I’ll just say this: Almost no one in politics would choose character over substance (policy substance, that is) if there were really substantial policy at stake.
Whatever your view may be of issues such as SSM, LGBT, abortion, immigration, God, guns, Muslims, climate change, etc., it makes zero sense to vote for a candidate that opposes your views on all such matters, but is of “good character,” versus an asshole who endorses all of your views on those matters.
Are you honestly trying to make the case that immigration and demographics don’t make an impact on an area?
I think that there would be an improvement in the takeout food arena, and the women of the country would probably be even more striking in a generation or two. There would probably be a lot more people speaking Chinese for a while, particularly older people, but the younger people would learn Spanish and speak Spanish and Spanish would remain the dominant language and the language used in commerce and legal proceedings. There might be more bilingual signage, but so what?
But I really don’t know what else you think would happen in terms of cultural shift. Clothing and fashion? Do you think all Mexicans wear peasant dresses and serapes? Frankly, these days street clothes look pretty much the same worldwide unless there is a religious element. As does new architecture. And it’s not like they’re going to edit Mexican history out of the schoolbooks.
And I’m not really certain what the Chinese population is in Mexico but the US (which is what we are ultimately discussing) has had ethnic enclaves since its founding (the town I’m in now was a religious Eastern European enclave in the ‘1700’s). The USA was made up of a conglomeration of ethnic enclaves. It’s key to the principles our nation was built on.
So I don’t understand your point. At all
You don’t understand what a massive amount of migration means to the nature of a nation? Would Canada welcome 30 million Americans as illegal immigrants? How long before Canada would be part of the US after a migration of that magnitude?
I have no doubt of your earnestness and enthusiasm for your beliefs, it would be deadly foolish of me to believe otherwise.
But even that. I mean Trump is dangerously incompetent to anyone who actually pays attention and is willing to face reality.
Trump has discussed taking guns away from people. He undermines national security. He let tons of ISIS fighters go free, possibly because Turkey offered him some business favors. Why are the people who are obsessed with guns and islamic terrorism ok with this? I mean, again, if you assume at root it all comes down to white identity politics that would explain it, but still.
Why not vote for a republican president who is competent and who won’t take your guns away or free ISIS prisoners?
To me, as a leftist looking in, Trump has a few good things going for him for his voters.
I can understand his base supporting 1 and 3, but they don’t benefit from the tax cuts. The tax cuts will become tax hikes for 90% of his voters.
As for point 3, any republican president would’ve done that.
People said those same things in the 1920s when there was mass immigration from Europe. People back then felt America was an anglo saxon, protestant nation and now there was a massive influx of europeans and catholics, causing a rise in the KKK as pushback.
But America survived. All the white europeans integrated and became Americans. If anything many of their descendents are now making the same claim about latinos, black lives matter, feminism, muslim immigration, etc.
I’ve said it before and I’ll probably have to say it again in the future: The only real service that Trump is providing to a substantial section of his base, but in their eyes it’s an absolutely huge priority, is Pissing Off the Liberals.
Right-wingers in America these days are largely in denial about the fact that they’ve wound up the undisputed losers on most of the social issues their movement was founded on back in the “Moral Majority” era. They are solidly on the losing side of history when it comes to equality for ethnic/religious minorities, women and non-cishet folks. (Not that they can’t still inflict an awful lot of pain on such people, but they have resoundingly lost what they used to like calling “the battle for America’s soul” on those issues.)
They are not going to get a return to their fantasy America where everybody acknowledges white cishet male Christians as their natural and default leaders/authorities, where everybody speaks English and goes to church on Sundays and conforms to traditional gender norms and never has any qualms about burning more fossil fuels.
And they have no chance of successfully fighting back against the power and self-interest of wealthy elites and consumerist corporate culture, which some of them vaguely recognize are responsible for serious damage to their prosperity and well-being, unless they ally with some of the “radical hippie socialist liberal” types that they traditionally fear and despise. The conservative establishment has successfully persuaded them that the only “elites” they need to worry about are “liberal elites”. So when they’re being shaken down and screwed over and hung out to dry by wealthy conservative white Christian politicians who pretend to be on their side, and the people whose objectives will actually help them are the progressive SJW folks they loathe, then the cognitive dissonance drives them crazy with poorly-understood rage.
