The Glade 4.0

I can't find the racist narrative in all of this and I loathe Trump. He started being called a racist when he became the Republican nominee for President. He's been front and center in the public eye since the 80's. Coincidence? No. The media wanted him to be the R nominee because they knew they could have a field day with him and he was easily portrayed as anything they have always wanted to label the R party as. The fact that he is a buffoon that plays right along with it doesn't help.

Sexist, maybe, I'd even lean that way in my personal judgment of him but racism seems entirely conjufred when every presentation of evidence of it depends on code words or secret meanings that others assign to his words. The man is by no means fit to be President but the racist bullshit is just that. I'm not sure if you only look at headlines or listen to news clips or the daily show or npr but this is a case of enough media calling him a racist well then it must be so, and that action, as frequent as it is used - has caused the word to have no meaning nor impact to most people I know. It's the equivalent of calling someone a 'poopy head' it is both meaningless and identifies the caller as an ignoramous.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Trump's entire primary campaign could be summed up by "I'll keep out the brown people." He did not just target illegal Hispanics, he also promised to not let in any Arabs, as well as promising to reform H1Bs to stop allowing in any more Chinese. You cannot outright refer to Hispanic illegal immigrants as a whole as "rapists and murderers" and then dodge accusations of racism. Adding on, "and some of them are good people" at the end doesn't magically change that, it's like saying, "With all due respect, you're an *******" and then claiming this isn't an insult because you said, "With all due respect" first.

Trump has promised that he will deport all 11 million illegals within 2 years. The only way that ever comes close to working is if you assume anyone visibly Hispanic is an illegal and require them to prove legality to not get deported.

Honest question to those with a liberal viewpoint:

How can somebody who highly values the sovereignty of our nation's borders state they want to remove illegal aliens without being accused of racism?

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The Dude abides.

They can't. Anything but globalist border-less policy is inherently racist.

I'm sorry, I got my snarky cynicism in your serious question. It's a worthwhile question, and deserves an answer. Now that I've been sarcastic, I'll step aside and let it get answered.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'm a "liberal" (though not particularly left or right leaning) and I value the sovereignty of national borders, and while I definitely support easier legal immigration (especially from countries with value systems more like our own), I want to make sure it's done in a legal fashion.

The left is generally not liberal anymore. It stopped being liberal two or three decades ago. Here's a blog post I wrote on the subject, inspired by a comment Corolinth made to me:


http://irishjackie.blogspot.ca/2016/07/ ... anity.html

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

No, it isn't "I'll keep out the brown people". This is the strawman always used by the left when they want to import more future Democrats - since most immigration these days comes from non-White sources, obviously the only reason for it it "keep out brown people" (never mind that certain European ancestries are pretty brown).

A) Arab/Muslim immigrants represent a security threat. Keeping them all out was never practical and he's since backed off on that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with increased vetting for people coming from places that A) have a history of extremism and B) are in such a state of chaos that they cannot provide normal international cooperation

B) Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants are not only coming in illegally, but are rather blatantly being used by the left as a means to try to gain permanent electoral dominance. The argument has frequently been made that they're here to "do jobs Americans don't want." This is far more "racist" than anti-immigration positions - this argument amounts to "lets import an ethnic underclass to do our **** work". The left has zero interest in these people beyond trying to create a new source of voters; this nonsense about "racism" and "brown people" is masking the fact that the argument amounts to "unskilled, uneducated workers should be allowed to violate the law becuase of their ethnic background and the fact that they or their offspring will vote for us."



You can't physically deport that many people in the first place.

If you were going to do that, moreover, you don't just go walking up to random Hispanics and harassing them; that would just end in a morass of individual cases. You go to places where you're likely to find large numbers of illegals all concentrated together, such as raiding worksites illegals frequent. You can hoover them up by the hundreds that way.

You're just trying to invent a reason to be scared of Trump that confirms your worldview (there are good reasons, but they don't involve holding on to the sacred cow of "racism"). You'd have trouble deporting 11 million people in 2 years if they lined up for it. If they don't, the last thing anyone would do is waste time bothering individual people on the street.

