[solenoid0937]

The current admin does not understand that our lead comes from immigrants. Sorry, but most Americans are kind of mediocre academically.

I do not understand why the "American First" MAGA crowd can't get it through their thick skulls that everything nice they have, including our technological lead, is built by immigrants that are just smarter than they are.

This is just an ego problem I suspect. It bruises the ego of MAGA voters to realize that immigrants actually are smarter, they actually do get paid more (and not because they're "taking the jobs" but because they are actually more desirable.)

[JuniperMesos]

> The current admin does not understand that our lead comes from immigrants. Sorry, but most Americans are kind of mediocre academically.

> I do not understand why the "American First" MAGA crowd can't get it through their thick skulls that everything nice they have, including our technological lead, is built by immigrants that are just smarter than they are.

Which specific Americans are kind of mediocre academically? Which specific immigrants are smarter than the average American and are therefore responsible for the nice things about America?

Not all American citizens have the same level of intelligence, nor do all people attempting to or actually succeeding in immigrating to the US. To the extent that "everything nice" including technological development is grounded in the average level of intelligence of the people currently inhabiting a country (which I think is a substantial part of but not the entirety of the explanation), this doesn't necessarily imply that immigration which isn't specifically gated on the intelligence of individual immigrants will improve a country along this metric.

And in fact the US has a huge number of legal pathways for immigration (including some like "immigrating illegally, having a natural-born-citizen child on US soil, and having that child sponsor your legal immigration decades later) that have nothing at all to do with how intelligent a given immigrant is.

And of course, immigration itself changes how "mediocre academically" Americans are, by changing who Americans are - an immigrant might eventually become a citizen; or if they don't their children born on US soil will be.

[oefrha]

Go to any top STEM PhD program and do a headcount. I don’t know what’s going on now thanks to this wave of xenophobia and funding cut madness, but back when I was in one (Princeton Physics, that was last decade), everywhere I go it was at least 50-50 in terms of international representation. You can also count the massive number of clearly foreign born faculty. It could not be more obvious.

Edit: And before you mention O-1 and friends for highly accomplished individuals (maybe that's not affected for now? Honestly have no idea), this kind of policy has wide ranging second order effects even if it doesn't affect top talent directly. Like I said I was U.S. educated myself, once I would encourage bright minds from elsewhere to pursue a higher education in the U.S., now I heavily advise them from even setting foot in the U.S.

[dnautics]

> Go to any top STEM PhD program and do a headcount

Having done a STEM PhD, No. STEM PhDs are merely easily exploited labor by STEM departments. The PhDs and postdocs from foreign countries are typically a notch lower than the US PhDs and postdocs (especially the postdocs, because in many foreign countries you can do a 3 year PhD). It's just that most americans won't accept 100 hour workweeks in exchange for a $50k paycheck, and won't falsify the science to stay in pursuit of the next rung on the academic ladder.

[JuniperMesos]

But foreign PhD students and postdocs who are being paid partially in the legal right to reside in the US might well be willing to accept those conditions. Just as an H1B visa tech employee is willing to accept lower wages and less freedom to challenge their employer, or an illegal immigrant farm laborer is willing to accept those working conditions in return for not being in whatever country they illegally immigrated from.

Any justification at all for the US government to give a visa to someone - including student visas, including visas for postdocs doing ostensible research - will be gamed by people whose primary concern is access to the US. Demand for access to the US among the myriad peoples of the world is that strong.

[oefrha]

Sounds like the bitter words of someone who got pushed out. I know the type, I’m no longer an academic myself. Sorry it didn’t work out for you, not sorry to claim that the overwhelming majority of the most important advancements are still made by people with PhDs, however many unsuccessful ones there are.

[dnautics]

I did fine for myself. You're crazy or brainwashed if you don't think there's something wrong going on in the academe. I have long conversations with my friend (who is a professor at ASU) about it, I don't think he's blowing smoke up my ass.

[oefrha]

I think there’s something very wrong with every single walk of society, and academia’s problems are far from the most grave. If I’m given the choice again, I take a rotten academia over fucking ad machines and quants that do no good / actively do harm in this world (both industries try to hire me and the likes of me) every time, even when I know I’m gonna leave at the end.

[Der_Einzige]

Most of these anti immigrant takes are ultimately sour grapes from people who were often rightfully left behind or economically downlifted by their lack of willingness to adapt to the changing world we are in.

