Doom or Not?

~ Clarissa

Yeah, I don’t know. This kind of thing makes middle-aged liberals feel edgy and rebellious. They watch, pout, and feel ferocious.

The scenes from LA are sad and embarrassing but there are many people who will find inspiration in the dysfunction.

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Published by Clarissa

47 thoughts on “Doom or Not?”

    1. It’s weird to see people wave Mexican flags in protest over being sent back to Mexico. But then, when did the Left ever try to be remotely coherent?

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        1. It’s disturbing that I can’t connect on any level with what people who support this mayhem think. I’m surrounded by these people, yet I don’t understand them at all.

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          1. Do you think they’re even Mexicans though? Or just another sad group of unemployed American college dropouts getting paid $200/day out of a Soros slush fund? If so, the flags are Mexican because that’s what the truck dropped off for them, along with the brick pallets. In all the pics I’ve seen, those flags look like they were just taken out of the package: bright, new, no fading yet.

            The from-Mexico people I’ve met wouldn’t be caught dead at such an event, as they’re 100% legal and they despise the border-hoppers.

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            2. It’s usually the children of immigrants. I keep trying to explain that, due to the specifics of Hispanics immigrants, the children find it extraordinarily hard to find their place and define their identity. These are the children, irrespective of where they were born. The grandchildren are doing even worse. We have imported a gigantic problem that will start manifesting in the next two generations. And it happened because nobody cared to study different immigrant communities and how differently they engage in identity-building.

              I simply don’t know any other immigrant group where children and especially grandchildren would be so adrift and so massively pissed off.

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              1. Could you please explain more about this? My husband is a Hispanic immigrant so I want to understand this phenomenon. Neither of us are connected to our respective immigrant communities though as we don’t see much value in it.

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              2. Some immigrant groups are great at passing down culture and wealth. Italians are a great example. Others are good at passing down one of the two. Germans, for example, don’t pass down the culture but are fantastic at passing down wealth. Hispanics don’t do either. In mixed marriages, the children will have the culture of the non-Hispanic parent. My niece and nephew have a Hispanic last name but they are not Hispanic in any way, although the father is living with them and always there.

                Obviously, I love the Hispanic culture enormously more than I do Italian, of which I know almost nothing. But it’s a fact that Italians are still very Italian three generations after emigrating. And Hispanics are not Hispanic or anything much else a lot sooner.

                The terrible gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18 were created by immigrant Salvadoran boys who had no idea who they were and tried to imitate the black gangster identity of the Bloods and the Crips.

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              3. Whole branch of my family are first-gen Italian and Greek. They’ve done very well with all that– no problem integrating the “Of course we’re Italian!” with the fact that they are completely, 100% Americans. The Asian families I know do this differently, but also well.

                Puerto Ricans don’t seem to have any trouble holding onto their culture though– is it because they’re Americans by default?

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              4. Thank you for the explanation. Besides the name, there is nothing Mexican about my child, they can’t speak Spanish either which leads to some interesting situations due to the name. My child is definitely much more connected to my home country and speaks the language. I thought it was a particular quirk of my husband but it’s somehow comforting to know it’s cultural.

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              5. Eh.

                I keep looking at the pictures and seeing flags that still have the fold lines in them.

                That means they just came out of the plastic wrap.

                I don’t think anybody is waving flags to show their origins or affiliations here. I think they are, as usual, getting paid $200/day to be there, but NGOs funded by tax dollars and sketchy China-backed billionaire types (Neville Singham, apparently), and those flags were what was in the Uhaul when they unloaded it and outfitted all the fine unemployed people who showed up in response to the ad.

                I don’t think it’s fair to our populations of legal Mexican and Cuban immigrants to associate them, their offspring, or in fact any group other than “losers who answer ads for temporary work as protesters” with those flags.

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              6. I know people who go to these things. They are completely sincere and passionate about their beliefs. We make a big mistake discounting their sincerity and dedication to their cause as something they do for money.

                Many of the people raging in those streets have more money than you and I could dream of having.

