It's remarkable that this article talks about Tammany Hall without mentioning that its century of peak corruption coincided with mass immigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall.
As Wikipedia explains: "In the 1840s, over 130,000 Irish immigrants arrived in New York City to escape the Great Famine, arriving in poverty and joining scores of thousands of their fellow countrymen who had arrived over the prior decades. By 1855, 34 percent of the city's voter population was composed of Irish immigrants. By providing these new arrivals with patronage employment, job referrals, legal aid, food, shelter, employment insurance, and other extralegal services, including citizenship and naturalization services, Tammany secured the lifelong support of the large and growing Irish population, which would form the majority of its electoral base for the next century. In exchange for these services, the Tammany political machine harvested Irish immigrant votes."
The article also quotes Plato, who predicted Tammany Hall 2,400 years earlier. Plato saw good government as a precarious and fragile thing that could be achieved only through careful cultivation of the polity's "constitution"--not just a legal document, but the political "way of life." As a result, Plato's ideal city had strong borders and was insulated from both trade and immigration: https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/983154/1/EXO....
"In most states of course, such confusion is a way of life with which people learned to cope by various compromises, as was the case when immigrants are allowed into a country (PS, 293d). But such compromises were neither necessary nor desirable for Plato, since any policy of unrestricted immigration would destroy his political constitution (PL, 736c; 950a). Aristotle agreed that immigration was a dangerous thing because it pitted newcomers against those already established, thus creating tensions and frictions between them."
Plato's Republic describes a society's descent into anarchy as involving the erasure of distinctions between citizens and foreigners: "the metic" (legal permanent resident) "becomes the equal of a citizen and the citizen of a metic, and similarly with the foreigner."
The author sets up an astute point linking Tammany Hall, Plato, and MAGA republicans, but somehow whiffs the conclusion. The U.S. didn’t defeat Tammany Hall through unspecified “fighting back”—it did so through assimilation and homogenization. The U.S. enacted restrictive immigration law in 1921. That, coupled with a population boom, dropped the foreign born population from 15% to under 5% and largely erased the separate identity of Ellis Island immigrants. That, in turn, made it impossible to sustain political machines that were built on ethnic solidarity among immigrant groups.
I learned that I don't need to agree 100% with an author's premises to find value in what she writes.
She is a bit partisan, but on the other side, it is about time for us on the right to completely re-evaluate MAGA, and go about creating a third way, distinct from the old mainstream republicanism of the McCains and Bushes, but also critical of what MAGA turned out to be.
“ Republicans who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and deny the results of that election. The dividing line is the denial itself: the willingness to hold that an election was stolen in the absence of evidence. That single belief turns out to be a genetic marker. Everything else travels with it.”
He doesn’t seem to be talking about conservatives or republicans broadly; seems like he’s focusing on a much smaller minority of people in society with very specific and fringe views. Perhaps it is “bias” to lump these people with the rest of conservatives.
Do you seriously buy the "explanation" that "liberals vote so much more by mail-in" that both Pennsylvania and Georgia flipped even though Trump was largely ahead in both?
Two states that, btw, were won by the Republicans in 2024. Which should give some food for thoughts too.
I think Trump is both crazy and senile now but I also think he may be the only US president to have ever won the elections three times.
Now I do also believe that, even in the face of cheating (probably by the same who then guided senile-Biden's auto-pen for four years), republicans should have accepted the defeat instead of trying to launch an insurrection.
Conservative vote is literally "cruelty is the point" and "empathy is bad thing" vote. That vote was motivated by explicit wish to harm and by masculinity being defined as "manly man is asshole" ideology.
Liberals are big tent of "not like that" that encompasses also assholes, but, crutially, not only them
It's remarkable that this article talks about Tammany Hall without mentioning that its century of peak corruption coincided with mass immigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall.
