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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25917 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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Saw this linked elsewhere, and do we now have a better notion of what was going on inside OpenAI with the attempted ousting of Sam Altman? With Altman re-instated, and a new, Altman-friendly board in place, is this the kind of revision of the mission statement that was worrying the previous board?

I continue to believe the real danger from AI is not the AI itself, but the humans that use it, and "We can make zillions from fat, juicy, military contracts/Whoops, how we were to know that would happen?" seems like one of the failure modes that should concern the AI doomer set.

I don't see it as providing any new information: this was almost so certain as to be predetermined. The MIC is a lucrative and stable system to be integrated into, and the dynamics of capitalism were going to inevitably drive OAI into its arms. Little different from Google pulling out of China for being a totalitarian regime to, five years later, begging Daddy Xi to please let them make money in China.

Safetyists can draw some minimal level of comfort from the fact that OAI priorities will marginally shift from improving capabilities towards AGI to building tools that the MIC desires. More profits, less fundamental/deep research. (And I think that's genuinely good for safetyists: a smarter drone swarm is not going to destroy humanity.)

a smarter drone swarm is not going to destroy humanity

Not if you think the danger lies in the super-intelligent AI getting control of that smarter drone swarm to achieve its end. I don't believe in the super-intelligent AI, I do believe in ordinary dumb humans getting shiner, more destructive toys, and somebody presses the wrong button or is insufficiently clear about what or who the target should be, and then "oops" but it's too late then. 'How were we supposed to know that setting up autonomous killbots might come back to bite us in the ass? Sorry, widow of Mr. President, we never intended it to be our motorcade that got zapped, it was supposed to be the other guys over the border of the country our guy was visiting at the time'.

The future of Open Ai is much like Wolfram Alpha--something overhyped to change the world and initially really cool and useful, but now crap due to to extreme metering of computational power and paywalls. Expect the same here. The need to turn a profit from this will limit the power.

You know, I totally forgot about Wolfram Alpha. I remember it was really cool back several years when I last played around with it, but after I got through the math classes I had it help me with, it just flew out of my mind and was forgotten.

Disagree, GPT may be thoroughly spayed in the political sense but (as of now) this is still not enough to stop a slightly dedicated shitposter attacker, and while it has a long way to go in terms of cognition, what we have is already enough for many use cases. Cooding with it in particular is amazingly convenient, developers I know still have to wrangle it and correct its output but it is very tangibly helpful, and for me as a not-dev, being able to write simple scripts for work in 5-10 minutes of prompting instead of 1-2 hours of googling (especially if I'm a noob at the relevant language) is an absolute blessing. I imagine assorted wordcels feel the same way.

Don't think this is at all true. A lot of usecases are porn, and quite a few involve violence or 'being offensive' or racism, but the vast majority of llm usecases work almost as well as they would without censorship/safety training.

While I'm impressed by the progress that has OpenAi had made, and admit that I underestimated thier methodology, I remain bearish on the underlying technology or reasons I've already gone into at length.

My hope is perhaps the technology is overhyped. Given the apparent change in just a few months about six months ago, I was expecting even bigger changes by now. Here’s hoping there is some kind of difficult technical issue.

I think there's more a staircase of jagged growth than a straight line up at the leading edge. You have leaps from GPT-2 to GPT-3 to GPT-3.5 to GPT-4. The gap between them can be years. GPT-3 was a cool toy but two years later GPT-3.5 changed the world. Even though there's been no qualitative change from GPT-4 last year, they've multiplied the context limit and added visual/internet browsing capabilities.

Why jagged? I reckon it takes time to process their gains understanding-wise, adopt new software improvements, get more training materials and buy new hardware. There's other stuff they do like censoring or optimizing . They're thinking 'do I really want to spend 100 million now and get a better version of GPT-4 or wait a bit longer for when my resources go further, once we've figured out X, Y and Z'. Training the models costs a lot of money and ties down a lot of compute. You wouldn't want to constantly be in training and making small improvments, missing out on making big improvements.

Just because nothing happened for the last few months, it doesn't mean that progress has stopped.

Maybe (though it’s really been more than a few months). We shall see. Perhaps it is merely copium.

The only interesting thing about the accelerationist vs safetyist wars is that for some reason the safetyists actually thought they were still going to matter once big money and the military-industrial complex decided what should be. EA hangers-on writing papers for their pet think tanks are just lucky they're unserious enough people to be sidelined through board wrangling and don't need to be thrown off any bridges.

The ‘safetyist’ guys are in many cases the very same engineers who demanded Altman’s reinstatement so they could get their Microsoft (or other) payout when it comes.

In truth, most people will abandon most principles when presented with a good chance of getting rich. And you can always justify it by telling yourself someone else was going to do it anyway, and at least this way you get paid.

I've definitely believed all along that once the money fountain got within their sights, all the "ha ha ha of course nothing will change/it changes" was the next step.

We solemnly swear we won't ever do anything even the teensiest bit naughty (unless it makes us a LOT of money).

I suppose it was just a bit eye-opening exactly how powerless the people who thought they were in charge really were, but yeah. AI danger is people, and people danger is greed, and "we can make tons of money off government contracts, don't let's be too fussy about which governments even" is always going to beat "AI can be an existential risk and we must be vewwy vewwy quiet when hunting wabbits", no matter how idealistic and "but look at all our high-quality technical papers full of the most jargoniest jargon!" you can pull out.

This is why I always thought the safety-first position— the people with power/money care more about increasing their wealth than in preserving humanity. And AI, if it actually works as promised, is a big, flashing “I win” button right in front of them. The only thing that might cause someone to consider blowing up an AI bank is if it belongs to a rival. The government wants it because it’s important to maintaining geopolitical status. The rich want it because the massive efficiency gains will put money in their pockets.

They've long been called useful idiots whose ideas around safety only really serve to establish and maintain control and do nothing to prevent evil uses.

I think this move vindicated that analysis.

'Evil uses'.

At the moment, LLMs couldn't plot their way out of a paper bag and fail at basic logic.

If we're talking 'evil' using LLMs to combat 'extremism' and 'misinformation' is both widely not seen as 'evil' and the most immediate use. They'll also be used to snoop through people's emails and highlight things cops could use.

Was any of that a use case OpenAI mission statement prohibited?

Image recognition seems good enough now though that killer drones that don't need an uplink and guidance to their own targets so they're immune to jamming are going to be fielded fairly soon. (<5 years).

But is OpenAI best at that?

I deliberately remained axiologically agnostic because what you think the machine should be restricted to do or not to isn't relevant to the fact that putting it behind a locked door and giving the key to the State and Corporations is never ever going to work.

They would have had a better chance putting it all in the hands of a single man. Organizations are structurally unable to stay mission focused. And only naive academics could believe otherwise to this day.

But is OpenAI best at that?

AFAIK they're not even in the conversation.

OpenAI bragging about its safety statement and mission statement which were going to make it the most ethicallest ever research company, don't be worried but just trust us guys. And now this.

I hate being proved correct about being cynical, I would have loved to be pleasantly surprised by "Huh, they actually do mean all the bumpf about safety and they won't cave in to the money fountain", but this is a fallen world after all.

Texas Border Flareup... Again

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23A607/295564/20240112012220571_23a607%20DHS%20v%20TX%20supplement.pdf

Border Patrol’s normal access to the border through entry points in the federal border barrier is likewise blocked by the Texas National Guard installing its own gates and placing armed personnel in those locations to control entry. See id. at 4a. And the Texas National Guard has likewise blocked Border Patrol from using an access road through the pre- existing state border barrier by stationing a military Humvee there.

Texas has seized a public park in Eagle Pass to take control of a 2.5 mile stretch of the border(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-blocks-federal-border-agents-processing-migrants-eagle-pass-shelby-park/). This is a bigger deal than it seems; the only boat launch and main surveillance point for miles is located there, effectively preventing border patrol from operating over a relatively wider frontage.

Context

The State of Texas has long been adding concertina wire to the border to prevent crossings, and has been accusing the federal government of cutting it to allow migrants to cross. Recently Texas won an injunction in court blocking the federal government from doing this, and the federal government has of course appealed, but the injunction includes an exception for if cutting the wire is necessary to assist migrants experiencing a medical emergency.

So Texas seized the main surveillance point and boat launch(in this sector) for the border patrol to prevent them seeing migrants experiencing a medical emergency. For the record, I don't trust the federal government with this "medical emergency" exception either, but this is flatly illegal in, well, pretty much every way you approach it.

https://news4sanantonio.com/news/trouble-shooters/texas-blocks-border-patrol-from-entering-key-area-for-illegal-crossings

Of course the border patrol union is siding with Abbott, which would make it awkward for fedgov if they cared. Although Abbott's justification has nothing to do with the border patrol union's:

Texas has the legal authority to control ingress and egress into any geographic location in the state of Texas, and that authority is being asserted with regard to that park in Eagle Pass

And anecdotally his fundraising emails are talking a lot more about state sovereignty than normal. It led to a twitter breakdown by Gina Hinojosa(head of the Texas democrats) accusing him of being a secessionist, and the admittedly low chance of Gina Hinojosa of all people meming Texas independence into the political mainstream through the power of negative partisanship is kind of hilarious.

But back to the topic at hand; it's unclear what Abbott's actual game is; he's an accomplished constitutional lawyer(literally; that's how he became governor) and knows he's going to lose at court. He's also never been the reckless type and so it's unlikely he did this without thinking it through. Angling for a Trump cabinet seat, maybe? It also surprises me that he did this now; primaries are coming up in March, and Abbott endorsed a relatively wide array of candidates to try to shift the house in a more partisan republican direction; taking a political risk like this one is unlike him.

