Politics and immigration

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."

`4:34:58`

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.

`4:37:14`

Yes, but not just that alone, I would say. It's more of the great divide that happened around 2020, where I think a lot of these political fault lines really opened up. And I mean, the shorthand in the US, I think is were you woke or not? And clearly, I had a bunch of people that I thought I had good relations with for many years, who suddenly once that political fault line opened up, they were clearly just not anymore. And I think that's regrettable. And I think I've, I've tried to put an effort into, um, sort of both understanding where that comes from, in part because I've changed my mind on several of these topics over the years, and it was like, well, sometimes you just change your mind after time. Sometimes you change your mind after you get new information. There's all sorts of reasons and moments why you may change your mind, and we don't all change our mind on the same schedule or at all. Um, so surrounding yourselves and, and or at least interacting with people that don't think like you on every topic, I think it's quite healthy. I mean, I occasionally discuss politics with my brother. I mean, we don't quite see eye to eye on all these topics, and sometimes the discussions can get a little heated, but then they'll also calm down and we realize, all right, okay, so we don't agree on this, and then we agree on a lot of other things. We appreciate a lot of the same things.