Biden Announces Reelection Campaign

[deaddmwalking]

Is DDM's argument that because people are xenophobic we need to respect their xenophobia? That is a shitty argument, xenophobia is bad so we should reject it.

No. That is not my argument. I point out that there is some limit to how many people can arrive and be absorbed into society with 'acceptable' costs, and what's 'acceptable' varies from 'none, ever' through 'what we have now' and up to 'more, please'. But having a real conversation about what acceptable immigration looks like is actually sane. Is anyone arguing that Canada needs to change their immigration policy? For reference, they accept 465,000 immigrants per year.

Is his argument that Americans want a thing and Democrats need to adopt whatever a majority of Americans want? That is also shitty, not only because supporting bad things is bad even if they're popular, but because he doesn't actually believe this (otherwise he would be furious at Democrats for their support of the deeply unpopular genocide, among other things).

No. That is not my argument. A democracy has institutions to ensure that the popular will is respected (unless it directly impacts with the rights of a protected minority). There are a lot of debates about who should be a protected minority. Some people think that unborn babies should be prioritized by society and some people think that the health and choices of pregnant women should be prioritized. Obviously there's a position I take on these issues, but in many ways they reflect what are society's values and having the conversation is important and in many policy issues there is a range of positions that are defensible based on what your value-system is. In a pluralistic society that values differences, we also have to respect that we can weigh the same facts and come to differing conclusions without one side being 'right' and the other 'wrong' - but we also have to come to a consensus that allows society to function. Ultimately, if 'the government' enforces laws that are deeply opposed to the society's convictions, that government will be forced to change in accordance with Democratic principles. Regarding immigration - creating clear policies that align with our national character is worthwhile - and welcoming immigrants is part of that. But we also have NIMBY issues - if the individual cost and inconvenience to Americans is too high, well, hard-right anti-politicians will ride into office. It happened in Poland, it happened in Turkey, it happened in Hungary. The U.S. isn't so exceptional that it can't happen here, so finding a solution that is broadly popular and supported by our legal obligations and professed values is critical.

Is his argument that we lack the resources or that society would crumble if we admitted every single person who arrived in the US? It can't be that since he said 15% is the magic number and even if we take his maximum number of asylum seekers (3.2 million in 2023) that's less than 1% of the US population. That is, unless he considers people who moved to the US more than a decade ago to be fundamentally different from a natural born citizen in some way (this would be pretty fucking racist). I don't see how bringing in a number of immigrants equal to 1% of the US population every year would be a problem. People naturalize pretty quickly, so we'd never get to 15% of people in the US being unnaturalized (idk if that's the right term for it) immigrants.

Math fail. If we admit 1% of the U.S. population every year and the median life-expectancy of an immigrant is, say, 35 years, then after 1 year the population would be 16%; after 2 years it would be 17%; after 35 years it would be 50%. That is assuming you use a baseline number and/or it capped immigration at 1%. That is, unless you suggest that we admit 3 million people each year, but also deport 3 million people each year, in which case you have a lot of new people but nobody really gets a chance to get established or build a life, which doesn't seem great.

Anyway, my mother moved to the United States (immigrated) when she was 10 years old in 1960. I do think that she's different than a natural-born citizen. She's an immigrant and she's a naturalized citizen, but she legally can't be elected President (just like Arnold Schwarzenegger). I don't see how recognizing that she has a different background and legal status under the Constitution than I do makes me a racist, but I'm happy to own it.

As for how quickly people 'acclimate', I think it depends on a number of factors like how old they are when they arrived, how integrated their life is in the new society, and a whole bunch of other factors. Let's just say that my grandparents seemed like 'immigrants' to people they met even after they had lived here 50 years but most people don't realize my mother wasn't born here.

And just because I know what argument will be made, yes I know we'd need to convince the people of the US to support this. Convincing people you have the correct opinion is literally doing politics, and it's what the Democrats are emphatically not doing by saying immigrants are dangerous and will kill you with an AR-15.

I think you're mischaracterizing a lot of things. Many people think that there are too many people illegally crossing the border. I live in Knoxville; we've had population growth of about 1.5%-2% per year. It is a big problem for people. They're building more houses, but they're not doing anything to expand infrastructure to support the homes. Traffic has gotten unbearable for a lot of people; schools are stressed because they have expanded enrollment beyond the existing classroom space; the cost of buying a home or renting an apartment has gone up and up and up. Obviously the inconveniences aren't enough to keep people from moving here, but there are a lot of people who want to slow it down or at least build the infrastructure FIRST. But it doesn't work like that.