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              7. Clarissa, I do believe these people are sincere. Are the people carrying the Mexican flag Mexican immigrants though? My impression is that of people waving a random flag that was provided to them. This entire flag waving is silly on many levels. If you love Mexico so much, just go there, it is actually not that difficult to get there from LA, it will take only about 2 hours to drive to Tijuana (one can even walk if motivated enough).

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          2. —I’m surrounded by these people, yet I don’t understand them at all.

            I do not know people that surround you, but I can offer some center-left explanation:

            I do not know any people for whom “unlimited immigration” is literally written on their banner, so to speak. Most would also not be bothered by persecuting violent criminals if due process were followed. But most are simply not bothered by immigration per se. They believe that vast majority of illegal immigrants do not commit any crimes (beyond entering illegally) and are just quietly living their lives, working minimal-wage jobs, keeping groceries prices low, lawns mowed, babies cared for, this kind of things. On the other hand, they are much more bothered by what they see as fascist tendencies of the Trump administration and its supporters, which manifest across the board, not just in topics related to immigration. Thus, they do not see throwing rocks at [whom they see as] the moral equivalent of Gestapo as wrong. The legality of it is irrelevant in this scheme to things – throwing rocks at the members of the real Gestapo surely was a crime in the Nazi Germany, yet most would wish much more rocks were thrown at them before millions died…

            Some sort of a forced unified mentality project that is so dear to the nationalists is not particularly valuable to them… definitely not valuable enough to tank the economy in the name of such project. Maybe it is not valuable in general, maybe in some conditions it could be valuable. But definitely it is not valuable to them if the other side is trying to push it down their throats…

            I know, I know, “the left has been doing just that”… To me that argument expired the moment the number of people who lost their jobs because of Trump policies exceeded the number of people who lost their jobs to the left-wing version of the cancel culture.

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            1. I agree that there are many people who are indifferent to the life of the polity, existing in a sort of a torpor, and solely preoccupied with immediate practicalities. I have no beef with these people. I understand that they are cognitively unable to comprehend where welfare benefits come from, what keeps the streets clean, and what makes their practicalities possible. These are people unable to understand the “we” because they are barely managing the “I”. However, such people won’t go out into the streets to throw stones at the police. It’s completely outside of their immediate practicalities, their selfies, their “what’s for dinner.”

              Those who went out and wrote “Death to Amerikkka” on the walls yesterday aren’t incapable of living the life of the mind. And they are clearly not vapid or indifferent. But how do they live with this extraordinary contradiction of wanting simultaneously gay parades and destroying the only thing that makes gay parades possible? Wanting all their rights and entitlements and simultaneously taking them apart? I don’t mind the low-intelligence people. It’s the incoherence of the intelligent I can’t get over.

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              1. —These are people unable to understand the “we” because they are barely managing the “I”. However, such people won’t go out into the streets to throw stones at the police. It’s completely outside of their immediate practicalities, their selfies, their “what’s for dinner.”

                Is this supposed to be some conservative intellectual equivalent of Dem BS about the deplorable hillbillies of the flyover country?

                I think you (collective you) want a monopoly on deciding what constitutes “we”. Same stuff which upsets me about Quebec nation-building…

                Fortunately, throwing stones are not the style of the majority of any population group. There are quieter ways to sabotage policies people oppose.

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              2. I don’t pass moral judgment on people with IQs under 90. I see absolutely no difference between that and being under 5 feet tall. It’s a physiological fact, nothing else. People can’t help it. This is why I said that I have no complaint to make about them.

                I’m puzzled by people who want, understand and appreciate things like rights and welfare protections but want to get rid of the only thing that makes these rights and welfare protections possible. With them I do have a problem. They have the intelligence to understand, so there’s no excuse for this incoherence at the heart of their beliefs. It’s the fake childishness that I can’t get over. It’s the assumed ignorance of “I want a car but it’s unfair that I should learn to drive.”

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            2. —I do not know any people for whom “unlimited immigration” is literally written on their banner, so to speak. Most would also not be bothered by persecuting violent criminals if due process were followed.

              Well, from what you go on to write later, these people may not have “unlimited immigration” literally written on their banner but they certainly act as if they do.

