6 ms·

Be brave and expressive. Whatever do you mean?

RajT88 2y ago
The party bemoaning illegal immigration when in power tried to entirely kill off immigration and naturalization - which are totally unrelated to such a complaint. Not to mention birthright citizenship. I could spell it out more plainly if you like, but if you are at all familiar with the parties, you should know by now which which one tried these things.
rayiner 2y ago
I come from a country where the Anglo-American tradition of participatory self-government is a totally alien concept. They view government as a parental entity and would be perfectly happy with a well functioning autocracy like China’s. This is true of my family members who became naturalized citizens, even after decades in America. There is one party that benefits from people with foreign mindsets participating in American elections.
- umbra07 2y ago
  What country is that? I've heard a similar sentiment from many of my transfer student acquaintances/friends from various Asian countries.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    Bangladesh, but I suspect that the same could be said for most Asian countries. The west in general, and America in particular, is the product of mindsets and modes of thinking that were centuries in the making and are different from the dominant ways of thinking elsewhere in the world. Your average westerner can’t articulate these ideas precisely, but has an intuitive understanding of them because they were raised in western society. You can’t take an adult raised somewhere like Bangladesh and expect them to think like an American just because they’ve lived here for 7-10 years and been naturalized.
- mindslight 2y ago
  > There is one party that benefits from people with foreign mindsets participating in American elections. It's well on display in the article too with the multiple examples of recent immigrants bemoaning [price] inflation, but then just assuming this is the immediate fault of the current administration and going on to say they're going to vote for former party that was actually responsible for creating much of the core [monetary] inflation that is driving current price inflation. Some basic education in economics and more on separation of powers (aka bureaucracy) could do wonders.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    I don’t disagree with your overall point, but I don’t think it’s a matter of “education.” Average people don’t vote/act according to formally reasoning things out. They act based on intuition and socialization. And the socialization of immigrants is completely different than of the people who founded the country. I know a bunch of New England Congregationalists. These are people whose families came over on the Mayflower. And from my perspective as a Bangladeshi they’re like some alien civilization. Like, they find it vaguely unseemly to have food with too much flavor. But they have a crazy high conscientiousness and process-focus, high social trust, and a reflexive aversion to waste. When you put people like that in charge of a country, it turns out a certain way. If those people still comprised the majority of voters, we probably wouldn’t have a $35 trillion debt today. At a G7 meeting after the global financial crisis, Angela Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran pastor, started crying because the other countries insisted Germany engage in deficit spending. Bangladeshis wouldn’t act like that.
    - mindslight 2y ago
      Yeah, "education" was not the right word. My own gripe is more about something like critical analysis in the context of our larger system. Continuing with the example, the commenters in the article were likely spurred on by the reactionary media constantly taking the very real issue of inflation and then fallaciously pinning it on the current administration. But instead of defending themselves, sticking with the topic, and directing blame where it belongs (massive monetary creation hidden while monetary velocity was very low), the democratic party seemingly reacts something like "oh no, not inflation again. did we cause it this time? we can't even remember. best to stay quiet.", and then goes on talking about their own disjoint narratives, with that same setup of a core of truth but the conclusions running amok. And sorry, but your initial point was very much partisan. You didn't name a specific party, but you certainly directed people to focus on one of them. Even if different people focused on different parties, that's still driving partisanship. Personally I see the effects we're each describing playing out for the immediate benefit of both political teams, with the loser being any sort of shared discourse.