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ZorbaTHut  4yr ago (text post)   Edited 4yr ago   41784 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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I'm dipping in and out of watching the live coverage of the death of the Queen of England, currently the coverage of the procession of the queen's body to the cathedral in Edinburgh, and addressing Charles as King. Peace to the woman, she's dead now, and they are no longer claiming rights to my fealty, so let them rule their own lands and good luck to them.

Now, royal coverage brings out the professional royal watchers/specialists in royal affairs for such coverage, and you have to expect an amount of bootlicking and sycophancy. But what strikes me - and maybe this is because I'm born and reared in the Republic of Ireland - is how tilted all this is towards the English audience. Right now they may have a few Scots on, but the coverage by British media is London-based, and for instance - I've heard an English live commenter burbling on as Charles' plane arrives, in an unmistakably RP accent with a posh tinge, about the Royal Standard of Scotland that is flying on the car awaiting to transport him that is "an emphasis on the descent of the king, ultimately back to King Robert the Bruce and the ancient lines of the Picts and Scots".

To which the only possible answer is: my arse it is. The name of the present royal House is Mountbatten-Windsor, because they had to change it from Battenburg due to anti-German sentiment from the First and Second World Wars. But again, this is all slanted towards an English viewership, eliding over the history between Scotland and England, and trying to pretend that no, of course all the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom are every bit as important as England.

Tell me again where he will be conducting his reign from? It's not Edinburgh, that's for sure.

As with this announcement of William now taking on the titles Charles bore: Duke of Cornwall. Prince of Wales. Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. The titles of conquered nations, assumed and folded into the English rulership. A reminder as to who is the top dog in this "United" Kingdom.

Advocacy for marginalized European identities can be in a bit of an awkward position, as the most-aligned general philosophical current available to tap into to advocate for the rights of marginalized identities tends to be really universalist. I think a majority of people (at least outside Scotland - and absolutely not counting you, if you are Deiseach as I think you are) who would express concern about Scottish underrepresentation might also have a hard time defining "Scot" as anything other than "person who happens to live in Scotland," at which point the whole thing would seem pretty arbitrary.

You missed a juicy detail: the house was called Saxe-Coburg und Gotha which became extra awkward when the German Empire was running a bomber called a Gotha that was bombing london. So they made up Windsor.

Yeah, all the jokes about them being German do have a point. They are much more of a mixed bag than "can trace his descent back to the Picts". His father was a member of the deposed Greek royal family and considered himself Danish. Because royalty has to marry royalty, most of the royal houses of Europe have intermarried over the centuries. There isn't a 'pure' British or Dutch or Spanish lineage, there is just the legal justification for why X is heir to the throne.

Horrible Histories has the right of it.

England has about ten times the population of Scotland, so I'm not seeing anything very surprising there.

Oh it's not surprising, but the unctuous attempts to cover over that this is, in effect, an English king with no ties to Scotland beyond "my great-great-great-grandfather purchased and lived in a house here which we visit at times because we like the shooting and the scenery" by evoking Robert the Bruce and the Picts fool nobody. It's the level of royal arse-licking by toadies that you have to expect at times like this one.

Literally everything on TV is unbelievably London-biased. You've not caught onto anything new. Every other region of England feels this just as keenly as the Scots and Welsh. We are not represented by London either, and programming/advertising that uses its demographics feels just as alien to us. So don't try and divide this along those lines.

The act of the union invited a penniless and embarrassed Scotland, fresh off the back of their failed attempt at colonialism, to put a Scottish King on the throne of England. To the extent that you are moaning about the provenance of the royals, that you skate over this in such a cavalier way is very revealing of the intent of this post, and the particular basket of chips on your shoulder.

As an aside, I often notice this continual reference to the German origin of the royal family comes up a lot from people who would otherwise insist that second-generation immigrants are just as British as those who can trace their lines back hundreds of years. The exception, as ever, only seems to be made for targets of personal dislike.

If Scotland is a conquered nation, a notion that it completely and totally laughable, then we should all be so lucky as to be conquered, and become the beneficiaries of millions and millions of pounds of transfer from our supposed oppressors.

Back her up there, sunshine. It wasn't the Act of Union that put a Scottish king on the throne, that was the Tudors failure to have a male heir that lived long enough to have kids of his own. Due to Elizabeth finally dying without issue, the nearest heir was her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, and ruled as James VI and I, uniting the crowns of Scotland and England.

England had often warred with Scotland and constantly tried encroaching on its territory. This was a peaceful annexation, since it was England that was now the seat of monarchy for both nations. A United Kingdom did not formally come into existence, however, until 1707 despite the union of the crowns: those Acts created the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Ireland was not roped in until the Act of Union of 1801 which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Your current state of "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" came about as a result of the partition of Ireland

As for the rest of it, I don't care if they're British, German, or Martians, just so long as they acknowledge they have no right (and never had any right, save that of conquest) of claiming sovereignty over my nation. My grandmother was born a subject of Queen Victoria. I was born a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. Let Charles be king of England, and indeed Scotland and Wales (that is up to the Scots and Welsh, if ever they do gain independence, if they want the monarch to be head of state as with the Commonwealth). But he's not king of Ireland, and he damn well is not a descendant of Pictish kings. He'd have better right to claim German territories via his great-great-great-grandfather Albert; after all, the English long maintained romantic claims to territories not theirs (such as France) because a distant ancestor had been a noble there.

He'd have better right to claim German territories via his great-great-great-grandfather Albert; after all, the English long maintained romantic claims to territories not theirs (such as France) because a distant ancestor had been a noble there.

King Charles III is actually one of the many descendants of Brian Boru. If we're going by descent, he may actually (I don't know much about royal lineages) have more of a claim to Ireland than he does the Pictish lands.

The Hanovers are also descendants of Elizabeth Stuart -- the line from there to the ancient Scottish Kings is (ironically) at least as direct as to the Anglo-Saxons -- it's the (French) Normans that were mostly cut out by the failure of the Tudors to reproduce.

Is he claiming to be king of all Ireland? Did the commentator specifically make a false claim regarding the ethnicity of his ancestors?

Given that Charles isn't claiming to be king of Ireland, what are you even asking for? A public ceremony where he shouts "I'm not king of Ireland! I'm not king of Ireland!"?

failed attempt at colonialism

Ouch, right on the Darién Gap, a region tough enough to have no roads running through it to this very day? Thank you for filling in this (Darién) gap in my knowledge.

The act of the union invited a penniless and embarrassed Scotland, fresh off the back of their failed attempt at colonialism, to put a Scottish King on the throne of England.

Not as I understand it - there was already a (partially-)Scottish king on the throne of England, and had been for over a century. What happened in 1707 was that the Scottish elites were bailed out financially for the Darien disaster in exchange for agreeing to merge the Scottish and English parliaments, creating a single London-based government for both countries.

If Scotland is a conquered nation, a notion that it completely and totally laughable, then we should all be so lucky as to be conquered, and become the beneficiaries of millions and millions of pounds of transfer from our supposed oppressors.

Sure, it beats the hell out of the alternative, but receiving an influx of subsidies doesn't really do that much to dull the resentment for rule-by-outsider. Speaking as someone that originally hails from a non-city part of the American state of New York, no amount of "well ackshually New York City sends you tax dollars" reduced our dislike for having laws created for metropolis applied to our irrelevant backwater. There would have been a pretty strong consensus for rejecting the bribe if it also came with the removal of onerous legislation.

I don't know the Scotland-England political dynamics to have any idea if that maps on at all, I'm just saying that the residents of a region that receives government subsidies will not necessarily reflect on this as being a fortunate arrangement.

It does map, and it also maps onto the rest of England that isn't London, but there are a few wrinkles with the Scots that make it all the funnier.

Firstly, that the loudest online ScotNats tend to also be fierce EUrophiles, and are so mad that the UK as a whole chose to leave the EU (to which it was a net contributor) that they want to leave the UK (from which they are a net beneficiary). That the relative damage they would do to their economy would be multiples of what the UK faced when leaving the EU is never addressed.

In addition to that, ScotNats like to think of themselves as uniquely tolerant and progressive, especially in comparison to England, despite being 96% white and until recently, only having a single city accept refugees (until they were called out on it)... not that refugees want to go there anyway. Much is made of how progressive an indy Scotland would become, but the question of how this would be funded remains conspicuously unanswered by nationalists -- as over 60% of their economy depends on trade with the rest of the UK, in addition to their received welfare via the Barnett Formula.

I fully accept that it might not calm the underlying feelings, but at some point one would hope pragmatism must prevail. I don't really want a failed state next door either, to be honest.

Every week there are several discussions brought up on this roundup about how low birth rates are a problem and people need to be convinced through propoganda and or religious manipulation or in some other way incentivized to make decisions that contribute to higher birth rates. Its rare that the other side gets argued for, either that higher birth rates would be bad, or that there is nothing wrong with current breeding patterns in our society. It seems to me like low birth rates are a result of people having the freedom, in accordance to their right to self ownership, to limit or delay or prevent the birthing of children, and that the resulting low birth rates are a reflection of the revealed preferences of the population. I also dont see any negative externality to people having less kids, its not like they are indirectly supressing the fertility of others who desire more kids. Which is why Im confused why its such a big deal to people on here and related spaces. Ive heard conspiracies about how culture has been altered by influential people with an antinatalist agenda to make childrearing lower in priority to women than having a career or marrying late, but I think its more likely that you are seeing these messages because a large segment of the population agrees with them because these life styles match their innate preferences. I think as long as society does not shame women who want to be fecund mothers, its a lot better than in the past where women were not allowed to pursue an alternative life plan. In general, I think its better if people have kids because they want to, not because they feel pressured to or forced to. I personally am debating whether I even want to bring children to this world, there is too much suffering and worry.

I believe it has something to do with what is politely termed HBD; a fear that the wrong sort of people (let's be charitable; uneducated) are reproducing and the right sort of people (let's be charitable: educated) aren't and thus the wrong genes will win.

So I think that's why it's a discourse in this space.

I don't subscribe to any of that; I believe in natural selection and that Eugenics is a mistake.

But let me make the case for natalism for you.

Why bring children into this world? To pay off the debt incurred by your own existence. How else can you possibly justify your carbon footprint, your consumption of the Earth's precious irreplaceable resources? The Amazon burns for the global economy that feeds you. Yes there's suffering and worry in the world, but at the heart of it is people trying to make the world better for their kids. This work has stretched back onto time immemorial. Are you so special, is your life really the pinnacle of it all?

No, I say. Being a parent is hard work, and you may think of it as a sacrifice, but it's really sacrificing your option to defect in a prisoner's dilemma. Plus, it's rewarding and all that.

I believe it has something to do with what is politely termed HBD; a fear that the wrong sort of people (let's be charitable; uneducated) are reproducing and the right sort of people (let's be charitable: educated) aren't and thus the wrong genes will win.

Agreed and the fact that their idea of "right genes" and "wrong genes" maps so closely to the ingroup and outgroup of blue tribe academic types is how you can tell that all their claims about "IQ" and "evolutionary fitness" are merely rationalizations for prejudices they already held.

The primary problems are that our birth rate is below replacement, (2.1 children per woman), and that on average, less intelligent people have more children than intelligent people. It's been estimated that we're losing about 0.3 IQ points every ten years because of that.

Also, women (smart women, that is), are having fewer children than they want. If we can't figure out how to reverse these trends, the long term prognosis is really bad. You can't have an advanced civilization without smart people. There are exceptions: Among people who identify as conservative or extremely conservative (mostly the religious), the most intelligent have the most children. So we have indications that it can be turned around. How do we encourage smart women to have the larger families they want?

So we have indications that it can be turned around. How do we encourage smart women to have the larger families they want?

This chart recently showed up on DSL. From 1965 to 2016, women added 4 hours per week of childcare; men added 6.5. Number of children in families with children has gone down by a lot since then. If you want to encourage couples (encouraging women is necessary but not sufficient unless you want a lot of single motherhood) to have children, the cost -- not financial, but the undelegable time cost -- needs to go down. By a lot.

Is there really too much suffering and worry, or have you been propagandized into that view by antinatalists? Is there really more suffering and worry than when every previous generation of humans was made?

What do you mean when you say that people are propagandized into an ideology? I find antinatalist views persuasive because I think there is some truth to what they are saying using reason and evidence to come to that conclusion. Propaganda is when you are repeatedly told one side of the story and are ignorant of the other.

It seems to me like low birth rates are a result of people having the freedom, in accordance to their right to self ownership, to limit or delay or prevent the birthing of children, and that the resulting low birth rates are a reflection of the revealed preferences of the population.

A little bit tangential, but I think it is worth mentioning that this sentence is based on some moral rule, or axiom of "self-ownership". I notice it a lot lately, you have some philosophers creating something - like Rawl's veil of ignorance - which is supposedly self-evident and basic. And then there is some implicit belief that whatever society stems from this belief must be good and moral, because the belief is moral by default. Rationalists have the same tick in their axiology where they put "truth" and to large extent "prevent suffering" as something automatic and then designing policies around that. I think it is worth realizing that not all people necessarily share this framework. In fact, there are supposedly limits even for adherents - for instance all countries I am aware of ban selling your own organs for transplantation, which theoretically is part of self-ownership.

I also dont see any negative externality to people having less kids, its not like they are indirectly suppressing the fertility of others who desire more kids.

This is a very narrow look at externality. All societies have some social construct and defecting from it can be viewed as subversive and bad. Some people do not have such hyper-individualistic worldview of complete self-ownership and they expect some duties from members of society. Having kids and reproducing/perpetuating society that enabled your existence as may be the expectation, externality in this case is ceasing the link and preventing their kids from having similar experience. You can extend this to other avenues that require multigenerational commitment, even let's say climate change. Why should somebody expect me to do anything about it? I will probably be dead before 2100 when the bad things potentially happen. I have ownership of my body and actions and I refuse to voluntarily cooperate.

A little bit tangential, but I think it is worth mentioning that this sentence is based on some moral rule, or axiom of "self-ownership". I notice it a lot lately, you have some philosophers creating something - like Rawl's veil of ignorance - which is supposedly self-evident and basic. And then there is some implicit belief that whatever society stems from this belief must be good and moral, because the belief is moral by default. Rationalists have the same tick in their axiology where they put "truth" and to large extent "prevent suffering" as something automatic and then designing policies around that. I think it is worth realizing that not all people necessarily share this framework. In fact, there are supposedly limits even for adherents - for instance all countries I am aware of ban selling your own organs for transplantation, which theoretically is part of self-ownership.

Self ownership isn't self evident, but appealing to it can bolster your argument because many people place value on it, otherwise, all morality comes down to opinion anyway. But saying that not all people share this framework is a reason not to structure morality by it seems to be a bit contradictory because it resembles an argument for self ownership where different people have different preferences and it is not fair for society to force people who want to live in a certain way to live by the demands of the dominant culture.