              I do not presume to be an expert, but I thought that ICE staff enjoy police status: as such they have the right to arrest suspects, don’t they? Is this not due process? Again, I may be wrong and I stand corrected if any readers can illuminate us non-Americans as to ICE powers. Or do you think that due process requires an arrest warrant issued by a judge? Honest question.

              —But most are simply not bothered by immigration per se. They believe that vast majority of illegal immigrants do not commit any crimes (beyond entering illegally) and are just quietly living their lives, working minimal-wage jobs, keeping groceries prices low, lawns mowed, babies cared for, this kind of things.

              Although I am familiar with this argument, I still find it staggering. It seems to suggest —correct me if I’m wrong— that illegal immigration is not that bad since it provides a substantial benefit to the middle classes. Too bad if among the plethora of pious, law-abiding and hard-working illegal immigrants a rather inconvenient number of dangerous criminals manages to filter through: drug cartels operators, rapists and convicted felons among them. This also contradicts the previous insistence on due process when it comes to arresting illlegal immigrants: how is due process observed in the wilful and conscious infringement of immigration law?

              —they are much more bothered by what they see as fascist tendencies of the Trump administration and its supporters.

              Could you please give some instances of such “fascist tendencies” in the Trump administration? If by fascist you mean arbitrary actions by the government in power, a lot if not most of the actions undertaken by the Biden administration were equally arbitrary and as such “fascist”. If by fascist you are referring instead to the historical and legal term: “a political system or ideology characterized by ultranationalism, authoritarianism, and totalitarian control, typically involving a strong leader, suppression of opposition, and a cult of personality, often accompanied by militarism and a focus on national unity above individual rights“, this in no way can be applied to the Trump administration: the President has to deal with Congress for new legislation, his actions are under the scrutiny of both Congress and a powerful judicial system, there is no suppression of the opposition nor is militarism an issue currently in the US.

              The above definition of fascism is instead perfectly apt to describe such countries as China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and many others of similar tendencies. Would you care to clarify your position?

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              1. Our local ER provides basic medical services to everybody who shows up whether they have insurance or not. If we add a million illegal migrants in addition to a million legal immigrants a year, who will provide medical services to everybody? It’s not possible to train doctors and build facilities at such a pace. Aside from mowing lawns and stocking grocery shelves, these migrants lead normal human lives. They need hospitals, schools, daycares, police, firefighters, and so on and on and on. Who will be providing all of this stuff? The choice is between unlimited migration and availability of all these services.

                I know somebody who recently resigned from a job in child protecting services in a big city. The workload has become insane. Do we want child protective services or nah? Do we want any of these welfare protections? Because you can’t have that and unlimited migration.

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              2. Then there are the constitutional rights we all love, the due process. You need lawyers, prosecutors and judges to provide that. Most people do not have the intellectual capacity to become lawyers and judges. If you add millions more people just like that, this means that the caseload for law enforcement becomes insane.

                So we either forget about constitutional protections and law and order or close the border. You can’t have both. It’s one or the other. Why is this a hard concept to grasp? Surely, it isn’t and people are simply pretending for reasons I fail to comprehend. Really, it’s hard to see a link between having to wait for months for a doctor appointment and a massive increase in immigration? Really?

                Sorry, I don’t buy it.

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              3. Ok, I’ll clarify my position: seems we are using similar definitions of “fascism”.

                The rest of what you said sounds to me as a nice demonstration that fish do not see water… Especially if they have a strong motivation to not see water. Examples:

                –the President has to deal with Congress for new legislation, his actions are under the scrutiny of both Congress and a powerful judicial system,

                So far yes, but all of these powers he is currently trying to limit, with MAGA crowd cheering on.

                —there is no suppression of the opposition

                what is your definition of “suppression”? Doesn’t firing them (so far from their jobs) count?

