"Nobody believes China is held together with belief systems. The Chinese are a distinct group."
Exactly, and the Chinese border is not open to just anyone.
"In practice Western nations have imported low-skilled people from the global south to drive down wages and create a permanent underclass who can be counted on to vote for more government, a ruinous mistake we may not recover from."
Excellent point.
Those who control the West are against national cohesion, which is the antithesis of their goal.
I agree. I think it is exactly that. Not a personal hatred, but simply an inconvenience. A balkanized territory can be made to fight amongst itself. A harmonious group are less likely to do so, no matter what the basis of their cohesiveness.
A glaring blunder of understanding in the ‘post-war consensus’ was the inability to recognize Nazi Germany as a progressive project. It was instead construed in the liberalist mind as conservative or nationalist; perhaps because it harkened to an imaginary past national glory upon which to found a utopian future. The deracination of nations was embarked upon to stave off similar occurrences. However, it failed to understand the American and English war effort as nationalist projects. My grandad didn’t fly fifty missions over occupied Europe for an imagined future moral order, he flew them for America; her allied nations a distant second. It was entirely a nationalist endeavor in his mind.
Just because an ideology harkens back to some imagined past as a model for a perfect future does not make it strictly nationalist. It is the perfected future that the harkening is intended to engender that makes it progressive.
Thus, progressives of all stripes, nationalist and so-called post-national, trade in fantasy and eschew reality.
Reality is that we are small-group social primates with an amazing ability to temporally and/or circumstantially expand our in-group, not present in any other species. Under the right conditions, that expansion can be quite large and quite long lasting. But change those conditions, and our tribalism will come back to the fore. One way to engender that is to import tribalists into our midst.
The post-national types extol the virtues of the former, almost unto worship, and neglect the latter, unto demonization, because they believe the former will usher in utopia. It will not.
Excellent analysis. I agree. The most racist people in society will be today’s multiculturalists, not its “far-right” people as they tend to be realistic. It is those who tried to create a post-tribal world that will embrace tribalism the most.
I did not ask for this, I wanted to adhere to American universal values; but it’s a fool who sees the ground shifting under his feet and does nothing in response. I fear for my cousins across the pond, from here it looks like the soil is liquifying. My fear for you is that solid ground will become encumbered with a great moral stain.
Ask Crazy Horse or Tecumseh what the cost of preserving a people is, and the cost of failing.
I think this is what it is. It is not necessarily personal hatred of an ethnic or cultural group. Rather, the post-national mind makes the same mistake socialist economic planners make, he takes the solid foundation for granted. He assumes stability, the rule of law and cohesion will always be there. So he is free to experiment.
A first-world nation produces enough leisure time for us to muse on societal improvements; subsistence living does not. In a sense affluence drives the calls to destroy the source of affluence. It is all indulgence.
Except for the fact that mainline Christianity worships a god that will torture humans for eternity, we have nothing in common with Islamists. In the past, America despised immigrants from Ireland and China. Much of this bigotry and stupidity has been buried in the sands of time.
The idea that Islamists could assimilate anywhere is a fantasy akin to expecting dogs to mate with cats. Mohammed, the pedophile and warlord, created a terrorist organization that has persisted for nearly two centuries. Like polio, this virus must be completely eradicated.
Certainly the track record of Muslims as a group is not one of assimilation. Individuals from the Islamic world can differ of course. The Iranians especially.
But the values argument is the one I see most commonly now. I think multiculturalism itself has become difficult to defend.
One problem with Islam—and there are many—is that it is a “religion” which has no recognition/division of State and religion. The first ayatollah of Iran, Ruhollah Mostafavi Khomeini, wrote missives directing all aspects of political and personal life—some even to the effect of personal hygiene in excretion. Yes, I know Christianity in its time was more worldly in nature, but that was then, this is now.
Islam is a full-spectrum system to run an entire society. Although a religion an Islamic society cannot be democratic, for instance. That is not their way.
"One problem with Islam—and there are many—is that it is a “religion” which has no recognition/division of State and religion."
Great point. But while the United States professes to have a separation of church and state, Christianity has a strong influence on the state, especially in the Iran war, where Christian Zionists are running the show.
