Summary
Senator Bernie Sanders criticized Elon Musk over his support for the H-1B visa program, calling it a tool for corporations to replace good-paying American jobs with lower-wage foreign labor.
Sanders cited data showing U.S. companies laid off 85,000 American workers between 2022 and 2023 while hiring 34,000 H-1B visa holders, arguing this undermines U.S. competitiveness.
Musk, who credits the visa program for his success, defended it, stating he’s ready to “go to war” over the issue.
The debate has divided MAGA conservatives, exposing rifts within Trump’s coalition.
Put a hold on that popcorn. It’s not a civil war. Elon and Trump are in agreement. What’s happening is some MAGA supporters are going through the five stages of grief. They seem to be somewhere around anger and bargaining. Trump conned his supporters like he conned his employees before them. Now Trump supporters are working their way to accepting Trump was always going to enrich himself and billionaires at their expense.
Now would be a good time to start pulling people away from MAGA. People need an alternative. Taking the wealth of billionaires as well as the source of their wealth would be a good start. Not to mention systemic change to our government’s institutions.
I don’t know a single maga who has the slightest chance at being turned. All the magas in my life are just people who I know are either 1) Willfully ignorant or 2) Hateful.
What I’m pulling them away from is any relationship with me and my family.
The same is pretty much true with my family as well. However thanks to the internet we have access to a larger subset of people than just our families.
Fair, and I appreciate the wisdom of both your original comment and this reply.
Nonetheless, after 4 to 8 years of trying to convince magas that they are victims of a grifter and members of a cult, I feel pessimistic about the number of peelable magas out there, my ability to do any peeling, and frankly the depth of motivation I feel to continue banging my head against the wall.
How about MANS.
Make America Not Suck.
Their whole shtick would jive with a thing called MANS too.
That’s the thing. It’s not enough to only be against something, although we still need to do that too. We have to be for something. We should definitely pick things we would be happy with too.
Thinking back to school, I had an ethics teacher ask the class what we thought the meaning of life is. The consensus from the class was whatever we believe. Then our teacher asked a follow up, in that case, what do we believe it means. No one had an answer.
We need to decide what we believe is important to us, what we value, and then figure out the most useful strategy to making that reality. We want to dismantle hierarchies, but that means thinking about what our lives would be without those hierarchies.
Right now, people are being told to imagine a world without certain groups of people, on the false promise that the elimination of people will improve their lives. We need to get people to imagine a world without certain classes of people. The elimination of class will give us economic freedom so that we will have the means to improve our lives.
You hit the nail on the head right there. It always boils down to focusing large groups of people against something, and for something, and often that something is people.
We need to fix the core concept of being against people. I actually like the concept of H1-B for example, it gives people in worse economic standing a leg-up.
However, setting up a system to game domestic work against foreign work, with the main focus being allowing the corpos to lie, and not pay fair wages, in exchange for slave labor isn’t a system.
It isn’t a system we should want to continue anyway. Immigration should be an opportunity for equality, not indentured servitude.
Good point. Here’s my pitch - Reboot America. Let’s turn it off and on again
Dismiss everyone. Hand out free food from strategic reserves, put a hold on all utility shutoffs and evictions, maybe cut some checks for people - let’s take some time, put everything on life support, and unfuck the system
How? Bottom up. Organize, take the local and state elections, call a constitutional convention. Let’s use the second to last option, the ripcord built into the Constitution for exactly this sort of situation
I don’t think it could happen fast enough to really matter, but I think it would get people moving in the right direction, and in the meantime apply pressure with a compelling but nonviolent threat