                —nor is militarism an issue currently in the US.

                right, militarism is not an issue in a country that is spending on military more than everybody else combined, and that wants to spend even more, not less, despite stated desire to balance the budget. Not to mention certain parade planned in the near future…

                I do agree with you that the countries you mentioned are fascist or totalitarian in some other ways. And yet Russia seems to be idealized by many MAGAs. (So Clarissa here fights with this idealization by posting pictures of huge crowds of Muslim migrants, to prove that Putin is a “globalist”.) I do not think this is because MAGAs are poorly informed. I think this is a manifestation of them and Russian putinists genuinely thinking alike.

                I personally do not mind US closing the borders or reducing immigration. But as far as those already in are concerned, I am not convinced that police state hunting all of them down and enjoying it is a lesser evil than higher strain on social networks. There is an alternative way to lessen that strain – tax the rich more.

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              4. I insist that I was posting about Putin’s efforts to destroy Russian men as an ethnic group long before MAGA came into existence. I have a reason to care in the person of my husband. 😁

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              6. @v07

                 —a nice demonstration that fish do not see water

                Darling, you and I are both humans, so… I’m as much a fish as you are!

                As for the rest of your argument, I never knew that being part of the opposition constitutes a job from which one can be fired. Has President Trump fired the Democrat Party? Oh, how I wish! and no, having a federal job while being a Democrat voter does not, in itself, constitute being part of the opposition.

                I rest my case.

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              7. @Avi

                One gets the impression that once a workplace has been entirely captured by people of a single political persuasion, that they think it should be illegal to ever downsize! Because you can’t fire Republicans and Democrats in precisely equal numbers if everybody in the office is a Democrat!

                That is a pretty wild way to define “discrimination”.

                By that definition if my church encountered financial difficulties and started firing staff, we could claim they were discriminating against Christians!

                And if the Afro-barber down the street, whose employees are 100% black, were to shut down: it’d be a clear case of racial persecution.

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              8. I’ve seen a boatload of pieces about people who voted for Trump but then got fired. Was that all not true? Are these imaginary people? It’s either one or the other. Republicans were fired and now bemoan their voting decisions or only Democrats were fired. The narrative changes every 15 minutes to suit whatever counts as a bigger fascism at any given time.

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              9. —I insist that I was posting about Putin’s efforts to destroy Russian men as an ethnic group long before MAGA came into existence. I have a reason to care in the person of my husband.

                N is pretty far from Putin and his efforts to destroy everything… Does N care about Russian men in general?

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              10. Avi,

                Obviously there are two separate groups – one are those who lost jobs because of Trump’s policies but that happened regardless of their political preferences, and there are those who lost jobs because they opposed Trump’s policies.

                Totalitarian regimes, if they evolve in that direction gradually (Nazi Germany, Putin’s Russia), do not advertise intention to build totalitarian regimes. “We are evil and are going to establish a totalitarian regime, mua-ha-ha (evil laughter)?.. It is always initially sold to the population in terms of rectifying some historic injustice, defending the Fatherland from some enemies, external or internal, need for some resources / lebensraum (that are currently possessed by those unworthy of these resources), returning to former glory / greatness, feeling victimized by those who do not see our greatness, etc.

                The problem with the right-wing intellectuals is actually very similar to the problem with the left-wing intellectuals. Both engage in wishful thinking and ignore human nature. But just like one cannot build left-wing utopia without everything descending into violence and hunting the “class enemies”, one cannot normalize hunting other types of “undesirables” without things eventually getting into more and more violence.

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              11. I think we need to agree on basic terms or the discussion won’t work. Do you agree with my statement that there’s no welfare without a nation-state? Do you agree that open borders and mass migration are incompatible with welfare protections? I recently gave a lot of examples of the impact of mass migration on healthcare, the justice system, the schooling, etc. These are not hypotheticals. We can all see that it’s happening.

                Totalitarianism is not a natural result of the nation-state. There have been nation-states that were totalitarian but they are not a majority. The post-national neoliberal state is just as likely to be (or not) a dictatorship. Destroying the nation-state because of the off-chance that it might turn into a dictatorship makes no sense to me because the only alternative on offer can turn into a dictatorship, too.

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              12. The app doesn’t let me write long comments, so I have to break them up.