Most of these who think that wasp Americans are harmed by high skilled immigrants are admitting that they can’t beat them. Pathetic slave morality which is life denying and ontologically damnable.

[dnautics]

I'm not a wasp American. I'm a scientist that wanted to publish real science. And yes. I was not good enough beat cheats and frauds.

[Der_Einzige]

[flagged]

[dnautics]

I saw seven cases of outright fraud by postdocs/grad students while I was in grad school, they were perpetrated by:

Chinese, Chinese, Greek, Canadian, Chinese, Chinese, German

They were called out by:

American, Indian, American, Polish, American, American, American.

Respectively

[bluecheese452]

Why would an American smart enough to become a stem phd toil away for a decade in poverty under an abusive university system instead of becoming rich in tech?

[solenoid0937]

> Which specific Americans are kind of mediocre academically?

Most of them. We have normalized getting Bs and Cs in our schools. Our school curricula are mediocre, and our culture around education is as well. It is distinctly uncool to care about education here.

> Which specific immigrants are smarter than the average American and are therefore responsible for the nice things about America?

Most of our best doctors, scientists, and engineers are all immigrants. Look at the ethnic breakdown of top AI researchers at the top labs.

> which isn't specifically gated on the intelligence of individual immigrants will improve a country along this metric.

It's not just intelligence. Immigrants overall have more grit, more entrepreneurial spirit, and more ambition and willingness to succeed than median Americans. It takes a lot to uproot your life and attempt to make it elsewhere. The vast majority of immigrants I've met embody the American spirit far better than most born-and-raised Americans I've met.

> And in fact the US has a huge number of legal pathways for immigration

That we are making harder and needlessly painful, which will in turn reduce the amount of highly intelligent and capable immigrants we get as well.

[JuniperMesos]

> Most of them. We have normalized getting Bs and Cs in our schools. Our school curricula are mediocre, and our culture around education is as well. It is distinctly uncool to care about education here.

Would you agree that caring about school performance constitutes acting white? Would you agree that acting white is uncool? Less flippantly, how much of American culture around education is specifically driven by a desire to eliminate or avoid noticing conspicuous racial discrepancies in measured educational attainment?

> Most of our best doctors, scientists, and engineers are all immigrants. Look at the ethnic breakdown of top AI researchers at the top labs.

What is the specific ethnic breakdown of the set of people you consider to be top AI researchers at the top labs? How does this compare to 1) the current ethnic breakdown of the totality of the United States of America, and 2) what the ethnic breakdown of the United States of America would be under your preferred immigration policy.

> It's not just intelligence. Immigrants overall have more grit, more entrepreneurial spirit, and more ambition and willingness to succeed than median Americans. It takes a lot to uproot your life and attempt to make it elsewhere. The vast majority of immigrants I've met embody the American spirit far better than most born-and-raised Americans I've met.

What kinds of immigrants have you met, and not met? How many of them can you talk with in the language they are fluent in, in order to get an accurate sense of the degree to which they embody the American spirit?

> That we are making harder and needlessly painful, which will in turn reduce the amount of highly intelligent and capable immigrants we get as well.

That might be worth it, if those highly intelligent and capable immigrants would, once they are settled in the US, turn their capacity and intelligence towards making US immigration policy more open to less intelligent and capable immigrants (e.g. their less capable and intelligent family members, or just liberalizing immigration policy in general).

[solenoid0937]

> Would you agree that caring about school performance constitutes acting white?

No, the opposite. In my experience immigrants care far more about getting good grades, whereas most multigenerational American students were happy with Bs or even Cs.

> What is the specific ethnic breakdown of the set of people you consider to be top AI researchers at the top labs? How does this compare to 1) the current ethnic breakdown of the totality of the United States of America, and 2) what the ethnic breakdown of the United States of America would be under your preferred immigration policy.

A lot more Asians. Very few Asians. A lot more Asians.

> What kinds of immigrants have you met, and not met? How many of them can you talk with in the language they are fluent in, in order to get an accurate sense of the degree to which they embody the American spirit?

Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Nigerian, Mexican, etc. So many.

The only ones not fluent in English were the Hispanic immigrants, but despite this they better embody the American spirit than most Americans. I don't need to be fluent in Spanish to see that (though mine is passable).

The skilled first and second generation American immigrants do extraordinarily well. Most of my second generation Asian peers are clearing mid 6 to low 7 figures in their 30s, many working on their own ventures or at bold startups. And my Hispanic landscaper that came here with nothing, now owns a business enough to pay him and his four employees.