Right-wingers in this category have retreated from the world of rational factual appraisal and analysis to the comforting echo chamber of delusion where they get told what they want to hear in a “reality-show” approximation of reality. They don’t have serious policy objectives or desire for competence at governance anymore: it’s all ill-informed gullibility and resentment of “the government”. Making liberals angry is about the only true connection to political reality that they’ve got left.
Ask the native Americans or other indigenous folks how they feel about unlimited migration. There are vastly more data points in history than 1920 USA.
“Migration” and “military conquest/colonization sometimes accompanied by near-extinction levels of mortality due to introduced diseases” are not synonymous. Trying to make modern migration look extra scary by equating it with the impacts of European colonization on indigenous traditional societies is not a serious argument.
The point is that numbers matter. If they didn’t there wouldn’t be so much gleeful talk in so-called Democratic circles about certain demographics dying off. If numbers didn’t matter you wouldn’t have separatist movements around the world or ethnic and religious strife. Ask Ukraine how they feel about border integrity.
I agree, which is why it baffles me that the GOP didn’t get aboard with impeaching Trump and getting President Pence in as quick as possible. Maybe they just like Trump’s bombastic, unusual, take-no-prisoners style.
He’s outright pardoned some.
Certainly numbers matter, but not to the point of making other fundamental issues insignificant or irrelevant. Migration in a modern developed society is not meaningfully comparable to colonial exploitation of indigenous traditional cultures, whether you’re talking about fifteen hundred migrants or fifteen million.
15 million is more people than most countries have. It damn sure would make a difference. That’s why every country has borders and border enforcement.
I never said it wouldn’t. Have you actually been reading my replies to your posts?
Sure it’s possible. It’s also possible they mean to provide a hundred other things to illegal aliens, but just didn’t happen to get any such hand-raising questions. But any concern over this or that benefit is a subset of the other concern I mentioned: that their idea of Addressing Immigration And Illegal Flow Of People, per the other show of hands, is making sure that traipsing across the border isn’t a crime. And if we simply let everyone in, then dickering over which [del]deck chairs[/del] benefits we will and won’t go on to provide is kind of secondary, isn’t it?
Let’s put aside that second sentence for a moment; your third sentence there seems like a reply to your first: if, as you say, we already provide much of that aid to folks who aren’t American citizens; and, if a case can be made that the taxpayer dollars could instead be spent bettering the situation of American citizens, then I want to hear that case. We should start looking into that. We should get right on it.
If you want to make a case for giving aid to folks who aren’t American citizens — be they the ones who’ve come here illegally, or the ones who haven’t — then I’m willing to listen, if you’ll explain it in terms of how helping them ultimately helps us. But if the big finish is simply that it helps them, then what’s the other guy selling?
I viewed their responses, at least in large part, as pandering to the liberal base. It was politically expedient to demonstrate a kinder and gentler approach to immigrants, in order to provide a stark contrast to the cruel actions of the Trump administration. I am not aware of any Dem platform that advocates for open borders. The Obama administration was quite effective in controlling the flow of illegal immigrants by diplomatic means and by large numbers of deportations. To me, in absence of evidence to the contrary, that is the actual Dem immigration policy. It’s my position that you can reasonably expect that to remain so with the next Dem administration.
Among other socially progressive issues, I’m a supporter of the ACA and any significant next steps that get all Americans to UHC. Is that something you would support with respect to benefits to American citizens and residents?
I make the case that offering healthcare and other essential social services to those who are here illegally makes for a kinder/better society. This does not take deportation off the table where it is warranted (eg. convicted criminals). I make the case for offering foreign aid to stem the tide of illegal entry by making people’s lives better in their home countries in partnership with their governments. I would even support efforts of improved border security overall. Including improved ports of entry controls and a well defined guest worker program. I even support addition and improvements of effective barriers, along with other technology and border policing. I don’t know of any Dem policies that are in contrast with these approaches. Are you?
