Frum: Dead Wrong on Immigration

Published at 11:14 on 7 April 2019

In a provocatively-titled article published in this month’s Atlantic, David Frum (himself am immigrant to the USA) claims that “If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will.”

He points out (correctly) that the current level of immigration in the USA is historically high, then starts using lots of rhetorical hand-waving to imply that this is certain to cause all sorts of problems and resulting discontent in the voting public. And then, if liberals refuse to clamp down on the immigration, the scenario in the article’s title will presumably play out.

The problem with Frum’s contention is, what statistical evidence there is doesn’t precisely support the presumptions of his hand-waving very well. (That probably explains why hand-waving and not hard evidence is used in his article.) In fact, what evidence there is directly contradicts most of Frum’s assertions.

The Cato Institute recently published an article showing that public support for more immigration has actually increased since a fascist administration (and yes, Trump, is a fascist) took office in the USA. Actually, it’s been increasing since the mid-1990’s. Then, roughly 65% wanted immigration to be decreased. Now only about 30% do.

That’s right, roughly 70% want immigration kept the same or increased. And that’s after a decade of high levels of immigration! In a country with a fascist president who uses his bully pulpit to regularly promote xenophobia! There is, simply put, no evidence of growing public support for reducing immigration.

And let’s consider who tends to support restricting immigration? Republicans, that’s who. Where do Republicans tend to live? Away from the big cities. Likewise, Democrats (who support continued or increased immigration) tend to live in or near big cities. Where do immigrants tend to live? Also in or near big cities. That’s right, those who live near immigrants tend to view immigration in a positive light. Exactly the opposite situation one would expect if the mere presence of immigrants produced unease about immigration.

This goes for the border wall, too. The closer a person lives to the US/Mexico border, the less likely he or she is to support building Trump’s wall.

Finally, the Pew Research Center has done comparative surveys on immigration in multiple countries. Here’s the most recent one. Note that, compared to the world as a whole:

  • Americans are more likely to believe immigrants are a source of national strength.
  • Americans are less likely to associate immigrants with crime.
  • Americans are less likely to associate immigrants with terrorism.
  • Americans are less likely to support the deportation of illegal immigrants.

In short, there’s simply not much evidence in favor of Frum’s contention.

Quite the contrary, I would say. Support for fascism in the USA comes primarily from rural right-wingers who have little or no regular interaction with immigrants. Simply put, they fear that which they don’t know.

Newly-naturalized citizens naturally see such fascist proclivities as personal threats and as such oppose them. Therefore, increasing the number of immigrant voters will improve the quality of the electorate, by increasing the fraction of it that has a profound revulsion to fascist politics.

And it’s not just the situation on the electoral battlefield that will be helped by the presence of more immigrants. The electoral battle itself will tend to be less fought and more conceded in the pro-immigration, pro-diversity direction. Remember, the mere presence of immigrants tends to cause a more positive attitude towards immigrants.

“You’re promoting immigration because you want to destroy America,” the fascists say. And on this one, they are right; or rather, we should act in ways that make this accusation correct. When fascists say “America” they are referring not to what actually is but their fascist vision of what they believe it ought to be. That vision is evil and should be destroyed.

Politics is war by other means. Fight it. Support continued and even increased immigration.

The 737 Max Scandal

Published at 08:18 on 2 April 2019

I was going to make a long post of my own about it, but Vox just preempted me. Executive summary (I encourage you to read the Vox article):

  1. Boeing found themselves painted into a corner by decades-old design decisions whose consequences they couldn’t have foreseen.
  2. Basically, it was not possible to easily and quickly make a safe aircraft that was more fuel efficient, to compete with the new Airbus A320neo.
  3. Boeing should have sucked it up and taken the loss involved in playing catch-up with Airbus.
  4. Instead, they decided to bolt new, more efficient engines on the existing 737 airframe (even though they didn’t really fit) and christen the result the 737 Max.
  5. The new planes had kludges installed (sensors and software) in an attempt to paper over their fundamental unairworthiness.
  6. A corrupt relationship with the FAA allowed the kludged-up planes to be approved and sold.
  7. The inevitable happens.

