Editing Openai/6962ca00-cfa0-800a-ac62-bd84f6c201e0 (section)

==== You are not wrong to apply their arguments against them. The reason it feels futile is that the argument is being made at the wrong level. ====

This is not a debate about:
* Welfare fraud
* Immigration policy
* Meritocracy in theory

It is a struggle over who gets to feel legitimate without having to change.

Until that question is confronted honestly, immigration will remain a proxy battlefield—and self-improvement will continue to be preached as a cudgel rather than practiced as a discipline.

If you want, we can push further into:
* Why American conservatism moralizes failure while excusing its own
* Why status loss produces authoritarian reflexes rather than class politics
* Or why the U.S. is uniquely bad at building cross-class coalitions compared to Europe