I live in California and have been to Brazil many times and I think it's hard to deny that California is deep into its process of Brazilification, there will be no going back, and by the middle of this century it will fulfill its destiny and become a newer, richer, much more powerful Brazil.
The similarities are striking: a paler-skinned elite class with massive wealth hogging all land and assets, living in distant estates behind tall gates (we don't have armed guards here yet, but will soon); a vast darker-skinned peasantry who will never afford land of their own and who live either on low-wage dead-end jobs or govt handouts; an impervious corrupt political class who somehow make millions while being employed as "public servants"; and while Brazil still has priests to tend to the needs of the poor, our priests are called Professors of Social Justice, but the process is the same, applying metaphysical balm to psychic wounds on behalf of their oligarchic employers.
The same is true throughout the West. Our ownership class decided it could no longer afford the bottom half of its citizenry—too many demands, too many expectations, always wanting their cut of the national loot, too much power to vote them out of office—so it's decided to immiserate and silence them and import their (much more docile and easier bought off) replacement.
Twenty-first century California is somehow both our first postnational state and a feudal aristocracy at the same time.
ive never been to texas but ive been to miami many times.
is a very fun, very Latino place (is probably the one place in America I've been where you're better off speaking Spanish over English), and the ladies are muy caliente—is just pretty expensive.
I AM from Brasil and living here for the last 34 years, and offer up a more sophisticated analysis. And that is that the both Brasil and the USA have been on a parallel course for all the time that really matters, and that time is modern times. In modern times everybody goes to college, and everybody becomes a philosopher, and everybody learns English, even Americanos, and everybody gets an MBA, and everybody makes it big in investment banking, and everybody retires early, and everybody then finds themselves traveling the world and making videos with sunsets and soundtracks, and everybody has beautiful lovers, and everybody has a fit body, and everybody believes in climate change, and everybody hates racism, and everybody has an identity, and everybody is different, and everybody is the same, and everybody has freedom, but nobody must take full responsibility for their very survival, and so-on and so-forth, and etc. and etc.. And in the meantime, the lights always come on when you throw the switch, and the toilet always flushes when you take a crap, and the stores are always, always open, and the internet travels at lightning speed.
"the lights always come on when you throw the switch"
This reminds me of a piece on first-world vs third-world expectations: "Over there, they throw the switch and fully expect, nay, fully KNOW that the light will come on. Over here, on the other hand, we throw the switch and enter a realm of endless possibilities. What's about to happen? God only knows. Our flat may burn down. Or flood. Or burn down, then flood. The mailman may run off with our wife. The President may be deposed. Hell, for all we know, there's even a vanishing chance that the stupid light will come on."
Based on the comments thus far it seems that you’ve poked a sore spot. To do that, of course, you have to hit some bullseyes, and you have. I, too, am a Cali native and can attest to it, though there are some confounding circumstances and realities that you may have missed from down under. For one, California, having only reached full industrialization with the advent of WWII, is an imperfect example of American malaise. And the flight of the white middle class, which is widely noted, is hardly a flood of refugees in the face of an advancing horde. It has been entirely facilitated by the irrepressible growth of real estate values. If your worn-out ‘60s tract home can be rebranded as a mid-century modern diamond in the rough, why not sell for 50-100x the original purchase price and move to…AZ, TX, or wherever? That solves all your nagging retirement income probs in one fell swoop! And, in fact, much of what has propelled that development over the last 15 years is money from Asia. Though the percentage of the population that is Hispanic is high, arrivals from China, Korea, Vietnam, etc. have been substantial in recent years and rivaled immigration from Latin America in sheer numbers. Vancouver BC has apparently experienced much the same influx since the late 90s from Hong Kong in particular. In fact, Cali has been a diverse society from early on, and the get-rich-or-die-trying mentality can trace its roots directly to the gold rush era - a period when the more established were also overwhelmed by incomers. An aspect of Hispanic immigration that is not well noted in its nuances is the odd phenomenon of politically right-leaning small business owners declaring their distaste for unfettered immigration while welcoming with open arms the effect of it on the lower end of the wage scale. I’ve seen that first hand, and it’s a major impediment to any pity I might otherwise feel for said proprietors. Also, Cali has attracted enormous investment of government dollars, particularly since WWII, even as it has repaid much of it with tax revenue and entrepreneurialism. It’s a messy, complicated picture made only more so by a full weighing of its modern history. Perhaps no one individual symbolizes it as fully as Earl Warren, the governor who pushed Japanese internment being one and the same as the Chief Justice who brought forth the Brown decision. Is the state on its way to Brazilification? Time will tell. But there are always elements in the complex picture that may prove critical even as they are overlooked.
