Which program, though? There is no program. We will all sprout wings and take off in flight before there is any such program or anything remotely resembling it.
Won’t Happen
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
Which program, though? There is no program. We will all sprout wings and take off in flight before there is any such program or anything remotely resembling it.
Clarissa's Blog 
OT: Interesting essay on the Right’s problem with art.
shorter version: the right is too cheap and shortsighted to properly invest in art and is more interested in correct ideology than craftsmanship or artistic merit.
the author doesn’t mention this, but I remember when it was the Left that did that (and is still doing it by evaluating art from the past in terms of conformity to current dogma).
https://americanmind.org/salvo/a-matter-of-taste/
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What arts are we talking about?
Got the distinct impression, last time I was wandering around a gallery, that art had simply bifurcated: craftsmanship went to the right, and visual showmanship went to the left. You can’t have art without both.
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“and visual showmanship went to the left”
Not even visual showmanship in my recent experience. The last few times I’ve been to exhibits, each piece was accompanied by a lengthy blurb, usually running to one or two paragraphs, exhaustively explaining how “this work interrogates how heteronormative white supremacy underlies…& etc.”
You could have gotten rid of the art entirely and just kept the blurbs and the experience would have been exactly the same.
(commenter formerly known as AcademicLurker)
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It’s exactly what I’m saying. The Left is drowning in words. Everything is not what it is but an explanation or a name you attach to it. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In the worldview where a desiring self is God, it makes sense to try to refashion an imperfect world with words.
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Meanwhile, my deeply conservative tribe is full of people I think of as artists and craftsmen. But you will never see their work in a gallery. They’re not interested in talking about it, or acclaim, or money, or any of that. My cousin does trim. Most people don’t think of that as an art, but he gets paid extra to travel all up and down the state just to do trim in nice houses. He’s *the* guy, if you want it done right the first time, perfect and beautiful. And it’s not like anybody walks into a house (or even a gallery!) and goes: “THE TRIM!! IT’S MAGNIFICENT!” Still, the man is a master of his craft. Another relative makes furniture. Not a lot. But it’s so beautiful and well-made. Elegant. Secret compartments and stuff. Built so well it will probably still be around when my great-grandchildren grow up. You’ll never see it in a gallery. He’s not interested in that. I mean, if he did a show, he might have to (gasp! horror!) get out and talk to people. It’ll never happen.
There’s an essential split there, between people who *do* art, people who *are* craftsmen… and people who talk about art and craft. And for whatever reason, it seems to be a right/left split.
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Even they know they’re doing so badly in the polls on this issue so they’ll float some fake shit like this to help them in the elections. Just like last week’s EXECUTIVE ORDER meant to protect the border, which in reality did nothing. And of course the regime media will dutifully report it verbatim without even a cursory examination.
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Voters are known to want two (or more) contradictory things at the same time. How would truly making this happen affect currently relatively low prices of various products in US?
Would casting out illegal immigrants make the Rust Belt start manufacturing again? Make American middle class richer? Both seem unlikely.
In Israel, foreign workers work in f.e. agriculture and construction.
Were everybody illegal deported, what would have truly happened in America, in your opinion?
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It’s a fantasy that conservatives have, without the corresponding think-through of the consequences. But their CEO-funders know, instinctively, that it’s a bad idea, which is why they never quite follow through. They just use it during elections to get the rubes on their side.
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The manufacturing disappeared not because of immigration but because jobs were off-shored elsewhere. In terms of jobs, illegal immigration didn’t touch the middle class. It squeezed working-class African Americans out of employment. So no, the end of mass illegal migration wouldn’t restore manufacturing or enrich the middle class in a direct way. It would do wonders for the recovery from the opioid and now meth epidemics. It would dramatically relieve the burden on the welfare system, including public schools. It would drop the number of vehicular deaths. It would stabilize Mexico and Central America. And it would take us back to being an actual nation-state which needs borders to be able to exist. Nobody is going to get deported at this point but closing the border to all “crossings and encounters” would be extraordinarily good. Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen, so we are wasting our time.
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Why did it specifically squeeze working-class African Americans out of employment and not just any working-class people?
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“Why did it specifically squeeze working-class African Americans out of employment”
The non-agricultural jobs that Mexicans took had been primarily done by African Americans (housekeeping, cooking, gardening etc).
Mexicans were cheaper.
grossly simplified version:
I’m not enitrely sure if it was malice or ignorance but I think maybe that with the civil rights movement gaining steam politicians were looking for another group to do the work they had been doing once African Americans began moving into the civil service (traditional rubicon of the American middle class).
That’s probably part of the justification of the 1964 immigration bill… Mexican immigration didn’t start to really be felt until the second half of the 1970s.
While Blacks made a lot of progress in the 1970s (for about 10 years the ‘black’ economy grew faster than the ‘white’ economy) then the crack cocaine epidemic stopped that in its tracks.
Since the late 1980s early 1990s Black leaders have adopted the position that African Americans’ problems are all due to other people and they have to reject ‘white’ values like punctuality, politness, meritocracy etc….
Results are about as dismal as anyone could predict.
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But isn’t there a bigger problem with the border that isn’t getting attention?
From all I’ve read, the southern border actually goes through a lot of private lands, which obviously can’t be gated. Then there is the Rio Grande which isn’t a straight line. So it really CAN’T be fenced. But every legislation the Dems have proposed to police it with electronic monitoring has been defeated, including e-verify which many gop-afiliated business people don’t like.
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Police it with electronic monitoring for the purpose of doing what? If you can’t turn people who are crossing illegally around, then what’s the purpose?
Right now, people are being let in by the thousand per day and released into the country to await court decision in here. That is the problem. The only real solution is neither fencing nor “electronic monitoring.” It’s to stop reviewing immigration cases of people in the country illegally. Nobody is proposing this solution either on the Left or the Right. This is not a partisan issue and it won’t be solved by repeating silly talking points about private lands crossed by the border or electronic whatevers.
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Well, of course not. E-verify will never be implemented because business requires workers they can underpay and abuse.
Trump walked a fine line by throwing red meat to his base with speeches and performative cruelty (the child separation policy), which perhaps discouraged illegal immigration to some extent, but not stopping it because that would deny his rich buddies the slaves they need.
I want to say that performatively progressive companies would do the same thing were they in businesses that relied on such labor. They abuse workers in their own ways.
For example, Amazon and Starbucks will wrap themselves in rainbow flags but will close stores where workers unionize (Starbucks) and fire those who try to organize (Amazon).
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Yes, Trump betrayed us on immigration. Biden has been even more horrid on it. Which is why I opened with “won’t happen.” There’s no political will to solve it either on the Left or the Right.
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Hmmm, be careful with imagining that most construction workers are or were Black. Working class Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Metis/Indians, and all intermixed of whatever descent are currently being economically undermined by deliberate illegal immigration. This cannot end well.
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