This is a very narrow look at externality. All societies have some social construct and defecting from it can be viewed as subversive and bad. Some people do not have such hyper-individualistic worldview of complete self-ownership and they expect some duties from members of society. Having kids and reproducing/perpetuating society that enabled your existence as may be the expectation, externality in this case is ceasing the link and preventing their kids from having similar experience. You can extend this to other avenues that require multigenerational commitment, even let's say climate change. Why should somebody expect me to do anything about it? I will probably be dead before 2100 when the bad things potentially happen. I have ownership of my body and actions and I refuse to voluntarily cooperate.

If a society places an expectation on its members to have kids and contribute to perpetuating their people, then the question must be asked why some people are defecting from this expectation. Maybe its because they lived a miserable life and don't want their kids to have a similar experience, maybe they don't think its fair to bring kids into the world and then shackle them to all the expectations demanded by their society, maybe they prefer doing other things than caring for children, and spending money on things that are not their children. I think perpetuating society is not an end in itself, what matters more is what the society that your perpetuating is like, and whether it is worth perpetuating, and this is why its important to acknowledge the differences in people and allowing them to live in a way which fulfills their desires the most. Your climate change example isn't exactly comparable because climate change is the cause of negative externalities going uncompensated for.

I have yet to see anyone at least on the Motte that we need really high fertility rates, like 6 kids a family or whatever. The concern is mostly that the fertility rate in essentially the entire developed world a significant portion of the developing world is below the replacement rate of 2.1. The fertility rate doesn't need to be high, it just needs to be higher of around 2-3 kids a family.

Any lower than the replacement rate and your population will begin to shrink, and ultimately without any increase future in the fertility rate, your society will go extinct. The future belongs to those who show up. You can try mitigate this with some level of immigration, but this is only a stop-gap measure, and not a solution for two reasons. First, immigration in sufficient numbers will replace the existing society, especially in the context of low fertility rates. This applies regardless of whether you're on the side of nature or nurture. The immigrant population's ethnic makeup will be different to that of the native population if you're on the side of nature, and the immigrant population's culture will supplant or at least substantially alter the native culture if you're on the side of nurture. Contemporary politics is hostile to the idea of true assimilation anyway, and even if it wasn't, it's unlikely to possibly assimilate immigrants fast enough to match the halving of the native population per generation. Immigration has a whole range of problems that I won't get into here, but it's not fairing particularly well for many countries in Europe, and other nations like South Korea and Japan, it's not really a realistic option. Secondly, you can't rely on immigration forever. Because the fertility rates are also dropping in other countries. The other countries that immigrants are coming from will experience or have already experienced a drop in fertility rate below replacement. Virtually the only part of the world that well above the replacement rate is sub-Saharan Africa. But eventually the fertility shredder will come for them too, and soon the whole of humanity will be slowly withering away.

But wait you say! There's too many people on the planet anyway! So what if we shrink our population for a couple generations anyway? Just accepting this argument on its face for now (I don't actually), you're not actually solving the issue, merely delaying it and hoping in a couple of generations it will resolve itself. Why would this trend reverse? The only way this trend "reverses" is that the sub-populations with extremely high fertility rates (Amish, ultra-orthodox Jews, hyper-tradCaths) basically take over the population (and somehow themselves don't get subjected to the same forces of low fertility). Maybe you're an anti-natalist, a nihilist and you don't really care what the future holds for humanity assuming there is even a future. But you must at least understand that some people might actually care.

But putting aside the longer term (though not that long) consequences of a low fertility on a culture's survivability, there are some really practical reasons why you need a higher fertility rate. A stable, productive economy needs young workers to actually do stuff. With a fertility rate of one, that means for every 4 grandparents, they will only have one grandchild to support them. This is no feasible. It doesn't matter how much money the elderly will saved from their lifetime of childlessness, if there's no one to actually pay to care for them, it doesn't matter. A society with is mostly elderly is a decaying and dying society. There WILL be civil unrest when one young person is expected to provide for four elderly people (through the state). To use an extreme example, the fertility rate of South Korea is by some estimates below 0.9 (!). This means there will be almost 5 elderly people for every young worker (2 generations) in South Korea if this trend continues. This is an absolute disaster. Already we're seeing the consequences to Japan and South Korea, and more counties will follow. It's only going to get worse. I should also add in national debt. National debt is taken on with the expectation that the economy will grow and the state will inevitably pay off this debt from the growth. But shrinking population means a shrinking economy, and the debt will only ever grow. Young people will be saddled with an increasingly unpayable debt given to them by the previous generations. Not having children is basically a free rider problem. You're expecting someone else's kid to care for you and pay of the national debt in the future. Suppose if no one chose to have kids anymore, then who would be left to actually do anything? We'd just be a dystopia of elderly people, Children of Men style. Humanity doomed to die off.

On to the things that are harder to quantify or definitely prove - I think the drop in fertility rate and the rise of childless and single child families is not social healthy, and is generally bring misery. The direction causality between between the atomisation of society and low fertility rates is uncertain, it's probably a feedback loop with many other related factors at play. We are facing a crisis of meaning and community in the West, and I think this has been driven in large part by the destruction of the family. Young adults may be happy to leave a hedonistic life free of familial responsibility in their youth, but when the reach their 40s and 50s, loneliness will and has hit them hard. It's incredibly short sighted and yes, based on instant gratification. They're the farmer who has eaten their seed corn and has nothing to harvest for the future. It's hard for me to take your suggestion that childlessness is just the result of innate preferences when this is an incredibly recent phenomenon, it hasn't been this way for the entirety of human history up into this point. It also make no sense evolutionarily that our innate biological preferences is to not have children (some people are argued that we are wired to have sex, not raise children, but this still makes little sense to me, because we are a K reproductive strategy species, not an r). Additionally, we live in an age of unprecedented information, ideology and propaganda. I don't believe or one second that say, feminist ideology hasn't had an impact on fertility rates.

I'll just leave by linking to some older comments of mine discussing various elements of this issue in more detail.

On Feminist Ideology

On the Value of Having Kids

On the Hostility of Modernity to Childrearing and its Consequences

There's also discussion from this same CW thread which I won't bother linking, as you seem to have read it already.

But wait you say! There's too many people on the planet anyway! So what if we shrink our population for a couple generations anyway? Just accepting this argument on its face for now (I don't actually), you're not actually solving the issue, merely delaying it and hoping in a couple of generations it will resolve itself. Why would this trend reverse? The only way this trend "reverses" is that the sub-populations with extremely high fertility rates (Amish, ultra-orthodox Jews, hyper-tradCaths) basically take over the population (and somehow themselves don't get subjected to the same forces of low fertility). Maybe you're an anti-natalist, a nihilist and you don't really care what the future holds for humanity assuming there is even a future. But you must at least understand that some people might actually care.

This argument misses the point that the only way for a population to compete with those orthodox religious groups is to emulate those groups in the ways that are relevant to boosting birth rates. But those religious groups rely on fear, shame, and the threat of violence to enforce their restrictive rules, and this is unacceptable in a liberal society. The best a liberal ideologue can hope for is that the future is filled with people who reproduce a lot because that is what they truly desire, and not because they are forced to by their religious beliefs, but this hope is naive.

But shrinking population means a shrinking economy, and the debt will only ever grow. Young people will be saddled with an increasingly unpayable debt given to them by the previous generations. Not having children is basically a free rider problem. You're expecting someone else's kid to care for you and pay of the national debt in the future. Suppose if no one chose to have kids anymore, then who would be left to actually do anything? We'd just be a dystopia of elderly people, Children of Men style. Humanity doomed to die off.

The solution to the debt problem is for the government to not spend in a way that accrues debt. You can internalize the externality by making people either have to save money to fund their retirement, or have kids to provide for them in old age. If everyone stops having kids, there is probably a good reason for that, and having a society full of only elderly people is not their biggest problem.

On to the things that are harder to quantify or definitely prove - I think the drop in fertility rate and the rise of childless and single child families is not social healthy, and is generally bring misery. The direction causality between between the atomisation of society and low fertility rates is uncertain, it's probably a feedback loop with many other related factors at play. We are facing a crisis of meaning and community in the West, and I think this has been driven in large part by the destruction of the family. Young adults may be happy to leave a hedonistic life free of familial responsibility in their youth, but when the reach their 40s and 50s, loneliness will and has hit them hard. It's incredibly short sighted and yes, based on instant gratification. They're the farmer who has eaten their seed corn and has nothing to harvest for the future.

Then wouldn't the solution to this be to spread the message that not having kids causes loneliness later in life. For what its worth, I think people already realize this, that some people are short sighted and end up regretting it is not a good reason to coerce those who do this but don't end up regretting it, its hard to know if a decision will be regretted, and some people like to take the risk. Also, the regret could be mistaken, an elderly person who chose to have few or no kids might believe it would have been better if they had had more, but only because they have changed as a person or do not remember exactly why they made the decision that they did.

It's hard for me to take your suggestion that childlessness is just the result of innate preferences when this is an incredibly recent phenomenon, it hasn't been this way for the entirety of human history up into this point. It also make no sense evolutionarily that our innate biological preferences is to not have children (some people are argued that we are wired to have sex, not raise children, but this still makes little sense to me, because we are a K reproductive strategy species, not an r).

There has been at least one other society in history that has had the same trends, which is roman society. The reason this is a recent phenomenon is because in the past, religious and cultural pressure prevented people from deciding for themselves whether they want sex to bring about babies for them.

Additionally, we live in an age of unprecedented information, ideology and propaganda. I don't believe or one second that say, feminist ideology hasn't had an impact on fertility rates.

Of course it has, but I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by feminist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were.

This argument misses the point that the only way for a population to compete with those orthodox religious groups is to emulate those groups in the ways that are relevant to boosting birth rates.

They don't have to emulate their hyper fertility rates. They simply just needs to main a fertility rate above the replacement rate. In your whole response you also completely ignore the major point that you actually need above a fertility rate above 2.1 for humanity to survive. I'm sure eventually the human population will eventually shrink to a point where civilisation as we know it collapses, and they rise again, but I don't exactly see that as a positive. Or we can hope the robots bail us out, but that might actually cause the extinction of humans one way or another.

The solution to the debt problem is for the government to not spend in a way that accrues debt.

The debt already exists! It was accrued by the earlier, now increasingly childless generations! The national debt of the US is currently $30 trillion. Who is expected to pay off that debt exactly? An increasingly smaller cohort of children, presumably. And god forbid when the Social Security system collapses because less and less people are paying into it while the growing elderly withdraws. And this still doesn't acknowledge the fact that you still need young workers in your society to do stuff like literally, physically. It doesn't matter if you're a retiree with a large amount of savings. If you're like South Korea, you simply won't have enough labour when one young worker has to do enough labour to support the needs of 5 elderly people and themselves. It's unsustainable. In 50 years or so, a lot of old people are going to be fucked. The state based social services will collapse if nothing changes. The only elderly people who will get support will be those who have grandkids who will personally and direct support them.

If everyone stops having kids, there is probably a good reason for that, and having a society full of only elderly people is not their biggest problem.

It's already happening! South Korea's population is going shrink by more than half in a single generation! Is that not concerning to you?

Then wouldn't the solution to this be to spread the message that not having kids causes loneliness later in life.

Yes, please! Except how do you actually propose to implement this solution? Because right now, people, particularly young women are told the exact opposite. What do you think the feminist messaging is, exactly? That their career is way more important than their family. Family is only something to worry about when after you've built your career, it's low priority if it's something to care about at all. The message should be that having a family is fulfilling and full of meaning! Now, if only there was some way to package this messaging in a system of beliefs that is easily absorbed by people... Maybe there is actually some truth in religious traditions and traditional ways of living more generally.

You know, the part of the issue is that there is the assumption, which is largely present in your own comments, that having family is a lesser path, that it's not something worth of admiration or celebration and it's even low status. At best, it's completely value neutral. People can just have a family if they want to I guess, whatever. No, I say. Having a family is a moral and social good. It is literally is the foundation for humanity and society and what makes life worth living. The alternative is hedonistic nihilism which is what I think we're heading towards. Being a mother or (gasp!) housewife is seen as a lesser, oppressive choice than becoming a 9-5 desk slave.

There has been at least one other society in history that has had the same trends, which is late roman society. The reason this is a recent phenomenon is because in the past, religious and cultural pressure prevented people from deciding for themselves whether they want sex to bring about babies for them.

Great, the one example that you managed to list was a society that was just about to collapse. Not exactly a confidence booster.

Also, I hate to do this, but unironically 'we live in a society'. Humans are social creatures by nature. There is no, and never will be some hyper libertine rationalist utopia where people are free from any and all cultural pressures. Society is made up of social institutions, which will always exert social pressures. 'Social pressures' is such a negative way of framing this. It is just as true that people find meaning, purpose and improvement in their social groups and community, which necessarily includes conformity and pressure to conform to that community in order to be part of it. There is social pressure for people to receive an education, is this a bad or oppressive thing? The issue is that 'social pressures' need to be oriented in such a way to produce good, moral and meaningful outcomes.

Of course it has, but I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by feminist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were.

This is a terrible argument. "I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by Fascist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were."

You also bring in a terrible double standard. People being convinced by religion is bad and oppressive, but people being convinced by feminist ideology is good and organic.

I'll leave you with a final question - if our current social paradigm eventually results in the extinction of humanity or at the very least a collapse of civilisation because of the lack of fertility, are you content to let things remain the way they are? Would you be okay with some limits or 'social pressure' on people if it means stopping the collapse?

Why did this feminist ideology become so pervasive in the first place? I think its because many people see pregnancy, childbirth, and caring for infants as burdensome and unpleasant, while having a career makes you financially independent and wealthier.

You are right about there being a pressure to conform, but its better that people are tolerant of different choices such as becoming a mother early or not doing so, rather than shaming one or the other.

The problem with religious pressure as opposed to secular pressure to conform and not disappoint is that the former is more coercive. Religion prevents certain patterns of behavior by calling them evil and scaring people with eternal consequences in hell for engaging in them. This results in people breaking the norm to be treated with hostility and disgust, that is if they get past the fear of divine punishment in the first place.

Edit: I also fail to see why you think that feminist propaganda is being pushed upon young females and crowding out pronatal messages not only in the west, but also in places like greece, china, and thailand which all have well below replacement birth rates.

it just needs to be higher of around 2-3 kids a family.

As it was in my village when I was growing up. More than 3 kids was very rare - the only case I recall was of a family which had triplets and an older sibling. Being an Only Child was a thing of note, and the stereotype was that only children would be socially awkward and probably spoilt by their parents. About 10% of child-bearing families have just one child. It was very typical to share a room with your siblings, at least until one of you was a teenager, but once your parents had a little money, it was easy to have a house with plenty of room for 2 or 3 children.

