I want as many Hispanic immigrants around as possible, I live for Hispanic culture, my Spanish is phenomenal. However, I don’t condemn people who are freaked out by the scope of Hispanic immigration to this country. When I traveled to Spanish-speaking countries the first 5 times, the experience was very traumatic. I wanted to be there, I spoke the language beautifully, and I’m from a very sexist country where daily disrespect towards women is the norm. And still it was very harsh. So I understand the folks who balk at having this culture arrive at their doorstep when they don’t know the language and haven’t chosen to have this experience.
One can screech “racism” until one is blue in the face but cultural incompatibility is real and overcoming it is hard. I should know. I left my own country because I felt completely culturally incompatible with everybody else. No useful goal will be achieved by trying to trick Leavers in the UK out of this very real discomfort by telling them they are actually bothered by the cruelty done to Greece and that they are racist anyway so who cares.
Have to go again, sorry.
Clarissa's Blog 
Haven’t seen this idea anywhere else yet. According to Malik:
In Scotland, the hostility to the political establishment has been expressed as hostility to London (to ‘Tory England’) and to the Labour Party. This led many to give the SNP a crushing victory in last year’s general election and to vote to remain in the EU in this week’s referendum. In Northern Ireland, many traditional nationalist voters expressed their political dissatisfaction by voting against London, and for Brussels.
…
In different regions of the UK, in other words, the revolt against the political establishment expressed itself in both pro- or anti-EU forms. Or, to put it another way, different people in different regions give different expression to the desire to ‘Take back control’.
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/the-revolt-of-the-fragments/
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Yes, as I keep saying, people are trying to respond to 21-century challenges with 20-century solutions. They think that tinkering with nation-states – dismantling them and putting them back, creating new ones out of the old ones, etc. will help. But it’s all a waste of time. Whenever anybody says the words “independence” and “sovereignty”, I die of boredom because it’s like discussing the latest model of rotary phones. It’s all dead.
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One can screech cultural incompatibility until one is blue in the face but economic insecurity is real.
Labor productivity has grown tremendously over the last few decades, but real wages have declined, and literally all the productivity gains have gone to the rich. This is exactly the climate where people tend to support xenophobic populists. As you can see with Trump here.
Maybe it’s time to admit that unfettered capitalism, austerity, and neoliberal economic policies aren’t an unalloyed good. Hey, even the IMF admitted as such a few weeks ago.
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Cultural differences and resulting anxieties existed long before capitalism. Money can help one escape from these anxieties if we are talking about the kind of wealth that can buy you a private jet and a castle on an island.
It is curious that xenophobic populists are not gaining any traction in Ukraine, where the economy collapsed for real as a result of the war. It is gaining traction, on the other hand, in enormously wealthy societies.
Truth is, if only anything were ever about money.
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You criticize Rauner a lot. And for good reason. But don’t you realize that the ideology behind Rauner’s actions is literally the same ideology that supports austerity, dismantling the state apparatus, privatizing it, ‘race to the bottom’ capital flight that is constantly searching for more wretched labor and environmental conditions to save a few pennies (in the name of free trade), etc. on a global scale?
Maybe, just maybe, people are reacting to that.
Or, maybe, 40% of americans just developed this visceral hatred of hispanics all of a sudden. In a vacuum. Just like that.
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The discomfort I felt in Mexico, Spain and back in Ukraine had nothing whatsoever to do with Rauner or “austerity.” Even now, put me in a group of Russian-speakers and I will feel like a fish out of water. Make me live in a building filled with them, and I will be moving no matter what the cost. Not because they are “bad” but because they are different. What does Rauner have to do with it?
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“What does Rauner have to do with it?”
Let me quote a recent commenter over at marginal revolution
“The problem is the inevitable collision between two worldviews.
One is the post-national world where nationality and borders are relics, where free movement of people and trade creates wealth and prosperity.
The other is the extraordinarily entrenched two century old view of the State as father/mother/babysitter with the associated high costs.
The clearest manifestation of the two views melding was international communism. It was an utter failure leaving behind broken and dismantled societies and cultures, and enormous amounts of blood. It provided neither the prosperity and caring parent, nor the free movement of people and trade.
The one world paradigm is hitting a wall of reality just as the international communism did. For all it’s vaunted advantage in wealth creation the most obvious result is crippling debt burdens. The reality of the EU and the open free movement is a series of failed states along the southern border which will never recover. Never. They will become part of the growing and spreading mass of failed states further south.
This isn’t a hiccup. This is what it looks like. There are probably 10% of the population of western developed countries who thrive in such a system. Another 20-30% who thrive as parasites, mostly in government. What has characterized almost every economic intervention since 2008 has been the maintaining of the ability of government to continue paying itself.
As long as the borrowing can continue, another 20-25% do reasonably well on the nanny state disbursements.
But that is ending, that is what has created these failed states.”
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/why-brexit-happened-the-lens-of-japan.html#comments
Rauner isn’t stalling a budget because he’s a jerk (though I take your word for it that he is).
Rauner is trying to kill public education (from the top down). Total fluidity means the uberization of education and elimination of research not funded by private economic interests.
The model of education and research that you work in is a relic of the nation state and is doomed. The more fluidity is embraced the more quickly the doom is coming.
The current model of fluidity is the state disvesting itself of the obligation to educate the citizens of the world who find themselves within its borders.
