What really might swing the election to Trump.

It's not just the youth sitting out the election.

Old people are berating young people for not rallying behind Joe Biden. There are theories galore: It’s Chinese indoctrination via TikTok! It’s “decolonization” studies! It’s CRT! All young people are secretly anti-Semites! My theory is that they don’t like children getting blown up and flattened under concrete. Or journalists and doctors getting killed; forced relocation and unimaginable suffering. Did you hear the one about the surgeon who had to operate on his own kid without anesthesia?

Well, the Atlantic’s Tom Nichols thinks young voters should suck it up.

“Young voters, sitting in the car, ready to floor the accelerator over the cliff,” frothed Nichols in response to a poll that showed 70 percent of voters between 18-35 disapprove of how Joe Biden is handling the war in Gaza.

“The real danger is not that they'll vote for Trump, but that they'll stomp off and stay at home. And then when a fascist wins, they'll say "I didn't do it." (Alternate: "I voted for [inane minor no-hoper weirdo candidate"] he added later.

I think it’s fine, to point out emphatically and often, that the other guy is a million times worse. But then you stop there. Because if you’re trying to shame a group of people for this dynamic it should be the Biden administration not the young people disgusted by it.

Also, there’s another reason you might see an actual voter surge for Trump and it’s not coming from Oberlin. On Semafor, Shelby Talcott notes that in 2016 “law and order” and “open borders” weren’t particularly salient issues. I don’t especially recall crime or even the border being a bigger deal than say … gun control or taxes or Obamacare or whatever. Trump made them into the issues.

In fact, in one of the 2015 Republican debates, “crime” is referenced only once — and it’s Trump who brings it up to rail against immigrants. In an exchange that now seems like it’s from the 26th dimension, Jeb Bush says asylum seekers deserve compassion. "They broke the law, but it's not a felony, it's an act of love. It's an act of commitment to your family," he’d previously said.

The moderator asked, “Do you stand by that statement and do you stand by your support for earned legal status?”

To which Bush replied. “I do. I believe that the great majority of people coming here illegally have no other option. They want to provide for their family. But we need to control our border. It's not -- it's our responsibility to pick and choose who comes in.”

To which Trump replied, “The fact is, since then, many killings, murders, crime, drugs pouring across the border, are money going out and the drugs coming in. And I said we need to build a wall, and it has to be built quickly.”

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So Trump managed to craft a narrative casting crime as a big problem and the border as a big problem, and then ingeniously fused the two (totally unrelated issues—immigrants commit less crime than native-born people). Then the entire pundit apparatus just decided that Americans are petrified of crime, always have been, always will be. Countless analyses and polls confirmed the idea that Americans fear nothing more than crime. The spike in violent crime during the pandemic has waned—but the narrative that America is drowning in violent crime has not.

The punditry also decided that Americans are congenitally averse to welcoming asylum seekers. Democrats helped promote this impression by presenting asylum seekers as a catastrophic, intractable problem. Eric Adams was particularly adept at stirring up anti-immigrant hysteria, enacting draconian cuts he claims are necessary to deal with the surge of asylum seekers. The media as always was unhelpful: it’s just the norm for even stolid New York Times to describe asylum seekers as an extreme weather event: a flood, a storm at the border. The right-wing media completes the picture by going with the delightful “invasion”. And so, a recent poll found that 80% of New Yorkers are concerned about asylum seekers. Is this because 80% of New Yorkers have had a negative experience with an asylum seeker in the past 6 months?

As for violent crime, outside of tragically violent enclaves that, in most cities, are confined to deeply under sourced neighborhoods—what percent of Americans have been the victim of a violent crime in the past year? It makes sense for those Americans to worry about crime. But what about the people who are more likely experience violence at the hood of a speeding car?

We’re immersed in a deeply mediated world. Like Matrix levels. And it creates a doom loop of self-fulfilling prophecy. Asylum seekers are a “problem” because all the media we consume assumes this is as natural as breathing air. Everyone is scared of “crime” because all media is telling them to be scared of crime (again, with the exception of the people who actually are at big risk and / or have already experienced it).

The thing about a highly mediated world, where perception of threat is generated on the internet and TV and in political speeches and think pieces and all the other ungodly brain poison we consume, is that it means you can change the narrative and sway public perceptions—as Trump did.

Asylum seekers: they’re brave, hardworking and strong, and when allowed to work, immediately start contributing to the economy. There’s no such thing as “unskilled” labor: do you want someone from Iowa spicing your carne asada or falafel? Crime: It’s frightening. But criminal justice reforms promote public safety longterm. Yet Democrats are firmly wedged in the narrative that you have to balance public safety with justice, as if they’re opposite, rather than complimentary goals.

But Democrats refuse. Instead, they weakly protest that they are, in fact, tough at the border and that they are, in fact, “tough-on-crime.” They threw criminal justice reform under the bus and have left many progressive prosecutors out to dry. They demanded more funding for police with virtually no accountability, lied about bail reform, and promote the ridiculous Ferguson Effect. Republicans just keep repeating that they’re weak on the border and soft on crime.

And so a population told to fear crime and to fear immigrants—by Republicans, Democrats, mainstream media—is drawn to a fascistic strong-man. Wild.

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