 in Spain, against 6.4 in the US (Lee & Lee). The US was very Germanic until very recently (~78% European ancestry).
Now as for Argentina vs Spain or its neighbors. It's not ideas, we know that much. In 1913 Argentina was about 1.5 times as rich as Italy and twice as rich as Spain (Maddison; Glaeser, Di Tella & Llach), and in 1950 it was more literate than Chile or Uruguay. But it declined because of instability: 8 regime changes from 1946 to 2010, vs. 2 each for Chile, Uruguay and Brazil (Geddes, Wright & Frantz). Since 1990 its rule-of-law score has been about 0.57, v.s. 0.96 for Chile and Uruguay (V-Dem).
Perón, obviously, was a man and not an idea. Kind of puts a wrinkle in what you said. And the issue predates Perón. It started with the 1930 coup, but Perón came out of the 1943 coup. The army then banned Peronism from 1955 to 1973, and in 1962 it removed Frondizi eleven days after Peronists won 10 of 14 provinces (source). This instability, not Peron himself, messed up the economy further. But Argentina was still richer than Chile and Uruguay in 1975. It fell behind absolutely between 1975 and 1990, shrinking 1.5% a year while they grew (Maddison).
But there's no research on why Argentina is so unstable. One hypothesis was positive feedback loop, but the effect size does not explain the magnitude of the excess over its neighbors, so that's ruled out.
It could be purely random chance. It could be HBD dark matter we're not seeing. Basic ancestry captures most of the deficit Argentina has vs. Germanic nations but it is in fact useless for explaining the difference from its neighbors. Maybe its immigrants were belligerent in a way not captured by their source countries. We don't know for sure but logic suggests to me it will be something like this, or else bad luck ... one calculation I did suggests it's about 1.5 SD among its peers. So it could be top 10% « bad luck » if you consider all of the variance among the peers (ethnicity and income matched) to be totally random. That is not one bad idea, in general people barely listen to anything, these countries share information lines and languages and yet they differ. So ideas differences are not plausible core drivers IMO.
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If the Democrats were smart, they would be working around the clock to draft the DONALD J. TRUMP EXPAND AMERICA ACT of 2027. Washington D.C will be admitted to the union as a full state, to be known as The District of Trump. Unauthorized aliens who can demonstrate a residence in the US of at least 10 years will be eligible for TRUMP cards, offering amnesty and a path to citizenship. The Kennedy Center will be officially renamed. 31 U.S.C § 5114(b) will be amended to allow Donald Trump’s face to be printed on US currency prior to his death.
The crown of Henry Clay is lying in the gutter. Chuck Schumer can pick it up if only he swallows his pride.
Democrats are not that smart. Or rather, they will lose their base if they do this and 2028 will make 2026 look like a normal loss.
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They could have had their entire green/infrastructure agenda his first term if they'd been willing to do that. "Trump High Speed Rail"! "Trump Solar!" "82 new Trump National Parks and Maritime Conservation Zones!"
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The Democrats want complete control and infinite immigrants of course. But what they want even more than that is to dunk on Trump.
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The immigration hawks gave us Texas bluer than New York. Zoomers speaking of 100 million deportations turned out 1.75 million non-voting but eligible Hispanics because they don't want their technically-illegal abuelita sent back.
And there is no benefit to deporting abuelita. Her three children and 10 grandchildren were born here, deporting her doesn't change their legal status. She doesn't have access to social security, if she didn't work for cash she probably doesn't know whose stolen ID she worked under- the company she worked for took care of all that. The only thing it does is make US citizens that zoomers Trump hired to be mean on twitter dislike for failing a paper bag test upset.
What does this mean?
Are you asking about how to parse the sentence? Because I also spent a while puzzling over it.
Reworded: The only thing it does is upset US citizens who are disliked by zoomers whom Trump hired to be mean on twitter. The zoomers dislike the US citizens because they (the US citizens) fail "a paper bag test" (presumably the brown paper bag test).
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The benefit is proving we still live under rule of law. Why bother having laws at all if "some" people are allowed to disregard them without consequence? What ever happened to "nobody is above the law?"
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This is the only real threat, I believe. He's obviously obsessed with leaving his mark on the map, one way or another.
