So, this is a topic that has come up for me a few times recently. The first time was when I saw Vivek Ramaswamy interview Ann Coulter. That was wild. I won't link it because of how outright racist it is, but yeah, TLDR, Ann Coulter is a literal white nationalist who wouldn't vote for Vivek because he's Indian-American, and argued that we need a 6th+ generation WASP president to "truly soak up what America is." And I just thought that was a wild take, because it's like WTF. it's one thing to be conservative in the sense of "yeah, I like this as they are, i want things to stay the same", or even to have a bit of this weird American civil religion thing going, but to be like "I need my president to be a 7th generation white guy" is...again, that's insane.
I mean, with me, I don't care what race you are. My favorite politician is a second generation Taiwanese immigrant. My second is a second generation Jew whose parents escaped the holocaust. Yes, we're talking Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders here. I really don't see any correlation between how long your family is here and how good they are as politicians, or even how conservative they are. I'm...idk how many generations here. At minimum 4th generation, probably longer. My grandparents were born here. My great grandparents, they probably were too. I suspect based on having some native american blood (that 2% virtually every american has these days) and some PA dutch influences that parts of my family have been here for literal centuries. The more recent ones were probably Irish coming over during the potato famine. So that's like 170 years ago. My family knows what it is to be American. I mean, I had a great grandfather who worked on the Panama Canal, a grandfather who was in WWII in Iwo Jima, my dad was in Vietnam on riverboats. I think I know what "being American" is, yet here I am being progressive AF while Vivek agrees with Ann Coulter on virtually everything and she would still hesitate to vote for him. To me, that's just racist.
Heck, I'd even vote for certain first generation immigrants. if Cenk Uygur was successful in being able to run, I'd vote for him. He's a naturalized citizen from Turkey. I'd definitely vote for him over Coulter or Ramaswamy. It's about ideas and ideology. And on the republican side, well, let's just say I'd be able to tolerate Arnold Schwarzenegger over virtually every republican candidate running now. He's a naturalized citizen from Austria. I mean, why do people care so much about where you're from and race so much?
I mean, to me, culture doesn't matter a ton, because let's face it, as this hyper rational autistic secular free thinker, I don't value keeping things the way they are. Any appreciation I have for American culture in particular comes from what it actually contributes logically to the discussion. I believe we do a lot right, and a lot of our norms come from a good place of trial and error and correcting past mistakes from past regimes like 1700s England. But at the same time, not everything is great. Just ask me what I think about our work ethic and hyper individualism on economic issues. But that's the thing. I'm capable of entertaining an idea and then either accepting or rejecting it on the merits, i don't like the idea of keeping things the same just because.
As for assimilation, since this is another topic that's been coming up in some recent discussions, I don't understand why these right wing nationalists are so obsessed with people conforming to their culture. I mean, i get it, they're authoritarians, they like to tell people what to do and think conformity to their idea of society is the ideal, but I've seen people defending AFD's immigration plan, which had straight up nazi crap in it like deporting citizens not deemed to be "german" enough. "Well ackshully they offered them monetary incentives to leave the country and renounce their citizenship". That only makes it marginally better. Like, wtf? Yes it's a bit less coercive, but it's still the same thing. Also what qualifies as not properly naturalized? Being the wrong skin color? Looking up the german requirements, most of my own concerns would be met by ANY german citizen, as the most important things for me would be speaking English (in the US, it would be german in germany), and not being a radical extremist. I mean, what more do you need? Follow the law, speak the language, don't be an illiberal extremist who threatens the state you're trying to join, live there for a certain reasonable period of time. Pretty simple, don't you think? I mean, that's basically MY minimum requirements. I'm not picky.
But, these rightoid types, they're really big on not just being for that stuff you need something else. You need certain ancestry (so they're essentially racist), you should be sufficiently "into" the local culture (which often means being into it to this weird, creepy, religious degree), and maybe, just maybe, you should be like a 6th generation person who has lived there or something.
Idk, to me, that's psychotic.
Then again, I realize many of these guys are bordering on nazism, if they're not outright nazis. They are essentially, quite literally, white nationalists by definition. They're white, they're nationalists, they seem to think being white is part of their nationalism, so if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and goes quack quack it's probably a duck.
Of course one of them fired back at me that I probably think the pledge of allegiance is creepy and jingoistic too.
Well...akshully, yes, it is. Remember the outrage we got when Colin Kapernick kneeled during the national anthem? Yeah, they got so triggered black football man wouldn't show the proper reverence toward their national symbols, even though he learned to do that from a vet who complained of him doing nothing.
And as far as the pledge, yes, teaching it to kids in school every morning is, in retrospect, very creepy and jingoistic.
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