I think we should be careful of writing off this sea change as simple professional influence campaigns. That kind of thinking is just what got Trump to the Whitehouse, and is currently getting the immigrants rounded up.
Things that didn't seem likely to have broad support previously, now are seen as acceptable. In the 90's no one could envision rounding up immigrants. No one could envision uploading an ID card to use ICQ. No one could envision the concept of DE-naturalization or getting rid of birthright citizenship.
Today, in the US for instance, there are entire new generations of people alive. And many, many people who were alive in the 90's are gone. Well these new people very much can envision these things. And they seem to have stocked the Supreme Court to make all these kinds of things a reality.
All because the rest of us keep dismissing all of this as just harmless extreme positions that no one in society really supports. We have to start fighting things like this with more than, "It's not real."
You don’t think the current admin uses influence campaigns? They are called “influence” campaigns for a reason; they are intended to shape both beliefs and behaviors.
Things that have broad support now may have that support primarily because of longstanding influence campaigns.
Both the widespread growth in smoking, and its later drop in popularity, are often credited to determined influence campaigns. You are not immune to propaganda!
>In the 90's no one could envision rounding up immigrants.
Both Clinton and Obama deported way more people than Trump.
Obama wasn't around in the 90's.
And Clinton only deported 2 million across his entire 8 years in office. With a laser focus on convicted criminals as part of a war on drugs. (Now the efficacy of the old "War on Drugs" can be argued, but the numbers can't. We have the records.)
I think you're conflating the number of "returns", defined in the 90's as people who were not allowed to enter at the border; and "deportations", defined in the 90's as people who were in the US, and then we put on a plane back out of the US. IE - "Returns" were people who showed up at the border, sea port, airport or border checkpoint; asked to get in, and we said no. Basically, the nice people.
What you mean is that Clinton simply didn't let anyone into the country. This is true. (Again, we have the records. Clinton refused entry to the US more than any president in US history.) He didn't, however, round up immigrants living in the US on this scale and deport them like we're seeing today. People would never have allowed for that.
To put numbers on it, Trump is on year 5, and has already processed more formal removal orders than Clinton did by year 8. Not only that, voluntary removals were near non-existent under Clinton in the 90's. Today, for just this year alone, they sit at around 1.5 million.
> Both Clinton and Obama deported way more people than Trump.
You are correct. Further, I suggest that Democrats and Democrat-controlled media cultivate a delusional worldview which allows their supporters to ignore the right-wing brutality consistently and continually imposed by Democrat leaders.
How do you feel about the second Trump admin's nationwide, made-for-TV DHS/ICE siege?
Ineffective. Too much noise, too little removals.
Do you think Trump's first term was a failure because he didn't deport as many people as Obama?
Trump's first term was a total failure for many reasons. He didn't implement nothing of his agenda successfully.
If one feels anything about it at all, it's a sign they're taking the Made-for-TV movie seriously.
Never take TV seriously.
The key mistake is even watching it in the first place.
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you're misinformed." - Mark Twain
> "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you're misinformed." - Mark Twain
I love the quote, thanks for sharing.
Here is a more extended quote from Jefferson on the same subject:
“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, ‘by restraining it to true facts and sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers.
It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, etc., etc.; but no details can be relied on.
I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.”
- Thomas Jefferson
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