Almost all of the houses on my street had families with 2-3 children of school-age or younger. There was one mini-house with an unfriendly old couple (I assume they had grown-up children, but they kept very much to themselves and nobody knew much about them) and another little cottage with a sweet old granny. If I walked down the street on a summer's day, I would almost always hear other children playing in gardens and I only had to climb over a wall to spend time with one of my best friends. The children also formed interconnections between parents, and so almost everyone knew everyone else on the street, even if people didn't go to church or other social events. Child-centred holidays like Halloween also meant that e.g. the sweet old granny were brought into the community. Babysitting, Scouting etc. meant that even families with teenagers were brought into the network of social relations.

Now the demographics are reversed: there are only about two families with young children and most of the houses are occupied by older couples/single people. On a summer's day, one hears no children, and the youngest people one generally sees are the gardeners who commute in from the city to do manual labour in the old people's gardens. This is not due to depopulation: the problem is that young couples can't compete with older people's wealth when it comes to buying houses, and older people can comfortably retire without selling their big family-sized homes. In contrast, my grandparents generation generally either moved into care homes or into places in the city soon after they retired. They reasoned: why live in a five room house with a big garden? Pensions were much less generous back then and poverty among the old was widespread, so selling a house was a good way to have liquid assets in your retirement.

This is an extreme case, but the demographic transition is really visible in some places. I hate it, and as it happens, the older people in the street with whom I've talked about it also hate it. I do know people my age who have a child and sometimes two, but they generally live in cities in cramped apartments that are unsuitable for having 2-3 children. Ironically, their homes remind me of the type of places that my grandparents' generation would live in, if they lived independently.

I was reflecting on the right-wing tactics in a world where they have less and less cultural power, and the Eye of Sauron in Washington is completely fixated on destroying them whenever they are.

I, as a chronic pessimist, don't think that they will ever adapt their tactics fully against the left-wing. Because, unlike the left that moves only by using Conflict Theory, the right-wing coalition suffer often from desertion, moderatization of issues, necessity of creating coalition with more moderates party and organizations etc.

For example, how anyone can think that the right-wing can be successful when, if they are in a coalition, only the most moderate and centrist policies that they promote can pass?

In a left-wing coalition you can be sure that, in a given arc of time, the coalition will implement policies that are more centrists first, then they will pass to more radical positions, and so on and so on.

The arc of history goes left also because the right has no sense of scale and can only concede, never take something. The only place where the government and administration (But not the Culture or the youngs!) have gone right in the West is Hungary, and only because Fidesz has total control!

Meanwhile, in order to help the left, you need only a smallish more leftwing party in the coalition, who will ask for more immigration, more of something, that will be for sure accepted.

That is why I absolutely despise centrists coalitions: Because they will negotiate with the Left, receiving something inconsequential on the long run (like a lesser tax on something useless) and giving to the leftist part something that cement their coalition (immigration, genderification, more cultural egemony)

How the right can win something if, whetever party or coalition you vote, they will for sure adopt with time leftists policies?

The process is like this:

  • Right wing comes in power, they adopt more centrist policies and get attacked as nazi anyway.

  • Centrist parties come in power, the negotiate with the left and with time leftist policies get adopted as a result of this.

  • You vote moderate left, and with time they switch to some more radical leftists positions.

It is maddening how there is no escape from this spiral.

The problem here is less with journalism and medias or whatever being left wing, and more with the right-wing being completely useless at doing anything of substance.

Sometimes it’s not about tactics. Sometimes it’s just hopeless, and that’s it.

Were there any “tactics” that dissidents under Stalin could have used to make the fall of communism happen faster than it did? Doesn’t seem very plausible.

Dissidents under Stalin didn’t control two out of the three most populous provinces to the point of telling federal corruption investigations ‘no’.

It's interesting how strong a narrative attractor WWII continues being; it's the year 2022 and the descendants of the participants still want to LARP as being on the Eastern Front. Someone around here (or perhaps at our Operation Gladio over at Reddit) posted a clever quip the other day along the lines of "of course [right wingers] are nazis, because [left wingers] are communists and the only working definition of nazi has been 'someone who fights against communists' all along"; the converse ("...the only working definition of communist is 'someone who fights against nazis'") seems to be just as serviceable.

Dissidents under Stalin were hunted down and shot.

Here the dissidents can actually win election and make laws.

The point was that there is such a thing as a hopeless political situation. I wasn’t comparing our present situation to Stalinist Russia, nor was I offering any thesis on what the necessary and sufficient conditions for a “hopeless political situation” are.

My judgement of "radical leftists position" is not made by my personal thought about it. I am talking about the leftist spectrum represented in Western Parliaments, where you have a more leftist and a more centrist wing inside the left-wing coalition.

The centrist part of the coalition can be unsure or unwilling of adopting the issues of the most leftwing policies (because they are not popular!), but they will do in 3 years!

I will make a concrete example to explain myself, in the Italian Parliament.

DDL Zan, a law presented by left-wing elements of the left-wing coalition, is about hardening sentences against aggressions against LGBT people, and inserting the notion of gender identity inside the Italian Corpus of Law.

When it was proposed, almost three years ago, there was an uproar inside the left coalition, because it is composed also by Left Catholics, Radical Feminists and more Blairite-like people, all of them wary of DDL Zan for different reasons.

After some years, DDL Zan appeared again in the Parliament (Same legislature, so exactly the same people as parlamentarians!), but this time was supported not only by the entire Left coalition, but also by the centrists and liberal parties. The law did not pass only because all the right wing went against it.

Withouth any change of popular support or coming from the change of the actual politicians, a fringe policy was completely adopted by the entire left-wing spectrum without problems.

Noteworthy, and useless, to say that now the same people that created Zan are beginning to create now proposal that goes hard towards transgender education and representation. They will propose them, be rejected, and propose them again in two years only to be completely accepted.

As always terms are muddied in the polls. It is true that Italians are pretty liberal (and also pretty tolerant). But at the same time they would for surely back off if they saw the consequences of inserting gender ideology in the Law. But the right cannot explain it (because they are lazy and stupid).

This seems to me to ignore all the times the left loses. The right wants to conserve how things are because what worked in the past and especially in a nation as successful as America is likely to work in the future. The left is like a scientist who runs a 1000 experiments trying to find a physics breakthrough. Most of the time the experiment fails. The rights job is to block the left from doing too much but once an idea appears to be working then they take the position.

Also the right has won before. Neoliberalism was a right wing extremists ideology. It has largely been adopted by the left. The left now has to frame their social spending in neoliberal terms and not as plain redistribution. Student loan forgiveness isn’t just a handout to constituencies but will boost growth by increasing education, spending power, and allowing college students more freedom to pursue their passions.

The left is like a scientist who runs a 1000 experiments trying to find a physics breakthrough. Most of the time the experiment fails. The rights job is to block the left from doing too much but once an idea appears to be working then they take the position.

That's a nice attempt to try to make sure that everyone has their proper place, but, I can't actually endorse this.

I'm not just an admin who signs off on the left's "experiments". I have my own substantive moral view of how the world should work, one that is not merely reducible to "keep things the way they are".

You can still have you own moral view and want to do things on the right. And sometimes we make moves to reverse things.

But I was replying to why the right always loses and for the most part it’s because the primary purpose of right and left is for the right to guide and block the left. And only occassionally allow change.

Right as moderator is certainly a popular idea among among the moderate left. For it to actually work, you need the Right to buy in, though, and I question the degree to which that is sustainable. The problem is that the "experiments" you describe have consequences, and those consequences can be used to draw conclusions on whether continued coexistence is desirable. Choose your experiments poorly enough, and the lab burns down.

For the right to buy in to ‘right as moderator’ entails the left acknowledging that their ideas can sometimes fail for reasons beyond the usual lack of funding complaint, and the right to accept that past ideas they support came from the left.

This is not the political culture we see in the USA.

The problem is that conservative ideas are only popular among the conservative base to the extent that they can be used to make culture-war hay. When it comes time to turn this rhetoric into policy, the politicians know that it won't fly, so they back off toward moderate reforms. For example, most Republicans in the US blame "tax and spend Democrats" for a whole host of economic ills and advocate for a leaner Federal government. But when it comes to actually reducing spending, the big social programs are so popular among the conservative base that they're untouchable. No Republican is going to march into the US congress and advocate for a big plan to reform, let alone eliminate, Social Security. Or Medicare. And these two programs alone account for nearly 60% of the entire Federal budget. Add in military spending and you're looking at 3/4 of the Federal budget that's off-limits to conservatives to any kind of cuts. Add in that most conservative constituents expect at least minimal spending in other areas, and grand plans of budget cuts are reduced to trimming around the edges.

So instead you end up with things like perennial calls to defund public broadcasting. PBS and NPR have been in the crosshairs of conservatives for some time, particularly because their news programs have a leftist slant. One issue, though, is that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's budget is so small that scientific notation is needed to express it as a percentage of Federal spending, so eliminating it is more about signaling than about actual spending cuts. The other issue is that while NPR and PBS news are undeniably left-wing (NPR to a greater degree), they are also pretty much the last bastion of "traditional Western culture" in mainstream American media. For example, classical music would disappear from American airwaves in all but the largest markets if NPR ceased to exist.

An even better example is the utter failure of the Republicans to repeal Obamacare. Opposition to the program was a centerpiece of conservative politics from the act's proposal in 2009 all the way up to 2017. Yet a conservative trifecta couldn't do anything about it. It turns out that when you expand coverage to people who couldn't afford it before, you create a constituency that benefits from the program. Actually repealing the ACA would have meant that a ton of people would have gotten cancellation notices and the status of their healthcare coverage would be in limbo. So there was at least the early recognition that the "Skinny repeal option wasn't really viable"; something needed to replace the program that kept most of the essential protections in place. In a sense, this was already a capitulation, because it suggested that the Republicans' only real problem with the act was that it was endorsed by a Democrat, not because of anything substantive. But even then, they still failed to come up with "Obamacare under another name" and didn't have the votes to repeal the law. The best they could muster was a repeal of the individual mandate, a supreme irony in that the only part of a large Federal program they got rid of was the funding aspect, which only had the effect of making the policies more expensive than they were before. So in the end, all we get from conservatives in the US is moderate tax cuts, which only serve to increase the deficits the right is claiming are ruining our economy. The right can't get any traction beyond "moderate" reforms because there's simply no call for it

Maybe it is because I am European and I come from a different political culture, but a lot of these actions make no sense to me.

It is NPR public and at the same time insanely left wing? It is simple, you are the government! You decide who staff the NPR and PBS and whatever! Are the journalists there unsatisfacted? They will leave or bow. Is the problem classical music or traditional western music or whatever? Fund another national public broadcast who will do these things!

I understand the libertarian political culture, but leaving these things at the force of the market will help only the left, not the right.

The USA is different in part because of highly successful private enterprises with a right wing slant.

The public broadcasting situation in the US is complicated. NPR and PBS aren't so much monolithic entities like the BBC but amalgamations of local stations. Congress created NPR and PBS and set requirements for member stations. The member stations can't be commercial and are often owned by public universities or nonprofit corporations that exist solely to run the stations. The member stations in-turn chose directors to run the national-level organizations. Member stations also produce most of the content, some of which airs locally and some of which is nationally syndicated. The government's only active involvement is through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB board members are political appointees, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but like other independent government agencies the board members are subject to terms and can't simply be fired (although I'm sure there's some impeachment process that's never been invoked). That being said, the board seats are apolitical and most presidents simply reappoint whoever's currently serving, regardless of political party. That's because CPB's power is basically limited to distributing its funding among local member stations. They don't produce any content or make any editorial decisions, they just deal with funding. And this funding is what's at issue when conservatives talk about eliminating NPR and PBS.

It should be noted, though, that this funding makes up surprisingly little of the overall public broadcasting budget. Member stations only get about 10% of their funds from CPB grants. The rest comes from donations from individuals, businesses, and private foundations. Every public station has a "pledge season" a couple times a year where they interrupt programming to incessantly beg for money for a couple weeks. It should be noted that most of the content on these stations isn't notoriously left-wing. On PBS it's basically limited to NewsHour, the nightly news program, and that isn't even that far to the left. On radio most of the content is either music, locally produced programming, locally produced programming that is syndicated nationally, and independently produced programming. The notoriously left-wing part of NPR is the daily news magazines produced by NPR itself, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. And at that it's mainstream urban left-wing, not radical left-wing. NPR itself, though, gets little to no money from the government directly; its budget mostly comes from syndication fees paid my member stations to air its content. The reason it leans left is that most of the people who donate to member stations are educated PMC lefty urbanites, and he who pays the piper gets to call the tune. If NPR decided to go MAGA its member stations would stop paying for its content and if they didn't, they'd see their donations dry up pretty quickly.

you are the government! You decide who staff the NPR and PBS and whatever!

This was called the Spoils System, which (as Wikipedia will helpfully tell you) was fought and eliminated in the US for being a hotbed of cronyism and nepotism. If this process also incidentally eliminated the electorate's ability to put any kind of break on bureaucratic sclerosis or culture drift, well, it's a short encyclopedia article, no room to mention everything.

It's not entirely correct that the right always adopts leftist policies. Gun control policies have been suffering multiple defeats over the years. Pro-life policies have never been abandoned. And while fiscal conservatism is mostly dead (or at least comatose), the taxes aren't as high as they have been at many periods in American history.

Gun control policies have been suffering multiple defeats over the years.

Sure. For instance, there was recently a decision striking down discretionary-issue carry permits in New York. So now you can theoretically get a carry permit on objective criteria (except there's still a loosey-goosey acceptable morals standard), but the carry permit now doesn't allow you to carry a gun in such a wide variety of areas that it's nigh-useless. Some "defeat".

I am not saying gun controllers in New York (one of their primary bastions) are completely vanquished. I am just saying they were handed a defeat, and that the right never abandoned the cause and never adopted the leftists policies. I do not claim the right won ultimately, finally and completely - not even on gun rights - I am just saying they have not abandoned the struggle, and the struggle has not been in vain.

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.

Actually not really.

Pre-Trump the democrats wanted generally higher taxes on the wealthy and republicans wanted generally lower taxes. Post trump democrats want to adjust the tax code to spare their wealthy donors from having to pay their rate and shift the burden onto Republican donors. Republicans are usually opposed to this but don’t have a consistent idea of what to do instead.

"We'll spend money so long as you deal with the social and cultural baggage" is the left's offer. It is not an acceptable offer. I do not care about you wanting to spend marginally more in taxes on your already comfortable wealth. I want you to deal with the social and cultural baggage.

Since when can Florida not deal with the cultural baggage of a few Latinos?

It’s impossible to walk around Miami without receiving a “buenos días”, been that way for decades.

Florida's Cubans are more than welcome to protest DeSantis' removal of a bunch of border hoppers, assuming they're not supporting it.

Mexicans and Caribbeans are, well, rather different, one could argue. Or at the very least, don't confuse them, for the love of God.

Sure, who even mentioned Mexicans?

The migrants weren’t Mexican either. They seemed to be mostly Venezuelans (hey, which is kind of carribean!)

Side note, that story of the Haitians running afoul of the mounted Border Patrol agents made me do a double-take--why are they crossing from Mexico? Could they not get on a boat to Florida like the Cubans do?

