Immigration issues

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Posts to the New York Times immigration forum (RIP April 9, 2007)
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ehkzu - 4:18 PM ET March 30, 2007 (#9481 of 9481)

Why Amnestyites despise 80% of Americans

Many of those advocating illegal immigration don’t seem to care for the masculine side of human nature. No one living in war-torn lands or the chaos of a failed state thinks we can do without maleness. But in a land that’s known peace for over a century we can indulge in this pacifist fantasy.

However, amnestyites don’t have the stones to revile us for being masculine (irony intended), so they choose the next best thing & call us racist. “Racist” is Amnestyitespeak for “white+masculine.”

That’s why when Meximericans shout “¡Viva La Raza!” (“Long live the [Mexican] Race!”) amnestyites shout it too. And they consistently push for letting Mesoamericans jump the queue ahead of people of other races from vastly poorer & more desperate situations. Think of Darfur, Bangladesh, Burma, rural China, Haiti, North Korea.

So amnestyites put one race ahead of all the others. That makes them racists. But being quick to accuse others of your own sins helps to conceal this fact. Puts your opponent on his back foot. And conceals the fact that what amnestyites really despise is the masculine side of the 80% of Americans who oppose illegal immigration (including 40% of Democrats & over a quarter of Latinos).

Note that I'm talking about masculinity, not men. Of course amnestyites love gentle, pacifistic girly-men who weep at chick flicks…men who’ve been “fixed.” No, it’s the quality of masculinity in either gender that churns their guts, including that of strong non-pacifist women like Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Senator Clinton, Margaret Thatcher.

This bias even extends to swimwear. American women wear bikinis; men wear tents. The Euros mock us about this. Sure, you could argue tents for everyone, or skimpy suits for everyone…but the current style divide reveals an amazing level of antimasculine bias.

The real joke is that the Mexican culture amnestyites glorify centers on the cult of machismo, which enshrines womanizing & wife-beating, along with barbaric rites like "bullfighting" (really bull-killing).

Control freaks that they are, amnestyites believe, like Marx, that human nature is whatever the State pours into our empty heads. So everyone can & should be programmed to be gentle—i.e. feminine.

Biologists know better. We can modify what we’re born with, but we’re born with plenty. Studies of identical twins raised separately bear this out.

And one of the things each of us is born with is our particular masculine/feminine balance. We need a mix so each of us can nurture those in our tribe yet be able to combat predators & other tribes attacking us.

We & all other ground-dwelling primates feature larger, more aggressive—i.e. more masculine—males, due to having nowhere to run out on the plains—so you have to defend the females, who have to be more feminine to gestate & nurse the babies. Even the girliest of girly men can’t do those tasks.

BTW tree-dwelling primates are usually similar in size & aggressiveness, because defense in the tree canopy just means running in all directions.

None of this is speculation. It’s all biological fact. Deal with it.

Amnestyites delude themselves into thinking that since we got Civilization we can reject our tough side, & they rail against every aspect of it.

When they die a just deity will stick them all in purgatory & force them to watch the movies “300” & "Saving Private Ryan" over & over until they get it.

We who oppose illegal immigration are expressing that tough side. When the amnestyites call us racist, they’re really saying that we’re expressing unacceptable toughness. They seriously want us to hand over this land, this language, this culture, to Mexico, because it would be, un, impolite not to.

And they’ve got the Bush administration, the Chamber of Commerce, the Catholic Church, the Mexican kleptogovernment, & Al Qaeda cheering them on. All we’ve got is 80% of the American people. And our votes.




ehkzu - 3:44 PM ET March 31, 2007 (#9519 of 9519)

Wimmin! Menfolk! Caint we all jest git along?

Re: ehkzu - 4:18 PM ET March 30, 2007 (#9481 of 9481) Why Amnestyites despise 80% of Americans

It’s kind of cool to make a proposition and then have those who disagree with you go all out to prove your points (inadvertently). OTOH it’s kind of disheartening to see how saying anything controversial is more like a Rorschach inkblot test than actual communication—people see what they’re looking for instead of what’s actually there.

