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it is bleakly, bitterly amusing to me how many people will not accept common sense and decency unless you word it in a very specific way that gets around whatever bumper stickers they’ve been programmed with
(frankly this includes me; I Am Not Immune To Smug Garfield + etc.)
I'm a shattered person
Sorry, this is silly, but I got no one to ask and it seems like you're no stranger to this sort of thing. This probably sounds if not dumb, very basic, given how much of a longstanding, endlessly discussed and analyzed issue this has been for fucking centuries now, but anyway: Is there actually a reason to be bothered by illegal immigrants? I mean, on the face of it, it just seems like such a victimless crime to me? Sure, some immigrants are criminals in other, actually serious ways, but I've seen no evidence that persecuting them over their status as illegals over those crimes specifically, is actually helpful. Like, internet piracy is a crime and most immigrants probably have more valid reason to do it han msot poeple who use Kissanime. I honestly straight don't even see how it's morally justifiable to report someone for being an illegal.
There isn't any good reason, and it is a victimless crime.
The reason that nations crack down on immigration so hard is that it is to the benefit of the state that people remain legible. It's important to the folks with power that they be able to know who they've got power over and what they can do with that power.
Sometimes that's for morally justifiable reasons- "how many people do we need to provide universal healthcare?" "how many teachers do we need for this school?" Most of the time it's for less savory reasons. "How much can we expect to collect in taxes?" "How many soldiers can we field in a crisis?" "Which people are most likely to try to take away our power, and how can we stop them?"
Open borders make people just a little bit less legible. If you can Hit Da Bricks if you're paying too much taxes, or if your country's being invaded, or if you don't like your country's rulers? Suddenly, the people in power can't keep track of what you can give them, because you could just leave any time.
most anti-immigrant fearmongering is either xenophobes xenophobing or powerful people pushing propaganda that's designed to keep you legible. morality has very little to do with it; it's for the convenience of the people in charge.
Something that probably belongs here right now: why on earth aren’t conservatives protesting the feds’ obvious overreach re: the anti-racism protestors nearly as much as they’re protesting the (much, much more reasonable) restrictions around COVID.*
Before I start: I need you to imagine, for a second, how you’d feel if a group of neo-Nazis moved into your local metro area. If they slapped horrible racist propaganda wall-to-wall, made the national news multiple times, looted and broke windows.... How you’d feel if they actively took over a chunk of the city, calling it an “autonomous zone”, and beating up anyone who tried to stop them.
how would you feel if law enforcement stood aside and let them do this crap? how would you feel if the ACLU came in to defend their legal right to do this? how would you feel if major conservative politicians came out in support of them, even justifying their looting, and it looked like lawmakers would cave to their demands?
I am not saying that the protestors are remotely morally equivalent to neo-Nazis. But I want you to take that fear, and hold onto it as you keep reading.
A lot of conservatives believe that anyone left of centre hates America as much as “terrorists” do. They believe ~leftists~ want to brainwash their children into hating America too, and are just minutes away from murdering anyone who disagrees with them.
...and, if I’m being honest, these beliefs are not entirely without merit. Leftists and liberals say “fuck America” all the time, and the number of times I’ve heard left-wing people say ‘nuke the South’ is unreal. if you take people who say that kind of crap at their word, they want anyone right of centre dead. and even if you don’t, even if you assume it’s all hyperbole-- like, yeah, most of us want conservatives to ~give up their way of life~, because a lot of it assumes that everyone is just like them, and not everyone is.
they see us as morally equivalent to neo-Nazis or Terrorists (TM). becuase they think, rightly or wrongly, that we want to terrorize them. we want to keep them from doing what they’ve always done, and teach their children to hate them. we want to murder them.
and the only thing stopping us from doing so, a lot of these people think, is law enforcement. most conservatives know people who work in law enforcement and/or the military. they know that those people are Like Them and want them to be safe. they know that cops want to keep them safe from terrorists and are only stopped by the namby-pamby milquetoast civilian government.
(yes, I just threw up in my mouth a little writing that.)
The government is supposed to keep Real Americans (TM) safe from Terrorists (TM). the fact that they didn’t under the Obama administration- that the Obama administration was full of people who’d actively talked about how they don’t like or trust America Because Racism, that they mostly just let protestors do their thing when they happened, that they actively supported ~leftists in academia~- that was all proof that the government was Out To Get Us.
Trump positioned himself as One Of Them. As someone who’d Drain The Swamp (TM). as someone who’d stop all the bureaucrats who were getting in the way of cops ~keeping them safe from terrorists~. who’d be a big powerful leader with a big stick, etc.
in the heads of the people protesting COVID but Completely Fine with jackbooted thugs dragging away unarmed protestors, when it comes to the protestors, the government is actually doing their job for once. the government is using its force against ~terrorists~ instead of against ~real Americans~.
and the fact that the government could easily turn that force against them? not even on their radar. they think their dear leader has their best interests at heart, so of course they’ll be okay.
