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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   25676 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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Ok I swear I don't just get up every morning and ask, "How can I be schizo today?"

But in one day I saw the following two things:

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1731747916568727610

Among the masses of migrants flowing across the southern border each day, a whole line of Chinese nationals, military aged men, automatically standing at "parade rest" as one reply pointed out.

And this:

https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1731808064108372245

Senator Dick Durbin making a speech in favor of allowing illegal immigrants into the military.

My schizo sense is tingling and saying that Nefarious Forces are Intentionally using the Power of Money to plan Bad Things for America.

Or, since this space has norms in favor of speaking plainly and against Darkly Hinting, let me put it more directly:

Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?

Seems like a better option for Taiwan than the US. Small area, low population, linguistically and ethnically very close, geographically close to the mainland for backup. Create enough chaos or manufacture some kind of coup, then their Marine Brigades can get an unopposed landing and it's all over.

Chinese people hang out with their hands behind their backs all the time. They walk that way too. It's just a thing.

I've seen plenty of Chinese soldiers in China. These guys don't read as Chinese soldiers to me. But I don't know what Chinese intelligence operatives look like.

Parade rest is a specific stance, it is easier than staying at attention but it isn't relaxed like that.

It is more likely that those men have their hands cuffed behind their back after they've shown or failed to show ID.

100% they aren't cuffed. Border Patrol is just waving people through at this point.

So you find it more likely that they are standing at parade rest for funsies?

It's not parade rest.

This was my first intuition as well. The video doesn't really show an angle behind the individuals with their hands behind their backs. Handcuffed seemed like an obvious conclusion.

Appreciate the sanity check everyone, my apologies for polluting this space

Less Of This, Please. There are plenty of 500k follower twitter accounts that react with horror to tweets with out of context clips and screenshots of news headlines, I know where to get it if I want it, and I don't want it here.

Ok I swear I don't just get up every morning and ask, "How can I be schizo today?"

It's funny how all sorts of "conspiracy theorists" and people with weird ideas are halfway self-conscious of the fact they're like that, and make jokes about it. You should either genuinely believe your ideas, deeply investigate them, debate them - or consider what 'schizo' ideas you had five or ten years ago and how many of them have held up, and admit you're very wrong.

Also, whatever standard approves of this post but not posts about perfectly reasonable topics that just don't have enough context isn't serving its purpose.

It's funny how all sorts of "conspiracy theorists" and people with weird ideas are halfway self-conscious of the fact they're like that, and make jokes about it.

It's because the term "conspiracy theorist" is used as an insult rather than a rational argument, if you endorse it, you take away it's power. If you say "yes, I am a conspiracy theorist, here is a conspiracy theory I believe in, and here is the evidence - come at me!" all sneering is suddenly reduced to quiet whimpering to the effect of "that doesn't count as a conspiracy, that's just a bunch of people coordinating to achieve a common goal".

consider what 'schizo' ideas you had five or ten years ago and how many of them have held up, and admit you're very wrong.

Hanlon's Razor, the bottom-up view of society. Very schizo ideas I was very wrong about, this is why I'm a conspiracy theorist.

Or, "excuse me, they're called 'conspiracy facts' now". Or of course the comic about "How to talk to your friends who believe conspiracy theories": "Hey bro, you were right about everything, I'm sorry".

Often I mention Snowden or one of the other NSA "conspiracy theories" which turned out to be true.

Eh. There's a real class of very bad ideas like the QAnon cinematic universe, or things like 'the government has secret spies all over the place. I have a friend who used to be one of them, he tells me about the reptilians and their spiritual plans for humanity's enslavement. I'm not sure I believe it but apparently the elites conspire with them, they took out JFK, they took out the people on the Clinton kill list..." (those are all real things I've actually been told by people who were being genuine, not hyperbole). I think OP is very much coming from the mindset that generates that.

The goverment having secret spies all over the place, especially in important organizations like twitter, is actually plausible and on some level true. There are agents of the goverment promoting censorship and it is hard to ascertain where certain of the biggest NGOs, private organizations, intelligence services, and parts of the bureaucracy like FBI begin and end.

In general, things that are true, or plausible are called conspiracy theories all of the time.

The mechanism of this can be seen with the Nordstream attack. The theory that the Russians did it was not called a conspiracy theory all that commonly, but the theory that America did it was called a conspiracy theory. Even though the later is much more likely than the first.

Another issue is that we have exaggerations being treated as a reason to not take serious things that are much more plausible. For example is the WEF running everything? No. Do they promote certain agendas and try to put their own people in positions of power? Out of their own words.

So yeah, there are true conspiracies, plausible ones and some more kooky claims. And there isn't a shared wise humanity that will accept the validly of all that belong in the true or plausible categories. Plenty of people would dismiss them if they go against the establishment.

There is also a conspiracy to promote ridiculous conspiracies and focus on them. But such tactics can be taken by fewer people as well who are inclined to do so. Is there a conspiracy to do so? Well, if there are people who work for an organization who promotes these claims, yes it will count as such.

Cass R. Sunstein and Andrian Vermule argued that the best way to combat conspiracies promoted by supposed extremists was to flood those spaces with ridiculous conspiracies. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics/119/

For example, instead of talking about Epstein who according to an Ex Mossad agent he was part of Mossad, promote, or focus upon reptilians, q-anon or aliens. https://7news.com.au/the-morning-show/jeffrey-epstein-was-a-mossad-spy-says-investigative-journalist-dylan-howard-c-595812

There are those who promote these theories, those who bite into the bait, and then those who overly focus on them and dismiss more legitimate issues. And once this tactic has started working as a result we will also observe people who do the second on their own and others who dismiss legitimate issues on their own, thinking that they are promoting what is true in accordance to their belief, rather due to some other motivation. We will also see people booing the concept also because they do side and support American elites for example and due to opposing scrutiny.

