November 26, 2014

Immigration policy — for cheap labor or cultural replacement?

In the search to track down the traitors who are selling out our country to hordes of foreigners, conservatives can mislead themselves into targeting primarily "cultural Marxists" — those who loathe Western, white, male, hetero culture, and want to replace it with something superior based on its opposites.

Not that that crowd isn't on board with amnesty and immigration, of course they are. But a bunch of limp-dick intellectuals in San Francisco don't have the wealth, power, and influence to control political and economic activity at the highest level. They only serve the powerful by providing an intellectual basis for the policies that were going to take place anyway, to make them sound like a logical necessity rather than a naked power play.

Culture-war conservatives should sober up by looking at the twin policy of immigration — off-shoring, especially of labor but also of tax status. It isn't only hordes of foreigners flooding in, but boatloads of jobs setting sail for far-flung dirt-floor countries. If immigration policy were primarily about replacing the native population with a foreign population more to the liking of the powerful, then why not bring all those beneficiaries of off-shoring right here to the USA?

The answer is that sometimes it's cheaper for their employers to bring the foreigners here, and sometimes cheaper to keep them where they are over there. A contractor who hires dry-wall workers cannot off-shore those jobs to Mexico, India, or China, because the dry-wall work must be done right here. Same with strawberry pickers, meat packers, fast food workers, lawn cutters, and leaf blowers.

But if the work can be done at a distance, the employers are happy to send the work overseas without the whole troublesome business of importing foreign workers to America (like having to pay them based more on the American vs. Indian cost of living). Answering phone calls to customer service and writing computer code naturally lend themselves to distance work. So does manufacturing, as long as shipping the goods here isn't too expensive (shipped in bulk, protected and organized efficiently through modern containerization). This includes industrial products, consumer electronics, and pharmaceutical drugs.

While the cultural replacement view cannot account for such a dramatic split between the twin policies of immigration and off-shoring, it follows straightforwardly from the cheap labor view that we normally associate with leftist or liberal criticism of immigration (such as it is).

There are other clear signs that the powerful don't care that much about replacing the native culture with a foreign one. Why aren't schoolchildren compelled to be bilingual in one of the languages of our new neighbors or trading partners from Central America, China, and India? Foreign language classes are a total joke, are only required for a couple years, and students are not tested for proficiency at all. School boards would eliminate French and German in favor of Cantonese and Hindi. The powerful may want us to be more sensitive and aware of foreign cultures, but not to actually become a foreign culture, which would require a lingua franca.

Deserting the battle over cheap labor, immigration, and off-shoring in this second Gilded Age of ours will earn conservatives a one-way ticket to irrelevance and impotence in the broader culture. So how can they present their criticism in a distinctly conservative rather than leftist way?

I think the main difference is that leftists only blame the shareholders and managers of Big Business for cheap labor policies. As the agents of bullying the government into opening the gates, they certainly deserve a good deal of the blame.

But what about ordinary consumers who clamor for ever cheaper products and services — and the hell if it means that the companies they buy from will employ workers from dirt-floor countries, whether bringing them here or sending the work over there? It's not as though the bulk of the American middle and lower classes would even consider, let alone carry out a boycott of companies that provide cheap junk made by careless foreigners.

"Hey, it's cheap, isn't it? It does the basic thing it's supposed to do, doesn't it? Then who cares if Chinese or Indians or Mexicans had to make it. Now I can buy ten times as much junk. If Americans made it, I could only afford one-tenth of the junk pile that I currently enjoy."

Middle-class callousness toward the consequences of their everyday purchases of goods and services on the demand side is almost as responsible for the cheap labor policies as Big Business greed is on the supply side. Not to mention the phenomenon of middle-class individuals employing cheap foreign labor as lawn cutters, dry-wallers, and babysitters in their own homes. That's not the outcome of a corporate board meeting on Wall Street.

The conservative response in the battle over cheap labor will not target only the wealthy in a class war, but try to humble the middle and lower classes as well, and hold them accountable for their callous preferences that have provided the fuel for the greed of Big Business.

Now, blaming everyone instead of a small easy target may seem like a losing strategy, but as long as it's based on humility and redemption, it can catch on at the grassroots level. An ordinary individual or family cannot meet with a politician the way that a corporate lobbyist can, but they can passively change their consumer practices and actively boycott companies that go against those wishes. "Boycott Chinese junk" would go a long way toward returning that work to American soil.

The leftist response to cheap labor, aimed only at the very top of society, is ultimately more hopeless. It relies on corporate containment policies at the very highest levels of government, or else violent disruption of the shareholders and managers' lives. During the last peak in inequality circa 1920, we saw armed strikers shooting it out against paramilitary armies, as well as anarchists lobbing bombs on Wall Street and assassinating politicians.

During the Great Compression, when inequality reversed and economic and political life became more stable, there were definitely large-scale regulatory programs by the government to rein in the greed and manipulation of Big Business, not to mention much higher income tax rates than we have seen since the '80s. That is the slice of Midcentury life that leftists and liberals can warm up to.

What they don't see is the grassroots change in preferences toward solidifying the culture through excluding foreigners and not buying stuff made in the third world, even if it meant more expensive products and services.

By the Midcentury, the days of hiring cheap servants recently arrived from Ireland, or cheap steel mill workers fresh off the boat from Poland, were long gone. As detailed in this profile from Fortune magazine in 1955, even elite executives chose to live in more modest houses and to employ fewer or no servants, compared to the decadent ways of the early 20th century — then still in living memory.

Middle-class preferences began to take account of the socially corrosive consequences of acquiring as much stuff for as cheaply as possible. And they came to view such pursuits as debasing to the individual. Those who still tried to cling to the old ways, a la Pottersville from It's a Wonderful Life and Norma Desmond's palazzo from Sunset Boulevard, were subjected to shaming in popular culture.

Liberals only see others as selfish, while conservatives see it as part of the human tendency toward sin. Emphasizing this difference will keep the battle over cheap labor from descending into class war against the rich.

