The very recklessness and brazenness of the Bush amnesty/guest-worker proposal makes me think that there may well be something to what Steve Sailer says over at VDare today. The electoral calculus of Karl Rove is not enough to explain this. Something deeper is at work, and to see it we need to look at the president himself. What sets his family apart from other major actors on the American political scene is its very close links to Mexico’s elite, many of whom are thoroughly corrupt. Looked at that way, it is not surprising that the Bushes would leverage (forgive the Wall Street neologism) that off-shore power base for their political advantage. HRS

Is Bush that inconceivably cynical? Or is he messianic? Or is he, as the liberals like to think, just plain Stupid? Or is he parts of all three?

I can’t read him.

My hunch is a combination of #2 and #3 on Shrewsbury’s list. #1 may be present too, but I think it is largely unconscious. HRS

It seems to me that there are really two questions here — why Bush acts the way he does, and why the Administration is not obviously disunited on this issue and so many Republicans back him. My impression is that Bush is genuinely stupid. This is not only based on his public demeanor. People I know through relatives by marriage met Bush while he was still governor of Texas were quite disconcerted by his stupidity. Moreover his aides seemed quite anxious to protect him from having to respond to even the simplest question. My answer to the second question does not entirely satisfy me. I have no doubt that many Republicans are mortally scared of appearing racist or have been partway brainwashed by the liberals. Others are simply short-sightedly greedy or have no economic policy other than appeasing “business” (that is, the loudest or most fashionable element of the business community.) I cannot, however, explain Rove and others’ crazy calculations of political gain.

Concerning the extraordinary difficult of reading Bush, here are two previous attempts to figure him out, though in relation to a different subject, his Mideast policy:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001515.html

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001738.html

I find all this extraordinary interest in Bush mental state is silly at best, distracting at worse.

We should be discussing ways to make useful contribution to a) defeating Bush proposal, b) defeating Repubs supporting Bush proposal (remember xSenator Abraham?), c) sending a very strong signal to Bush and Repub establishment, up to and including Bushes defeat in November, d) replacing Repub establishment that is whoring for more immigration.

Michael Savage is on radio right now calling for Bush impeachment for his sellout to Vinchi Fox.

mik’s chastisement is well taken. However, it’s natural that people want to understand what the leader of their country is up to and why. And with Bush this is unusually difficult.

I’ll reiterate that I believe Bush to be intellectually shallow (not to be confused with stupid) and perfectly straight-talking. If you want to know what he really thinks - the complete extent of what he really thinks - then just pay attention to what he actually says. He’ll be happy if the farthest extent of what he says is achieved, but he expects that reality will end up at some compromise that makes progress toward his goals but doesn’t fully achieve him. He likes Mexicans and thinks they are a positive addition to America because he has Mexican relatives; full stop, don’t go looking for any more intellectual subtlety or cultural awareness. Anyone who thinks cousin Martino isn’t a good American, and that his relatives in Mexico aren’t just as good, must have a face that looks like the wrong end of a horse.

He’s an Ivy League C student: they aren’t that hard to figure out. They aren’t dumb — just shallow enough and lazy enough that dissembling is too much effort. VFR commenters seem to be looking for a philosophical or cultural depth that you will not find in the type. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that he loses sleep at night over the sorts of things we do.

The one time I actually met him (though I was in a group and didn’t shake his hand) he was among a crowd of corporate CEOs and such; and he was perfectly, completely at home. I expect he thinks we and our VFR ilk - to the extent he has any awareness of the landscape beyond Pat Buchanan at all - are a bunch of backward horses-asses, though he smart enough not to say so in public.

Again, it isn’t stupidity, it is corporatist shallowness. If you spend any time in corporate boardrooms you’ll recognize it in an instant. CEOs and board members aren’t stupid; many are razor-sharp. Its just that there is no “there” there; the corporate world is pretty much all there is, and everything else revolves around a game of convincing pain-in-the-butt employees and team members to get with the programme as much as they are capable of doing, and outfoxing competitors.

As for the rest of the Republicans who may not fit that stereotype, in my opinion most do indeed think that the backward era of racist politics is over; that race has no objective consequences of any import that would imply discrimination in politics, and that only the morally stunted would act as if it does. As Mr. Auster says they have no principled basis from which to oppose open borders, because opposing open borders requires the acknowledgement that race and indiginous blood matter - objectively matter. The remnant - say the John Derbyshire’s of the world - are just (predictably) dancing the Hegelian Mambo.

I appreciate Mik’s frustration at the relative lack of available practical courses of action, but even a utilitarian like Sun Tzu might have a thing or two to say about understanding the enemy.

