America is at war and besieged, but not by some external enemy. The enemy sits in the White House, in Congress, and in many state and local governments.

Donald Trump and the Republican party are waging an all-out war on America on multiple fronts: our democracy and elections, science and reality, the media and facts, the health of Americans, the decency and the fabric of America, and finally with outright violence and their support of domestic terrorism. Given that we are in the midst of the most consequential election of our lifetimes, in this article I’ll focus on their war on democracy and voting rights. 

The War on Our Democracy and Your Right to Vote

It is not surprising that the Donald Trump is willing to do any amount of damage to America in order to maintain his power, given the assaults on America he has already committed:

• Trump has repeatedly insulted US service members, both in the military and intelligence communities. Trump called dead soldiers “losers” and “suckers”, and disparaged John McCain by saying “He’s not a war hero” and “I like people who weren’t captured”. After McCain died in 2018, Trump said “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral”.
• Trump invited a foreign adversary to meddle in the 2016 election, and Russia obliged that same day
• At the same time that Trump coddles dictators, he has alienated our democratically elected allies and led to a massive slide in global opinion about the US

There are so many other examples of Trump narcissistic willingness to debase America’s best virtues (increasing democratic inclusion, multicultural acceptance, and the peaceful transfer of power), and embrace its worst legacies (white supremacy, violence, and xenophobia). This is what you expect from a psychopathic demagogue. What is shocking is the level of complicity shown by a major party.

Why they must cheat to win

Trump and the GOP know they have very little chance of winning a free and fair election where every citizen has the unencumbered right to vote. Their policies of entrenching the power and money interests of the elite few have little hope of resonating with a diverse electorate. Thus, their only hope of winning is via a full-scale assault on our democracy, the integrity of our elections, and their massive voter suppression strategy wherever and however possible. 

Trump and the GOP barely even tries to conceal this anymore. Trump admitted last March: 

“They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again” 

In June Trump was asked what the greatest risk to his re-election was. He answered: 

“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits”

He was referring to the many ongoing Republican-led lawsuits attempting to prevent people from voting.

There are multiple other examples of Republicans admitting that more legal votes cast will be bad for them, and thus they must suppress as much voting as possible.

How they cheat: the Trump/GOP voter suppression playbook

There are three pillars to the Trump/GOP strategy: (1) Suppressing your ability to vote and for your vote to be counted, (2) spreading lies about “voter fraud” to justify this suppression and motivate their base, and (3) using violence and the threat of violence to intimidate voters at the polls and poll-workers who are counting votes. Let’s take these one at a time. 

Legal and extra-legal voter suppression

Republicans are relying on a variety of voter-suppression tactics they’ve been perfecting in recent years, all of which target Democratic leaning voters. These include

• Selectively purging voter rolls 
• Passing very restrictive voter ID laws which disproportionately impact minorities
• Restricting hours and locations where ballots can be cast or dropped off

Trump has added to this classic Republican voter suppression playbook. In May, Trump appointed a major Republican donor, Louis DeJoy, to run the US Postal Service (USPS). He immediately began getting rid of mail-sorting machines and implementing a strategy that was essentially sabotaging the USPS’s ability to deliver ballots on-time. Luckily this created major outrage, and after a threat of legal action Dejoy said on August 18th he’d suspend some of the most egregious efforts. Trump has admitted to blocking funds to the USPS in order to prevent too many people from voting by-mail. 

Last month Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbott made an unprecedented and extreme voter suppression decree allowing for only one drop-off location for ballots per county. This very clearly hurts high population counties that are more Democratic, as well as vulnerable populations that cannot easily make the multi-hour round trip required for some to drop off a ballot 20 or 30 miles away. 

Now, Texas Republicans are trying to throw out over 100,000 legally-cast ballots cast by “drive-in” voting, which was instituted as a COVID safety measure. They are doing so by appealing to “one of the most notoriously partisan conservatives in the federal judiciary”. 