But back to the topic at hand; it's unclear what Abbott's actual game is; he's an accomplished constitutional lawyer(literally; that's how he became governor) and knows he's going to lose at court. He's also never been the reckless type and so it's unlikely he did this without thinking it through. Angling for a Trump cabinet seat, maybe? It also surprises me that he did this now; primaries are coming up in March, and Abbott endorsed a relatively wide array of candidates to try to shift the house in a more partisan republican direction; taking a political risk like this one is unlike him.

His problem was that he had to be seen as doing something. His credibility was low with the right.

He's been off side with the base regarding some recent legal issues. Alex Jones was getting railroaded by a far left judge in Austin and Abbott didn't even make a token comment about due process. A bunch of Bushies were upset about Ken Paxton beating George P Bush and teamed up with the Dems to impeach him in a process that abused the rules. After Paxton won Abbott sent out a press release congratulating him on winning a fair trail instead of admitting the problems with the process.

So Abbott needs to shore up his credibility with the right.

Picking a fight over the border is attractive for a number of reasons.

  • Biden's border policies are extremely unpopular, to the point that his administration wants to avoid delineating them. Forcing Garland to take them to court likely means forcing the Biden admin
  • Under Trump the legal left took the position that States had a number of rights to defy federal immigration law and enforcement. This puts them in a position where they need to oppose their own legal briefs from five years ago.
  • Any legal fight will take years and keep illegal immigration in the news for that time. If Biden tries to do something extreme it more of an opportunity for Abbott.

I'd agree that it's political. The political situation is either A) You know the Feds will stop you, so you be a good boy and do nothing. Your meek compliance gets you zero enthusiasm from the right, and whispers start that you're an open-borders sympathizer, or B) You do something like this, stick to it as long as possible, make the Feds physically stop you. It'll help for a little while with the actual situation, and being seen to try to do something is good for his political support. Forcing the Feds to actually physically stop it and showing video of them doing that will help his political situation, making the case that he's on their side and is a fighter, and it's the Feds' fault that it isn't working.

Except Abbott is almost assured to get slapped down very fast. He’s literally a top constitutional lawyer; he knows he’s going to lose at court and his options will be ‘back down’(much more likely) and look weak or ‘nullify federal law directly’ which he doesn’t have enough troops to do.

If you start from the position that this is a probing action, it doesn't really matter if it gets slapped down.

How long will it take to have a case like this run through the system? Who’s bringing the lawsuits? The optics are very much in Abbot’s favor here. He is going to be sued by the federal government for checks notes protecting the border when the federal government decided not to. And keep in mind that Abbot’s position is extremely popular among conservatives.

The courts tend to hold the right to the intersection of leftist and rightist strictures, whereas they hold the left to no standard at all. In this case the courts will rule Abbott is wrong on the grounds of Federal authority overriding his.

It will also take months or years for something like this to get to the courts. Courts tend to work slowly, and it can always be appealed to a higher court until ScOTUS. Then the feds simply have an order telling Abbot to stop, but if he doesn’t he’s had years to dig into positions that allow him to control the situation. And that’s assuming that the feds will risk the optics of trying to forcefully remove the TNG, which almost certainly will get violent.

No, the courts can move fast with preliminary injunctions when they want. And they want far more often when it benefits the left than the right.

Texas is in the fifth circuit, which I believe is more right-leaning?

It doesn’t matter when it’s this blatant.

Yeah, you're probably right.

I guess I mostly just meant that the one-sidedness probably applies less there.

It doesn't matter that much. BOTH left- and right-leaning courts at the appeals and higher level tend to favor the left over the right, though the left more so than the right.

The only question the right needs to be asking is this:

What will it take (institutionally, legally, even diplomatically) to effect mass deportation of 10m + illegals? They need to be rounded up, processed and removed without successful injunction or legal challenges for this to occur. This is the only viable deterrent and the only viable way to ‘close’ the border. If you don’t deport, everything else is worthless. Large transit camps, mandatory nationwide enhanced e-verify with prison sentences for employer noncompliance (all the way up and down the chain of command), roadblocks in all major cities to root out illegal migrants with immediate deportation if unable to prove citizenship and - most importantly of all - an end to birthright citizenship to kill the incentive.

Trump spent a long time saying it should happen. But even he didn’t dare even propose the mechanism by which it would happen, and if there’s any reason (above all else) for pessimism on this issue, it’s that.

I doubt you could implement this in a way that has any non-zero chance of a false positive.

Liberal democracies will accept occasionally jailing the innocent, but they will not accept deporting a citizen.

According to the Government Accountability Office ICE has been accidentally doing this for years already: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-487

Sure; but that’s under decades old law.

A new initiative would necessarily attract blame for that.

US police kill citizens semi-randomly all the time, yet the US still has police. In practice people are fine with false positives and trade-offs. There are those who died of COVID vaccine injuries, yet that didn't stop the rollout.

US police kill citizens semi-randomly all the time

No they don’t, unjustified homicides by police are extremely rare.

I don't know how often American police shoot an unarmed person who wasn't resisting arrest or anything like that - plausibly, an event meeting that description could happen once a week or once a month. In a nation of 330 million people, that's completely meaningless, of course. But if something happens once a week, it's true in the colloquial sense that it happens "all the time".

I was thinking of Justine Diamond, or police breaking into this weirdo's car and shooting him: https://www.cpr.org/2022/09/13/clear-creek-county-deputies-shooting/

They also get the wrong house from time to time in these no-knock raids as mentioned below. I don't know how one defines 'all the time' vs 'extremely rare' in these national-level statistics but it's definitely a 'non-zero chance' and either way supports my broader point.

My head hurts after reading that link. And I frankly almost want to side with the cops, that dude sounds incredibly irritating, and the best solution seems to be to walk away and ignore him, but they're not allowed to do that.

If cops have discretion to shoot him dead, surely they have the discretion to walk away.

“Can you ask Clear Creek what their plan is? If there is no crime and he’s not suicidal or homicidal or a great danger, then there’s no reason to contact him,” a CSP sergeant says over the radio. “Is there a medical issue we’re not aware of?”

“No,” a patrol trooper responded back.

But the increasing number of officers on the scene remained there, engaged for almost an hour and 20 minutes, attempting to get Glass to come out of the car. At one point, a deputy climbed on to the hood of the car and shined a flashlight into his eyes and remained there, eventually drawing his gun and pointing down into the car at Glass.

Extremely rare but SWAT teams do occasionally raid the wrong house.

As the saying goes, the optimal amount of a bad outcome is not zero.

So if you were in Abbot's position what would you do in response to the illegal migration crisis promoted by the Biden regime?

And anecdotally his fundraising emails are talking a lot more about state sovereignty than normal. It led to a twitter breakdown by Gina Hinojosa(head of the Texas democrats) accusing him of being a secessionist, and the admittedly low chance of Gina Hinojosa of all people meming Texas independence into the political mainstream through the power of negative partisanship is kind of hilarious.

If the federal goverment supports illegal migration then that legitimizes greater authority for the states. Unlike seccession, this is compatible with federalism provided the federal goverment are run by people who actually oppose mass illegal migration, as is their duty to do so. If not, there is still not seccession and if anything, Texas would be making the rest of their country a favor. But there is an evolution into greater exercise of power of the states and less sovereignty of the Federal goverment. Or it could be about the dominant ideology of those in control of it. If their agenda is like the current Biden administration, the states actually behaving more like the primary goverment would be the natural, reasonable evolution. A case of the mandate of heaven passing to those willing to behave in accordance to their duty towards their people. Of course this implies a duty to impeach Biden, and his officials who are following the criminal conduct in favor of mass illegal migration.

The way the law is seen should evolve in response to the circumstances. If the federal goverment is run by extremists who are willing to trample over rights and impose their way then (even more than the past) more state sovereignty should be something that conservatives support. Then this ideological evolution should affect both trying to exercise power in terms of executives and in terms of conservatives in the supreme court.

I’d like to see you elaborate on Biden’s “promotion” of the crisis. I tend to agree with @hydroacetylene that the economic incentives are going to dominate; are the Feds not enforcing that? They’re still detaining and deporting significant numbers.

His administration has been using lawfare to stop any attempt by states to stop illegal immigration. (This suit, against the buoys, against the new Texas immigration law, etc.)

There were less than 8 million Hispanics in 1966 and only 4% of the population

Wow, Biden really got started early, huh?

So if you were in Abbot's position what would you do in response to the illegal migration crisis promoted by the Biden regime?

Expand e-verify and crack down on non-citizen employment(most of these people are economic migrants who only come for higher wages), continue doing what he's already doing at the border, invoke the interstate compact with Mexican states again to break up caravans before they arrive at the border. Crack down on sanctuary cities(of which Texas has plenty).

So if you were in Abbot's position what would you do in response to the illegal migration crisis promoted by the Biden regime?

Keep going with the buses? That seems to have worked in New York City, which is now less "send me your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" and more "stick 'em in tent cities before we can boot them out" (I don't see AOC turning up to cry in front of photographers before any NYC migrant centres, unlike her little jaunt to Tornillo).

"The federal government insists we accommodate your entry? We're complying, we're accommodating you every step of the way to move deeper and deeper into this country you wish to live free and unafraid in, up to the big urban centres which are crying out for your contribution to vibrancy, economic development, and the rich tapestry of all human endeavours!"