Even the name you chose for the performance gives the game away.
“Spiff.”
Light. Dapper. Slightly comic. The sort of word that belongs on a cartoon character or a man who thinks a neat turn of phrase is the same thing as gravity.
Then you wrap it in “Postcards from the Abyss.”
An abyss is bottomless.
It is the place where light ends, where pressure crushes, where everything that once had a name is reduced to the same dark matter. Oceanographers measure it in thousands of meters of perpetual night. Religion calls it the pit. Everyday language uses it for the point at which meaning collapses.
And from that place you send postcards.
Not dispatches. Not testimony. Postcards. The tourist’s souvenir. The polite little note from the edge of the void, carefully composed so the people back home will know you stood somewhere dramatic and felt something important.
You did not choose a name that sounds like a man who has actually looked into the dark and come back changed. You chose a name that sounds like a man who visited the gift shop on the way out and bought the stationery.
That is the real tell.
A man who truly understood the abyss would not need to announce that he is writing from it. The depth would be in the work, not in the branding. You needed the branding because the work alone does not carry the weight you want it to. So you borrowed the oldest metaphor for bottomlessness and printed it across the top of your essays about blood, soil, and who belongs.
Reality does not send postcards.
It simply continues after the flags are gone and the labels have dissolved.
You are not writing from the abyss.
You are writing from the gift shop that sells postcards of it.
you have clearly identified the problem at the intersection of cultural relativism and open borders. presumably you are not advocating for America to adopt the outlook you describe in China. what are the practical steps you see this country taking to address the challenge you identify? indeed identification is the first step...what is the second?
No China is China. Each nation needs its own blend. But it has to define what matters. The harsh reality is civic nationalism doesn’t work. If people are too different nothing will work except to separate.
I don’t have easy solutions. Start with expelling all foreign criminals and illegal immigrants. Then go from there.
Demographics will change America. I don’t see it avoiding some form of balkanization.
Stop the tap…it should never have been turned on. My late father was an immigrant. He came here in 1948 or so. In those days it was not easy to come here legally before the revision of the immigration laws in the early 60’s. Here’s what he needed to come here legally: job offer, sponsor, language ability, and of course a clean record. Job offer determined need for him. Sponsor agreed to take responsibility if he became indigent. Language mastery to maximize probability of functional assimilation into an English speaking society. He obtained these essential requirements through 5 years of living in a NAZI occupied country during the war. He was, as is said, “a man with a plan”.
Last I read, the current crop of immigrants legal and illegal overwhelmingly need public assistance (welfare) to survive and—due to inability to speak language—ghettoize. Deportation is too slow a process and we are too weak willed to sustain such an effort in any event. We can barely keep up with the criminal aliens as they leave our jails. Perhaps better is to “sour the milk”. Kill all public assistance and see if the numbers of “voluntary” deportations rise.
China has a form of civic nationalism that works. so, maybe civic nationalism doesn't work with American conceptions of pluralism and small l liberalism. I am not convinced of this, however. most immigrants come to America because of the economy, the educational opportunities and the nuclear stockpile. is this not some form of civic nationalism (replace those with free enterprise, liberty and security)? with regard to expelling foreign criminals and illegal immigrants: a worthy goal, how do we get there? perhaps a first step is judicial reform (process claims/deportations/arrests faster by providing more attorneys and devolving control to local agencies), enforcement reform (already ongoing under current administration) and a change in the posture of the federal gov't towards immigrants. the balkanization you (seemingly) seek to avoid is fomented by those who equate immigration with illegal immigration, which it does not seem to me you are trying to do.
Even legal immigration has its limits, or drawbacks, as now implemented. For one, the vetting process is broken or really has been abandoned. 60 to 70 percent of new, legal, immigrants are brought here through family means (often termed reunification) via several policies/laws/acts. These people are not vetted in the sense of contribution to the nation benefit—even if their family sponsors were (highly doubtful these days). Oddly enough, and I’m not promoting such, the (much hated) H1-b VISA program does a better job of importing productive immigrants.
Is it not said for every immigrant from South America the USA takes that nine family members eventually join them? As you say, they are not in any way vetted for productivity or even compatibility.