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Very disappointing result. But what else can we expect? He lost big time, and now he's trying to save 2028 and get as much done on immigration as he can with the new hostile legislative environment. I doubt he ever cared that much about immigration in the first place.
If you voted Democrat or stayed home because of Iran and Israel, I hope you're happy, because you're getting the bathwater with the baby. Amnesty, Part 3 will go swimmingly, I'm sure. Hopefully he's just talking.
If this gets us amnesty, then amnesty was already going to happen eventually anyway. This is also massive cuck behavior. Letting them run the country poorly with massive corruption because if you don’t, the Democrats will flood you with immigrants. It’s basically a massive threat to the right to get in line and vote Red no matter who. It’s an abusive relationship.
How about the opposite happens and the Republicans learn they need to be competent, stay out of stupid wars, and not be corrupt criminals so the left can’t gain power? They didn’t lose because chuds stayed home. They lost because normal people thought they did a poor job running the country. They need to be better next time instead of blaming the voters. All these people have to go.
Accelerationism is bad and never works. There isn't some perfect uber-Chad President waiting in the wings to take us to the promised land.
It's not that hard to just vote for the most right wing candidate in every election.
I think the people encouraging "based" right wingers to vote Democrats are probably mostly funded by the left. It's a good bit. And notice how the left wingers would never, ever, even once, encourage someone to stay home or vote for a Republican.
In any case, all problems except demographic change can be fixed. Even communist countries can turn around within a couple decades. Trump will be gone soon enough. But immigration will never be reversed. Other than AI, it is the only issue that really matters.
Radical pro-Palestinian activists were doing exactly that in 2024. "Genocide Joe" was the meme.
They said to vote Trump to teach the Dems a lesson? May I see it?
Ethnic Arabs/Muslims in greater Detroit voting for Trump over Gaza
I can't find links to regular blue white leftists doing this in the general - Google wants to keep sending me stories about blue white leftists not voting for Biden in the primary. But there are numerous press stories after the election, mostly featuring push polls by pro-Palestinian groups claiming that voters staying home over Palestine cost Harris the election.
Dem post-defeat analysis says Gaza did cause people to stay home
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Not true. In 2016 there was a nontrivial push among the Bernie left to stay home. There might not have been much of that in the press, but Hilary and Kamala were the media establishment candidates, so of course they wouldn't; in real life, like at universities, it was a very common sentiment.
But of course, any left winger who wants to smack down another left winger advocating for a more cooperative or long-termist strategy can nutpick right-wing posts like yours to in turn argue that right-wingers would never even once encourage someone to stay home or vote for the left-wing candidate.
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No, do not vote for the most right wing candidate in every election. Vote for the most right wing candidate who can win. Learn from the Arizona GOP(Texas was mostly sunk by this being a very very blue year, but the TxGOP not learning this lesson is a legitimate possibility going forwards).
Yes, very much so. I was assuming that in my comment but I should have spelled it out directly.
What I am arguing against is voting for the left to "teach the right a lesson". To the extent that this galaxy-brained attitude exists, I assume it is mostly an op.
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With democracy, I think the only way out is through. I will not conserve a democracy. If the demos did not want to be replaced, they should not have voted for it. If the demos are sorry that they know not what they vote for, then they should have never revolted against the aristocracies to begin with. It all seems just to me, that the West would end up this way.
They aren't trying to replace the demos, they're voting to expand it, by allowing people to become members even if they were not born thus.
I'd believe this more if many of the same voices pushing "expand" hadn't also been loudly anti-natalist for as long as I can remember. Not saying those are connected, but they certainly look suspicious together.
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I didn’t advocate for accelerationism. I advocated in my comment for competent governance. Trump is not competent and does more harm than good. We’re in this position because Trump did a bad job. He is the problem. DeSantis in 2024 would have left us in a much better spot. In a two party system, if the right wing party does a bad job, then the left will take power. That is what happened. Simple as.
Yes, I would also like a competent right wing government and I was a Desantis supporter in 2024. But that choice was not on the ballot.
Your comment implied that it was desirable that the Democrats won, even if that means increasing immigration. That would seem to indicate that either you are a left winger who supports immigration or that you think it's good that the left won to "teach the right a lesson". That latter attitude is indeed a form of accelerationism.
