politicartoons | Native American protests at an Arizona Illegal Immigration Rally

The Czech writer Karel Čapek (1890-1938) once wrote a satirical essay, "Twelve figures of pen fight, or a handbook of literary polemic." One of the figures is called Imago; it consists of replacing the position of one's opponent with a pathetic caricature. I never intended to prove that "Mexicans are also a bunch of ethnocentric assholes." Please don't distort my words. What I said was that Mexico also has illegal immigrants from poorer countries such as Guatemala and Honduras, and that Mexico treats them more harshly than the United States treats illegal immigrants from Mexico. I cited the Newsweek article as a source. If you think that I am wrong, and the Newsweek article is not an authoritative enough source, please share your reasons for believing that Mexico doesn't have illegal immigrants from poorer countries, or that Mexico doesn't treat them more harshly than the United States treats illegal immigrants from Mexico.

I stand by my words: Native Americans are a small minority (1-2% of the population) in the United States. The fact that you are 1/8 Native North American in no way refutes my words. By the way of analogy: my name is Ilya. I am a U.S. citizen, having naturalized in 1995. The fact that I am named Ilya in no way refutes the fact that the percentage of U.S. population named Ilya is tiny, probably well under 0.01%. My point was that even though Mexico's indigenous population is much greater percentage-wise than the U.S., and the majority of Mexicans are of partly indigenous descent, Mexico does not have free immigration from poorer countries.

You haven't answered my question. Upthread you wrote, "Those protesters haven't learned anything." What do you think they should have learned? What should have they realized by watching the counter-protester that they don't already know? Please answer.

Thank chron_job. (http://politicartoons.livejournal.com/3539992.html?thread=80837656#t80837656)

Since you referred to

chron_job's comment approvingly, it is my understanding that you believe that a country not founded on unjust privilege is a country with open borders, like the ones the United States had for much of the 19th century, before the frontier closed, except intercontinental travel is now much easier. So in your ideal world, if a million Bangladeshis or Somalis or Malawians decided that they wanted to move to the United States, there should be no obstacles barring them from doing so, just like now there are no obstacles barring a New Yorker from moving to New Jersey. Am I right? I don't want to argue against a caricature of my opponent's position, which is why I want to double check it.

Edited 2013-02-19 23:49 (UTC)

You're so polite I simply MUST respond!

1) Are you implying America wasn't founded on unjust privilege? That's funny.

2) No obstacles. Also funny.

You're throwing around caricatures left and right, which I suppose is appropriate since we're in a political cartoons community. Carry on.

Years of political dialogue in Russophone LiveJournal, and years before that (when the Russophone blogosphere did not yet exist) in English-language forums have taught me to be polite even with people i disagree with.

I asked you, whether in your ideal world, there would be open borders. You haven't answered my question. Please do.

Of course the United States is founded on unjust privilege. There is no justice in that a bus driver in Seattle makes much more money than a bus driver in Chittagong. There is no justice in that a factory worker in Detroit makes much more money than a factory worker in Shenzhen. This is a fact. My question to you is, what you want to do about it. Do you want to allow a Seattle-based bus company to fire all the drivers it currently has, bring new drivers from Chittagong, and pay them much more than they would make in their native Bangladesh, but much less than it used to pay American drivers? Do you want to allow a Detroit-based car company to fire all the workers it currently has, bring new workers from Shenzhen, and pay them much more than they would make in their native China, but much less than it used to pay American workers? In 1913, this was possible, except instead of Chittagong and Shenzhen there would be villages near Naples and towns near Pinsk. Since then, the world population has grown, and so has the wealth gap between rich and poor countries, but in order to cross an ocean a person can now sit on a plane for less than a day instead of crowding in a steerage hold for two weeks. You still haven't answered whether you want to return to the 1913 situation in 2013.

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause

This is getting boring rather quickly.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-chen/immigrant-scapegoating-no_b_1233008.html

Edited 2013-02-20 02:31 (UTC)

So you are refusing to answer my question. Instead, you are giving irrelevant links. This is what I suspected would happen. Tee-hee.

One last time:

An American who lives in Seattle can find a job in Newark and move there. The U.S. government will not put any obstacles in front of him or say that he breaks any laws. However, if a Mexican who lives in Oaxaca finds a job in New Jersey and moves there without going through the regular immigration procedures, he will break the U.S. immigration laws. There is a possibility that the government will find out that he is an illegal immigrant, and deport him back to Mexico. This is the case in 2013; in 1913, an Italian could go from a village in Campania to Lower Manhattan without much trouble, but times have changed. These laws, however, are enforced inconsistently. There are millions of illegal immigrants in the United States, mostly from Mexico but in fact from all over the world, whom no one deports. The protesters want these laws to be enforced consistently. As I understand it, you have a problem with it. So I am asking you, do you want the laws restricting immigration to be repealed? Do you want it to be as easy to move from Oaxaca to New Jersey as it is to move from Washington State to New Jersey, or as easy as it was to go from an Italian village to Little Italy in New York in 1913? I've asked you several times, but all I got instead of an answer were irrelevant links and a cute facepalm userpic.

Can you answer "Yes, I want the borders of the United States to be open, permitting everybody from all over the world to come here" or "I want the laws to stay the way they are, but continue to be enforced inconsistently" or "I want the laws to change in such-and-such a way"? You seem to have contempt for the protesters, but do not tell us, how your proposal is different from theirs.

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

Irrelevant links!! Answer my question!!! Tell me in great detail here and now exactly how you would personally restructure your country's immigration policies otherwise you are avoiding my question and must submit to either one of the two false premises I have presented!!!

