It’s almost like the Bible is actually a collection of separate books written by a bunch of random people with wildly different ideas and perspectives over hundreds or thousands of years, and not a single coherent document written by a single omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent entity.

While you make great points, I believe the previous poster was probably complaining that those people who are in it just for the community are still (by and large) voting and supporting keeping their community on a local and national stage. If you vote in Christian nationalists or support “Christian” laws because your church is advocating for them, it doesn’t matter if you personally just like the music and church picnics. The same goes for tacit upholding of Sharia Law by social Muslims.

It is incredibly hard to be a social Christian or Muslim without a belief that even if they aren’t 100% convinced about God, their book is better than the alternatives. They are (again slightly generalizing) in support of the good aspects like “love thy neighbor” and subconsciously give weight to their book overall.

Those who have fully deconstructed or were only ever religious by outward appearance or for protection from a Christian or Muslim society shouldn’t really be lumped in as a Christian or Muslim.

What exactly is the problem with Manjaro? I ended up trying it, but my switch to Linux from Windows 11 has been hampered by Battlefield 6 and a few other games. Did I make the wrong choice for Linux distro?

No, it’s clearly not “brown people from over there”. What you are describing is assimilation into your culture. That requires that the people immigrating want to assimilate and join “you”. Also, a subset of sickos within “Western” culture being pedos is not the same as a society that believes child marriage is normal (or preferable).

Fundamentalist Christianity (any denomination or offshoot) is generally a “white people” culture and is also fundamentally incompatible with Western liberal society just as much as Islam is or Hindu caste is etc, so no, it is not just a “brown people” thing. White Christians don’t need to keep practicing things that harm kids, but it is part of their culture so they still do. And they influence or attempt to set the law to conform to their cultural beliefs. That is the concern with non-assimilation and mass immigration of any kind, anywhere.

A peaceful and united world without borders would be awesome. I wish I could be as optimistic as you, but when we have so many examples of one culture completely wiping out another I can’t get there. Tibet is a “recent” example, all Native cultures in North and South America are more. Most of Africa as well.

I do think that not all cultures are equal because all cultural institutions are not equal. Child marriage, caste, women’s rights, LGBT rights, etc. are components that make up cultures, and everyone thinks their culture’s interpretation of these is superior and should be enforced as the norm. This will be THE blocker for a united one world society without borders.

Looking into why there are too many people coming from country X to fix those problems, no matter how generously you are trying to make sure their plate has enough, will invariably run into cultural clashes with fixes. International solidarity and support should increase, but at what point is that cultural colonialism? Can for example Sharia Law coexist perfectly with liberalism? Can a society made with conflicting ideas about autonomy exist?

Calling it all racism is a thought-terminating cliche. Not all groups of humans have the same societal values, and that is not intrinsically tied to race. It is economic in origin. There certainly are racists like you describe, but they are most likely a vocal minority.

The wealthier a society becomes, the more picky it can afford to become. Personal autonomy can be selected for easier when hand to mouth subsistence isn’t taking up 100% of your time. Things like Abrahamic religious laws arise from subsistence societies. This doesn’t make cultural friction any less real or impactful.

Women’s rights and abolition of child marriage is the result of privilege, but that doesn’t mean they are bad things. When “most” people talk about integration, they are broadly talking about adoption of those values.

To your final point, sadly a mass reduction in habitable land will almost inevitably result in reciprocal population loss. Probably violently through wars of conquest for the remaining resources.

To be fair, many against illegal immigration push for going after companies who hire illegal immigrants. A lot of those many would prefer to go after the employers first, because you solve a problem at the source and not by treating symptoms. E-Verify and employment law are supposed to do that, if there is no economic incentive then most illegal immigration stops.

As for seasonal migrant workers, there are laws enabling them to do it legally. They need desperately need to be updated and expanded, but the legal groundwork is there.

Shouldn’t that be an easy question to answer though?

If a supermajority left-wing government changed immigration law to free and unrestricted passage across borders, making anyone who sets foot on US soil is legally a resident if they wish and further entitled to a pathway citizenship if they want it, then that would be the law and must be followed.

Anyone would still be free to run their campaign on changing immigration law back, or to something else. Economic and societal performance under that hypothetical law change would determine if a supermajority of “change immigration law to XYZ” then gets elected to do that.

There is always a possibility that putting no or too few limits on immigration causes irreversible damage to a country before course correction can happen, but the same is true for extreme polarization and unresolvable political divide.