A third interpretation is that you are mostly rightist but believe the Trump administration is so corrupt that even a leftist, open borders Democratic administration is preferable. But are you not considering that the Democrats are also corrupt, in fact much more corrupt in terms of dollars wasted?
You are misunderstanding what I am saying. This was always going to be the outcome with Trump. So it’s best to just get on with it. He is maximally polarizing, corrupt, and incompetent with a hard cap on his national popularity so the left sweeping into power was baked into the cake.
I think Trump has done a lot more good than bad and we are in a better place because of him, but it is time to move on. I wish the Senate hadn’t gone so poorly, but that is just more evidence MAGA has to go. We have to live in reality. He’s not the guy, and if he wasn’t going to step aside, then him being discredited is a necessary evil. If it wasn’t a blowout now, 2028 would have been even worse. Maybe we can still keep the presidency if he gets out of the way. That is the white pill. Probably not though, and if that happens it’s 100% on him.
Thank you for the clarification. I did misunderstand you and I agree with your assessment.
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My ideal would be Abbott 2032, sacrificial lamb in '28. He's effective, smart, good at politics, and seems to actually care about second order effects. I do not care about demographics as long as me and mine aren't discriminated against- although I have an aesthetic attachment to phenotypical Europeans, we're not going extinct anytime soon and have stabler demographics than any other group.
But that's not going to happen. He lost, and he's in a wheelchair. As an all powerful veep he's plausible. As a powerful domestic policy role he's plausible. I guess it's Desantis.
You can’t sacrifice 2028 because immigration is cumulative and the most conservative Supreme Court we will ever see in our lifetimes just voted 6-3 against repealing birthright citizenship. You can never remove anyone, certainly not anyone’s children, and remember the president can admit unlimited (yes, unlimited) legal refugees without. congressional approval.
Again, I am not a white nationalist. I care about the rights of social conservatives to continue to exist, a sane macroeconomic environment, and keeping the government out of my business personally. All of those would take more than a single democrat admin to destroy.
If my neighbors are all mestizos its fine.
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And that's why you must care about demographics. You'll find that racial tolerance is quite rare among non-Europeans.
While moral universalism is highest and ingroup bias is lowest among Western Europeans, I think that’s a too strong comment. Most African states have quite a diversity of ethnic groups. Most middle eastern states, India, and much of Southeast Asia involves societies where different meaningful ancestry groups coexist. Latin America has very meaningful colorblind cultural currents, and in many cases they are dominant.
I think racial masochism is also a bit complicated since it’s often a mix of genuine outgroup preference with wanting to stick it to “other white people I don’t like.” When blue tribe is muzzled, or is marginal like in many even minimally white Latino countries, race relations are a lot better.
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There was a time when it was rare among those of European extraction. They learned to be better; the rest of Adam's progeny can do it too.
(This is one of my pet peeves with the ctrl-left; Persons Of Colour ought not be excluded or held to a higher standard, but they ought to adhere to the same standards as a white person!)
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Singapore seems pretty harmonious. Everyone being well-off tends to reduce animosity. You only start seeking scapegoats when you have something to scapegoat them for.
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But non-Europeans invariably hate each other more than whites.
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I agree with all that, and the Republicans should be better, but it still sucks. Teaching them a lesson means that even more permanent changes in the demographic makeup of America are going to happen, and there is so much noise in each election and so many constituents and so many issues that there are many, many chances for them to screw up and prioritize the wrong things next time, too. With such a lack of credible individuals on the right, it's going to be even harder to stay on track next time.
I agree that it’s terrible and I’m very black pilled. My white pill though is that this can hopefully clear out the old guard and something new can emerge because people will see how serious this is. It was so bad too because Senate seats are 6 years. There’s nothing we can do now except play defense because Trump messed up so bad.
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I think it's pretty much a nothingburger but the anti immigrant faction on twitter is still throwing a fit over it. I don't have the exact cases off my head but maybe we need a list of all the batshit stuff that Trump has said on tv that he likely forgot 5 minutes later.
Well when you lose like he did, people are going to start caring a lot more about the stupid shit you do and say. He’s going to get heat from both sides now instead of just the left.
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