Immigrants don't have to be dangerous to be a problem. Homeless people don't have to be dangerous to be a problem. Drug-users don't have to be dangerous to be a problem. It'd be great if people were endlessly selfless but they're not and they never will be. Most people will help someone out if it doesn't cause them problems, but even New Yorkers (who are pretty liberal and very used to immigrants) find that the current rate of entry is unsustainable.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Fun thing about "Integration" policies.

If you are born "here" you don't have to do them. Because you can do or be anything and you are already integrated no matter how contradictory it is to the "majority culture" or "greater good"... just because the policy isn't meant to effect white people I MEAN LOCALS (close one hey).

But because "Integration" is an important and legit democratic value for sure. Foreign born types, and maybe even their children, they need to speak a specific language, know specific historic facts, wear specific clothes, celebrate specific holidays (and not others), follow specific sports, go to specific churches, and hey basically have their lives dictated to them by definitely qualified individuals selected from the "native" (but not TOO native if you know what I mean) born class determined by a democratic process of... yelling the loudest on Murdock sponsored media.

And its definitely cool and democratic to have some sort of first and second class citizen thing going on, especially one based on literal variable birth rights. Its not like even a fascist parody like "Service guarantees citizenship" is actually more equitable and progressive than that.

[Kaelik]

Is anyone arguing that Canada needs to change their immigration policy? For reference, they accept 465,000 immigrants per year.

Yes, obviously. Canada should accept far more migrants then it does. Obviously.

Ultimately, if 'the government' enforces laws that are deeply opposed to the society's convictions, that government will be forced to change in accordance with Democratic principles.

This is one of those things that's blatantly not true. And in the specific instance, the government is changing the views of the populace right now to be more xenophobic by having all the democrats adopt a policy goal more extreme then what Trump did in 2016.

Math fail. If we admit 1% of the U.S. population every year and the median life-expectancy of an immigrant is, say, 35 years, then after 1 year the population would be 16%; after 2 years it would be 17%; after 35 years it would be 50%. That is assuming you use a baseline number and/or it capped immigration at 1%. That is, unless you suggest that we admit 3 million people each year, but also deport 3 million people each year, in which case you have a lot of new people but nobody really gets a chance to get established or build a life, which doesn't seem great.

No Pseudo just isn't a weirdo xenophobe who's worried that people who immigrated years ago are a foreign menace that must be addressed as fundamantelly non american for the rest of their life.

Many people think that there are too many people illegally crossing the border.

Zero people think this because they have personally evaluated the amount of immigrants the US can support and then looked up the stats. What actually happened is that the GOP politicians said this, and that convinced all their voters, and then Joe Biden and the senate democrats said this, and that convinced all their voters and anyone who looks at the media will now see an article that says "Too many immigrants? Yes, Joe Biden promises to ban them all with as many guns as needed, where Donald Trump promises that his magical aura will disintegrate the horde at the border, but we should also shoot them just in case." And now anyone who reads an article will come away with this incorrect belief, whether they had it beforehand or not.

And it is objectively an incorrect belief. You can have "values" or whatever, but the people who believe this false thing believe actually false shit, like that we can't integrate all the immigrants, or that the immigrants have bad women's rights culture and need to be civilized by the white man.

Immigrants don't have to be dangerous to be a problem. Homeless people don't have to be dangerous to be a problem. Drug-users don't have to be dangerous to be a problem. It'd be great if people were endlessly selfless but they're not and they never will be.

Guess we can add "evil homeless armies shitting on the streets and ruining our beautiful san franisco" to the right wing things deaddm believes now.

[Kaelik]

And its definitely cool and democratic to have some sort of first and second class citizen thing going on, especially one based on literal variable birth rights. Its not like even a fascist parody like "Service guarantees citizenship" is actually more equitable and progressive than that.

Yeah, it's really fucking funny to hear about how we need to respect the democratic will of the people who want to exclude others when we literally just don't let 50 million people who live here vote and people somehow pretend that's okay.

