Australia should take America’s Trump trouble as a galvanising moment. Universities, corporations, industry associations, sports bodies, cultural institutions and governments should step up recruitment efforts to win the attention of an entire generation of ambitious and talented people who would normally have had their sights set on the US. And bring the best of them to Australia to top up our human capital.
As a Nationalist I cannot object to Australia doing this, as weird as that may sound.
Last night there was a highly upvoted, highly-trafficked post on r/the_donald declaring that the Quebec shooter (a far-right white nationalist) was definitely a Muslim because no information had been announced yet which meant the media was colluding to cover for a Muslim. Some select (upvoted) comments:
There are rumors of one week old refugees committing this act of terrorism. Wake the fuck up people.
“the media will not report on violent incidents till they ascertain that the perpetrators were not muslim”
Takes time to patch up all the cracks in The Narrative™
> Also to poorly photoshop their picture so they appear whiter.
I checked back there this morning to see if the news that the shooter was actually a white rightist Canadian had gotten any discussion. It hadn’t, of course - the front page is all people declaring they’re proudly boycotting Starbucks, which recently said they will hire refugees.
I bet there are a lot of people who read r/the_donald and have a vague impression that refugees committed six murders in Canada last night, a vague impression which will stack with other similarly unverified vague impressions and leave them convinced there’s an epidemic of refugee violence. I have no idea what to do about that, and it terrifies me.
This is partially a side effect of the media blowing their own credibility, and partially a side effect of conservatives setting up their own bubble. I’m not even a conservative and I don’t really know who to trust these days.
It’s hardly unique to the Left though, since social conservatives burned through an unbelievable amount of social capital fighting against gays lately.
i found this picture of guillermo del toro with a gun and i don’t have a good caption so i am passing it on to you, the consumer
this is my oc gunillermo del toro
I’ve been having unbearable anxiety all day but now I’m having chest pains that are SO BAD I don’t know what to do
Help?
You may want to try taking an antacid to check if it’s just stomach trouble. (I am not a doctor and this does not constitute medical advice.)
I think you’re overconfident in your interpretation of what the anon meant. Maybe that’s what you would’ve meant in their shoes, but they’re them and you’re you.
I think people can pick up on these things on a subconscious level even if they aren’t fully thinking that way explicitly on a conscious level. I certainly can’t name most logical fallacies even when I can spot them. (I didn’t know what the formal name for what the problem with religious threats about the afterlife was, but I could tell something was wrong with them, for instance.)
Take, for example, the treatment of racial diversity in America. If a 100% black company is okay, but a 100% white company “needs diversity”, then this implies that blacks are worth more than whites. That may not be what (most of) the advocates really mean, but that’s the sum vector of their words and actions as received by a number of people. And people pick up on that as being unwanted/unwelcome.
Or to take a stronger example, if men and women are equally capable of doing good things, but men are uniquely violent and evil, then it logically follows that men are worse than women. …and the ways to escape that tend to look like either MRA or “redpiller” (not the same thing) behavior, which are definitely not welcome within Feminism.
It should come as no surprise that are a lot of people that do not feel wanted/welcome within Feminism and refuse to have the label applied to them, even though many Feminists would want to apply the label to them.
But anyhow, both groups often don’t really go chasing down these chains of reasoning and making them explicit, since people don’t really think that way (and most people are relatively average). But I think they do notice them, and they become feelings that baffle their opponents.
Now, it’s possible that the Anon really does believe America has an ownership claim to those University positions, and that Anon has a partial ownership claim to America, and thus some claim to those positions. But that gets into the philosophy of ownership/property, which is a whole other thing, especially since I view ownership/property as useful rather than true.
Anyway…I don’t know much about the history of academic visa policy in America. So I can’t comment on whether every attempt to tighten it is characterized as racist xenophobia. But this particular attempt pretty clearly is xenophobic and maybe racist too.
Well, I don’t think it was handled well. I would have done TUoC’s “xenophobic plan” version instead if I were Orange Capitalism Man. But there is a reason I didn’t vote for Orange Capitalism Man despite being an unironic Nationalist.
Anonymous asked:
theunitofcaring answered:
I think grad schools should accept the best students for their programs. I think taking less qualified students because by random accident they were born in the country, instead of people who are actively choosing to spend their lives in this country, does not strengthen the country, it weakens it.
And I think that the costs imposed by suddenly yanking the rug out from under someone who has been here five years are unacceptably high, and that if we decided to go full racist xenophobes we should at least be racist xenophobes with some semblance of trustworthiness and integrity by making the ban one on evaluating or accepting future students, instead of stranding people who have already built lives here.
Doing it this way is not just horrible, it is demonstrating a willingness to be gratuitously horrible on a whim, and one of its consequences is that no one should ever again expect that the U.S. government will behave consistently or make it possible to make long-term plans that involve travel into or out of the country. And the cost imposed by that expectation is extraordinarily high. If you care about financial outlooks more than the lives of people stranded in foreign countries away from their newborn children (yes, I personally know of a case of that), you might care that lots of companies have frantically recalled departments of overseas workers lest they later not be able to return to the country, and that they’ve said research and development and their success as businesses will be damaged by the necessity of coping with an immigration system that is suddenly bucking wildly at the whims of an appallingly ignorant corrupt cronyist.
But mostly it’s just that if you think where people are born should decide what rights they have, then we’re fundamentally on a very different page about everything.
Also, Iranian students aren’t taking slots from American ones.
Those slots don’t belong to American students, they belong to American universities. American universities that, demonstrably, would like to attract students from all over the world.
Kind of nice summary of nationalism, here. Declare ownership of other people’s stuff, get angry at foreign people for “stealing” stuff you never owned from you.