As Wikipedia explains: "In the 1840s, over 130,000 Irish immigrants arrived in New York City to escape the Great Famine, arriving in poverty and joining scores of thousands of their fellow countrymen who had arrived over the prior decades. By 1855, 34 percent of the city's voter population was composed of Irish immigrants. By providing these new arrivals with patronage employment, job referrals, legal aid, food, shelter, employment insurance, and other extralegal services, including citizenship and naturalization services, Tammany secured the lifelong support of the large and growing Irish population, which would form the majority of its electoral base for the next century. In exchange for these services, the Tammany political machine harvested Irish immigrant votes."
The article also quotes Plato, who predicted Tammany Hall 2,400 years earlier. Plato saw good government as a precarious and fragile thing that could be achieved only through careful cultivation of the polity's "constitution"--not just a legal document, but the political "way of life." As a result, Plato's ideal city had strong borders and was insulated from both trade and immigration: https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/983154/1/EXO....
"In most states of course, such confusion is a way of life with which people learned to cope by various compromises, as was the case when immigrants are allowed into a country (PS, 293d). But such compromises were neither necessary nor desirable for Plato, since any policy of unrestricted immigration would destroy his political constitution (PL, 736c; 950a). Aristotle agreed that immigration was a dangerous thing because it pitted newcomers against those already established, thus creating tensions and frictions between them."
Plato's Republic describes a society's descent into anarchy as involving the erasure of distinctions between citizens and foreigners: "the metic" (legal permanent resident) "becomes the equal of a citizen and the citizen of a metic, and similarly with the foreigner."
The author sets up an astute point linking Tammany Hall, Plato, and MAGA republicans, but somehow whiffs the conclusion. The U.S. didn’t defeat Tammany Hall through unspecified “fighting back”—it did so through assimilation and homogenization. The U.S. enacted restrictive immigration law in 1921. That, coupled with a population boom, dropped the foreign born population from 15% to under 5% and largely erased the separate identity of Ellis Island immigrants. That, in turn, made it impossible to sustain political machines that were built on ethnic solidarity among immigrant groups.
is the author of this post in thread? i do not like the AI voice it reads like.
I didn't notice any obvious markers, weird prose, or meandering in this one.
That would be disappointing, as the author is a fairly known writer.
Liberals are also assholes, but this article chose to come to a biased conclusion that involves MAGA Republicans.
I learned that I don't need to agree 100% with an author's premises to find value in what she writes.
She is a bit partisan, but on the other side, it is about time for us on the right to completely re-evaluate MAGA, and go about creating a third way, distinct from the old mainstream republicanism of the McCains and Bushes, but also critical of what MAGA turned out to be.
“ Republicans who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and deny the results of that election. The dividing line is the denial itself: the willingness to hold that an election was stolen in the absence of evidence. That single belief turns out to be a genetic marker. Everything else travels with it.”
He doesn’t seem to be talking about conservatives or republicans broadly; seems like he’s focusing on a much smaller minority of people in society with very specific and fringe views. Perhaps it is “bias” to lump these people with the rest of conservatives.
Do you seriously buy the "explanation" that "liberals vote so much more by mail-in" that both Pennsylvania and Georgia flipped even though Trump was largely ahead in both?
Two states that, btw, were won by the Republicans in 2024. Which should give some food for thoughts too.
I think Trump is both crazy and senile now but I also think he may be the only US president to have ever won the elections three times.
Now I do also believe that, even in the face of cheating (probably by the same who then guided senile-Biden's auto-pen for four years), republicans should have accepted the defeat instead of trying to launch an insurrection.
You've identified yourself on the metric. I'm trying to decide if that's a result of self-reflection, or its absence.
Yes and there is nothing suspect about liberals voting more by mail. Demographically it checks out.
Complains about biden auto pen and biden are kind of clearly fake given Trump mental state.
Conservative vote is literally "cruelty is the point" and "empathy is bad thing" vote. That vote was motivated by explicit wish to harm and by masculinity being defined as "manly man is asshole" ideology.
Liberals are big tent of "not like that" that encompasses also assholes, but, crutially, not only them
“This article reached a conclusion from the author’s perspective” is not a criticism of writing. It is a description of writing.
Good writing is almost never neutral. It can be fair, careful, honest, and proportionate. But if it has nothing to say, it isn’t good writing.