Seriously, who do you think does immigration enforcement? Most of the ARE Hispanic. I'm a minority in this field. Here in the RGV, 80% or more of the population is Hispanic. Only Hollywood would come up with such an idiot strategy.



You can't.

Racism arguments are based on Appeal to Motive (assumed motive, particularly). In the case of immigration it relies on the idea that because most immigrants are non-white, that must be the reason people don't want illegal immigration. "Racism" is based on the argument that one's cynicism about the motives of others is of probative value. That's also the reason why the definition of "racism" keeps shifting; it's important to keep that as the motive to avoid answering uncomfortable questions like "why should illegal immigration be an ok avenue to violate the law?"

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I have 2 jobs, I'm taking 17 credits, and I have 3 children at home. I really don't get this.



Let me explain it like this - saying something "isn't racist" or "isn't sexist" isn't an expression of approval. It just means that it does not fit into those categories. It's not possible to actually have a conversation about the issue with someone that is referring to something as "racist" or "sexist" because there's an implication there that you're "defending racism" or "defending sexism". These terms are an attempt to gain an upper hand before a discussion even starts by implying that the other side is ok with racism or sexism, and forcing them to walk on eggshells around the topic. There's even a joke about that that goes:

"I'm not racist but..." *says something racist*

Which is all hardee har har until you realize that what's said is often not "racist" at all; it's frequently a discussion of facts that a miinority group, or a liberal finds uncomfortable, and the reference to racism is designed to prevent people from bringing this up in the first place.

Ideas and actions that are genuinely racist are very easy to criticize without actually using those terms. I can very easily explain why the KKK is bad without using the term "racist". It should be possible to do so, and the advantage of that is that it focuses on the ideas rather than being a veiled ad hom against one's opponent. If I start a discussion off with "niggers are...<statistic here>" you aren't going to want to discuss the statistic with me, so I don't know why you think it's possible to have a conversation when you think that "racism" as you perceive it is some sort of self-evident truth.

Much of what you perceive as "racism" is stereotyping and predjudice and generalizations, which range from "not as bad as actual racism, but bad" (for some prejudices) up to "unfortunate, but undeniably true as a general rule". The idea that generalizations are always bad is an idea middle school children indulge in; discussion is impossible without them and just because one is uncomfortable with the implications of one doesn't make it inaccurate. The same applies to "sexism", in different ways.



Reference the lengthy explanations I referred to in my previous post. I'm well known for my verbose posting; it's not as if I haven't gone into the issue beyond merely denying the "racism" or "sexism".

However, I'll try to sum up the issues with the use of the concept of "racism" and "sexism" for your convenience, the 3 top issues being underlined:

1) The continuing shifting definitions of these terms, and invention of new forms of "racism" and "sexism" such as "microaggressions" and "cultural appropriation". While you may not personally indulge in the most absurd forms of nonsense, the fact is that accusations of "racism" are permanently tainted with this absurdity. Hearing the word "racism" these days is a clue that one is talking to someone who is simply not interested in reasoned discussion at all.

2) Near-complete refusal to acknowledge "racism" on the part of minorities (or the left), or "sexism" by women (and the actual sexism engaged in by serious feminists and some portions of the left). When such is acknowledged, it is inevitably in the most cursory way, with the excuse being some variant on historical inequalities. This is not the way to build equality and tolerance; you cannot create it by creating new inequalities and double standards, then trying to excuse them. It often appears that the goal is to create backlash and resentment in order to maintain the currency of the issue.

