Laura Ingraham: "The America we know and love doesn't exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don't like … this is related to both illegal and legal immigration" pic.twitter.com/s5G2qIY4W0
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) August 9, 2018
One sees that Laura Ingraham of Fox News laments the demographic changes that have, and will continue, to transform America. Of course she does: she’s a white nationalist, and hopes for a herrenvolk – a sham democracy – favoring her own ilk.
Ingraham bemoans, truly, the transformative power of liberty: the free movement of people, goods, and capital through thousands upon thousands of daily transactions. Through these free & voluntary encounters and exchanges, America has grown more productive and consequently more prosperous.
Those uncomfortable with a more productive society, as Jennifer Rubin observed, are on the wrong side of the divide between Trump vs. an America that works:
On one level, this is hardly surprising since Trump’s message is aimed at Americans who are resentful, feel left behind and are both physically and culturally marginalized. The flip side of this, however, is that Trump either ignores or vilifies urban America, refusing to acknowledge that diversity is part of the formula for their success. And, moreover, the presence of vibrant cities not just on the coasts but also in the heartland suggests Trump’s base would greatly benefit by moving from dead and dying Rust Belt towns to more economically vibrant places. Some of that has already gone on as the population has shifted from the Northeast and upper Midwest to the South and West, but it seems we should not be filling Trump voters with the false hope that coal jobs are coming back, but rather encourage them to be like immigrants — go to where the work is.
Trump fails to understand that immigrants go to places that have work, or at least work better than what they left. Every immigrant who comes is a vote of confidence in America, a bet that there is economic prosperity available at the end of the journey. The same immigrant mentality should be encouraged among native-born Americans.
America does not need to be made great again; she is already a great republic, made so by the ambitious many, both old and new.
Ingraham is right about one thing: the conditions she prefers are gone. Fortunately, they will not be coming back. Trumpism is an extreme-but-futile revanchism, a malevolent attempt to roll back the clock to a lesser time favorable only to Trump’s so-called base. (This base is cocooned and insular, so it overestimates its own strength and underestimates the strength of those in resistance & opposition.)
However long the conflict, the result is assured: every part of Trumpism, and most notably ethnic nativism like Ingraham’s, awaits only the gutter.