For example, regarding my point about amnestyites hating masculinity—their responses to my post generally boiled down to “Yeah, we do. Masculinity bad, femininity good.” And they generally acted as if I’d said “masculinity good, femininity bad,” which would make my stance an easy target, to be sure. But I had in fact said “masculinity OR femininity by itself bad; both together—in proper balance—good.” I guess that was too nuanced. Ideologues of both left and right really don’t like nuance. Too feminine I guess.

There was also a lot of catcalling about homosexuality. Again interesting, since I’d explicitly stated that masculinity and femininity are independent of sexuality and gender orientation. I felt like I’d wandered into a junior high school cafeteria, or perhaps the set of “Mean Girls.”

But thanks for proving my point, which I’ll restate here a little differently:
Hating masculinity is a luxury of peaceful civilization, advocated by hypocrites who live their comfortable lives in denial of the fact that every civilization only survives if it’s able to defend itself with lethal force if push comes to shove. Europe’s Jews couldn’t believe that their comfortable middle class lives could be stolen from them by force. They trusted civilization’s feminine aspect. It betrayed them.



ehkzu - 11:20 PM ET March 31, 2007 (#9531 of 9532)

Arguing the Other Side Pt. I of II

TheCap0, Incadove et al-- Making the other side’s argument…

I were a demagogue I'd focus on anecdotes of wonderful hardworking people just trying to better their & their families' lives. That’s a powerful emotional approach, & it’s easy to sweep people up in this. But then the next day they often wake up feeling like they’ve been had—like you feel if a car salesman talks you into buying a new car you don’t really need & then you’re stuck with the payments for years.

So in the long run I think it works better to make a more substantive appeal. In this cae I think I’d look at how globalization is breaking down the "cell walls" between sovereign nations & creating a nascent new paradigm—one that might idealistically involve the rich getting less & the poor getting more for once.

Also, in this forum we've talked about two very different axes of immigration. One is practical--crime, disease, overpopulation, need for unskilled labor, whether or not illegals put more money into the system than they get back, etc. The other is philosophical, which even our antiphilosophical friend rmad indulges in. This is the concept of patrié, of tribe, of kameradschaft. There’s more wiggle room here, since we’re free to choose who we give our loyalties to.

Ultimately I regard that as a personal choice, & thus it's open to variation. I can argue that you should dance with the one that brung you--i.e. the nation on whose infrastructure & legal system & national defenses you depend. But you can certainly make an argument for pledging your loyalty to, say, the downtrodden of the world as a higher priority.

And there's plenty of wickedness running around in every country to give you an excuse to feel like you don't owe it anything--even to obey its laws.

And if you're a Catholic you've already been instructed to disregard American immigration restriction laws. So if you put church over country that's also something that could be argued.
I think if I were to make the other side's argument about immigration I'd go for the philosophical side. For one thing it's hard to nail down the practical side. In the last analysis we're all guessing about illegals' impact on the economy. I think they cost more--especially to the average taxpayer--but I couldn't prove it until or unless we became a vastly more "tracked" society with biometric IDs for everyone & data mining as sophisticated as WalMart's.
And of course you could argue philosophically that it's better to have 20 million illegals here than to hand over every detail of our lives to Big Brother. Again, I think that's a battle we've alredy lost on both counts, but it is arguable.

I wouldn't play the race card. It's good stuff demagoguically, & of course every white racist in America opposes illegal immigration by non-whites, But that doesn't prove the reverse. And it's a lousy way to recruit people to your cause. Once you get people's backs up they'll never agree with you even it you can prove every point you make. Nor would I play the reconquista card. It’s just divisive & ultimately doesn’t hold water. Especially since it’s special pleading for one group of illegals—Mexicans—over, say, Guatemalans, Chinese, Philippinos etc. Which is racist.
No,I’d go for some flavor of “1 world” globalization thing.That’s a positive message.It’s doubtless the kind of pitch Candidate Edwards will make in his sunny way.



ehkzu - 11:24 PM ET March 31, 2007 (#9532 of 9532)
Arguing the Other Side Pt. II
continued...