1. Are those students staying in America after graduation?
2. Are their costs being, in any way, offset by US government spending, even indirectly?
3. Isn’t this position by default against any form of wealth redistribution, since that would be “declaring ownership of other people’s stuff”?
1. Some are, some aren’t. What’s it matter?
2. Yes, of course. And by the same token their money and their labour add to America’s wealth. I figure the balance probably comes out positively on both sides; if it doesn’t then that’s an issue to address. But not like this.
3. No. Wealth redistribution works partly by donation and partly by taxation. Obviously donation’s not declaring ownership of other people’s stuff, and taxation is a cost that we accept by making use of public resources. To be honest, though, I’m not sure what this has to do with the issue at hand.
1. How much it matters depends on 2.
2. Quite frankly I do not trust that the pro crowd on this issue actually cares whether it’s net positive for America, much less America’s tax revenues.
I agree that this was not well-handled, but considering that any opposition at all has been labeled as racist xenophobia over the years, I don’t see what incentive the anti side on this issue have to make concessions since concessions won’t get them anything.
The fundamental thing to understand about Nationalism is that nations are the roughly the largest projects where the benefits still mostly accrue to the participants (and their families). That actually has to be enforced somewhat in order to hold and convince people to cooperate on the project over the long term. Otherwise the optimal local strategy is to extract as much value as feasible and leave, since one and one’s descendants do not need to live with the consequences.
Nations still very much exist and very much are relevant. Cultures are different and cultures matter, which is why everyone is constantly fighting so hard to change the culture in their desired directions. Cynical foreign governments routinely act to undermine their competitors, so you can’t afford to be a doormat on the national level.
3. I’m probing for inconsistencies and expected to find them based on the behavior of most people on their immigration positions. Do you support Basic Income or any form of state-sponsored welfare at all? Because your language suggests a general rather than specific claim of this kind. Limiting it to a specific claim would require special justification. (For instance, arguing that the necessity of generating the wealth in the first place requires it.)
Now, it’s true that America has something to gain from foreign nationals coming to study here - specifically, the exportation of American values, which contributes to global American dominance, which is in the interests of both Americans and the world economy (much like keeping the sea lanes open). That’s the cynical Nationalist view of this and the one I actually support.
The thing is, what the anon is really asking is something along the lines of “I’m supposed to commit to the nation, but are the elites of the nation willing to commit to me?” And a nation only works if enough people cooperate.
Anti-Nationalists don’t even seem to realize this, which is why they get blindsided by people like Orange Capitalism Man.
then again, banning citizens of every Middle Eastern country except those involved in the 9/11 attacks is about as sensible as invading every country except those involved in the 9/11 attacks.
Orange Capitalism Man has shown more opposition than most politicians to the apparent US Death Pact with Saudi Arabia, but it remains to be seen if he’ll do anything about it.
Anonymous asked:
theunitofcaring answered:
I think grad schools should accept the best students for their programs. I think taking less qualified students because by random accident they were born in the country, instead of people who are actively choosing to spend their lives in this country, does not strengthen the country, it weakens it.
And I think that the costs imposed by suddenly yanking the rug out from under someone who has been here five years are unacceptably high, and that if we decided to go full racist xenophobes we should at least be racist xenophobes with some semblance of trustworthiness and integrity by making the ban one on evaluating or accepting future students, instead of stranding people who have already built lives here.
Doing it this way is not just horrible, it is demonstrating a willingness to be gratuitously horrible on a whim, and one of its consequences is that no one should ever again expect that the U.S. government will behave consistently or make it possible to make long-term plans that involve travel into or out of the country. And the cost imposed by that expectation is extraordinarily high. If you care about financial outlooks more than the lives of people stranded in foreign countries away from their newborn children (yes, I personally know of a case of that), you might care that lots of companies have frantically recalled departments of overseas workers lest they later not be able to return to the country, and that they’ve said research and development and their success as businesses will be damaged by the necessity of coping with an immigration system that is suddenly bucking wildly at the whims of an appallingly ignorant corrupt cronyist.
But mostly it’s just that if you think where people are born should decide what rights they have, then we’re fundamentally on a very different page about everything.
Also, Iranian students aren’t taking slots from American ones.
Those slots don’t belong to American students, they belong to American universities. American universities that, demonstrably, would like to attract students from all over the world.
Kind of nice summary of nationalism, here. Declare ownership of other people’s stuff, get angry at foreign people for “stealing” stuff you never owned from you.
1. Are those students staying in America after graduation?
2. Are their costs being, in any way, offset by US government spending, even indirectly?
3. Isn’t this position by default against any form of wealth redistribution, since that would be “declaring ownership of other people’s stuff”?
Where, oh where, is the constituency for moderate liberal democracy, the constituency for assimilation? Radicals to my left, saying you should bring your vile customs here; fascists to my right, saying you should keep your vile customs at home. Where are the liberals saying that you can bring the surface features of your culture here–we’ll cover your traditional bread-and-protein dish in cheese and sugar, and your myths and heroes will appear in our comic books–but the rest, you have to leave behind. Your religion will be about as mighty a cultural force as Unitarianism; your deep tribal divisions will mean as much as anti-Irish sentiment means nowadays; you will be another slice of modern liberal democracy with a fancy new paint job.
Where are the liberals who believe in the awesome assimilating power of the West?
That sounds like cultural erasure, my friend.
You wouldn’t want to use your vile White Western Imperialist Colonialist Culture to erase that of proud foreign People of Colour and other Minorities, would you?
In other words, the people now believe their own information-culture war munitions. Those whose goal is to play ideological chicken with Islam and cultures that involve FGM and honor killings, and think Liberalism will win, on purpose, are becoming fewer and farther between.
The actual purposes of both diversity and religious tolerance were not even forgotten, as they weren’t even known in the first place.