Then there is the need for immigration itself. We are moving into an era of automation and robotics. No one I know is predicting a future with plentiful jobs to keep people occupied. This is especially true for manufacturing that might mop up the lower skilled.
All immigration changes a nation. Its legality is just a decision by lawmakers. The scale we now see in most Western nations is so great no one can realistically vet people. We have no idea who is coming and what their chances of assimilation are.
I have no answers primarily because the issue is volume. I can't think of any nation that could manage a massive influx of foreigners even if they were authoritarian and able to impose strict rules.
I think the precursor to balkanization is just decline. Things stop working. Each country begins to look more like the third world; corruption, dysfunction, low trust.
My concerns with civic nationalism is then mostly the scale. A few thousand, fine. Tens of millions inevitably form enclaves and parallel societies. But it is sold as a panacea which is unlikely.
Quite true. Of course, this point is simply a “disingenuous” assertion by the TPTB. The real reason could not be further from the truth. However, assuming there are many “useful idiots” out there who believe this, then they must also believe in the “blank slate” concept of equality.
Until we win this argument, we are doomed to continue to import Iow IQ individuals who will not, and cannot, thrive in a high tech, 21st century society as we are in the U.S. The “Smart Fraction” will not sustain us indefinitely, albeit AI may extend such for the foreseeable future, but that’s another discussion.
Agreed. The blank slate argument will die through exposure to reality. It is a nice sounding idea when the targets of your affection are thousands of miles away. When they move in next door and behave in alien ways it is a much harder sell.
Now the mask is off. You are not arguing merely for secure borders or lawful immigration. You explicitly say civic nationalism cannot work and that people who are “too different” must separate. That means citizenship, contribution, loyalty, service, shared law, marriage, friendship, fingerprints, bones, blood, and the common human body are all subordinate to whatever inherited difference you appoint yourself to measure.
You say, “Expel foreign criminals and illegal immigrants. Then go from there.” Where exactly is “there,” Spiff? After the unauthorized immigrant and foreign offender, who enters your second category? And what do you do with the men in your own country who swallow Viagra, travel abroad, marry women from the very populations you call “too different,” and produce children through the bloodlines you claim cannot coexist? Are those women suddenly compatible when a Western man desires their bodies, labor, fertility, beauty, companionship, and care? Is “separation” only required when immigrants arrive independently, but suspended when one of your own men wants a foreign wife to continue the same supposedly threatened lineage? You cannot preach genetic separation while your own countrymen cross every border of color, nationality, religion, and ancestry to marry and reproduce. Apparently, foreign blood is a civilizational danger in the neighborhood but a welcome rescue inside the bedroom. That is not protection of a people. It is hypocrisy with a prescription bottle.—the naturalized Somali physician, the Mexican police officer, the African nurse, the Black athlete, the mixed family, or the citizen whose ancestors fail your private compatibility test?
You admire essays exposing frontier violence, and people scalped because “dark hair” carried a bounty, yet you repeat the classification that makes such systems possible: first declare a population fundamentally different, then declare common life impossible, then call separation practical.
And before prescribing separation to millions, answer this: when you choke in a restaurant, will you reject the Mexican who saves you? When you sleep, does your British body escape the same helpless submission governing every other human body? When you die, will the soil preserve your color, inspect your passport, or salute the flags packed inside your coffin?
Reality does not authorize your hierarchy. You do. Your fingerprints are unique; your bones are not. Your flag did not create your lungs, and your ancestry does not keep your heart beating. “People are too different” is not a discovery made by reality. It is an ancient human excuse for withholding from others the individuality you demand for yourself.
Excellent article.
"Nobody believes China is held together with belief systems. The Chinese are a distinct group."
Exactly, and the Chinese border is not open to just anyone.
"In practice Western nations have imported low-skilled people from the global south to drive down wages and create a permanent underclass who can be counted on to vote for more government, a ruinous mistake we may not recover from."
Excellent point.
Those who control the West are against national cohesion, which is the antithesis of their goal.