3) The proliferation of both individual incidents of fabricating "hate", "sexism/misogyny" or "racism" and the invention of laughable statistics to support them, or oversimplification to the point of essentially becoming a fabrication. We're told with a straight face that rape on college campuses equals the rate found in the Congo in the middle of a civil war where it's an accepted terror practice. We're told about a "gender wage gap" that shrinks by 75% when even the most elementary statistical controls are applied, and which suspiciously does not generate any actual incidents of wage discrimination. There is endless talk about disproportionate effects of criminal justice on blacks while the equally-significant disproportionate prevalence of criminality prompts finger-wagging. In a "racist" or "oppressive" nation, no one does this. Only a society that really cares about racism or sexism would even be worth fabricating such claims against in the first place.

4) The demonization of female and minority public figures that do not hold the "approved" views for their identity group.

5) The attribution of any disagreement on these issues to the motivation of the other party. This happens publicly, with such nonsense as the "basket of deplorables" comment, and you did it above. You seem to want to attribute this to a "chip on my shoulder" and what it would take for me to call something racist or sexist, to the point that you don't know how to respond. You may have noted that inability to respond is not one of my problems. This appears to be a common problem on the left, a refusal to acknowledge even the possibility of discussion on these topics rather than simply deploying the terms and then refusing to acknowledge that in a free society, everyone's opinion matters on the subject of what opinions are permissible.

6) The obvious moral hazard of unconstrained ability to deploy terms like "racism" and "sexism". It should be obvious that if one side of debate can deploy them uncontested to put things the other side does so out of the realm of discussion, it will do so, and do so more and more frequently.

It appears to me that the reason that you're having a hard time knowing how to respond is that it hasn't occurred to you that someone could call into question how they are used. Yes, I have an exceedingly high bar for the use of the terms "racism" and "sexism" because by using them you're essentially trying to place things into the column of ideas that can be dismissed out of hand, and on top of that I see zero willingness to enforce the same standards on the left, or on minorities, and it presents all the signs of being a smoke screen for maintaining racial and sexual identity issues for as long as possible.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Your vociferous and passionate arguments in this matter give the impression of a fervor that someone merely disagreeing with definitions would not have. You create the impression of someone who is defensive about (and by implication, guilty of) racist thoughts and feelings.
Regardless of your actual stance on the matter, it is difficult to approach the problems of 'false racism' from the side of the aisle you're coming from. Your arguments often have merit, but they're too easily mixed in with those who have actual prejudice. When your allies are the KKK and various other hate groups, you can't be too surprised that you get cast in the same lot, when you use the same arguments.

Sorry for being terse, but you're answering a question I didn't ask (although I'm willing to entertain that discussion in IM's). If you'd like me to use the term "progressive" instead, fine, but I think the board understands who I'm targeting with the question. And I genuinely would like to understand their perspective.

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The Dude abides.

How very convenient. The problem here is that since you're using the definitions I'm calling into question, not only are you engaging in blatant appeal to motive, but equally blatant question-begging. You are not in a position to determine what level of "vociferousness" is and isn't appropriate to "disagreeing with definitions." Definitions are not some semantic quibble here - as I pointed out there are used to try to gain an implied moral advantage before discussion even begins, and this complaint about "vociferousness" of the left is exactly the problem I described above - a demand to be allowed to play referee to the debate it participates in and declaring any counterpoints not sufficiently obsequious or mealy-mouthed to be unacceptable, while reservering the right to use any sort of hyperbole its own adherent want.

Interestingly, that's exactly what you're doing here with your little "impressions".



This is precisely the sort of behavior that causes me to question your motives in the first place. How very convenient that it gives you this "impression". Let's divert the subject away from how the concept of "racism" is used and onto TR's personal subjective suspicion that he's "guilty" of "racist thoughts and feelings".

But since you want to talk about "impressions", your comments give me the "impression" that you're trying to distract from the points I brought up with nothing more than your extremely self-serving "impressions" and your arbitrary standard of "vociferousness". You give me the impression that you are constitutionally unable to contemplate having to surrender the power of the left to declare things "Racist/sexist" or not and participate in a national conversation in which those words had meanings generally acceptable to everyone, rather than those convenient to the left.