42 comments:

  1. In the 90s, I remember a "Buy American" campaign. Even in the late 90s, when I went to college, there was a liberal movement on campus to boycott fruits/vegetables and clothes produced in countries with poor working conditions.

    There was also a somewhat controversial "American owned" movement. Dry cleaning businesses would advertise that they were American owned.

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  2. "In the 90s, I remember a "Buy American" campaign. Even in the late 90s, when I went to college, there was a liberal movement on campus to boycott fruits/vegetables and clothes produced in countries with poor working conditions."

    As hard as we can be on the 90's, that decade kinda was the last gasp of any relatively sincere (if overblown and misguided at times) effort to make a difference.

    So what has changed since?

    - First of all, you do need relatively bold and independent but selfless young people to really get something going. They also need to be at least a bit restless and excitable, maybe even a bit angry too. Obviously the Millenials teens of the 2000's/the Millenial young adults of the 2010's are far too timid, taciturn and conformist to form a group capable of even considering raising hell let alone taking action.

    - These days the cancer of leftism has so grossly metastasized in the last 20 years that most cause celeb type of things are so dominated by annoying weirdos (gays especially) that most people don't really buy earnestly into them anymore. Agnostic once pointed out that as late as 1993, the public was still so homophobic (aka well informed and sensible) that the creators of the movie Philadelphia didn't quite sugar coat the depraved gay life since audiences wouldn't have bought a too sanitized story.

    - Also, it does take teamwork to conceive and execute a plan. But people have grown so jaded and cynical since the 90's as the current inequality/cocooning cycle has matured that it's difficult for people to make any sacrifice for a cause because people have become so reluctant to trust the ability and loyalty of others. In a more trusting period like minded people would easily find each other and would know that they share a lot of common ground. They wouldn't be so nervous about would be friends selling them out.

    Earnest, relatively wholesome activism is has become near non existent post 2000. The only socially approved causes these days are so repulsively alien, leftist and corrupt that only the most greedy, souless, and perverted people actually put any devotion towards them.

    I do realize that, being America and all, there's still a handful of places where non disgusting ideas can be discussed, but that doesn't change the fact that voicing many beliefs that were accepted as late as 1993 can get you fired, marginalized or otherwise branded and punished in these oh so progressive times.

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  3. I was part of the anti-globalization movement that was popular circa 2000. (Also big into the Israel / Palestine movement, where I got to troll Jews right to their faces for what seemed like hours at teach-ins and discussions.)

    Why didn't it go anywhere? Because the liberal focus on third-world conditions was intended to shame Western corporations into improving them, while still keeping the work done overseas. Not to suggest that such cheap labor was undercutting wages or sucking away jobs from the West.

    Important part of a boycott -- the conditions for lifting it. For most of the anti-globalization crowd, it wasn't bringing the jobs back here.

    There was also a focus on the effects of NAFTA, the FTAA, etc. on American workers. Union-busting, lowering wages, and so on. But that received equal or even slightly lower emphasis than the brutal sweatshop conditions of the third-worlders. If it bleeds, it leads. That was more important than who was being manipulated by Big Business (American vs. third-world workers).

    I didn't get the impression that most of those folks looked down on blue-collar Americans, in fact many of them had something to prove about how connected they were to them and the simple life. They just didn't get as much emphasis as third-worlders because the working conditions were abysmal for third-worlders, vs. merely degrading for first-worlders, and that gave the activists an easier time of portraying the corporate decision-makers as rapacious bloodthirsty monsters, rather than callous amoral slime.

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  4. That "bloodthirsty monster" view follows from the harm/fairness morality of liberals. The enemy is perceived as harmful, dangerous, unjust. And is then portrayed that way to others.

    Callous amoral slime... that view is more the product of a mind that values group loyalty, when they see leaders selling out their own group for personal gain. Conservative morality is disgusted by selfishness per se, as it undercuts group cohesion. Liberals only worry about selfishness if it'll result in corner-cutting that harms others.

    BTW, "sell-out" rings louder in contemporary ears than "traitor." It gets more to the point of what the motive was for betrayal, sounds less archaic, is already in common use, and is associated with speakers who aren't fuddy-duddies (a huge image problem, and reality problem, with "movement" conservatives).

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  5. "Because the liberal focus on third-world conditions was intended to shame Western corporations into improving them, while still keeping the work done overseas. Not to suggest that such cheap labor was undercutting wages or sucking away jobs from the West."

    1910's-1960's liberals (at least the ones who were genuinely compassionate, selfless, and populist rather than being vampiric commie careerist Jews) were indeed concerned about the plight of the ordinary white worker. But by the 70's and increasingly since then, inequality has risen along with an inane preoccupation with foreign/exotic stuff that becomes quite toxic in the late period of a high inequality cycle.

    Post 1970 Campus activists thus affected a great deal of concern (worship is probably more accurate) for the poor brown souls. Of course, that comes at the expense of those who have your skin, your language, your accent etc.

    Notably, the last period of high decadence/inequality produced this kind of vapid, pretentious idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

    Alleged bastions of virtue and wisdom went to great lengths to justify involvement in foreign affairs/cultures as opposed to having a modest value of knowing better than to meddle with weird stuff beyond your understanding. People of a low inequality era also realizing that such meddling comes at the expense of fidelity to their homeland and it's people.

    Some modern conservatives bemoan multiculturalism/globalism as awful newfound ideas, but The wiki article points out that the Christian missionary movement was quite global in the late 1800's. Also, clueless modern liberals complain that the idea of 'white man's burden' was racist and demeaning, but in reality Westerners of that time period were too busy indulging and adventuring to defend the integrity of their co-ethnics.

    Indeed, if one definition of 'racism' is preferring to protect and serve an ethnic group(s) at the possible expense of another, than Westerners of the 1920's-1960's were far more 'racist' than Westerners of the later 1800's/very early 1900's or Westerners of the 1970's-2010's.

    Another 'sound familiar' thing is that much rhetoric/prose/art of the later 1800-early 1900's is quite florid, hysterically emotional and self-righteous. Similar to how Western culture has gotten increasing emo since the 70's.

    Contrast that emotionalism to the stoic, modest common sense that prevailed in the 1920's-1960's.