Now compare this to the median multigenerational American - working a dead-end job, comparatively far less grit, ambition, and risk-taking, too comfortable so there is not as much a drive to be exceptional or prove themselves.

Which group do you think the Founding Fathers would say better reflects the American spirit? To me immigrants are clearly the better reflection of the best aspects of American culture.

[lurk2]

> Which group do you think the Founding Fathers would say better reflects the American spirit? To me immigrants are clearly the better reflection of the best aspects of American culture.

United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790:

> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.

Note: “free white person […] of good character”

US Constitution Preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Note: “ourselves and our Posterity”

[solenoid0937]

I don't think the letter of the document captures the spirit.

[sakompella]

slop

[jedberg]

It's a simple matter of math. The USA has less than 5% of the world's population. It's statistically impossible for that 5% to be the smartest 5% in the world. Therefore, if we want the smartest people in the world, we have to allow immigrants.

[hallole]

The smartest aren't uniformly distributed across the Earth.

[array_key_first]

They almost certainly are, at least before we account for education. Education is, of course, not uniform.

But... the US also has not the best education, so.

[myroon5]

> account for education

and nutrition, pollution, infectious diseases, etc

[jedberg]

That's true. It is possible that the smartest 5% are all here in the USA. But it is statistically unlikely that's true.

[hallole]

You put words in my mouth. I don't claim that the smartest are clustered in the USA.

[unethical_ban]

So your original comment was somewhat of a tangent. the point jedberg made is that it is in the interest of a country with a strong economic and academic base to welcome the smartest people from across the world, since it is unlikely that all the smartest people in the world are in the US.

[hallole]

Yes, but Jedberg makes it sound as though -- given that only a small fraction of the world's population lives in the USA -- the country has little chance of succeeding if it is to go without immigrants. I disagree, and an extreme example I could offer as a counterpoint is Japan: tiny population (relatively), yet outsized performance.

[irishcoffee]

So we need leetcode for immigration now?

[eecc]

I’m not sure US academia is mediocre. It’s more like… normal?

But America being what it is, it attracts those with most potential creating and sustaining a network effect.

But there’s nothing intrinsically good or bad of the US, and it’s quite easy to mess up the equilibrium and go back to the mediocrity you mentioned

[seanmcdirmid]

It’s a numbers game. Taking the best from the world talent pool is going to provide better results than from the much smaller American talent pool. Unless your country has more than a billion people, you need to look at world talent.

[genxy]

The US has to especially encourage immigration since we have gone out of our way to make the education system systemically broken. Our funnel is broken on purpose. Look at countries with strong showings in things like chess or running. Why is that? They encourage large populations of kids to participate, the larger the pool the more top performers.

[deeg]

It's not an ego problem. It's a racial one.

[mandeepj]

> including our technological lead, is built by immigrants

That's my point to get the Constitution changed (Amendment #28) to allow an immigrant to run for POTUS. We love US more than natural-born citizens. Our interests are far more aligned with the betterment of the country than anyone else's.

[amanaplanacanal]

Oh boy! If we are talking about constitutional amendments I can probably think of a few that would be much more important than that.

[alterom]

>Our interests are far more aligned with the betterment of the country than anyone else's.

Generally, yes.

But then there's Elon Musk.

Peter Thiel too: while a US citizen by birth, he defacto immigrated to the US from elsewhere (as in: moved from another country to settle in the US).

Immigration for rich folks is a bit different, see.

[mandeepj]

Peter Thiel is a naturalized US citizen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel

Musk was (mostly) great until 2020; Something happened to him during the COVID timeframe.

I'd not want Musk, Thiel, or Palantir guy to run for POTUS. Probably, there should be a clause that if your net worth exceeds the threshold, you shouldn't be eligible to run until you donate all of it to the government, with no option to get it back ever. Some more clauses can be added as well.

Edit 1: I think another clause, maybe most important, a minimum one term public office service experience required only as a Senator, Rep, Governor, or a Mayor.

[alterom]

>Peter Thiel is a naturalized US citizen

Oops, my bad, somehow I thought his parents naturalized before he was born.

Thanks for pointing this out; this helps the point I'm trying to make.