Like obviously the entire world should get to vote for the US president, because the US empire effects the whole world, but imagine pretending you support democracy (except when it comes to healthcare or genocide, then we have to make tough choices because the people cannot be trusted) while literally arguing on behalf of punitive attacks against a bunch of people you think shouldn't be allowed to vote.

[MGuy]

I like that dead DM thinks that he's providing nuance to the situation yet he is just repeating talking points that his team agreed was bad when Trump was in office. As long as there is a sufficient NYT article you really can make these people believe anything.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I also like how DeadDM has at vast length and word count described a bunch of social and economic ills ALL CAUSED BY HIM, or rather his prefered neo liberal policies and politicians being in total power for decades.

Then he blames those ills on migrants and then blames migrants for the populist swing to hard right politics.

Migrants aren't the reason you lack a public housing program, a public transport system, a funded public school system, a public health system, and basic functional city zoning regulation.

But if you and all your media shills start saying they are then of course you are only supporting the hard right guy who wants to kill them all.

Leaving shills like DeadDM to do that collar tug gulp bead of sweat "that was a close one" on angry mobs finding the correct source of their anger while pretending its all either political expedience or real statisticalised logicistal factualoids tm* (*not actual facts or statistics).

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Apparently, in the midst of this Gaza Genocide president Genocide Joe has announced that he will...

VISIT PALASTINE!

Huh? Well OK. Um. EAST PALASTINE!

Wait, which part of...

THE TOWN EXPLODED BY A TOXIC TRAIN A YEAR AGO THAT HE REFUSED TO VISIT OR HELP IN ANY WAY FOR A WHOLE FUCKING YEAR.

What.

YES THAT PLACE. NOW. WHILE A PALASTINE ANNOUNCEMENT WOULD BE WILDLY MORE RELEVANT TO SOMETHING ELSE.

Just... what is the plan there? Which thing is supposed to distract from which thing? Is East Palastine so in danger of blowing up again in the media all of a sudden, now, that it becomes so urgent to bring it back into the public eye by failing to address it in such an untimely manner? Did Biden just get old man confused and they ran with it?

Just... fucking... fire your political strategy and media guys. FIRE THEM. THEY ARE BAD AT WHAT THEY DO.

[Thaluikhain]

Immigrants don't have to be dangerous to be a problem. Homeless people don't have to be dangerous to be a problem. Drug-users don't have to be dangerous to be a problem.

As an aside, just under 30% of Australians were born overseas. Australia has any number of problems, but too many foreigns isn't one of them.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Australia has any number of problems, but too many foreigns isn't one of them.

First Nations Australians may or may not fully agree...

Anyone else can fuck off and join the people they want to deport "going back where they came from" the moment those words pass their lips.

[Thaluikhain]

Australia has any number of problems, but too many foreigns isn't one of them.

First Nations Australians may or may not fully agree..

You have a point there.

[Kaelik]

Yeah I was going to make a joke about how people born in another country and moved here at the age of two are "lifelong immigrants" in deaddm's categories, but it sure seems like your average white person who's parents came here 200 years ago is more of an immigrant then your average Mexican who crossed the border yesterday.

(Because white Anglos did a lot more murdering and avoidining intermarrying, and white spainards intermarried a lot more with indigenous people instead of mass murdering them.)

[phlapjackage]

Migrants aren't the reason you lack a public housing program, a public transport system, a funded public school system, a public health system, and basic functional city zoning regulation.

This is the thing that stood out to me and I was going to comment on, over all the other stuff. Listing a bunch of societal issues, then blaming them all on immigrants/migrants.

Just really disappointing. Doesn't seem like a very nuanced take on their part.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

then blaming them all on immigrants/migrants.

But you see. Migrants use public services. So if your own politicians you support spend 30+years destroying all public infrastructure for their personal profit. That's the fault of migrants. Because they like, went to the doctor this one time, fuck it, private health care for everyone forever THANKS MANUEL this is OBVIOUSLY your fault.

...Says DeadDM who is obviously not a Racists buuuut...

[PseudoStupidity]

I just can't figure out why he said I made a math mistake when I explicitly rejected the racist idea that immigrants are somehow different from people who were born here. Maybe he'll elaborate, but it sounds like he thinks immigrants should be treated differently from native-born citizens.