I agree. I think it is exactly that. Not a personal hatred, but simply an inconvenience. A balkanized territory can be made to fight amongst itself. A harmonious group are less likely to do so, no matter what the basis of their cohesiveness.
Some might say this is crackhead reasoning.
What do you mean?
Rats follow their nose. If one understands that, one also understands how to have migration without problems.
Caveat: no matter how many crows you put in the henhouse, you'll never get good eggs nor any poultry meat.
Yes. If we are to have immigration there needs to be strong filters.
A glaring blunder of understanding in the ‘post-war consensus’ was the inability to recognize Nazi Germany as a progressive project. It was instead construed in the liberalist mind as conservative or nationalist; perhaps because it harkened to an imaginary past national glory upon which to found a utopian future. The deracination of nations was embarked upon to stave off similar occurrences. However, it failed to understand the American and English war effort as nationalist projects. My grandad didn’t fly fifty missions over occupied Europe for an imagined future moral order, he flew them for America; her allied nations a distant second. It was entirely a nationalist endeavor in his mind.
Just because an ideology harkens back to some imagined past as a model for a perfect future does not make it strictly nationalist. It is the perfected future that the harkening is intended to engender that makes it progressive.
Thus, progressives of all stripes, nationalist and so-called post-national, trade in fantasy and eschew reality.
Reality is that we are small-group social primates with an amazing ability to temporally and/or circumstantially expand our in-group, not present in any other species. Under the right conditions, that expansion can be quite large and quite long lasting. But change those conditions, and our tribalism will come back to the fore. One way to engender that is to import tribalists into our midst.
The post-national types extol the virtues of the former, almost unto worship, and neglect the latter, unto demonization, because they believe the former will usher in utopia. It will not.
Reality will out.
Excellent analysis. I agree. The most racist people in society will be today’s multiculturalists, not its “far-right” people as they tend to be realistic. It is those who tried to create a post-tribal world that will embrace tribalism the most.
I did not ask for this, I wanted to adhere to American universal values; but it’s a fool who sees the ground shifting under his feet and does nothing in response. I fear for my cousins across the pond, from here it looks like the soil is liquifying. My fear for you is that solid ground will become encumbered with a great moral stain.
Ask Crazy Horse or Tecumseh what the cost of preserving a people is, and the cost of failing.
Yes. It’s almost as if they are deep in the thrall of a monumental Freudian projection.
Banger, a brilliant post to be saved.
Your short paragraph near the end is spot on:
“Mass immigration is an elite project to erase national loyalty as a force as it stands in opposition to unpopular globalism.”
I think this is what it is. It is not necessarily personal hatred of an ethnic or cultural group. Rather, the post-national mind makes the same mistake socialist economic planners make, he takes the solid foundation for granted. He assumes stability, the rule of law and cohesion will always be there. So he is free to experiment.
A first-world nation produces enough leisure time for us to muse on societal improvements; subsistence living does not. In a sense affluence drives the calls to destroy the source of affluence. It is all indulgence.
Except for the fact that mainline Christianity worships a god that will torture humans for eternity, we have nothing in common with Islamists. In the past, America despised immigrants from Ireland and China. Much of this bigotry and stupidity has been buried in the sands of time.
The idea that Islamists could assimilate anywhere is a fantasy akin to expecting dogs to mate with cats. Mohammed, the pedophile and warlord, created a terrorist organization that has persisted for nearly two centuries. Like polio, this virus must be completely eradicated.
Certainly the track record of Muslims as a group is not one of assimilation. Individuals from the Islamic world can differ of course. The Iranians especially.
But the values argument is the one I see most commonly now. I think multiculturalism itself has become difficult to defend.
One problem with Islam—and there are many—is that it is a “religion” which has no recognition/division of State and religion. The first ayatollah of Iran, Ruhollah Mostafavi Khomeini, wrote missives directing all aspects of political and personal life—some even to the effect of personal hygiene in excretion. Yes, I know Christianity in its time was more worldly in nature, but that was then, this is now.
Islam is a full-spectrum system to run an entire society. Although a religion an Islamic society cannot be democratic, for instance. That is not their way.
"One problem with Islam—and there are many—is that it is a “religion” which has no recognition/division of State and religion."