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  6. Let's compare and contrast between low inequality/striving periods (the first value given) and high inequality/striving period (second value given):

    - Rootedness Vs. Cosmopolitanism

    - Stoicism Vs. Hysteria

    - Modesty Vs. Bombast

    - Shared Sacrifice Vs. 'rational' self interest (e.g. the 'I got mine' asshole)

    I can't imagine why Jews/gays and their pitiful useful idiots eventually dominate the later periods of high inequality cycles.

    Now that I think about, the martial arts craze of the 70's and the ninja craze of the 80's were the beginning of the ongoing infatuation with far Eastern Asia that serves as a red flag that bodes ill for the heath and security of the West.

    As usual though, people in the 80's had enough good sense to have in awe for the coolest aspect of East Asia, the mysterious ninja of japan, the most inscrutable product to date of Man's most aloof, secretive race.

    How quickly we lost our pride, our integrity, our joie de vivre. The meek race that was once, at best, fodder for hokey philosophies, children's toys and B-movies became celebrated and even coveted by westerners. In a stupor of debauched self loathing some white men began churning out pathetic garbage about how white women were so uppity that we ought to be chasing Dragon Ladies instead. Yuck.

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  7. I'm interested in helping "blue collar" folks, but I doubt you will be successful with boycotts or shaming consumers. Instead, I like the idea of bringing back tariffs (which I admit have a steep political hill to climb). As you say, people are interested in value -- if we make foreign products more expensive they will start to buy domestically produced products as a good value.

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  8. "I doubt you will be successful with boycotts or shaming consumers."

    It worked with the Temperance movement, though state barriers to consumption didn't hurt either. Prohibition was repealed quickly, but Midcentury folks didn't descend back into Pottersville-level vice and indulgence. They would have been shamed and shunned.

    If you don't think there's fertile ground for shaming consumers who would climb over others' dead bodies in the quest for cheap junk, you don't realize how disgusted more and more people are becoming at Black Friday craziness.

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  9. Globalism creates catch-22s that render the public powerless. For the most part people didn't vote to have cheap Chinese junk--rather, businesses like Wal-Mart put such enormous pressure on suppliers that outsourcing to China (which excels in making junk) became the unavoidable conclusion. Then why shop at Wal-Mart? As the supply chain scales up it no longer matters. Market conditions effectively restrict consumer choice to what large scale businesses deem the most profitable means.

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  10. Has anyone else noticed how often one hears english with a non-American accent these days in the media? Maybe they figure that with the ongoing diversity invasion that media ought to reflect the fact that we no longer live in Eisenhower's America. Of course, it's also another sign of how the high inequality libertine character loves to flirt with the foreign.

    In the 1950's, did mainstream, respectable companies make ads with a latino/British/Australian accented person (Canadian accents aren't heard though, probably because they're too close to American)? There's also of course the over representation of homos with their breathy, neurotic voices being obviously divergent from the Norman Rockwell conception of folksy, wholesome (e.g. God fearing and modest) American life.

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  11. As for the great Wal-Mart question, I tend to side with Agnostic since Wal-Mart seemed to surge in popularity in the 90's. The 90's were of course were when our current cycle of inequality/glibness/tasteless decadence began in earnest.

    In a healthier time period, such a crass business model would've offended enough people that it would induce more responsible behavior on the part of big companies.

    One other note about modern cause celeb stuff; besides deranged weirdos hogging attention, there's also the plague of aging but clueless as ever Silent gen./ Baby Boomers braying for their ego's and for status brownie points. They've been polluting the place since the 60's but, like Agnostic has pointed out, they won't go away 'til they're senile or dead.

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  12. "Market conditions effectively restrict consumer choice to what large scale businesses deem the most profitable means."

    Still, consumer apathy or preference for disposability is needed to fuel the cost-cutting measures by the big chains.

    Home Depot sells disposable shoddy junk for consumers who don't expect a minimum level of quality -- those who prefer band-aid-ing their way through home repair, and those who want cosmetic / status points over function / utilitarian value. Most of that crap is made in China or Mexico, and the parking lots are local pick-up spots for shoddy workers from Central America.

    Meanwhile over at Sears, a good amount of their Craftsman tools are still made in America and of decent quality. They aren't the best out there, but they don't cost an arm and a leg either. They're a quantum leap above Home Depot tools, though, and only cost 50% more (not a big deal in magnitude -- $15 instead of $10 for a hammer).

    Well made, American made tools are still a viable industry because there's enough of a market whose preferences are against cheap crap that the corporate board would otherwise love to stock its shelves with instead.

    Sears is not a mom & pop store, and could try throwing its weight around against consumers if it wanted to, but their consumers (of hand tools anyway) would push back and stop buying Craftsman. Their tools that are made in China, Mexico, or India do take a hammering in online reviews, so they know how tight of a leash they're on.

    Contrast that with consumer electronics -- none of that is made here anymore, and none built to last more than 5 to 10 years max. That's because just about everyone uses those products for goofing off and distracting themselves, and the ones who are halfway productive with them prefer to throw their gear out before 5 years are up and upgrade, mostly to compete in a nerd contest over whose computer rig is the coolest.

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  13. What needs to be done to "assimilate" the people that are already here? Reopen the "How to be an American" schools that were pioneered by people like Henry Ford? Also, how do we salvage the demographic damage that has been done throughout the west in the UK, Canada, Australia, ect, with the combination of low birth rates and mass immigration, or for that matter merely raise birth rates to replacement level again? It's hard to make the argument that this is mere "cocooning" rather than outright civilization failure/collapse if the cocooning period ends with these "native" populations drastically reduced. From what information I could find, it seems that even during the Gilded Age American "native" birth rates kept pace with Irish-immigrants. You even said once that the Mexican invasion was merely a form of "metamorphosis." Care to elaborate on this further? Why would a young, Anglo-Saxon like me be enthusiastic about such a metamorphosis?

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  14. Sorry to spam, but have you read this?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/friendsgiving-a-new-tradition-to-be-thankful-for/2014/11/25/66aab37a-74b6-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html

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  15. Bio cult. guy- You make a good point about how the diversity and numbers of post 1965 immigrants are much greater than previous waves.