>I'd not want Musk, Thiel, or Palantir guy to run for POTUS. Probably, there should be a clause that if your net worth exceeds the threshold, you shouldn't be eligible to run until you donate all of it to the government, with no option to get it back ever. Some more clauses can be added as well.

Edit 1: I think another clause, maybe most important, a minimum one term public office service experience required only as a Senator, Rep, Governor, or a Mayor.

Can I vote for you and your proposals somewhere?

At this point, this reads like "I have a dream". But it's one worthy of trying to make a reality.

>Musk was (mostly) great until 2020;

Aside from running the Thai cave diver's life (and slandering him as a "pedo") for daring to rescue the children instead of letting them die waiting for Musk's non-existent submarine to rescue them.

That, and being generally known for working his employees to the bone.

And the whole "I need to spread my superior seed" conveyor belt approach to having children.

And the "420 funding secured" nonsense.

Oh, and the Hyperloop hype, which he did with the sole intent to kill high speed rail in California (which he succeeded in).

And the Boring Company scam.

And... nevermind, he was a known, not OK", great asshole before* he went full Nazi, but I can agree that he was "great" in comparison to what he's become.

>Something happened to him during the COVID timeframe.

It's ketamine. Ketamine happened.

[bluecheese452]

Why would I want an immigrant smarter than me? If I have a 120 iq and he has a 130 iq then he is going to take my job. You really aren’t convincing me here.

[tptacek]

You reasonably might not. We would though. Who prevails, the small-but-concentrated interest, or the vast-but-diffuse one? It's the central question of all public policy.

[bluecheese452]

Why would the average us citizen want to import a smarter foreign competitor. There are far more workers than there are ceos.

[tptacek]

An accountant wants better, more reliable, and cheaper software. They're not intrinsically motivated to subsidize native-born software developers.

[bluecheese452]

No they don’t. They want to work 40 hours a week, go on vacation twice a year, drive a couple of cars, have their wife stay home and raise the kids. All things possible 70 years ago but no longer possible.

[tptacek]

Accountants and software developers do not in fact share a fate. I know it doesn't feel that way when you're commenting on HN, but there are whole lucrative professions that do not care at all what happens in ours.

[akerl_]

Because I want to work with talented coworkers and do business with talented counterparts and socialize with people who aren’t scared of immigrants.

[solenoid0937]

Because without having the smartest people, the reigning superpower is totally, utterly, unequivocally fucked.

Power is a function of technological superiority. The moment you it stops attracting the smartest people, a country will fall behind on military and economic power.

[bluecheese452]

Which matters not one lick to the average citizen. Norway is no superpower yet life is pretty good there.

[pickleRick243]

I find it a bit hard to believe you actually think such a line of reasoning would be convincing. I think many MAGA voters in fact are aware that many of the immigrants are smarter than them, and hence they do the rational thing of trying to reduce competition. I don't understand why you wrote "taking the jobs" in quotes. That's exactly what's happening- superior immigrant applicants are taking jobs that would have been theirs.

[burnerRhodov3]

This is a very racist comment, or atleast smells of xenophilia. "Americans are kind of mediocre academically". You can't use the term Americans are [all], followed by a blanket statement.

If that was about any other class of people it'd be downvoted to oblivion, but for some reason Americans and white can always be talked shit on.

This is the kind of shit US AMERICANS are talking about, this xenophilia bullshit that is infecting our nation.

[solenoid0937]

I'm born and raised in the US. I don't think it's racist at all, it's just true.

Go to any high school and see how little American schoolchildren care about academics vs immigrant schoolchildren. Academic excellence being uncool is baked into American culture. You're a "nerd" if you do well and care. Getting a B is "good enough." And "C's get degrees." This mentality is plainly unacceptable in most immigrant cultures.

I took almost two dozen AP classes in my day. In each one, the concentration of immigrant groups was far higher than the rest of the school at large.

Expand this out to college. Look at the admissions for top colleges without affirmative action. How do their demographics compare to the rest of the country? - MIT, 47% Asian. Berkeley, 41% Asian. UCLA and Stanford, 27% Asian.

6% of the US population is Asian, and 75% is white, and these schools don't have affirmative action. If all groups were equally competitive, admissions would reflect demographics.

(Ethnicity here is a crude approximation for immigration recency. I am not saying one ethnic group is better than another - simply that children of immigrants excel.)

The same goes for top PhD programs, the highest paying STEM jobs, even C-suite positions at big tech.