Great point. But while the United States professes to have a separation of church and state, Christianity has a strong influence on the state, especially in the Iran war, where Christian Zionists are running the show.
Spiff.
Even the name you chose for the performance gives the game away.
“Spiff.”
Light. Dapper. Slightly comic. The sort of word that belongs on a cartoon character or a man who thinks a neat turn of phrase is the same thing as gravity.
Then you wrap it in “Postcards from the Abyss.”
An abyss is bottomless.
It is the place where light ends, where pressure crushes, where everything that once had a name is reduced to the same dark matter. Oceanographers measure it in thousands of meters of perpetual night. Religion calls it the pit. Everyday language uses it for the point at which meaning collapses.
And from that place you send postcards.
Not dispatches. Not testimony. Postcards. The tourist’s souvenir. The polite little note from the edge of the void, carefully composed so the people back home will know you stood somewhere dramatic and felt something important.
You did not choose a name that sounds like a man who has actually looked into the dark and come back changed. You chose a name that sounds like a man who visited the gift shop on the way out and bought the stationery.
That is the real tell.
A man who truly understood the abyss would not need to announce that he is writing from it. The depth would be in the work, not in the branding. You needed the branding because the work alone does not carry the weight you want it to. So you borrowed the oldest metaphor for bottomlessness and printed it across the top of your essays about blood, soil, and who belongs.
Reality does not send postcards.
It simply continues after the flags are gone and the labels have dissolved.
You are not writing from the abyss.
You are writing from the gift shop that sells postcards of it.
Yes the Blank Slate concept is partly to blame, these people missed Steven Pinker's debunking of the concept.
The propensity of new immigrants to vote Left is another factor.
you have clearly identified the problem at the intersection of cultural relativism and open borders. presumably you are not advocating for America to adopt the outlook you describe in China. what are the practical steps you see this country taking to address the challenge you identify? indeed identification is the first step...what is the second?
No China is China. Each nation needs its own blend. But it has to define what matters. The harsh reality is civic nationalism doesn’t work. If people are too different nothing will work except to separate.
I don’t have easy solutions. Start with expelling all foreign criminals and illegal immigrants. Then go from there.
Demographics will change America. I don’t see it avoiding some form of balkanization.
"Start with expelling all foreign criminals and illegal immigrants. Then go from there."
Eliminate all immigration; we have enough losers now!
Yes, stop the tap. True in most Western nations.
Stop the tap…it should never have been turned on. My late father was an immigrant. He came here in 1948 or so. In those days it was not easy to come here legally before the revision of the immigration laws in the early 60’s. Here’s what he needed to come here legally: job offer, sponsor, language ability, and of course a clean record. Job offer determined need for him. Sponsor agreed to take responsibility if he became indigent. Language mastery to maximize probability of functional assimilation into an English speaking society. He obtained these essential requirements through 5 years of living in a NAZI occupied country during the war. He was, as is said, “a man with a plan”.
Last I read, the current crop of immigrants legal and illegal overwhelmingly need public assistance (welfare) to survive and—due to inability to speak language—ghettoize. Deportation is too slow a process and we are too weak willed to sustain such an effort in any event. We can barely keep up with the criminal aliens as they leave our jails. Perhaps better is to “sour the milk”. Kill all public assistance and see if the numbers of “voluntary” deportations rise.
China has a form of civic nationalism that works. so, maybe civic nationalism doesn't work with American conceptions of pluralism and small l liberalism. I am not convinced of this, however. most immigrants come to America because of the economy, the educational opportunities and the nuclear stockpile. is this not some form of civic nationalism (replace those with free enterprise, liberty and security)? with regard to expelling foreign criminals and illegal immigrants: a worthy goal, how do we get there? perhaps a first step is judicial reform (process claims/deportations/arrests faster by providing more attorneys and devolving control to local agencies), enforcement reform (already ongoing under current administration) and a change in the posture of the federal gov't towards immigrants. the balkanization you (seemingly) seek to avoid is fomented by those who equate immigration with illegal immigration, which it does not seem to me you are trying to do.