    Given how these factors are pushing America's physical and social limits (I've left out other Western countries which haven't gone as far), I don't think it's too Sci-fi too say that we've come to a point in which America's empire and delusional ambitions are on the verge of collapsing under they're own weight.

    When American culture became more stable, strong and wholesome in the 1920's/1930's, it wasn't that hard to assimilate mostly European ethnics (who are more conscientious, earnest, and active than mestizos & Asians while also being more smart and restrained than non Euro caucasians) in the ensuing decades.

    It's true that Asians, latinos, Arabs, and even Jews put more effort into blending into Anglo society in the 20's-early 60's, but obviously there's only so much that environment can do to reverse thousands of years of programming. The relatively small pre 60's numbers of those groups also explain why they were more eager to fit in.

    Now that we've got so much diversity I think it's almost inevitable that when white Americans regain a sense of soul, unity, and clear vision there will be a ferocious backlash against multicult.

    This backlash will lead to either a dividing of America into ethnic blocs and/or a swift campaign to exile certain unwelcome (most likely taciturn & venal Asians, violent Muslims, or predatory Jews) peoples to another nation, perhaps to a country that still is committed to multicult. or maybe even full repatriation to their ancestral lands.

    The Southwest in particular, with vast numbers of Asians and mestizos, would require a lot effort to get it back to pre 1960 America assuming that the SW isn't written off as a total loss in the first place. Obviously the coastal area is valuable enough that whoever was fighting over American territory would likely not just gift it to a weaker, smaller nation. Absent a strong, highly motivated force it's possible that much of the inland SW would remain Asian/mestizo territory even if the coastal area isn't.

    Also, keep in mind that America nearly broke up in the much more homogenous Civil War era.

    Also note that the idea of the modern US Military/goverment not being able to fend off another force, even on it's own soil, might seem absurd at present but how much longer can any American institution (even the miltary) absorb all of the blows dealt by such corroding diversity?

    I'm remind of the Fort Hood shooting, if memory serves, in which a white leader actually said that anti-US terrorism was part of the price the modern military was going to have to pay for greater diversity. How long will anything sustain with this kind of suicidal nonsense?

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  16. With regard to Jews- even in today's amoral, diverse West some Jews still affect phony non Jewish names to dodge the negative traits associated with Jews. Like Donald Tokowitz aka Donald Sterling (the pig of a slum lord who bragged in court about his whoring). Is America really going to be the most Jew friendly country (besides Israel, duh) in the world forever?

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  17. Personally, I do see immigration policy as formed based on public opinion, and then wealthy businesses take advantage of that opportunistically.

    You can just look at the mess of policy there is and it obviously isn't calculated to maximize corporate advantage but is born out of a stew of political horse trading and opinion mongering.

    The actual policy is more down to the average person's fear of appearing nationalistic vs fear of not appearing patriotic. I don't see Cultural Marxists as having much of a role in generating this, but they display a far extremes.

    So I wouldn't see a pathway like "Less greed for cheap services to less incentive for business to set immigration policy for migrants to less migrants" really happening.

    Not sure if this is directly related to your point, but although the Midcentury and Great Compression era wasn't a race to show off being at the top of the pile, it was still a consumerist age, more trying to keeping up appearances. I don't know that any of them were too concerned with where their goods came from. Isn't this how you described it before?

    Buying durable goods vs goods which wear out, that seems to have a lot to do with uncertainty, where people can't be sure that they'll have an opportunity to buy more goods tomorrow (because the supply or ability to pay might change), so make a long term investment in goods today.

    Also durable goods will be bought only where people are relatively more able to gauge an article's timeless quality, because it doesn't change much or because knowledge is otherwise easier to come by - like if fashion or tech cycles change (perhaps because of competitiveness), people can't get very familiar with how high quality an article is that easily, and don't worry about if it will last, so discount durability a lot.

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  18. Arthur Blank is one of the founders of Home Depot.

    The Jewish community center in Dunwoody, GA is housed in the Arthur Blank building. It's an expensive, new contemporary style building.

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  19. I never described the Mexican invasion as a mere metamorphosis -- I checked and can't find what post you're thinking of.

    As for how to assimilate those who are here, I don't know if it's possible. During the last great wave of immigration, the micks, wops, dagos, hunkies, and polacks were at least part of Indo-European culture and the European gene pool. If both genes and culture are pushing in some different direction, as they are in spics, then they won't be assimilated.

    You're right that this is a major difference from the previous Gilded Age. It reflects an even longer-term cycle, what Peter Turchin calls "asabiya" or potential for collective action. In-group-ness. That rises and falls on the order of centuries, not decades.

    During the last Gilded Age, we were still on the ascent, and Britain was at its peak, so immigration across a "meta-ethnic frontier" would have been unthinkable, and hence undo-able. That was more like the period of internal chaos and instability leading up to the civil wars of the late Roman Republic -- rising competitiveness and inequality, although against a backdrop of rising Roman collective identity, solidarity, and international power. Even though they were overwhelmed by in-fighting, they were still strong enough collectively not to welcome in a bunch of barbarians and become ruled by them.

    This time around, when American and British "asabiya" is declining, our in-fighting will begin to look more like the Crisis of the Third Century. As Roman solidarity began to wane, they were so internally divided that they more or less welcomed the foreign barbarians as guests, installed non-Romans in top military positions throughout the Empire, and then got over-run by them, never to recover.

    Our era of bombastic politics looks more like the reign of Commodus than Julius Caesar, despite both being periods of civil chaos.

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  20. What will happen in the Southwest, West Coast, etc., being over-run by Mexicans? Well, we aren't going to remain united as a large nation for much longer, and when it breaks up into smaller entities, the invaders probably won't be venturing so far from their homeland.

    Consider the Germanic tribes in the late Roman Empire and after its break-up. They remained in the northern part of the Italian peninsula, and have contributed to Italy's present-day status as a half-way decent economy. It's what you would expect from Alpine (not Nordic) Germans living in any other nation.