It’s not a good solution. These people’s children will still be US citizens from birth, even if they stay in New York and California they will still vote and their vote will count in the house and for the presidency. They will still take welfare and other resources from contributing taxpayers. The disproportionately high amounts of crime they and their descendants commit will still affect you and your own family. Deporting them to New York achieves nothing.

It’s not a good solution. These people’s children will still be US citizens from birth, even if they stay in New York and California they will still vote and their vote will count in the house and for the presidency.

So what? Assuming they vote Democrat (and you know what they say about assumptions) They'll be voting in New York and California isn't going to change the electoral calculus all that much.

ETA:

Deporting them to New York achieves nothing.

This is obviously incorrect on multiple fronts. Aside from assisting those who are seeking sanctuary being the morally correct course of action from a good Christian perspective, it helps Abbott politally by being seen to take his his constituents concerns seriously and it helps the Democrats by giving them what they want.

Deporting them to New York achieves nothing.

Deporting them to New York means the average New Yorker who didn't give a damn when it was a bunch of rednecks down West and South of them dealing with this crap now sees it on their doorstep, and goes to put pressure on their congresscritter about it. Like I said, AOC is very conspicuously not crying in front of the migrant tent city in Brooklyn, whereas she had no problem flying down to Texas to do a photo-op about it. And Mayor Adams is having no problems doing Bad Evil Wicked Things like evicting poor homeless refugees once their time in official shelters is up.

Congresscritters then put pressure on government, which sees it can start cracking down at least some without being pilloried for it, as congresscritters will report back to their constituents that they are indeed Doing Something.

But back to the topic at hand; it's unclear what Abbott's actual game is; he's an accomplished constitutional lawyer(literally; that's how he became governor) and knows he's going to lose at court. He's also never been the reckless type and so it's unlikely he did this without thinking it through. Angling for a Trump cabinet seat, maybe? It also surprises me that he did this now; primaries are coming up in March, and Abbott endorsed a relatively wide array of candidates to try to shift the house in a more partisan republican direction; taking a political risk like this one is unlike him.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is the Leviathan-shaped hole.

Abbott strikes me as a savvy guy, and I think he might be trying to position himself as a Ceaser to Trump's Gracchus. I think that he thinks that the Plebs (IE the general public) and the Legions (IE the rank-and-file Cops, National Guard, Border Patrol, etc...) might side with him rather than the Senate, and he's now testing the waters with what is essentially a probing action. The CBP Union taking his side reinforces this impression.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is the Leviathan-shaped hole.

this is gibberish what does this even mean?

It's a reference to the book Leviathan by philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes claimed that people are inherently selfish and capable of violence. The natural state of man is a "war of all against all," or an anarchic realm of banditry and feuds. Enlightened self-interest leads to the formation of governments, but when those governments act in ways that make people think they would be better of with anarchy, it weakens the power of the state and encourages civil war and criminality.

Hlynka believes (as I understand it) that this is more or less the most important text of political philosophy in Western civilization and that it is underappreciated in the modern world. This is the best source I can find of him explaining his views on the matter.

I have, and I continue to maintain that "the Left" and "the Right" are best understood as a religious schism within the Enlightenment with disciples of Rousseau on one side and the disciples of Hobbes on the other. Both accepted Locke's theory of the social contract (or at least the broad strokes thereof) but each had vastly different ideas about the relationship of the individual to said contract. The American Revolution skewed one way, the French the other.

@HlynkaCG if I've misrepresented your opinions.

No, you pretty much covered it.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it "the most important text of political philosophy in Western civilization" but I would easily place it in the top 10, and I do believe that the liberal/post-modernist domination of academia has resulted in it being severely underappreciated and often misunderstood in [current year].

Rousseau died long after Hobbes died lmao and I always have hated his posts and even with your explanation I still don't understand what he's saying. If Hobbes was alive and writing today he'd probably call him a leftist from what I've seen from him. One time he told me slavery in the South was inspired by Rousseau and that Southern planters and slave owners were leftists. Just a bizarre view of the world.

The opposition with Rousseau is in the conception of the state of nature which is fundamental to the liberal ideological grounding of all post 1789 politics.

Rousseau believes that humans are naturally good and that people must give away their natural rights in exchange for civil rights to a government that will promote the General Will: a return to the state of nature through the abolition of all social noms, as they are inherently evil.

Hobbes believes that humans are naturally evil and that people must lease their natural rights to a legitimate sovereign so that he may defend them and prevent the War of All Against All. The goal of good government is to avoid tyranny, which is the violation of natural law by anyone because it returns it's victims to the natural state and makes chaos and rebellion legitimate.

These two tendencies are well represented in the French revolution and hereafter in every Liberal project.

Hynkla doesn't have weird views at all, he's merely got the views held by most people who have been in direct contact with violence, your cops, soldiers, etc. People who know that society is rife with violent deviants who would victimize everyone if not for the organized monopoly on force. And he's constantly advocating for the maintenance of order as the core of right wing politics.

I happen to disagree as a perennial traditionalist and reject the idea of a state of nature altogether at this point, but no it's not a weird position. And it makes perfect sense here: there is chaos and lawlessness at the border and anyone who restores order is legitimate regardless of means because legitimacy requires the enforcement of order first.

I'd say that's a reasonably accurate summary of my position.

Unfortunately, Hobbes's advice to the governed is to bow down and kiss the feet of the sovereign, obey without complaint almost no matter how horrible they are, because whatever they are is better than being in that state of nature, the war of all against all. Unless, that is, you think you can defeat the current sovereign and do better.

Hynkla doesn't have weird views at all, he's merely got the views held by most people who have been in direct contact with violence, your cops, soldiers, etc. People who know that society is rife with violent deviants who would victimize everyone if not for the organized monopoly on force.

It's certainly a convenient philosophy for those who embody the whip hand; it justifies anything they might do.

You're leaving out the big hole that famously makes Leviathan the "Rebel's catechism".

The sovereign must be obeyed absolutely insofar as he is not a tyrant. Is he to declare war onto you you have free reign to blow him and all his agents up.

Hobbes does not believe in limited government, but he does believe in natural law as a limiting principle of all possible action. God himself damns tyrants.

It is not just untrue to say that Hobbes justifies all sovereign action. It is actually the opposite of what he says and he got exiled and censored out of it so I'd like you to take that back.

That said yes, if you can't do better you shouldn't destroy all of society out of spite. I don't think that's an unreasonable moral standard. I oppose communism on those very grounds after all.

You're leaving out the big hole that famously makes Leviathan the "Rebel's catechism".

I mentioned it. "Unless, that is, you think you can defeat the current sovereign and do better."

God himself damns tyrants.

He may, but His damnation does those under the tyrant no good.

That said yes, if you can't do better you shouldn't destroy all of society out of spite.

Or do anything but obey. For an American, that means that if you're not ready, able, and willing to take on the entire United States Government and personally replace it with something better of your own devising, suck it up buttercup.

"Seeing that from the virtue of the Covenant whereby each Subject is tied to the other to perform absolute and universal obedience to the City, that is to say, to the Sovereign power, whether that be one man or Council, there is an obligation derived to observe each one of the civil Laws, so that that Covenant contains in it self all the Laws at once; it is manifest that the subject who shall renounce the general Covenant of obedience, doth at once renounce all the Lawes. Which trespass is so much worse than any other one sin, by how much to sin always, is worse than to sin once. And this is that sin which is called TREASON; and it is a word or deed whereby the Citizen, or Subject, declares that he will no longer obey that man or Court to whom the supreme power of the City is entrusted."

It is actually the opposite of what he says and he got exiled and censored out of it so I'd like you to take that back.

He spent time in exile because he supported the wrong sovereign.

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Abbott gives me the same general impression, but doing this over the summer makes it politically much easier to eke out a victory if things don’t go his way. He has a 10,000 man army camped on the border but that won’t save his rear, politically(although it might get him out of an arrest) and losing at the Supreme Court and then calling the bluff is, well, a pretty big gamble to pull from someone who’s never been a craps player before- he prefers to count cards at blackjack- and also only has like 30,000 reliable troops even if you count operation lone star entirely separate from the Texas military department(which it assuredly is not).

On a very tangential note, I saw the Twitterati point and laugh at that upcoming movie about an American Civil War that somehow has California and Texas on the same side. Ignore the fact that that happened in my novel, but it was more that they both happened to oppose the Federal Government (well, you'd resent them a bit if they nuked every data center around to contain an AGI getting uppity, and Texas is surprisingly popular for those, not to mention glassing SF).

As such, if these secessionary sentiments ever become something more than posturing, at least I can get points for prescience.

Only people who have never seriously considered the idea could mock the possibility of an alliance between the two states with the strongest national identities against USG in a CW scenario.

They do so because it doesn't neatly follow from their political intuitions. And ignore that in an open conflict ideological loyalty is even more tenuous than normal.

Any look at Syria shows alliances of circumstance are routine. And any look at the middle east more broadly should complete this understanding with the practical reality that ideology is one of the last predictors of political loyalties if you stand to lose something more significant than your pride.

Texas and California can be friends like the IRA and the PLO.

Agreed, I recently tried to understand the current Tigray War in Ethiopia and it is such a clusterfuck that some factions are allied to each other but at the same time they are also allied to enemies of their allies which makes them enemies in ways that can easily make your eyes water. All in the midst of ethnic, religious, tribal, and of course personal allegiances shifting constantly. Not to even talk about regional and international spillover.