Very useful comment, ta. Yes, I am not claiming that Hispanic migrants are driving folk away. That would be silly when folk are moving to Texas which is equally as Hispanic. It is the political economy that is doing that is driving the out migration. That the political economy looks so Latin American is, however, striking.
It’s a good point. While Cali has a strange political history that defies facile characterization, it seems to be in the grip of an oligarchy at the highest level that is supported by the current dominance of the Democratic Party. The pitfalls of a one-party state are beginning to be felt, as even liberal independent journalists have noted the high level of corruption that has blossomed in recent years. An X-factor that deserves more attention is the ineptitude of the state GOP. They seem overmatched and content with their current status, bereft of fire, good ideas, political savvy or any ability to communicate with the diverse population. But the Dems have probably already sewn the seeds of their own demise. To wit: the looming green electrification mandate was announced almost exactly two years ago with cosmically perfect comic timing: a few days later - less than a week - the populace was advised not to charge their Teslas lest it cost us the juice for our air conditioners during a typically nasty late-summer heat wave. That this clearly signaled deficiency of our electrical generating capacity was noted, and some minor progress has been made. But it seems unlikely that future green-sourcing will be able to meet the extra, unanticipated demand that AI proliferation will exert. We were never told much about how it was all going to happen anyway, and it’s the kind of awkward faux pas that a skillful and aggressive opposition pol could take great advantage of. Maybe our rep for innovation will bring about a viable 3rd party? One can hope…As far as figuring out what cultural force is ultimately most responsible for the current situation that has us approaching Brazilification I dunno. A good source for bigger-picture historical contextualization is “American Nations” by Colin Woodard. But as for the current situation and the somewhat ominous tendencies that you’ve noted, you might want to hedge your bets and put some of your money on Catholicism. The center of gravity in the state has moved south and LoCali has always been more Catholic than NorCal. The electorate’s Hispanic preponderance squares with it as do the current/recent upper reaches of political power: Nancy Pelosi and the former governor, Jerry Brown.
Religious effects on culture is a big subject. California now does perhaps resemble Boston under Irish Catholic dominance. (And I like Colin Woodard’s “American Nations.)
For as long as I can remember, trying to get into "los Estados Unidos" has been both an aspiration and an escape plan among my compatriots. Many have taken the jump during my lifetime, very often not ones I would have chosen as our proverbial ambassadors — which is of course not how these things work. There is no PC way to put this: "not our best" has, in my experience, often been a pretty accurate descriptor. Countless cases of "Damn, that guy? And the Yanks let him in? Damn."
I used to joke that the kind of characters we were sending over would end up molding the US into us. I used to joke about lots of things. I lacked the foresight to know that "Tragedy+Time" was a reversible equation.
The absurdity is compounded by the fact that, being a child of immigrants myself, I've never understood making untold sacrifices to escape a place you ostensibly can't stand anymore, only to immediately recreate its every wart, pustule and hemorrhoid wherever you land. What is your escape all about, then?
"Wow, this situation sucks. Let's leave and bring it with us everywhere."
My criticism of your model starts with the difference between Texas and California. Clearly there are other factors at play than the number of immigrants and their culture. You speculate that the culture on the ground might play a role too. I'll bring up another possibilty: competition. If the Latin American model of grace and favor corruption is worse than Anglo American rule of law, then we should expect rule of law to outcompete it, right? Otherwise what does "better" mean? So is competition more intense in Texas than in California?
