People get resentful when you do things that are bad. But they also get resentful when the good guys try to get them to do what’s right instead of being selfish. Having people who are resentful has no bearing on whether what you are doing is right or wrong.
I have not seen an opposition to liberal policies that was not based on selfishness. The problem with the ACA? Healthy people don’t want to pay to help the sick. The problem with taxes? People don’t want to pay, or don’t want to be forced to help the poor–which shouldn’t matter if they were going to help the poor anyways. Why do they want a smaller government? Because they want more personal freedom. Why do they want to kick out immigrants? Because they erroneously think they’re taking all their jobs.
So if I’m on the other side in all those issues, I’m gonna make them resentful. But that doesn’t mean that I’m doing anything wrong. The most I can do is try to use political correctness (aka basic politeness) and education to try and reduce the resentment.
That’s not to say there aren’t issues where conservatives have the moral choice and liberals don’t. I can’t think of any, but I’m sure that the conservatives on this board will try to bring them up.
And, yet, I bet most liberals would be resentful if you guys did those things, too. Especially since being PC about it is not something conservatives believe in. You’re babying people if you consider their feelings and try to mitigate bad ones like resentment.
If you’re just referring to letting a lot of immigrants in, okay, I agree with that. The liberal policies I disagree with are the ones focused more on multiculturalism than assimilation.
It’s hard to argue that your policies are virtuous if you have to lie about them. Not you personally, but politicians and major pundits. If we had 12 million extra immigrants because that’s what our law allowed, and we’d had open debate about that law, sure, many people would be mad, but they’d also see that they were outvoted. The problem is that in a lot of policy areas, the Trumpies are the majority or at least within spitting distance of it, and they feel their victories have been unjustly denied them. Liberals would feel the same way if the public wanted UHC, the politicians said they favored UHC, the politicians actually passed UHC, but then decided they just didn’t feel like enforcing it so millions went without insurance. That kind of thing would tend to make you pretty frustrated, wouldn’t it? That’s how a lot of people feel about immigration and trade.
One of the crazy things about Trump’s agenda is that on just about every issue he’s been stymied by the fact that the law isn’t on his side or he needs changes to laws and Congress can’t or won’t do it. But on immigration, he needs little. The law is already on his side and he’s showing that in that area the rubes were right. The government was intentionally going easy on enforcement and all he’s had to do is take the cuffs off ICE to get results. That proves to a lot of his supporters that the government was not on their side and has been lying to them for years.
Well well, what happened to worrying about “the basic ethnic character of this country being radically changed”? :dubious:
Liberals in general are not in favor of unlimited immigration from anywhere, nor do we think that immigration laws shouldn’t be enforced. But we’re not going to buy your pretense of merely being concerned about law enforcement or successful assimilation, if it turns out that what really gets you upset is just the prospect of white Americans becoming a demographic minority.
Well, given current immigration policies, whites should remain a majority as far as the eye can see, especially if we count white native-born Latinos as white, which we pretty much do now. The only way the white majority can be threatened is by allowing tons of unauthorized immigration.
This whole dog-and-pony show is classic Trumpery: he makes a big noise about something that the government’s already been engaged in, and spouts a lot of attention-grabbing tough talk about how he’s really gonna make things happen. And although what actually happens isn’t substantially different from what’s been happening already, the Trumpistas (who are sufficiently ignorant about policy matters not to realize that there was anything happening already) swallow it hook, line and sinker. So they’re ready to swear that everything was totally stagnant until Dear Leader Made it Great Again.
Just like with all the blather about “bringing back manufacturing” and “job creation”. Trump has some high-profile conversations with manufacturers, who in many cases were already planning to open or retain plants in the US, and then brags about the resulting few tens of thousands of mediocre jobs as though he personally has saved the US blue-collar workforce from extinction. (Note, for comparison, that the economy typically creates over a hundred thousand jobs per month in non-recession periods.)
Similarly, Trump points at ordinary ICE activities like deportation raids as though he was the one who somehow made them possible, and pretends that what they achieve is somehow much more significant than it really is. The Trump version of the existing policy, like the Trump version of everything, is just showier, more slapdash, and far more blatantly advertised than what was already in place.
But it sells well to the credulous who, as I said, don’t know enough about most government policies to realize that the Trump showbiz aspect didn’t significantly change the procedures that were there already. So they buy all the nonsense about Trump somehow having “taken the cuffs off” legal enforcement procedures, despite the fact that the only thing that’s substantially changed is the marketing.
:dubious: Where do you think “tons of unauthorized immigration” generally comes from? From Latino countries for the most part. If Latinos are considered white, as you suggest, then how can getting “tons” more of them “threaten the white majority”?
Your reference to “counting white native-born Latinos as white” makes no logical sense at all. Obviously if they are white, then they count as white, yes? Are you trying to say that Latinos in general are white or that they’re not?
And what the hell does being “native-born” have to do with whether they’re white or not? Does being born in the US make somebody white who wouldn’t be white if born of the same parents in Mexico? How you figure?
When someone is white but speaks Spanish, they are usually regarded as Latino. If someone is white and does not speak Spanish, they are usually regarded as just plain white.
Latinos, like Americans, come in all colors. The main issue with too much Latino immigration is assimilation and linguistic problems.
Of course, we don’t have to worry about excessive Latino immigration because the law forbids it. So in theory, on paper, we have no issues. And I suspect going forward, this problem is now solved. Unauthorized Latino immigration was slowing anyway and now a lot of them are going to be sent home, and the headlines are already deterring new border crossers.
Well, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen language used as a determining characteristic of race.
Does my being able to speak French and (sort of) Dutch make me more white or less white than if I could only speak English? How about if my French is Haitian and my Dutch is Afrikaans?
[QUOTE=adaher]
Latinos, like Americans, come in all colors.
[/quote]
Then for Latinos who are white, how does the ability to speak Spanish mysteriously change their racial category from “white” to “Latino”?
I think the problem is that you are kind of muddled about whether you consider “Latino” a racial category or not. On the one hand, you seem to regard a lot of Latino-ancestry people as white, but on the other hand, you’re worrying that “tons” of “unauthorized” mostly-Latino immigration will “threaten the white majority”. Well, which is it?
:rolleyes: In a way, though, one almost has to admire the brazenness of the Trumpery approach to these issues. Namely, you just keep on following essentially the same policies already in existence but make a lot of noise about how Winning! you are, and throw in a bunch of abuse of your predecessors. The actual situation may not change much, but lots of ignorant and credulous people will take your word for it that the problem is now solved.