Brilliant take on the hierarchical pluralism concept. The binary vs spectrum framing really cuts through alot of the BS in this debate. I've seen this same dynamic play out in immigrant communities where second-gen folks dunno if they're supposed to honor thier heritage or fully assimilate. The idea that Vivek is adopting Abrahamic moral absolutism while claiming to rep Hindu values is lowkey the most ironic part of his whole argument.
To put it bluntly, the American identity is a white identity (i.e. it's a racial identity). This is taboo to discuss, so the term "Heritage American" has been used as a euphemism. "White Americans" generally refers to the pre-1965 settlers/immigrants, with the founding Anglo-Saxon stock being the nucleus around which some assimilation has been possible for other white pre-1965 immigrants. The mostly colored post-1965 immigrants are outside this boundary.
It's kind of funny in a grim sort of way watching my fellow Americans have a national identity crisis. My prediction is it's going to get worse, much worse. My attitude about this country is that it's a kind of mining colony on a moon of, say, Saturn. It (and all post-Enlightenment countries to varying degrees) has detached itself from history and is literally objectifying itself out of existence. Trauma has become the god and the victim must spend his days endlessly trying to find out who or what he/she is. Am I a man? Or a women? Am I Jewish? Or Hindu or Chistian? Or am I a non-believer staring down oblivion? And they are going to just keep doing this until the Muslims take over (e.g., the Somalians in Minnesota and Mamdani in Manhattan); like a self-destructive machine made by the Dadaists hanging out at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, circa 1913.
America is owned by corporations not Heritage Americans. The claim of Heritage Americans is strong but what capacity do they have to make good that claim?
America is being settled by the Global South because it is trying to maintain hegemony/global integration. Freedom for capital and goods inevitably results in freedom of mobility.
It's the basic conflict between ethno-nationalism and civic nationalism. The laptop class considers even the civic nationalism Vivek promotes to be covert white supremacy (i.e. Anglo-derived values are American values), which is kind of is, and consider themselves multicultural global citizens and the USA to be merely an economic geography. The woke are more correct than the mainstream. I don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle. The only way to hold the country together I see is the Singapore model, e.g. a loose set of shared values (albeit strictly enforced) along with symmetrical multiculturalism or enclavism, whether that is cultural or physical space for people to celebrate their ancestry.
The most absurd anti-nativist turbo-civilisation-destroying rhetoric is not even this one of the "woke right" which, instead of laying claim to "some birthright", should pull itself by the bootstraps and man up and face indiscriminate competition from wherever in a nation which has become a blank economic space.
No, I think the dubious accolade belongs to Melenchon, who during the last French presidential elections campaigned for third-world immigrants to "lay claim to this French soil which is sacred for you, as it will be the soil on which your children and grandchildren will be born and it will be their land, so you have more rights to occupy it than anyone else". How is it possible to even counter something like that from a blood & soil standpoint?
What is this “Heritage Americans” bullshit? My ancestors were lead smelters at fuckin’ Jamestown in the 1620s. So what? Who gives a fuck?
I only just found out about it in recent years because I bothered to take the DNA test and do the research myself. But before that my family had raised me on the lie that our family went back to Germany and the first American Swindle was in 1800. Nope! Bullshit!
But what does it matter whether my first ancestor to this cursed land came over in the 1600s or 1800?
They are both "natural" rights: you know instinctively that the laptop is yours, and that Ramaswami does not belong to the same group you do.
Anyone trying to impose the opposite on you can only achieve his goal by threat, through gangs of armed enforcers or by brainwashing the public with media propaganda
When you say "Rights are imaginary. We made them up. We have no rights!" "Natural rights are bullshit", my interpretation of that is you intend "we have rights only insofar as we manage to defend them" and we need might to do that
...and who says that the device from which you wrote this message is yours? Just because you bought it? So what? What if I went to the store/to Amazon before you and managed to buy it first?
What a little scummy weasel he is. I would almost take any one else to be governor of Ohio but then remember NY and NJ and Minnesota Governors. He will be just as bad. They should not have public office neither should he.