And I’d also play the assimilation card. Europe’s Moslems—even second & third generation ones—are for the most part not integrated into European society, & that breeds bombers & general unrest. America is the best country on Earth at integrating diverse people under our flag, & what we absolutely don’t want is to screw this up the way Europe has done. That would mean integrating the 10-20m illegals into our society. But remember, we’ve done that twice before—with amnesties—in the last 40 years, & the rate of incursion didn’t diminish. It increased.

So you have to articulate your vision for how we deal with the consequences of what you want. It’s not enough to plead on behalf of the poor hardworking people crossing the border. You have to have a vision thing that deals with cross-border gangs like M13 as well, & with some way to handle a level of immigration both legal & illegal that’s unprecedented in the history of functioning nations (as opposed to immigration from one failed state to another, or the Jewish immigration to Palestine—stuff like that).


Even the US lacks infinite resources. Put too many people in the lifeboat & it swamps & everyone drowns. Our agricultural productivity is endangered by the collapse of the porous aquifer & salinization of irrigated lands—same things that turned the “fertile crescent” in the ancient Middle East into the semidesert it is today.

Now you could argue, & some of you have, that America is escaping the graying of the population that’s occurring in the rest of the 1st world (especially Japan & Europe) due to all these young coming coming in to work & pay the social security checks of the old here. That goes back to the practical arguments as opposed to the philosophical ones, as does the preceding paragraph.

So thinking out loud here you need a vision thing with both practical & philosophical angles. If we do as you say, what does that make of America in, say, 2050? Bragging about how that America will be unrecognizable to a white American today isn’t much of a selling point for today’s white Americans now, is it? You need to paint a prettier picture. The country like the Bay Area I live in, which is intensely multicultural & quite successful at it.

So in general I recommend more Edwards-style arguments & less “you white racists are doomed—eat dirt & die!”-style jeremiads.

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. This old saw is honored more in the breach than in the observance, but it’s seriously true. That’s why Bush acts to down home & leaves it up to his hirelings to do the Swift Boating for him while he’s all “Who me?” about it.
IncaDove has tried to do this repeately with the song lyrics & Emma Lazarus, but he/she is so quick to take & give offense he/she keeps pouring vinegar over the honey.

Yes, I realize it’s easy to fall into waving picket signs & shouting when you see the other side doing it. And some of the stuff on my side makes me cringe—both the over the top hectoring & some of the sexual innuendo. So I’m really aiming this caution at both sides.

Along these lines some political consultant once said “Never compare ANYONE with Hitler.” It’s usually seen as overreaching, & sometimes as insulting to those who suffered under the real thing.

One other area to explore is national service. I’m a little uncomfortable about our Armed Forces becoming a mercenary army of foreigners joining to get citizenship, but there might be a rather selective way to make this work.

Ultimately, America is still a country that’s largely opposed to illegal immigration, & your arguments have to take this fact into account. You can’t dismiss them or call them all racist. You can explain to them what their place in your new America will be, & tell them how your vision is true to their better angels.



ehkzu - 2:41 AM ET April 2, 2007 (#9553 of 9553)

Enemy not on this forum

theCap0 wants to know the enemy. Well, the enemy has never posted a single message on this forum. Because your enemy isn't me, or any other amnesty opposer on this forum. Nor is our enemy you, nor any other amnestyite who's posted to this forum. Because none of us have the power or influence to make any changes. (Except for our votes, of course, but those are subject to a lot of interesting stuff on the way to the ballot box...and, sometimes, after.) In fact we all have the same enemy--shadowy, ruthless, obsessed with wealth and privilege, and with charity for none except for, perhaps, immediate family members.