Edited 2013-02-20 15:25 (UTC)

So you do not have an opinion, what the U.S. immigration laws should be. It appears that you have not given this matter a thought. Yet you have contempt for people (the anti-illegal immigration protesters) who do have such an opinion. Instead of attacking their ideas, which you cannot do because you have not formulated a competing idea, you are attacking them personally: oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc... er, they do not understand that the United States have been founded on unjust privilege.

I have a piece of advice for you: do not let moral posturing replace thinking. I understand that this runs contrary to everything taught in American schools and colleges (which I know firsthand, for unlike the commenter with Brezhnev on his user picture, I have graduated from an American university 17 years ago), but this is a lesson I've learned from the university of life.

Edited 2013-02-20 17:25 (UTC)

do not let moral posturing replace thinking. I understand that this runs contrary to everything taught in American schools and colleges

Oh the irony....

Edited 2013-02-20 21:30 (UTC)

Am I wrong? What is more prevalent in American schools and colleges: teaching critical thinking, or politically correct indoctrination? My impression that the latter is more prevalent. I went to college in the U.S. in 1991-1993, and my brother and my stepson went to high school here; I base my opinion on my own education as well as theirs.

Yes. You are wrong.

Where did you learn to make blanket assertions and attribute your own subjective experience onto an entire country of over 300 million people?

What is more prevalent in American schools and colleges: teaching critical thinking, or politically correct indoctrination? My impression that the latter is more prevalent.

Well, that is subjective and also not what you just asserted. You wrongly asserted American schools teach the suppression of critical thinking in favor of indoctrination. You cite this without reasonable evidence, and then cite some vague impression you have of three people.

O_H__T_H_E__I_R_O_N_Y

Edited 2013-02-20 22:15 (UTC)

I stand by my words: Native Americans are a small minority (1-2% of the population) in the United States.

Technically correct, though they used to be the majority when the protesters great great great grandfathers came here and stole their land by murder, rape, and pestilence.

That's the irony the native american guy is pointing out. Those who not so many generations back stole land by force protesting people who just want to live in peace.

The population of Great Britain and France has increased about 1 1/2 times in the last 150 years; that of the United States has increased about 10 times. Some of it was no doubt due to higher fertility of Americans compared to the French and the Britons, especially before the frontier closed, and farming families were large. Most of it, no doubt, was due to immigration. I cannot find any numbers on the Internet, but it seems intuitively obvious to me that the ancestors of most Americans alive 150 years ago were not resident in the United States. Mexican Americans are about 10% of the U.S. population; there were very few of them in 1863. Italian Americans are about 5%; same here. American Jews are about 2%; same here. Polish Americans are about 3%; same here. Immigration from Germany in the 2nd half of the 19th century was huge. 12 million people came through Ellis Island alone, and they had children, and their children had children. Therefore, if "stole their land" you mean "won the Mexican-American War", then it weren't ancestors of most modern-day Americans; it was other people in the country to which the ancestors of most modern-day Americans later immigrated.

By stole land I mean raped, killed, intentionally spread disease, took body parts, displayed corpses, lied and dishonored treaties, and stole land.

This is getting like tennis.

Ever hear of Saint Patrick's Battalion?

Yes I have heard of Saint Patrick's Battalion.

Here is a chapter from a novel about an empire's conquest of a native people. Without looking it up, can you guess who it is talking about?

The [village] which had been destroyed was that in which [a native leader] had spent the night before he went over to the [empire]. [a native man] and his family had left the [village] on the approach of the [imperial] detachment, and when he returned he found his [house] in ruins — the roof fallen in, the door and the posts supporting the penthouse burned, and the interior filthy. His son, the handsome bright-eyed boy who had gazed with such ecstasy at [the native leader], was brought dead to the [house of worship] on a horse covered with a barka; he had been stabbed in the back with a bayonet. the dignified woman who had served [the native leader] when he was at the house now stood over her son’s body, her smock torn in front, her withered old breasts exposed, her hair down, and she dug her hails into her face till it bled, and wailed incessantly. [a native man], taking a pick-axe and spade, had gone with his relatives to dig a grave for his son. The old grandfather sat by the wall of the ruined [house] cutting a stick and gazing stolidly in front of him. He had only just returned from the apiary. The two stacks of hay there had been burnt, the apricot and cherry trees he had planted and reared were broken and scorched, and worse still all the beehives and bees had been burnt. The wailing of the women and the little children, who cried with their mothers, mingled with the lowing of the hungry cattle for whom there was no food. The bigger children, instead of playing, followed their elders with frightened eyes. The fountain was polluted, evidently on purpose, so that the water could not be used. The [house of worship] was polluted in the same way, and the [religious leader] and his assistants were cleaning it out. No one spoke of hatred of the [empire]. the feeling experienced by all the [natives], from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger than hate. It was not hatred, for they did not regard those [imperial] dogs as human beings, but it was such repulsion, disgust, and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them — like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders, or wolves — was as natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.

The inhabitants of the [village] were confronted by the choice of remaining there and restoring with frightful effort what had been produced with such labor and had been so lightly and senselessly destroyed, facing every moment the possibility of a repetition of what had happened; or to submit to the [empire] — contrary to their religion and despite the repulsion and contempt they felt for them. The old men prayed, and unanimously decided to send envoys to [the leader of the native rebellion] asking him for help. Then they immediately set to work to restore what had been destroyed.

I have not read much Tolstoy. Interesting reply though.

Edited 2013-02-21 17:07 (UTC)

Oh, and just to let you know, I loved Fantastic Planet.

Native American protests at an Arizona Illegal Immigration Rally

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