For the last few years, with the open border and people trampling in willy nilly, I had a running theme when I linked those news: Those poor saps are walking in on a family quarrel. When the excrement hits the rotating object it’s going to get seriously ugly.
I now think I was wrong on that. Oh, not on its getting ugly. I still worry about that and they — and the people they think are their defenders — aren’t making these people being caught in the middle less likely.
But I’m less — not completely “not worried” but less — worried about the excrement hitting the rotating object and precipitating us into a civil war.
Look, I’m going to be blunt: I don’t know how many votes the left is creating ex nihilo. I’ve known for a good long while that we were nothing like the half of the country that shows up in voting — this is obvious from how hard they work all the fraud mechanisms — sometime in the last three years I came to suspect their high watermark, including all the indoctrinated young and their insane shock troops and everyone else was about 25%. Of those the hard shock troops which are the criminally inclined and the insane who can’t be talked out of their leftist insanity are maybe half of that.
Look, in a nation of 300 mil (I never bought the 50 aggregated on out of nothing the last 20 years even as birthrates trolled the depths) it’s still a lot of people.
But it’s not enough for a civil war.
The fact that we took away some of their financing sources (not even all of them) and the shock troops became reduced to the usual half a dozen boomers with assistive oxygen and walkers bleating on the corner just reinforced my belief. I’m now convinced the young lady who told me ten years ago that most of antifa was there because it was a paycheck was saying nothing but the truth.
So the illegal masses coming in aren’t getting into the middle of a family quarrel. But they are still in danger. In fact they might be in more danger than not.
Look, there are certain things we’d been assured were lies that we now know we’re not.
And one of them was that it was a lie that people were coming here to steal American jobs.
We were told that immigrants came here to do jobs Americans wouldn’t do.
Turns out they were wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, but wide open wrong.
Numbers don’t lie, and even with the anemic deportation we’ve had, salaries have gone up.
But it’s beyond that. The Telegraph last night had an article about “Generation jobless.” This is something I’ve been sounding the alarm on for a while, and all I get is “it’s all the fault of kids these days.”
Note that the Telegraph is in Britain, but the article could have been written about this country too. I’m not the only one who has observed a tendency for young people (And dear Lord I’ve been screaming at it for 10 years. They’re mostly now over thirty) to either be stuck in a never-ending educational loop or give up and hide in the basement doing nothing. Sometimes literally.
Now the problem used to be mostly young men, because well, the overculture was rigged to create at least “false success” for women, (make work jobs. Pretty looking jobs. “Our Laney is a representative of the under-represented, at anti-racism inc.” and don’t tell anyone she makes nothing) because of all the feminism rawr noises. And also because women are as a rule more social and less likely to hit the “I’m just gonna give up and hide.” But lately I understand young women are hitting the same, with a side line of being highly medicated and on endless therapy sessions.
Thing is when there is a “generation jobless” I don’t care how bad kids these days are (and whose fault is it, if you didn’t check they were at a minimum taught to read and write? Because even I managed that) there is more at work here. A lot more.
The lot more became obvious under Biden when for a year or so almost anyone who got a job was not born in the country. (And I bet it’s the same in England.)
Why? Oh, several trends. One of them was DEI, sure, but another was that people who are here and not citizens are easier to make into indentured servants and/or/pay less. There is also credentialism. If what you require to hire someone is a certificate, other countries are far more okay with faking certificates than Americans ever were. We’re autistic about stuff like that. They’re not.
But ultimately? It’s cheaper. And they’re easier to bully. It looked good for the bottom line; it looked good for diversity.
And so, companies have in fact giving away American jobs away to immigrants. And no, the trades are not a refuge from this, because lately they’ve been importing people for the trades too. (Those are mostly illegal.)
Yes, this means you’re going to see a lot enshittification, because most of the illegals (and not) are faking credentials, learning on the job, and have lower standards for “doing it well” because those are cultural. (Look, I come from a culture where doing it sort of okay is the apex to be aspired to, provided it’s done quickly. Yes, I was saved by being on the spectrum. I have a tendency to waste a lot of time on perfectionism. but there’s a middle ground, and most of the imports won’t even try.)