This enemy likes things exactly at they are. And they're exactly as they are because our enemy wants it that way.

You want to legalize illegals. Our enemy doesn't want that. Illegals help them keep wages down and bust unions.

We want them kept out of the country, and those who are here made to leave. Our enemy doesn't want that. They want them in this country, illegally, with neither rights nor recourse, so they can wring work out of them without having to worry about their lives or rights.

Our mutual enemy doesn't care about illegals' impact on hospitals and schools and inner cities. Our enemy doesn't use the hospitals we use. Their children don't go to public schools. They live in gated communities with private police protecting them.

I'm referring to the investor/CEO class. They earn--some might say steal--over $1M a year, and have full time tax lawyers making sure little or none of that goes to pay for public services, which they don't value because they don't use them.

They stay in power in a democracy by convincing conservatives and independents that they are conservative (they're not), and that Democrats are all Com-yew-nists who will turn America into Cuba.

You rarely see them, even in photographs. Instead you see their lackeys and house servants, otherwise known as our politicians (I exaggerate...a little).

The enemy has American citizenship, or Mexican, or Guatemalan, or Chinese for that matter. It doesn't matter. What matters is great wealth that never satiates its possessors but only makes them want more.

So theCap0, if you want to know your enemy, this isn't the place to do it. Everyone here is trying to make society better. We disagree on how to do that--often deeply. But none of us is doing this simply because we're out for #1.

So we actually have more in common with each other than we do with those who feed off the status quo...off keeping the illegals here, and illegal...feeding off them like ticks.




ehkzu - 6:47 PM ET April 2, 2007 (#9572 of 9574)

Some men rob you with a six gun--some with a fountain pen

TheCap0 read my post:
>ehkzu #9553 2:41 AM ET 4/2/2007 --Enemy not on this forum
And responded in this way:
>thecap0 - 7:27 AM ET April 2, 2007 (#9560 of 9571)
Not the enemy, eh? There are those on this forum who have called those of us who favor open borders vermin, unAmerican, & worse. They have tried to condemn us to Siberia, Antarctica, or He!!. Do you deny that they are the enemy & that they consider us the same? Do you disavow them & their words, or are they merely engaging in a little harmless hyperbole?

My answer: Of course they regard you as your enemy, and vice versa. As for your other challenge, the only words I’m obligated to avow or disavow are my own—and I stand by those, along with everything Chakotay has said. Neither he nor I have descended to the muffled curses and namecalling that have characterized so many posts on the two visible sides of this issue.

Colonel Sanders has stayed above the fray as well, but is more focused on Marxist input to this problem than I am. Other than that I’m only obligated to avow or disavow the statements of political organizations I belong to: namely the Coral Reef Alliance and the Democratic Party. The former has no stance on immigration. The latter is profoundly wrongheaded on this issue IMHO. But since the Republican Party has become the supple and devoted servant of the oligarchs, I choose to belong to the lesser evil. But you didn’t answer my actual challenge: that those oligarchs have a third position in this debate that you haven’t addressed.

Consider the players:
1. Liberals favoring illegals and amnesty.
2. Conservatives and moderates favoring strict control over who enters and stays in this country.
And, invisibly:
3. Oligarchs favoring the status quo—lots of illegals here and more coming, and staying, illegally.

The first side includes 60% of Democrats plus the Catholic church, a large majority of Democratic congressmen, a smattering of liberal churches (when they aren’t busy feeding street people), ¾ of Americans of Latino heritage, the Government of Mexico and most of its citizens, and, to be honest, radical Latino anti-white, anti-American organizations like MECHA.

The second side includes nearly all Republican voters, 40% of Democrats, over a quarter of Americans of Latino heritage, a fair number of Republican congressmen (notably Sen. Tancredo), a few conservative Democratic congressmen, and, to be honest, all the white supremacist organizations.