Most red tribers from Texas and Florida distinguish between Mexicans, Caribbean Latinos, and centracos about as strongly as they do between any of those groups and whites.

These were Venezuelans, which red tribe elites in Texas and Florida are going to lump in as centracos(even though they aren’t) if they aren’t white and Caribbean(which they’re probably closer to) if they are.

centracos

I've never heard the term centraco before. Centroamericano?

More or less. Someone from south of Mexico and north of Costa Rica.

I think the point of this stunt is that conservatives are more upset about the non-monetary costs involved, namely the destruction of their local culture. It is the same arguments that liberals make about colonialization and gentrification, except applied to cultures that liberals don't like.

The entire point of sending them to Martha's Vineyard is that it was small and ill-equipped for the problem. Specifically, previous efforts to stir shit by bussing immigrants to major cities on the eastern seaboard failed to draw attention or rile up anti-immigrant sentiment (few noticed and no one cared - little enough surprise, as these are big cities and already have very large immigrant populations, including large numbers of illegal immigrants), so it was necessary to step up the shit-stirring. The defense offered - that this is about sharing the burden that border states have unfairly been forced to shoulder* - doesn't hold up to scrutiny. GOP-run southern states have made no serious effort to arrange for the large-scale transfer of migrants or asylum seekers to northern blue states, which is what you would actually do if you were burdened and trying to redistribute it. Instead they (Abbott and DeSantis) have done it about as inefficiently as possible, sending penny packets at considerable taxpayer expense and without regard for the welfare of the people transferred. That suggests that the point was either publicly owning libs or trying to rile up nativist sentiment.

(As an aside, I will not be at all surprised if it turns out that these people agreed to transportation under false pretenses.)

*whether or not it is actually unfair is another matter, considering the flow of Federal money and economic cost-benefit analysis of immigration.

That’s incorrect. MV is a liberal stronghold where the wealthy Dem donors vacation. That’s why MV was chosen.

Boston, NYC, Chicago, and DC are liberal strongholds where wealthy Dem donors actually live. They're also large cities that don't really have a problem handling a sudden influx of a few thousand people, so they were failing to generate the desired controversy. Martha's Vineyard is small, remote, and unlike Texas doesn't have a lot of Federal money and Federal facilities designed to handle the flow of migrants.

They live there in gated or guarded neighborhoods, traversing the wretched streets with personal drivers or (if slumming it) Ubers. Dropping migrants off there and the rich won’t even realize, it’s not in their line of sight. MV requires their attention both physically and symbolically.

This is such a fantastical portrait of American cities it makes me question if you've ever visited one.

It’s possible you’ve confusing rich residents with 8 digit millionaire residents, or something. The very rich in SF, Seattle, Boston and NYC have their own neighborhoods, sometimes own drivers

Boston, NYC, Chicago, and DC are liberal strongholds where wealthy Dem donors actually live. They're also large cities that don't really have a problem handling a sudden influx of a few thousand people, so they were failing to generate the desired controversy.

I repeat: Not true. The mayor of Washington D.C and the Governor of Illinois both called for the National Guard to deal with it. (D.C. was denied). NYC Mayor Adams handled it a bit better but said New York was at a "breaking point"

Specifically, previous efforts to stir shit by bussing immigrants to major cities on the eastern seaboard failed to draw attention

Not true. The mayor of Washington D.C and the Governor of Illinois both called for the National Guard to deal with it. (D.C. was denied)

The mayor of NYC also got into it with Greg Abbott as I recall.

Specifically, previous efforts to stir shit by bussing immigrants to major cities on the eastern seaboard failed to draw attention or rile up anti-immigrant sentiment (few noticed and no one cared - little enough surprise, as these are big cities and already have very large immigrant populations, including large numbers of illegal immigrants)

This is completely incorrect.

DC declared a public emergency.

NYC also considers a few hundred immigrants "emergency declaration" worthy.

There are hundreds of articles on this topic, and none of them have the Blue Sanctuary Cities taking a small bump in immigration with grace and aplomb. The freak-outs here are nakedly hypocritical and deserve to be called out as such.

The 'public emergency' releases funds to take care of arrivals. That's the extent of emergency here. Most people in DC have no idea this is going on and the people who do know don't care. There are no 'freak outs' - there's public officials annoyed that it was done with zero attempts to coordinate with local authorities. Which goes back to my point: Abbott/Desantis are not making a good faith effort to redistribute immigrants. Being as disruptive and disorganized as possible is the point, so they can talk about how owned the hypocritcal libs are.

The 'public emergency' releases funds to take care of arrivals.

So these sanctuary cities have no existing protocols for dealing with illegal immigrants? Their only response is to tap into funds for natural disasters?

it was done with zero attempts to coordinate with local authorities. Which goes back to my point: Abbott/Desantis are not making a good faith effort to redistribute immigrants. Being as disruptive and disorganized as possible is the point, so they can talk about how owned the hypocritcal libs are.

This is still histrionic. It's not like border states get a coordinated heads-up. Where's the good faith from Bowser, Adams, and MV? Why haven't they been spending their own money to help illegal immigrants get there before now?

It's not like border states get a coordinated heads-up.

Border states have multiple federal agencies dedicated to the matter and receive additional federal money (paid for by blue states) to help local agencies. If Texas is having issues and Abbott wants additional assistance, he can ask for it instead of engaging in maximally disruptive stunts.

Abbott has been asking for help for years, and instead he gets furors over false allegations of horsemen whipping Haitians.

To pile on: the sin here is deceiving the people being moved. If DeSantis' agents had said "we want to send you to an upscale New York neighborhood as a political stunt, there is probably good work up there" I wouldn't object.

Personally I love the idea of shipping illegal immigrants to blue tribe strongholds, but it has to be done ethically.

A lot of your posts have this following pattern.

  • Right wingers always accuse left wingers for booing their outgroup.

  • Here's an example of something the right did that also boos the outgroup.

  • Some people in the motte are sympathetic to those people. Principles not withstanding.

  • Woe is me? ("laughing at my pearl clutching is absolutely the point.")

You might benefit from leaving out the <woe is me'ing>. Right wingers here do that too, and they do receive less baseline pushback, but I am not a fan of that.

I am saying this because that tone specifically acts as a lightning rod and makes people hostile to you even if they weren't initially going to be. In a "ohh it sucks for you? well it sucks for me too, and its because of your people!" way.

Basically you are putting a big signboard on your back saying "HEY I AM THE OUTGROUP, LOOK AT ME, PUNCH ME HARDER, I WILL GET MAD AND YOU WILL LIKE IT".

Thanks for the earnest feedback. I'm not 100% certain I follow what you're trying to say, as I don't think I said anything about reds accusing blues of booing their outgroup. Unless you were referring to an older post?

I can try to take what you say to heart, but I suspect so long as I'm going against the grain the response will be fraught.

Yes, I am referring to a pattern. Which obviously older includes posts by you. The one that comes to mind is one you made on the topic of political violence, and framed it in a "When the right wingers here talk about political violence, I feel targeted because I am just an innocent left wing guy who has x,y,z opinions, so do you really want to kill me?"

And many responses were along the lines of "yes I do want to kill you".

My suggestion is that you can avoid that entirely by not making it personal. You can frame it as "innocent people with sincerely held beliefs but not operating in bad faith can get caught in the crossfire of political violence" and it will probably be met with much less vitriol.

In short maybe don't clutch your pearls?

impoverished people seeking a better future

by breaking the law. Wonder why you omitted that?

The correct judgement would be for them to be immediately kicked out of the country, and anything more reserved than that is a blessing. Even being buffeted around to make liberals walk their walk is still more than they deserve. As far as I'm concerned, this is extreme leniency.

I've long theorised that the solution to ivory tower liberals virtue signalling about illegal immigration is to give them some actual skin in the game, instead of letting them escape all the negative consequences of their ideology inside their walled communities. It seems the governor agrees with me, and that the theory was sound. I applaud this action and hope that next time he sends 500. And then 5000. Until the message sinks in. You do not get to ruin our towns from your gated communities with no consequence.

My idea was that asylum applications cannot be granted unless a citizen by birthright sponsors them. Anyone could sponsor up to 100 entries. The list of sponsors (but not their assigned wards) would be public. You can volunteer your own names if you know them, or you can have them assigned. And if any of the people you have sponsored to enter the country commits a crime, you are held jointly responsible as if you had committed that crime yourself.

In addition, I'd apply that last part to human rights lawyers who frustrate deportations -- if anyone you rescued from deportation commits a crime, you are also held responsible.

People need to be held directly responsible for the consequences of their advocacy. Foisting it off on border towns and other people far away, ensuring there's no cost to you directly, is immoral.

I think the refugee framing is fine, and even more it means that the load has to be shared.

by breaking the law. Wonder why you omitted that?

Because I expected you to be able to parse 'illegal immigrants' as...well...doing something illegal.

I've long theorised that the solution to ivory tower liberals virtue signalling about illegal immigration is to give them some actual skin in the game, instead of letting them escape all the negative consequences of their ideology inside their walled communities. It seems the governor agrees with me, and that the theory was sound. I applaud this action and hope that next time he sends 500. And then 5000. Until the message sinks in. You do not get to ruin our towns from your gated communities with no consequence.

Massachusetts has about as many illegal immigrants (250,000/7,000,000) per capita as Florida does (720,000/21,000,000). Neither share a border with Mexico. Tell me again what consequences Florida is suffering that Massachusetts isn't? Moreover, the majority of illegal immigrants settle in metropolitan areas which vote blue even in red states like Texas. The vast, vast majority of those voters obviously don't live in gated communities. Those that do, do not unilaterally decide policy; Obama and Clinton and so on respond to the desires of their voters.

The message won't sink in, because the hypocrisy that you think is there just isn't, not because you haven't shipped enough illegal immigrants to Massachusetts.

People need to be held directly responsible for the consequences of their advocacy. Foisting it off on border towns and other people far away, ensuring there's no cost to you directly, is immoral.

Our tax dollars (which I understand are still the vast majority of funding for border security) pay for federal agents and facilities in Texas, so I do indirectly bear that burden. If anything, blue states contribute more in federal taxes than reds.

I've said it's regrettable that border towns have these issues, and if there were a robust way to mitigate the effects on them I would support it. But as I've said, even under Trump there were still large numbers of illegal immigrants at the border. Your sponsorship proposal wouldn't stop illegal immigrants from illegally ignoring it any more than they do now. The only real solution I can see working is developing those nations to the point that they don't want to come here anymore; look at how the number of illegals from Mexico has dropped as conditions have improved, and those from other countries has increased as conditions there worsen.

I've said it's regrettable that border towns have these issues, and if there were a robust way to mitigate the effects on them I would support it.

"I'm really sorry," he said, loading the bullet into the chamber. "Trust me, if it were up to me, I wouldn't be doing this," he continued, putting the cigarette into the man's mouth. "I just wish there was some way of avoiding this situation." He aimed the gun. Lamenting "It's all just so awkward," he pulled the trigger. Then sighed, reaching for the next bullet. "There has to be a better way."

I'm sorry you feel that way, my friend. I wish you the best.

You're really not doing yourself any favors with that kind of "your suffering is a sacrifice I am willing to make" attitude.

Is there a name for this particular type of trolling so popular among leftists? I would describe it as fake saintly concern for the well being of someone you are arguing with. It is similar to posting suicide hotlines, telling people to “seek help”, asking “who hurt you”, saying you hope they “get better”. It is particularly grating, which is clearly the point. But in my opinion this tactic should be a bannable offense. “Oh sweetie, I’m so so sorry someone hurt you. I hope you can find the strength to reach out and seek help so you can do better. Trust me, I have been through it too sweetie. Here is a great resource for mental health professionals in your area. <3”

The term you're looking for is feminization. Leftist groups and spaces are thoroughly less masculine than right-wing groups and spaces; this is seen clearly in correlations between politics and physical strength, gender distributions among voting blocs, the social norms of various politically-salient subgroups, support of feminism, etc., etc.

You could also say it's cattiness, but that's the same thing. Passive-aggressiveness. It's just meangirls versus fedposters.

I think it is named Concern Trolling.

The only real solution I can see working is developing those nations to the point that they don't want to come here anymore;

Are you sure that doing so is actually easier, more practical and/or more sustainable than building a figurative wall and deporting anyone who makes it across? Or do you just much prefer helping migrants and foreign countries and consider any negative externalities for your own countrymen unimportant in comparison?

Are you sure that doing so is actually easier, more practical and/or more sustainable than building a figurative wall and deporting anyone who makes it across?

I suppose my point is that haven't we been doing that, and the incentives are so strong that people are coming anyways? I'm not going to propose that nothing we do matters, but it seems like short of fixing the economic disparities, there's no real lasting solution to the problem.

I suppose my point is that haven't we been doing that

Why do you think this? There has been billions spent in aid to those countries over the years. We engage with free trade with them which would result in rapid QOL improvements to any nation, if they would just stop voting for socialists and engaging in crime.

It's very much not an easy problem. As anti_dan alluded below, many countries south of the border are either oppressively socialist, or are oppressively anti-socialist (in some cases, thanks to the US/CIA), with the fun third option of "practically dominated by organized criminals with no obvious political lean." Trying (and failing) to absorb large numbers of pseudo-refugees into the nation of America, with its nominal values of democracy and liberalism, is probably easier than trying to get much of South and Central America to not be what it currently is.

I know very little on the particulars of the American-Mexican border and its security, but I was so far under the transatlantic impression that border security and deportations were done half-heartedly at the most.

A significant portion of the border is extremely hazardous Sonoran desert where almost no-one lives on either side, so enforcement in those locations is quite difficult. A non-trivial number of migrants die every year attempting to cross the border in these sections.

I'd apply that last part to human rights lawyers who frustrate deportations -- if anyone you rescued from deportation commits a crime, you are also held responsible.

Lawyers are enforcing the rules of the game.

I know the rules are bullshit and people often deliberately frustrate the setting of the rules, but before making lawyers responsible for the crimes of the people they represent I would want to try everything else first.

I really cannot overstate how much I despise these lawyers. I don't believe for one moment that they actually believe that the asylum laws were intended to include migrants from countries that are simply unpleasant places to live. I think they know beyond any shadow of doubt that coaching economic migrants up on how to make asylum claims that result in them being released into the interior of the country is exploiting a loophole in how the law works. They want people to be able to migrate freely, they know they can exploit that loophole, and they feel morally righteous in doing so.

I don't know if Patchwork_October has the perfect solution, but it seems like a good enough workaround to curtail the worst of this behavior.

I really cannot overstate how much I despise these lawyer

If the answer to "why are we punishing the lawyers" is "because I hate them" then we have really cut through all the bullshit exceptionally fast.

I really like Patchwork_October's idea for requiring birthright sponsors for immigrants. I would go further and have them put up a bond to stop some judgement-proof patsy being used.

And I'm advocating changing the rules.

