America’s in the middle of another of spasmodic crackdown on the free speech like McCarythism or the Red Scare. In this case so that Israel can commit genocide because a controlling number of American elites are scared of Israel, in many cases most likely because Israel has proof they’re baby-fuckers. (Can you say “Epstein”?)
The slightly less depraved ones are just scared of AIPAC funding their opponents. Others genuinely love the idea of mass murder, and probably have screenshots of dead Palestinians and Israeli soldiers wearing Palestinian women’s underwear saved for times when their palms get sweaty and they started breathing fast.
But, let’s bring this back to the more usual themes of this blog. There’s another interesting news story: it seems there’s a bill proposed to ban all Chinese students from studying in America.
Sweeeeet.
You know one of the main reasons why the US took the tech lead so decisively before and after World War II? A massive influx of European scientists and intelligentista, many Jewish, but plenty not. The smartest people in the world disproportionately wanted to live in America.
This continued for generations: you’d be some other nation, you’d train up smart people, educate them, and the ungrateful fucks would go to the US to finish their education, then stay in America. Endlessly frustrating for everyone but America.
So, of course, current American elites, scratching under their armpits, hooting about foreigners, grunting out “Uhmerika, grate” have decided to add to their broad attack on research, brains, intelligence, universities, teachers and books by banning even more smart people coming from other countries.
They will glare at you and tell you it’s “so them Chinese fellers can’t learn our secrets.”
Weird thing, last survey I saw had the Chinese leading in 89% of tech fields, up from 80% and there are more top Chinese AI researchers working in America than American AI researchers.
So, if you go to America you can’t say “mass murder is bad”, and no one can protect you from the government’s thugs if you do, but, fortunately for some, soon you won’t be able to study in the US, so hey, it’ll be a moot point if you’re lucky enough to be Chinese.
American universities are only massively dependent on foreign students and Americans, scared of catastrophic, life long student loan debt increasingly don’t want to to go to university, so I’m sure this won’t hurt America at all. Who needs scientists, engineers, professors, intellectuals, and all them fancy folks who think they’re better than MAGA chuds? I hear some of them academic types say evil worlds like sexism and racism and nasty phrases like settler colonialism, CIS, justice, fairness, genocide and so on.
Yup. Ban ’em or make ’em terrified. Don’t give academics any freedom, they think bad thoughts about how killing brown people might be wrong or that women might be worth something when they aren’t cooking or spreading their legs. They might say “abortion isn’t always evil” or suggest that God isn’t real or something.
Anyway, I’m pleased to notice that America is 110% (as an American manager or coach would say) dedicated to driving itself into the dirt and ensuring China buries it there.
Jefferson Hamilton
I can understand the glee to a point, but should you really be celebrating? If your neighbor is seemingly hell-bent on turning his property into a total shithole and own a ton of guns, is this good news for you?
someofparts
So I have a silly question this morning for anyone lucky enough to live outside of this armpit of a country. Can you comfortably talk to the people you meet going about your ordinary business day to day?
I ask this because I cannot. I have had to train myself to always be afraid to speak naturally to people I meet IRL. If I still had to go to a job site anywhere I would probably be addicted to sedatives by now. If you can still speak to the people around you without fear, congratulations. Compared to this, living in a place where the language is unfamiliar would be comfortable
Ian Welsh
Which is why, in most cases, I write something like “if we can avoid a war/if the US doesn’t invade.”
The problem is that to me and most other foreigners, the US looks like it’s gone from “barely trained pit bull” to “rabies”
And that means the faster it crashes, the safer. Assuming you can avoid being bitten during the decline, of course.
The other issue is that I consider the decline inevitable, so the faster, the better. (I have since about 2009. Before then I actually worked to try and stop the decline and turn the US to a better path. But Obama decided he’d rather be part of the club than the next FDR, so…)
Ian Welsh
I note, also, that I’ll probably never visit the US again. Even if I wanted to, which I might as I have friends who live there, it wouldn’t be safe for me given my anti-genocide writing. And given my health, well, I dunno if I’d survive being stuck in some immigration holding pen for a few months.
edwin
When the Toronto BlueJays won the world cup in 1992 the comments in Toronto was “Our Americans are better than your Americans.” The more things change the more they remain the same – often with a twist.
