I keep giggling when the media — even some on the right — refers to the lively… discussion last week about the appropriate use of H1B visas and when to import workers as “A MAGA civil war.”
Sure, there were the usual sh*theads babbling about how America is a “blood and soil” nation and all that nonsense. (The most amusing was the one arguing with me that America was created explicitly as a white nation. He failed to tell me which documents say so, and explain the divergence in what was considered “white” then, or even show me the set aside for free black people, which, yes, existed in the North.) But let’s be real and talk about the actual argument amid actual Americans. Not the (Mostly Russian. And they probably actually believe what they’re posting) paid trolls. I suggest we mostly ignore anyone screaming about the “white” race or set asides thereonto until they come up with better trolls.
This wasn’t a civil war. This was barely a family argument.
Here I should interject. Where I come from expression is loud and voluble, particularly if your mom is a bit deaf. I remember the first time Dan (the poor man is from a Connecticut patrician family!) found himself at the table with my family. I saw when his eyes got all panicky and he started looking at the steak knives, and wondering whether to dive under the table. At which point I told him we weren’t about to slit each other’s throats. We were discussing where to buy shoes the next day. It hadn’t even gotten impolite. We were all just enthusiastically shouting our opinions and disagreement.
He got used to this communication method later on to the point he didn’t much notice it. Heck, I didn’t notice it, until I was walking back from downtown one day and heard what sounded like two men having a very loud argument about three blocks away from our house. It wasn’t until I got closer I realized it was my teen sons who were discussing their favorite Spiderman timeline.
This example is more germane because at the time I thought “Gee, it sounds like they’re about to slit each other’s throats. I’m shocked no neighbor ever called the police.”
But it was the kid next door, in the quiet house where no one ever raised their voices who tried to commit suicide by dropping from a roof. And it was in that quiet house that the father and mother divorced, in a long, bitter mostly silent process that took years and left them both broken.
I’m not saying loud is preferable (My Connecticut DIL still tries to dive under the table while her husband and BIL scream at each other at the top of their considerably powerful voices over…. who gets to sit next to whom at holiday meals. Or whether one of them set the trivets in the right place for me to place the turkey pan.)
I’m saying that some family arguments — granted not the ones about Spiderman retcons — need to be had, no matter the volume. And that there’s worse than having arguments out in the open where the world can see and hear.
Sometimes “not in front of the kids, dear” is justifiable. And sometimes all it does is tamp down the tensions till everything explodes.
Let me unpack it for you: Of course Musk and Trump had a prejudice pro H1B visas. The first came here with one, and he and the second see only the results after they’ve been normalized, tamped, cleared and made rational by their middle managers.
Look, this is like what I refer to with the publishing industry drinking its own ink. If you only see the end result of the actions taken by your middle managers, you don’t know what goes on in the middle. I call this management by spread sheet, and though both Elon and Trump are too smart to do that exclusively, they run very large enterprises and have to delegate SOME of them.
The publishing industry got caught in this, because they started doing things like judging the success or failure of a book without taking in account anything but the book. Ie. not paying attention to even elementary things like covers, much less push, or money spent on publicity, or what type of publicity, or the fact the pipeline had gotten clogged with things like “ordering to the net.” It was all “the numbers don’t lie” but yes, the numbers do, which is why they ended up drinking their own ink and opening themselves up to having indie eat their lunch.
The problem with the management of any large enterprise is the you end up having to take certain things on faith. Which is how the hyper concentrated management of communist countries fails.
Yes, you can do marketing and opinion surveys, but for anything political or frankly economic or– well, pretty much anything in these days, they are proving more and more useless.
So, of course, Trump and Elon stepped in it, after Vivek really stepped in it by thinking America is how Hollywood portrays it.
But Elon and Trump have walked it back, and I really think they mean it. They truly were not aware of how bad it’s gotten. Yes, every new job created in a quarter going to foreign born people might have been a clue, but I think they didn’t connect it.