I hate to break it to you, but my allies aren't the KKK or any other hate groups. For that matter, neither are Trump's; his failure to denounce David Duke as vociferously as people would prefer notwithstanding. You cannot stop people from supporting you in this country just because you don't like them.

Furthermore, this is exactly the sort of hypocrisy I've discussed in the past. The left is replete with "hate groups" of its own, that it simply refuses to recognize, or excuses.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

As far as I'm concerned, racism and other unacceptable forms of discrimination are when someone notices that a Bad Thing is heavily correlated with another indicator that's difficult or impossible for a person to change, (such as race or religion) and then instead of evaluating each person individually like they were doing before they noticed this, they instead decide to take the easy way out and just act as if the Bad Thing is true of the whole group. They know it's not actually true of the whole group, but to make things easier on themselves they've decided they're not going to care about the others.

It is true that the majority of Muslims in the world have shitty values and should not be in the US. That does not mean it is right to just blanket ban all of them without regard for the rest. Trump's wall is the same ****. Upon noticing that we have an illegal immigrant problem and that a lot of them are Hispanic, his solution is to wall off the Hispanics.

How are Trump's policies any different than other historical policies now universally considered to be horribly racist? Redlining, for example, was banks deciding that the minority of individuals in a black community that weren't terrible credit risks just weren't worth bothering with. It was far easier to just use race as a substitute, and then they wouldnt have to pay a bunch of auditors to actually evaluate individuals.

The illegal immigrant problem seems simple to me. On average, the illegals pay more in taxes than they consume in services. So they're not here to mooch off our social programs. They're here for the jobs. If we make sure there aren't jobs here for them, by going after employers that hire undocumented workers, then they won't come here. Unfortunately, it's far easier to blanket demonize them as a raving, raping horde invading us from the south and saying we need to build a wall to protect ourselves.

LOL

While I appreciate your taking the time to respond, you did not answer my question. My question has nothing to do with the values of or services consumed by illegal aliens, nor Trump. I'm asking for somebody on the left to ignore the current presidential election context with regard to my question.

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The Dude abides.

Trump has moved on from the blanket ban position months ago; you should probably do the same. The wall is not the same thing - there are designated legal ports of entry where one can enter legally. A wall would limit people to those ports of entry. The "big beautiful door" is a metaphorical reference to legal entry, not a literal door in El Paso and nowhere else, which is obvious to people not being pedantic hyperliteralists about everything Trump says.

Trump's current position on Muslims has been "extreme vetting" which you should be fine with (aside from the lack of specifics about what precisely that entails) since you just admitted that the majority of Muslims have values incompatible with this country.

Complaining about the wall on practicality grounds is one thing; complaining it's racist is utter nonsense. It is not "racist" to stop people from entering the country in a non-legally-prescribed manner just because they're not white. By complaining that it is, you're tacitly admitting that you think Hispanics should have a special privilege to ignore the law.



We do need to do something about it, even if building a wall is not the right solution. Even if you accept the idea that they pay more in taxes than they take in terms of social services (which is true only if you consider wage-earning adults while ignoring children, and explicit tax payer benefits, rather than services such as schooling that aren't paid out as an individual benefit) the fact is that they take jobs, and drive wages in those jobs down. They also create a large, unskilled underclass that we then have expend additional resources to get up to the level of education we need people to be at, and in the process overcome a language barrier.

This country does not actually need large numbers of low-wage unskilled workers. Again, claiming that "Donald Trump said they were all rapists!" is true only if you are hyperliteral and don't understand how normal people converse. Donald Trump talks like that (which is part of his appeal to many people). He does not talk in normal carefully-parsed politispeak. It's expected that the Democrats will pounce on anything he says; that's they're job. Pretending that this sort of hyperbolic talk is literally 100% true is just self-justification for all this nonsense about "racism".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Riov you're literally saying "I'm not going to respond to any of your points, I'm just going to reassert my position despite and contrary to evidence presented and actually using the idea you're supporting your position as a negative."