No, there is a thing that 'conspiracy theory' materially refers to and they are extremely wrong. There are people in 2018 who believed that secret numbers in Trump's tweets are hints about how he's still the real president and fighting a shadow war against the soros deep state. "Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?" is recognizably one of those, in a way that "ukraine did nordstream" is not. I agree there are gradations, but there's clearly a huge gap between the two. Just because some NYT journalists called things you agree with conspiracy theories doesn't mean the concept isn't useful. Your reply is pure 'arguments as soldiers' - kooky conspiracy theories are bad, therefore they must be generated by the other side to hide the REAL truth! Come on.

It's funny how all sorts of "conspiracy theorists" and people with weird ideas are halfway self-conscious of the fact they're like that, and make jokes about it. You should either genuinely believe your ideas, deeply investigate them, debate them - or consider what 'schizo' ideas you had five or ten years ago and how many of them have held up, and admit you're very wrong.

Underestimated argument. Related tweet

The principle is simple enough: most gamblers day traders lose money, those who don’t almost all just get lucky, and updating your priors because a tiny proportion of gambles pay off is stupid. Anyone who actually knows Jones/Ike tier conspiracy theorists in real life knows their hitrate is sub 1% and being the most obsequious normie who believes every word in the New York Times would make you right vastly more of the time than they are. If you believe everything, which they do, you will eventually be right about a few things. This challenges no conventional principle or authority.

The NYT and the American establishment lie and trying to manipulate people so commonly that being reasonably suspicious and willing to believe plausible conspiracy theories makes you have a much more accurate version of the world.

It isn't gambling to not trust them but it is gambling to trust them. With bad odds. Going full Alex Jones means you are going to doubt the NYT when they peddle some of their BS but also buy into some of Alex Jones BS. In 2002 for example, if you listened to Alex Jones, he argued this:

To Jones, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 were part of a larger move to eliminate civil rights and control the populations, including Americans, more effectively. The possibility of war in Iraq, to Jones, is part of the attempt by what he calls the New World Order to dominate the world.

“The government needed a crisis to convince the people willingly to give up their liberty in exchange for safety,” Jones writes in an introduction to his latest, two-hour film, “The Road to Tyranny.” https://www.mcall.com/2002/12/20/voices-from-outside-the-mainstream-weigh-in-on-iraq-war-threat/

Which would suggest against the Iraq War, neocon domination and authoritarian measures like the patriot act. Which isn't insane, but an example of Jones leading people in this instance to a more reasonable place than the establishment.

Having known people who believe in ghosts and aliens, they tend to be less dangerous for the world than those made to follow fanatically the new current thing. Whether it is war related, or a different agenda.

Did you read the post you were replying to? The idea is conspiracy theorists are wrong almost all of the time, and sometimes right simply because they copy the things others are saying and make them more extreme. And then, after the fact, their fans select specific things they said that aged well to declare them accurate. And you respond by ... selecting a specific thing Jones said 20 years ago and arguing for his accuracy.

This is a gross misrepresentation of my post, and you especially shouldn't be accusing others of not reading the posts they reply towards when you do that.

I disagreed with the above post of course. The point is that NYT and the establishment gets a lot of important things wrong and doubting them and buying into reasonable claims that are seen as conspiratorial would make you have more correct view of the world. That is because the establishment lies in favor of its agendas.

Whether "great replacement isn't happening", race, crime, war (iraq war the most notorious, even back in Vietnam with Torkin incident), or really partisan fake news (see Russiagate) are just some examples of categories you will find plenty of lies.

That even people like Alex Jones can get important things correct. The Iraq war and the rise of authoritarianism in response to war on terror are not insignificant issues. They are very important.

To think that this is an arguement for Jones being accurate in general, or me being a fanboy of his, when I said that he peddles BS too, is clearly inaccurate. Another short arguement was that in important ways some of the kooky nonsense can be less harmful than believing fanatically in current thing propaganda and doubting that instead.

You promoted in the past the lab leak theory as a conspiracy theory for example, and it was a case of you getting it wrong since it is at worst a plausible theory. A lot of irrationality of our times is on irrational extreme dismisal of valid issues.

If you want to be better than even the Alex Jones of the world, you ought to be more humble about reality and stop painting things that reflect negatively on the American elite as false by default and part of conspiracy theories. Suspicious right wingers have been for the most part proven more correct for their suspicions than those booing them over the years.

And even those who get things wrong too, but also get things correct in an important way the sentiment of questioning power is more valuable than not questioning it, so I wouldn't be too condemning. And my problem would be more that by including the more indefensible claims, they erode the value of things that are true in their arguments. We don't live in an age of overt paranoia against elites but in an age of lack of sufficient accountability.

Your analogy doesn't work. If conspiracy theorists were treated like day traders, the NYT would not try to imply belief in Jones' theory is cause for immediate loss of credibility, they'd imply it's unlikely, but might end up being true, because you never know.

What you're doing is like acting it was no big deal that one UFO nut was 100% proved to be correct about extra-terrestrial contact, because all the other UFO nuts before him were wrong.

I don't understand why you think i'm arguing that, like, the lab leak is fake because Qanon people are crazy. I'm not saying any thing about the lab leak or similar. I'm saying that OP's claim about chinese soldier immigrant coups is Q-anon tier.

Most of those Asian dudes in the video look like they are at least 30 years of age, and many look significantly older than 30. It would be strange for China to send a bunch of middle-aged guys over to become US soldiers. Granted, it would make sense for Chinese special agents to be older on average than privates in the US military, because it takes time to train a special agent, but these guys look old enough on average that I have a hard time believing that they would manage to successfully infiltrate the US military no matter how desperate the US military is to recruit. These guys look like dads.