Matt’s explanation is very good, but I don’t think it’s sufficient. If Bush were the familiar, common type Matt says he is, then Bush’s behavior would be more consistent. It is not part of the corporatist mindset to engage in the kind of staggering contradictions that Bush repeatedly engages in, several of which I’ve discussed in the past. Also, Bush’s messianic streak, and his contempt for his own political base, would also not seem to fit the mold of the Ivy League “C” student or of the corporate executive as I understand it.

However, I can feel mik’s frustration increasing and I’ll leave off the headshrinking of Bush for a while. :-)

Thanks to Matt for his very useful and insightful post as we try to make sense of this alien mentality.

Now we have adduced four theoretical elements: 1) George Bush, MBA (no “there” there); 2) raw cynicism (perhaps unconscious, as Mr. Sutherland sagely notes); 3) perhaps just a touch of zealous messianism, hmm?; and 4) utter thoughtlessness.

Put them in the blender and whaddaya get?

I don’t know that intellectual or discursive consistency has ever been all that important to the average corporate CEO. Getting where he wants to go today is the main thing, and as (former corporate CEO) Jim Barksdale once said “the main thing is to make sure that the main thing is the main thing.”

Mr. Auster wrote:
“Also, Bush’s messianic streak, and his contempt for his own political base, would also not seem to fit the mold of the Ivy League “C” student or of the corporate executive as I understand it.”

Hmmm. A messianic CEO with contempt for his employees, customers, and shareholders… sounds like the love child of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. :-)

Actually, as I was making that comment about messianism, the thought of Bill (“I look forward to a time when people don’t read books”) Gates passed through my mind as undercutting my point. But I suppressed it, or rather, I failed to pursue it. Fortunately, the same thought didn’t escape Matt. :-)

Two even more messianic CEO’s that fit this bill were Jack Welch and Larry Ellison though they may not have received quite as much newsweekly face time.

Chance from “Being There”.

As I mentioned in another thread, there is no reason to send anyone back after a certain number of years, because they are doing a job “that Americans won’t do.”

Speaking of which, Mark Krikorian’s NRO article a couple of days ago mentioned that cheap labor is a deterrent to innovations and mechanization in agriculture. He went into further details in a live radio talk show in the evening (Lars Larson, who I had previously thought of as mainstream or neocon, was virulently opposed to Bush’s plan and invited Krikorian as a guest.) Here is another deterrent to mechanization, from a research paper at the Center for Immigration Studies:

“Harvest labor productivity must be greatly increased so that production costs can decrease and worker income can increase. This is a key factor that the U.S. Government has been neglecting since 1979, when the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture of that time, Bob Bergland, stated, “I will not put federal money into any project that reduces the need for farm labor.” This policy supported an anti-mechanization movement that had brought a lawsuit against the University of California for using public funds to conduct mechanization research. The Court eventually dismissed all charges, except the need for a public interest representative on the project review committee. However, the Bergland policy has gradually ended the availability of public funding for research and development projects focused on reducing the cost and increasing the labor productivity for harvesting horticultural crops. Today, the USDA has only one poorly funded harvest mechanization project. Higher wages can be paid when workers are much more productive, but since 1979 the Bergland policy also has reduced that opportunity.”

The URL is:

http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/back1200.html

I will try to send email to Tom Tancredo and my own congressman urging that we reverse the policy and fund R&D into mechanization of the harvesting of fruit and vegetable crops that are currently harvested by hand. This will be a way to undercut future arguments about the “necessity” of imported cheap labor. I will post the email later.

The larger point, which transcends agriculture, is that we are encouraging the development of a third-world, labor-intensive economy through our immigration policies.

All hat and no cattle, a Texas saying….Ivins. Also,the MBA is just a loin cloth,otherwise the Emperor has on no clothes.

All hat and no cattle, a Texas saying….Ivins. Also,the MBA is just a loin cloth,otherwise the Emperor has on no clothes.

Mr. Coleman wrote:
“As I mentioned in another thread, there is no reason to send anyone back after a certain number of years, because they are doing a job ‘that Americans won’t do.’”

I may be misinterpreting because I haven’t followed all of the threads closely. I am not entirely sure if Mr. Coleman is speaking ironically here, for example. But I have a comment on the general notion that if an immigrant - legal or illegal - is doing something ‘that American’s won’t do” they ought therefore to be allowed to stay.

Or maybe it isn’t a comment as much as an admission that the statement confuses me. It seems to be a complete nonsequiter. If there is something that American’s quite literally won’t do then why is it taking place in America at all? It seems to me that America is a place where you presumptively find Americans, and that everything that takes place in America of any significance is something being done by Americans. To the extent that is not the case America has become culturally disfunctional; and short-term economics be damned, the situation has to be remedied.

The assertion — a very common one — appears to be that because there is some putative short-term economic reason to keep a particular illegal (or legal for that matter) immigrant around, there cannot be a valid reason of any sort to do otherwise. In attempting to come up with an analogy I was struck that I could use nearly any complete nonsequiter as an analogy.