BUT they are cheaper. And so they are the ones being hired, and salaries are driven down, and then the only ones wanting to do it are those who are also benefiting from programs to help illegals and “refugees” and who can afford to do less in the visible market because they’re receiving subsidies and also working under the table.
The idiots liberals think this means they’re keeping America functioning, but that’s not remotely what’s happening.
What’s happening is simultaneously a driving down of quality and a pushing down of price, until at some point the quality can’t be driven down more by offshoring, but the price falls, and then we outsource to slave labor in China and other totalitarian regimes.
Look, this can’t go on. We can’t continue subsidizing driving our own children out of the job market. And yes, the problem starts with minimum wage, because that’s what sets up the inability to hire people legally. But it doesn’t end there. There are a million factors driving this.
And it’s all pushed by DEI, inability to test people for jobs and having to rely on credentials, and of course open borders.
Trump is doing exactly what he should be doing, in stopping DEI and making it possible to test people for jobs. Because that’s the death or credentials. Oh, and of course, closing the borders.
The young might not be well educated — most are not — and might have learned helplessness. But they’re still of our stock. If their parents succeeded, they’ll find their way once we stop hitting them on the head.
But in the meantime, the people demonstrating on the streets with foreign flags, and the usual idiot obligatory boomers talking about “compassion” are making the possible outcome exponentially worse.
We have figured out the people coming here are in fact taking ours or our kids’ jobs*. From here on out, it’s going to follow a crazy train of resentment against “the intruders.” It’s starting with Indians, because they’re a visible minority. It’s not going to stop there.
The best thing to do? Stop H1B visas. Stop nepotistic/racial hiring. Stop flapping lips about the inherent superiority of your race/subrace. Stop flying foreign flags. Stop insisting we cater to YOUR language, which is not English. Shut up and do your best to Fit in. Or Fuck Off.
Because at the end of this, this bullshit slide affects me. More importantly, it affects my kids.
And yes, note I put an asterisk up there. *Arguably I did steal an American job, but not one recognized as such in the eighties. And in my defense, if he’d not married me, my husband would be unlikely to marry and stay married. We’re one of those couples. So I stole the Wife to the Mathematician and Mother to his very Odd Offspring from some American-born woman, who’d probably run screaming from that job.
I didn’t steal the job as a writer from anyone.** Look, it’s not a location specific job. Arguably, I’d do much better if I were living in Portugal. And I’ve told people to stop worrying about AI and start worrying about people in Eastern European countries who speak English well enough to produce write for hire popcorn books for American companies who will pay them for the piece work, then pay someone who is not ESL to fix it. This is happening right now. Because $500 per novel and a novel per month is a princely living in many places in the world. I’m not that cheap, but what I make per year even just from writing would put me on a par with my brother and SIL who live very well indeed for Portugal.
So, why not do it? For the same reason I throw things at people (American and Portuguese) who ask me why I don’t retire in Portugal. It’s sort of like asking you why you don’t wear a suit that squeezes you and makes you itch all day.
I choose to live here, because I’m American. This is where I feel at home. Where my friends live, and the people I want to be friends with. The people that get me. This is where my children, who have never been anything but American live.
Which is why I’m hoping the crazy doesn’t get out of control enough that the broken identification mechanism casts me out.
Because I have nowhere to go. No other place is home.
[** Writing is a field screwed up by cheap labor, yes, but the cheap labor at least until recently was not foreign. Writing was screwed up by the demand that women have a profession as well as anything else. This drove an influx of stay-at-home-wives (most not moms) into the field. They were willing to work for less, because mostly they worked for the prestige. Most of them were exquisitely educated and well off, anyway. This drove the advances down to the point they are lower than they were in the 40s. It also, as it always does, affected quality as the books started reflecting ONLY the concerns of an extremely narrow population band, and one what wasn’t concerned with making a living.
Economics is a right bitch. You can’t solve it by screaming about race or whatever. It’s all about supply and demand. A supply of cheaper labor in excess of demand drives price down. That’s it. That it also drives quality down has more to do with the nature of an artistic field and the impressions it feeds on.]
According To Hoyt 