    Unfortunately, our invaders are more lardbutt than Lombard. But hopefully they'll show the same migration pattern and not feel like trekking out and putting down roots far beyond their zone of genetic and cultural adaptation.

    I used to think that the Southwest and Texas might be able to beat back or at least halt the invasion, but I've become more skeptical after discovering what a large fraction of their population is made up of transplants. Sure, they think Arizona is an epic Wild West kind of place now, but what about when the shit hits the fan? I'm thinking their cosplay days will wrap up real quick, and they'll be heading back to Michigan.

    The more that a border area becomes flooded with transplants whose identities are not rooted in the border struggles against such an alien people, the weaker those places will prove on test day against the aliens.

    How rowdy and confrontational are the border states going to get, when so few Texans these days are actually from Texas? I don't doubt that a hardened core will stay put and put up a good fight, but Hummer-loads and Prius-loads of red state transplants are going to GTFO.

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  21. "although the Midcentury and Great Compression era wasn't a race to show off being at the top of the pile, it was still a consumerist age, more trying to keeping up appearances."

    The Midcentury was more about materialism than face-to-face social connections, but it wasn't competitively materialist. You were content with your handful of well-made, proud-to-own cars, gadgets, tools, and appliances -- the same that everybody else enjoyed.

    It's the competitiveness that fuels fashion cycles in a materialist age, and the acceptance and even preference for planned obsolescence -- "I'm-a be upgradin' dat shit anyway. Sheeeit."

    Materialism vs. social connections is part of the cocooning vs. outgoing cycle. That interacts with the separate cycle of competitiveness vs. accommodation.

    What does a society look like when it's aiming for social connections, but in a competitive way? It looks like the '80s. You look back at the outgoing periods of the '20s / early '30s and the '60s, and they were more carefree about how many friends they had.

    The '80s was outgoing and socially driven, but starting to get way more competitive. I was just a child then, but what I observed from the older kids, saw on teen movies over the years, and gleaned from what the grown-ups were up to, shows a high-pressure social scene where the individual felt there was a high-stakes, winner-take-all contest for social popularity. Different from the more carefree quest for acceptance and approval during the Jazz Age and the Wonder Years of the '60s.

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  22. "How rowdy and confrontational are the border states going to get, when so few Texans these days are actually from Texas?"

    I apologize in advance for throwing around generalizations with little first hand experience (I've lived my life in the upper midwest). The impression I get from Texans, (including white ones with roots in the state) is that they don't put a lot of emphasis on race. It's not like there's a James Byrd style murder every day, contrary to what smug Northern liberals like to believe. Texans certainly take pride in Texas and honor past Texans but they evidently don't seem all that riled up over white displacement.

    Why would that be? Texans do seem to have a really headstrong, individualist ethic that does make them hostile to authority and leftism but perhaps has the effect of diminishing racial solidarity. If Obama kicked out a white Texans' well behaved but illegal mestizo neighbor, the white guy would probably get upset about a northern liberal throwing his weight around, even if such tactics benefited the white guys race.

    Also, per Sailer, Texas latinos have historically been more productive and honest than coastal latinos which probably does make Texans a bit more sanguine about multicult.

    It does go without saying that the modern toxic, every man for himself culture has greatly diminished sensible white racial fidelity even among groups noted for fierce pride, like white Southerners. Though maybe whites in the flat, historically diverse state of Texas have never been quite as racially 'aware' or as well established as deep Southern hillbillies.

    With regard to vigilance in the Southwest, I suspect that much of the area is never going to be all that valued by many whites (or most others) who don't care to be in a region with often forbidding terrain and weather. Steve Sailer frequently points out that relatively few areas of even California have weather and terrain which makes them amenable to habitation. Particularly in So Cal. you don't have to go far before it gets quite desolate.

    The West, especially the area outside the NW has always been wilder/flakier/more transient anyway so you wouldn't really expect there to be a whole lot of 'let's defend the motherland' type of attitude anyway.

    One of the few things that's a little off about Red Dawn (the '84 original, duh) is setting in a cold, desolate, rugged mountainous area (filmed in northern New Mexico I believe). The effort at making the town and it's people All American would've played better in Peoria if it had been filmed in, uhh, Peoria.

    Green and blue stir your passions more than grey and brown.

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  23. Another thing about Red Dawn's locations. The landlocked area it was shot in is supposed to evoke the Midwest, but at least most of the midwest has swamps/lakes/vegetation/prairies/vibrant deciduous forests etc. aside from the ubiquitous farmland. Had it even been shot in coastal California they could've pleased the viewing eye with the ocean and/or coniferous forests.

    But nope, they picked a thoroughly uninviting inland SW location that only Macgyver would enjoy.

    Agnostic, you might enjoy this defense of Friday the 13th:
    http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2013/12/friday-13th-day-friday-13th-1980.html

    The author makes a good point about how the sense of innocence lost is amplified by the the way that the film uses it's small town New Jersey setting to create a charming, peaceful community.

    Red Dawn had actors believable as earnest, buoyant middle Americans but it's setting did not fit the protagonists.

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  24. "Sorry to spam, but have you read this?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/friendsgiving-a-new-tradition-to-be-thankful-for/2014/11/25/66aab37a-74b6-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html"

    Friendsgiving more like transplantsgiving. They don't dance around it being the main factor, not hating one's family. They're self-made orphans.

    Unfortunately even your circle of friends aren't going to be the same in five years when you're moving every five years, a la the Millennial woman being featured. They talk about the rituals remaining the same (for a whole five years -- some ancient tradition), but not the people who are practicing them together. This year it's one group of acquaintances, the next year some other.

    They try to make it sound like deeply rooted friends are replacing deeply rooted family, but they don't try to hide how shallow their friendships are. They go back at most five years and the rituals they share are playing Rock Band or making pumpkin mac 'n' cheese -- how deliciously quirky!

    Picking up bar sluts involves the same ritual time after time, but a different body each week. Is that what you call a modern replacement for traditional courtship?

    BTW, the Millennial on the move from the article is leaving DC for Loudon County -- what is it about the Virginia suburbs that attract these flaky types more than the Maryland 'burbs?