You would think that Chinese dominance in almost all areas of science, and Russian dominance in all things missiles would trigger another Sputnik like crisis in American education.
You’d be wrong. Donald Trump looks carefully at the situation and says “Hold my beer.”
Ian Welsh
I was in Toronto during the 93 Blue Jays World Cup. Torontonians went crazy. Haven’t seen that big a party since then.
bruce wilder
Ian caricatures this as if powerful, globalist elites are driving these America First impulses because they are philistines with working-class racial prejudices. It is a very confused take.
There are cross-currents, but fundamentally the kind of people who feel patriotic solidarity with the mass of the American people are barely participants. The preferences of the 90% in any direction are of no account in this process.
The middling elites — the credentialed parasites of the PMC that make up the impotent resistance like that Columbia U professor — do not resemble Ian’s troglodytes, but they have been morally worthless politically for a long time, their cosmopolitan veneers of no redeeming value. These termites caused the dry rot that is being exposed by demolition. They are diverse and earnest.
Jan Wiklund
Obscurantism is said to have hit the Muslim countries at the time their primacy ended about 1200-1300. Perhaps there is a psychological need to convince oneself that being the smartest is not good at all, if one isn’t.
George Orwell wrote somewhere that the Brits in the 1930s – well, many of the influential at least – thought that intelligence was Bad and the only thing that counted was character (which was left undefined). Probably a consequence of lost technical lead, that too. One doesn’t like to feel inferior.
Astrid
@ someofparts
A couple years back now we talked about finding safe shelters in the storm and my offer then still stands for you. If you find yourself in trouble and can’t get local help, ask Ian for my email address and phone number and I’ll do what I can to help.
It may not be very much (I’m seriously at the “should I put a big chunk of my savings into physical gold in several bank deposit boxes?” stage) but I think at the very least, I could provide some bridge funding and a safe and free place to stay of you need it.
GrimJim
The Rise and Fall of Civilizations
cf. Ibn Khaldun and Others
Savagery
Barbarism
Civilization
Golden Age
Decline
Decadence
Depravity
<<WE ARE HERE — GOOD LUCK!
Collapse
someofparts
Astrid – Good grief, thanks! If things get that bad I will keep it in mind. Meanwhile, nice to see you. I’ve been wondering where you were and missed seeing you in comments.
Ian Welsh
A kind offer Astrid. We’ve had our differences, but you’re a good person.
Eric Anderson
The links above are down on Xitter, Ian.
Imagine that …
Daniel Lynch
Ian said “one of the main reasons why the US took the tech lead so decisively before and after World War II … A massive influx of European scientists and intelligentista,”
I see it differently. Firstly, the U.S. did not necessarily have a tech lead before and during WWII. The tech of Japan, Germany, and even Russia was often better than U.S.. What the U.S. had in those days was capacity. The reason the U.S. had capacity, besides being a big continent with lots of natural resources, was due to New Deal infrastructure, then later New Deal programs to build factories during WWII, similar to how in recent years China’s government has invested heavily in infrastructure and industry.
Then after WWII, the U.S. had a huge competitive advantage because it was the only industrial power that had not been wrecked by the war.
By the 70’s and 80’s, Japan’s tech was once again surpassing the U.S. — and Japan has almost no immigrants. Now China’s tech is surpassing the U.S., and China does not depend on immigrants.
I agree with Ian that the U.S. is in decline, and has been for some time, but it’s certainly not due to a lack of immigrants. Rather, the decline is due to neoliberalism, the American cultural tendency to focus on short term profits rather than the long term, and our rulers’ insistence on wasting resources on foreign wars and foreign meddling instead of investing at home.
NR
And don’t forget the deliberate destruction of our education system, which has been ongoing for decades now.
different clue
While shutting down pro-Palestine ( and other) activism and organizing and such is a short term goal of these TrumpAdmin actions, in the long term it is not the long term goal. The long term goal is to abolish and exterminate-from-existence the “big Blue” universities in non-MAGA parts of the country. From Trump’s own point of view it is spiteful vengeance on all those classes of people who are better, smarter, prettier, more tasteful, etc. than Trump himself is, and who know it. And Trump knows they know it. And he wants to get even. So he works to exterminate all the brain-centers of non-MAGA civilization within the borders of the US.