I have been upgrading my priors to the effect "more shocking the video, higher likelihood it is AI generated", but this is not shocking enough.

If I were to guess, it is something mundane, and the tables have turned and past stereotypes have become a funhouse mirror: these days it's the Chinese who come from such a well-ordered society that they amaze Westerners with their ability to stand in line waiting for their turn.

it's the Chinese who come from such a well-ordered society that they amaze Westerners with their ability to stand in line waiting for their turn

I've been on multiple lengthy trips to China. Chinese people specifically don't line up in an orderly manner waiting their turn. That, the general dirtiness and the horrific air pollution when it turns cold are my primary complaints about China.

Aren’t the ones in the video literally under arrest? That seems like it should affect behavior a bit.

Yes. So that's why they're standing like that. I just mean to contradict muzzle-cleaned-porg-42's description of Westerners being amazed at Asians politely queuing. Chinese people don't do that, absent border patrol rounding them up.

If they were in line for getting a zoo ticket or a movie theater ticket, it would be a big shoving mass of people. As I have the misfortune of personally experiencing in China.

Plenty of Chinese illegal immigrants already arrive through legal avenues, mainly in the form of criminal organizations getting people tourist visas that they overstay on. That's how most of the girls in "massage parlors" in NYC and LA are trafficked into the country. They don't need to cross the border in the dead of night, they just book a flight and land at JFK or LAX. Why would a state need to resort to this sort of needlessly arduous infiltration when common gangsters have already figured out easier ways?

I feel like military service for citizenship isn’t a bad trade at all. Presumably the military is a strong enough insinuation to integrate all types of people. Additionally, someone willing to spend years in the military is likely someone we would want to keep in the country.

The first problem would come with other laws on the books. Meaning that one citizen can bring whole families along. Wife, kids, parents grandparents etc. this makes one successful crossing into potentially 15 visas etc. and it doesn’t allow for discretion as I understand it, so not only mustwe accept all of these visa requests, but we cannot vet those people coming.

The second problem is that it turns the military into a jobs program. Yes the military can probably integrate people into mainstream society. But in the meantime, you’re dealing with all kinds of problems that might well make it much more difficult to fulfill the main purpose of the army— fighting in wars. This could come in the form of language problems (it generally takes years for a person to become competent enough to use a foreign language as the primary means of communication) cultural issues (diet restrictions, cleanliness issues, taboos) and general attitudes towards authority. A small number of immigrants can probably integrate, but if 15% of your military isn’t able to speak English, doesn’t have the same culture as the rest of the units, and has discipline issues, that’s going to hurt your ability to fight.

The third issue is loyalty. What’s necessary is crossing the border and joining the military. There’s not really much vetting here, especially if the person uses a false name. This potentially lets foreign agents spy on us (we’d teach them how we teach our soldiers), some of our tactics, how our weapons work, and so on. This is all invaluable to anyone worried that the Americans want to go to war with them. Of course the equipment is valuable and a soldier might sell it. Or an enterprising group might try to get enough of their people in the military to make them less effective. We’ve talked about trying to root out the Sinhala gangs that run fentanyl in Mexico. If the grunt units are full of gang members, that’s going to be a problem.

Sinhala gangs that run fentanyl in Mexico

I didn’t realize the Sri Lankan mafia had such a global presence! Do their sworn enemies hail from the state of Tamil-ipas?

It was auto corrected. But dang, I might have to tell that story…

Serving in the military is pretty much the closest that a person can come to making themselves the tool of the country's government, so citizenship contingent on military service makes it so that people who are government supporters are more likely to become citizens than people who are not government supporters. To me such a system of incentives seems to be likely to push the country closer to authoritarian statism.

Indeed, it just occurred to me that that would be the logical thing to do for a military that has just acquired a state.

When a foreigner is required to serve in the military in order to secure citizenship, are they going to follow the constitution of the country that they're not a citizen of, or are they going to do what they're commanded to do?

Depends on what leverage the one who commands them has. I assume the American officers will be doing the commanding as well, and they're close while the alleged Chinese handlers are far away. Perhaps if they all have their families hostage in China it could work.

I think a poor kid from Central America will probably do the same as a poor kid from Texas who is joining to get free college.

There is one generation between the two groups.

Those two people are not fungible.

Why not? Regardless of national origin, army grunts tend to just do what they get told to do. That's what gets drilled into them relentlessly.

My father was once sent to pacify striking workers. While he was from out of town, most of his unit was not. It didn't result in anything that you'd read in the papers / history books about, but let's just say the powers that be did not make that particular mistake again.

There are limits to what grunts will do to their neighbors, and that's how you should want it, if you want to your government to maintain values beyond "do what I tell you".

There are also limits to what foreign grunts will do, but these are more observable in doing things for their neighbors rather than to them.

I am having trouble finding a citation, but my understanding is that while non-citizens can serve in the US military (and choose to become naturalized after, generally, a year of service), they are generally not eligible for a security clearance, and are limited to enlisted (non-officer) roles that aren't particularly sensitive. I don't know if that changes after naturalization.

After naturalization they may or may not be eligible for a clearance based on their specific circumstances, but they aren’t ineligible outright.

Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?

No, privates don’t launch coups.

This is quite schizo.

China is definately not sending agents as illegal immigrants to join the military and conquer the US via military coup. That plan is pants-on-head retarded.

I was initially going to say that if they aren't sending agents in as illegal immigrants for general sabotage/espionage work, they aren't trying, but honestly why send them over the border when they can simply immigrate legally through Academia or employment with various major corporations? The illegal route might be a better fit for the more hands-on side of things, I suppose, but the idea of getting enough illegals across the border and into the army to compromise the actual army is a complete non-starter.

but honestly why send them over the border when they can simply immigrate legally through Academia or employment with various major corporations?