There are so many more examples of similar efforts around the country. In all of them, Republicans are trying to prevent as many people (the “wrong” people) from exercising their constitutional right to vote.  

False claims of voter fraud 

Republicans have long sought to justify such voter suppression measures by falsely claiming that they are preventing “voter fraud”. Trump has stepped this up on the campaign trail and has made numerous baseless claims of voter fraud. Every expert and every serious study of the issue finds that voter fraud is virtually non-existent. As the Brennan Center puts it:

Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare. Yet repeated, false allegations of fraud can make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to participate in elections.

Ironically, one of the few cases of confirmed election fraud was, as you might guess, committed by a Republican operative, in my home state of North Carolina. 

Despite their falseness, these lies do real damage, in particular by sowing confusion among low-information voters. In addition, to Trump’s most ardent true believers these accusations of voter fraud are red meat and motivate them to take aggressive actions to suppress and intimidate voters in the “wrong” neighborhoods. 

Violence, intimidation, and terrorism at the polls

Violence and the threat of violence at polls is sadly as old as this country, and plays a much larger role in our history than many people realize. The KKK and the Jim Crow terror-state in the South was largely about preventing black men from voting, even though they’d legally obtained that right in the 15th Amendment to the Constitution. Unfortunately, these terrorist efforts worked, and led to the virtual elimination of voting by blacks in the south until the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Another important factor was a loophole in the 13th Amendment which, while it ended slavery, also provided a huge exception: 

“… except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…”  

This exception was a major factor in mass incarceration of African Americans and the building of the modern police state. The police have sadly been a consistent source of violence and voter suppression against minorities for a century and a half. Trump has tapped into that tradition and emboldened his supporters among the police to be aggressive and intimidating at the polls. Some cops have already started doing so. 

Trump’s GOP has been planning to send 50,000 aggressive “poll-watchers”  (many of whom are expected to be armed and from right-wing militias) into mostly minority neighborhoods to intimidate and suppress voters. There is a very real risk of election-day violence reminiscent of a third world country. It is alarming that this is the election strategy of a major party in 2020. 

I am quite worried about right-wing mob violence or terrorism directly at Democratic-leaning polling stations on election day, with police often being complicit or turning the other way. This is not to say that all cops are Trump supporters or bad apples, but that the culture and history of policing in many areas lends itself to such violence and voter suppression.

This weekend in Texas a group of armed Trump supporters in multiple pickup trucks threatened and harassed a Biden/Harris campaign bus and rammed into other cars on the freeway. The Biden campaign was forced to cancel an event. Trump then celebrated this illegal armed attack via Twitter and said “I LOVE TEXAS!”. Perhaps we’ve become too accustomed to how low Trump has brought the presidency and this country that a president celebrating an armed attack against a political opponent barely makes the headlines.

If the election is close, expect Trump mobs to vandalize and terrorize poll-workers and polling stations where votes are being counted. This strategy was piloted on a small scale in Florida during the 2000 recount. Expect its full release this year. 

Like every fascist movement, violence lies at the core of Trumpism. Trump has gassed peaceful protesters and clergy on American soil to get a photo op at a church. Trump has sent un-identified secret police to attack and kidnap protesters. Trump has inspired violence and terrorism many times amongst his hysterical hate-filled followers. Most recently, the FBI arrested 6 men preparing to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan, after Trump regularly encouraged right-wing extremist groups to take action and tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN”.

Trump has already told us he will refuse to concede and accept the results of the election if he loses, and will do anything and everything to cast doubt on the result, make up absurd lies, and use whatever power the office of the President has to cling to power. We can also expect that he will continue his long pattern of instigating violence by his supporters aimed at his political enemies. 

What every true American should do to preserve our democracy

VOTE! Voting should not be so hard in a country that celebrates itself as a beacon of democracy. But it can be challenging, due to the many obstacles put in place by Republicans to cement their power. If ever you are going to persevere these obstacles, this is the year. Go out there and vote for Biden/Harris and Democrats up-and-down the ticket. Sadly, there are virtually zero remaining principled Republicans, and a vote for any R is a vote against America and complicity in Trump’s voter suppression and fascism. 

