It’s because of the difficulties of maintaining an American identity that President Coolidge signed the 1924 Immigration Act - which shut the borders down and facilitated assimilation - and that required 40 years and a world war to achieve. This entire discussion shows we need another ‘time out’ on immigration and forceful assimilation policies.

Someone tried a funny scam on me a few years ago. I was selling a dining room set online. Someone said he wanted it, offered what I was asking. But he was moving - needed to send a moving company to pick it up to bring it to his place down south. He sent me a check, and contacted me to make sure I got it. I didn’t recognize the bank - I brought it to my bank, and they said it looked like fraud. I called the deal off and the guy ghosted me. But imagine how many fall for this kind of thing. They get a check that bounces, and they lose their furniture - someone working with the scam artist takes it and fences it. Must happen every day in a country of 350 million. You won’t find this in a spreadsheet, and it generates the sort of weary malaise that makes people distrustful of fellow ‘community members’ and social scientist cheerleaders who always say everything is getting better.

Colleges and universities are so much more expensive because parasites called ‘administrators’ must all get paid. At the expense of students and their parents. You could fire 95% of them, return governing authority to professors who do the real work - and save everyone $$.

If social security does go bust, it’s going to be younger Gen X and Millennials who really take it on the chin - having paid in large sums over most or all of their working lives, only to get nothing.

Watching all of this immigration/H1B discourse, it’s astonishing how many foreigners feel entitled to participate in the American market at the expense of Americans, and how many recent immigrants feel entitled to call the shots. I would never feel that way about another country.

America was built by settlers - who literally built colonies out of the wilderness. They didn’t show up like ‘immigrants’ and enjoy an already functioning society with social welfare benefits. Then over time the founders allowed immigration, then shut it off as they saw fit.

Well crafted vanilla ice cream is delicious - an elegant desert. I don’t know why people make fun of it. Stuffing your ice cream with nuts, cookie dough, chunks of this or that - it’s vulgar. You’re covering bad ice cream.

I did not know that George Floyd had overdosed on fentanyl just 8 weeks before his death - that he had actually been in intensive care because of it. Years later we're still learning new facts proving Derek Chauvin and the other officers were railroaded.

‘True’ crime is only interesting for most people if you have some ‘shocking’ reveal that someone is innocent, has been ‘framed’ or whatever. The mundane reality that almost all the people arrested are guilty isn’t ’exciting.’

Woke is a just a word that people want to shake off now. It was not a movement, just a label for leftist excess at a particular time. Leftists once liked to be called ‘liberals,’ then that became toxic. They shifted to ‘progressive.’ That’s still around but maybe not forever. Really there has just been one continuous path of getting more extreme over time. There was a lot of hatred for ‘dead white men’ in the 1990s. Remember Jesse Jackson chanting ‘hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go!’ It got more extreme over time - but Jackson could have been described as ‘woke’ had that been a term then.

I like to remind people that John Nash was just some kid from West Virginia. He was a math genius our system post-WW2 was able to find and develop. We would miss out on him today. He would have teachers who think he’s weird. And the system eliminates advanced classes.

It would be funny if it wasn't so serious. Police officers responded to a scene where shooting had been reported. They asked a guy if he had a gun. He said no, the officers asked him to "hike his pants." The guy had a .40 calibre pistol that had been stolen from an FBI agent's car two months earlier. The lower court threw out the guy's conviction on the grounds that he should have been able to walk away from the cops, but didn't because he is black and had reason to be afraid - he felt "compelled." So even though he cooperated with the cops and the gun was found - no can prosecute. The cops did their job, found a stolen pistol, probably prevented some future crime - but SCOTUS basically sides with the thief.

I think Jack is right here, and I think they’re going to hold back the birthright citizenship ruling till the last moment, knowing it will cause a firestorm. Fundamentally it is batshit crazy to let 9 old lawyers make a decision like this - reading centuries old texts in ways that can destroy the fabric of society - because ‘that’s who we are.’