Let a hundred flowers bloom.

I think the only reason the US doesn't do what it needs to do about the border is because doing what it takes to actually solve the border crisis would make America look bad in international affairs. Russia and China would have tons of propaganda pictures and stories about how horrible the US is, and the left wing press in the US would be happy to help. The empire and securing global markets is what is most important to American elites, and illegal migration just isn't a huge issue to people who can afford to live in nice areas and send their kids to good schools. The only way to stop illegal immigration would be to replace the entire US government with people that don't give a shit if securing the border makes them look bad and hurts the US's standing abroad. They'd just tell other government to fuck off if they tried criticizing them about it and jail leftists who try to stir up shit domestically. But we don't live in that world so nothing can reasonably be done about it.

The best explanation of the illegal immigration topic that I've encountered online is probably this paragraph from 2016

Both parties, despite occasional bursts of crocodile tears for American workers and their families, have backed the offshoring of jobs to the hilt. Immigration is a slightly more complex matter; the Democrats claim to be in favor of it, the Republicans now and then claim to oppose it, but what this means in practice is that legal immigration is difficult but illegal immigration is easy. The result was the creation of an immense work force of noncitizens who have no economic or political rights they have any hope of enforcing, which could then be used—and has been used, over and over again—to drive down wages, degrade working conditions, and advance the interests of employers over those of wage-earning employees.

The political/managerial class directly benefits from illegal immigration, they're not going to do anything about it until they're forced to.

The "drive down wages" thing does not make sense, economically. When an illegal immigrant does repair work on your house, sure, he lowers the wages of a native repairman, but he also gives you a cheaper repair. When an illegal immigrant picks berries, he substitutes for a native picker, but the price of berries goes down (because food markets are quite competitive!) In order for this to make sense, 'the elites' would have to be capturing all of the value of illegals, somehow, despite the competitive marketplace. This is theoretically possible, but I don't see much evidence!

Also, to steal a left-wing argument, do you support the workers rights that illegals are supposedly undermining? Like, 15 dollar an hour minimum wage, strong unions (no right to work laws, state-mandated bargaining), etc.

The "drive down wages" thing does not make sense, economically. When an illegal immigrant does repair work on your house, sure, he lowers the wages of a native repairman, but he also gives you a cheaper repair. When an illegal immigrant picks berries, he substitutes for a native picker, but the price of berries goes down (because food markets are quite competitive!)

I don't know, man. I used to make these arguments myself, but I don't feel like we're swimming in abundance since we let it rip with the globalism. The only class of goods I feel is more available is electronics, and maybe cars. If the price for that is the absolute gutting of manufacturing and farming jobs in my country, I'm not convinced it has been worth it.

Also, to steal a left-wing argument, do you support the workers rights that illegals are supposedly undermining? Like, 15 dollar an hour minimum wage, strong unions (no right to work laws, state-mandated bargaining), etc.

I agree with them in spirit, I'm not convinced about them in practice.

The only class of goods I feel is more available is electronics, and maybe cars. If the price for that is the absolute gutting of manufacturing and farming jobs in my country, I'm not convinced it has been worth it.

In my experience and also (i think) the statistics, 'durable consumer goods' have gotten significantly cheaper. Definitely more slowly than in the past.

From FRED, "all employees, manufacturing" / "all employees" has been flat at 8.5% since 2000 after a fairly linear decline from 38% since 1940ish. I am very confident goods are cheaper now than they were in 1970 and 1940. This probably is just meaningless because these numbers don't mean what i'm guessing they do but durable consumer goods CPI / total CPI has dropped 43% since 2000 and 20% since 2010. So just intuitively by glancing at the graph (and this isn't a strong argument as a result, you'd want a more detailed understanding of what happened) I don't find 'less manufacturing jobs so higher prices' to be correct

Everyone else also benefits from illegal immigration; American meat prices are artificially low because illegal immigrants staff the slaughterhouses for wages Americans won’t take. Houses are nicer than they ‘should’ be because the illegal immigrant laborers take a pay cut compared to natives. Etc, etc.

This isn’t a simple ‘business owners vs heartland workers’ story, the typical American consumer benefits from cheap labor for jobs that spoiled Americans don’t want to do anyways.

You haven't actually done anything to refute the claim that the benefits and drawbacks of illegal immigration aren't evenly distributed. I agree that these people benefit slightly from employers breaking the law and cutting down costs by hiring illegal immigrants, but the idea that those benefits actually match up to what the people in question have lost and are losing is just farcical.

jobs that spoiled Americans don't want to do anyways

Yeah, Americans don't want to work in illegal conditions that violate labour laws - this doesn't make them spoiled!

You haven't actually done anything to refute the claim that the benefits and drawbacks of illegal immigration aren't evenly distributed.

That's not what you said, you said:

The result was the creation of an immense work force of noncitizens who have no economic or political rights they have any hope of enforcing, which could then be used—and has been used, over and over again—to drive down wages, degrade working conditions, and advance the interests of employers over those of wage-earning employees

This implies they drive down wages and advance the interests of employees in general. This is not true. They drive up the value of the wages of most americans, while driving down the wages harming of the interests of workers in the specific sectors immigrants work in. And in such a way that, if there were tax increases and redistribution to specific native workers, everyone would have more 'value'.

And given that, the paragraph doesn't make any sense!