[deaddmwalking]

I just can't figure out why he said I made a math mistake when I explicitly rejected the racist idea that immigrants are somehow different from people who were born here. Maybe he'll elaborate, but it sounds like he thinks immigrants should be treated differently from native-born citizens.

If you recognized that 15% of the total population as immigrants bumps against historical limits of how much immigration people tolerate, and you also recognized that 15% of the current U.S. Population is immigrants, than +1% of the U.S. Population per year would quickly exceed 15%. 3 million per year is 30 million in 10 years; since the average life span is significantly longer than 10 years.

I do think that every nation on earth has policies about how to handle immigration, and that's reasonable. The United States has both one of the most flexible policies for granting citizenship and the most tolerant of immigration/absorption into society. Those are good things worth celebrating.

There are limits to how many people can move to the United States over a given time. Whether it's 1 billion per year or 1 million per year recognizing that there are limits to what society and infrastructure can handle isn't controversial. Deciding what those limits are and what resources we're dedicating to making the lives of immigrants better is important.

[MGuy]

So looking at that just makes me think: We should make it so that those immigrants should have a quicker and easier time changing their status from immigrant to citizen over the next 10 years so annoying (borderline) racist people can stop complaining about the number of people with that immigrant label.

[PseudoStupidity]

I just can't figure out why he said I made a math mistake when I explicitly rejected the racist idea that immigrants are somehow different from people who were born here. Maybe he'll elaborate, but it sounds like he thinks immigrants should be treated differently from native-born citizens.

If you recognized that 15% of the total population as immigrants bumps against historical limits of how much immigration people tolerate, and you also recognized that 15% of the current U.S. Population is immigrants, than +1% of the U.S. Population per year would quickly exceed 15%. 3 million per year is 30 million in 10 years; since the average life span is significantly longer than 10 years.

I do think that every nation on earth has policies about how to handle immigration, and that's reasonable. The United States has both one of the most flexible policies for granting citizenship and the most tolerant of immigration/absorption into society. Those are good things worth celebrating.

There are limits to how many people can move to the United States over a given time. Whether it's 1 billion per year or 1 million per year recognizing that there are limits to what society and infrastructure can handle isn't controversial. Deciding what those limits are and what resources we're dedicating to making the lives of immigrants better is important.

I don't consider people who have lived in the US for a significant amount of time to be different from anyone else who's lived in the US for a that same time period. I don't think old people are "more American" than young people, nor do I think people who arrived in the US from elsewhere are "less American" than people who were born here. Once you've spent some time here and learned the ropes you're just as American as anyone else, who fucking cares? I reject the racist view you are expressing where "immigrant" is a status that follows people around for their entire life and marks them as an other to be carefully watched lest there become too many of them, I thought I had been explicit about that in my post. I get the status of "immigrant" as someone who just arrived and needs help learning the ropes, but any consideration of immigrant beyond that was not something I was considering.

With this use of immigrant (a permanent status for people from somewhere else, and those people must be kept below a certain threshold of the population) I do not recognize 15% as a historical limit of immigrants that people will tolerate. That is absurd, there is no magic tolerance number.

[Foxwarrior]

I was too young to remember it, but my parents tell me that in rural England then people treat you like an immigrant until your family has lived there for at least a hundred years... They found this very annoying for some reason.

[Kaelik]

The United States has both one of the most flexible policies for granting citizenship and the most tolerant of immigration/absorption into society. Those are good things worth celebrating.

This is absolutely dumb as shit and not even close to true.

There are limits to how many people can move to the United States over a given time. Whether it's 1 billion per year or 1 million per year recognizing that there are limits to what society and infrastructure can handle isn't controversial. Deciding what those limits are and what resources we're dedicating to making the lives of immigrants better is important.

And people are saying you are a racist psychopath because you think that number is way smaller because you believe in the inherent bad culture of the browns and you think people who have lived here for 10 fucking years are scary foreigners.

If you recognized that 15% of the total population as immigrants bumps against historical limits of how much immigration people tolerate, and you also recognized that 15% of the current U.S. Population is immigrants, than +1% of the U.S. Population per year would quickly exceed 15%.

I do not recognize 15% as a historical limit of immigrants that people will tolerate. That is absurd, there is no magic tolerance number.

Exactly, why would anyone accept this. It's absurd and obviously untrue. People have accepted more and less immigration then this all the time all over the world based on social conditions. The correct thing to do is not institute deaddm's ideal immigration rules (zero admissions of any kind because we are apparently already at the limit according to that post!). Instead, the correct thing to do is change the social conditions so that people shut the fuck about this, like for example, having a political party actually just say "we don't have a problem of too many immigrants, we have a problem of too few immigrants."

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

This 15% migration thing is not just nonsense on its face (no, racists don't accept 15%, no the racists and the non racists do not collectively compromise on 15%, holy shit).

But did I not just finish telling you. Australia has been tracking how racist our population is. We implemented the racist anti immigration bullshit. We have concentration camps and second class citizens and bullshit insane deportations. We had the "Centrist" retards like DeadDM embrace the far rights arguments and grant them credibility by treating racism as a real legitimate concern that deserves not just an electoral option but the ONLY electoral option. We did the bipartisan bills that gave the far right everything they wanted, we left NOTHING for anyone who wanted to vote for what was once our world leading multicultural movement.

And we DOUBLED THE RACISM. "People who hold racist beliefs" as extensively surveyed have jumped from a bit over 10% of the population to closer to 30%.

IF and its a big IF there is any group that thinks 15% is a magic number, they will quickly be dwarfed by the "Fuck off we're full hur hur hur" contingent that will only grow under this sort of policy and rhetoric. Typically, as a fascist enabling liberal you think you can and should ride the beast for personal profit and be damned the casualties among the browns, but you cannot ride the beast, it will go where it wants to instead then eventually devour you and grow stronger.

Basically you can't trick the fascists into voting for you. You can only empower their movement or not.

[phlapjackage]

The United States has both one of the most flexible policies for granting citizenship and the most tolerant of immigration/absorption into society.

[violence in the media]

...how much immigration people tolerate...

Dead, what part of fuck those people are you not getting? You mention protecting minorities from the majority, but throw that out the window when the minority tag is "immigrant". You keep saying that we need to make concessions to the [foolish, ignorant, racist, dimwitted, outraged, misled, propagandized] portions of the population; we're saying that those people need to pushed out into irrelevancy. Do not validate their opinions with both sides centrist bullshit. "Well Dave, one side wants to dismember immigrants with chainsaws, and the other side says 'What the fuck?! That's cartoonishly inhumane!' Let's see if we can find a middle ground in the NYT opinion section!"

For example, when the Democrats passed civil rights legislation in the 60s, the response from the Republicans shouldn't have been to welcome the racist voters into the GOP with open arms. They should have said, "your racism and white supremacy has no place here either" and Billy Backwoods should have found him and his kin increasingly disenfranchised by his own inhumane fucking choices. Groups like the KKK, hate churches, abortion clinic bombers, and the assorted fascist military cosplayer groups should be treated as the hate group/terrorist organizations that they are and handled accordingly.

"Blah, blah, blah, political calculus...the racist voting block would be large enough to rally behind a new racist party and displace the GOP..." Yeah, maybe not if they were forced to do that back then rather than having 60 years to entrench in the GOP.

[Kaelik]

Cannot stress enough how much democratic presidents saying "the immigrant hordes are invading" turns people like deaddm into those people who need to be marginalized vs how much the democratic politicians saying "these people are absurd monsters" marginalizes them and reduces their power nationally.

The GOP has gone whole hog on weird transphobia and it has mostly result in them LOSING ELECTIONS. If the democrats actually pushed back against racist nationalism instead of adopting it, immigration would be the same thing.

[Kaelik]

Biden went on Seth Meyers to threaten all american jews that if they dont' support Israel's genocide of the Palestinians that he's going to gencocide them (like the last time he said this a couple months ago).

I can't tell if he's never met a Jew who didn't work as a prison guard in Israeli murder facilities, so he doesn't know he's threatening American Jews every time he does this line, or if does know and he's just thrilled to do it.

[deaddmwalking]

I think you should provide the quote. ABC says:

On his late-night appearance, Biden said without Israel, no Jewish person would be safe -- but also warned of diminished support for the country if it continues its current tactics in Gaza.

"Israel has had the overwhelming support of the vast majority of nations. If it keeps this up without this incredibly conservative government they have ... they're going to lose support from around the world," he said. "And that is not in Israel's interest."

Is that him threatening to initiate a genocide against them?