I honestly don't see the problem. If you're asserting that a person isn't a danger and can be released into the general population, you should be held accountable if you're wrong. Otherwise if that person goes and robs from someone, or rapes or murders, the cost of your bad decision is entirely externalised. Unless your terminal value is letting the most people stay in the country you possibly can, what's wrong with it?

And I'm advocating changing the rules.

To say that people questioning the rules get punished. Typical strongman behavior but I will try literally anything else.

If you have the power to punish lawyers for representing the wrong people, you also have the power to say those immigrants just do not have legal rights to stay in the country in the first place.

Lawyers are enforcing the rules of the game.

Yeah, no, and being a regulatory lawyer in private practice is my day job. A lot of regulatory law is deliberately contorting and poking the process as hard and as wildly as possible, often in manners completely disconnected from the actual equities of the case, to achieve some sort of preferred policy result or outcome for the client.

  • Martha’s Vineyard is one of the wealthier places in the US, why would you think they would be less capable of dealing with illegals than a small border town?

  • You can’t kidnap illegal immigrants in Florida to send elsewhere, but you can apprehend them at the border and send them places. They require a court case in Florida.

  • Surely the shelter size of Martha’s Vineyard is immaterial when it is 45 minutes from the mainland. Does the wealthiest part of Massachusetts not allocate for illegal immigrants?

  • No one was manipulated because they were offered a flight to Massachusetts and arrived there. You are upset that an illegal immigrant had to spend x hours in MV before MA proper picked them up on a boat. Or you’re upset that MV kept some overnight as their own publicity stunt. All in all, I care about the citizens whose quality of life is significantly worsened from illegals, not the illegals who had a momentary blip on their desired trip to MA and got to spend some time in beautiful MV.

  • They are not our countrymen by definition. YOU should treat our countrymen better instead of literal illegal border-invaders over your own fellow citizen.

Martha’s Vineyard is one of the wealthier places in the US, why would you think they would be less capable of dealing with illegals than a small border town?

Why would wealth be the only indicator of a place's ability to deal with illegals? A small border town might already have a setup to deal with these people whereas MV might not. In such a situation, the border town could indeed be more capable.

All in all, I care about the citizens whose quality of life is significantly worsened from illegals, not the illegals who had a momentary blip on their desired trip to MA and got to spend some time in beautiful MV.

Meaning you care about the people who have to deal with this in MV?

They are not our countrymen by definition. YOU should treat our countrymen better instead of literal illegal border-invaders over your own fellow citizen.

Would you direct your advice towards DeSantis as well? MV's people are his countrymen as well.

Why would wealth be the only indicator of a place's ability to deal with illegals?

Maybe not the only, but it's surely quite sufficient, especially given such small quantities of migrants.

They have professed an ardent desire for more migrants, so placing them on their island is simply an act of goodwell. Now, if they actually don’t want to deal with the migrants, and instead want to offshore them on their faraway neighbors, then theirs is the case of not caring for countrymen. In which case having them deal with the problem is a way to care for countrymen, excluding countrymen who don’t care for countrymen, which is a morally ideal form of neighborly care.

This latter bit is something humans do with ingrained moral intuition, but we can make an example. If we’re in a tribe and we care for one another, that’s good; when one element of the tribe stops caring for others, then the rest of the tribe no longer has an obligation toward that element. This is something you find in human affairs ranging from friendships, classrooms, organizations, etc. 10 friends share something, 1 stops sharing, the 9 will share with one another and exclude the 1. Morally grandstanding about wanting immigrants, just not placed anywhere you live or breath or raise your children, is a defection from the rules of the social living — you’re obtaining value (moral grandstand) and placing costs on a neighbor who doesn’t obtain the value.

No one was manipulated because they were offered a flight to Massachusetts and arrived there.

How would you update your analysis if they were told they were being flown to Boston?

Then they should do that in the land where they are born or follow the rules to change lands.

Entering a country and requesting asylum is, in fact, following the rules.

Entering a country and requesting asylum is, in fact, following the rules.

I would disagree in the case that your request is facially invalid. In other words, I do not consider bad-faith requests for asylum to be legitimate rule-following, even if it is not specifically criminalized.

And you have evidence that that is the case here? And, btw, how, exactly, can an asylum request be "facially invalid" unless the requestor cites an invalid reason (eg, economic hardship, rather than persecution)? Anyone who did that would not be admitted, so it is almost certain that none of the claims are "facially invalid." Nor are any of these people likely to be particularly conversant with what constitutes persecution (esp persecution based on a "particular social group," an area of the law which is in constant flux). So,the assumption that these people must be cheating somehow does not seem to be based on a dispassionate analysis of facts and law.

Those large scale migrations were from invading forces slaughtering the men and raping the women. I know there have been some illegal migrant rapes and murders, but something tells me this isn’t what you meant.

The “natural” human impulse throughout history has been to throw out out-group invaders and settle people from your clan. If they are just following the natural human impulse that makes it even worse.

Large-scale migrations have been with us for thousands of year,

So has rape and murder, which often accompined these migrations. (See the subjugation of the Americas by Europeans.)

Appeal to tradition is here invoked selectively.

Which, judging by the Breitbart comments and replies I expect here, laughing at my pearl clutching is absolutely the point.

To be clear, people aren't laughing because they think you care about poor immigrants too much, they are laughing because they think your reaction proves none of it was sincere.

I love the idea of stopping the madness, and treating our countrymen better, but trust issues aside, what specifically are you even suggesting?

To be clear, people aren't laughing because they think you care about poor immigrants too much, they are laughing because they think your reaction proves none of it was sincere.

And how should I react in a way that would satisfy them? Donate money or time to organizations that provide aid to illegal immigrants?

I love the idea of stopping the madness, and treating our countrymen better, but trust issues aside, what specifically are you even suggesting?

I doubt I'm knowledgeable enough to give you a list of policy prescriptions that will solve the problem overnight, nor does this seem to be the place for that. I'm too lazy to dig up my previous comments on it, but I believe there's room for compromise on immigration and most other issues. The response I got from that was angry conservatives claiming they compromised in the 70s and 80s and why should they listen to me now when they know I'll be back in 20-30 years asking for more compromises?

For lack of a better word, always this: less culture war, please. We're all humans, not moral monsters, let's not cheer the people trying to stoke partisan division for political gain. You and I aren't so different and largely want the same things, yet in some perverse reversal, we spend 80% of our time arguing about the 20% of things we disagree on rather than finding solidarity in the 80% of things we do agree on.

It’s this kind of ultra-smarmy response that makes people laugh at you and dismiss you. You’re openly advocating and voting for policies that many of believe are existentially disastrous for this country - that will literally lead to the financial, cultural and generic dispossession of our people and a disappearance of our posterity from the earth - and when people get angry about it you retreat to “we all want the same things, what about the high road and civility, can’t we just all have a calm and reasonable debate, why all the hate, etc.”

No, Chris, we DON’T all want the same things and just disagree on the little details. Our worldviews genuinely are irreconcilable, and no amount of holier-than-thou ostentatious displays of false empathy - the secular liberal equivalent of “I’ll pray for you” - will bridge those gaps. An uncharitable interpretation of your post is that your main goal here was to “trigger the Cons” and to push OUR buttons, using a conversational tactic that was guaranteed to provoke a hostile response that you could pre-emptively forecast to make yourself look virtuous and us look unreasonable.

It’s this kind of ultra-smarmy response that makes people laugh at you and dismiss you.

It's not smarmy, it's genuine. I'm genuinely sorry that my ethos, policy preferences, whatever it is, infuriate you. I'm sorry that you believe our worldviews are irreconcilable, and we're headed towards whatever conclusion you think that leads us to.

You’re openly advocating and voting for policies

I can't vote.

An uncharitable interpretation of your post is that your main goal here was to “trigger the Cons” and to push OUR buttons, using a conversational tactic that was guaranteed to provoke a hostile response that you could pre-emptively forecast to make yourself look virtuous and us look unreasonable.

Alright. How could I rewrite my post in such a way that wouldn't provoke such a response from you, while keeping the same general point intact?

I can't vote.

Okay. I'll award you -1 bad point for not personally voting for this stuff, but +1 for each time you've advocated in its favor and helped push even one other person toward supporting it.

I can't vote so I'm not an activist is a really goofy take, my man.

That wasn't my take, and I'm not sure whether you'd count me as an activist or not. But if you're going to tally up my score, I may as well set the record straight, no?

Not to mention I can see someone accusing me of voting illegally down the line or something if I'm unclear about it.

So, to be clear, you do or do not advocate for either explicit open borders or more broadly permissive attitudes toward economic migrants?

For one, I actively advocate for little beyond treating each other better and sometimes I wade into debates on COVID. It's quite rare that I write about culture war topics. I don't consider myself particularly knowledgeable about the border or immigration.

If you're just asking what policy I would support, then no, I don't agree with letting anyone into the country. It seems like there was some agreement that border security was necessary as recently as the Clinton years, and I suspect that if you pressed the median democratic voter rather than the serially online or activist class most would say as much. While expressing some sympathy for the plight of migrants. I'd personally support increased efforts towards developing and stabilizing the countries these people are coming from, but this could either have been shown to be ineffective or is already happening and I'm ignorant of it.

I have a more favorable view towards skilled immigrants legally applying for citizenship, as well as refugee programs.

More comments

Alright. How could I rewrite my post in such a way that wouldn't provoke such a response from you, while keeping the same general point intact?

What is your point, exactly? You originally seemed mostly upset that people are picking on Martha's Vineyard, or that some people got used in a political stunt, but now it seems like you're just generally sad that people are upset about this. If your point is that obvious grounds for compromise are getting torpedoed by political stunts, I think it's on you to demonstrate that this is actually the case.

And how should I react in a way that would satisfy them?

You could admit that you don't want illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities because they are a burden, and then you could go on to admit that they're a burden in red states for similar reasons.

If you say "we can send as many as we want to red states, but send a few to a city of rich blues and it's a crisis", people will laugh at you, because you just did something laughable.

And how should I react in a way that would satisfy them? Donate money or time to organizations that provide aid to illegal immigrants?

House them in your apartment to start. Immediately advocate for their deportation once their asylum claim is shown to be nonsense.

For immigrants to only go to the places that talk about welcoming them.

For lack of a better word, always this: less culture war, please. We're all humans, not moral monsters, let's not cheer the people trying to stoke partisan division for political gain. You and I aren't so different and largely want the same things, yet in some perverse reversal, we spend 80% of our time arguing about the 20% of things we disagree on rather than finding solidarity in the 80% of things we do agree on.

It's a noble sentiment. Sadly both sides are pushing hard to force their view of the 20% on the other, and the side that stops pushing will quickly see more and more such 20% slices being force-fed to them.

It's a culture war, not a culture friendly disagreement. Not fighting a war that already started isn't peace but defeat.

And how should I react in a way that would satisfy them? Donate money or time to organizations that provide aid to illegal immigrants?

No, get your local government to build adequate amount of shelter in your community, for a random, representative, and proportionally-sized group of immigrants to live with you, and go to the same school as your kids.

I got from that was angry conservatives claiming they compromised in the 70s and 80s and why should they listen to me now when they know I'll be back in 20-30 years asking for more compromises?

Yes, that would be one of those trust issues I asked to set aside. But you're right, any realistic solution would need to address them.

I doubt I'm knowledgeable enough to give you a list of policy prescriptions that will solve the problem

You misunderstood, I don't care about policy at this point. We can have open borders for all I care (especially if you sign up for the kind of buy in, that I described above). It's this where I want hear specifics:

For lack of a better word, always this: less culture war, please. We're all humans, not moral monsters, let's not cheer the people trying to stoke partisan division for political gain.

Like, what are you selling, and at what price? I go to the Breitbart comment section and tell them to chill out, and in return you try to get the FBI to not designate parents, pushing against CRT, as domestic terrorists?

No, get your local government to build adequate amount of shelter in your community, for a random, representative, and proportionally-sized group of immigrants to live with you, and go to the same school as your kids.

I'll do you one better: let's nuke the school system that ties property value/geography to school funding and mix everyone together regardless of class. Bussing but for SES rather than race. No more private schools while we're at it. Let's have the poor kids, immigrants, rich kids and my kids all in the same class and see what happens.

I'll point out that I can't vote at the local or federal level, but sure. I'd be fine with spreading them out as evenly as possible in the country and/or bussing towards that end. There are some thorny issues of consent where they may want to form their own communities but that's above my pay grade and maybe not worth arguing over for a hypothetical.

Like, what are you selling, and at what price? I go to the Breitbart comment section and tell them to chill out, and in return you try to get the FBI to not designate parents pushing against CRT as domestic terrorists?

Sure, although my pull with the FBI is more or less nonexistent so we'd be better off focusing our efforts elsewhere. You want to co-author a substack? Collaborate here? Run a presidential unity ticket?

I'll do you one better: let's nuke the school system that ties property value/geography to school funding and mix everyone together regardless of class.

Based.

Bussing but for SES rather than race. No more private schools while we're at it. Let's have the poor kids, immigrants, rich kids and my kids all in the same class and see what happens.

Potentially based? I'd like a better plan than "let's find out what happens". I'd like that parents have better oversight and control over what's going on in the schools, and I'm happy to nuke private schools, but I think homeschooling needs to stay.

Sure, although my pull with the FBI is more or less nonexistent so we'd be better off focusing our efforts elsewhere. You want to co-author a substack? Collaborate here? Run a presidential unity ticket?

Hey, I was offering Breitbart comments, so don't think I can ask for more than an angry letter to the FBI.

Political campaigning sounds like a bit much, but you have me intrigued with the collab idea, if you were serious. What do you have in mind? What would the substack be about?

I'd like a better plan than "let's find out what happens". I'd like that parents have better oversight and control over what's going on in the schools, and I'm happy to nuke private schools, but I think homeschooling needs to stay.

If you want a better plan you'd need to hire me; at the moment I'm but a poor scientist spouting ignorant ideas outside of their field.

I like: Small families who want more control over their child's education and decide to homeschool them a certain way. Talented individuals receiving tutoring from experts.

Dislike: Rich families paying money to tutor undeserving children.

What do you have in mind? What would the substack be about?

Partisan hackery. The substack was a bit of a joke since I don't have the requisite time to really focus on it, but I do have lots of questions I'd be open to doing the old adversarial collaboration style for questions like: What happened to the Obamacare death spiral we were panicking about, and what's happening to it now? What were the ultimate effects of the Trump tax cuts (I heard apocalyptic warnings from the left about rich oligarchs raking in billions and excitement from the right about worker's wages)? In short, revisiting policy items from years ago that the media was hyping as apocalyptic and seem to...not have done a whole lot in the end, or at least not that overtly.

I'd be fine with spreading them out as evenly as possible in the country and/or bussing towards that end.

