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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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US military offers immigrants fast track to citizenship in effort to boost recruiting

I have some thoughts about this.

First, this looks suspiciously like textbook "How to lose your empire in five easy steps" guide:

  1. Have your citizens grow fat, lazy and unwilling to risk their lives, especially in far away wars that they see no benefit from anyway

  2. Hire strong and hungry barbarians to serve in the imperial military

  3. Have the barbarians realize they are now doing most of the work holding up the empire together, while not getting commensurate benefits, which go to the fat and lazy citizens instead

  4. Have the barbarians take over the reigns of power

  5. The empire suffers bouts of "bad luck"

  6. The historians write "Decline and fall of the $EMPIRE"

(Side note: since we live in the clown world, I feel compelled to add a disclaimer that the word "barbarian" is used in purely descriptive, not pejorative, meaning - as "somebody who is not part of the imperial culture" - and, in fact, for the purposes of this definition, I am a barbarian myself and many of my friends are Barbarian-Americans)

Second, we have been actively sold the notion that DIE efforts in the military are vital if we want to keep the recruiting targets and the strength of the military. I do not see this idea being empirically confirmed, and what is even worse - I am not seeing anybody even interested in empirically confirming or disproving it. I expect that from the left - you don't seek an empirical confirmation of your religion, you already know it's the true faith. But I would expect people on the right - and I mean all those talking heads, think tanks and high-flying politicians - be interested in figuring out whether DIE actually makes the army stronger - and if not, pushing that fact hard. I don't think I am seeing this. For the most of the 20th century, The Right sleep-walked into giving up almost every major societal institution to The Left's takeover, but I'd expect at least they'd put up some fight for the military. Doesn't seem to be the case. Is it that the only thing that can get people really caring nowdays is when a piss water manufacturer offends them? I'd say the military going woke is a bigger deal than piss water going woke, but I don't see the red tribe treating it this way.

As a Hegelian synthesis of the above, the third thought is that the barbarians should be, at least at the start, the least woke part of the society. Thus, them joining the army in large numbers (provided that indeed happens) should constitute at least a temporary impediment to the further assimilation of the military into the woke collective. However, again, I see very little interest - at least where I could observe it, maybe I'm not looking in correct places? - in the red-tribe thought to exploring this opportunity and building some kind of "welcome wagon" track to ensure these people will join the Right Side and vote accordingly once they become citizens. I am not sure how it should look like, but that's what these "think tanks" are for, aren't they? Do the thinking thing and figure it out. Or at least try - I don't see the trying, really. Am I wrong here?

Read the article. They’re recruiting people who already have (usually permanent) residency, which means they’re merely accelerating the citizenship process by a few years. They’re not recruiting soldiers from abroad. Everyone they hire through this program would get US citizenship eventually anyway if they never enlisted.

That said, the problem with the military in the US is that it no longer serves as a guaranteed pipeline for smart young people. One of the things that’s so important for ambitious young people is a clear path to wealth, status and power. For example, the military could offer an ‘accelerated leadership program’ in partnership with the state department, White House and prestige private employers like Google or Goldman Sachs to funnel officers into great jobs after they serve for several years. Not a ‘maybe Harvard will accept you for a JD’ like it is now, but an actual, relatively ironclad guarantee.

When it comes to enlisted soldiers, it’s even simpler. Just offer them more money. No shit recruitment has gone down when flyover country construction workers are making $70k a year now easily, whereas in 2014 they were making $40k and in 2011 they were unemployed. Double enlisted wages and see whether the recruitment problem subsides.

I think it’s still somewhat a problem simply because you have a huge potential for conflicts of interests. If we go to war with China, having a large contingent of Chinese nationals fighting will create the potential for defections. There are already cases of Americans choosing to compete for their ancestral home Olympic teams, which while low stakes (it’s just sports) does highlight the issue. If your officer corps is full of people who might not feel connected to America, they might not fight, or might give away intelligence, or simply defect with all the training that we’ve given them.