Both the IRA and PLO were left-wing militias.

Or consider Lebanon, where every ethnic/religious militia has at one time or another aligned both with and against every other militia.

Well, they're perfectionists in Lebanon. The leader of the HRC doesn't walk around with an internal monolog that asks "boy, I've never fought a battle with the NRA, let's check that off the list." Maybe he should. I hear the ACLU used to think that way, and possibly still does.

Makes sense for a genuine civil liberties organization, because every political faction wants to violate someone's civil rights some of the time and so the civil rights will do well to practice its independence by calling everyone out on their misbehaviour. So I would expect FIRE to do it in the modern age more than the ACLU.

When it comes to identity, I think it is Texas big gap then runner up. Not sure if that runner up is California or Florida.

Alaska for the runner-up, surely.

Also Hawaii, there is a pretty substantial Hawaiian Nationalist movement.

Ethnic Hawaiians? Or who?

Yeah. I get the impression it's sort of a "dog chasing car" movement--most of their support would evaporate were it a real possibility.

I think Alaska might have as strong an identity as Texas. The real weirdness in that civil war movie map is that Oklahoma isn't part of Texas.

East coast guy who knew — tangentially — one person from Alaska so defer to your knowledge

Indeed, that was the logic I was using. After the fictional Civil War, they remained two independent states (well, they don't have a contiguous land border), so I consider "allies of convenience" an apt label.

Adversity makes for strange bed fellows, especially when there's someone more powerful who you both hate.

Since the movie hasn't actually come out, God knows what the geopolitics there are, though I'm inclined to think that they picked those two particular states because of how absurd they think an alliance would be, explicitly presenting them as a unified entity, so as to avoid accusations of inflaming tensions (not that it did).

I'll admit I haven't seriously considered the idea, but I can't come up with something the USG can do that will alienate both CA and TX and 17 more states, but not the rest of the states.

It looks from that map like the federal government tried to take unilateral control of water allocation and decided to prioritize big cities in deserts(Pheonix, Santa Fe, Las Vegas), driving a wedge between Texas/California on the one hand and the states in between on the other and alienating the south(which is extremely rainy) with some kind of infrastructure project to transport water northwards. The bigger question is how the northwest stuck together when it jumped; it doesn't make any sense how the red and blue states there weren't at each others' throats instantly.

Oh, my goodness, you have got to read Cadillac Desert, a book about water that is one of my all-time classics. I wish I were more motivated to do good, solid, effort posts, because a review of that book could really work...

Large unilateral extension of federal domain? Later states have a lot more of it than early ones.

Texas has very little federal land. California has a lot, but so do the neighboring loyalists.

You're not wrong and yet I feel like that if shit were to hit the fan tomorrow it would be the coastal cities vs the Mormons, the Episcopalians, and the Texans.

vs the Mormons, the Episcopalians, and the Texans.

Do you mean something else?

Yah I was thinking of the Presbyterians, I always get those two flipped in my head for some reason.

Still a wealthy nursing home de jure committed to political liberalism, unless you mean the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, who are one of the smaller confessional protestant groups IIRC. They're loud on the internet but I don't think any more common than IRL tradcaths.

Do you mean the confessional Lutherans, who are indeed numerous and concentrated enough to be potentially relevant? Or are you generally referring to conservative protestants- who are extremely relevant politically right now, but the vast majority of whom are evangelical(that is, not Presbyterian- more likely to be Baptist or Pentecostal)?

Episcopalians? The denomination that couldn't turn liberal fast enough and thus provoked some vicious lawsuits over parishes trying to leave? First women clergy, first trans likewise, first gay/lesbian bishops, first female primate, first first first - of course, they've never been dominant numerically and they've been leaking numbers like a sieve, but they boast of having the richest parish in the nation, of being the National Cathedral (even though you guys don't have a state church) and, under the First Female Ever, a rather desperate claim to being a mini-communion of their own - they're so international, you see, with "108 dioceses and three mission areas in 22 countries or territories" which totally makes them the equivalent of the Anglicans or the Romans!

Since the end of the tenure of the First Female Ever and her replacement by a cis, straight, male (though he is African-American), they've quietened down a lot on all that, but still - the Episcopalians versus the coastal cities? Noo Yawk is a coastal city, is it not, and that's where they're headquartered and where all their historical associations are, and you think they'd throw that over to row in with a buncha flyover rednecks?

Blaim my general ignorance of protestant denominations, I'm always getting the Congregationalists, the Episcopalians, and the Presbyterians, flipped around in my head.

Don't worry, it's very confusing for everybody. But it did make us sit up and open our eyes when you put in the Piskies as lining up with Texas. California, I could see, if California was squaring up to the federal government over something; as good liberal footsoldiers TEC would have statements of support and flags and protests and blessings for the rebels before you could blink.

All three of those are liberal Protestant groups with membership that couldn’t get older if they tried.

The largest segment of conservative Protestantism are evangelicals(mostly Baptist with a large pentecostal minority), with confessional Lutherans and continuing anglicans vying for a very distant second and groups like churches of Christ and orthodox Presbyterians being practically tiny. The supermajority of socially conservative Christians and Christian adjacent believers in the US are evangelical, catholic, or restorationist(mostly mormon). Non-evangelical conservative Protestantism and Orthodoxy(to the point where sociological surveys usually don’t bother distinguishing mass attending orthodox from Catholics) are rounding errors nationally although some of them are concentrated enough to be regionally important.

sociological surveys usually don’t bother distinguishing mass attending orthodox from Catholics

Well, I wouldn't either, if the orthodox in question are attending the sacrifice of the mass and not the divine liturgy! (this is tongue in cheek)

Maybe it's just my local area, but conservative Presbyterians seem bigger than Lutherans or the continuing Anglicans. Though I do get the sense they're much older than even the Lutherans or Anglicans, who seem to have at least a few younger members and families.

I think Presbyterians just have a hard time distinguishing themselves from the Reformed Baptists, especially given their generally low/moderate sacramental theology. My sense is that conservative Christians who get themselves interested in some Calvin just stay where they are and see their Calvinism as a theological spin on their existing denominational affiliation (heck, around here even the continuing Anglicans are calvinists, much to my chagrin). I actually think Calvinism is kind of the evangelical Protestant version of being a trad -- male, intellectual, a little stuck up. And I say this as someone who was really attracted to Calvinism before I realized I had to find a place where the eucharistic theology was unapologetically realist and baptism was regeneration ipso facto -- so you can infer from that what you will about me.

Why Episcopalians?

The behavior of the federal government here is bizarre.

In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates? 5% 10%? And yet, the people who pull the strings in the federal government seem to be okay with defacto open borders. Let's be honest. Most of the people who are processed, shipped to another state, and given a court date years in the future will be here for good.

There appear to be two paths to US citizenship. A legal route, which is nearly impossible for most people, and an illegal route which gets easier and easier.

Recently a school in Brooklyn was shut down (for one day) to house illegal migrants. Source, with bonus inaccurate fact check:

https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-house-migrants-school-shut-down-673190116310

New York and other cities are howling about migrants being bussed into their communities, but so far seem reluctant to change their sanctuary city policies. Why? Just to stick it to Trump? To me it seems only fair that migrants be housed in the communities that explicitly claim to want them.

This has to be the number issue for every Republican candidate in 2024. It seems that the European migrant problems have made it to America. The situation seems to be getting out of control.

There appear to be two paths to US citizenship. A legal route, which is nearly impossible for most people, and an illegal route which gets easier and easier.

I am given to understand the situation is more an abuse of the asylum system. Somebody comes in, gets caught, and requests asylum, with a halfway-plausible story. It gets provisionally accepted, but the backlog for formal evaluation is like a decade long, so they get to stay in the US until that happens. Even if the formal hearing results in them getting booted out immediately, they still had a decade in the country, and can do it all again the next day.

And in turn, it is promoted by pro-immigration NGOs that coach every immigrant to plead the threshold claim necessary to get an asylum decision.

A similar thing would happen in the criminal justice system if every offender demanded a trial by jury. They don't, because sentences are high enough that they'll take a plea, but there is no such incentive in immigration courts.

[ Amusingly enough, a trial by jury is unquestionably a defendant's right under the BOR and goes back centuries, but the asylum debacle was created whole cloth by Congress in the last 70 years. ]

In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates?

There aren't many open borders advocates, but there are lots of left-leaning people who are advocates of not looking like racists or Republicans. And lots of other more left-leaning people willing to throw those accusations at anyone who wants to crack down on illegal immigration.

In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates?

To take a term already used in this thread de facto vs de jour. Vast majority would not say that they are for "open-borders" but opinion change when there's any kind of filmable enforcement action. "I'm not for open borders but don't do that." Similar to cutting spending, many maybe most want to "cut" federal spending then you give them a list of programs to cut or expand and people in effect want more spending.

The US government arent - for the most part - open border advocates. They just don’t care enough to be closed border advocates. One sees this pattern all across the West with the center-right. Nominally many are in favor of immigration restrictionism, but when it comes to it it’s just too hard to implement, there are too many legal challenges, they have other priorities.

If you want to end mass immigration (and only one Western country - Denmark - is really trying to) from the third world you need to make it the central pillar of your government. Every resource must be devoted to it. All your parliamentarians must be ideologically committed to it. You must stack the judiciary. You must devote yourself to it utterly. You need a combination of public, political and institutional support, exactly what the anti-abortion movement did in the US over decades.

