Luke Reeshus

If an Independence Day scenario occurred, the mainstream press would be trying to gauge the aliens' political slant based on which cities were targeted first

This erroneous way of thinking predates America. It's the Noble Savage myth, and it was there at the founding of Jamestown, when churchmen and capitalists back in England did everything to constrain the colonists from effectively deterring the natives from attacking them. After the massacre of March 1622, the Virginians just ignored them: "Whereas we are advised by you to observe rules of justice with these barbarous, perfidious enemies, we hold nothing unjust that may tend to their ruin." -- Governor Wyatt to the Virginia Company in London

@MartinSkold2 I guess Americans made the (completely understandable) error of assuming that everybody else would behave like them with independence, if that makes sense .

It did! US presidents from FDR through JFK, who were in effect overseeing the demolition of the European empires (that had previously tried to break up the US) were implementing the Wilsonian vision of a world of sovereign states who got along under various international compacts. So, eg, the idea that Egypt or Malaysia would end up geopolitically in play, did not register, so the US made no effort to control chokepoints comparable to its British predecessor’s. As there, so with other things. This was always the naïveté of American world order, but it had a kind of logic to it, because the US was already opposed to those empires. It just had no plan for when the winds shifted, and ended up financially and politically beholden to the world it had helped liberate.

@sdixitmd @Devon_Eriksen_ @curiouswavefn "encourage the world's best to come to the US to build. "What we did mid 20th century." You mean in 1965. Because in the decades before that, when immigration was restricted, the US was a technological backwater which accomplished nothing of note as a country, right?

@Devon_Eriksen_ False binary. You're both right - invest in homegrown talent and encourage the world's best to come to the US to build. What we did mid 20th century. @curiouswavefn

What a strange invasion force they are. They couldn't conquer us with guns, or with trade, so they came with empty hands and mouths full of tales about how they were too good for their own nations and people. And now that we have realized that this, too, is a weapon, they screech like psychotic ex-girlfriends, alternately sobbing about how heartlessly cruel we are, and ranting dire predictions about how we will never survive without them. But if we can't live without them, why aren't we dead yet? Every time they demand to stay in our country, there is always some claim that they do for us something we cannot do for ourselves. "I'm a scientist!" Do they expect us to believe we are incapable of science? To "be a scientist" is not a contribution. It is a credential. A scientist was enrolled in a PhD program, instead of someone else. He passed that program, and was given a fellowship, or a research grant, or a job, or a tenure track position. Instead of someone else. When institutions squat across every upward ladder in your civilization, gatekeeping vigorously, it really IS a zero sum game. And what have these student-visa, green-card-stapled-to-his-PhD scientists invented? Discovered? Revolutionized? Not much. Certainly not more than the native Americans did in the 20th century. They all want to wear Warner Von Braun like a cape, but where are the results? The actual next Werner Von Braun didn't get any special favors, even though he's technically African, and we all know why he didn't. I don't see any compelling evidence that all these hordes of third worlders are a net positive AT ALL, much less a better bet than the sons of America who they were imported to replace. Why the hell would I feel sorry for them when I know 140+ IQ Americans who are hanging drywall and driving school buses? Norman Borlaug saved the third world from starvation, and the thanks America gets is that the Millennial Norman Borlaug gets to sell insurance because our political class wanted to play Racial Diversity Zoo for cheap votes. And then pat themselves on the back for being generous with someone else's heritage. So I'm not interested in the crocodile tears of an invader over losing ten percent of something that was never his to begin with, as I am equally not interested when he switches, on the instant, to boasting about how he is "competitive" in the hundred yard dash when he starts on the fifty yard line. The replacement of native Americans with everyone else isn't some wild eyed conspiracy theory. It was done right out in the open. We all know this. We all know exactly who had their thumbs on the scales, because they didn't bother to try hiding it. The only thing they hid was their motives. So, as far as I'm concerned, we can send them all back. Every last one. And wish them the best of luck in their own countries. After all, if, as they claim, all playing fields are inherently level, and only merit matters, they should revolutionize their own economies in short order. Meanwhile, we can do for GenZ Americans what GenX and the Millennials missed out on until it was too late. We can invest in them.

@avidseries "Innovation" x.com/shortmagsmle/s…

The rightwing bubble is one of the most statistically illiterate districts in the discourse when it comes to immigration. Here are a few of the things they don't seem to know: (1) Indian H-1Bs are only a tiny percentage of the total legal immigrant population in the US (about 1 to 2%). (2) Just because a group might suck in Europe (e.g., Pakistanis, Lebanese, Turks), doesn't mean they suck here in the US. (All of those groups I named outperform whites on income and education here in the US). (3) Legal immigrants (including from many nations in the developing world) drive innovation and tech company creation here in the US at a higher rate than do native-born Americans. (4) While Indian immigrants display more in-group hiring bias than native-born whites, the amount of this bias is only average among immigrant groups.