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  25. Shoulda mention this above, sorry, but it just occured to me that the author of that reflections blog notes in his reviews of Friday the 13th and Conan ('82 debut) make use of symbolic, unapologetically religious imagery like sinister snakes. He also points out that the use of powerful symbolism has declined a lot since the 80's with dorky post 1991 artists smugly saying that such stuff is too played out and not cerebral enough.

    Wouldn't you know it, art in general is much less memorable and resonant these days. You can thank the kill joy pseudo sophisticates who try so hard to be 'edgy' or 'different' that they end up avoiding basic elements of effective art.

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  26. Friendsgiving is going to ramp up the competitiveness on what is supposed to be a day of harmony. You've got a lot more to prove among your peers (co-workers, friends, "friends," etc.), but not so much among your family.

    Who's going to propose pumpkin mac 'n' cheese in a kin-based setting? They'd get shunned right out of the family. Stick with the way it's always been, and nobody has to compete against anybody else.

    I think the only thing different about this year's Thanksgiving meal with my brother and mother was no rolls. Otherwise it's the same as it's been since we were kids -- turkey, stuffing, mashed / baked potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, corn pudding, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and sparkling grape juice.

    That goes to show how bogus the Friendsgiving rituals are. If they were meant to allow the participants to feel comforted by the familiarity of the rituals, they would be based on the ones they'd grown up with. A bunch of SWPLs in DC -- how diverse could their family traditions be? They may very well come from the same neighborhood in Brookline, Mass.

    That's how it is at college for the kids who can't make it home for Thanksgiving. Perhaps not the dining hall, but some organization will host an open invitation meal. They make it as traditional as possible (or at last they did the one time I was stuck on campus for the holiday), so that it's familiar and comforting in this strange deserted place when you expect to be home with family.

    Friendsgiving is just the appropriation of yet another bonding-based holiday by the SWPL status contest crowd. Halloween costumes, ugly sweater parties, New Year's parties... what else can we fuck up? Thanksgiving! Who's up for a Turkey Trot and then some pumpkin mac 'n' cheese?!?!?!!!!

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  27. I think Red Dawn was going for mountain-dwellers being rugged survivalists more than plains people or forest folk.

    Historically, mountain groups cannot be displaced by military invaders. Greek, Albanian, and Armenian are language isolates, rather than extinct languages, within the Indo-European family because nobody could kick them out of the Balkan mountains or the Armenian highlands.

    Another classic teen movie from '84 that was meant to evoke the Midwest but was shot in the mountains -- Footloose, filmed in Utah (based on events from Oklahoma). They don't play it up, so most viewers won't notice (I didn't until I listened to the DVD commentary). But its setting does look more desolate than the tree-lined 'burbs of a John Hughes movie set around Chicago.

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  28. Yeah, the California based industry often doesn't bother to go further East due to logistics; the Midwest and Northeast are especially unpopular because of schizo oft. freezing weather and also where unions are stronger.

    I do think that they probably don't put much though into the fact that so few Hollywood movies are shot in a huge swath of the country where so many live. Thus, most upper eastern Americans can't really relate to desert California or craggy Utah. Or the piney woods and lousy ass sandy soils of Georgia for that matter.

    In eastern Minnesota where I live you can practically go a few hundred yards in any direction and run into a river, lake, or large pond/swamp. I've lived within a few minutes of the Mississipi almost my whole life in addition to the lakes, which is probably why the setting of Friday the 13th is so much more appealing than a landlocked desolate mountain.

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  29. Part of the avoidance of the plains/Midwest is also crass snobbery. Those douchey Hollywood liberals look down on the midwest/plains region as a gun infested hellhole. Flyover country, ya know.

    They feel more comfortable in the more rootless mountain states. Besides, they've also got snow capped mountains sporting yuppie filled resorts to beat off to.

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  30. Also with regard to Red Dawn, Hollywood and really, the general public finds mountain warfare to be preferable to other settings. How would one stage fight scenes amid cornfields and lakes? Though some parts of the midwest are hilly and/or thickly forested/swampy enough to make geurilla warfare not out of the question.

    In the Green Berets, John Wayne was ridiculed for filiming a Vietnam movie in the drab Georgia woods. Ironically, a decent chunk of Vietnam fighting actually did occur in an area not unlike the deep south rather than the expected thick jungle. So you don't necessarily need vast mountains or even a jungle canopy to hide in.

    Like you said though, there's a historical precedent for people, even in small numbers being difficult to dislodge from tough places.

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  31. Yes, even my opinion of the Jews has taken a huge hit in the last few months. I personally doubt America will continue to be Jew-friendly either. There are only so many times that people are willing to be kicked in the teeth by an overly aggressive minority, that continue to work against their best interests.

    I disagree that other western countries haven't gone as far as America. America is simply bigger, and creates that illusion as a result. Go to Vancouver or Toronto in Canada. They both look like combinations of Hong Kong, Mumbai and Mogadishu. 35% of French births are Muslim. Australia and New Zealand are being colonized by China and India as we speak. There are classrooms in southern Italy with just one Italian child in them. This is all across the west, and will need to be dealt with all across the west.

    "Obviously the coastal area is valuable enough that whoever was fighting over American territory would likely not just gift it to a weaker, smaller nation."

    This is an excellent point, that not enough conservatives pick up on. People in places like Texas or the south are so enamored by the idea of succession, that they fail to recognize this on several fronts, the most obvious being that you don't surrender territory before a battle has even started. Also, I have a friend who simply thinks that if blacks/metizos/muslims/asians/ect tried to carve out their own independent nations in North America that would finally be enough to awaken the "white devil." I think retaking the coasts is all that would be necessary. At that point all you need to do is out-breed them.

    Once again, I agree with the conclusions that you and Agnostic came to regarding Asians. I personally consider them to be a bigger long term danger, mainly because, like you've said, white people are explicitly putting them on a pedestal. With metizos, at least they are so transparently in your face that everyone knows what they are doing. For example I know a typical aspie-type millennial girl from Vancouver, and she has been stalked by THREE asian guys, one Fillipino, two Chinese. I tried to gently suggest that maybe it's because asian guys from Vancouver are autistic and clueless. Of course, she would have none of it.