They didn’t realize how bad it was 20 years ago and how it has incrementally grown. Yes, sure, offshoring is bad but “inshoring” and laying off your entire department to bring in foreign labor who then perpetuates itself by despising Americans, in a purely xenophobic snit (Hi Vivek!) is just as bad. And creates massive resentment.
Which Elon and Trump got to see, up close and personal.
(Oh, and much as I stare at Vivek in horrified fascination, let me tell you as someone who acculturated, this is one of the phases. You’re trying to understand your new culture, and you go through a phase of believing the media, not realizing it has its own biases. “Oh, so things really are like Revenge of the Nerds. Or Pretty In Pink. Or whatever.” You have to work at moving out of that phase. So I have some limited sympathy for him. Acculturating is difficult and a hell of a lot of work. Which is reason #300000 why mass immigration is a bad idea and makes every country worse. As the world is finding out.)
And then they walked it back. And this is good. Because they saw the rage and the hair-trigger anger people are living with, but more importantly they saw the injustice and the ridiculousness of importing workers because you can essentially enslave them. While you can’t do that to citizens.
Oh, and to the people saying that to want to (really, not pretend, with fake ads) hire Americans first is “DEI”: you are full of shit. American citizens are tax payers. They are also members of the culture, born and raised in it. If their buy in doesn’t get them at least equal consideration for work and the benefits of an economy they and their parents helped build, it’s on you to explain why not. America should be run for the benefit of Americans (of all colors.) I’m not suggesting we slam the gates shut. I’m suggesting small, a trickle really, and for very specific needs and circumstances, where people aren’t committing wholesale fraud to get it. (Like, I came over as a bride. But I’m strenuously against “Marry the maid so she can stay here.” I would have come over, anyway and had a study/employment offer at the same time. I just happened to fall in love. BUT–) There should be routes for entry. I suggest more than for “must be a genius” which is NOT the best criteria, we should screen for “really wants to be American” but that might be just my own bias showing.
The point is, as much as I’m sure Vivek didn’t know what he was stepping into, this argument is one that needed to be had. The pros and cons, and the justifiable anger of the people should be on open display. And the “factors leading to” should be investigated. Because by themselves H1B visas might be a good idea. They are not a good idea as they’re being used/frauded/messed with. And as with publishing, the fraud factors are so many that people at the top don’t even realize their metrics mean nothing.
Yeah, sure, the education in America is a mess, and that needs to be fixed. But we need to find pathways to get kids employed, instead of assuming they’re all stupid and lazy. (They’re not. And keep in mind “kid” for me at this time is anyone under 45 or so.) If you think they are you don’t know how hard they’re fighting/working to stay above water, and have been deceived by reports of a few people. (Look, even in my day most retail workers were flaky and wouldn’t show up for their shifts or paycheck. It’s just now we make it harder for people to work two or three jobs in retail. So we have fewer of the reliable ones, because fewer of them can work more than one job.) BUT all of that is also obscured by people trying to hire cheap people they can bully and by the sheer mess that is our HR and their protocols, including DEI.
So, after this discussion, we are set on a better path to fix the problem. These discussions need to keep happening, and yes, they need to happen in the open and where everyone can see it because no one has the full picture of how messed up the entire process is. Even I didn’t, and I have feelers in a lot of places. (It’s like the people who say illegal immigration is a net plus. No it’s not, if you see the payouts and destruction of education, healthcare, welfare, etc. etc. etc., and I’m sure even I don’t have the full picture.)
This is the time to take a page from the dems and say “party unity my ass.” In healthy families, nations and movements, things get discussed in the open without fear it will destroy everything.
And yes, the dems will think it’s a civil war and that we’re “falling apart” but that’s because they don’t tolerate dissent or even questioning, and frankly any questioning would cause them to fall apart, because they have no coherent philosophy.
Ignore them. The adults need to work through this stuff.
And despite the shouting and the waving hands, I have great hopes for the future.
According To Hoyt 