'How to glide into fascism,' featuring Democrats, Republicans, and our dumb media.
How we went from 2016 to 2020 Trump.
You’re not supposed to pontificate about History before it’s history but here I go: the defining phenomenon of the first half of the 21st century is that Western powers create refugee crisis after refugee crisis with their endless wars—then go, “Sorry, border’s closed.” (I count the drug war in this formulation).
The resulting tension—people don’t stop coming when they have no other choice—wrecks the internal politics of Western countries. Asylum seekers have to go somewhere. Almost all want to go to America, with Western Europe a close second. We could create a system where this is easy instead of impossible; a system where instead of spending untold billions on a vast system of policing and incarceration, border patrol does a basic background check to vet criminals.
How politically salient would illegal migration be for conservatives if they didn’t have images of tired, dirty people massing at the border? What, Fox is going to send Jesse Waters to a Venezualan restaurant? “America can’t afford more cuisine with flavor in it!” Instead, you have the visual gut punch of tired people slogging relentlessly through rivers of mud like they’re in a fucking zombie movie. Add to that the use of delightful words like “invasion” by Republicans and the less inhumane but also literally inhuman media tick comparing them to extreme weather events (flood, etc).
Of course Americans are going to be concerned about “illegal immigration” and have the issue guide their behavior at the polls. Even though I bet not a single random man on the street interview would yield an answer if you were to ask, “How has an asylum seeker negatively impacted you, personally?”
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Yet liberals embrace the framing of right-wing dipshits: that an influx of brave, industrious people who love America present an existential crisis. Some, like Eric Adams, actively promote Fox News talking points.
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