Has this ever actually been a problem? All the hand-wringing about treacherous immigrants during the world wars came to nothing.

There was the Ni’ihau Incident, in which the Japanese-Americans on the island immediately went to help the downed pilot — but in the context of, for example, the 442nd Infantry Regiment, this one incident can likely be counted as a rounding error.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder whether changing attitudes towards assimilationism also change the calculus. My cursory intuition: immigrants were far more pushed to assimilate back in the ‘30s and ‘40s than they are in these ‘20s, where metaphors like the “melting pot” are derided, the very notion of a “cricket test” is tarred as racist, and having a non-American (or better yet: non-Western) culture and family living in their Old Country is treated as a sign of moral worth. As such, I’d expect the number of “would-be-treacherous immigrants” to have risen.

(I recognize that this last bit contains a large number of rather unfounded assertions; I would like to provide concrete examples and details, but alas, phoneposting won’t allow me to do so.)

FWIW, my intuition would be that 1st generation legal immigrants are probably MORE assimilated than 1st generation immigrants in the early 1900s due to higher requirements for entry, but it does seem that young 2nd generation immigrants are much less pushed to assimilate / are less interested in assimilating.

I'll add the caveat that this impression is mostly from East Asian and African immigrant families I've interacted with in the US- the parents generally seem to want to emphasize their Americanness while their children seem to want to emphasize what makes them different, to the extent that quite a few of them resent their parents for trying to raise them as American rather than keeping up cultural traditions/keeping them fluent in their parents' native tongue.

it does seem that young 2nd generation immigrants are much less pushed to assimilate / are less interested in assimilating.

What would your metric for this be? As far as I can tell, contemporary immigrants are assimilating just as fast or faster than historically as measured by things like language or intermarriage rates (e.g. my German ancestors moved to Iowa in the 1850s and didn't stop speaking German until WWI killed off German American subculture).

I'll add the caveat that this impression is mostly from East Asian and African immigrant families I've interacted with in the US- the parents generally seem to want to emphasize their Americanness while their children seem to want to emphasize what makes them different.

That's common with second generation immigrants everywhere (again, as far as I can tell) - first gen immigrants don't necessarily fit in as well, but they chose to uproot their lives and move to a different country, so they're eager to make it work. Second gen immigrants are more likely to be in an awkward limbo were they don't quite fit into their country of birth (often exacerbated by racism from their peers) and didn't choose it. For some, their parents' country of origin takes on conceptual role similar to how some adoptees treat their (unmet/absent) biological parents. Cue a soul-searching trip to the old country where they find out it kind of sucks and also they don't fit in even a little.

What would your metric for this be? As far as I can tell, contemporary immigrants are assimilating just as fast or faster than historically as measured by things like language or intermarriage rates (e.g. my German ancestors moved to Iowa in the 1850s and didn't stop speaking German until WWI killed off German American subculture).

It seems like the US census information for bilingualism etc for 2nd gen immigrants doesn't start until 1940 (only for either 1st gen or those unable to speak English before that), which is of course after many of the European immigrant groups of the late 1800s and early 1900s had pretty well assimilated.

That is to say while this was not revealed to me in a dream, take this as basically my unsupported impressions from 1st gen immigrants vs 2nd gen immigrants in the 16-35 age range vs 2nd gen immigrants in the 50-80 age range (which of course also opens up the possibility that the older group are simply more assimilated due to age rather than anything generational) rather than any sort of rigorous analysis.

My own impressions are that children of immigrants are a lot more likely to claim a foreign identity than they used to be, but without actually having one. In their eyes, their parents' culture consists of a handful of traditional foods that trigger their childhood nostalgia, a colorful outfit they wear once or twice for an instagram photoshoot, a language they speak at best at the level of an unschooled toddler, and if they are progressive enough the right to blame systemic racism for their challenges in life.