Such is, of course, supposed to be the advantage of federalism. It is conspicuous how much contemporary progressivism seems to be trying to take away that advantage as much as it can.
The contemporary Californian model seems to partly rest on not even thinking about cultural effects, certainly not in a negative way. That can also be part of the competition.
Many Hispanic migrants are not learning English. Why should they? Everything is written/said in Spanish for them. We are becoming a bilingual country like Canada
This is multiculturalism at work. The more Hispanics that immigrate, the greater the pressure to provide Spanish language everything and the less pressure there is to learn English.
The problem, besides increased costs of dual-language everything, is that some jobs basically require Spanish because the workforce (mostly illegal) only speak Spanish. Construction, food service, even retail.
It’s easy to build a strawman for the causes of governmental dysfunction, but if you really want to understand how it works, you might want to look elsewhere. This essay takes a superficial similarity (Trump as Latin-American?) and conflates it with causality It also disregards the very profitable, influential and irresponsible transformation of culture into into an industrial commodity. P.T. Barnum, Cecil B. DeMille, Harvey Weinberg—no Latin American fingerprints on. it until quite late in the game. Cultural industry was reckoned at 25% of GDP back when NAFTA was first negotiated, and the American negotiators refused to yield a nanometre on allowing any restriction on it. Wonder why?
I am struck by how California has changed. How can one not be so struck? It has changed from over a century as the State Americans moved to to the State they increasingly flee from.
Not that many Europeans moved to Latin America during the colonial. If anything, places like Mexico overperform their fundamentals. "implication of Putterman-Weil: Latin-Am incomes higher b/c of Iberian colonialism, not lower, contra normal institutional view" https://x.com/pseudoerasmus/status/576901976950177792
Better way to judge places like Mexico is to compare them to South Afirca/Zimbawee/Dutch Ruled Indonesia/Algeria. USA/Canada are not good reference point of comparison. But you can see Mexico (and South Africa overpeforms) in @garretjones/putterman https://x.com/GarettJones/status/1816936334495191296
Mexico has institutional stability and proximity to the US going for it. But Mexican political patterns are still less functional than US ones. Mexico also got an earlier start in Europeanisation.
Anglo-America over performs its fundamentals too surely? The point is not that Iberian colonialism had no positive impact, it is that Anglo colonialism does markedly better.
There is a good argument to be made that the impact of Hispanic migration on the US depends on whether local elites lean into the relevant patterns or against them.
Discussing the cultural, political and social effects of immigration are incredibly important and frequently overlooked by the immigrants are our economic saviors and the I hate lazy Americans crowd. I don't want the US to become Latin-Americanized. What makes the US fantastic are its WASP cultural, politics, social norms and values. I know this is a very un-PC comment but it's the truth. The most dynamic, prosperous and stable countries are English dominated countries (UK, US, Canada and Australia). They also happen to be the ones where people are immigrating to en masse, illegally and legally.
I prefer scenarios to prediction. The US runs a maritime-order hegemony. I am therefore sceptical of applying imperial cycles to it, since so much of that hegemony is based on allied nation “opt ins”.
That being said, he intensity of the polarisation within the US is cause for concern. Peter Turchin has famously predicted intense political polarisation and conflict which could extend to civil war. I have discussed this possibility.
Let me clarify my borders position. I’m not kidding.
Open borders would be treated as treason and result in executions for the traitors.
The Border:
This would no longer be the border patrol but select and at war, weapons free military units or contractors.
There would be multiple barriers, exploding drones, mines, snipers, dogs, and displayed corpses.
Gangs would be treated as a military target that is fighting perfidiously and no mercy.
I’m not kidding.
But forgive me but while there are enormous problems in America, all these policies and the self serving dysfunction of our ruling class have been present since the 1960s, which is decades before open borders, and at least 20 years before the current rush of immigration from Mexico, which started in the 1980s.
All these policies were present in many Democratic run cities for a century (Chicago forever , Boston under Greary ). Indeed you yourself have written there’s echoes of pre-Civil war policies towards working class whites now, I did by the way read the book you recommended.