What the hell has happened to you?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Well, there's always going to be some liberals that just shout racism in response to literally anything they don't like. You have people like Al Sharpton where it's literally their job to make everything about race. Any policy relating to literally anything proposed by a right-wing candidate is going to generate some accusations of racism. However, they're not going to have much credibility if you don't act like Trump does and direct hateful rhetoric at a specific race. In addition to his comments about the judge, he specifically said we needed the wall (which only targets Hispanic illegals, rather than all of them) in order to keep the "rapists and murderers" out.

Bush got accused of racism a lot but it never really stuck because it just wasn't credible. Stuff like "Bush doesn't care about black people" after Katrina became a joke very quickly.

I think it just requires an indication that you're aware of the impact that policy will have on the people being deported and have compassion over what it will mean for them. Part of that is about the language you choose, and part of it is about the way in which you propose to implement the policy. If you talk in angry and aggressive ways about foreign "rapists and murderers", defend racial profiling, advocate "rounding people up" at every opportunity, etc., without much (if anything) in the way of caveats and nuance, and your policies don't seem to prioritize any kind of compassionate relief elements (e.g., asylum reviews, reporting exemptions for medical care and calls to the police, etc.) you communicate animosity, dehumanization, and, given the racial makeup of the immigrant pool and the history of bigotry towards them, racism. On the other hand, if you use language and tones that suggest concern for the actual people being affected, you talk about the issues involved in a way that acknowledges there's nuance to them, and your policies do emphasize those compassionate relief elements, then you're much less likely to come across as having an agenda influenced by racism.

For example, the "rapists and murderers" thing sounds racist, but something like this would not: "It's true that the vast majority of illegal immigrants come here looking for a better life for themselves and their families, and that they're actually less likely, on average, to commit crimes (once they're here) than native-born citizens are, but when those crimes do happen, the fact that the perpetrator wasn't supposed to be here in the first place adds insult to injury, because it means there's an extra layer of prevention that has failed; an added sense that the government has not fulfilled its fundamental duty to uphold the laws and keep people safe from those who would do them harm."

I want open borders. We just have dismantle the welfare/warfare state first.

Cyclic immigration and emmigration is good. People are resources and need to move and leave areas as efficiences of those areas for their labor increases or wanes.

Humans are just stupid tribal animals.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Since I'm not actively involved in the debate (and indeed have stayed out of hellfire for the most part. Who needs the drama?) I felt no obligation to respond to the entire post. In point of fact, I wasn't actually trying to offer a rebuttal of DE in the first place, but rather make a side comment on a singular point.

Too often, when people post here, there are accusations of moving the goalposts or accusations of strawmen, when in fact the poster's responses are more like side commentary rather than an attempt at rebuttal. In this case, I've really stayed out of the discussion for the most part so feel comfortable kibitzing rather than playing this game.

As for "what happened to me"-- no idea what you're talking about.

The judge is a member of La Raza which is an ethnocentric Hispanic organization, so while Trump was his usual boorish, uncouth self about it and didn't adequately explain this fact (as in, he failed to mention it at all) he was not being "racist" to call the judge's objectivity into question. Furthermore, the people suggesting he was racist to say this are also the ones suggesting all Hispanic people vote as a block and have immigration as their main issue. Neither of these is true.

As for the wall, you're engaging in a perfect solution fallacy. The fact that the wall would not stop all immigrants does not mean it would not stop EQI (Entry without Inspection) immigrants along the primary route of entry.

That these illegals are primarily Hispanic is irrelevant (although in point of fact, Chinese, Nepalese, Bangladeshi, and other immigrants appear at the southern border as well, while in small relative numbers, still on a daily basis.

Stopping other forms of illegal immigration could also be called "racist" because they would stop non-Hispanics while still allowing Hispancs their primary means of entry. Essentially, you're arguing that any illegal immigration control is racist becuase it would not impact all ethnicities equally. This is nonsense. You use different means to target different kids of immigrants.