Biden doesn’t need to be pro-mass-immigration for it to happen. He just needs to not be deeply ideologically committed to anti-immigration policy. Anything less than Zemmour-level devotion to nativism and inertia keeps the gates open.

The behavior of the federal government here is bizarre.

How so?

In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates? 5% 10%? And yet, the people who pull the strings in the federal government seem to be okay with defacto open borders.

What do these two points have to do with each other? If "the people who pull the strings in the federal government" are okay with something, what does it matter how much the powerless peasant masses disagree?

Why? Just to stick it to Trump?

They want to replace and degrade whites and white men in particular. There's an elite consensus that this is the way to go.

Economically - diversity quotas, govt contracts favouring non-white companies, hostile workplace environment lawsuits and affirmative action. We see various leaked information showing how white men were disfavoured in RAF hiring, how the USAF plans to make its staff more representative of America, how 20% of HR workers admit they've done it, IIRC.

Socially - see https://twitter.com/StupidWhiteAds for a huge list of examples in advertising. I can't think of any modern ads that sneer at blacks, with the exception of that Chinese ad where a young woman put her black suitor in the washing machine until he turned Chinese. There's also historical revision to prioritize the black-slavery/civil rights narrative in US history. I know enough about historiography to know that you can present and choose different facts to produce hugely different narratives, even before you start lying outright. There's also the whole concept of white privilege.

Physically - see mass immigration, both legal and illegal is the most obvious case. I suppose one could also argue that progressive taxation takes from whites and Asians, gives to blacks and browns, artificially lowering the fertility of productive groups and raising that of less productive groups.

Categorically - see the developing practice of capitalizing 'Black' and 'Brown' while decapitalizing 'white'. Delta Airlines sent a memo specifying this just the other day. The old rule was that ethnicities, regions and states like Caucasian, European or French were capitalized while colours weren't. The new rule clearly singles out whites as not being a real group with a shared identity. See also Ignatiev's theoretical work on undermining whiteness as an identity.

Alternately, observe how traditionally white countries like England are being recategorized as 'nations of immigrants', how the BBC works hard to find and fabricate diversity in history. A Doctor Who episode set in the Victorian era showed 1/3 of London being black/brown with the Doctor remarking that 'history was a whitewash'.

It's easily within the US's capabilities to prevent illegal immigration. This isn't the Russian or Chinese army on the other side of the world (which the US plans to defeat). It's unarmed, disorganized, poorly funded people right next to the US, in a hemisphere the US dominates, hoping to enter and work a job without being imprisoned or deported. Illegal immigration is a political choice for any rich, strong power.

It's hard to deny that a lot of this is true. I've noticed that a large number of ads seem to fall into the "white man is disrespected by woman/minority" category. The Hanes ads where Charlie Sheen tried to be friends with Michael Jordan but was rejected seem to be patient zero. Although obviously the sitcom trope of "husband is stupid oaf / wife is smart" goes back to at least the Simpsons if not further.

I honestly don't understand how these commercials could possibly sell product, so I assume they are just pushing the agendas of the ad execs.

I honestly don't understand how these commercials could possibly sell product, so I assume they are just pushing the agendas of the ad execs.

"product?"

It's easily within the US's capabilities to prevent illegal immigration. This isn't the Russian or Chinese army on the other side of the world (which the US plans to defeat). It's unarmed, disorganized, poorly funded people right next to the US, in a hemisphere the US dominates, hoping to enter and work a job without being imprisoned or deported. Illegal immigration is a political choice for any rich, strong power.

While the US becoming minority-White might be an added bonus for plenty of establishment democrats with a lot of sway over US immigration policy, the federal government doesn't have the state capacity to deport 10 million people and it won't for the foreseeable future. Nor does it have the state capacity to consistently enforce labor laws for natives, who are better tracked. There's also no good replacement for illegal labor in the US economy; absent migrants working below market wages in jobs no-one else not on probation is willing to take food prices would skyrocket and absent illegals working 12 hour days construction would get even slower and more difficult. This is politically untenable so no one wants to do it.

Now the US can do a lot to slow the tide(like cracking down on sanctuary cities), but it's not just that we can't deport 11 million people, it's that we don't really know how to run a society without them. They do a lot of important jobs Americans refuse to and that's a travesty, but no one knows how to fix it.

They do a lot of important jobs Americans refuse to (construction, food)

Back in the 1950s and 1960s the US could construct things quickly and simply, Eisenhower built the national highway system even as he expelled a million illegal immigrants. If food prices rise, they could try subsidizing or mechanizing labour-intensive work. There are non-trivial expenses in health/education spending on illegal immigrants, that money could be redirected to subsidies. Illegal immigrants undercut domestic workers, it would logically raise employment and wages amongst the working class.

Nobody had this helpless attitude for the other major problems the US faced. When the Arabs launched an oil embargo and plunged the developed world into a recession, the US didn't give up on supporting Israel. They rationed petrol, they launched fuel-efficiency programs, they looked into nuclear energy and renewables.

The US state apparatus is way larger today and has all kinds of fancy AI/surveillance tools, it's well within their abilities to launch Operation Wetback 2.0.

Back in the 50s and 60s Americans were young and thin and quite a bit less rich.

They certainly don't seem to feel rich today, what with the common complaints about rent and healthcare and being unable to support a family on a single income anymore.

Perhaps single income only felt rich before because men were effectively earning their wife's share in the market and their wife felt rich as long as her husband was, resulting in some kind of positive-sum richness feeling?

Most Americans can, in fact, support a family on a single income. Yes, a 50’s size family.

They don’t do it because of lifestyle constraints- every adult has a car and everyone in the house has a room and multiple sets of nice clothes and we eat at restaurants a lot and at home we don’t have beanie weenies is not how the fifties single earner families lived.

You can confiscate the wealth of illegal aliens to fund sending them back. You can implement work ID laws that incentivize migrants to take a ticket back to the US. You can trawl social media etc to find the communities comprised of mostly illegal migrants. You can fine businesses who use illegal labor.

Food prices would only increase as a proportion of income for the already wealthy; the lower class will now find significantly more demand for their labor and can pick and choose which businesses to work for to maximize their quality of life. (We saw this happen with the peasants after the black plague in Europe; fewer peasants = more demand for their labor = a natural wealth redistribution from the wealthy to the poor). They would make more money than the price of food increases. The eradication of remittance payments means more funds in US economy. Would be enormously beneficial for the lower and middle class and really only hurt the very wealthy white collar workers who are far removed from the economic competition of lower/middle class.

You can confiscate the wealth of illegal aliens to fund sending them back.

That would be astoundingly cruel and inhumane.

Who's going to pick fruit and work in slaughterhouses, hmm? I suppose you can use prison labor, but it's not like there's a bottomless well of that either and it's not well-distributed or trustworthy enough.

The poor can go back to eating rice and beans, I guess. But there isn't a scenario where meat and fruits and vegetables prices rise lower than the wages of the american poor and working class. That's assuming the wages of nativeborn workers go up very much at all; illegals mostly work in different industries(eg fruit picking) than the native poor.

If the US government could control immigration, they could let in people who would credibly fill the roles that most need filling, if the polity wills it. And not let in, say, pregnant women who want citizenship with publicly funded healthcare and schooling for their baby, unless the polity actually wants that.

But, yes, the first part is still very difficult under current circumstances.

The pregnant women are more sympathetic than the workers, so the people who would be let in are reversed from how you've described it.

Possibly so, there’s nothing to say even a more functional democracy than ours currently is needs to optimize entirely for economics.

Who does that in Japan? Who does it in Iceland (well they don’t have fruit, but slaughter houses apply)? Millions would be happy to do these jobs once the pay rises, just like you have dudes doing underwater welding. And the pay will rise in the absence of a pseudo slave labor class.

there isn't a scenario where meat and fruits and vegetables prices rise lower than the wages of the american poor and working class [rises]

Sure there is. All of the increase in payment to “food companies” due to the rise in food prices is going to the lower class employee base (who need the money more), yet this increase in payment is paid for by everyone (lower-to-highest classes), meaning you necessarily see a transfer of wealth from upper to lower class; and on top of this, the increased cost of food for the wealthy makes prices more salient, leading to more cost-saving consumer practices which winds up enforcing more competition among food-related businesses.

It's not slave labor when someone voluntarily sells their time at a rate you don't like. It's not even pseudo slave labor.

not even pseudo slave labor

It’s not slave labor, and it’s also not “not genuine” slave labor? That’s what pseudo means. The simplified point is that, just like slave labor is great for the wealthy employers but bad for the non-slave wage competitor, so is it bad when you import a class of people who are practically economic serfs within a given industry: no hope of ever obtaining a better position because of the language barrier / citizenship barrier / possibly no degree at all even in Mexico/Honduras/etc.

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Who does that in Japan?

Fruit and meat are very expensive in Japan per google. Citrus(the largest crop there that needs to be picked by hand) production per this source(https://calfreshfruit.com/2022/02/22/challenges-for-the-japanese-citrus-market/) is declining in part due to a labor shortage. Japan is a major importer of every category of foodstuff IIRC because the terrain's not suitable for mass agriculture, so I suppose agriculture works differently there. Oh, and Japan has southeast Asian guest workers harvesting crops(https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Agriculture/Japanese-farms-turn-to-foreign-workers-as-rural-population-ages).

Who does it in Iceland (well they don’t have fruit, but slaughter houses apply)?

This reddit thread(https://old.reddit.com/r/Iceland/comments/chin8z/what_is_animal_agriculture_like_in_iceland/) claims that there aren't enough slaughterhouses but I would take that with a grain of salt.