                Yes, the nation-state gave us Hitler. And neoliberalism gave us Pinochet and Putin. Yes, Hitler definitely sucked more. But I do not believe that the fear of a new Hitler justifies dismantling the extraordinary gains of the nation-state model which aside from Hitler gave us democratic, perfectly functioning societies. One of these gains is a large middle class. Neoliberalism does not need a middle class. I’m not willing to sacrifice that and the welfare apparatus to the fear of Hitler. If we give all this to Hitler (with no guarantee that we are actually preventing another Hitler), it means Hitler rules us.

                If there were an absolute guarantee, it would make sense to discuss it. But look at Russia and China. They are fully neoliberal. And fully authoritarian.

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              13. To conclude, I started my exploration of the nation-state as a scholar 25 years ago from the position of hostility to the nation-state. That was my default position. Since then, we have seen neoliberalism advance at a rapid clip. We see austerity in everything, the middle class is shrinking. It is no longer enough for me to evoke the fear of Hitlerism to agree that dispensing with all this is justified. I will need other arguments to consider why we should ditch the nation-state.

                I hope this clarifies my position. I’m very open to changing my mind about pretty much anything, and I’m very interested in exploring other points of view. The position you have been advancing is one that I not only explored but held and defended in my early scholarly writings. I have departed from it not because I’m unaware of it but because I have found its limitations.

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        1. Yeah, the journalist has no explanation either. I do, though. These people sincerely love their countries. They don’t really want to be here but the money is irresistible. Once we withdraw the money, everybody can go home and be happy there.

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  2. They love their country so much, they decide to wave their flag as soon as they touch US ground.

    Back in BFE, they didn’t bother to respect it, as it was a “symbol of oppression”.

    Go fucking figure!

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        1. Mexicans have been thoroughly brainwashed by their government to identify themselves with the Aztecs. It’s gotten so, even Guatemalans whose ancestors were routinely eaten by the Aztecs think they are Aztecs. Why not identify instead with the winner side, which is the Spaniards whose language they speak and whose love of socialism they share, is a mystery.

          Spaniards have their flaws but they were vastly superior to the Aztecs on every level except the culinary uses of human flesh.

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          1. Because Spaniards, albeit not the Dutch they subjugated for so long, don’t need special privileges to succeed, other than cheap wine and Tapas 🙂

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            1. True.

              Also, people need to be aware that Latin Americans will not rest until they try every permutation of socialism, no matter how destructive it is. It’s a collective obsession.

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  3. It’s funny how the bricks show up like clockwork every time there is a “grass roots protest” against the state.

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    1. This was clearly planned and organized, and somebody leaked the exact route of the ICE raids in advance. This must be investigated, although it being California makes everything harder.

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  4. Middle aged liberals will never change, and will always vote for whatever crappy Democrat is put forward. The question is how this will play with people who either voted for Donald Trump or stayed home in 2024. The number of voters who are willing to change their minds are vanishingly small, but they still decide every presidential election (contrary to popular belief, it’s not primarily about turnout.)

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  5. and there are those who lost jobs because they opposed Trump’s policies.

    It must be nice to imagine that history began on Jan 21, 2025.

    https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/197-military-officers-purged-by-obama/

    https://www.cato.org/commentary/bidens-firing-spree

    Biden’s Firing Spree

    The new White House has sought dismissals of Trump holdovers to an unusual degree — though media outrage is muted this time.

    https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/bidens-unity-purge-military-advisory-boards

    Before Biden, there was an unspoken consensus that members placed on advisory boards by an outgoing administration would be maintained by the present administration.

    By trying to purge these military boards, Biden has once again broken with the American tradition of presidents endeavoring to not politicize the military.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/06/politics/biden-removing-trump-board-appointments

    WashingtonCNN — 

    Battle lines are forming across Washington as the Biden administration grapples with how to handle dozens of Trump loyalists the former President installed after the election. Over the past two weeks, the new administration has made an effort to remove a number of Trump appointees across various government agencies and boards. While some have gone quietly, others have not, raising questions about the legal authority President Joe Biden holds in removing his predecessor’s appointees, and how successful he will be in rooting out people he doesn’t want.

    Lefties lie so much it makes you feel dirty just engaging with them.

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