(Masterless Men).
It’s not the migrants who are bringing these policies, although many of them embrace them for gain and they certainly act as electoral fraud inflation, but that’s not even a conscious act never mind vote on their part.
When the migrants get a drivers license (which is wrong if illegal) so they can work, automatic voter registration/AVR generates voter registration and so a ballot.
… in practice all the ballots needed.
The ballots are then filled out and stored in warehouses, or the votes are tallied on USB network cards, which are helpfully inserted into Dominion or other electronic devices and voila.
The other issue is crime and gangs, again these policies that enable same precede nearly all migrants, even my god the Irish.
You might want to have Michael Barone’s take that the Hispanics are becoming the Italian Americans of the past. This matches my experience.
We have open borders for other reasons, we’re absorbing Mexico at low cost. The suffering is borne by little people. So yes the Latin Americanization is in a way, underway…
I don’t think that Latin American immigrants are even close to the only factor. It does strike me that elite responses to Latin American migration makes a difference. Hence California and Texas being so different.
I live in California and have been to Brazil many times and I think it's hard to deny that California is deep into its process of Brazilification, there will be no going back, and by the middle of this century it will fulfill its destiny and become a newer, richer, much more powerful Brazil.
The similarities are striking: a paler-skinned elite class with massive wealth hogging all land and assets, living in distant estates behind tall gates (we don't have armed guards here yet, but will soon); a vast darker-skinned peasantry who will never afford land of their own and who live either on low-wage dead-end jobs or govt handouts; an impervious corrupt political class who somehow make millions while being employed as "public servants"; and while Brazil still has priests to tend to the needs of the poor, our priests are called Professors of Social Justice, but the process is the same, applying metaphysical balm to psychic wounds on behalf of their oligarchic employers.
The same is true throughout the West. Our ownership class decided it could no longer afford the bottom half of its citizenry—too many demands, too many expectations, always wanting their cut of the national loot, too much power to vote them out of office—so it's decided to immiserate and silence them and import their (much more docile and easier bought off) replacement.
Twenty-first century California is somehow both our first postnational state and a feudal aristocracy at the same time.
I wonder how one could take advantage of this in a red state like Texas or Florida.
take advantage how?
To make a better life. There's a lot of great stuff about Latin culture.
ahh ok.
ive never been to texas but ive been to miami many times.
is a very fun, very Latino place (is probably the one place in America I've been where you're better off speaking Spanish over English), and the ladies are muy caliente—is just pretty expensive.
But worth checking out, if you havent already.
I lived near Ft Laud for a few years. Out near Ft Myers now.
Still very Latin area. Hence my interest.
Such as?
Start with music.
hahahaha. Who cares about music? No one's moving to Paraguay for their music.
I AM from Brasil and living here for the last 34 years, and offer up a more sophisticated analysis. And that is that the both Brasil and the USA have been on a parallel course for all the time that really matters, and that time is modern times. In modern times everybody goes to college, and everybody becomes a philosopher, and everybody learns English, even Americanos, and everybody gets an MBA, and everybody makes it big in investment banking, and everybody retires early, and everybody then finds themselves traveling the world and making videos with sunsets and soundtracks, and everybody has beautiful lovers, and everybody has a fit body, and everybody believes in climate change, and everybody hates racism, and everybody has an identity, and everybody is different, and everybody is the same, and everybody has freedom, but nobody must take full responsibility for their very survival, and so-on and so-forth, and etc. and etc.. And in the meantime, the lights always come on when you throw the switch, and the toilet always flushes when you take a crap, and the stores are always, always open, and the internet travels at lightning speed.
"the lights always come on when you throw the switch"
This reminds me of a piece on first-world vs third-world expectations: "Over there, they throw the switch and fully expect, nay, fully KNOW that the light will come on. Over here, on the other hand, we throw the switch and enter a realm of endless possibilities. What's about to happen? God only knows. Our flat may burn down. Or flood. Or burn down, then flood. The mailman may run off with our wife. The President may be deposed. Hell, for all we know, there's even a vanishing chance that the stupid light will come on."