Remember folks, immigration is key to America's dynamism. Between 1924 and 1965 it was severely restricted. During these dark years, the US was a technological and cultural backwater and accomplished nothing of note as a nation.

@extradeadjcb New euphemism for 'biomass' just dropped Reminds me of NYT's Wajahat Ali gloating last year about "brown people" taking over the US. Diversity indeed

It's also truer - this woman does not belong to any particular culture in any way that matters, her college admissions essay about her grandma's fried dough balls is exactly the same as anyone else of her ilk, anywhere in the world She's just Not White

@captive_dreamer Yes, they're fighting a proxy war against NATO, not Pashtun tribesmen

Russia lost more soldiers KIA this month to drones (nearly 3000) than we did in 20 years in Afghanistan. That's in one month.

I guess at least they’re running out of shit to do this with. We got like maybe a black popeye left and then they have to actually write something new

there's $600 billion in annual welfare fraud going to Democrats and foreigners so maybe we can handle that before we get angry that Zoomers are purchasing lunch.

@MarkAmesExiled Yeltsin did all that by himself while drunk 24/7? Impressive

After Yeltsin destroyed Russia's democracy, collapsed its economy and looted its wealth, he named Putin as his successor on one condition: that Putin pass a law granting Yeltsin and his family total immunity. What Putin did for Yeltsin, Trump did for Trump x.com/unusual_whales…

@arcticinstincts WW2 Kamikaze pilots were enthusiastic fanatics (No one volunteered for the program; most thought it was tragic and stupid -- but they did their duty)

What historical fact sounds true but is fake?

@bronzeagemantis "Yes, we engaged in political mendacity, but it was for a greater cause, so why do you care?" is the current refrain of the Left regarding this stuff Not sure why you're echoing it

Again I ask why this matters, if you agree with Rosa Parks that a law requiring blacks to give up their seats is unjust. The entirety of punditry is now “you were TRICKED” and REVEALING media analysis type things. I want to know why that’s important

@eugyppius1 Who is "we"? I'm confused. It's historically relevant that much of the Civil Rights movement was stage-managed and socially engineered by communists, no?

This exactly right and applies to a whole genre of argument I have found tiresome since I first had internet shitpoast account. "We were actually back in the day much more liberal than the lying liberal media gives us credit for" hardly seems like a good angle of attack here.

@martianwyrdlord In fairness to normies, it's difficult to imagine the desperate hivemind urge of the Left to control the Narrative. I know it exists, can even directly observe it, but it still blows me away

Normies assume everything that entered the news cycle over the last century was completely spontaneous, when the truth is that most events of any cultural or political significance were carefully stage-managed by informal cadres of activists, publicists, lawyers, journalists, bureaucrats, and security professionals. Most of the time this was relatively out in the open, in the sense that the commies would happily teach you how the sausage was made in their workshops, of course of presenting it all as heroic, canny culture jamming. But the average apolitical normgroid just sees the headlines, which always give the impression that the spontaneity isn't controlled. Which the communists count on. This is their way of lying to everyone without *technically* lying.

@DKThomp I see we're at Stage 3 of the cultural subversion sequence: 1 - That's not happening 2 - Maybe it's happening but not that much 3 - Okay it's happening regularly. Who cares? 4 - Actually it's good that it's happening. F* you

it's a poem about a thing that never happened, credited to an author who probably never existed, and helen is introduced within the mythology as the daughter of ZEUS, a figure literally nobody in this country even believes in, if you're emotionally invested in the historicity of her pigmentation you need a life and also medication, not necessarily in that order

@antoniogm This is indeed a propaganda coup... for Putin.

Four months after Pearl Harbor, the Americans staged a daring bombing raid of Tokyo, launching B-25s off carriers in a near-suicide mission (the bombers could not land back on carriers). The goal: raise morale at home, sow fear in the enemy, and defuse the feeling of invulnerability in Japanese imperial conquest. The actual destruction was cosmetic, but the raid was a propaganda coup and rattled Japanese leadership so much they pushed themselves into the Battle of Midway, a devastating defeat.

@FistedFoucault Applebaum is a snake. She's not calling for Europe's technological autarky; she's bitching to the choir about its inability to censor this American-owned website, because people on here can advocate for 'radical' ideas like... technological aurtarky from globohomo.

Credit where credit is due. Second part is 100% correct.

If you are wondering why Christopher Nolan set out to demolish Homer's Odyssey—specifically, the Odyssey—Mike explained why in 2024.

USAID was 100% involved in bringing migrants through the Darien Gap.