If you're serious about all this, it's hard to see why you would object to sending immigrants to Martha's Vineyard in the first place. I mean, you advocate arranging things so that everyone has to live with illegal immigrants. And by your implied standards, people in MV who don't want illegal immigrants around are acting badly, and when MV kicks immigrants out, MV is acting in ways that are harmful to society. So by those standards, you should be applauding the whole thing.

I'll do you one better: let's nuke the school system that ties property value/geography to school funding and mix everyone together regardless of class. Bussing but for SES rather than race. No more private schools while we're at it. Let's have the poor kids, immigrants, rich kids and my kids all in the same class and see what happens.

I don't like this debate tactic. You substituted your interlocutor's request, which was basically reasonable and at least somewhat within your power to achieve, for a radical solution that is self-evidently monstrous to most people and completely unachievable, leaving you with no responsibility. It's very easy to make the perfect the enemy of the good when you benefit from the status quo.

You don't like using relatively powerless people in a political stunt, okay. I can accept that. I don't see how that translates into it being unreasonable to expect Martha's Vineyard to bear some of the costs that they enthusiastically impose on other people, especially when those other people they impose on are almost universally lower status than they are.

I don't like this debate tactic. You substituted your interlocutor's request, which was basically reasonable and at least somewhat within your power to achieve, for a radical solution that is self-evidently monstrous to most people and completely unachievable, leaving you with no responsibility.

On the contrary. I'm fine with his proposal, and given free rein, I'd go a step further. I absolutely disagree that it's 'self-evidently monstrous' to mix students together regardless of their class and I'm baffled why you would think so. You might disagree, but it seems absurd to call someone monstrous for suggesting that a wealthy student may have to rub shoulders with an impoverished one.

It's also absolutely not within my power to achieve as I'm not a citizen and currently have no children. The only realistic way I can see to take personal responsibility is either volunteering my time or money, which I suggested. I suppose I could run for office, but either way, we're not talking about realistic proposals, yeah?

I don't see how that translates into it being unreasonable to expect Martha's Vineyard to bear some of the costs that they enthusiastically impose on other people, especially when those other people they impose on are almost universally lower status than they are.

Oh, I absolutely support taxing the fuck out of the people who live on Martha's Vineyard and breaking up their elitist private schools. Crank that marginal tax rate, baby. Send their kids to public schools. No more private jets, no more helicopters, no more yachts. No more generational wealth and trust fund kiddies. Raise my tax bracket too, although I'm light years away from buying a house in Martha's Vineyard. What else do you want to do?

I absolutely disagree that it's 'self-evidently monstrous' to mix students together regardless of their class and I'm baffled why you would think so.

The history of using forced bussing in the United States is that it basically destroyed the cities. People with means simply moved as far as necessary to make bussing impractical, and at the same time tight-knit minority communities were broken up for the sake of forcing minorities to go to school as minorities in their school. Most people would find it self-evidently monstrous to use government power to force people to work in a certain office or attend a certain church, so it's baffling to me why you think using this power on peoples' children - notably, using those children as means for the end of a social benefit, rather than for the benefit of those same children - would be positively viewed.

And how should I react in a way that would satisfy them? Donate money or time to organizations that provide aid to illegal immigrants?

Enforcing immigration law by turning away in a prompt and timely manner migrants not entitled to enter the country. Deporting those who manage to evade law enforcement and make it into the interior of the country. Cooperating with federal authorities to do so, particularly in the case of illegal migrants who abuse the host country's generosity by committing further crimes such as driving while intoxicated or battery. Improving migration-control infrastructure on the border, such as via the construction of walls or other significant barriers. Cracking down on NGOs acting to subvert U.S. immigration law. etc.

I don't take your pearl clutching as legitimate worry. It's weaponized concern; no human is illegal, but also it's not generally your communities suffering the constant tide of human detritus.

If you want me, or people like me, to take this concern seriously, you need to put your money where your mouth is for a few generations. Spend the next thirty years getting shipped hundreds of thousands and tens of millions of these people, and then, at the end of it, still argue that you care and no human is illegal and strive to help them.

If you think this is unreasonable, then we're at an impasse, because we've already been lied to on the immigrant problem for decades. We've been betrayed by amnesty, by lax border security, by sanctuary cities and their advocates. The left mashed defect on this issue, and we're not going to hit cooperate until you give us a few wins.

but also it's not generally your communities suffering the constant tide of human detritus.

Liberal metropolitan areas are home to the vast majority of illegal immigrants in the US. This has been one of the recurring critiques of conservative nativism over the past decade - that they're complaining about immigrants in places they don't live. The idea that sheltered coastal liberals are forcing southern conservatives to foot the bill for their xenophilia ignores the reality of how illegal immigrants are actually distributed around the country.

Heavily segregated cities where the detritus slip unseen into the cracks of already endemic homeless and drug issues hardly strikes me as the same as a flood of toxic illegals in huge numbers fundamentally altering the makeup of your border towns and enclaves.

No, in the Vineyard, there's no cracks to hide in. There's no gate to close or blocks to avoid. They're actually there, not just nearby. Just like it is for reds.

This is just special pleading. They don't seem to have any difficulty slipping through the cracks in Texas. In fact, it seems to me one of the core complaints is that it is too easy for them to slip through the cracks in Texas.

Texas is not perfect. Texas also isn't supporting the invasion, so I'm perfectly willing to cut them some slack. Being imperfect isn't a dealbreaker for me.

You've made this general claim about 3 or 4 times now, but haven't provided any sources. I'd be genuinely interested in a breakdown, especially if it distinguished asylum claimants and unaccompanied minors.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/11/us-metro-areas-unauthorized-immigrants/

So far I have seen zero evidence for the contrary claim; it simply seems to be taken as a given.

You have my blessing to go seek those breakdowns out. I wish you luck in your journey toward knowledge, and look forward to hearing what you learn about racial segregation in cities, homeless rates in cities, homeless demographics in cities, and problems arising from those things, especially concerning drugs.

Segregated cities that used to contain the exact red tribe folks that fled due to unregulated minority violence.

As an open borders advocate, I have no interest in providing charity for immigrants. When I eat at a restaurant that's owned and staffed by immigrants, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. When I buy produce that's picked by migrant workers, I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

What I see as needing to end is not letting immigrants in, it's incentivizing the wrong kind of immigrants to come here by making charity and or free social services available to them. Mass immigration was great for America in the 19th and early 20th centuries because it operated under the model I prefer. I say we go back to it.

"Get rid of the illegals" is already a difficult enough problem given the split in American politics; "Keep the illegals, but make sure they get no public help so we can have a ton of sob stories of kids going hungry and not having medical attention" is so far beyond even expulsion that I almost think you're being sadistic for satire's sake.

I do not believe my solution is sadistic, just as I do not believe it was sadistic when the US allowed mass immigration in the 19th century without offering immigrants the kind of public support they're now offered.

Stop offering charity and the sort of immigrants who would only ever have been a drain on the system will, in the words of Mitt Romney, self-deport. Really though, I don't think that many immigrants fit this profile. I believe the vast majority are perfectly willing and perfectly capable of finding jobs and supporting themselves and their families without private charity or public assistance.

What will also naturally come to an end under my preferred system is the mass arrival of unaccompanied minors, which is almost exclusively due to the fact that current US law allows unaccompanied minors to cross the border without fearing deportation while it subjects intact families to deportation. End this bizarre perverse incentive and that entire category of sob story goes away.

Are you referring to legal immigrants or illegal immigrants? I notice that a lot of American rhetoric simply uses 'immigrants', and since the topic of discussion is specifically illegal immigration in this case, it would helpful to be specific about what you're arguing.

I'm referring to both categories. I do not want charitable incentives to exist for legal immigration or for unauthorized immigration. The market and not politicians should decide what quantity and what quality of immigrant this country can support.

An open border advocate believes there should be no restrictions placed on entering the country. As such, there would not be any illegal immigration.

In a hypothetical Caplanian utopia with one billion Americans, sure. But as it stands now, illegal immigrants are a category of person. Muddying the waters by referring to Chinese international students, Indian H1Bs and Central American border-jumpers as 'immigrants' is very misleading.

It's akin to referring to both squatters and law-abiding tenants who pay their rent on time as 'residents', and then talking about being 'pro-resident' or 'anti-resident' when the 'anti-resident' side are really just against squatters and the 'pro-resident' side thinks charging rent is immoral.

Who is the "your communities" here?

The communities referred to by Chris when he says "you" in his final paragraph. Similarly, an organization being religious does not make it right-aligned. The left has many churches nowadays, which has been a driver of the schismatic actions and attitudes spreading through denominations.

The tens of millions of undocumented, predominantly Latin American economic migrants living in the U.S. are not the result of refugee resettlement agencies and it is disingenuous to conflate the two issues.

We have very little idea how many illegal immigrants there are in the U.S., and estimates range from 10-11 million to 20 or 30. We know there will be approximately 2 million more than whatever the previous total was after this year, so it's safe to say that the number is dynamic. Also, it's unclear how many first-generation children of said illegal immigrants there are, who arguably ought not to be citizens either because Wong Kim Ark isn't exactly a paragon of judicial reasoning, and ius soli is not exactly an internationally-favored citizenship model.

Lastly, just because economic migrants from latin america have been coached by NGOs and cartel smugglers into "claiming asylum" at the border does not make their disingenuous cases anywhere close to the same as the cases of Iraqi or Afghani translators, or populations in danger of genocide like the Yazidis.

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.

Manipulating impoverished people seeking a better future and treating them as chattel to score political points is what the 'libs' have been doing for decades. That's how we got into this mess.

I don't want anyone to be mad, I want them to stop being 'altruistic' with other people's resources.

The migrants have as much or as little right to be in Martha's Vineyard as they do in McAllen, TX; restrictions on interstate travel in the U.S. are prima facie unconstitutional. They will suffer less privation in shady Martha's Vineyard than they would in outdoor detention facilities in the dusty Texas desert, so this is actually an improvement. Moreover, they're being shipped to one of the least violent places in the country; far away from the human traffickers and cartels. What, can undocumented people not cut the grass, caddy the golf courses, cater the garden parties, and nanny the fur-babies of the Vineyard? Is there not a massive New England employment crisis for lack of workers? Surely there are some "jobs Americans just won't do" there! I've heard that this kind of enriching diversity is a positive gift!

This is one of the best political stunts of my lifetime, because it is finally an example of chickens coming home to roost for the sanctimonious rich NIMBYs who are always so eager to be so charitable and hospitable with other people's neighborhoods and lives, but then insulate themselves and their own from the predictable consequences of their ideals. The migrants are already being used as chattel by the smugglers and the wealthy progressives who prioritize not having to see awkward and uncomfortable images that would result from enforcing the actual law and having an off-the-books workforce to abuse. This is just a teeny tiny step towards actually evening the burdens. You know, having the rich and privileged do "their fair share." Like a prominent Martha's Vineyard denizen said, "The defining issue of our time" is working "to apply the same rules from top to bottom" and not "settl[ing] for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by."The ruling class who refuse to preach what they practice must be made to put skin in the game, otherwise they have no reason not to continue to disassociate from the rest of the country and let it go to ruin.

Yeah, we really got what we deserved there, and that's it for Germany. Shame we won't live long enough to see whether Al-Almanya will also practise such a culture of welcoming.

The migrants also didn't want to stay in what they percieved to be inferior countries, and were happy to be given a lift to Getmanic-majority countries.

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.

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.

It is, and if someone proposed resurrecting gladiatorial combat you'd really see the pearls come out.

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 😅

So, less than 48 hours later, and the illegal immigrants have already been deported from Martha's Vineyard. The MA governor has activated the national guard, and sent 125 Guardsmen to escort the 50 immigrants in a purportedly voluntary relocation to somewhere out of sight of the rich progressives.

The level of hypocrisy on this one is just amazing. No one invited anyone into their home. They couldn't even stand the sight of brown people unburdened by lawncare equipment till the weekend. It reminds me of when Mac went pro-life to pick up chicks.

Also, the $12 Million seems to be for the entire relocation program. Given how shameless and stark the results are, this may end up being the best use of money in politics in years.

It’s my understanding that they moved them to a place they could be housed, because MV is just a little island and doesn’t have facilities to host a bunch of families who have no shelter.

They seemed to react kindly to the people, I didn’t really see anything of this “couldnt stand to see brown people” stuff.

The few reports I heard people brought them food, clothes, set up medical treatment areas, and brought a soccer ball and set up game tables, to hang out and pass the time, etc.

It’s my understanding that they moved them to a place they could be housed, because MV is just a little island and doesn’t have facilities to host a bunch of families who have no shelter.

They have thousands of newly empty summer homes and hotels.com is eager to help me compare the 1026 different hotel options. MV has a population of almost 90k. The idea that they can't settle 50 people is absurd.

They seemed to react kindly to the people, I didn’t really see anything of this “couldnt stand to see brown people” stuff.

They had them escorted off the island by the military within 36 hours. It's easy to put on a smile for a couple hours for a photo shoot. Why not welcome them to settle there and enhance the vibrancy of the community?

The immigrants appear to have been told that they were going to boston.

Immigrants typically like to go to big cities where the economy runs a bit hotter than towns of 100k people.

Maybe you should find a few of the immigrants who wanted to stay in MV before deploring how they weren't allowed to stay there.

You’re probably right, I’m giving the rich folks at MV too much credit

But manipulating impoverished people

How are they being manipulated? From what I've heard, lots of those being bussed or flown out were asked whether they wanted to go and said yes.

and treating them as nothing more than chattel to score political points

But, of course, conservatives are just going to turn around and say that this is exactly what liberals have been doing, and in the even more literal sense of "point-scoring," namely deliberately refusing to enforce immigration laws in order to politically profit from future naturalizations or even present unlawful voting by illegal immigrants.

How are they being manipulated? From what I've heard, lots of those being bussed or flown out were asked whether they wanted to go and said yes.

They were (ostensibly, this is dependent on honest reporting) asked if they wanted to go to Massachusetts, not Martha's Vineyard. Would you consider it honest if I asked an immigrant if they wanted a flight to the United States and I dropped them off in Soldotna, Alaska?

But, of course, conservatives are just going to turn around and say that this is exactly what liberals have been doing, and in the even more literal sense of "point-scoring," namely deliberately refusing to enforce immigration laws in order to politically profit from future naturalizations or even present unlawful voting by illegal immigrants.

Politically, perhaps, although if we had that conversation we'd likely recycle tired talking points about how the United States has always been a nation of immigrants. The US population share of immigrants is higher than it was in the 80s, but on par with the early 20th/late 19th century.

From a humanitarian perspective, I strongly disagree that they are equivalent.

  • -11

Would you consider it honest if I asked an immigrant if they wanted a flight to the United States and I dropped them off in Soldotna, Alaska?

How is Martha's Vineyard remotely comparable? The migrants were bussed out of there within 24 hours and it's only a couple hours from Boston.

From a humanitarian perspective, I strongly disagree that they are equivalent.

You're right, getting here in the first place is infinitely more expensive and dangerous than being transported from a red state to a blue state.