Even legal immigration has its limits, or drawbacks, as now implemented. For one, the vetting process is broken or really has been abandoned. 60 to 70 percent of new, legal, immigrants are brought here through family means (often termed reunification) via several policies/laws/acts. These people are not vetted in the sense of contribution to the nation benefit—even if their family sponsors were (highly doubtful these days). Oddly enough, and I’m not promoting such, the (much hated) H1-b VISA program does a better job of importing productive immigrants.
Is it not said for every immigrant from South America the USA takes that nine family members eventually join them? As you say, they are not in any way vetted for productivity or even compatibility.
Then there is the need for immigration itself. We are moving into an era of automation and robotics. No one I know is predicting a future with plentiful jobs to keep people occupied. This is especially true for manufacturing that might mop up the lower skilled.
All immigration changes a nation. Its legality is just a decision by lawmakers. The scale we now see in most Western nations is so great no one can realistically vet people. We have no idea who is coming and what their chances of assimilation are.
I have no answers primarily because the issue is volume. I can't think of any nation that could manage a massive influx of foreigners even if they were authoritarian and able to impose strict rules.
I think the precursor to balkanization is just decline. Things stop working. Each country begins to look more like the third world; corruption, dysfunction, low trust.
My concerns with civic nationalism is then mostly the scale. A few thousand, fine. Tens of millions inevitably form enclaves and parallel societies. But it is sold as a panacea which is unlikely.
“ But it is sold as a panacea which is unlikely.”
Quite true. Of course, this point is simply a “disingenuous” assertion by the TPTB. The real reason could not be further from the truth. However, assuming there are many “useful idiots” out there who believe this, then they must also believe in the “blank slate” concept of equality.
Until we win this argument, we are doomed to continue to import Iow IQ individuals who will not, and cannot, thrive in a high tech, 21st century society as we are in the U.S. The “Smart Fraction” will not sustain us indefinitely, albeit AI may extend such for the foreseeable future, but that’s another discussion.
Agreed. The blank slate argument will die through exposure to reality. It is a nice sounding idea when the targets of your affection are thousands of miles away. When they move in next door and behave in alien ways it is a much harder sell.
Now the mask is off. You are not arguing merely for secure borders or lawful immigration. You explicitly say civic nationalism cannot work and that people who are “too different” must separate. That means citizenship, contribution, loyalty, service, shared law, marriage, friendship, fingerprints, bones, blood, and the common human body are all subordinate to whatever inherited difference you appoint yourself to measure.
You say, “Expel foreign criminals and illegal immigrants. Then go from there.” Where exactly is “there,” Spiff? After the unauthorized immigrant and foreign offender, who enters your second category? And what do you do with the men in your own country who swallow Viagra, travel abroad, marry women from the very populations you call “too different,” and produce children through the bloodlines you claim cannot coexist? Are those women suddenly compatible when a Western man desires their bodies, labor, fertility, beauty, companionship, and care? Is “separation” only required when immigrants arrive independently, but suspended when one of your own men wants a foreign wife to continue the same supposedly threatened lineage? You cannot preach genetic separation while your own countrymen cross every border of color, nationality, religion, and ancestry to marry and reproduce. Apparently, foreign blood is a civilizational danger in the neighborhood but a welcome rescue inside the bedroom. That is not protection of a people. It is hypocrisy with a prescription bottle.—the naturalized Somali physician, the Mexican police officer, the African nurse, the Black athlete, the mixed family, or the citizen whose ancestors fail your private compatibility test?
You admire essays exposing frontier violence, and people scalped because “dark hair” carried a bounty, yet you repeat the classification that makes such systems possible: first declare a population fundamentally different, then declare common life impossible, then call separation practical.
And before prescribing separation to millions, answer this: when you choke in a restaurant, will you reject the Mexican who saves you? When you sleep, does your British body escape the same helpless submission governing every other human body? When you die, will the soil preserve your color, inspect your passport, or salute the flags packed inside your coffin?
Reality does not authorize your hierarchy. You do. Your fingerprints are unique; your bones are not. Your flag did not create your lungs, and your ancestry does not keep your heart beating. “People are too different” is not a discovery made by reality. It is an ancient human excuse for withholding from others the individuality you demand for yourself.