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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?

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.

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.