The Constitution is not the totality of law nor was it ever intended to be. It is the guide rails that establishes the scope that the rest of the legal system exists within.

How would framing immigration in comparison to the Bill of Rights even push the same buttons as the Second Amendment? The Constitution grants Congress the authority and requirement to protect the country and to set naturalization law, which is immigration. There is, as you said, no constitutional right to become an American citizen.

Piss off right-wingers with Due Process, because Constitutionally everyone on US soil or in US custody for any reason, and that means Everyone with a capital E, is covered under Due Process.

Not to counteract that there is definitely a decent amount of racism involved, but isn’t your point about law changing hypotheticals basically useless? If the government changed any law making any currently illegal immoral thing legal, wouldn’t anyone not care about what’s legal? And just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. Some states still have legal child marriage, that doesn’t mean anyone should like it and there should be mass efforts to make it illegal.

There is definitely a middle ground between open border immigration and what is happening now. Not everyone who is against illegal immigration is racist, and I would hesitate to even attempt to claim racism is a majority reason. It’s has become a thought-terminating cliche the same way “woke” or DEI is for the Right.

Who would have thought Amazon caused all this by killing brick and mortar stores and malls, thus creating the mall cop to ICE pipeline.

All this time I thought it was caused by Amazon dumping money into the Trump administration. Completely different.

Many places have or had in the past closed primaries, meaning you can only vote as a registered party member. I wouldn’t complain if people had registered to try and influence from within the system, though that is an uphill battle that may not be worth it and can backfire. Pushing for a weak candidate to try and get the opposition elected is how we got Trump’s first term.

Apparently Marta didn’t expect to cachy them paws for pulling the old fake ball throw. Poodles are masters when it comes time to throw down (13 stories).

Which is why I, as a professional guard baby, always bring a tennis ball and a kitten to expected kidnappings: to distract puppies and to distract the kidnapper with “dad with the kitten he said he didn’t want” moments.

I see the BRI as a soft precursor imperialism and just a different place on the same “spectrum” of imperialism. They aren’t committing crimes like Belgium, obviously, but China’s handling of Tibet and Interference with it’s other direct neighbors does signal to me more than willingness to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

I do not think this is unique to China in any way, mind you, but I do not see any indications China is better than any of the 5 eyes countries or Russia. I believe all governments are inherently amoral entities, being an abstract collection of laws and bureaucracy.

The Western Roman empire is an interesting case, as while the various “barbarian” empires were fairly short lived, the members each ended up running their own globe-spanning empires, not to mention the various Holy Roman Empires.

I would like to thank you as well, this has been an excellent discussion and I have enjoyed learning about your perspective.

You are correct, I do not want to imply that China is the primary exploiter in Africa, nor is the belt and road as it currently exists nearly as bad as historical colonization in the region. My concern is that in a global crisis like the complete collapse of the US, China and others would take the opportunity to expand in a similar fashion.

I would argue that there is not a substantive material difference between imperialism since the 1900s and Rome. Each replacement empire brings new spins on the same formulas. The US empire isn’t much different at this point than feudal empires of the past, just with monopolies instead of aristocracy.

The problem I see is that there has never been a significant lag time between empires and is more a passing of the baton as additional empires either rise from the remains or are subsumed by another empire.

My only point was that I think you are being incredibly optimistic on how long it takes to fill an imperialist power vacuum, or that the US is definitely currently worse than whatever would replace it. I would say that I am extrapolating from basically all of human history rather than doomerism, but I suppose that is a matter of perspective.

Chinese fishing fleets have been documentedly invading fisheries all over the world and not just the South China Sea. Latin America might experience more lag time on foreign influence due to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but exploitation in Africa is not primarily being done by the US currently so I wouldn’t expect to see massive shakeups there.

That is only because the US has outsourced it for them. Europe basically invented third world intervention and only back to back world wars stopped it. If power flips back to Europe and China, don’t think that means the global south will suddenly be interference free. Ask China’s neighbors and any country with fishable ocean how non-expansionist and non-interference they are.

The only reason I haven’t switched to Manjaro permanently is because mods for the Warhammer tides games is much more tedious and I play Battlefield 6. The rootkit anti cheat software that many of the new multiplayer games use suck, but I do still want to play some of those games.

I am kind of sad noone has posted Mordin singing the best version of this song.