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A great man once said feeble minds discuss people, mediocre minds discuss events, and great men discuss feeble and mediocre minds. As befits my station (see: flair), I will endeavor to do the first two.
Yesterday, Ron Desantis proudly shipped 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. See Breitbart and Fox News’ takes as well. The individuals were supposedly offered a plane ticket to Massachusetts, without being told they were being sent to a small, isolated island unprepared to receive them as part of a political stunt. Amusingly, not sharing a border with Mexico, Desantis actually had to source his illegal immigrants from Texas. I suppose rustling up 50 of the 772,000 homegrown illegal Florida Mans was too difficult, or may have upset some core constituency, who knows. The only shelter in Martha’s Vineyard has room for 10 and is obviously not equipped in the way that Boston, New York or DC would be and the plane ticket to those places would have been much cheaper.
Also of note: see the Fox News article for the Florida legislature’s $12 million
‘immigrant relocation program’Own The Libs/Desantis for President fun.I can stomach a border wall and even see the necessity, despite disagreeing with what it represents. I can sympathize with people living near the border and dealing with crime and drug cartels. But manipulating impoverished people seeking a better future and treating them as nothing more than chattel to score political points and ‘own the libs’ absolutely turns my stomach. Which, judging by the Breitbart comments and replies I expect here, laughing at my pearl clutching is absolutely the point. You want me to be mad, you want me get up on my soapbox and bleat some self-righteous Soyjak lines about muh poor illegals so you can get mad right back and it feels good.
So I guess I won’t do that, although I never know what to say instead. I’m sorry that you hate Obama and Clinton (see: Breitbart article) so much that the thought of them having to deal with poor third worlders is amusing. I’m sorry that you’re so angry about illegal immigration and the libs that we’ve come here. Please, let’s all try to treat our countrymen better and do what we can to dial down the hate.
Hey, people used to go to watch people being tortured to death for fun. The fact that cruel political actions now involve free plane tickets instead of dousing someone in tar or sending bombs in the mail is progress of a sort.
There are two ‘nice’ outcomes, 100% or 0%. 100% means clear path to citizenship for basically everybody. 0% means people don’t trek across brutal deserts, national sovereignty is restored, and the working class has more labor power. It’s in the middle that we get this brutality, where neither side can get what they want so the only victory is your rival’s tears.
It is, and if someone proposed resurrecting gladiatorial combat you'd really see the pearls come out.
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I want to chime in with full support for the 100% or 0% point, and I'd go further and assert that it's the conflict between two or more sides that creates trouble in most situations more than a clean victory by either one would. It's not the victory that's messy, it's the war. Half-measures drag things out and make them worse.
This isn't limited only to immigration, either. It goes for every entrenched conflict. Even today's culture wars wouldn't be a problem if, say, the progressives achieved total dominance and did in fact wipe all the witches from the face of society. It'd suck for me, personally, but it sure would end the culture war and bring about unity.
I have a nit to pick:
Blue tribe needs outgroups. If they wiped out red tribe they would turn inward to continue the conflict.
One of liberalism's great strengths is its relative comfort with endless conflict. The meme of tolerance and metaphorical warfare through the voting system allows that conflict to continue endlessly while allowing the conflicting factions to form a united front against outside threats.
Other systems built around ideological purity require an honest attempt to actually destroy the enemy, and when this is successful a new enemy needs to be found or created.
I think unending conflict may simply be human nature, and stability is learning to manage that conflict in a productive manner.
One could argue, however, that historically, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US needed a new "Evil Empire" to fight.
I think we found a few 😅
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