05-14-2017, 08:49 AM
(05-14-2017, 06:03 AM)Mikebert Wrote:(05-13-2017, 05:46 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, the antiimmigrant sentiment is economic, not social.
Only partially. The main thrust is cultural. This is particularly salient in Europe where the immigrants are from a very different culture and the host nations have less experience in assimilating immigrants. But its true here too. Trump crafted his campaign to emphasize immigrants as bad people, the dregs of their societies that their home countries were foisting on us, or even as terrorist agents bent on our destruction. In contrast, Trump's anti-trade message was purely economic. His campaign rallies showed it was his immigrant message and not his trade message that resonated. The campaign chant was Build the Wall, not Shut China Out. Furthermore, the wall would have zero effect on the net inflow of illegal immigrants, which were no longer coming from the South, but instead people from the Old World who were overstaying their visas. Trump never addressed the main source of illegal immigrant inflow, nor mentioned the only effective policy that would stop them. He would have had to do this if his immigrant message was about economics as opposed to "others" mixing in with us and diluting traditional American culture. If the message is economic, it would be the immigrants who were closest to us in culture and work habits (Europeans, White Cubans, East Asians and South Asians) who pose the greatest economic threat, as opposed to Islamic, Black or Latino immigrants who have the greatest perceived cultural threat to "core" Americans.
Net immigration from Mexico is basically zero as former immigrants from Mexico are often retiring in Mexico because of a lower cost of living, especially in medical costs. So figure that many Mexican-Americans can retire in California, where real-estate prices are terribly inflated, sell the little bungalow for an inflated price, and return to Mexico and live like aristocrats. The climatic difference in some parts of Mexico from California is that the rains come in the summer (Mexico) instead of the winter (California). The illegal immigrants of Latin-American origin are from Central America, often from places made into hells of violence because of the influence of large amounts of blood money from American addicts buying illegal drugs.
In any event, the Latin-American immigrants have heavily assimilated into American life... although they could often assimilate Americans not of Latino origin into their world. Paradoxically, the ones that look least white are often the ones who most assimilate into American culture. To people of Maya origin, Anglo culture is much more benign and promising than the Spanish culture of brutal elites in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The success of South Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian immigrants often reflects how little they have assimilated into American life. Rejecting the anti-intellectual populism so pervasive in American? If I were married to and had children of a wife of any of those origins, I would want my kids to have the respect for learning more characteristic of Korea than of Kansas or Kentucky. (If anyone wants to know -- it is white people who use the most illegal drugs, use the worst illegal drugs, and get away with drug use to a greater extent before they do more damage to themselves and their kids. D@mned meth!
As usual, Donald Trump blames people instead of trends. The factory jobs and even mining jobs have disappeared because of automation. Much of our economic distress results by having a population too large (and it would not matter what the ethnic mix were) to make life inexpensive enough. It is arguable that for many Americans, economic rent (payoffs to the 'right people' for the privilege of living in their midst) is a bigger part of their cost of living than food, fuel, or government spending. Life was much less stressful when real estate was cheap even in California. Ask yourself how Donald Trump got rich, and you will see much of the problem.
As pointed out in another thread, Donald Trump is a hero to rural folk for fleecing the urban middle class, impoverishing them with exorbitant rents.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