I am American and when I say that we have a problem where most Americans do not give a fuck about education, I am not being racist, I am just pointing out the truth. Over decades, our culture has bred an anti-intellectual attitude, one that prioritizes being cool and sociable over getting shit done. This is the antithesis of progress and ambition. It is great for sitting around and demanding handouts.

Immigrants more closely approximate the culture the founding fathers intended for the US. They uproot their lives to build something great. They get off their asses, do exceptionally well, and are carrying the nation on their backs. The rest of our culture could learn from them, instead of blaming our problems on them and turning them away.

[burnerRhodov3]

dude... using stats to back up your racism doesn't make it non racist. WTF are you talking about?

[solenoid0937]

You didn't actually read the comment, you're just angry because you saw some stats. The ethnicity is a simple proxy for immigration, something you'd have seen if you actually read the comment. Also: Why do Trump supporters always devolve into one-line quips instead of engaging with the argument?

[JuniperMesos]

A lot of American citizens are nonwhite.

[hallole]

Our lead does not come from immigrants. The American people, who are a distinct people, have shown time and again a potential for great things.

Even if it were true, there are wider effects of immigration that you must consider. The purpose of life isn't to increase GDP. It reflects poorly on you that you must cast your opponents as being stupid and spiteful. Could it be that MAGA voters are humans with real motivations and rationales?

[james_marks]

By “American People” you mean native Americans?

Because Literally everyone else in the US is an immigrant. Or are you referring to the Spanish that settled the west? The French in the far south? The Italians and Jews that populated New York? The British and Africans?

I’m painting in broad strokes, but to say “the American People” as if it’s somehow distinct from immigrants is just ladder pulling.

[bluefirebrand]

> Because Literally everyone else in the US is an immigrant

I'm not American, but this conversation happens a lot in Canada where I'm from too

I was born in Canada, in a Canadian hospital. I've never had any other home than this country.

I'm descended from immigrants, but I am not an immigrant. I'm not considered indigenous either, that's a whole other type of person.

What a strange thing, to be from a place but have many people say "it's not your place, it's stolen" as if I had a say in that. If I went anywhere else, I would be an immigrant there.

Very odd.

[array_key_first]

The point is your parents, or their parents, were immigrants. But those very same people we are now trying to restrict from coming here.

Meaning, if we time travel and apply these restrictions, you yourself would have never been a citizen. In fact, you probably wouldn't even exist. Do you see the problem?

That, my friend, is ladder pulling. When you destroy the very conditions that allow you to thrive.

[burnerRhodov3]

The entire world has been settled and resettled. You can't let past conquests stop you from having a country, laws and borders or all countrys would be illegitimate.

>The point is your parents, or their parents, were immigrants.

Or my parents, parents, parents, parents, parents, parents were... And if they came here for a better life, obviously there was some mind virus that was going on in their home country that forced them to leave in search of a better life. Don't try and bring that mind virus here if you had to immigrate here to escape it.

[array_key_first]

The US in particular has always been made up of immigrants. I don't know how it works for canada. But for the US, that's always been the case. We're a country by immigrants, for immigrants. An American identity is not one of skin color or race. To suggest otherwise is not just a ahistorical, it's anti-American.

There is no mind virus. People wish to rewrite history to fuel their own delusions. They don't require enforcement around immigration, they require medication and perhaps a history lesson or two.

[ViktorRay]

The point is that people who immigrate to USA and Canada will have descendants who will be just like you. Only difference will be their skin color (maybe).

Is Kash Patel any different from Americans who have lived here for generations? Is Rishi Sunak any different from the people who lived in Britain from generations?

[anon84873628]

It sure is odd! This is something that the educated descendants of colonizers just have to grapple with. I imagine it's still less difficult than being born as someone lacking the systemic privileges.

[gorwell]

You don't know the meaning of the word you're using.

Immigrant (noun) A person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence.

[throwaway85825]

'America' is named after Amerigo Vespucci. America is a European nation.

[electrondood]

A distinct people? That's a myth. Every American is an immigrant, or descended from an immigrant.

[oceanplexian]

The word loses all meaning then, because so were the ancestors of the indigenous people who crossed the Bearing Strait.

[krapp]

Unless your people walked across the Bering Strait during the last ice age you're an immigrant.

[xp84]

Which ones?

Certainly if 8,000[1] years ago a tribe walked across and settled, and then 7,000 years ago another group walked across and set up camp next to the descendants of that first tribe who had been there a thousand years, the second group were actually immigrants, right?