(This is totally separate from IQ, culture, race, etc arguments about immigration, and doesn't disprove them at all)

This implies they drive down wages and advance the interests of employees in general. to drive down wages those of wage-earning employees

No, it implies they drive down wages, as opposed to salaries. There's a clear distinction there and it actually matters for this particular topic - people on salaries BENEFIT from wage suppression, because wages are a component in the costs of services/goods that they consume. I'm more than happy to keep talking about this, but you'd probably be best served by reading the article I was quoting from first - https://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-01-21/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-resentment/

Do you have a more data-oriented source on the economic claims here? My sense is that if immigration pushes down wages in a few specific sectors, the benefits are diffuse enough that the income for the natives in that sector decreases. But people who work for wages are >50% of the working population, so the harms in terms of lower wages from immigration aren't actually 100x as concentrated as the benefits anymore. And (poorly justified guess) this either washes out or is net beneficial because the immigrants are providing useful services and the population of wage workers isn't, like, doubling.

Also note that if we were taking in as many skilled immigrants as unskilled, this wouldn't be an effect at all - because all skill classes would increase in proportion. And ... I'm not actually sure if that's even false? If you combine illegal and hispanic immigration with the disproportionately skilled immigration from india, asian countries, etc.

That might be part of the reason, but I think another big part of the reason is that US citizens are not going to go pick berries, work in slaughterhouses, or do yard work for $7/hr. Illegal immigrants in the US are an important part of the economy.

Illegal immigrants in the US are an important part of the economy.

Illegal immigrants are an important mechanism of wage suppression, asset inflation and shifting the outcome of elections, and I think US society would be substantially improved if the hiring of illegal immigrants was made into an offence which explicitly pierced the corporate veil and lead to such extensive asset seizures and punitive prison sentences that every single illegal immigrant was unemployed overnight in fear of said regulations.

I get where you're coming from, but Americans keep voting for politicians who don't do that. They keep voting for politicians who either think that it shouldn't be done or politicians who say it should be done but then don't try very hard to actually do it.

Polls for decades have shown that Americans are very against illegal immigration, but we only have two parties and neither will do anything about it. They finally voted in Trump and they pulled out all the stops. He tries to limit Muslim immigration and some judge in Hawaii shuts it down. He doesn't get his wall either. The fact is there is nothing Americans can do to stop illegal and mass immigration short of a coup. I'm not saying that to fed post, but just using common sense. How else could Americans stop illegal immigration if elected officials, the media, and the deep state prevent anyone from really doing anything about it?

Trump could (and should) have sicced federal law enforcement on the businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Everyone knows who does it, everyone knows where the live, and they have attachable assets. Illegal immigration sceptics on both sides of the political fence know that this would work, and that more security on the border probably wouldn't (not least because ~1/2 of all illegal residents were originally overstayers and not border-jumpers). The vast majority of illegal immigrants come to the US to work illegally, and if people stopped employing them they would stop coming.

He didn't, because businesses which employ illegal immigrants are a key GOPe constituency, and at that point he was still trying to work with the GOPe. And the MAGA base didn't care.

We still see far more people calling for fences and deportations than we do calling for universal e-Verify. I despise people who try to psychoanalyze political opponents, so I am not going to speculate on why this is. But part of the reason why politicians (even Trump) don't actually try to reduce illegal immigration is that the voters who say they want less illegal immigration don't expect them to.

By prioritizing the issue (as @WhiningCoil pointed out in https://www.themotte.org/post/780/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/166846?context=8#context, while Americans care about these issues they might not tend to prioritize them) and consistently voting for politicians who will act on the issue.

I'm sorry, but that's just straight up not true. The US doesn't have a system where people can vote on issues straight up, but when they have been given the chance, they have voted against illegal immigration. See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_California_Proposition_187

Within days, the deep state shut it down. Just like Trump's Muslim ban by some judge in Hawaii or his wall. It is literally impossible to stop illegal immigration democratically in the United States. If it was possible, it would have ended by now.

I don't think it's impossible. People would just have to consistently vote for politicians who actually prioritize the matter. But Americans for the most part, even if they want to stop illegal immigration, do not care about the issue enough to make it a dealbreaker when it comes to who they vote for.

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Wouldn't a better idea be to fix the US economy so it doesn't require importing countless poor people to work unpleasant jobs reliant on the fact that they aren't here legally and therefore have no right to a liveable wage?

A better idea from whose perspective? The cheap labor benefits American consumers, and the wage being paid is more than said importee would get in their home nation presumably.

So both sides have reasons not to "fix" it. From a free market perspective its a win win.

Well from my perspective, for starters. Is that your perspective then, a free market perspective? Because that wasn't the impression I got from any of your other posts. Other posts I've read of yours gave me the impression you would oppose the exploitation of people living in poverty so Americans can keep their suvs and dollar cheeseburgers.

Also I recall a different response the last time America got a bunch of cheap laborers and gave them just enough to make them better off than they would have been in their home nation.

I am a neo-liberal with authoritarian leanings i would say.

I think exploitation often depends on whether the people being exploited are happy with it.

Having said that i am also sympathetic to the idea that neo-liberal free markets need to be directed and regulated by the state. I think off shoring manufacturing has caused a lot of hardship for working class Americans in the Rust Belt et al.

So probably my position would be importing cheap labourers is ok as long as they are treated reasonably well and are themselves happy with their wages, which i guess is close to the free market position, or comparative advantage. But that manufacturing should be on-shored for the good of the American populace even though that will also raise prices, because the impact on poor Americans is disproportionate.

So I guess, let market forces reign but with a heavy state hand regulating them, for an optimum balance of economic and human thriving.

I would be on board with this if we weren't talking about illegal, undocumented, non-citizens. I would actually be ok with indentured servitude if it was between consenting adults. But the system as it stands seems almost designed to be abused.

Sure, some kind of easy legal immigration for low paid workers would probably be better. But I don't see that being politically feasible currently.

So probably my position would be importing cheap labourers is ok as long as they are treated reasonably well and are themselves happy with their wages, which i guess is close to the free market position, or comparative advantage.