Stay informed and involved. I know it is sometimes hard to keep up with the barrage of awful news, and I don’t expect this assault on our senses to stop anytime before January. But we have to let our voices continue to be heard. Authoritarians love political apathy, since it provides the vacuum for them to consolidate power. 

Donald Trump is truly an evil man and an existential threat to America. We must defeat him and the deeply un-American Republican cowards enabling his hostile takeover of the US of A. 

We recently had an election. It didn’t go the way I’d hoped. Almost everyone I know was devastated. On the night of the election, after leaving a Hillary ‘victory party’, I got home and watched as the unthinkable happened. I was pretty tipsy at this point. I typed out and almost tweeted the following witty commentary: “Congratulations to Vladimir Putin and the KKK on winning the US presidential election tonight“. I’m glad I didn’t press ‘Send’.

Since election night, I’ve been mulling over what to write. Some of the questions bouncing around in my head and some of the answers (not necessarily consistent):

• How did this happen? (How did we elect an unstable megalomaniac?)
  • Trump’s shameless exploitation of fear. I’ve previously written a Color Coded Timeline of Trump’s troubling statements.
  • The post-truth world of Trumpism– his many lies and distortions
  • The fake news engine that propagated so many false news stories. Teens in Macedonia creating fake news sites with fabricated stories to dupe Trump supporters. These were viewed and shared by millions. Two of the many fakes news stories that went viral amongst Trump supporters: “Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for president” and “FBI agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apartment in murder-suicide”
  • Voter suppression efforts of the GOP in NC and elsewhere
  • The globalization of the past several decades has brought greater prosperity overall, but it is more concentrated at the top and regular folks are getting left behind. The Trump movement was a reaction against this.
• What should we do going forward?
  • Give him a chance
  • Fight against the really bad shit
  • Don’t be obstructionist, like the Republicans were with Obama. It’s the country that suffers.
• How bad is this?
  • Maybe it’s not so bad
    • Trump said he wants to do is a massive infrastructure investment. This is long overdue, has broad support, and will do a lot of good if done correctly.
    • He is reaching out to reasonable moderate Republicans (Romney etc)
  • It’s looking bad
    • Appointment of white nationalist Steve Bannon, old school southern bigot Jeff Sessions, and unstable mega-hawk Michael Flynn

But I’m not going to write that post, at least now now. Why? First, it just feels wrong. It’s too easy, too lazy. I feel like I’m missing something fundamental, the big picture. I do think these are important questions to address. However, I think addressing them will be largely pointless unless we also tackle a deeper problem. After all, people who agree with me will probably love it, and Trump supporters will dismiss it as more liberal BS and hogwash.

So what is this blog post about? As the title suggests, it’s about how we talk to people. More generally, how we communicate between our tribes. I think being honest about this will help inform answers to the questions raised above.

“You can’t hate someone whose story you know”

I heard this quote recently while listening to a podcast. I think it is so deep, so true, and so very relevant today.

If we take this quote as truth, then we have an explanation as to why the US population is nearly equally divided into tribes that ‘hate’ each other.  It is because we do not know each other. To know someone you must communicate respectfully with them; you must want to understand them. This is where things break down. This is the original sin of modern politics. This is what we must fix.

I recently broke my self-imposed moratorium on commenting on political issues in social media. It has been an interesting experience, as I have many diverse followers/friends. The first time I did this was when I tweeted support for a beautiful speech that Michelle Obama gave about women’s rights (soon after the Trump Access Hollywood tapes came out). This tweet got linked to my Facebook page, and then a massive free-for-all ensued, with all sorts of ugly statements. I ended up blocking the most extreme ‘trolls’. Not much good came out of the whole episode. People just dug-into their camps and exchanged volleys. It was mostly a waste of time. