> its important to understand the arguments being made if we are honestly interested in engaging in discussion and improvement.
Yes. But making their arguments into different, milder, sanitized and whitewashed ones is NOT understanding them. It is carrying water for them. As of now, both their rhetorics and actions match perfectly. There is zero reason to think this is about crime levels.
> The fact that the rate is lower for native-born or legal immigrants is immaterial to the argument advanced by those seeking more enforcement of immigration laws
When the deportations are done in an orderly manner and without visible abuses, these people are unhappy. When they are done with visible abuses, then they feel like they are getting what they wanted. They do not particularly like the focus on lawbreakers either, their own rhetoric casts violent law breaking as something good - if done by the right side. In fact, when only illegal immigrants are deported, they act like something was missing.
If we are honest to ourselves about what they want and openly talk about, they want white ethnostate. They have issue with legal migrants and with non white citizens too. They have issue with EU having non whites in it. Somehow, their primary targets are cities with relatively low illegal immigration rather then ... Texas with much higher illegal immigration.
Reality check is that he has actual track record on delivering or trying to deliver on his anti-democratic impulses. In terms of personal monetary gain, he is the most successful president of history.
He is also actually successful at making Project 2025 reality. He is on the way to cause very real harm (economic, physical) to blue cities too.
> Its depressing trying to steelman that behavior because you realize that the country you grew up in had these people there.
Maybe we should stop steelman them all the time. That is how they got enabled by centrists and pundits and moderates so much, they became the rulers. Steelmanning obvious bad faith actors is just another fallacy.
Steelmanning consists of ignoring disturbing claims conservative right says, not listening to what they are actually saying and replacing what they are saying by some feel good fiction of good intention.
The other method of challenging them and trying to prove your point does not work either. There is no solution it seems. They need to suffer the consequences of their decisions on their own.
Thats why I was so depressed. I have an engineering mindset of finding out how to improve things and there seems like there is no solution to this problem that involves remaining with this group as part of your society because it takes two to tango (ie. both sides need to put in genuine effort at growth).
Steelmanning is not challenging them at all. It is whitewashing them, making softer argument so that they are more palatable and frequently undistinguishable from support.
The only person challenged by such steelmanning is opposition to MAGA. They now have two opponents. They are made look as if they were exaggerating or were crazy when they accurately report to what MAGA does or says. They now have an additional, basically unintentional bad faith, rationalization to deal with against them.
> there is no solution to this problem that involves remaining with this group as part of your society because it takes two to tango (ie. both sides need to put in genuine effort at growth).
The problem is that what happens is that the opposition to MAGA is constantly asked to do growth, to steelman, to concede and move more to the right to accommodate MAGA. It is highly asymmetric and provably does not work.
> I have an engineering mindset of finding out how to improve things
I think that making it clear what MAGA wants says and supports to moderates and center is way better strategy then basically helping them.
Owner of the thirty-five employees company wants long term income and sort of security. They usually do not want huge peek in short term followed by death. They are also less comfortable with strategy that has 95% chance of destroying the company and 0.5% chance is earning a lot with 5% in between.
Outside investors are the exact opposite.
Also, smaller owners do not have that billionaire mindset of "any unethical or illegal action goes". It is not like they would be saints, but there is range of personalities and value systems among them. Billionaire became billionaires because not caring about any of that gives them advantage.
You are ignoring Trump literally adopting Russian proposals and demands in that war as they are. Trump and america flipped sides, seeing Russia as admirable peer and Ukraine as someone who should shut up and put up.
Trump want deals with russia to enrich himself. For that he needs Ukraine to loose. Bad thing is Putin does not have enough, he wants the rest of Europe too.
Because they can focus on different movies. Americans few decades ago found internarional movies boring, did not focused, but could focus on American movies.
I don't think people can focus on any movies anymore, period.
I used to host movie night for the friend group, because I was the one with a decent home theater setup, but we stopped because people just can't get through movies anymore. Same with family. We'd always put on a movie at night when family were over for a visit, but we don't anymore. Within 5 minutes of the movie starting, everyone's on their phones or getting up to do other things. Why even bother hosting?
I even let the guest(s) choose the movie so they're not subjected to all that boring "character development" and "establishing shots" in movies I go for, and they still can't make it more than 5-10 minutes. My teenage kid can't even make it through movies with zero quiet parts, designed specifically for that age group. Not into it at all--she puts YouTube on at 2x-2.5x speed and "watches" two videos at a time while playing video games.
I was a film student in the 90s, I would watch a dozen films over a weekend. Now, if I want to sit through a film and give it my full attention I have to either go to a movie theatre or break the movie up into a series of bite-sized segments. If I want to get lost in a book I have to go camping somewhere away from any cell towers.
I don't think film students today are less interested in film. Their attention spans are shot.
Yes. But making their arguments into different, milder, sanitized and whitewashed ones is NOT understanding them. It is carrying water for them. As of now, both their rhetorics and actions match perfectly. There is zero reason to think this is about crime levels.
> The fact that the rate is lower for native-born or legal immigrants is immaterial to the argument advanced by those seeking more enforcement of immigration laws
When the deportations are done in an orderly manner and without visible abuses, these people are unhappy. When they are done with visible abuses, then they feel like they are getting what they wanted. They do not particularly like the focus on lawbreakers either, their own rhetoric casts violent law breaking as something good - if done by the right side. In fact, when only illegal immigrants are deported, they act like something was missing.
If we are honest to ourselves about what they want and openly talk about, they want white ethnostate. They have issue with legal migrants and with non white citizens too. They have issue with EU having non whites in it. Somehow, their primary targets are cities with relatively low illegal immigration rather then ... Texas with much higher illegal immigration.
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