The fact that Rauner is creating a bloated and corrupt fiefdom around himself is irrelevant. He’s where the future is.
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“The reality of the EU and the open free movement is a series of failed states along the southern border which will never recover. Never. They will become part of the growing and spreading mass of failed states further south.”
“There are probably 10% of the population of western developed countries who thrive in such a system. Another 20-30% who thrive as parasites, mostly in government. ”
“Total fluidity means the uberization of education and elimination of research not funded by private economic interests.”
“The fact that Rauner is creating a bloated and corrupt fiefdom around himself is irrelevant.”
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“Spain, which even at the height of the crisis was tranquil and booming in high cuisine and high end stores”
That’s true of Greece as well.
“Actually, the younger generations are so massively into fluidity that it is stunning.”
Younger people (in the west) have always been into temporary things. Traditionally that starts wearing thin at around age 30. We’ll see if that’s the case with the current crop.
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“Younger people (in the west) have always been into temporary things. Traditionally that starts wearing thin at around age 30. We’ll see if that’s the case with the current crop.”
I agree. Being all for a gig economy is well and good until the first of the month when the rent is due. Will your landlord wait for two more months for the check that you’re supposed to get from your freelance gig? Will your bank be OK when you don’t make your car payment on time? Will they agree to not perma-fuck your credit history?
Why is it that all the burdens on this new ‘fluid’ economy are borne by the people, and not the investor class?
Nope, it’s absolute stability for them and ‘fluidity’ for us. Liquid capital is the same as it ever was, looking for innovative ways to exploit people’s labor.
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Capitalism, by definition, is a system of economic relation that tends towards constant growth of capital. It has a myriad of drawbacks but it also brought us unparalleled prosperity that we are enjoying at this very moment. There will be some discomfort associated with a passage towards fluidity but ultimately everybody will be fine. I don’t want to create needless drama with these posts and be like one of those “the demons of suburban hell are haunting me” freaks.
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\Truth is, if only anything were ever about money.
Just read Uri’s column about the first world trend of losing trust in the establishment and in political parties. He claims it’s true also for Israel and that the result world-wide is the rise of the right:
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1464371059
If you can’t read the entire thing, here is a long quote:
A class by themselves are young leftists, who refuse to support any party. Instead, they turn towards non-party activism, regularly founding new groups for civil rights and peace. They support the Palestinians in the occupied territories, fight for the “purity of our arms” in the army, and do wonderful work for similar causes.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of such associations, many of them supported by foreign funds, which do wonderful work. But they abhor the political arena, would not join any party, much less unite for this purpose.
I believe that this phenomenon comes close to the explanation of the trend. More and more people, especially young ones, turn their back on “politics” – by which they mean party politics – altogether. They do not “lack all convictions”, but believe that the political parties lack all honest convictions and they want nothing to do with them.
They don’t see that political parties are a necessary instrument for achieving change in a democracy. They see them as groups of corrupt hypocrites, lacking real convictions, and don’t want to be seen in such company.
THUS WE come to an astonishing fact: developments in Israel resemble processes in many other countries, which have nothing to do with our specific problems.
…
THIS SEEMS to have become a world-wide pattern. All over South America, not so long ago a bulwark of the left, leftist parties are thrown out, and rightist figures take over.
Considering that this is happening at the same time in dozens of countries, large and small, which have absolutely nothing else in common – different problems, different issues, different situations – this is nothing short of amazing.
For me, this is a riddle. Every few decades, new ideas come up and infect a large part of humanity. Democracy, liberalism, anarchism, social-democracy, communism, fascism, democracy again, and now this kind of chaos, mostly radical right-wing, are world-wide trends. They don’t yet have a name.
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“Just read Uri’s column about the first world trend of losing trust in the establishment and in political parties. ”
Or as I pointed out the other day, representative democracy is failing. Because it belongs to the nation-state era.
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\Or as I pointed out the other day, representative democracy is failing. Because it belongs to the nation-state era.
But you haven’t said who will rule us instead and with which results.
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Liquid capital will. With the result that those who can’t replicate its movement at least intellectually and are stuck in old categories are screwed.
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I am unsure Uri is right about it being a trend in Israel.
According to wiki, in 2015 elections turnout was 72.36%.
Haredi sector votes religiously (figuratively speaking) and right wing youth also seems to vote.
It’s those few too-progressive-for-their-good Leftist youngsters who stayed home. Unlike in other places, our right wing votes well and the few Leftists shoot themselves in the foot by not voting.
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If “I want as many Hispanic immigrants around as possible, I live for Hispanic culture” is true then why don’t you move to a hispanic country? There are plenty of them already. They don’t need to displace American culture.
You said “I left my own country because I felt completely culturally incompatible with everybody else.” Then why would you move to another culture you dislike?
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“Then why would you move to another culture you dislike?”
I’m not in a good mood today, so let’s not provoke me by writing idiotic things, OK? When exactly did I say that I disliked the United States? Can you adduce quotes to support this moronic statement that you decided to inflict on me for no reason whatsoever? Do I need to have my time wasted by this sort of whiny, pathetic idiocy?
Jeez. One more dumbass moan and you are banned forever.
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Have you heard that
“At least 36 people were killed and 147 were wounded in a double bomb blast at the international terminal of Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport; Turkish PM blames attack on three suspected ISIS militants.”
?
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No, I had no idea. This is horrible. These animals are everywhere.
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