Brilliant take on the hierarchical pluralism concept. The binary vs spectrum framing really cuts through alot of the BS in this debate. I've seen this same dynamic play out in immigrant communities where second-gen folks dunno if they're supposed to honor thier heritage or fully assimilate. The idea that Vivek is adopting Abrahamic moral absolutism while claiming to rep Hindu values is lowkey the most ironic part of his whole argument.
@Rajeev Ram
To put it bluntly, the American identity is a white identity (i.e. it's a racial identity). This is taboo to discuss, so the term "Heritage American" has been used as a euphemism. "White Americans" generally refers to the pre-1965 settlers/immigrants, with the founding Anglo-Saxon stock being the nucleus around which some assimilation has been possible for other white pre-1965 immigrants. The mostly colored post-1965 immigrants are outside this boundary.
It's kind of funny in a grim sort of way watching my fellow Americans have a national identity crisis. My prediction is it's going to get worse, much worse. My attitude about this country is that it's a kind of mining colony on a moon of, say, Saturn. It (and all post-Enlightenment countries to varying degrees) has detached itself from history and is literally objectifying itself out of existence. Trauma has become the god and the victim must spend his days endlessly trying to find out who or what he/she is. Am I a man? Or a women? Am I Jewish? Or Hindu or Chistian? Or am I a non-believer staring down oblivion? And they are going to just keep doing this until the Muslims take over (e.g., the Somalians in Minnesota and Mamdani in Manhattan); like a self-destructive machine made by the Dadaists hanging out at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, circa 1913.
America is owned by corporations not Heritage Americans. The claim of Heritage Americans is strong but what capacity do they have to make good that claim?
America is being settled by the Global South because it is trying to maintain hegemony/global integration. Freedom for capital and goods inevitably results in freedom of mobility.
It's the basic conflict between ethno-nationalism and civic nationalism. The laptop class considers even the civic nationalism Vivek promotes to be covert white supremacy (i.e. Anglo-derived values are American values), which is kind of is, and consider themselves multicultural global citizens and the USA to be merely an economic geography. The woke are more correct than the mainstream. I don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle. The only way to hold the country together I see is the Singapore model, e.g. a loose set of shared values (albeit strictly enforced) along with symmetrical multiculturalism or enclavism, whether that is cultural or physical space for people to celebrate their ancestry.
The most absurd anti-nativist turbo-civilisation-destroying rhetoric is not even this one of the "woke right" which, instead of laying claim to "some birthright", should pull itself by the bootstraps and man up and face indiscriminate competition from wherever in a nation which has become a blank economic space.
No, I think the dubious accolade belongs to Melenchon, who during the last French presidential elections campaigned for third-world immigrants to "lay claim to this French soil which is sacred for you, as it will be the soil on which your children and grandchildren will be born and it will be their land, so you have more rights to occupy it than anyone else". How is it possible to even counter something like that from a blood & soil standpoint?
What is this “Heritage Americans” bullshit? My ancestors were lead smelters at fuckin’ Jamestown in the 1620s. So what? Who gives a fuck?
I only just found out about it in recent years because I bothered to take the DNA test and do the research myself. But before that my family had raised me on the lie that our family went back to Germany and the first American Swindle was in 1800. Nope! Bullshit!
But what does it matter whether my first ancestor to this cursed land came over in the 1600s or 1800?
Rights are imaginary. We made them up. We have no rights!
They are both "natural" rights: you know instinctively that the laptop is yours, and that Ramaswami does not belong to the same group you do.
Anyone trying to impose the opposite on you can only achieve his goal by threat, through gangs of armed enforcers or by brainwashing the public with media propaganda
“Natural rights” are bullshit.
We are just too weak to enforce them. You are a might makes right guy
What do you mean?
When you say "Rights are imaginary. We made them up. We have no rights!" "Natural rights are bullshit", my interpretation of that is you intend "we have rights only insofar as we manage to defend them" and we need might to do that
...and who says that the device from which you wrote this message is yours? Just because you bought it? So what? What if I went to the store/to Amazon before you and managed to buy it first?
I don’t follow. What do you mean?
Why do you support your property rights, but not your blood rights
What a little scummy weasel he is. I would almost take any one else to be governor of Ohio but then remember NY and NJ and Minnesota Governors. He will be just as bad. They should not have public office neither should he.