Really, it should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that a plane that substitutes good engineering practices based on the laws of physics operating in the real world, for software operating in cyberspace, ends up sometimes startling and surprising pilots, sometimes with tragic results. It should also come as no surprise that said software has bugs, also sometimes with tragic results.

The most important overall rule of software development is that it’s extremely difficult to get right. As someone who’s worked in that field, I know this by first-hand experience.

Bad Advice from Rick Wilson

Published at 11:50 on 1 April 2019

In a recent New York Daily News opinion piece, Rick Wilson claims:

That’s why the Democrats have two options for the 2020 presidental race: Make the race a referendum on Trump and Trumpism, or lose.

No. No those are not the two choices the Democrats face. This is not even remotely true.

The Democrats already have had an election where they campaigned as a referendum on Trump and Trumpism: the 2016 presidential election. That was most of Hillary Clinton’s platform: being the Not Trump candidate. And we all know how well that worked out.

Moreover, opposition parties facing authoritarian movements have generally failed when they campaign on the “at least we’re not them” platform. It’s what doomed the opposition for decades in Venezuela and Italy. They campaigned on being Not Chávez and Not Berlusconi in multiple elections… and lost every one.

It was only when the opposition changed their campaign tactic to “what we can do better for you” that their fortunes changed.

Ignore the Not Trump line. Everyone interested in voting Trump out already knows that means voting for the Democrats in 2020. The Democrats have an absolute lock on the Not Trump vote; as such, any additional effort focused on this sales tactic is wasted.

Look, I get it: Rick is a conservative. For him, personally, about the only thing good about the Democrats is that they are Not Trump. He’s not enthused about any of their other policies. He’s not looking forward to holding his nose and voting for a Democrat. But hold his nose and vote Democrat he will.

One of the greatest errors in thinking one can make is to extrapolate one’s own beliefs onto others. For millions of Americans, Trump is not so abjectly repugnant as he is to Wilson (or, for that matter, yours truly). Yes, it would be a great thing if he was: Trump would have never been elected. But wishing something were so does not make it so.

So, No Collusion*

Published at 12:44 on 25 March 2019

* No knowing, orchestrated collusion by the Trump campaign, that could plausibly be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt to a judge and a jury, that is.

There is, however, a big puzzle piece that simply doesn’t fit right: why did Mueller catch so many people in and closely connected to the campaign lying about their connections to Russia? It doesn’t make sense: why like to an investigation (exposing yourself to being prosecuted for perjury), if you have committed no crime?

There are a number of plausible explanations, some that are fairly innocent, some otherwise. (In the latter category, what if Mueller almost found enough to prosecute the campaign for illegally colluding, but not quite?) Absent as full as possible a release of the report, we will never have any idea how to explain this discrepancy. It is for this very reason that a full release is desirable.

Beyond that, all of us in the anti-Trump crowd should put a lid on the whining. The whole reason for investigating was that we didn’t know enough and thought that there probably, but not definitely was serious dirt to be found. Mueller didn’t find the expected dirt, most likely because that dirt simply doesn’t exist. Sometimes, gut feelings end up being wrong. Deal with it.

This is, after all, why societies that worry about becoming repressive don’t automatically punish wrong-doers on mere suspicion, but instead require evidence, evidence that must typically be uncovered via investigation. An investigation is not a conviction.

On top of all that, there are many other reasons for which Trump should be opposed, and many of those reasons are more likely to be fruitful and convincing campaign material. Trump’s personal faults, as bad as they are, have never ranked terribly highly. Consider this poll, for example.

One of the reasons the opposition failed to unseat Berlusconi for so long in Italy was that they were too preoccupied with Berlusconi himself, instead of the conditions that had prompted many to vote for him. So can the “Russia, Russia, Russia” crap and move on to more fruitful avenues of criticism.

