like i know the aftermath of 9/11 did strange and terrible things to mainstream american culture but it had been TEN YEARS!

if you go to the neal stephenson haters club you will find Me

buying etsy witch curses to manifest this

I can't believe there's a person out there named HR McMaster

and ik everyone hates foreigners but I can't help but think that if any public figures were out there like "I genuinely value Somalian lives as much as American ones, why don't you?" we might get some movement. we can't roll over and accept racism as a foregone conclusion

so much of it comes down to "why do we care about Americans more than foreigners? why are we so afraid of any possible harm to Americans, even when those fears are irrational, but we shrug at the harm that America causes foreigners?" it just does not make sense as an ideology. it is obviously wrong

so ig what I'm saying is, if you grab a random orthodox economist in a suit and have them go on the news and explain in a very normie-friendly way why vastly reduced immigration restrictions are a good thing, and you just keep hammering these points, you could prob change public opinion

customs (controlling the flow of goods across the border) is its own thing, idc, you can come up with customs policy if you want but I think it's fair to separate the issues

and all the things that we could still be afraid of re immigration (how will we supply enough housing etc? what about public services for poor immigrants?) are things that we should be doing anyway, for poor citizens. again the economic benefits outweigh this

you could argue that people who risked their lives to immigrate to the US are perhaps More American than native-born citizens because they made a conscious decision to come here

and if we're concerned about demographic collapse, opening the borders will let a lot of young people in! plus "was this person born within the magic lines" is obviously completely arbitrary and should not change how we treat anyone, as a matter of principle

"open borders" is a radical-looking position, but it's really easy to back up even from a normie-lib perspective. undocumented immigrants are consistently less likely to commit crimes than citizens, and mainstream economists agree that open borders would lead to economic growth

the US is really sparse and most immigrants are coming here from denser areas! i think, left to their own devices, with free movement between nations, people wouldn't choose to overcrowd themselves -- we'd probably see people emigrate from particularly overpacked cities for QoL reasons

his face, it is too large