This country has absolutely zero obligation to allow people in, and especially none to allow them easy means of violating immigration law. There is no racism here whatsoever. This sort of crap is exactly why liberals should not be permitted to use the term "racism" any more without being ridiculed - it's just naked attempts to rig the law to the left.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You do realize that what you essentially did is admit that it's entirely a complaint about racist language as the left sees it. Then you gave an example of how the same policy could be articulated differently in a less "Racist" way.

You just admitted to exactly what I've been claiming - it's all abou reasons to distract from the actual issue with claims of "racism".

As an aside, the "immigrants commit fewer crimes" is a non-point because it does not account for the fact that the threat of deportation if apprehended for another crime likely surpresses crime rates among illegals below where it would be without such a threat.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No, what I "admitted" is that support for any given policy can be based on a variety of reasons and motivated by a variety of attitudes, and the language people use when talking about that policy is how they communicate what those reasons and attitudes are. That should not be a shocking concept. You can support stricter enforcement of immigration laws because you have concerns about the economic impact and a reasonable, balanced view of the security impact, or you can support it because you're sick of all these brown people "taking over" the country, or you can support it for some combination of those reasons and attitudes. How you talk about it communicates what your underlying reasons and attitudes are.

Tell me, prior to Hillary Clinton's reference to Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables, were you under the impression that she had a deep and abiding respect for them as decent Americans with whom she merely had some technical policy disagreements? I'm guessing not. Presumably, you were able to discern from her choice of language and the emphasis she placed on various points that she thought they were all a bunch of ignorant, dirtbag racists long before she came right out and said so. Well, it goes both ways.

And yet the policy in question is the same. Are you actually taking the position that the same policy can be racist or not racist based on the attitudes of the person espousing it - or more to the point, those attitudes as seen by the self-appointed judges of what is and isn't racist?



Hillary Clinton did not espouse any particular policy there. Her views on "deplorables" are neither a recommendation for or against any of her policy positions.

Furthermore, the fact that it goes both ways is part of the issues. No one here is really that enthusiastic about Trump; he's seen as the only alternative to Clinton. Similarly, Clinton shows that she's just as bad as Trump, possibly worse, she's just better at hiding it until her "deplorables" screw-up. Leaving aside the number of press outlets that tried to claim she was actually right, this is one of the points I cited above - persistent refusal to acknowledge the bigotry on the left, or if it is acknowledged to do so in only the most cursory way.

Either bigotry is an issue, or it isn't. You don't get to pick and choose the bigotry, and you certainly don't - after Clinton blatantly exposes hers - get to turn around and say "well it goes both ways" and point back at Trump. The fact that it goes both ways is exactly what people have been complaining about for years, and failure to recognize that it goes both ways is part of the reason Trump is a thing. People just stopped caring that you think something is "racist" since the double standard is so transparent.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

In my opinion, the stupidest thing about "racism" is Americans' collective belief that as soon as someone is proved to be racist it disqualifies them from holding any job more complicated than McDonald's cashier. Considering the substantial moral failings politicians tend to have, why is this an instant deal breaker? Hillary has significant moral failings that even her supporters don't deny, but Trump being a racist somehow immediately overrides all that, to the point that Trump's supporters have to make themselves look ridiculous by emphatically denying Trump has no racist feelings at all?

This is like, I don't know, like DUIs in accidents. It doesn't matter that the other guy was going 100 MPH in a residential area, flipped his car going around a curve, and rolled over a family out for a walk before smashing into you while you were pulling out of your driveway. You had alcohol in your system, so all of that was your fault.

What galls me is that the left can label an entire group of people racist, as if they have the ability to look into people's hearts and discern somebody's motives. As a Christian, I've had people tell me not to judge people by expressing dissatisfaction with somebody's actions without saying anything about motives.

Yet the left seems to have some super power to see deep into the heart and know everyone's motives, which gives them the righteousness to condemn others. But I suppose it's okay I guess, because at least they're not like those hypocritical religious people.

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The Dude abides.