According to the Iceland review(I don't read Icelandic so this is probably the best source I can find easily-https://www.icelandreview.com/economy/without-foreign-workers-slaughterhouses-face-staffing-shortages/), foreigners.

It seriously looks like the native lower-classes of wealthy countries cannot be convinced to do these kinds of jobs absent compulsion(slaughterhouses in the US are well known for using parolees who will be imprisoned if they don't work), and there will be a shortage if foreign labor isn't available. I would rather have Hondurans do it than Indonesians, personally.

I'm not excluding that some automation improvements can reduce labor but I think all of the low hanging fruit has probably already been picked, considering getting labor is so difficult.

It does not appear that foreign workers are big source of Japan’s agricultural workforce: https://fas.usda.gov/data/japan-foreign-farm-labors-role-growing-japan

In the past 10 years, the percentage of foreign farm workers as a share of the total agricultural population has increased fourfold from 0.5 percent to two percent

Just half a percent of the agricultural population in 2010.

https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a06003/

Only 25k “guest workers” out of 1.5 million total agricultural workers, so 1.5%. This number is increasing though, coincidentally as the Japanese feel poorer and poorer…

It seriously looks like the native lower-classes of wealthy countries cannot be convinced to do these kinds of jobs

We can convince them to spend 12 years in brutal school/residency to stab utensils in human flesh for 16 hour periods at a time, for nothing but money and respect. I promise you we can convince them to pick fruit — forestry workers have some of the highest life satisfaction and doctors perhaps the lowest.

I also looked and it seems that American born employees account for a little over 60% of slaughterhouse workers

https://www.epi.org/blog/meat-and-poultry-worker-demographics/

In Iceland a lot of the butchers come from Sweden: https://www.icelandreview.com/news/hundreds-foreigners-work-slaughterhouses/#:~:text=Foreign%2Dborn%20workers%20are%20now,further%20away%2C%20even%20New%20Zealand.

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I lived in Japan from '07 to '11 and haven't been back since, so this may be out of date, but the idea that fruit and veggies are very expensive matches my memories, but is a little incomplete. Sushi and ramen are incredibly cheap in Japan, and I would extrapolate that most of the food-service labor force is somehow attached to those two parts of the industry--sushi because Japan just plain has the best fish, ramen because that's usually served with beer or on a chuhai run.

I do wish that they just stuck to having borders and made legal immigration much easier. It would make it easier to get jobs etc, for the immigrants. It would mean that we wouldn't be selecting for people who are willing to break the law.

But this position has now become toxic across the board, especially in the GOP base.

the people who pull the strings in the federal government seem to be okay with defacto open borders.

Easy: the US does not have de facto open borders. "De facto open borders" is a mood expression of nativists who don't like current state of immigration enforcement. If we actually had de facto open borders, immigration would be unfathomably higher.

The people who "pull the strings" are wedged because there's no magic solutions to the material factors driving Latino migration. Nobody wants to spend the exorbitant sums it would require to actually physically secure the southern border. Nobody is willing to countenance just shooting them. Unfucking Latin America to the point where you don't have tens of millions of people who'd rather be an illegal or quasi-legal day laborer in a country where half the people hate them than stay where they are is a nontrivial exercise, and there isn't much support for that either (try and sell the guy who wants to deport all the Mexicans on spending trillions of dollars failing to develop Latin America). On top of that, the US is like most developed countries in that it has an aging native population that demands increasingly high standards of post-retirement living at the same time the retiree-worker ratio is getting worse, so it also just needs immigrant labor.

New York and other cities are howling about migrants being bussed into their communities, but so far seem reluctant to change their sanctuary city policies.

NY and other blue states already absorb the majority of immigrants, including illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. The central objection remains that the migrant bussing project is done in a maximally disruptive and uncooperative way.

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If nothing is done, the immigration will not necessarily be Latin American.

We are already seeing people flying to Latin America from India/Africa with the intention of migrating to the U.S. Oh, you think that they were simply tourists who wanted to visit the wonderful country of El Salvador?

https://apnews.com/article/el-salvador-travelers-fee-migration-dd176d85871e54a9eb8695f8fb03a65d

The cost to secure the Southern Border is trivial compared to the costs of unlimited immigration. Honestly, I hate to say it, but Donald Trump was right about the wall. It's the right thing to do and it wouldn't be that expensive.

We'd still have to deal with the problem of people flying in on tourist visas though.

If we actually had de facto open borders, immigration would be unfathomably higher.

Immigration is unfathomably high right now.

in a country where half the people hate them

There are some people who hate hispanics, but most people see illegals as unfortunates, generally good people, but we really need to not have any more of them. They run into condescension and annoyance at poor English language skills but actual hatred for these people is not socially acceptable or common.

The central objection remains that the migrant bussing project is done in a maximally disruptive and uncooperative way.

As opposed to the cooperative and non-disruptive way they cross the southern border? It's obviously just blue cities arguing Texas should have to deal with the negative externalities which are inevitable when hundreds of thousands of third worlders stream across the border.

The central objection remains that the migrant bussing project is done in a maximally disruptive and uncooperative way.

As opposed to the hundreds of thousands streaming across the border, which is done in a minimally disruptive and maximally co-operative way? If the sanctuary cities don't like the reality of how illegal immigration actually is done, maybe they should stop finger-wagging at the states that have to bear the brunt of the migrants turning up on the other bank of the river first thing.

Nobody wants to spend the exorbitant sums it would require to actually physically secure the southern border.

Are they really that exorbitant? The US could secure a much shorter southern Mexican border, or the even shorter southern Guatemalan border. The latter is just 459km vs 3145km between the US and Mexico, almost seven times shorter.

They’re probably not the exorbitant. For comparison , Israel used to face a similar issue with it’s Egypt border, where African economic migrants would just stroll in. We built a fence. The border is roughly 125 miles long, in a desert area. The US-Mexico border is about 2000 miles long, so it’s about a 1:16 length ratio. The population ratio between Israel and the US is about 1:37, and the gdp ratio is about 47. Fudge a little for the US border being more remote in some places, but it’s clear that y’all can totally afford a border fence.

A decent chunk of the US-Mexico border is not passable anyways, so the remoteness probably cancels out.

The real barrier is just Israel being willing to do things the west won’t.

Nobody is willing to countenance just shooting them.

If you’re correct that other non-violent measures are exorbitantly expensive and/or ineffective, I am in fact willing to countenance just shooting them. You wouldn’t have to shoot very many before the rest of them would stop coming. (Or would start openly acting like proper invaders, in which case a lot more people would start being okay with shooting a lot more of them.)

I agree with you but when you look at the fact that the Europeans let in millions of Syrians because of a single picture of a Kurdish kid washed up on a beach you realize pretty quickly that gunning down migrants doesn’t have majority support.

Enough terror attacks in Europe and I can see the Europeans hardening to the point that they do it, but the thing about Guatemalans is that they’re Christians and they don’t practice the same overt cultural and religious hostility to Europeans that many migrants from the Islamic world do, so the public is unlikely ever to have enough contempt to resort to those tactics in the US.

Fear is what leads to policy like that, and while Europeans are increasingly scared of large scale MENA immigration (see Houellebecq, Zemmour, etc), Americans aren’t very scared of Central American immigration even if they oppose it.

The first time CBP mows down a family of six, public support would evaporate in an instant (though the odds of such a policy ever making it to implementation are basically zero, since it would be comically unpopular and probably unconstitutional to boot).

Or would start openly acting like proper invaders

How many people do you think will continue buying "invader" rhetoric when the bodies of children are being paraded around on every media outlet in the world?

The overwhelming majority of the people currently streaming across the border are military-age men. If shooting broke out, the odds of a family of children getting smoked is far lower than the odds of some brazen young men.

Whether "mostly military-age men" it is or isn't true, it would be astronomically unlikely there wouldn't be at least one adorable family among the body count. All one has to do then is find them, take a bunch of pictures of the bodies, and distribute them widely, while completely ignoring the rest, and your work is done.

Even if there are literally zero adorable families naturally coming over, the cartels running the operation on the other side aren't stupid. Surely they would be willing to ensure there are a few like that and make sure they get covered.

In the name of equity and inclusion, I’d be more than okay to go without age- and gender-discrimination when it comes to distributing bullets for border enforcement.

In which case:

You wouldn’t have to shoot very many before the rest of them would stop coming.

Would apply even moreso, as military-age men are presumably the most risk-tolerant group.

Source? This does not look like the overwhelming majority are men, especially once you ignore the more action-laden pictures of fence climbing and violent clashes. Are you sure you are not just instinctively copying points from the European migrant crisis?

This could be a result of selective reporting on the part of either right-wing media, left-wing media, or both. I have seen tons of video of migrant caravans, and of migrants camped out near border checkpoints or in front of migrant processing centers, and it’s always at least 75% young men. Now, again, this could be due to the narrative being pushed by the sources of media that I consume. And, similarly, I’m sure you can acknowledge that The Atlantic is strongly pro-migrant and would at least be tempted to selectively display the most sympathetic images possible.

There are some attempts at statistics, claiming 46% female. You could of course choose to extend your argument by saying that these too are fake, but at that point, what would be sufficient evidence to persuade you?

I recently looked up the numbers after @Steffieri called me out on the same assumption. Women are in the majority among legal migrants, and make up 45-47% of illegal migrants depending on survey. It's not overwhelmingly male, but it's not majority families either.