In Brasil we take our chances - because the chances of the mailman running off with the wife - are as likely as him actually delivering the mail.
“Got your mail.”
“Yay, finally!”
“It’s divorce papers. She’s sick of you mate.”
“Eh, well, she’s got a point.”
Based on the comments thus far it seems that you’ve poked a sore spot. To do that, of course, you have to hit some bullseyes, and you have. I, too, am a Cali native and can attest to it, though there are some confounding circumstances and realities that you may have missed from down under. For one, California, having only reached full industrialization with the advent of WWII, is an imperfect example of American malaise. And the flight of the white middle class, which is widely noted, is hardly a flood of refugees in the face of an advancing horde. It has been entirely facilitated by the irrepressible growth of real estate values. If your worn-out ‘60s tract home can be rebranded as a mid-century modern diamond in the rough, why not sell for 50-100x the original purchase price and move to…AZ, TX, or wherever? That solves all your nagging retirement income probs in one fell swoop! And, in fact, much of what has propelled that development over the last 15 years is money from Asia. Though the percentage of the population that is Hispanic is high, arrivals from China, Korea, Vietnam, etc. have been substantial in recent years and rivaled immigration from Latin America in sheer numbers. Vancouver BC has apparently experienced much the same influx since the late 90s from Hong Kong in particular. In fact, Cali has been a diverse society from early on, and the get-rich-or-die-trying mentality can trace its roots directly to the gold rush era - a period when the more established were also overwhelmed by incomers. An aspect of Hispanic immigration that is not well noted in its nuances is the odd phenomenon of politically right-leaning small business owners declaring their distaste for unfettered immigration while welcoming with open arms the effect of it on the lower end of the wage scale. I’ve seen that first hand, and it’s a major impediment to any pity I might otherwise feel for said proprietors. Also, Cali has attracted enormous investment of government dollars, particularly since WWII, even as it has repaid much of it with tax revenue and entrepreneurialism. It’s a messy, complicated picture made only more so by a full weighing of its modern history. Perhaps no one individual symbolizes it as fully as Earl Warren, the governor who pushed Japanese internment being one and the same as the Chief Justice who brought forth the Brown decision. Is the state on its way to Brazilification? Time will tell. But there are always elements in the complex picture that may prove critical even as they are overlooked.
Very useful comment, ta. Yes, I am not claiming that Hispanic migrants are driving folk away. That would be silly when folk are moving to Texas which is equally as Hispanic. It is the political economy that is doing that is driving the out migration. That the political economy looks so Latin American is, however, striking.
It’s a good point. While Cali has a strange political history that defies facile characterization, it seems to be in the grip of an oligarchy at the highest level that is supported by the current dominance of the Democratic Party. The pitfalls of a one-party state are beginning to be felt, as even liberal independent journalists have noted the high level of corruption that has blossomed in recent years. An X-factor that deserves more attention is the ineptitude of the state GOP. They seem overmatched and content with their current status, bereft of fire, good ideas, political savvy or any ability to communicate with the diverse population. But the Dems have probably already sewn the seeds of their own demise. To wit: the looming green electrification mandate was announced almost exactly two years ago with cosmically perfect comic timing: a few days later - less than a week - the populace was advised not to charge their Teslas lest it cost us the juice for our air conditioners during a typically nasty late-summer heat wave. That this clearly signaled deficiency of our electrical generating capacity was noted, and some minor progress has been made. But it seems unlikely that future green-sourcing will be able to meet the extra, unanticipated demand that AI proliferation will exert. We were never told much about how it was all going to happen anyway, and it’s the kind of awkward faux pas that a skillful and aggressive opposition pol could take great advantage of. Maybe our rep for innovation will bring about a viable 3rd party? One can hope…As far as figuring out what cultural force is ultimately most responsible for the current situation that has us approaching Brazilification I dunno. A good source for bigger-picture historical contextualization is “American Nations” by Colin Woodard. But as for the current situation and the somewhat ominous tendencies that you’ve noted, you might want to hedge your bets and put some of your money on Catholicism. The center of gravity in the state has moved south and LoCali has always been more Catholic than NorCal. The electorate’s Hispanic preponderance squares with it as do the current/recent upper reaches of political power: Nancy Pelosi and the former governor, Jerry Brown.