Time for a Brexit Redo

Published at 18:49 on 13 March 2019

First, the Leave campaign cheated. They lied, and they peddled foreign influence. Cheaters in sports get stripped of any titles their cheating played a role in. Why shouldn’t cheaters in politics suffer a similar fate, particularly given how the consequences of their cheating can be vastly more severe?

Second, decisions shouldn’t always be irrevocable. We’ve all done things we regret, only to back out as best we can and admit we were wrong for making what hindsight showed to be a wrong decision in the first place. Sure, some decisions are intrinsically hard to undo, but why should that be used as an excuse for making all decisions artificially difficult to undo?

Hold another referendum. If it fails, try as hard as possible to shit-can the whole misadventure. In such a case, it’s likely the rest of the EU will go along with Britain’s wishes; the trade disruption caused by a Brexit would hurt the Continent, too.

Ilhan Omar’s Bigoted Remarks

Published at 10:12 on 8 March 2019

Some points:

  1. Yes, she did use the phrase “allegiance to a foreign country.”
  2. Accusations of dual or conflicted loyalty have an ugly history behind them, to the point of being a standard trope in antisemitism.
  3. Yes, the phrase was part of one sentence of a larger speech, the rest of which did not exhibit antisemitic rhetoric.
  4. Point (3) is less relevant than it may seem. There’s a long history of political gaffes being ripped out of larger context and getting repeated over and over. This is hardly the first case. It’s a standard occupational hazard of being a politician.
  5. There’s basically two options at play here, neither of which make Ms. Omar look particularly good:
    1. She said what she said because it reflects her true inner biases; i.e., she’s a bigot.
    2. She said what she said because she didn’t know better; i.e., she’s an ignoramus.
  6. The Republicans have been far worse; just witness how little they did over the years as Steve King evolved into being an outright fascist.
  7. The resolution that passed was a pretty good one. It acknowledged the generally bad record of bigotry in the House in recent years and condemned it in general, instead of simply singling out a possibly bigoted left liberal and being silent on all the other instances.
  8. It proved a political masterstroke as well, because the Republicans, being a party of re-branded fascism, could not stomach the idea of condemning bigotry in general—and are now on record for it.

Might this all end up proving that being a somewhat bickersome “big tent” party is in the Democrats’ best interest? Consider that the resolution that was brought up and passed was nobody’s first choice: The left wing of the Democratic Party didn’t want any criticism of any one of their own, and the right wing wanted something that only went after this particular instance of bigotry. In the process of bickering and squabbling the Democrats came up with… a political masterstroke that neither faction would have come up with on their own.

Left-Wing Authoritarianism: What Can Be Done?

Published at 11:06 on 7 March 2019

First, If your blood pressure rose at the mere mention of the phrase “left-wing authoritarianism” in the title, then I suggest it’s time for you to calm down and give this article a read; it’s likely to be particularly important.

Second, this post references one I made about a month ago. If you’re unfamiliar with it, I suggest you read it first.

That earlier post concluded thus:

So there’s my answer. Like many answers, it begs a question: what can we do about it? I could now go on to answer that, but instead I think I’ll close and let the reader think about it for a while.

Such a conclusion carried an implicit promise of a follow-up at some time in the future. It is now time to get on with that follow-up.

The 20th century’s worst tyrants called themselves socialists. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all chose to label themselves in this way. And now that the 20th century has given way to the 21st, we have a tyranny (sorry, but if you look at the full picture of all the repression there, that’s the only thing it honestly can be called) in Venezuela that has also chosen to apply this label to itself.

Yes, in many cases, particularly that of Hitler, cogent arguments can be made that the self-proclaimed “socialist” tyrants lied when they made this claim: they failed to empower the working class, instead empowering states and parties that oppressed all unfortunate enough to be living under their misrule, workers included. Also, there are plenty of self-proclaimed “socialist” or “social-democratic” parties all over the world that have had collective centuries in power without instituting tyranny.

