Politics and immigration

I'm sure, but I also think-- I mean, I wanna take the steel man argument here. I do think that it, this can turn ugly, right? Is it possible for some of these things to just veer into overt racism that isn't founded in anything else but a hatred of other people? Yeah, that could happen. But that risk does not negate the need to have a discussion about the makeup of your country and what your immigration policy should be like. And I-- what I also find so funny is, especially in Europe, it's so kind of myopic that this discussion about whether Europeans should have a right to self- determination about what their countries look like, that standard seems to only apply there. No one is trying to tell the Japanese, "Hey, you, you're too Japanese." Like whatever, it's 98%, I think, in Tokyo that's, um--... Ethnic Japanese, right? Like, is anyone trying to tell the Japanese that their Tokyo would be a much better country if, if they were down to London levels of ethnic Japanese, that it was, whatever, 37%? I don't think so. So there's this weird almost self-loathing, in my opinion, I mean uh, Gad calls it suicidal empathy--... that permeates this stuff to a degree that I still haven't fully unpacked. Like, where is this coming from? Why is it that way? But regardless, I just noticed, hey, London looks different. I preferred the old London, as I would say I preferred the neighborhood that I grew up in in Copenhagen, how it looked in the '80s.

Like I-- I totally get how you can then jump five leaps and go like, "Okay, well-" That's racist. And I also, I don't care anymore. Like, this is a fair discussion to have. Countries and peoples have a right to set an immigration policy, and this notion that we shouldn't have any borders or, or even worse than that, it's all just a blank slate, that all peoples are just the same, and we can take people from one place of the earth and we can place them in another place on the earth and everything's just gonna work out hunky-dory. Empirically not true. Europe has been running that experiment since the '80s. It hasn't panned out well, and now there are forces in Europe who wanna undo that experiment, who want to end mass immigration as it's been run so far. And I happen to believe, and so do a majority of Danes and a bunch of other peoples that like, "Do you know what? Yeah, it hasn't been working how we've been doing it. We gotta make some changes." And I don't think that means, again, zero immigration. Again, I'm an immigrant. I think US, generally speaking, has benefited tremendously from immigration, but that's the kind of sleight of hand. Immigration depends greatly on who immigrates. And a country benefits when the people who immigrate are net contributors to the society, and in most cases, that they assimilate with the local culture.

If you come to Denmark and you wanna become a Dane, and you put in all the effort, and you contribute to so- society, I think most Danes would be quite happy to allow that in a reasonable number. If you come to Denmark and you don't wanna assimilate, and you are a net drain on society, and you live in a parallel society, it's also fair for Danes to say like, "Uh, let's stop doing that."

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And then also, American culture is very different. This is a point I did not fully appreciate until living both places extensively. America has a culture of optional assimilation, where it is much easier and then much more condoned for someone coming from Denmark or Ukraine or wherever, come to America, buy into the American set of values and norms and culture, and then be able to be respected as Americans by other Americans. This is what's so funny to me when there's discussion like, "America is such a racist country." I'm like, "Have you ever been anywhere? Do you know what other countries are like?" Like, if you think America is the most racist country, you are simply misinformed. I mean, we're dealing with that, with time we've spent in Denmark. My wife is American of Scandinavian heritage-... but multiple generations in the US. Very difficult. Very difficult-... as a blonde, blue-eyed woman who's put in all sorts of efforts of learning the language and doing everything, still very, very difficult to assimilate to Danish culture. In a way where if that had been the other way around and she had been Danish and moving to the US, it would not have been that difficult at all. And this was the other thing. I mean, living in a country like Denmark with a, an American wife who is of Scandinavian heritage and has put in all the effort, and still realizing, man, assimilation is incredibly difficult, even when you're 97% there all the way.

Holy smokes, must it be almost impossible if you come from a completely foreign culture-... and foreign norms and the rest of it. And of course, that's what the stats I just quoted bear out, that the more dissimilar the culture is and the further it is the less likely to be successful.