Religious effects on culture is a big subject. California now does perhaps resemble Boston under Irish Catholic dominance. (And I like Colin Woodard’s “American Nations.)
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/curley_effect.pdf
For as long as I can remember, trying to get into "los Estados Unidos" has been both an aspiration and an escape plan among my compatriots. Many have taken the jump during my lifetime, very often not ones I would have chosen as our proverbial ambassadors — which is of course not how these things work. There is no PC way to put this: "not our best" has, in my experience, often been a pretty accurate descriptor. Countless cases of "Damn, that guy? And the Yanks let him in? Damn."
I used to joke that the kind of characters we were sending over would end up molding the US into us. I used to joke about lots of things. I lacked the foresight to know that "Tragedy+Time" was a reversible equation.
The absurdity is compounded by the fact that, being a child of immigrants myself, I've never understood making untold sacrifices to escape a place you ostensibly can't stand anymore, only to immediately recreate its every wart, pustule and hemorrhoid wherever you land. What is your escape all about, then?
"Wow, this situation sucks. Let's leave and bring it with us everywhere."
Man, you got some people upset with this essay.🤣. I think it is a fair observation.
Nightmare
My criticism of your model starts with the difference between Texas and California. Clearly there are other factors at play than the number of immigrants and their culture. You speculate that the culture on the ground might play a role too. I'll bring up another possibilty: competition. If the Latin American model of grace and favor corruption is worse than Anglo American rule of law, then we should expect rule of law to outcompete it, right? Otherwise what does "better" mean? So is competition more intense in Texas than in California?
Such is, of course, supposed to be the advantage of federalism. It is conspicuous how much contemporary progressivism seems to be trying to take away that advantage as much as it can.
The contemporary Californian model seems to partly rest on not even thinking about cultural effects, certainly not in a negative way. That can also be part of the competition.
Many Hispanic migrants are not learning English. Why should they? Everything is written/said in Spanish for them. We are becoming a bilingual country like Canada
This is multiculturalism at work. The more Hispanics that immigrate, the greater the pressure to provide Spanish language everything and the less pressure there is to learn English.
The problem, besides increased costs of dual-language everything, is that some jobs basically require Spanish because the workforce (mostly illegal) only speak Spanish. Construction, food service, even retail.
It’s easy to build a strawman for the causes of governmental dysfunction, but if you really want to understand how it works, you might want to look elsewhere. This essay takes a superficial similarity (Trump as Latin-American?) and conflates it with causality It also disregards the very profitable, influential and irresponsible transformation of culture into into an industrial commodity. P.T. Barnum, Cecil B. DeMille, Harvey Weinberg—no Latin American fingerprints on. it until quite late in the game. Cultural industry was reckoned at 25% of GDP back when NAFTA was first negotiated, and the American negotiators refused to yield a nanometre on allowing any restriction on it. Wonder why?
I am struck by how California has changed. How can one not be so struck? It has changed from over a century as the State Americans moved to to the State they increasingly flee from.
Not that many Europeans moved to Latin America during the colonial. If anything, places like Mexico overperform their fundamentals. "implication of Putterman-Weil: Latin-Am incomes higher b/c of Iberian colonialism, not lower, contra normal institutional view" https://x.com/pseudoerasmus/status/576901976950177792
"Sometimes, sometimes not. Mexico has a substantial amount of Spanish ancestry, even though the number of Spanish immigrants wasn't very large." https://x.com/gcochran99/status/1658201701688672256"
My Anglo paternal ancestors, arriving in Australia in the 1790s, bred a lot. The original couple have maybe 3000 living descendants.