Nota bene: i am not going to actively research what Fox/boomer facebook/Alex Jones/etc. are currently saying about this because i think if I do I will lose my goddamn mind. This is purely based on what I learnt growing up about the ~!!Conservative Mindset!!~. Some parts of this may be inaccurate or otherwise outdated, because I left the GOP in 2012.
I have met a great many very intelligent people who imagine in their formidable mastery of a field that if they could just order the world to their whims, things would be so much better than the current system whereby regular people are allowed to make their own decisions; experience tells us it is not so.
Bret Devereaux, A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry
part of the point you are trying to make: if you sell things online you are, in fact, a small business. what everyone else seems to be getting from that post: you have to lie to your representatives
yeah I think part of the reason people are accusing me of lying is that I used the word spin?
what I meant by that was that ... well, politicians, especially ‘Pubs, are not going to do the right thing by their constituents; they’re gonna do what the people who vote for them (and, even more importantly, donate to their campaigns) tell them to do.
your local politicians do not think of you as a person. why would they? they don’t know you. they think of you as a little bundle of identities and statistics, some of which make you more likely to vote for them and some of which make you less likely to vote for them.
your opinion only matters to them if they think you’re already likely to vote for them, or if they think that screwing you over would be bad optics. and, sadly, your opinion matters more if they think you have the money and power to make their lives harder if they don’t do what you say.
when I’m calling my local government or my blue Congresscritters, I spin things as “I am a QUEER DISABLED PERSON and if you really want to support queer disabled people [read: get the votes of the QUEER and DISABLED interest groups, who tend to vote blue], you need to [do the right thing]”.
you can’t spin things that way when you’re talking to a right-of-centre politician. they know queer people (and disabled people, and people of colour, and young people, and and and...) don’t vote for them. they know what they’re doing is gonna piss you off; they don’t care. you weren’t going to vote for them anyway.
so you have to make it look like they need to give a damn about your opinion. when whatever poor underpaid staffer goes to their boss going “sir, the chart says that if you do this, your approval will tank with [groups X, Y, and Z], I think it’s a bad idea”, they hear your voice.
are you a small business owner? mention that. are you a caretaker for an old person who’d be screwed over by their policies? mention that. are you a teacher or a healthcare worker? mention that, and mention how the crap that they’re pulling would affect your students/patients. (Republicans are happy to screw over teachers/healthcare professionals, but they sure don’t want people to think that’s what they’re doing!)
state your very real concerns in a way that makes them give a damn, and you’re more likely to have an impact than if you don’t.
How do ultra-Christian conservatives justify the death penalty given "he who is without sin", "shalt no kill", and so on? I've heard lines like "liberals would rather kill babies than murderers", but that's still accepting that someone is being killed outside of war/self-defense. Is it just that US capital crimes are a subset of Old Testament capital crimes, so it's fine?
so the thing you have to keep in mind about conservative political thought is, uh... a lot of the time they do not actually abide by what the bible teaches.
you can get just about any stance out of the bible if you try hard enough. everything from “kings are the only stable form of government” vs. “all people are equal in the sight of god”, “slavery is an abomination” vs. “slavery is the moral and correct thing to do”, “vengeance is the Lord’s” vs. “it’s okay to order bears to tear children to death if they mock you for being bald...”
conservatives are all about social power and appeals to authority. the bible has been an authority in western culture for donkey’s years. they naturally take it as authoritative, but a lot of conservatives haven’t actually read the entire thing cover to cover, and a lot more have only read it with their preacher’s ... interesting interpretations in mind.
most conservatives intuitively believe that the death penalty is Right and Good, because people should get what they deserve. if someone is Gross, they deserve to be punished. if someone is sufficiently evil, they deserve to die. this is a core part of their belief system and would be such regardless of their religion-- alt-righters often share this belief, for example, and they’re mostly atheists.*
and since religious conservatives look at the bible more as a source of authority/a justification for their own social power, rather than a work of literature that deserves to be analysed on its own merits, most of them believe that the bible confirms the things they believe.
if they believe, for example, that slavery is bad, they expect the bible to say that slavery is bad, regardless of what the book of philemon would tell you. if they believe that abortion is murder, they expect the bible to say that abortion is murder, and would be shocked to learn that the bible gives you instructions on how to perform an abortion under certain circumstances.
if you tell an ultra-christian conservative that, actually, the bible is suuuuper anti-death penalty, they will look at you as if you’ve sprouted an extra head. the bible is their Authority. it exists to confirm the things they already believe. if they believe it, it’s in the bible, and vice versa.
*(IMO this belief is one of the things that’s likely to make people conservative, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m distinctly nervous about the tumblr!/fandom!left. but that’s a whole nother kettle of fish.)
hurgh.
I should have the good words for these things, but right now, I’m just sad.
