[rayiner]

If you believe that people and cultures are different (which almost everyone outside America believes) then it follows that a region reflects the people who developed it. Countries are, of course, not just land, but they are built of infrastructure, governments, institutions, culture, customs, rules, norms, and values. If Iowa is polite, flat, and egalitarian it’s because Iowans made it that way. By contrast India or China are the way the Indians and Chinese made those places. It stands to reason that if Iowans like Iowa, they might be resistant to immigration from people who are different who will change the place.

[kevviiinn]

You seem to think that people are never influenced by outside sources such as wealthy capital owners spreading propaganda in Iowa in order to make it the way the capital owner wants. I know you'll say "oh people can make choices for themselves" but that's not how behavior works especially when avenues of information are so highly controlled

[rayiner]

You mean wealthy capital owners who want to erase people’s natural affection for their own culture and communities so they can freely sourcing fungible labor from anywhere in the world? Yeah, there is a propaganda effort on that front.

That said, I think in the long run people see through propaganda and correctly perceive their own self interest. Knowledge workers in NYC and SV are following their own self interest in aligning themselves with global capital on the immigration issue—they benefit from a globalized economy with free movement of labor—while plumbers in Iowa are acting in their self interest to opposite it.

[nhchris]

I don't think it's fair to characterize the belief that the people living in a country have a large influence on how that country turns out, as thinking that outside forces have no effect.

[kevviiinn]

Essentially always whenever I see statements like that they ignore larger systemic forces at play so I don't think that it's unreasonable.