Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Would it be accurate to say that our national status would become a matter of becoming more like a municipality under your paradigm? I’d imagine if we were to allow unfettered immigration (minus serious criminals) we’d probably see a rapid dissolution of national identity
Was that an issue for America in 1874?
Immigration forges national identity. I don't want to tire you with melting pot cliches, but I don't think this gets how shared cultural identity works at all. New Yorkers have a fierce New York identity despite a very large % of the city either being immigrants or second gen children of immigrants. The city is famously patriotic because people choose to come there. You seem to think of identity in more narrow terms that people do. People feel bound by shared interests.
This tends to provoke a nativist backlash among the segments of the population most prone to xenophobia, but that's why we need to tamp that impulse down.
and a reorganization of the states into something else, whether it’s an Aztlan or whatever. How do you see, at least here in the Western hemisphere, nation-states transforming, whether it’s a sort of hemispherical government, or into smaller self-governing states, if we were to open things up like you propose?
It’s not the 19th century anymore, I think, but these days I’m unsure what day it is since it’s irrelevant to me for the most part. That said, I’m just trying to have a non-defensive or non-antagonistic conversation around some of your ideas regarding immigration and the long-term impacts they’d have on political or governmental organization and cultural identity. I find them interesting, and I’m trying to wrap my head around what the West would look like in a 100 years if your immigration wish list comes true.
Anyway, I’m literal listening to Globo right now and will be moving to Brazil in June for a year just because I want to experience a different culture and learn a new language. <- I point that out because I’m not threatened by cultural blending , although I’ll admit to having a stronger stance on immigration than most; but that’s founded in what I view as a long-term view of retaining a strong national identity politically founded in a strong federal identity mixed with pragmatic governance.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:It’s not the 19th century anymore, I think, but these days I’m unsure what day it is since it’s irrelevant to me for the most part. That said, I’m just trying to have a non-defensive or non-antagonistic conversation around some of your ideas regarding immigration and the long-term impacts they’d have on political or governmental organization and cultural identity. I find them interesting, and I’m trying to wrap my head around what the West would look like in a 100 years if your immigration wish list comes true.
Anyway, I’m literal listening to Globo right now and will be moving to Brazil in June for a year just because I want to experience a different culture and learn a new language. <- I point that out because I’m not threatened by cultural blending , although I’ll admit to having a stronger stance on immigration than most; but that’s founded in what I view as a long-term view of retaining a strong national identity politically founded in a strong federal identity mixed with pragmatic governance.
- Doc
You're going during an interesting time. The exchange rate is very good for Americans now, but inflation in Brazil has increased dramatically as well. I was there last year and R$100 doesn't even fill up a tank of gas. What town are you moving to?
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:It’s not the 19th century anymore, I think...
But humans are still humans. You suggested that an uptick of immigration from people free to enter the US would dissolve national identity. That "national identity" was made, rather than dissolved, by cultural exchange of nearly free-for-all immigration in the 19th century seems relevant to that argument. Sensing you might say something like this, that's why I choose to bring up present day New York as shared identity among New Yorkers as New Yorkers and Americans is rather famous and the subject of a lot of popular media.
It's not a coincidence that the most xenophobic areas of the country are those that have very few immigrants, but have seen a recent uptick or that isolated, older people tend to be the most xenophobic demographic slice. When you interact with immigrants a lot, it's a lot easier to see how these fears are unwarranted. Go to a soccer game with some immigrants from Somalia and it's not hard at all to see how identity forms through shared interests and choices in the same locale. Fans of the same club will die for each other. :p
Again, that America could absorb immigrants in opposition to Europe's more anti-immigrant views is one of the most important factors explaining America's rise to geopolitical dominance.
Icarus wrote:You're going during an interesting time. The exchange rate is very good for Americans now, but inflation in Brazil has increased dramatically as well. I was there last year and R$100 doesn't even fill up a tank of gas. What town are you moving to?
We’ll be dipping our toes in at Caxias do Sul, primarily due to my wife’s brother’s recommendation. I initially lobbied for Porto Alegre (admittedly because I like Gremio) or Novo Hamburgo (since that’s where a good portion of her family history hails from). She wanted Sao Paolo or Curitiba (where her mother was from and where her family lived until they moved to the US - dad is from Utah). I kinda wanted Brasilia, only because the whole idea of Brasilia is so weird to me and the architecture would be fun to check out. I think CdS will be good since the first place I wanted to check out was Igazu Falls, anyway. And since we’re going hiking in the Patagonia we’re exploring possibly road tripping there.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Your example of NY city is fine, except it’s not the NYC of the 19th century*, or even the mid-20th. The cultural identity of the city continues to shift dramatically with every new influx of immigrants, as do the socioeconomic realities. It’s also a city. Which is subject to multiple layers of jurisdictional governance. I should note, before anyone is tempted to ascribe a xenophobic accusation toward me that I’m fine with NYC.
Whatever the case maybe, with your stated views of immigration, how confident are you the US would retain its territorial integrity as it currently is if your immigration policies were enacted over the next century?
* eta:
The reader should note the NYPD doesn’t sanction the Muslim Community Patrol parroting their design aesthetic.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Icarus wrote:You're going during an interesting time. The exchange rate is very good for Americans now, but inflation in Brazil has increased dramatically as well. I was there last year and R$100 doesn't even fill up a tank of gas. What town are you moving to?
We’ll be dipping our toes in at Caxias do Sul, primarily due to my wife’s brother’s recommendation. I initially lobbied for Porto Alegre (admittedly because I like Gremio) or Novo Hamburgo (since that’s where a good portion of her family history hails from). She wanted Sao Paolo or Curitiba (where her mother was from and where her family lived until they moved to the US - dad is from Utah). I kinda wanted Brasilia, only because the whole idea of Brasilia is so weird to me and the architecture would be fun to check out. I think CdS will be good since the first place I wanted to check out was Igazu Falls, anyway. And since we’re going hiking in the Patagonia we’re exploring possibly road tripping there.
- Doc
Take a jacket as that will be winter time for them. Curitiba is nice, and very easily mistaken for a typical town in Europe. There are lots of places that are like Germany, where everyone speaks German, because after WWII tons of them fled for Brazil and started their own little colonies.
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
Icarus wrote:You're going during an interesting time. The exchange rate is very good for Americans now, but inflation in Brazil has increased dramatically as well. I was there last year and R$100 doesn't even fill up a tank of gas. What town are you moving to?
We’ll be dipping our toes in at Caxias do Sul, primarily due to my wife’s brother’s recommendation. I initially lobbied for Porto Alegre (admittedly because I like Gremio) or Novo Hamburgo (since that’s where a good portion of her family history hails from). She wanted Sao Paolo or Curitiba (where her mother was from and where her family lived until they moved to the US - dad is from Utah). I kinda wanted Brasilia, only because the whole idea of Brasilia is so weird to me and the architecture would be fun to check out. I think CdS will be good since the first place I wanted to check out was Igazu Falls, anyway. And since we’re going hiking in the Patagonia we’re exploring possibly road tripping there.
- Doc
I’m looking forward to reading your observations of life and culture. And I’ll be jealous as hell of your hiking in Patagonia.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