    This is an extremely unpopular stance, even among conservatives, but I'd add Hindus and Sikhs to your list of unassailable, mainly because they carry the same habits of venal and taciturn behavior east Asians have, but with an extra helping of smug and belligerence.

    I'm personally somewhere in the middle in regards to how assimilable metizos are. I don't completely subscribe to the alt-right's view that they're filthy mongrels, but I don't believe they're "natural conservatives" either. Admittedly I'm biased, since in the pacific northwest they're a super-minority, and most of the diversity I experience is of the east Asian/Fillipino/Indian extraction.

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  32. "I never described the Mexican invasion as a mere metamorphosis -- I checked and can't find what post you're thinking of."

    http://akinokure.blogspot.ca/2014/03/is-homo-presence-most-alienating-form.html

    "Many conservative commentators give the name "cultural suicide" to our immigration policy, or other policies with similar effects. When you think about it, though, it's not so much suicide as metamorphosis -- one day America is European, the next day it's Amerindian."

    Also...

    http://akinokure.blogspot.ca/2013/07/leftists-were-anti-immigration-back-in.html

    " We know where they stand now, but it's important to emphasize how recent their shift has been. Otherwise we'll feel doomed, like it's part of some ancient liberal push for more immigration, ever growing in strength, and it's only a matter of when to abandon ship. If liberals were anti-immigration in the first half of the '90s, and the friggin' Sierra Club took a restrictionist position in the '80s, then we're not up against some kind of primeval unstoppable juggernaut."

    "What will happen in the Southwest, West Coast, etc., being over-run by Mexicans? Well, we aren't going to remain united as a large nation for much longer, and when it breaks up into smaller entities, the invaders probably won't be venturing so far from their homeland."

    Blogger like Heartiste and Vox Day are correct with their prophecy of doom, then. We are screwed. Game over. What good is less cocooning and less status striving going to do if we're in unstoppable decline? Unless the coming unrest of the 2020s motivates societal change comparable to the 1970s or the 1920s, and provides a massive jolt discrediting the status quo, why not just have a "burn it down" attitude? Shouldn't we just get it over with? This may sound like whining, but what am I investing in, emotionally, physically, mentally if we only have disunion and decline ahead of us?

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  33. "They try to make it sound like deeply rooted friends are replacing deeply rooted family, but they don't try to hide how shallow their friendships are. They go back at most five years and the rituals they share are playing Rock Band or making pumpkin mac 'n' cheese -- how deliciously quirky!"

    Don't forget that they watch Home Alone 2. Not Home Alone, but Home Alone 2.

    "BTW, the Millennial on the move from the article is leaving DC for Loudon County -- what is it about the Virginia suburbs that attract these flaky types more than the Maryland 'burbs?"

    I noticed that, too. Assuming that conservatives actually care about the country at this point, they better wake up to how corrosive the "transplanting" trend is, because it may provide more long term damage then immigration itself. It's destroying states like Virginia and North Carolina, which used to be respectable.

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  34. "I'm personally somewhere in the middle in regards to how assimilable metizos are. I don't completely subscribe to the alt-right's view that they're filthy mongrels, but I don't believe they're "natural conservatives" either. Admittedly I'm biased, since in the pacific northwest they're a super-minority, and most of the diversity I experience is of the east Asian/Fillipino/Indian extraction."

    As I noted above, latinos do seem to have a better track record in the heartland (at least Texas anyway) than they do elsewhere, California especially. This is possibly due to Texas latinos being whiter than California's.

    One of the most unsettling aspects of mestizos in America (esp. L.A.) is the way they perpetuate the overcrowded hyper density that Europeans correctly regard as the classic indicator of a 3rd world hive. One of the primary reasons Euros rose from the muck is because they understood that having too many people packed together is degrading and pitiful. Also, avoidance of crowding allowed Euros to self-limit their breeding so as to leave more time, food, land etc. to the living. This made it possible for Euros to develop the sound minds and bodies needed to create so many of the aspects of modern civilization.

    Euros and blacks have increasingly been exiled from Los Angeles because of their unwillingess to pile 3 1/2 generations into a 1960's ranch house.

    The overcrowding certainly does point to nature rather than nurture although some of these disagreeable traits might also be due to California's trendy, liberal, and amoral culture attracting bottom of the barrel types and/or coarsening potentially better people. Even California whites have been on the flaky side all along (I seem to remember reading about Pac. Northwesterners coining the word californicate to express their contempt of Californian's bringing their ills elsewhere.

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  35. From the Wiki article:

    Californication as a pejorative was a culmination of sentiments known in the 1940s, typified by Stewart Holbrook, author and Oregonian columnist, who campaigned through the fictitious James G. Blaine Society against development and unchecked population growth.[8][9] Similar groups—such as The Miller Society—jokingly promoted measures like building a 16-foot (4.9 m) tall fence all along Interstate 5 to prevent exiting between California and Washington, expelling non-native Oregon-born residents, and instituting a $5000 immigration fee.[9]

    Note how this also pertains to the mid century American culture discouraging me first rootlessness, treachery and greed.

    " I agree with the conclusions that you and Agnostic came to regarding Asians. I personally consider them to be a bigger long term danger, mainly because, like you've said, white people are explicitly putting them on a pedestal."

    Both Jews and Asians alike share the trait of low empathy/disinterest in other people (except for self centered reasons). We're In a period of naivete (caused be cocooning) and high striving (caused by callous disregard for others). It's not surprising that we see so many clueless whites encouraging and even envying the ability of these parasites to prey on the vulnerable.

    The Jew dominated liberal world (including the media) constantly bashes whites for supposedly valuing superficial 'nordic' traits which leads to the misconception that whites have the most reflexive hostility to physically alien obstreperous blacks. The reality is that Euro whites are, in healthy time periods, as disgusted by Jew/Asian rootless two faced duplicity, insouciance, and their naturally gutless/heartless character.

