Thank you for quoting one of my articles in this piece. On a deeper level, the ICE issue is not really about ICE; it's about whether we should allow our society and our government to be corrupted by the corporations who much prefer illegal alien workers to legal immigrants - and so don't want us to provide a legal means for them to be here. These companies control our media, via which they've brainwashed the public to imagine that they are the good guys. Nothing could be further from the truth: "Who Is Really Behind our Illegal Immigration?" at https://daveziffer.substack.com/p/who-is-really-behind-our-illegal
While I understand the argument you are making here, I would suggest more broadly that what is playing out here is (once again) the partisan politics of the United States, and that there are multiple forces colliding in this arena, of which corporate money is a significant player but seldom the sole determining factor.
I agree that there have been determinate forces that have favoured illegal immigration: this is a long standing issue in US politics, one that traditionally the red team supported because its funding partners benefited from cheap labour. At some point, the blue team decided that it too had a stake in illegal immigration, which likely also had some aspect of funding influence behind it. Conventionally, this has been presented as bringing in political clients to prop them up... this indeed is how the Armin Rosen piece in County Highway largely presented the Minnesota fraud story.
However, I would caution against assigning too much singular force causation into US political situations. What you are describing is one of the key forces at work, and it may even be the most powerful of those forces, but never underestimate the social and philosophical forces that also bear upon US politics.
For example, the conflict over gender metaphysics, as I've discussed here at Stranger Worlds, emerged from the 'queering gender' project of Judith Butler, and then became co-opted into the national (and international) politics. Money eventually became involved, but it was not initially or primarily about this, and to a fair extent it still isn't.
Likewise, the 'no person is illegal' mythos originated in 1990s Germany, whereupon it spread internationally, initially to Belgium and Canada, and eventually to 'blue states' in the US. This was not a vector of influence where corporate money worked directly - which is not to say that the social mythos didn't converge with that commercial force (clearly, it often does).
This is tied up in the breakage of the conceptual apparatus behind citizen democracy and the emergence of an international 'mass society' (to use Hannah Arendt's term) that often glosses itself as "our democracy" but which cannot be so, since it is focussed on the commonality of the human and therefore has no concept of a 'demos', a people, for whom any given democracy is their political realm.
This clash, between the 'globalist'-influenced 'mass society' of the human, and 'populist' or 'neo-nationalist' reactions against it, is the primary political conflict in Europe and the United States right now. Corporate money did not create this situation - although it certainly does its best to benefit from it! - and the useless legacy media (who long since ceased to operate as journalists) propagate the 'mass society' mythology both for commercial reasons and because their reporters largely believe in it.
If these sorts of philosophical reflections interest you, I encourage you to stick around at Stranger Worlds. I post a highly eclectic set of philosophical topics here, one 3-minute essay (750 words) per week, all animated by a viewpoint outside the red-blue divide and that I hope might help defend the political centre from partisan collapse.
Whether or not you stick around, thanks for stopping by and commenting on this Bazaar! Greatly appreciated.
Good points here. I'd subscribe, except my inbox is already intolerably full & I'm trying to cut down on subscriptions. But thanks for the invitation. I'm pretty sure our paths will cross.
Thank you for quoting one of my articles in this piece. On a deeper level, the ICE issue is not really about ICE; it's about whether we should allow our society and our government to be corrupted by the corporations who much prefer illegal alien workers to legal immigrants - and so don't want us to provide a legal means for them to be here. These companies control our media, via which they've brainwashed the public to imagine that they are the good guys. Nothing could be further from the truth: "Who Is Really Behind our Illegal Immigration?" at https://daveziffer.substack.com/p/who-is-really-behind-our-illegal
Dear David,
While I understand the argument you are making here, I would suggest more broadly that what is playing out here is (once again) the partisan politics of the United States, and that there are multiple forces colliding in this arena, of which corporate money is a significant player but seldom the sole determining factor.
I agree that there have been determinate forces that have favoured illegal immigration: this is a long standing issue in US politics, one that traditionally the red team supported because its funding partners benefited from cheap labour. At some point, the blue team decided that it too had a stake in illegal immigration, which likely also had some aspect of funding influence behind it. Conventionally, this has been presented as bringing in political clients to prop them up... this indeed is how the Armin Rosen piece in County Highway largely presented the Minnesota fraud story.
However, I would caution against assigning too much singular force causation into US political situations. What you are describing is one of the key forces at work, and it may even be the most powerful of those forces, but never underestimate the social and philosophical forces that also bear upon US politics.
For example, the conflict over gender metaphysics, as I've discussed here at Stranger Worlds, emerged from the 'queering gender' project of Judith Butler, and then became co-opted into the national (and international) politics. Money eventually became involved, but it was not initially or primarily about this, and to a fair extent it still isn't.
Likewise, the 'no person is illegal' mythos originated in 1990s Germany, whereupon it spread internationally, initially to Belgium and Canada, and eventually to 'blue states' in the US. This was not a vector of influence where corporate money worked directly - which is not to say that the social mythos didn't converge with that commercial force (clearly, it often does).
This is tied up in the breakage of the conceptual apparatus behind citizen democracy and the emergence of an international 'mass society' (to use Hannah Arendt's term) that often glosses itself as "our democracy" but which cannot be so, since it is focussed on the commonality of the human and therefore has no concept of a 'demos', a people, for whom any given democracy is their political realm.
This clash, between the 'globalist'-influenced 'mass society' of the human, and 'populist' or 'neo-nationalist' reactions against it, is the primary political conflict in Europe and the United States right now. Corporate money did not create this situation - although it certainly does its best to benefit from it! - and the useless legacy media (who long since ceased to operate as journalists) propagate the 'mass society' mythology both for commercial reasons and because their reporters largely believe in it.
If these sorts of philosophical reflections interest you, I encourage you to stick around at Stranger Worlds. I post a highly eclectic set of philosophical topics here, one 3-minute essay (750 words) per week, all animated by a viewpoint outside the red-blue divide and that I hope might help defend the political centre from partisan collapse.
Whether or not you stick around, thanks for stopping by and commenting on this Bazaar! Greatly appreciated.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
Good points here. I'd subscribe, except my inbox is already intolerably full & I'm trying to cut down on subscriptions. But thanks for the invitation. I'm pretty sure our paths will cross.
Dear David,
Thanks for your explanation here! I quite understand... there is too much to read and I am late to the party. 😂
All the best,
Chris.