The third side includes only the few thousand fat cats whose collective income exceeds the collective income of 90% of Americans, minus a few enlightened souls like George Soros (love him or hate him, he isn’t just serving selfish ends). Add to this oligarchy of the hyperrich those who work for them—namely the leaderships of the Republican and Democratic parties, and the Chamber of Commerce. Then add the criminal organizations that profit from the status quo—those who traffic in drugs and humans.

My point was that this third side used its power and influence to create the status quo and now to maintain it, despite the staunch opposition of 80% of American voters, and is in fact the main player in this drama. Yet this third side is completely absent from all immigration forum posters.

You can focus on individual conservatives whose namecalling angers you, or on the secretive billionaires who’ve said nothing to your face, but who are playing you like a fiddle, since they use your efforts to help maintain the status quo.

And I'll say again that even those who curse you are trying to improve society in their own way and not just look out for #1. You don't have to change your stance on immigration to acknowledge that. Bottom line: who’s your bigger foe—Minuteman or packing plant owner? Who do you think really has the clout in the halls of Congress?


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The following is my last post to the immigration forum and the last post to the forum overall before it closed forever (according to the New York Times)
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ehkzu - 4:24 PM ET April 9, 2007 (#9767 of 9767)

Changing the topic from policies to motives

Now this is ripe. Here we have someone using hate speech to lecture me about supposedly using hate speech. Talk about hypocrisy. And they're using all this as a way to change the subject from immigration to psychology. Tch tch.

The details: >alfonso382 - 9:50 AM ET April 9, 2007 (#9756 of 9760)
>Two nations divided by a border ekhzu (tambien conocido como 'jijodesuchi'), this is for you: >"Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated." Coretta Scott King >http://thinkexist.com/quotes/coretta_scott_king/

Note the Spanish phrase "tambien conocido como 'jijodesuchi' means "also known as jijodesuchi." Jijodesuchi is an offensive Mexican curse word. I won't translate it here, but suffice to say that it's talking about you and your mother in a way that would start a fight in any bar if your interlocutor understood what you were saying to him.

Well, speaking of mothers, I write all my posts as if my mother were reading them. If only other posters--like Alfonso32--did likewise.

Free tip on persuading people: using hate speech to lecture others about their supposed hate speech usually isn't very persuasive. Funny how that works.

And to do so in a language most posters don't understand is not only hypocritical, it's childish to boot. Like some nasty little 12 year old boys on a street corner making obscene remarks in Spanish about the gringas walking by.

This is also a perfect example of trying to change the subject from immigration to motives. It's a dirty trick used by politicians of every stripe--because it usually works. When you accuse people of being bad/dishonorable they usually leap to defend themselves and forget what they were talking about before being accused. That's why the book "Crimes Against Logic" devotes a whole chapter to this ploy.

Readers, don't get diverted. Our motives are not the subject. Immigration is. And whether I'm seething with hatred or brimming with luv has no bearing on whether my facts are true and my logic is correct. If Hitler himself says the sky is blue, that doesn't make it green, and if Mother Theresa herself says Finland is next to Hawaii, she's still wrong despite her saintliness.

Lastly, when someone in an argument tries to change the subject by questioning the other side's motives, you can usually take it as admission of defeat. So it's a backhanded way of conceding the real debate.

I hereby welcome Alfonso32 to the ranks of those who agree that illegal immigration is a bad thing that must be stopped; that illegal aliens must be denied the ability to earn a living in America, educate their children, or seek any medical aid other than emergency treatment.
And that Mexicanos like Alfonso32 would do best by devoting their energies to reforming Mexico's kleptoccracy and rigid Catholic hierarchy that combine to keep half of Mexico's population in dire poverty.

And yes, I agree that NAFTA should have included killing our huge taxpayer-provided subsidies to giant American agribusiness. Deals like this do no good for ordinary Americans like me or for ordinary Mexicans. They are to help los ricos of both countries, no one else.