It's tough to get numbers for different kinds of illegal immigration, though. "Streaming across the southern border" isn't even the most common form of illegal immigration most years.

Easy - kill the men, deport the women and children.

From a blue stater perspective, I'd be surprised if even 5% are true open border types. Most seem to want some sort of process for asylum seekers that seems, in theory anyway, fairly defensible. In practice, all the immigration judges in the world couldn't give everyone that sets foot in Texas a decent hearing even if they worked without vacation for the next 2 years.

The problem being that “asylum” isn’t what liberals think it is. The definition of what would allow someone to seek asylum is pretty wide and includes economic hardship. It’s not for true emergencies (say: being included in a general political or ethnic purge) but just about anything that a person would want to leave their home country for. Rubber stamping 3 million “refugees” instead of just letting them cross and disappear is a joke. The difference is paperwork. And all of that makes the generous assumption that they actually risk deportation if they decide to never show up to the hearing.

Indeed, but making that determination is a fact-based inquiry and if every individual demands one, there’s no way to keep up.

New York and other cities are howling about migrants being bussed into their communities, but so far seem reluctant to change their sanctuary city policies.

Because they, or at least enough of those in charge, are true believers in the idea that these "compassionate" policies make them The Good People. Abbott is just making them pay the price for their compassion.

It's not the percentage of the people, it's the percentage of the donor class that supports easy immigration.

Are the rich really so attracted to the idea of cheap servants that they would see their communities destroyed? I think there are some true open border believers in the far left, and that the rest of blob is just sort of going with the flow.

The dominant theme of the post Covid period has been that incentives don't matter and we can't enforce rules on anyone. So maybe we are theoretically against open borders, but we also can't actually enforce any rules (that's mean!), so we end up with defacto open borders.

2024 will be the true Red Wave if Democrats can't get their shit figured out on immigration quick. "Biden's border crisis" has a nice ring and it also happens to be true. Biden looks weak as hell here.

Are the rich really so attracted to the idea of cheap servants that they would see their communities destroyed? I think there are some true open border believers in the far left, and that the rest of blob is just sort of going with the flow.

This touches another one of those thoughts that would coagulate into an effort post if I had the will. I watch people believing obviously absurd and horrible things ("We should let infinite numbers of people across the border", "Trans women have no advantage in sports" while staring at a 250-pound "female" rugby player, etc.) and my conclusion, from being in a pretty Blue bubble with mostly leftist friends, is that you are underestimating both the number of true believers and the degree to which normies don't notice and don't care until their schools are actually being taken over by illegal immigrants.

Yes, a lot of lefties (and not just the "far" left, but mainstream liberals) literally cannot imagine that letting more people across the border is anything but good. It's a combination of "They are poor refugees fleeing oppression and it would be immoral to turn them back" and "We need more people who will become good productive American tax payers." Any suggestion that a lot of these people becoming criminals and/or net drags on the social welfare system? That's racism.

When I was younger, even on the left, "I support immigration but not illegal immigration, we welcome new Americans as long as they come the right way" was the mainstream position. Now that's racism and dangerous Trumpism.

And the normies who don't pay much attention except when a picture of people flooding across the borders hits the news? They vaguely understand that there are poor people who want to come here, as there always have been, and we have some sort of immigration system that's supposed to filter them, but to speak up and say that there seem to be some problems and maybe too many people are getting through would make you sound like a MAGA or something.

The dominant theme of the post Covid period has been that incentives don't matter and we can't enforce rules on anyone. So maybe we are theoretically against open borders, but we also can't actually enforce any rules (that's mean!), so we end up with defacto open borders.

From talking to a number of my true blue Democrat-voting friends (but who would not describe themselves as "leftists"), yes, this is pretty much the case. Ask them if they are literally in favor of open borders and they will say no. But ask them what sort of restrictions we should have, and what measures they would consider acceptable to keep undesirables out, and the best they'll come up with is "Well, maybe not someone with a violent criminal record." (As if we have access to that information for hundreds of thousands of people coming from dozens of countries.) Like, in theory they'll allow that letting Cartel soldiers just come across the border is probably bad, but anything that resembles strict enforcement makes them cry about children in cages.

Any suggestion that a lot of these people becoming criminals and/or net drags on the social welfare system?

Do you have statistics to back this?

Bluntly, this is a perfect example of the obnoxious "Cite?" demand that isn't really expressing skepticism or a desire for evidence, it's just saying "I dislike your argument so I will try to force you to waste time looking up citations which I can then dismiss."

I do not believe that you actually believe that the statement "a lot (illegal immigrants) become criminals and/or net drags on the social welfare system" is false. You might disagree with me over how much "a lot" is (a number I made no effort to quantify, but let's stipulate that I implied it's large enough to be a significant problem, and you could reasonably disagree), but you don't actually disagree that it happens with measurable frequency. You are just testing me to find out if I keep bookmarks handy for my arguments, or how much time you can get me to waste Googling something.

I actually started to do this. But I'm not going to post the links (you can use Google as well as I can) because I realized that you wouldn't actually care.

(Unsurprisingly, what you will discover is that in raw numbers, it's pretty indisputable that illegal immigrants are a net loss economically. Groups that are anti-immigration highlight the raw numbers and dismiss potential long-term benefits (how many of them eventually become citizens, or produce children who become citizens and taxpayers), while groups that are pro-immigration highlight the fact that illegal immigrants aren't technically eligible for most social welfare programs, and downplay the fact that many receiving benefits either married a US citizen or have children here who then become eligible, as well as ignoring things harder to quantify like downward pressure on wages, increased presence of organized crime, etc.)

Did more searching and found this: https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-migrants-take-the-jobs-of-native-workers

It's been a while and you still haven't responded to my follow up, so I now doubt that you do have sources and am now more convinced that immigration is actually a positive for jobs and economy.

It takes time and effort to find good sources. If you have good resources to share, I will read them and maybe learn a thing or two about immigration in the US.

"you wouldn't actually care"

Even being pro immigration, I would want to know if immigrants are far more likely to be criminals or net negatives because that would influence the kind of policies I would want to see pursued or how I would argue.

When I google, all the top results (from Penn Wharton, from CBPP, from AIC, from NBER) say immigrants are good for local economies. I would share links except I don't know if any of them are actually good sources or not.

Bad faith accusation. Takes a simple request to provide evidence for inflammatory claims as a personal insult.

I tend to agree as my personal journey on the issue was pro-open borders. If we let the migrants in today then tomorrow they are more wealthy American citizens.

One thing to not is there is I believe a Milton Friedman type school of thought that illegal immigration is better than legal migration. Illegal provides a selection effect for the hungriest immigrants willing to do the work Americans don’t want to do. And from a selection effect the illegal immigrant today has more selection effect for the American characteristics (prior immigrant waves having a much harder journey so selects for entrepreneurship etc).

My journey on immigration likely went from a “Why Nation’s Fail” type mindset where the primary reasons some nations fail are bad institutions, lack of property rights, corruption etc. My guess is this is still the dominant elite view and therefore more immigration into a society with good institutions translates into a huge net positive for humanity. You then summarize into some sort of Yglesias thesis of “One Billion Americans” who I believe is considered slightly a center right writer.

The work of Garret Jones on national average IQ being the driving force of a national wealth drives my thinking much more, but George Masons Econ department sits outside elite consensus. Even at that school he can’t specifically make hbd arguments. If you want to explain why some countries always have poor institutions then you end up using Jones arguments.

In summary I completely agree it’s very tough in America to make strong anti-immigration arguments especially in elite circles. The very best you can do is find agreement that the border needs to be secure enough to limit the pace of illegal migration to allow our economy to have enough low-end work and public resources to turn migrants into American citizens.

Are the rich really so attracted to the idea of cheap servants that they would see their communities destroyed?

But who is going to landscape their estates if they have to pay grubby white Americans to do it, darling?

Landscaping is actually one of the easier things to replace illegal labor in; the American elite reticence towards mass deportations goes much farther down the social ladder than people who have estates landscaped precisely because everyone middle class and higher understands that there aren't enough parolees(yes, parolees. No Americans will do those jobs without being required to by law) to replace the illegals picking fruit and killing chickens and digging ditches.

Might they prefer Hondurans to be flown into their meatpacking plant in the midwest or rural south, and then flown right back out when their contract ends, UAE-style? Yes. But American income inequality being what it is, their children don't compete with each other economically, so it's not that big a deal.

I do realise that agricultural work is the huge soak-pit of illegal immigrant labour, and the farm owners who have the supply cut off are now looking to mechanisation, rather than raising wages to attract native workers, because they claim they will go under if they have to pay going rates.

But my view of "why don't the rich care?" is because the truly rich don't interact with the illegals competing for jobs with native working-class, and if they do encounter them it's in the aspect of 'working on the landscaping crew' or 'contract cleaners who arrive to clean the house every week' - that is, their staff hire them to do the jobs so the rich only glimpse them as figures toiling in their peripheral view but never around for a long time. So it's easy to be compassionate in the abstract, about "no human is illegal", like the Martha's Vineyarders with their signs - until those same immigrants and refugees start physically turning up in the community, and then it's a different question.

C'mon. You know better than to talk like that.

You might be able to justifiably claim that the "rich" may consider poor white Americans as being somehow worse than illegal Hispanic immigrants. You can't get away with being condescending to someone you disagree with, not when it's a habit.

I won't construe this is a formal warning or anything, but you got 5 AAQCs last month, surely you can adhere to better standards.

Edit: Never mind, I'm taking the mod hat off this thing, it's not an infraction that is worth it really.