Its the same reason he took over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He wants to turn it into the Trashy Trump Center for the Underperforming Anti-Arts. And rub his betters’s faces in it.
His greed for revenge is more insatiable than his greed for money or anything else. Spiritual weaklings like liberals are not able to cope with that kind of hatred, or process it, or even admit it exists. So they will think that banning ” unmagamerican” speech on all their personnels’ websites and such will spare the universities from extermination. It will not. Extermination is the goal itself.
Trump’s fondest long-range dream for Columbia University would be to drive it bankrupt, liquidate it, buy the property for pennies on the benjamin, sell every physical thing of value to whoever wants to buy it and take it off the property, and then tear down all the buildings and replace them with a Trump Tower, a Trump golf course, and a Trump City Club.
J.D. Vance and the Gilead National Christianists have a longer range reason for exterminating the universities and tearing them down. J.D. Vance is an anti-Vatican-II Christianazi-adjacent Dark Enlightenment supporter and Dark Ages nostalgiast. He lays out his own vision and reasons in a speech he gave at a Conservative Conference, called ” The Universities are the Enemy”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FR65Cifnhw
( By the way, does bruce wilder consider research scientists and the professorial trainers and mentors of new generations of research scientists and practicing scientists to be “parasites” as he wrote in his comment? Or is this just more elliptical irony which I am too literal and linear to understand?)
Duncan
Our national policies will not be revoked or modified, even for scientists. If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years.
– Adolf Hitler
Mary Bennet
Mr. Welsh, et al, the price of American withdrawal from unwanted world policeman status is, was always going to be, no more easy immigration. I did not vote for the outfit in charge right now, and I don’t like the way they are going about things, but, everything in life and also in world affairs, apparently, comes with a price.
As I see it, the only thing we “owe” to the post WWII Mittel European diaspora is atomic energy, which, IMHO, we could well have done without. Polish refugee, nominally Catholic Brezinski was willing to destabilize all of Central Asia, on our dime, in order to take down the hated Russians, Poland’s historic enemy. Russia is not an enemy of the USA and never has been. Russia was our ally during both world wars, our revolution and supported President Lincoln during our Civil War. German nominally Jewish refugee Kissinger managed to make us hated throughout South America, completely wrecked President Kennedy’s attempts to mend fences and establish good relations in our own hemisphere.
The infamous neo-con faction began as a group of refugees who settled in NYC where they could enjoy the benefits of cheap rent, transportation and free tuition at New York City College, advantages they are quite willing to see the rest of us do without.
Astrid
Thanks for your kind words. I’ve largely moved onto being a full blown Marxist, some might say Stalinist. So active participation here no longer made much sense. I do drop by to read the posts and comments, as I find a number of them to be quite helpful for checking my own thinking.
I’m still mostly living my old life but definitely thinking very hard about a move out of the country in the next couple years, quite possibly to China or at least into the Chinese sphere of influence. I’ve moved most of my money into either short term bonds, gold (ETF, yes, I know, I know), and China centric funds. Next step is to move more of it out of the country.
I also just bought 1 oz of gold from Costco. Very unlike me to keep anything too valuable in the house but I keep thinking that maybe I need to have a few gold bullions on hand in case I need to make a quick escape north. In case anyone is interested and has a Costco membership card, Costco sells precious metals for near and sometimes even slightly below spot price, as was the case today. It’s a better deal as I get 4 percent cash back on the purchase.
Just a thought. Yes, I know, I know.
different clue
( Not strictly relevant, but it shows that AI is a sump into which all the worst brains drain).
Little video of two Amazon robots with the same AI system on board trying to cope with eachother.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1jadp27/two_amazon_robots_with_equal_artificial/
different clue
Here is a story titled:
“B.C. woman detained at U.S. border, sent to Arizona detention facility in chains”
Here is the link.
https://vancouversun.com/news/bc-woman-detained-at-us-border-sent-to-arizona-detention-facility
This kind of thing is part of a general Trump goal of making Canada hate American enough to seal the border and let zero Americans in. The reason for that is that Trump’s Gilead Christianazi sponsors want to turn America into a sealed-off sealed-up
North Korea style National Christianist Gilead Republic.
somecomputerguy
What does competitiveness mean? Foreign trade was a minuscule fraction of U.S. economy for most of the second half of 20th cent.