I'd go so far as to say none of that is necessary, if the laborer knows what they're getting into.

I'd hope I count as a skilled worker, but I can also accept "cheap", since my wages in the UK would be a pittance compared to the US, an electrician in the US can easily make triple what a junior doctor does in the former. Further, I'm not remotely happy with said salary as provided by a monopsony employer, and I think calling the conditions NHS doctors labor under as "treated well" to be a farce.

None of that prevents me from leaving, I still consider it a step up, albeit a modest one, from being a doctor in India.

I'm also entirely OK with less skilled workers, such as those in construction or domestic care, who go to places with less than stellar rights and conditions like the Middle East from even less stellar, not even planetary, conditions as found in the Indian subcontinent. Would it be nice if they were paid better and treated better? Sure, but believe me that the silent majority will accept that as a reasonable tradeoff when it means they make 5 to 10 times what they could back home, thus having actual savings while sending remittances back home.

I'd know, I was one of the doctors at a Qatari Visa Center, and there were plenty of people who were eager to resume their posts after their visas expired and they had to come back. I'm sure many of them were mislead by touts about how cushy it was there, but they're not the norm.

In other words, as long as people make the tradeoff with a decent level of insight, and ideally it's a step up from where they began, I can hardly begrudge them their movements.

So I guess, let market forces reign but with a heavy state hand regulating them, for an optimum balance of economic and human thriving.

One of the reasons why I don't call myself an outright Libertarian despite being very sympathetic to that position is that I see clear utility from having states around to do things that the free market doesn't (as well as fuck things up, but my position is that we should find where we can maximize benefits and minimize downsides from having both).

Especially in matters of national security, you need to have a big stick to prevent companies from selling out or doing end-runs, such as Nvidia after the executive order banning export of high-end GPUs to China.

Sadly, while I sometimes wish otherwise, governments are usually good to have around, not that I'd mind less of it in many places.

I actually have sympathy for Libertarians myself. I think their positions are generally logical, consistent and principled. Unfortunately much like with communism, i don't think their ideas will actually work in practice with actual people.

I think that would be better for US citizens, but the politicians do not care much what I think and Americans keep electing the same kind of politicians over and over again.

That kind of apathy is the biggest issue though. Because it's one step above acceptance - you already present exploitation as a fait accompli, like Americans are physically incapable of picking berries or doing yard work or paying a reasonable rate for those tasks, when the exploitation is why they refuse to do those things. Why would a politician act any differently?

I don't mean that to sound personal, I'm part of the problem too. It's such a massive and ingrained problem at this point that it seems almost impossible to fix.

This is a theory of international relations where America is bidding against themselves in an auction. The rest of the world largely does not just let illegal immigration happen. But they largely do like free trade. A few countries might say hypocrisy or something but if we just change the rules and say countries don’t need to take refugees then everyone will agree with us. America is constantly hypocritical in international relations.

If we banned illegal immigrants but pushed free trade everyone is just going to follow along.

I think a better theory is that most elites just don’t recognize hbd. They don’t realize many of these immigrants won’t assimilate. They think they will be like the Italians and Irish who just became white Americans. They support immigration because they think it’s a huge utility gain for both sides to have more people following western norms. You average Syrian refugees kids will become Frenchmen who pray at Mosques and your average subsaharan African will have kids who become Harvard educated Doctors is how they think it will play out.

I think a better theory is that most elites just don’t recognize hbd.

Yeah, people come up with all kinds of theories about really complicated political schemes and intrigues but history shows that elites for the most part are not super-human Machiavellian manipulators, even if they would like to be. I think that they certainly are a bit smarter than non-elites on average, but for the most part they are not genius-level political masterminds from a comic book.

The simpler explanation is that to the average left-leaning elite, HBD = racism and racism = bad, end of story. And to the average right-leaning elite, HBD might make a bit of sense but it's not the sort of thing one brings up in polite company and anyway who cares, it's not like my mansion is going to be besieged by mobs of illegal immigrants any time soon.

I would also note that in America, illegal immigrants actually do assimilate pretty well on average. America's chief racial divide has to do with a group of people who have been living here for hundreds of years and whose ancestors got kidnapped and forced to work by America's founders. In Europe, which does not have the guilt that comes with something like that, and which deals with immigrants who assimilate less well on average than Latin American immigrants do in the US, political voices that are in favor of less third-world immigration are actually doing pretty well right now. For example, /r/europe is basically far-right on this topic by Reddit standards.

I share your thoughts. I don’t have a huge problem with illegal immigration in the US for the most part. Hispanics tend to assimilate in the ways they are ok. Generally they haven’t matched IQ testing or educational attainment but second and third generation have reduced criminality to the US white level. But the immigrants Europe gets I am not sure that will be achieved.

Hispanics who have assimilated still vote Democrat at rates far beyond those of average Americans.

Who are assimilated Hispanics, though? Second generation Californians whose ancestors came over in the early 80s, or 15th generation Texan ranchers who still have a vaguely Hispanic last name? White Cubans, or 90% indigenous Mayans? They’re a pretty heterogenous group in a way that ‘pure’ Irish or Swedish Americans aren’t.

They could stop illegal immigration if they wanted to though. This isn't some impossible task. There just isn't political will among the elites. Pakistan deported over a million Afghans: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistans-plan-expel-over-1-million-afghans-living-country-illegally-2023-10-31/

Are you trying to tell me the US couldn't do this if they wanted to? The government just doesn't want to for [insert reason here]. You didn't agree with mine, which is fine, but I hope you don't think the US actually couldn't if there was the political will.

And I mean they kind or are Machiavellian manipulators, considering it's an extremely unpopular thing politically yet they've managed to let mass immigration go on for over 4 decades, completely reshaping the demographics permanently of this country. Trump got elected to finally do something about it, and he was unable to do anything to curb it. Part of that is on Trump's incompetence, but more of it is that very powerful people and institutions resisted and thwarted him every time.

