I've had Bulgarian family end up all over. I have a cousin in a town in Denmark. He and his wife don't have friends, which he doesn't mind cause he's a nerd, but his wife is miserable from loneliness. People are just very cold to them. An uncle ended up in England around the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, and same thing. I don't know, the US has its problems at the people level, obviously, but I know when we came to LA and my mom got a job at a travel agency she immediately had like 100 hilarious gay friends and women friends. *major caveat obviously there ALWAYS major exceptions but there's a reason people around the world love Americans as people despite our government's best efforts.
I have really appreciated your insights into Bulgaria. I think you're right about Western Europe, or at least the UK. I worry that you overestimate American receptiveness toward immigrants and asylum-seekers.
There's a good side and a dark side. The good side comes out when neighbors have personal or community connections to immigrants, as in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, PA. In the very blue city of Nashville, where I live, we celebrate our large immigrant population, which includes the largest Kurdish community outside of Kurdistan. The "good side" was exemplified when Trump's ICE agents showed up at an immigrant family's house and tried to detain a father and son as they got in their van to head to work. The neighbors formed a human chain around the van and would not let ICE past them. Local police arrived and refused to help the ICE agents, who eventually left. The neighbors then moved the father and son to a safe location.
But the bad side comes out when Americans are presented with immigrants as a depersonalized abstraction. It's a nasty streak in our history going back to the wave of Irish immigration in the 1840s, when a nativist party arose that was commonly called the "Know-Nothings" (a good fit for today's MAGA, too). Trump and Vance clearly decided to push all their chips in on the anti-immigrant strategy. I think it's no coincidence that this is the moment the polls showed Trump gaining some momentum after two months of struggle. MAGA is betting on hate and racism, and there's a pretty good chance that it's a winning strategy. Maybe they're not yet burning buildings where asylum-seekers live. But maybe that's also just a matter of time. It's definitely part of our national character.
I love Nashville and you natives will not shame me about loving Lower Broad as much as a drunk bridesmaid!
I agree with everything you say. Both anecdotes and studies show that people love their immigrant neighbors. It's criminal politicians and the criminal mainstream media that stir up fears of immigrants in the abstract that come here to take your stuff and rape your women.
This is universal. I was talking to my friend here in Sofia about attitudes towards refugees. Basically younger people are a bit more liberal, older more conservative.
But then she was like, "My dad is against the refugees [abstract] but he took in a refugee family and gave them a free place to live until they got on their feet." So, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
An elderly friend of mine who escaped the holocaust as a child and became a Vermont leftie once told me, "I only have one prejudice. Europeans."
I've had Bulgarian family end up all over. I have a cousin in a town in Denmark. He and his wife don't have friends, which he doesn't mind cause he's a nerd, but his wife is miserable from loneliness. People are just very cold to them. An uncle ended up in England around the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, and same thing. I don't know, the US has its problems at the people level, obviously, but I know when we came to LA and my mom got a job at a travel agency she immediately had like 100 hilarious gay friends and women friends. *major caveat obviously there ALWAYS major exceptions but there's a reason people around the world love Americans as people despite our government's best efforts.
I have really appreciated your insights into Bulgaria. I think you're right about Western Europe, or at least the UK. I worry that you overestimate American receptiveness toward immigrants and asylum-seekers.
There's a good side and a dark side. The good side comes out when neighbors have personal or community connections to immigrants, as in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, PA. In the very blue city of Nashville, where I live, we celebrate our large immigrant population, which includes the largest Kurdish community outside of Kurdistan. The "good side" was exemplified when Trump's ICE agents showed up at an immigrant family's house and tried to detain a father and son as they got in their van to head to work. The neighbors formed a human chain around the van and would not let ICE past them. Local police arrived and refused to help the ICE agents, who eventually left. The neighbors then moved the father and son to a safe location.
But the bad side comes out when Americans are presented with immigrants as a depersonalized abstraction. It's a nasty streak in our history going back to the wave of Irish immigration in the 1840s, when a nativist party arose that was commonly called the "Know-Nothings" (a good fit for today's MAGA, too). Trump and Vance clearly decided to push all their chips in on the anti-immigrant strategy. I think it's no coincidence that this is the moment the polls showed Trump gaining some momentum after two months of struggle. MAGA is betting on hate and racism, and there's a pretty good chance that it's a winning strategy. Maybe they're not yet burning buildings where asylum-seekers live. But maybe that's also just a matter of time. It's definitely part of our national character.
I love Nashville and you natives will not shame me about loving Lower Broad as much as a drunk bridesmaid!
I agree with everything you say. Both anecdotes and studies show that people love their immigrant neighbors. It's criminal politicians and the criminal mainstream media that stir up fears of immigrants in the abstract that come here to take your stuff and rape your women.
This is universal. I was talking to my friend here in Sofia about attitudes towards refugees. Basically younger people are a bit more liberal, older more conservative.
But then she was like, "My dad is against the refugees [abstract] but he took in a refugee family and gave them a free place to live until they got on their feet." So, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The fact that you think AfD are fascists betrays your ignorance.