This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Texas Border Flareup... Again
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23A607/295564/20240112012220571_23a607%20DHS%20v%20TX%20supplement.pdf
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
Immigration is unfathomably high right now.
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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).
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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:
Would apply even moreso, as military-age men are presumably the most risk-tolerant group.
More options
Context Copy link
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?
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Easy - kill the men, deport the women and children.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link