Would you consider it honest if I asked an immigrant if they wanted a flight to the United States and I dropped them off in Soldotna, Alaska?

Most people consider Alaska to be a worse place to live than the median locality in the US, thats why people have to paid to move there.

By contrast MV is a luxury locality, where the vast majority of people would be overjoyed to live.

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.

No, I want the people that live in Martha's Vinyard to admit that living around illegal aliens fucking sucks and everyone knows it. I want them to admit that despite having way more than enough wealth to handle 50 people, they don't want to, because they know that it's bad for their community. I want the people that utter platitudes about how diversity is our strength to deal with even the slightest bit of personal consequence for their ideology.

Of course, I don't have any illusion that any of these things are going to happen, but putting it as blatantly front and center as this does might at least make it apparent to fencesitters that the empathy of the very wealthy for illegal aliens only extends as far as some other neighborhood.

I want them to admit that despite having way more than enough wealth to handle 50 people, they don't want to,

The mainstream news coverage I saw, and the mainstream reddit posts I saw, said that MV was loving this and happily making room for them. EDIT I see that MV has since put them on buses and shipped them away at gunpoint.

I have known about this campaign to bus the illegals to the sanctuary cities for a long time, but my wife just learned about a few days ago with the MV story. She wanted me to be angry and I knew not to fall into the trap so I just said "it sounds like win-win-win: the immigrants volunteered to be put there, the receiving community says they want them, the 'donor' community says they cannot handle that many refugees."

Good, send about 15,000 to 20,000 up there and I hope they're still living those values.

Massachusetts has ~250k illegal immigrants. They're already living those values.

A non-trivial number are from Ireland. Slightly different linguistically and culturally.

Rural, Catholic, poor, stereotyped as violent, lazy, and criminal? Maybe not that different.

The closest I can find to a hard number on Irish illegal immigrants estimates it at around 50k. Even if 100% of them were in MA, which they're not, that's still be ~200k other illegal immigrants.

250k is about 2/3rds of Arizona's number, but since they support illegal immigration and welcome them they should have all of both states total and Arizona should have none if they don't want them.

If AZ and MA want to negotiate that transfer and the immigrants agree to it, that's fine. For that matter, if AZ wants to unilaterally set up a program to send immigrants out of state with consent obtained in good faith, that is fine. But neither AZ nor MA have the authority to unilaterally expel unwanted individuals, and they certainly don't have the authority to transport people under false pretenses.

But neither AZ nor MA have the authority to unilaterally expel unwanted individuals, and they certainly don't have the authority to transport people under false pretenses.

--MA appears to disagree with you, since they literally called out the national guard and shipped the illegals out with all possible speed.--

[EDIT] The above appears to be flatly incorrect. The national guard troops appear to have been activated to provide service at the destination base, not sent in force to Martha's Vineyard to collect the migrants. I was wrong.

Evidence they were forced to leave?

Or are you just assuming what's convenient?

More comments

That might make sense if 100% of the people living in Massachusetts "support illegal immigration and welcome them" and 100% of the people living in Arizona don't, but I somewhat doubt it is quite that black and white.

I knew not to fall into the trap

What trap? Is this a married thing?

Tip for married life: When your wife says "I just heard about this horrible thing!" you do not say "axxshually you are wrong and misinformed."

The mainstream news coverage I saw, and the mainstream reddit posts I saw, said that MV was loving this and happily making room for them.

Ah yes, that's why they're comparing this to literally hitler.

Or to put it concisely, they should incur some actual costs so their virtue signalling actually carries some signal and stops being pure noise and posturing.

Either they can suggest that taking in these immigrants is good and thus agree to accept more from southern states, or they can scream about a humanitarian crisis and resources stretched thin, at which point they acknowledge that the Southern states have it way worse.

So where's the evidence of them screaming? NPR reports that they're working on helping those immigrants, but they didn't have the items or capacity on hand.

"Everything from beds to food to clothing to toothbrushes, toothpaste, blankets, sheets — I mean, we had some of it ... but we did not have the numbers that we needed," said Lisa Belcastro, who runs the island's homeless shelter

For that matter, where's the virtue signaling? What proof is there that MV is supportive of illegal immigrants?

What proof is there that MV is supportive of illegal immigrants?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/florida-flies-migrants-to-sanctuary-destination-of-marthas-vineyard

Martha’s Vineyard has styled itself as a “sanctuary destination” that welcomes migrants — a position it took early in former President Donald Trump’s administration.

From back in 2017:

https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2017/04/06/immigration-issue-stirs-heartfelt-response-island

I assume this is sufficient proof.

So where's the evidence of them screaming?

Perhaps 'heated discussion' is the more accurate way to put it.

The apparent official response is they can't stay and will be transported away... which seems to bely the idea of providing a 'sanctuary.'

https://twitter.com/NYCHomoCon/status/1570456702390267905#m

Meanwhile, the residents themselves seem rather torn over the situation, with the ones most angry about Desantis' action turning out to be the least likely to support housing the migrants locally.

https://twitter.com/DoctorTurtleboy/status/1570571488956395521

Which is pretty damned classic NIMBYism if you remove the specific context.

Meanwhile, many southern towns are getting twice this many migrants on something like a daily basis and it causes minimal national headlines for some reason.

Absent any of the above, the 'virtue signalling' part arises from a town declaring itself a sanctuary city whilst, apparently, lacking the infrastructure to actually handle people seeking sanctuary.

As in, signalling support for a cause whilst not actually acting in support nor putting any skin in the game, but only so they can claim to be virtuous.

My bet is they will continue to claim support for illegal immigrants whilst making zero changes to accept such immigrants, and in fact taking measures to prevent this particular type of shenanigans.

And in such case I won't mind seeing red tribe politicians calling their bluff and helping them put their money (or, alternatively, their foot) where their mouth is.

Thanks for the links. You're certainly correct that Martha's Vineyard appears to have pledged itself to not obeying federal immigration laws. I don't like this kind of political action, but I can't deny that MV wasn't walking the walk.

The Border Patrol didn't have toothbrushes or toothpaste or blankets or sheets on the border either. You might not have noticed, but they were reduced to herding people into pens under freeway overpasses for lack of places to put them.

As far as I can tell, they've "helped" them straight onto a bus and far away from them:

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1570786066025836545

With the help of the National Guard (who needed to outnumber them more than 2 to 1, obviously):

https://twitter.com/EmilieIkedaNBC/status/1570775078828388353

I'm sure the illegals were persuaded to pose for a few feel-good photo shoots to project the image of virtue. Certainly the MSM is making hay of it. But when push came to shove they bundled the diversity onto a bus and sent it away.

sounds like they're making room for the next group DeSantos sends there.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, Martha's Vineyard is not some tiny rust-belt town mired in desolation and poverty. It's got many holiday homes for its summer residents, who are so eager to prove their impeccable credentials that they put up posters about welcoming immigrants. Just open up your summer compound and take in a few of those fifty people, Vineyarders!

Yes, it's a political stunt. So are the posters. So is the "kids in cages" and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez being photographed weeping outside a parking lot.

who are so eager to prove their impeccable credentials that they put up posters about welcoming immigrants

What's your source?

Grain of salt, but this link has a few images.

Personally, I'd bet quite a lot that "in this house, we believe" style signs are common there.

The best meme I’ve seen come out of this whole business was Homer Simpson holding one of the “In this house, we believe” signs backing slowly into a shrubbery, then re-emerging with a “No Trespassing” sign.

It is apparently illegal for states to secure their borders, as this fall only under federal jurisdiction. From here:

Can states enforce immigration laws?

The federal government has sole authority to enforce immigration laws. While DPS and the National Guard can’t enforce those laws, Abbott increased trespassing penalties under the disaster declaration and directed state troopers to arrest migrants on state trespassing charges when they are caught on private property.

It is very easy for the federal government to decide to let people illegally cross the border, since Washington DC is thousands of miles away from the Texas border. Why should Texas have to absorb all those people illegally coming into the country?

Why should Texas have to absorb all those people illegally coming into the country?

It doesn't. Many pass through Texas and many remain, but the vast majority wind up elsewhere (and many enter elsewhere, notably California).

Are there any reliable studies on this? Given the costs involved in just getting across the border my priors tell me that "the vast majority" probably don't have the resources to make it very far past the border into other areas of the country. There may be people smuggling networks in place but how many have the resources to make use of them? Coyotes aren't getting people across the border out of the goodness of their heart.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/11/us-metro-areas-unauthorized-immigrants/

The idea that Texas is stuck with all the illegal immigrants while liberal states cheer from their sheltered enclaves is a political talking point, not reality.

my priors tell me that "the vast majority" probably don't have the resources to make it very far past the border into other areas of the country.

It's not that expensive to move around the country once you're in (especially if all you've got is the clothes on your back) and many people crossing the border in the south have friends/family elsewhere in the country who both serve as an attractor and will help them out. Moreover, people physically walking across the border is a minority of illegal immigration to the United States. A majority* are arriving legally and overstaying visas. You can fly to NYC or Chicago, get a tourist visa, and never leave.

*at least as of a couple of years; I don't have a breakdown from this year, but I have no reason to think it's radically changed in two years.

Why was providing actual data on the thing everyone else in this thread was simply assuming downvoted?

Because the data he provided is literally accurate but fails to prove the relevant point. "Many areas have illegal immigrants", even liberal ones, does not logically imply that many liberal enclaves don't. (And especially, when the liberal enclaves are rich enough that people there have choices). This entire discussion started with Martha's Vineyard, which is a liberal enclave without a high immigrant population, in an area shown by that very data as having a high immigrant population.

I'm sure that there are poor inner cities that are both liberal and have a high illegal immigrant population, and are driving much of that data, but that isn't really in dispute.

I basically agree with this sentiment and would try and reframe the discussion in terms of luxury beliefs: namely people living thousands of miles from land borders can easily harbor fantasies about human nature while ignoring (and experiencing) few of the very real negative externalities associated uncontrolled illegal immigration. If a relatively small number of buses (or even flights) are required to make the most politically powerful parts of this country more fully aware of the kinds of the problems they are rather thoughtlessly creating for others.

... some relevant context here:

  • Massachusetts isn't a statutory 'sanctuary state', but mostly because the courts decided to do that for the legislature. Most major cities are, or have effective rules equivalent to such, for what little it ever comes up.

  • Martha's Vineyard is a 45-minute ferry ride from Falmouth, and from there 2-3 hours bus ride from Boston.

  • It's also ridiculously rich and notorious for large and sudden parties: the perspective that it couldn't scale to shelter for 50 really doesn't pass the sniff test.

  • There has been over a decade-long and massive surge of undocumented immigrants into border states, almost none of which has particularly been focused on parts of the border which have had shelter capability. Federal ICE policies have, at the very least, minimized the ability, and drastically demoralized any interest in enforcement where it remains possible (cfe 'reins').

  • There's been big mess about releasing undocumented immigrants minors in a handful of cities to relatives, 'relatives', or sponsors, which is required in by law and existed under the Trump admin but has scaled up dramatically, with a lot of !!fun!! questions about consent that would normally scare people given ICE Airlines, and abuse of the policy has probably been tied to a recent high-profile homicide.

  • A lot of the scale-up of that problem is downstream of aggressively coached asylum claimants, who -- while generally not actually falling under the statutory examples for asylum -- began to be released on recognizance in far more cases in recent years. Which looks a lot like... this, just with different political goals, since in no few cases the admin just bussed the applicants to random cities (edit: which sometimes then bus them again to random suburbs), gave them provisional status, and then shrugged about things like shelter capacity, often to defang criticism about custody numbers. Which, as with other times in the past, people didn't seem to care about.

I'm not a fan of this show-boating from DeSantis, but I don't think "$12 million ‘immigrant relocation program’ Own The Libs/Desantis for President" is a very strong steelman.

Martha's Vineyard is a 45-minute ferry ride from Falmouth, and from there 2-3 hours bus ride from Boston.

Undoubtedly illegal immigrants have plenty of disposable income and familiarity with the Massachusetts transit system.

Regardless, ship them to Boston for 1/3rd the price instead of nakedly stoking partisanship for political gain. And why is the Governor of Florida concerned with Texas, and using funds his legislature approved for the state of Florida to ship illegal immigrants from Texas to Massachusetts?

There has been over a decade-long and massive surge of undocumented immigrants into border states, almost none of which has particularly been focused on parts of the border which have had shelter capability. Federal ICE policies have, at the very least, minimized the ability, and drastically demoralized any interest in enforcement where it remains possible (cfe 'reins').

Border crossings, or at least apprehensions as a stand-in for crossings, from 2010-2020 were lower than they had been for the previous 30 years. The total number of illegal immigrants in the country flatlined in the same time. Moreover, there appears to be a limited ability for us to control how many illegal immigrants show up at our borders.

If by 'reins' you mean this story, it's not clear to me how the media mistaking reins for whips is related to federal ICE policy.

Which looks a lot like... this, just with different political goals, since in no few cases the admin just bussed the applicants to random cities, gave them provisional status, and then shrugged about things like shelter capacity, often to defang criticism about custody numbers. Which, as with other times in the past, people didn't seem to care about.

Your argument being that there should be a better federal support and/or shelter network to be certain that illegal immigrants can be humanely treated? Your terms are acceptable. Even if we tied it to border funding or some other carrot, I doubt Senate Republicans would care - Trump, at least, was offered border wall funding for protection for dreamers and wound up shutting down the government instead.

I'm not a fan of this show-boating from DeSantis, but I don't think "$12 million ‘immigrant relocation program’ Own The Libs/Desantis for President" is a very strong steelman.

The governor of Florida is paying to fly illegal immigrants from Texas to Massachusetts to score political points. I'm too stupid to rationalize how that is in the best interest of the citizens of Florida, so I'll leave that to my betters.

Undoubtedly illegal immigrants have plenty of disposable income and familiarity with the Massachusetts transit system.

I'm thinking that there may be at least one person on Martha's Vineyard who fits that category, especially for a ferry system that charges a buck a ticket.

And why is the Governor of Florida concerned with Texas, and using funds his legislature approved for the state of Florida to ship illegal immigrants from Texas to Massachusetts?

There are a number of fun power of the purse legal or correct focus of government questions, but I'm rather skeptical that you'd have been soothed if the Florida legislature have phrased their funding expenditure slightly or if Texas had independently decided to pay for shipping undocumented immigrants to Florida as a pit stop.

Border crossings, or at least apprehensions as a stand-in for crossings, from 2010-2020 were lower than they had been for the previous 30 years.

Interestingly, the 2021 numbers broke the 2000 record, though NPR gives some estimation caveats. There's some fun questions about how comparable these numbers are -- NPR's waffling about gotaways applies as easily in the opposite direction, not just for this year but also for large parts of the lulls. But more interestingly, the surge had resulted in a large number of policy changes to discourage unlawful immigration, most notably the 1996 IIRIRA.

If by 'reins' you mean this story, it's not clear to me how the media mistaking reins for whips is related to federal ICE policy.

