Reuben Rodriguez
@ReubenR80027912
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Joined February 2019
Well, I was wrong. I want to describe 3 key reasons essential for Ds/media to understand. 1. This was not a rejection of Harris but an *affirmation* of Trump. 22 confused me/us; THAT year inflation/Covid/crime should have delivered red waves. But w/o Trump, Rs can’t close dels
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Someone smarter than me can prob lay out a way to harness this indelible quality of ppl. Ppl don’t like my suggestion of light xenophobic jingoism as a way to build national solidarity & channel eternal passions away from domestic stakeholders so what’s option 2? 😆.
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Was just reading QTs on Derek’s article about BlackRock (obviously) not being the reason housing is expensive & it’s all banal/the same. Midwits NEED a monocausal, omnipotent & shadowy explanation for things not going well. This is kinda inescapable & evergreen (1/2).
Our country is occupied and controlled by the Israelis. This is our fight. They’re using our money and our bombs to slaughter innocent people and steal land. And then our media tells us the Muslim world “hates us for our freedom” and people believe that slop as they lose public.
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This has nothing to do w/ ppl already here. Ironically many of THEM understand rather intimately how dangerous high skill immigration is. You are allowed to pull up the ladder in service to 330M ppl. To not do so itself just crazy!.
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You are 100% allowed to not want *more* competition in your own career/life. It’s mighty convenient that ppl whose job is to “communicate complex ideas in English” are not terribly worried about non-native English speakers as potential competition. We should all be so lucky!.
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Everyone pro-high skill immigration deserves to be replaced by an H1-B and DoorDash till they’re 70. How would Noah like Hinge to show his potential matches 30% more former D1 athletes? Would that “net good” be good for him?. Life IS zero sum & ppl saying it’s not are insulated.
Remember, MAGA sees high-skilled immigration as the enemy, because they're worried about Indian/Chinese presence in the U.S. elite. The stuff about anti-Asian discrimination at universities is a smoke screen.
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Things will just get somewhat worse in small ways with occasional flashes of bad but ppl just complain, shrug and adjust their expectations. Buyers remorse or regret followed by correction really is NOT a thing ppl do in their life or politics. Rationalization is rule of day.
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Accelerationists are so dumb. Mamdani will be bad there is no scenario where NYC 2026 looks like NYC 1976. Has SF responded to ppl shoplifting & publicly defeating daily by electing Judge Dredd?. If you’re expecting horror on the Hudson, that’s just a weird fantasy.
Bill Maher: "You spent your whole life talking about how government tries to do too much, which it does, and spends too much. And here you have Trump. and then the other side, you have the guy running in New York, Mamdani, who's a straight-up communist.". George Will: "I want
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The only requirement I have for a president he/she lusts for an opportunity to nuke.
I expect my president to never nuke back and to never ever ever admit that.
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There aren’t many historical examples of this b/c most societies full of smart ppl organize in optimized ways. But just adding smart ppl into a society if disorder will not save that society.
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Important to understand that race/IQ science is wrong b/c raw talent is meaningless absent a strong rules based society where it can flourish. A society with a median IQ of 105 that is orderly will vault over one w/ a median IQ of 120 that is not.
The bulk of the world's intellectual talent lies within this green oval. If America cuts ourselves off from that talent, we are part of the global periphery.
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This isn’t really new either! The “spirit” of Tecumsha, the “wisdom” of Sitting Bull were fully part of a bipolar 1950 view of the American Indian. They were brutal Injuns in Gunsmoke etc but ALSO wise elder nobles. Only by the 90s were the savage enemy’s fully removed.
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The noble savage myth making of the American Indian is a great microcosm for Anglo-US culture. Every other culture ever built monuments to their conquests over barbarians. But we built up an idea of a peaceful nature “other” who had a quasi-magical connection to the land.
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Low key, a surprising of econ activity is downstream of legacy pro-worker policies for ppl over 60. Pensions are the big ones (there are companies that went defunct in the 80s STILL paying ppl born in the 40s). But there’s just a million little examples like this that add up.
Did you guys know that Delta has stewardesses in their 60s that clear 200k a year flying 10 times a month thanks to a sweet union deal negotiated decades ago.
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lol. Everyone is gonna wring their hands when we have to nuke the caliphate of London in 2060 but like…no one can say the signs weren’t extremely clear and blaring for many decades.
UK: Islamists in Britain, who travel freely between Iran, Gaza, and London, are running military-style boot camps for scores of young Muslim migrant men across the country.
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Thus actually is the Vance bull case (on the personality dimension):. Him embracing the memes and South Park type attacks w/ humor does bode well for offsetting his negative parts.
@ReubenR80027912 He has a self-deprecating quality about himself (particularly his post after the most recent South Park episode) that DeSantis decidedly lacks. I think he also has a great talent in adjusting his conversational style to whomever he is speaking to in a way that isn't fake.
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I do think it’s so interesting for Trump’s heir apparent to be mirthless. Again, if played right having young women despise you can be a net positive for Vance but he does walk this fine line of “telling hard truths about globalists” vs “being annoying and/or scary”. We’ll see!.
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Vance has a quality (somewhat similar to DeSantis) that I struggle to describe. It’s some combination of negative charm + a strong desire to be “right” on technicalities (like a debate club). Whatever it is it’s antithetical to white women <45. That isn’t a fatal flaw but (1/2).
Vance is the figure that many people said would necessarily emerge from the browning of America and the concomitant end of the white majority -- the first national political figure to go through the gauntlet of elite socialization, marry a fellow legal elite of Indian ancestry,.
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No one is “honest” in politics b/c everything is justified in service to main goal of “demonize X”.
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Ppl misunderstand political narrative. You start with “X group is bad” THEN you wedge in every conceivable proof point. In this case, a decision was made that “Tech & AI are bad”. THEN they’re attacked on environmental front, social front, Econ front etc.
The myth about data centers and water is incredibly sticky for some reason. You can present hard numbers and it just doesn't penetrate. I've tried gently explaining it to people IRL and they look at you like you're a reality-denying kook. They believe the water thing *so hard*.
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The cross Atlantic relationship prob reached its zenith (like so many things) in the 90s with cultural crossovers (Spice Girls, Hugh Grant, Oasis) and the Blair-Clinton affinity. But like so much else, the breakdown of post liberal order will tear down this recent thing too.
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