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Ok, so are you one of the special Bangladeshis who escaped the backwater where they came from and somehow became an enlightened, modern, westernized credit to your country, or should we be sending you back because you’re ruining the vibes here?
  - rayiner 2y ago
    I don’t think I should be allowed to vote. I grew up under almost ideal circumstances for assimilation and it took maybe halfway. Like most people, I’m becoming more like my dad as I get older, and my dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh. Maybe my kids should be allowed to vote. But they’ve got an American mom. On the other hand, studies show second generation Asians feel even less assimilated than first generation ones, and I’m seeing that in my oldest kid: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/MicrosoftTeams-image-4.png https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Microso... Those feelings, which result in group conflict, are destructive to a democracy. You can’t build a well-ordered, efficient society when large numbers of people feel alienated. It’s a recipe for fighting over group conflicts instead of cooperating in an emotionally detached way on things like infrastructure. You can see the ethnic/religious loyalty play out when the rubber hits the road. My parents have been in the country for 35 years and probably won’t vote for Harris because of what’s happening in the Middle East. They are not people who care about human rights. They think the Rohingya are probably illegal Bangladeshi immigrants to Myanmar. They’re not Arab and haven’t stepped foot in a mosque in 35 years. But ethnic and religious collectivism runs deep in a way individualistic westerners cannot hope to understand.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      You know, there are women who strongly believe that they should not be enfranchised. Well, not just themselves, but that all women are incapable of making sound voting decisions. After all, women are not quite smart enough to understand the nuances of politics, and god forbid we make important decisions about war or healthcare that way. Moral panics about suffrage are nothing new. Notably, opposition often comes from the very group that is disenfranchised: humans are nothing if not aligned, and there's always someone who is going to hold an unusual, self-effacing position. I will give you credit for at least being consistent in your position when applying it to yourself, but that doesn't give it any more weight than the idea that women should not be allowed to vote. Or the newly liberated African-American men before them, or Native Americans who got their rights after. It's historically been a losing argument and it seems awfully unlikely that the current situation is any different. Also, while we're splitting hairs: I would consider many individualist westerners to not care about human rights. Actually I think a lot of the time most Americans are not voting for their rights, usually because they are mostly static until significant change happens to make them care (say, the civil rights movement, or the fall of Roe v. Wade). And I think some of them are actually actively against the cause of human rights, seeking to deprive and limit the extent to which they apply. I know people who won't vote for Harris because of what's happening in the Middle East. Some of them want more bombs going there and some want fewer! I think it is actually quite rude to assume that your cultural divisions are somehow special and unheard of amid the existing voting population, or that they are enough to destabilize the country. That does not seem to be supported by history.