Better way to judge places like Mexico is to compare them to South Afirca/Zimbawee/Dutch Ruled Indonesia/Algeria. USA/Canada are not good reference point of comparison. But you can see Mexico (and South Africa overpeforms) in @garretjones/putterman https://x.com/GarettJones/status/1816936334495191296
Mexico has institutional stability and proximity to the US going for it. But Mexican political patterns are still less functional than US ones. Mexico also got an earlier start in Europeanisation.
Anglo-America over performs its fundamentals too surely? The point is not that Iberian colonialism had no positive impact, it is that Anglo colonialism does markedly better.
There is a good argument to be made that the impact of Hispanic migration on the US depends on whether local elites lean into the relevant patterns or against them.
Somebody from Australia should come up with a theory of employment based on fake credentials;
https://www.fox13now.com/news/fox-13-investigates/fox-13-investigates-high-paid-university-of-utah-executive-lied-on-resume-published-fake-articles
If the CV is fake, then so is the job.
Excellent as a college essay, but pretty useless as a policy brief on immigration.
Discussing the cultural, political and social effects of immigration are incredibly important and frequently overlooked by the immigrants are our economic saviors and the I hate lazy Americans crowd. I don't want the US to become Latin-Americanized. What makes the US fantastic are its WASP cultural, politics, social norms and values. I know this is a very un-PC comment but it's the truth. The most dynamic, prosperous and stable countries are English dominated countries (UK, US, Canada and Australia). They also happen to be the ones where people are immigrating to en masse, illegally and legally.
I have written quite a lot on migration policy. This was not trying to be a policy brief.
For commentary on policy see: https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/giving-thanks-for-arthur-calwell
Lorenzo,
Will the American empire end like Spain’s did? And by that I mean a slow, painful decline with a catastrophic civil war.
I prefer scenarios to prediction. The US runs a maritime-order hegemony. I am therefore sceptical of applying imperial cycles to it, since so much of that hegemony is based on allied nation “opt ins”.
That being said, he intensity of the polarisation within the US is cause for concern. Peter Turchin has famously predicted intense political polarisation and conflict which could extend to civil war. I have discussed this possibility.
https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/an-american-civil-war
Lorenzo; coincidence.
It isn’t them.
It’s elite whites.
Let me clarify my borders position. I’m not kidding.
Open borders would be treated as treason and result in executions for the traitors.
The Border:
This would no longer be the border patrol but select and at war, weapons free military units or contractors.
There would be multiple barriers, exploding drones, mines, snipers, dogs, and displayed corpses.
Gangs would be treated as a military target that is fighting perfidiously and no mercy.
I’m not kidding.
But forgive me but while there are enormous problems in America, all these policies and the self serving dysfunction of our ruling class have been present since the 1960s, which is decades before open borders, and at least 20 years before the current rush of immigration from Mexico, which started in the 1980s.
All these policies were present in many Democratic run cities for a century (Chicago forever , Boston under Greary ). Indeed you yourself have written there’s echoes of pre-Civil war policies towards working class whites now, I did by the way read the book you recommended.
(Masterless Men).
It’s not the migrants who are bringing these policies, although many of them embrace them for gain and they certainly act as electoral fraud inflation, but that’s not even a conscious act never mind vote on their part.
When the migrants get a drivers license (which is wrong if illegal) so they can work, automatic voter registration/AVR generates voter registration and so a ballot.
… in practice all the ballots needed.
The ballots are then filled out and stored in warehouses, or the votes are tallied on USB network cards, which are helpfully inserted into Dominion or other electronic devices and voila.
The other issue is crime and gangs, again these policies that enable same precede nearly all migrants, even my god the Irish.
You might want to have Michael Barone’s take that the Hispanics are becoming the Italian Americans of the past. This matches my experience.
We have open borders for other reasons, we’re absorbing Mexico at low cost. The suffering is borne by little people. So yes the Latin Americanization is in a way, underway…
I don’t think that Latin American immigrants are even close to the only factor. It does strike me that elite responses to Latin American migration makes a difference. Hence California and Texas being so different.
By took, you mean conquered from the Spanish.