The media doing so, alone, doesn't particularly control. The President of the United States, in response to the media outrage, informed the country that " promise you, those people will pay. There is an investigation underway right now and there will be consequences," while the Vice President said "it evoked images of some of the worst moments of our history where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, has been used against African Americans during times of slavery"... still doesn't exactly control, but it has a lot of impact on the day-to-day operations. Not because that particular sort of behavior was especially common, or even because horseback operations, but because Tall Poppy.

((The agents in question were found to not having been using the reins as whips, or striking the immigrants; they were punished under a slight stretch of other different use-of-force rules.))

And there's been a lot of stuff like that. Individually, you could maybe argue that each one is merely a skeptical and restraining eye. In combination, Border Patrol has been told to not try very hard, and they know it.

Your argument being that there should be a better federal support and/or shelter network to be certain that illegal immigrants can be humanely treated? Your terms are acceptable.

No, my argument being that "treating them as nothing more than chattel to score political points" has been a common practice, and there's been crickets, at length. I don't know the correct solution to this problem; there are reasons I could see federal support or shelter networks to help, but there are also plausible ways that they're likely to be impossible to scale up or even to make the general scale of the problem worse in ways where the ultimate cost to life or safety is greater. There are some interesting and difficult questions to ask on that matter!

I just know very few people were horrified about it happening, even for very large numbers, and even with far greater humanitarian impact.

Even if we tied it to border funding or some other carrot, I doubt Senate Republicans would care - Trump, at least, was offered border wall funding for protection for dreamers and wound up shutting down the government instead.

Which is interesting. Why didn't Trump accept that bill? Or, for that matter, why did the bill receive mostly Democratic support in Congress? The link just shrugs, perhaps Trump was incompetent. Which, to be fair, not exactly a bad null hypothesis!

But there was also a contemporaneous leak describing the White House's perspective. Maybe that leak was wrong! Maybe Trump somehow -- unusually -- managed to pull the vast majority of Republican politicians to his whims, and trick the Democratic Senators. But it's strange how the writer here can't even seem to imagine the possibility that a 'compromise' bill is actually not giving much to the other side, while demanding a lot.

The governor of Florida is paying to fly illegal immigrants from Texas to Massachusetts to score political points. I'm too stupid to rationalize how that is in the best interest of the citizens of Florida, so I'll leave that to my betters.

Can you make any deep guesses about why DeSantis wants to do this, or why he -- and several other states, many of whom have been running similar operations -- believe that it makes effective political points? Was he born wicked, or was wickedness thrust upon him?

Interestingly, the 2021 numbers broke the 2000 record, though NPR gives some estimation caveats. There's some fun questions about how comparable these numbers are -- NPR's waffling about gotaways applies as easily in the opposite direction, not just for this year but also for large parts of the lulls. But more interestingly, the surge had resulted in a large number of policy changes to discourage unlawful immigration, most notably the 1996 IIRIRA.

Maybe so, but the people ranted about how soft Obama was on the border and how much better Republicans would do if we enacted their policies. Well, Trump got elected and not much changed; the trend towards increasing numbers of migrants potentially started in 2018 before being masked (heh) by COVID or not. I don't have a counterfactual world where Trump won reelection in 2020 to see what the numbers would be today, but I think there's a pretty good argument that even if we gave repubs everything they asked for (at least mainstream repubs, defined as a majority) the numbers would still be relatively high. I'm not convinced by the folks saying the entirety of the crisis is due to the fact that we wouldn't build the wall and improve morale among Border Patrol agents.

The media doing so, alone, doesn't particularly control. The President of the United States, in response to the media outrage, informed the country that " promise you, those people will pay. There is an investigation underway right now and there will be consequences," while the Vice President said "it evoked images of some of the worst moments of our history where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, has been used against African Americans during times of slavery"... still doesn't exactly control, but it has a lot of impact on the day-to-day operations. Not because that particular sort of behavior was especially common, or even because horseback operations, but because Tall Poppy.

I agree with what you say here, but your original claim was that federal ICE policies have hobbled border patrol. Whatever, forget it.

No, my argument being that "treating them as nothing more than chattel to score political points" has been a common practice, and there's been crickets, at length.

Your contention here being that the current administration was under fire for the bad conditions at their border facilities, so they shrugged and started bussing all the people to random cities rather than where the people actually wanted to go? And your claim is that, in the article you cited, the relatives they are supposedly being bussed to do not exist and were fabricated? Before you accuse me of strawmanning I'm just trying to fill in the gaps here, I genuinely don't see how the evidence you cited is equivalent to Desantis or how ostensibly bussing children in border facilities to relatives is treating them as chattel.

But there was also a contemporaneous leak describing the White House's perspective. Maybe that leak was wrong! Maybe Trump somehow -- unusually -- managed to pull the vast majority of Republican politicians to his whims, and trick the Democratic Senators. But it's strange how the writer here can't even seem to imagine the possibility that a 'compromise' bill is actually not giving much to the other side, while demanding a lot.

So is your argument that Senate Republicans would, in fact, accept a compromise?

The bill that you linked seems to be healthcare-related, not immigration, or else I'm just unfamiliar with the arcana of congress.

Can you make any deep guesses about why DeSantis wants to do this, or why he -- and several other states, many of whom have been running similar operations -- believe that it makes effective political points? Was he born wicked, or was wickedness thrust upon him?

Neither; I suspect he wants to do this to amass political power and support a 2024 presidential bid. In the same way I don't think that Biden really cares about student loans or a lot of the diversity stuff, I think he does those things for his partisans. Doing what your constituents want isn't a bad thing, the real problem is when politicians of all stripes do things to hurt the outgroup and we cheer them for it.

Maybe so, but the people ranted about how soft Obama was on the border and how much better Republicans would do if we enacted their policies. Well, Trump got elected and not much changed; the trend towards increasing numbers of migrants potentially started in 2018 before being masked (heh) by COVID or not. I don't have a counterfactual world where Trump won reelection in 2020 to see what the numbers would be today, but I think there's a pretty good argument that even if we gave repubs everything they asked for (at least mainstream repubs, defined as a majority) the numbers would still be relatively high.

There's some fair and interesting debates about the effectiveness of conservative policies, or even how and when conservative policies are in the realm of the politically possible, but I don't think it's very useful to try to extrapolate from the 2016-2020 to what would happen if "we gave repubs everything they asked for". Trumpist policies -- regardless, or because of -- their (lack of) merits, did not spend a lot of time being actually applied. Most famously the DACA stuff, which not only was blocked at length, not only was eventually turned back at SCOTUS under iffy legal reasoning, but also just took until June 2020 just to finish the court cases that eventually told Trump to try again.

There are plausible arguments that this is bad policy, or that perhaps someone more competent could have turned in into bad policy instead of merely bad paper. There's plausible arguments that the proposals, even if 'not bad', would not actually reduce immigration if implemented. But it's a very weak argument about the effects of implemented policy.

((And, separately: the metric has been a measure, for a long time.))

Your contention here being that the current administration was under fire for the bad conditions at their border facilities, so they shrugged and started bussing all the people to random cities rather than where the people actually wanted to go? And your claim is that, in the article you cited, the relatives they are supposedly being bussed to do not exist and were fabricated?

No, my separate claims are that :

  • The federal government was releasing large batches of adult undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers at bus stops, usually without notifying the state government, and often with wide disregard for the capacities of local shelters.

  • The federal government has bussed or flown minor asylum-seekers to sponsors including relatives, as required by law.

  • The federal government has bussed or flown 'minor' 'asylum-seekers' to sponsors that 'include relatives', and then each of those prongs turn out to not be true.

I don't know for certain whether ICE gave them a big list of options to pick, just really hates that one bus stop in El Paso specifically, or if they give each immigrant or asylum-seeker a spin on an oversized wheel of fortune. Presumably someone actually wants to live in the Bronx, so it's possible that the immigrants getting bused there requested it specifically.

But I'm rather skeptical of a dividing line, here, when one side of this looks like the uncaring treatment of chattel being forced to be used for political purposes by an unarmed Florida government PR team, and the other side looks like the caring treatment of armed ICE agents.

So is your argument that Senate Republicans would, in fact, accept a compromise?

Senate specifically is a funny example! The Senate actually voted, 68-32, in favor of a pretty expansive and pretty progressive-favored slate, best-known as the Gang of Eight Bill. It struggled in the House through a lot of 2013, and Eric Cantor's loss in 2014 killed it in the House, especially since a lot of the conservative criticisms -- that the enforcement side would be neutered by Democratic efforts -- seemed a little prescient as DACA continued to grow.

The bill that you linked seems to be healthcare-related, not immigration, or else I'm just unfamiliar with the arcana of congress.

I linked to the vote for an amendment that the healthcare (and other random crap) bill: the text of specific to the amendment for that vote is available here. For (stupid) reasons, this is how Congress tends to do a lot of procedural stuff.

Doing what your constituents want isn't a bad thing, the real problem is when politicians of all stripes do things to hurt the outgroup and we cheer them for it.

That's true, but it's kinda useless without a deeper consideration. It's almost always possible to rationalize some deep reason why a bad policy that hurts the outgroup is acktually some great and necessary goal for the broader movement which "will protect the property of the rich and give a greater share to the poor, cut down the burden of your taxes and provide you with more government benefits, lower prices and raise wages, give more freedom to the individual and strengthen the bonds of collective obligations", and also polish floors and server as a dessert topping.

There's a really obvious reason, here, and without being willing to touch it, this comes across as special pleading.

Trumpist policies -- regardless, or because of -- their (lack of) merits, did not spend a lot of time being actually applied. Most famously the DACA stuff, which not only was blocked at length, not only was eventually turned back at SCOTUS under iffy legal reasoning, but also just took until June 2020 just to finish the court cases that eventually told Trump to try again.

DACA is irrelevant in a conversation about how many illegal immigrants cross the southern border in a given year, short of some laughably tenuous argument about making a 'favorable environment.'

I don't think it's very useful to try to extrapolate from the 2016-2020 to what would happen if "we gave repubs everything they asked for"

He built the wall which was his signature campaign promise on immigration. ICE was kicking in the doors of illegal immigrants who hadn't committed crimes (aside from being in the country illegally) at a higher rate. He slashed the number of refugees accepted. All much more relevant than DACA, and the former was his signature immigration campaign promise. I think it's quite useful to extrapolate from the Trump presidency, actually.

I don't know for certain whether ICE gave them a big list of options to pick, just really hates that one bus stop in El Paso specifically, or if they give each immigrant or asylum-seeker a spin on an oversized wheel of fortune. Presumably someone actually wants to live in the Bronx, so it's possible that the immigrants getting bused there requested it specifically.

Your link itself says the children were being released to relatives or sponsors. Desantis obviously didn't manage to find migrants with relatives or sponsors in Martha's vineyard. The fact that you're desperately trying to find some equivalence here to convince me that I'm being unfair in calling this out...bah. I'm done.

DACA is irrelevant in a conversation about how many illegal immigrants cross the southern border in a given year, short of some laughably tenuous argument about making a 'favorable environment.'

DACA -- a program that prohibits removal and supplies work permits for those covered -- has a "laughably tenuous" connection to how many undocumented immigrants cross the southern border?

He built the wall which was his signature campaign promise on immigration.

Trump threatened a government shutdown for 5 billion, got 1.6 billion with a ton of caveats, and then it and a bunch of other attempts got shot down in court (tbf, in the case of the emergency order, probably correctly).

ICE was kicking in the doors of illegal immigrants who hadn't committed crimes (aside from being in the country illegally) at a higher rate.

If you mean arresting and deporting immigrants without other convictions, with the kicking in doors figuratively, yes. (I'm not able to find statistics on ICE's actual no-knock arrests, and because ICE's warrants explicitly don't allow them to break into buildings, I don't know that they happen enough to be meaningful.)

He slashed the number of refugees accepted.

Fair, albeit this seems a real small deal from someone dismissing DACA, especially given the statutory limitations for the refugee program.

Your link itself says the children were being released to relatives or sponsors.

And then it carefully glosses over the adults. The El Paso bus stop ones don't even really bother with that fig leaf.

The fact that you're desperately trying to find some equivalence here to convince me that I'm being unfair in calling this out...bah. I'm done.

My point isn't to compare equivalence between these programs; my point is that no one cared about it.

I'm not American, but I do see this as a reasonable set of actions. In fact, it's almost what the right should've been doing from day one.

If someone else is saying 'we need to let in the migrants/refugees and care for them', but the burden of doing so falls entirely on you, it's more than reasonable to simply start moving them elsewhere. I think doing so makes you look unreasonable and unpleasant, but it's an unreasonableness and unpleasantness that forces the right people to put skin in the game.

I'm not sure about this particular move, to be fair, but overall? I think relocating migrants is fair and appropriate to the point of being effectively a win-win. If New York or Boston or wherever wants to functionally allow illegal immigration and Texas doesn't, New York and Boston should bear more of the costs associated.

I think relocating migrants is fair and appropriate to the point of being effectively a win-win

Indeed, it ought to be a win-win-win. E.g. Texas says it's having to do too much for illegal immigrants, many immigrants at the Texas border would rather go to e.g. New York but can't easily get there on their own, and New York says even illegal immigrants are making their new communities stronger; with every marginal immigrant relocated everybody should be happy!

If the reaction had been "thanks, that was nice of you to help them immigrate a little further", maybe rubbed it in a little with "I'm sure they'll be more welcome and have more opportunities here anyways" or "we appreciate the economic help", then I'd think Texas looked pretty foolish to make a big deal out of it. Instead too many reactions have been more reminiscent of the "AAAAAAH! MY FINGERS! MY PRECIOUS FINGERS!” metaphor (last few paragraphs of the linked post).

This is a lot of boo words ("chattel", really?).

This looks pretty simple to me. Blue cities vote on policies that increase the burden on border states, border states start shipping their burden to the blue cities. What did people think they were voting for when they made their towns "sanctuary cities"? Were they hoping they'd never have to pay up on that assertion?

The second big thing to remember is that the Federal government is already doing this, as a matter of policy. They just don't send them to NYC or Martha's Vineyard. No, they go to places like Chattanooga. Everything you're saying about the small number of stunt flights the Republicans are doing applies just as well to the much larger operation that the federal government is running. But, since they're dumping them in red states (Georgia, Nebraska, Tennessee, etc.), neither the national media nor you seem to care much.

https://www.local3news.com/first-on-3-late-night-flights-carrying-migrant-children-arrive-in-chattanooga/article_f49f3c52-7959-5508-85d7-c080b0b2c611.html

This whole thing is in my view some perfect hardball politics. A lot of towns got caught up in TDS and made stupid laws to virtue signal about immigration (using those same human beings you're outraged at Republicans for "manipulating"). All the while thinking they weren't going to be getting the midnight flights of immigrants dumped on their doorstep. Abbot and DeSantis are just including them in the distribution network, in the meanest and most politically advantageous way they can.

Do most migrants end up in red states, in blue states, or an even mix?


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