We were a virtual autarky from the depression through the end of WWII and immediately following, and had tremendous rates of growth.
The larger the country, the less important trade is, and the harder it is for outsiders to break in, just structurally.
I worked at a major public research university for 20 years, and I am fine with banning foreign students completely. Especially graduate students.
Their sole role is; more profitable alternative to the people and society the university was built to serve.
This is particularly problematic with graduate studies, since foreign undergraduates first, don’t finish with crushing student debt and second aren’t paying stupefying graduate tuition out of their own pocket, either.
There are plenty of smart people already living here. I am sure the geniuses who run our universities can figure it out; they’re geniuses. Faculty salaries might have to suffer.
On the other hand, given the existence of foreign universities, and H1-B visas, why bother having universities at all? Particularly, I bet the University of Bangalore can graduate enough Ph.D. economists fill all U.S. job openings forever.
Mark Level
someofparts, I am with you. Very glad to be retired and not have to deal with dumb ShitLibs. Saw one of the most moronic posts I have ever on FBook (which I nearly never use) some days back. It was from a fellow teacher in the region I used to work in who I don’t know directly, probably came up in my possible friends feed and I’d heard the name favorably once or twice. So her post was a giant Map with (evil) Russia as a high plateau, “Ukraine” a steep dam holding the Red (I’d guess) Asiatic waters back but with cracks in it. At the bottom was the sweet, vulnerable garden “Europe” (never did anything bad in history that we know of, amrite?) waiting to be swamped. I immediately unfriended that dumb ShitLib loser (whatever she teaches it certainly isn’t history, probably performative histrionics about race, LGBTQ+ status, etc. . . but the kicker for me was seeing a former girlfriend’s name on there. By the time we broke up I knew she was kind of stupid, but that shocked me. When she was supporting Hills in 2016, 2 years before our relationship while she was finalizing her divorce, I teased her about it, “Oh, you like War Criminals, eh? I didn’t think you were that type.” She had a bit of a masochistic streak, I think that’s why 2 years later things got warm between us. But this kind of spoiled most of the warm feelings I still had for her.
Outside of personal relations, I declined to reply to the post, because anyone tribally siding at this coloring-book level with Ukrainian Banderists and the global Elite is beyond redemption. I could have made obvious points, “Oh, all of you Russophobes have been declaiming for the last 3 years that ‘Ukraine Will Win!’, yet now you believe that ‘Putin’ will pour with his hordes across Europe? So, was Russia a weak autocracy, or a Giant Superpower Threat? Btw, do any of you know that Red Army (Russian) soldiers released the prisoners in Auschwitz? And that the Guards were (a) Germans, and (b) Ukrainians?” Not worth the time or effort to reply. You can’t communicate with the voluntarily blind, deaf and dumb (in both senses.) Living in this country is Hell.
mago
Brain drain, brain rot . . .
Back in the Pleistocene era when I lived down the rocky rutted road from Fred Flinstone a university education was affordable and a student loan was unnecessary.
There were military vets and native Americans, Hispanics and other undesirables such as myself in the lecture halls, mostly studying the humanities. Foreigners all.
Then there was this weird cohort of button downed short haired MBA types—a lot of them, and I was like wtf?
Who are these people?
I got older if not wiser and figured out it’s those fucks that are running the world.
Brain drain and brain dead have been around for a while, just accelerating now like oh so many things.
Warvigilent
As to that reversal of the brain drain. BC is doing something along the lines of letting
American doctors and nurses practice without the same hoops to go through as other medical profession immigrants .
Ian Welsh
Don’t know that I’d go Stalinist, but full Marxist is an entirely defensible option in my opinion. Especially if you’re willing to ditch a bit of the inevitability.
I’ve been telling people China’s a good option: just hard for most people to emigrate to, both legally and because of language issue. I’ve become certain that, at the least, I need to learn Mandarin. China is the future, and it’s where the future happens.