To hear my dad tell it, it’s all down to the fact that some people are tired of being politically correct, taking others’ feelings into account, negotiating, and compromising. And I can kind of see it, if you have a very simple view of the world, which propagandists try to engender.
Simple ideas like:
I.e., birther nonsense. They may not believe that he is a “secret Kenyan” but there’s enough delicious illegitimacy hinted there that they would be happy to go along with the person who speaks out against it.
I.e., cut taxes. You know, because that should help everyone who works for a living.
So, you know, trade wars.
They WANT the kind of person who will tell China and Mexico to go F themselves, international trade laws and farmers be damned. That’s what they have been thinking all the time and they are tired of liberals preaching to them about the world economy and specialisation benefiting all. “It’s obvious,” they think, “all we have to do is stop sending jobs over there. Why don’t we just do that? And stop Mexicans from taking the jobs my nephew should have. It’s so simple.” They don’t think about the nuances, the trade pacts, the treaties, anything like that. It’s very black and white.
So when some blustering fool gets the highest office in the land handed to them, and that fool tells China to F themselves, they don’t have a collective gasp of horror, they think “RIGHT ON!!!”
Same with almost everything else. Black and white, simple thinking. Bullies. Racists. They all like it when the person in charge stands up and says what they’ve all been thinking.
Biden was associated with Obama, so part of the illegitimacy, and even worse, a sympathiser (with those horrible no-good black people). What could stop Biden from the presidency? Finding dirt on him. So that’s what needs to happen. Sure it’s not nice, but who cares about nice. We’re done with political correctness.
Everything goes back to that, just take the most complex topic and make it simple. Idiots want money, Trump appears to have money, so they like him and admire him for (apparently) having money. So what if it was daddy’s money, so what if he bribed people, so what if he cheated on taxes, they don’t like taxes anyway. Money = good = Trump.
My mother likes Trump, and I have thought all my life that she has a mind like a hatchet. She likes to separate the world into simple good and bad categories and once she has that single thought in her mind, she is unstoppable. Babies = good, sex = (as far as I can tell) a necessary evil (emphasis on evil), killing babies because you can’t stop yourself from doing evil things is like, evil squared. Trump could put a justice on the Supreme Court to stop this horrible thing = the best thing that has happened in the history of the world.
It is that simple. She watched his inaugural parade while laughing in joy, and finds the shock, horror, sadness, and anger from liberals something to be happy about.
I’m dead serious, I just don’t get it.
Until recently , I lived and worked for thirty years in one of the largest and most diverse cities in the US.
My two closest work colleagues were first generation immigrants. One Israeli, the other Vietnamese. My two best friends are first generation immigrants, one an Eastern European Muslim, the other Chinese.
My other colleagues and friends were similarly diverse.
All of these people are fluent in English, although all but one - one of my friends immigrated as an infant- speaks it as a second language.
In every place I’ve ever worked, Christians are a minority.
So I spend my days around all sorts of immigrants and I honestly do not get your point. What are the cultural aspects of the life of a 21st century immigrant that you feel are so different from ours?
Because as far as I can tell, they eat, dress, work and live in pretty much the same way I do.
Some of them celebrate a few holidays and cultural celebrations, but I think there’s room in our country for a Chinese New Year celebration or two without squeezing out Christmas.
Now, if you are talking about people that practice a fundamentalist religion-
I can see the vast cultural differences in those groups. But we have always had insular religious groups and acceptance of such groups is a key part of the mission statement of our country.
And frankly, the immigrant cohort that is most controversial are the groups from the countries to the South of us. And most of them are Christian and celebrate the same holidays we do.
So I really would like to see some specific examples from you of immigrants degrading American “culture”, whatever that means.
I can’t parse that “hypothetical” about Canada. Yes, if every single person moved out of Canada, then there would be 30 million fewer people in Canada. It would probably devastate their economy. And ours. I’m not in favor of open borders but my reasons are largely economic.
But I don’t think US “culture” would change all that much. The world has been pretty thoroughly globalized