The party bemoaning illegal immigration when in power tried to entirely kill off immigration and naturalization - which are totally unrelated to such a complaint. Not to mention birthright citizenship. I could spell it out more plainly if you like, but if you are at all familiar with the parties, you should know by now which which one tried these things.

rayiner 2y ago

I come from a country where the Anglo-American tradition of participatory self-government is a totally alien concept. They view government as a parental entity and would be perfectly happy with a well functioning autocracy like China’s. This is true of my family members who became naturalized citizens, even after decades in America. There is one party that benefits from people with foreign mindsets participating in American elections.

umbra07 2y ago
What country is that? I've heard a similar sentiment from many of my transfer student acquaintances/friends from various Asian countries.
- rayiner 2y ago
  Bangladesh, but I suspect that the same could be said for most Asian countries. The west in general, and America in particular, is the product of mindsets and modes of thinking that were centuries in the making and are different from the dominant ways of thinking elsewhere in the world. Your average westerner can’t articulate these ideas precisely, but has an intuitive understanding of them because they were raised in western society. You can’t take an adult raised somewhere like Bangladesh and expect them to think like an American just because they’ve lived here for 7-10 years and been naturalized.
mindslight 2y ago
> There is one party that benefits from people with foreign mindsets participating in American elections. It's well on display in the article too with the multiple examples of recent immigrants bemoaning [price] inflation, but then just assuming this is the immediate fault of the current administration and going on to say they're going to vote for former party that was actually responsible for creating much of the core [monetary] inflation that is driving current price inflation. Some basic education in economics and more on separation of powers (aka bureaucracy) could do wonders.
- rayiner 2y ago
  I don’t disagree with your overall point, but I don’t think it’s a matter of “education.” Average people don’t vote/act according to formally reasoning things out. They act based on intuition and socialization. And the socialization of immigrants is completely different than of the people who founded the country. I know a bunch of New England Congregationalists. These are people whose families came over on the Mayflower. And from my perspective as a Bangladeshi they’re like some alien civilization. Like, they find it vaguely unseemly to have food with too much flavor. But they have a crazy high conscientiousness and process-focus, high social trust, and a reflexive aversion to waste. When you put people like that in charge of a country, it turns out a certain way. If those people still comprised the majority of voters, we probably wouldn’t have a $35 trillion debt today. At a G7 meeting after the global financial crisis, Angela Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran pastor, started crying because the other countries insisted Germany engage in deficit spending. Bangladeshis wouldn’t act like that.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    Yeah, "education" was not the right word. My own gripe is more about something like critical analysis in the context of our larger system. Continuing with the example, the commenters in the article were likely spurred on by the reactionary media constantly taking the very real issue of inflation and then fallaciously pinning it on the current administration. But instead of defending themselves, sticking with the topic, and directing blame where it belongs (massive monetary creation hidden while monetary velocity was very low), the democratic party seemingly reacts something like "oh no, not inflation again. did we cause it this time? we can't even remember. best to stay quiet.", and then goes on talking about their own disjoint narratives, with that same setup of a core of truth but the conclusions running amok. And sorry, but your initial point was very much partisan. You didn't name a specific party, but you certainly directed people to focus on one of them. Even if different people focused on different parties, that's still driving partisanship. Personally I see the effects we're each describing playing out for the immediate benefit of both political teams, with the loser being any sort of shared discourse.
saagarjha 2y ago
Ok, so are you one of the special Bangladeshis who escaped the backwater where they came from and somehow became an enlightened, modern, westernized credit to your country, or should we be sending you back because you’re ruining the vibes here?
- rayiner 2y ago
  I don’t think I should be allowed to vote. I grew up under almost ideal circumstances for assimilation and it took maybe halfway. Like most people, I’m becoming more like my dad as I get older, and my dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh. Maybe my kids should be allowed to vote. But they’ve got an American mom. On the other hand, studies show second generation Asians feel even less assimilated than first generation ones, and I’m seeing that in my oldest kid: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/MicrosoftTeams-image-4.png https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Microso... Those feelings, which result in group conflict, are destructive to a democracy. You can’t build a well-ordered, efficient society when large numbers of people feel alienated. It’s a recipe for fighting over group conflicts instead of cooperating in an emotionally detached way on things like infrastructure. You can see the ethnic/religious loyalty play out when the rubber hits the road. My parents have been in the country for 35 years and probably won’t vote for Harris because of what’s happening in the Middle East. They are not people who care about human rights. They think the Rohingya are probably illegal Bangladeshi immigrants to Myanmar. They’re not Arab and haven’t stepped foot in a mosque in 35 years. But ethnic and religious collectivism runs deep in a way individualistic westerners cannot hope to understand.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    You know, there are women who strongly believe that they should not be enfranchised. Well, not just themselves, but that all women are incapable of making sound voting decisions. After all, women are not quite smart enough to understand the nuances of politics, and god forbid we make important decisions about war or healthcare that way. Moral panics about suffrage are nothing new. Notably, opposition often comes from the very group that is disenfranchised: humans are nothing if not aligned, and there's always someone who is going to hold an unusual, self-effacing position. I will give you credit for at least being consistent in your position when applying it to yourself, but that doesn't give it any more weight than the idea that women should not be allowed to vote. Or the newly liberated African-American men before them, or Native Americans who got their rights after. It's historically been a losing argument and it seems awfully unlikely that the current situation is any different. Also, while we're splitting hairs: I would consider many individualist westerners to not care about human rights. Actually I think a lot of the time most Americans are not voting for their rights, usually because they are mostly static until significant change happens to make them care (say, the civil rights movement, or the fall of Roe v. Wade). And I think some of them are actually actively against the cause of human rights, seeking to deprive and limit the extent to which they apply. I know people who won't vote for Harris because of what's happening in the Middle East. Some of them want more bombs going there and some want fewer! I think it is actually quite rude to assume that your cultural divisions are somehow special and unheard of amid the existing voting population, or that they are enough to destabilize the country. That does not seem to be supported by history.