And how do we sort it out now, millennia after those various groups arrived, after all that DNA has been mixed together?

My point is just that it's silly to label any race or group "immigrant" or "native" based on what movements we guess from their skin color that their ancestors may have made millennia or centuries ago, or even what their parents did. Yes, I'm very in favor of birthright citizenship, even if people have "anchor babies" in bad faith the baby didn't have any say in it. And no one else of any color had any say in being born in America either.

[1] please substitute correct numbers -- they don't matter

[krapp]

I don't know. I do know that, as far as America is concerned, "native" doesn't include the colonizers who showed up 200 years ago when the land was already settled.

[xp84]

Land can only be nonviolently settled exactly once. The arrangement of who had what land 400 years ago when many European-Americans' ancestors started to arrive was merely the then-current state shaped by centuries of violent bloodshed (or "colonization") between one Native tribe and another Native tribe.

I'm saying that pre-colonial-age America was not a place where each tribe came in, found their own piece of virgin land, and lived in peace and harmony. They were not any different than the homo sapiens on other continents, which is to say, smart, determined, and willing to kill outsiders to improve their own tribe's chances of survival.

The only reason of course that they are viewed so sympathetically today is the tragedy of their near-complete destruction, which can be explained very thoroughly by their incredibly bad luck of having almost no domesticable native animals, and their not having gotten Iron Age technology. But in the end their destruction was mostly due to disease, traceable to early Spanish contact, which had absolutely decimated North American societies before almost any human Europeans had set foot on the mainland.[1] Europeans indeed did lots of bad things to those peoples, but I argue this is less proof that "Europeans are uniquely mean" and more proof that humans are brutal when they come into conflict over scarce resources and will press whatever advantages they have, whether it's large numbers of braves with obsidian arrowheads or muskets.

A good read for some perspective on what we can piece together about what pre-colonial America was like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization

> "According to Keeley, among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, only 13% did not engage in wars with their neighbors at least once per year. The natives' pre-Columbian ancient practice of using human scalps as trophies is well documented. Iroquois routinely slowly tortured to death captured enemy warriors (see Captives in American Indian Wars for details)."

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11831114/

[krapp]

You can excuse or justify the genocide of native people by European colonizers any way you want, although it baffles me why so many people want to. But it doesn't matter, they still don't get to call themselves native.

[anon84873628]

I think it's pretty clear these are shorthand terms for the issues with systemic bias in our modern society.

Pre-colonial North America was certainly not some idyllic pacifist utopia as people like to fetishize. However, any previous ethno-political disputes between those nations is irrelevant compared to the very recent history of the last 200 years.

The genocide of Native Americans in the 19th century happened under the unbroken chain of authority of our current government.

[tadfisher]

And under treaty with those so victimized. Which is continually forgotten in these sorts of conversations.

[bluecheese452]

What if they took the bus across?

[platevoltage]

> Could it be that MAGA voters are humans with real motivations and rationales?

No, it couldn't. Trump tells them to vote a certain way, they do it. Look at Massie's primary as an example.

[xp84]

Go on thinking that, but it really won't help the Democrats win if they persist in this attitude. Voters are just looking at what's on offer from both parties, and one party's platform has been judged to be both hostile to their interests and also actively scorns them as people. The other is mostly hostile to their interests and is super corrupt, but it cuts taxes[1] and doesn't belittle them.

The Democrats squeaked out one miraculous win buoyed by the incompetence of Trump's band of corrupt idiots in the early COVID days. But now merely pointing out how incompetent and corrupt Trump is stopped working, as we saw in 2024. Do Democrats have anything left in the playbook besides derision and scorn toward those outside their tent? We will soon see, I guess.

[1] I know the talking points say that the tax cuts "only benefit the rich" but I'm far from a 1%er and can tell you that I'm paying way more taxes in a blue state than I would be in a red state, and also the OBBB improved things for me. Voters in those blue states can see their tax bills and the one thing Democrats can't say is that they don't put a huge tax burden on those who work.

[anon84873628]

You're just arguing that pandering and short-term-ism works. I won't hold my breath for a Republican caucus that's actually fiscally responsible.

[etc-hosts]

I can only speak to 1 scenario but state tax was higher in CA than in TX, but property tax was higher in TX. TX had wild utility bills (top minds in CA are working on this though).

[platevoltage]

I'm not a Democrat.