However, tyrants have still chosen the “socialist” label, and have done so over and over again. When something happens that repeatedly, it’s hard to shrug it all off as mere unlucky coincidence.

The answer, I think, is that “socialism” is a uniquely useful fig-leaf by which to attempt to disguise and legitimate tyranny. Socialism has generally been seen in a positive light by most people. Many Americans will doubt this, but most Americans have a highly-unrepresentative exposure to what socialism means; in most other nations, the history of the label has been nowhere near as consistently pejorative.

But it goes beyond that. Socialism not only has a generally positive connotation, it denotes an ideology which often claims:

  1. Economic inequality is the main problem in capitalist society, and
  2. The state can and should be used to dismantle capitalism.

Point No. 2 makes socialism an exceptionally useful mantle for dictators to claim, as they can then claim to be wanting increased state power not for the sake of themselves and their cronies, but to liberate society from capitalist oppression. Point No. 1 then comes in to distract the public from valuing liberty, since so much ideological attention is being paid to battling economic inequality.

And that, in a nutshell, is why left-wing authoritarianism has been such a recurring problem. The solution, then, is to reject the premises that have been proven to be such pitfalls, and to replace them with better premises.

Premise I: The Classic Liberals Have a Point on the State Being Dangerous

The State is dangerous. All of the worst genocides of the 20th century were performed by State actors. All of them. The oft-repeated quote incorrectly attributed to George Washington has proven itself true time and time again:

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Classic liberals, particularly the followers and fellow travelers of organizations like today’s Libertarian Party, are of course being two-faced here: they are typically blind to the interplay of state and corporate power, and almost always blind to the oppressiveness of corporate power. That their present-day prescriptions for society would almost certainly prove oppressive is not, however, a refutation of the claim that State power is a dangerous thing. Both State and corporate power are dangerous. Which brings us to….

Premise II: The State vs. Capitalism Is a False Dichotomy

The State in fact helped to create capitalism, in the U.K. by passing Inclosure Acts that destroyed communal property, using State force to drive rural peoples off their land and into the new industrial slums the capitalist class was building. In the New World, States used imperialism and genocide (conducted by armies in their employ) to drive indigenous peoples from their lands and create “new” spaces for capitalist class society to expand into.

More importantly for opposing capitalism in the here-and-now, it is a false dichotomy to assert that government and capitalism are the only possible options. Capitalism has only been around for 350–400 years; the State for 5,000. Even 5,000 years is a distinct minority of the time of human existence, and living beings in general have been organizing themselves into ecosystems (on decentralized, hierarchy-free bases, with no leaders or ruling classes) for literally billions of years.

In fact, these leaderless structures have proven themselves to be vastly more long-lasting and stable than human-created hierarchical ones, which all tend to self-destruct due to ecological collapse within a few centuries or millennia.

There are better ways, ways that are neither capitalist nor state. Just pick health care: why should capitalists or government be the only answers? They don’t have to be!

Premise III: Lack of Liberty, Not Lack of Equality, Is the Real Problem

In fact, economic inequality is best understood as a special case of a deficiency in individual liberty. Those born into poverty (through no choice of their own!) have less choice and opportunity in their lives than those born into affluence. Poverty violates the individual liberty of those born into it.

Capitalism is oppressive, not because under capitalism some workers’ state doesn’t own the means of production, but because the average capitalist firm is approximately as open a society as the average fascist state. In fact, the capitalist firm served as Mussolini’s model for his fascist state, which he called the corporate state. Don’t ensure that the state owns the means of production. Instead, ensure that the workers who work in them do.

Will recognizing the dangers of the state and promoting greater liberty as a core goal be a magic bullet that prevents a self-proclaimed “socialist” government from going rotten? Probably not: there are no such magic bullets. But it offers a hell of a better chance than the more typical recipe of attempting to promote economic equality via greater state power.