Mod hat on, mod hat off? I'm sorry to be confusing you at this early stage in your moderatorhood, I wasn't intending to be condescending, more referencing this meme.

Welcome to dealing with the Awkward Squad! And believe me, I'm even more confused than you about how the heck I managed to garner five AAQCs, I genuinely never set out to deliberately write anything that might be nominated, so it's a mystery to me!

I did take the mod hat off by my own initiative, it's not like the others yelled at me haha.

You're a regular here, we might bicker but I can't ever deny that your net contribution is very positive, even if you have your own quirks that make me raise an eyebrow, or on certain topics, want to claw my eyes out.

So my initial annoyance that motivated me to put the mod hat on was swiftly overruled by me sighing deeply and accepting that it wouldn't make a difference plus it wasn't a big deal in the first place. I suppose the fact that you were referencing a meme from a show that I haven't watched does make sense!

I haven't even watched the show myself, it's just been floating around on social media for years about "people so far removed from the actuality of the situation they may as well be living on another planet".

It has also been a favourite gambit of media in the UK to ask politicians who try to lean too hard on the "man of the people" bit questions such as "so how much does a litre of milk cost?" and watch them squirm as they have no idea, never having gone grocery shopping themselves or if they have, never having to care about the cost of whatever they want to grab off the shelves.

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Are the rich really so attracted to the idea of cheap servants that they would see their communities destroyed?

As TIRM notes, it's not their communities. I've seen plenty of libertarian types point out that one can find enclaves of "1st world" living conditions in most any destitute "3rd world" country — you just have to be rich enough to afford it. And if you're the right kind of rich, then importing a lot of "cheap servants" will make you even richer — or at least make this sort of gated community cheaper — even as the country as a whole declines.

(Again, I like to point to open borders advocate Nathan Smith's "How Would a Billion Immigrants Change the American Polity?", because I much appreciate his forthrightness about the outcomes he prefers — though I think a better comparison than the Roman or British Empires would be the UAE.)

The UAE is the ideal situation for American immigration policy because migrants get deported immediately when their economic use ends and have zero recourse to citizenship, ever. That’s hardly a cautionary tale, it’s an ideal.

their communities

Adjacent communities perhaps. But their private schools and nice neighborhoods aren't being overwhelmed with false asylum seekers. They don't pay the price.

"Our local schools are being overwhelmed by this!" A few of the worse off public ones sure are. But that's not their community, not their problem.

Who said anything about their community.

The west's wealthy have long now abolished any covenant they had with nation or race.

The people getting hurt by this are just cogs in a system they are using. Cogs that aren't having enough children and are too expensive. So they're just swapping them out. Mechanical maintenance of the economic zone.

Cogs that aren't having enough children and are too expensive.

Funny thing really. The way you can tell that all the talk about "dysgenics" is bullshit is that it's not "the help" who are dying out, it's the fagot/tranny/elf brahmins.

the fagot/tranny/elf brahmins

Obnoxious, antagonistic, boo outgrouping, and whether meant ironically or not, clearly not the kind of argument we want to see made here. No, not because you used no-no words, but because you used them in a way calculated to be antagonistic.

I'm feeling mellow today, so 1-day ban. You really seem determined to once again see how many infractions you can accumulate before you get permabanned. Frankly, you only haven't been permabanned because as polarizing a figure as you are, a lot of people like you and you rack up a lot of AAQCs along with your shitposting. But the forbearance is not going to last forever. If your goal is just to push us to a final ban so you can go back to DSL or wherever to crow about how you finally "proved" something (whatever it is you think you're trying to prove) then just do your big flaming swan song and get it over with (and please make it worthy). Otherwise, knock this shit off - for someone who talks so much about discipline and being a grizzled NCO who's seen the world and survived some shit and knows what for, you do not get to pretend you can't help yourself or don't know what you're doing.

Obnoxious, antagonistic, boo outgrouping, and whether meant ironically or not, clearly not the kind of argument we want to see made here.

Is it not though?

I'll grant that my specific choice of words could be interpreted as uncharitable but at the same time I was specifically echoing the rhetoric used by others in this thread an elsewhere. @Hoffmeister25 is correct, and yes, a significant part of my motivation here is to highlight the contradiction.

The sort of rhetoric that you casually dismiss when aimed at the outgroup doesn't feel so good when it's aimed back towards the ingroup does it?

The sort of rhetoric that you casually dismiss when aimed at the outgroup

What rhetoric directed at the outgroup are you claiming I failed to mod?

doesn't feel so good when it's aimed back towards the ingroup does it?

Are you really claiming that I modded you because you attacked "my" ingroup?

Is that really what you're claiming?

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not because you used no-no words, but because you used them in a way calculated to be antagonistic.

Honest question: is there an example of anyone using similar no-no words that isn't judged as being "calculated to be antagonistic"?

Use-mention distinction.

If you are referring to other people as faggots or trannies or niggers or whatever, it would be hard to convince me that your intent was anything other than to be insulting and inflammatory.

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Real world grim and stupid politics snipped, let us move to our favorite fantasy world (for the same thing, but WITH DRAGONS!)

Obssessive political crap is over, obssessive nerd crap starts now!

elf brahmins

Can there be such thing?

Of course!

Ed Greenwood's fantasy kitchen sink world is place for everything and everyone, and place of pseudo-Hindu fantasy copycat culture are the Shining Lands.

Var, Durpar and Estagund are lands following the Adama faith, religion based on reincarnation, oneness of all things and strict caste boundaries.

And since Shining Lands are properly free of racism and speciesism (as it should be in these types of fantasy world to prevent them from being even bigger Grand Guignol charnel houses that they are)

Just like the gods were aspects of the Adama, so too were the various species of the world. No follower of the Adama would turn away anyone based on their race alone.

yes, when Baldur Gate 4 comes out, you can legitimately and canonically play elf brahmin.

Yes, even DARK ELF BRAHMIN! Here comes Nivray the Rotspider, ready to save the world with his wise and brilliant advice!

edit: yes, the links work now

Yes, even DARK ELF BRAHMIN! Here comes Nivray the Rotspider, ready to save the world with his wise and brilliant advice!

Finally some Tamil-Brahmin representation that isn't in theoretical mathematics 🙏

I don't know what he means by "elf"(I don't think it makes any sense as a slur for Williams syndrome in context) but it is literally factually true that the gays and trans have extremely low TFR and disproportionately come from not-poor backgrounds.

He’s making a reference to Curtis Yarvin’s “dark elves and hobbits” essay.

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The super rich actually have more kids than almost anyone else in the US.

Right, they've set up policies that drive their competition extinct while multiplying their servants. Classic high-low vs middle.

Part of the donor class wants a new voting base especially in certain states, the other wants cheap labor. Their goals are closely enough aligned they can unite to easily overcome the few populists who get elected, since Regean's amnesty in the 80s.

I've been voting for border enforcement for nearly 30 years, I have no expectation that anything close to my wishes will ever be done about it. Of course I didn't think the court would overturn Roe either, so perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised someday.

Are the rich really so attracted to the idea of cheap servants

That’s a massive understatement of the role of illegal labor in the economy; construction and meatpacking and agriculture all rely on huge illegal immigrant populations to function the way they do in the US.

A fair point, and a good reason why "the rich" aren't worried, because they're not seeing the masses of migrants who end up in those jobs, or have them living anywhere remotely near them. It's the abstract, theoretical numbers for them, which means it's not a problem they worry about, it's someone else's problem where they end up living and working.

It's a negative feedback loop -- illegal immigration makes a political settlement on legal immigration for those folks that actually work untenable. That in turn fuels further demand for illegal immigration to the point where it's too baked in to do much about.

One cautionary lesson of the last few years and the result of inflationary pressure is that the subjective wellbeing of Americans at all income levels is coupled to cheap goods. It's not just the rich that are attracted to the fruits of cheap labor, but it goes all the way down the income chart.

Yeah, I suspect people really don't consider the degree to which illegal labor props up some low prices. I suspect that a lot of stuff (like house remodeling, landscape jobs, etc.) would undergo decent price spikes if someone snapped their fingers and relocated illegal immigrants back to their home countries – at least regionally. But a regional spike in something like meatpacking can raise prices nationwide.

Are the rich really so attracted to the idea of cheap servants that they would see their communities destroyed?

It's not "their communities" that's the thing. The Rich can afford private schools and private security. They're rich, why would they give a shit about the plebs?

Edit: I continue to maintain that this here, is the core reason for all the derangement and freak-outery surrounding Trump. It's classism all the way down.

Well, the other argument is that if the people you let in will vote democrat then it makes sense for Biden provided the loss of historic voters is less than the new votes.

I wonder if Abbott is trying to go up to SCOTUS for Arizona v. U.S. round 2?

Doing something like that and getting shut down in the federal courts is a win-win for Abbott isn't it? He won't be charged with a crime for this. He won't be personally punished. The worst you could accuse him of is wasting taxpayer dollars, an argument I've never seen succeed.

Except it makes him look weak to the large contingent of his base that wants to directly deport illegal immigrants, damn the law.

Being weak martyrs worked pretty well for the early Christians and it seems to work even better now that Christian martyrdom is entrenched (usually not under that name) in Western culture. Even someone with a "strongman" image like Trump hasn't suffered from being (from his supporters' perspectives) persecutable by the legal elites.

Debatable. It also makes him look like "the guy who showed up". Which again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, has vastly different connotations depending on which side of the Hobbes vs Rousseau spectrum you fall on.


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