calltheromans

On the path to software guru-hood.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

@allTheYud @JohnSmi74604397 Left Hand Guy would be a pretty cool supervillain name too

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

Matt, I don’t know you, but I’ve been following your work for over a decade at this point. Over the past 20-30 years, I’ve almost completely lost faith in the profession of journalism. If it wasn’t for the small handful of people like yourself, that loss of faith would be total.

Thank you for sticking to your principles and following the stories wherever they go. We need a lot more of you.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

If you google some combination of “rubio speech iran ballistic missile” you’ll get a bunch of videos of press conferences, speeches in congress, interviews, etc, spanning a period of over 10 years with exactly that same message.

With that context, it’s probably worth asking why the mainstream news messaging is some version of “we have no idea why he did this”…

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

I struggle with the idea that she has this absurdly huge following. This woman got her original claim to fame by starting a project to build a centralized doxxing database for gods sake (before she realized that the real grifting opportunities were on the right wing).

She’s never shown that she has any actual principles, she just seems to gravitate towards whatever lets her feel important regardless what group she’s in.

Watch, when the Kirk trial is over and it becomes clear that all her conspiracist shit is actually shit, she’ll flip back to the left, likely under the “the right is controlled by Israel” banner.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

@esrtweet You know how a lot of really good programmers are also pretty bad communicators?

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

This is where me and people like wanye might disagree, but yes, I agree, America has multiple cultures that coexist under the “American culture” umbrella.

And yet, I imagine it wouldn’t be too hard a stretch for you to imagine cultures that wouldn’t fit under that umbrella.

Say any culture that strongly believed that women were inferior to men*

Like yes, if they immigrate here, their beliefs don’t matter all that much, in the sense that the law protects women’s equality. And - one would hope - after a couple of generations it’s likely that those cultural beliefs would mellow. That’s what wanye is talking about (also, that given the current scale of immigration, legal and not, when their kids are 18, we basically just have to hope that their values won’t be too far from western values).

*I picked a relatively tame cultural difference. Many cultures around the world share this belief. I could have picked some of the more extreme ones - like cultures that think gay people should be killed, etc.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

You seem to be under the impression that I support revoking the citizenship of people already here or something.

I don’t.

Conceptually, giving the children of illegal immigrants citizenship is weird. It also has some weird consequences. You can’t just handwave that away and assume it’ll just get ignored.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

See I don’t agree with you about the pendulum. I think this case makes it swing faster.

Like I’ve said - I think this case was correctly decided.

But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a legitimate question being asked : should the children of illegal aliens (a category that did not really exist when the 14th was ratified) be eligible for citizenship?

Like, you don’t have to be racist to see that there are some actual weird consequences to the answer being yes.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

That irrelevant. The kids born and raised here are American - I agree - because the law currently grants them citizenship on birth.

But their parents - by law, not opinion - should not have been here. That’s the part people have a problem with. They see it as people being rewarded for breaking the law, which itself then becomes an incentive to break the law.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

@MiamiMoleMan @StovexKlmnel @JamesSurowiecki Neither? That’s my point lol

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

And all of that was before the concept of illegal immigration existed, and before it was plausible for someone to fly here, have a baby, then leave.

Like, again - you don’t have to agree that it’s a problem - there are millions of Americans who _do_ see it as a problem. You have to coexist with them. _That’s_ what makes this unsustainable. I’ve already seen people proposing shit as wild as banning foreign women from flying to the U.S. without a recent negative pregnancy test, all the way to sterilizing visa holders.

Without some compromise from the American left on this (and a few other immigration related issues), I foresee a pretty bad future for immigrants (like myself!).

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

I post openly about being an immigrant (hell, I was on TPS for several years!), and I get plenty of right wing idiots telling me to go home.

But I also understand that this is a democracy. Those people? Their vote matters. So I try and understand them, and I try to convince and persuade, and I try not to burn any bridges in the process. My ideological opponent is still my brother, whether he knows it or not. I don’t need to like him, but I do have to coexist with him.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

I’m not saying you are.

I’m saying that a refusal to find a compromise that works for most people is going to lead to actual death camps. For all the Trump administration’s stupidity and cruelty, ICE detention centers are basically kiddy daycare in comparison to what some people already want.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

Just to be blunt - you’ve called me stupid, implied I’m not a “real American” because *gasp* I have an opinion and I’m asking questions for clarity - you’ve told me to get out of the country, etc. I’m not ok with any of that.

I appreciate your apology, but understand this : I’m an immigrant myself. And I see the path that we’re on now. The path that ends in camps. Being belligerent with people because they have different opinions than yours is just going to accelerate that path. We _need_ to find compromise with the people we share a country with.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

@npparikh @JamesSurowiecki This condescending thing you’ve got going on is really great.

I envy people who are both stupid and wildly arrogant. It must be a nice existence.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

I stated my opinion. I don’t know if it’s a majority opinion, and I certainly don’t believe it’s something that people could get ratified at the state level. I do feel that the left refusing to compromise on this will lead to a backlash from the right - that is explicitly a future I do not want - _being an immigrant myself_.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

I wouldn’t want to repeal the 14th - but I do want Congress to clearly define what “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means.

Also, I have nothing in common with that ghoul Miller - see, I don’t go around claiming that i get to decide who a real American is.

Maybe exhibit some self awareness.

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

@Wombats4eva @JamesSurowiecki It was an example of something wrong with the system.

Up to 10% of births in the U.S. are to people here illegally. Do you really not see why people might have an actual non-racist problem with those kids being given citizenship?

[calltheromans @calltheromans]

@GarlicCorgi @JamesSurowiecki Yeah that’s not even remotely true lol