You keep using left and liberal like they’re interchangeable when they absolutely aren’t.
In 2016 the left went for Bernie sanders, who had an economic populist platform that spoke to the grievances that came from 2008. The democrats - liberals - kneecapped him and shunned his supporters.
It’s the liberals who took minorities for granted and are now turning on them now that they’re no longer useful. It’s the liberals who thought they could just run on demographics and identity politics alone and not bother with a real platform other than “we’re not trump”. I find it pretty offensive that you lump the mythical “left” in this country with liberals. There’s very few actual leftists and whole lot of liberals who think they’re left because they want to reform capitalism with social democracy instead of overthrow it like it deserves to be.
I’d be considered a somewhat anti immigration leftist, because I work in an industry that undercuts local labor and imports cheaper J1s and H1Bs. During covid, instead of a merit raise of 10-50 cents we got a three dollar + raise because they couldn’t import foreign labor for cheap. Tight immigration used to be a somewhat left wing stance, economic protectionism. Loose immigration just benefits business owners and fucks over labor. Obviously we’re a nation of immigrants and we need immigration but we also need to clamp down hard on businesses who take advantage of cheap labor to fuck over American labor like myself. I hate that the immigration conversation focuses on “illegals” and not on businesses fucking over American labor by hiring cheaper legal and illegal labor instead.
And I think race is overplayed of an issue when it comes to immigration. A large quantity of immigrants coming in are not English speakers, most are Spanish speakers. I’m from NY originally and I’ve been gone for almost a decade living in the whitest state ever and I had to go home to take care of my mom - I heard almost entirely Spanish being spoken many places instead of English. When I grew up it was English 90% of the time and now it’s Spanish probably 40-50% of the time. That’s culturally shocking and it’s fair for English speakers to be irritated by it and feel like they’re being replaced. I have a ton of respect for people who speak more than one language but due to a brain injury I’m not capable of it despite trying. It’s crazy to see how much my hometown changed in the decade I’ve been gone. It’s unrecognizable.
Also it shouldn’t be controversial to say certain places are getting completely overwhelmed by immigrants. Of course the liberals will paint you as a rAcIsT for saying so but look at how hard they lost this election to see how tired people are of their bullshit.
We have a racist history that bleeds into the present day no doubt but not everything is because of race.
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