anon_qono said in #4999 2w ago:
What I mean specifically is the problem with our highest quality immigrants. Mass migration is a separate issue. America has imported big waves of immigrants over the years, some good, some bad, some disastrous. I'm not talking about any of those, or generic "assimilation". I'm talking about the top tier.
For the last quarter millenium the United States has done far better than any other country on earth at attracting talent--not bugmetric "highest scoring" but the most courageous, agentic, risk tolerant, frontier-minded men on Earth who want to try their luck in Thunderdome America. And then developing them to their highest and most ambitious form.
This is our specialty.
Look at Operation Paperclip. We took these brilliant men who were at the farthest edge of capability. We sent von Braun and his men to Alabama, and eventually gave them our best 24yo cornfield engineers, a deepwater port, an insane goal and a budget equal to 1% of our GDP.
But first, we demanded and received their loyalty. When he was finally permitted to naturalize in 1955, von Braun said: "This is the happiest and most significant day in my life. I must say we all became American citizens in our hearts long ago."
We saw this mechanic work thru the 20th century and into the 2000s, through men like Elon Musk and Jensen Huang.
So what do we have today?
A country that demands and receives nothing in particular.
A country whose civic religion has metastasized into a form of self-hatred.
So we get high-caliber unamericans. The most crass examples I know of are all born post 2000... here are two:
Look at Eileen Gu. Born in the US to an American father and Chinese-immigrant mother, grew up in the nicest part of SF, went to Stanford. She is a talented skiier, trains at Lake Tahoe, competes. Eventually she wins Olympic Gold... playing for China. Is it a coincidence that she went to high school and college during peak woke?
Or an Indian acquaintance. High IQ. Went to a west coast university circa 2020. Disgust in his voice talking about his first tech internship... all the race-based "interest groups", the rest-and-vesters, people leaving at 5pm. Hilariously he thought it a bad sign that Rishi Sunak was the PM of the UK, and so many American tech cos run by Indians... "bad if you can't find leadership in your own people". So true, king.
We have a problem. America still disproportionately imports the world's most capable, but:
- They will not magically show loyalty when none is demanded.
- They feel natural resentment seeing gibs and sinecures flow to the undeserving.
- Woke encourages a lopsided ethnonarcissism (which dumber immigrants sometimes participate in uncritically) but which has a special effect on the best--they recognize it for what it is, find it repugnant and weak, sometimes cynically participate if to their advantage.
- They will not respect a people who don't respect themselves.
Ultimately this is another hard-to-fake indicator of civilizational health. Are our own smart young people trying to leave? (Fortunately we are not at this stage yet. If we get there we are the new USSR and it's truly over.) When smart young people from elsewhere come here, do they find something worth their permanent loyalty, or just an opportunity to milk?
We are nerfed until we fix this.
One severely underdi