    Jews/Asians are also far more likely to engage in perverted stuff like gay sex which certainly does show their soul deadening nihilism

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  36. "This time around, when American and British "asabiya" is declining, our in-fighting will begin to look more like the Crisis of the Third Century. As Roman solidarity began to wane, they were so internally divided that they more or less welcomed the foreign barbarians as guests, installed non-Romans in top military positions throughout the Empire, and then got over-run by them, never to recover."

    But how regional will it get? In "the next 100 years", George Friedman of Stratfor argues that America's geography, sitting between two oceans, with the Mississipi river system, means the country is destined to have a strong central government and unified foreign policy.

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  37. that doesn't contradict greater loyalty to regions, and Friedman does argue that the American Southwest may come under the influence of Mexico, but it seems doubtful that American power will decline.

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  38. "Many conservative commentators give the name "cultural suicide" to our immigration policy, or other policies with similar effects. When you think about it, though, it's not so much suicide as metamorphosis -- one day America is European, the next day it's Amerindian."

    I said that in the context of what new variety of vibrancy is the most alienating -- arguing that the out-of-the-closet-ing of homosexuals has been far more disorienting. They are mentally ill, running loose, with nobody telling them to control themselves but everyone cheering them on. That's the pinnacle of craziness in the 2010s.

    Mexicans are not abnormal per se like queers are -- they're not who you want living next door, not who you want making your products, etc., but they're not mentally ill. Mexicans taking over California is one culture unfortunately succeeding another, not a case of the loonies set free from the madhouse to infect normal spaces with everyday abnormality.

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  39. "Assuming that conservatives actually care about the country at this point, they better wake up to how corrosive the "transplanting" trend is, because it may provide more long term damage then immigration itself. It's destroying states like Virginia and North Carolina, which used to be respectable."

    A lot of conservatives, especially of the pseudo kind, aren't going to wake up to that reality because of cognitive dissonance. Not just on a personal level, being transplants themselves, but on an ideological level -- freedom of movement, pursuit of individual happiness, climbing the status pyramid as high as possible (which at the very least means moving away from your podunk town, even if you don't plan to settle into Wall Street), and so on and so forth.

    In status-striving times, liberal has come to mean one who sympathizes with society's losers (albeit losers of their choosing, not any old group of them), and conservative to mean one who sympathizes with its winners.

    The ideologies no longer have anything to do with Progress vs. Tradition, stasis vs. dynamism, etc. Both are in favor of all our radical new political and economic experiments hurtling along, it's just that one wants there to be a safety net for the losers and the other is content to let them fend for themselves. The current ideological divide is between paternalism and callousness. Two great tastes that taste great together!

    Of course libs are even more in favor of the transplant phenomenon, it practically gives them an orgasm to think of what hip new It City, or It Nabe they're going to set off for next.

    Only conservatives are mentally equipped to see the downside of transplanting, as it offends the moral foundation of in-group / loyalty. If every individual is a footloose free agent, guess what -- no community in the present, no persistence of community into the future, and no retention of community from the past.

    Preserving community necessarily comes at a cost to the individual, who must dampen their drive toward "rationally maximizing self-interest." That's one of the essences of conservatism -- not denying the self perhaps, but not glorifying the self either, let alone immunizing the self against any crimes it commits against the integrity of the community.

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  40. I think the Millennials or the post-Millennial generation will have an easier time seeing this, given that one of the main rationalizations that the Silents and Boomers used for moving away was that "there's no jobs" where they came from. Sure there were -- just not very many lucrative or status-enhancing jobs. If seeking status trumps sticking together, then everybody who isn't at the very bottom of the pyramid is going to leave for greener pastures.

    However, that was the 1970s. Those greener pastures are beyond over-grazed by this point, and no amount of phony high-tech start-up hype is going to reveal new, uncolonized pastures for today's young people to trek off toward.

    For Millennials, there's no high-status jobs here, none there, none anywhere. If you're going to be an unpaid serf or a barista, there are always plenty of local opportunities for that. Why waste a bunch of money living somewhere else, when your parents are accepting of you moving back?

    Not for the right reasons, nor with their hearts in the right places, but I think Millennials and their successors are going to turn the tide on the transplant phenomenon. It simply won't be worth it for them.

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  41. "What good is less cocooning and less status striving going to do if we're in unstoppable decline?"

    Because "we" are not in unstoppable decline, but only the US as a big-ass overextended nation. The Roman Empire broke up into smaller polities, and ours will too. The Holy Roman Empire broke up into France, the Low Countries, the highland German countries, etc.

    Huge nations are not a long-term stable form, so it's good that we're going to split up into smaller more sustainable regions. Losing the Southwest to the Amerindians wouldn't even be returning to our founding days -- the Frontier was only closed around 1890, and the Mountain States were only admitted as states during the Gilded Age.

    The main thing to focus on is if the invaders grow beyond their traditional boundaries, like Mexicans colonizing the Midwest (thanks to the meatpacking agribusiness), blacks in the North (thanks to the Great Migration, although they've been heading back down South for awhile now), or Scandinavians in Appalachia (thanks to the higher ed and health care bubbles providing them with jobs).

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  42. One argument that I've seen expounded many times on libertarian websites is that free trade, off shoring, etc., creates co-dependency between nations. If war were to break out between the two, not only would it be costly in terms of human life, but also in terms of overall lost trade.

    I do think that this is a reason why ascendant China asserts its aggressiveness more gingerly than old rising nations of the past. If they would war with the US, the trade collapse between the two countries most amount of 100s of billions of dollars, and China holds I believe over $1 trillion in US sovereign debt, which would be impacted.

    A recent lesson is Russia, whereby the West is not directly engaging the Bear with military, but rather directly with economic warfare. Russian's economy has already hit a serious rough patch and many crucial Western items are now not available, so that will likely curb Putin's ambitions in the long run.

    What absolutely was a kick in the groin to the middle-class, Midwestern whites was NAFTA. That pact only benefits our neighbours and rich corporations. I would wager that it is the main contributor behind the evisceration of the Midwest. A pox on the people who crafted and approved that.

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