They could stop illegal immigration if they wanted to though. This isn't some impossible task. There just isn't political will among the elites.

One of my favourite trolls is to ask people who claim that this would be an impossible task to just go on the record as saying that it'd be impossible for a government to round up and deport (or otherwise deal with) 6 million people.

I don't think the government with the silly mustache guy and the Hindu good luck symbol cared if they accidentally rounded up a small number of non-Eskimos as collateral damage - particularly because they were mostly rounding up and deporting citizens of defeated enemy countries. A single citizen deported by mistake is enough to sink a mass-deportation programme in a Western democracy (and probably should be).

This happened in the UK with the Windrush Scandal. The problem is particularly bad in the UK because the mess created by changing citizenship laws as the British Empire as dismantled - the scandal concerned people who immigrated from the Caribbean before their birth countries became independent (and were therefore born and remained British and never crossed a border) or between independence and 1973 (in which case they lost British citizenship when their home countries became independent, but were not subject to British immigration control and therefore would have arrived without paperwork). But I'm sure the INS has had paperwork screwups similar to the UK decision to destroy the old disembarkation records in 2010 which left us unable to work out which long-resident undocumented Caribbean immigrants were citizens, which ones were legal permanent residents, and which ones were deportable.

Historically, the US has not tried to maintain a central register of everyone in the country legally such that it would be easy to only deport the right people - and the people who favour mass deportations generally think that keeping such a register would be tyrannical overreach.

I appreciate the historical information - thank you for giving me some interesting material to read and learn about. However I have to disagree with a point you've made in your last paragraph. Specifically...

Historically, the US has not tried to maintain a central register of everyone in the country legally such that it would be easy to only deport the right people

This isn't actually true anymore, and hasn't been for a while. The NSA's surveillance and profiling system most likely has a flag for whether or not someone's an illegal immigrant, and if it doesn't it would be able to add one in seconds. The sheer amount of data and processing they have, along with their access to Meta and Google's advertising databases means that they'd be able to organise the deportation and identify the illegals in a single SQL query.

keeping such a register would be tyrannical overreach.

Those people are correct! That doesn't change anything about it already existing, however.

This isn't actually true anymore, and hasn't been for a while. The NSA's surveillance and profiling system most likely has a flag for whether or not someone's an illegal immigrant, and if it doesn't it would be able to add one in seconds.

Winston Smith was born in 1970 in a poor rural county which never digitised its birth records. He has never had a passport. The SSA has long-since lost any copies they kept of the documents he submitted when he first applied for an SSN in 1986.

Yossarian was brought to the US by his parents as a teenager in 1983. His shitlib high school guidance councillor helped him acquire an SSN in 1986 using the US birth certificate of a baby who died shortly after being born in 1970. (Back then birth and death certificates were not positively matched, so you could use a dead person's birth certificate). His parents' visas have long since expired, and they were out of status when they died in the 1990s.

How does the NSA know which one is a US citizen and which one is an illegal?

The problem with a mass roundup-and-deport is with corner cases like these, not people who entered the country on a 4-year visa 5 years ago.

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"They could, and then we'd Nuremberg them and throw their ideas out of the Overton window" doesn't strike me as a solution to immigration, though. Certainly not a final one.

doing what it takes to actually solve [X] would make America look bad...

This seems a correct take, and generalizes to quite a bit of the everyday grumbling we hear about other "unsolvable" problems like homelessness, uninsured drivers, and street crime. Not that the solutions that look bad are always effective, but they are probably moreso than current inaction.

It's not that they would make the US look bad abroad. It's that they'd look bad in the US. There are plenty of people who like the idea of not having to see, e.g., homeless people or immigrants but who aren't going to support actually rounding them up en masse. In many cases weeding them out from the general population would require invasive enforcement policies that would anger voters who support Doing Something. (This is a pervasive element of politics - people like the idea of a problem being fixed or a certain outcome being achieved, but balk at the tradeoffs involved in actually doing it).

Yeah but the rest of the world isn't the leader of the free world. America's narrative is that it is spreading freedom and democracy and human rights. If the border starts looking like the Gaza Strip, homeless people are being carted off to prison etc. you'd see foreign governments take advantage of that. The global elites are more or less in agreement on this issue of immigration too and I think actually truly believe it, so they aren't going to change. They'd be embarrassed among their peers, which I think they care about more than what voters and their fellow countrymen think. The only way to change it would be to replace it with people who are America First i.e. don't care about the U.N. or Western Europe or NGO's opinions. Plus they'd have to tell a bunch of legal organizations to get fucked (foreign and domestic). It would be a massive endeavor.

I do agree that home front is also a problem. Leftists would be agitating and you'd see newspapers like the Guardian crying about it from day one and trying to get sympathy for migrants. You'd either have to have discredited these organizations so much that nobody cares what they think, or straight up jail and beat them into submission. Then you'd also have to have a population that is okay with that as well. Because right now, as soon someone comes into enforce the law, every left wing newspaper in America is going to be talking about kids in cages and people dying at the border with AOC photo ops. It would have to be a whole paradigm shift that is really unreasonable to expect unless something extraordinary happens.

The only way to change it would be to replace it with people who are America First i.e. don't care about the U.N. or Western Europe or NGO's opinions.

American voters, left or right, do not give two shits about what any of those think. What is important is how American voters regard themselves. Your average middle-class suburban conservative doesn't like immigrants, but they also won't like hearing stories about abusive migrant detention centers or, say, migrants killed up by mines as I've seen advocated for here and elsewhere. You have some hardcore anti-immigrant types who fantasize about CBP shooting asylum seekers, but they're a small minority compared to people who just hope a symbolic middle finger to would-be immigrants will overcome the overwhelming economic incentives and aren't prepared to resort to the inhumane measures or extraordinary costs required for effective immigration enforcement.

The global elites are more or less in agreement on this issue of immigration too and I think actually truly believe it, so they aren't going to change.

This is probably true, but not in the way nativists think. Western countries all share a similarity in that they have a highly educated, aging population that demand standards of living, social security, etc... be maintained (and actually increase) despite declining labor force participation, retirees that are living longer than ever, and a workforce with a disproportionate aversion to manual/menial labor.

The only country of note that has bitten the bullet on avoiding immigration despite the factors above is Japan, and they've paid for it with economic stagnation. Political elites have to try to square the circle, and they've calculated (almost certainly correctly) that even if they're nominally anti-immigrant that they can't afford the political and economic costs of actually cutting off immigration. Again, there might be a minority who is happy with that outcome, but your average voter isn't going to be swayed when the politicians tell them this is what they asked for. So instead you get the status quo - capricious, half-assed enforcement which gets more capricious or more half-assed depending on whether the party in power is notionally against or for immigration.

It's not that they would make the US look bad abroad. It's that they'd look bad in the US. There are plenty of people who like the idea of not having to see, e.g., homeless people or immigrants but who aren't going to support actually rounding them up en masse.

Why not? Isn't that exactly what happened with the homeless problem when Xi came to visit California?

No, that was more or less a continuation of standard practice, i.e. disperse homeless encampments when they become too noticeable, but don't actually do anything to address homelessness. It nicely illustrates the point: people don't want to see homeless people or have to deal with them, but they're also not willing to support throwing thousands of people in prison for vagrancy or spend money to build sufficient shelters.

No, that’s stupid.

Maybe don’t put too much faith in LibsOfTikTok? Or Twitter in general. It’s optimizing for shock, not a realistic model of the world. There are better China hawks and immigration skeptics out there.

Any drill sergeants here want to give your opinion on that "parade rest"? Hlynka?

Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?

Almost certainly not. Honestly, a supervillain plan like that seems almost comforting compared to trying to explain US border policy otherwise.

So much of what's going on (for example) just seems so...strange. It'd almost be nice if there was some Bond-esque maneuver behind it.

The federal government considers "legacy Americans" or however you want phrase the European stock of this country from the 1700's until the floodgates were thrown open in the 1960s to be the greatest threat to whatever America is supposed to be now. I can't view allowing illegal immigrants into the military as anything other than importing foreigners to oppress the natives. I don't think China needs to bribe American politicians at all, since they have common cause against me and my children.

Your fellow original-European-stock Americans overwhelmingly vote for politicians who are either in favor of more non-European immigration or at most only care a little bit about it but do not actually try very hard to do anything about it when in office.

It is your own people who are mainly responsible for what is happening.

Voters in California voted for Proposition 187 - it was thrown out by low level Federal judges with help from the ACLU. Plenty of other ballot initiatives have met the same fate. How is it the voters fault when they keep getting overruled by unelected judges?

Did they? Or is it just not their top priority? Affirmative action is one of the most unpopular policies almost ever. It's lost every democratic vote it's ever been put to. And yet, politicians who supported it kept getting elected for decades. Immigration is much the same.

Tell me, when was the last time you and yours got oppressed by the big bad US military? Little Rock? The armed forces are a spectacularly bad tool for stomping on the citizenry. This is, of course, by design.

As for common cause…do you think China gives two shits about the who/whom within America? Do you think the people setting up Harvard admissions are desperate to please the CCCP? Because it’s very hard for me to see any common cause. The closest they get is China cheerfully benefiting from American internal tensions. And that’s just as easily ratcheted by convincing people like you to wail and gnash your teeth about race. If you don’t think you’re a pawn of Chinese interests, perhaps your outgroup would feel the same.

The military and their contractors interfered in the 2020 election, resulting in an illegitimate presidency with policies deliberately hostile to my people.

I’m sure this secretive black-hat conspiracy will make great use of the broke Mexicans they’re importing. How will all these lily-white Brits keep their resumes competitive?

It’s hard to find this exposé any more convincing than the various Russiagate conspiracy theories. The people flogging those surely also thought they could see Putin’s hand in every Facebook post. Why do you find this more credible?

Maybe I just haven’t forgiven Taibbi for posting most of his bombshell investigative reporting on Twitter. I guess this is a step up by comparison.

Tell me, when was the last time you and yours got oppressed by the big bad US military? Little Rock?

Not really supporting this claim, but the army lent some serious hardware to the '93 Waco siege, and one of the more iconic photos includes an M1 that the FBI "borrowed" in front of the burning compound, complete with proudly waving US flag. That is far more recent than Little Rock.

Also Kent State.

Little Rock?

You mean when the military was deployed against schoolchildren in order to crush their ethnic solidarity and clear the way for ethnic cleansing?

Ethnic solidarity is when you bully the shit out of children with a different skin color?

Yep. Good times.

It is obviously an example of the state doing exactly what WhiningCoil is afraid of. It’s also probably older than him. My point is that military intervention in American culture is so rare and awkward that it’s not why the army is “importing foreigners.” There’s a much simpler explanation, which is that the armed forces are desperate for anyone remotely resembling a fit human. Populations of poor young men from agriculture are recruiters’ bread and butter. Assuming it’s a ploy to “oppress the natives” is kind of ridiculous.

If the Chinese government wants to get people in they can take the much easier route of buying or setting up US companies via proxies that bring people over on work visas, the salary threshold / other H1B is obviously no match for the resources of the CCP.

This is more likely some group of men who have realized that life as an illegal in the US is still vastly better than life in most of the world, including for most Chinese (I doubt these are tier one elites).

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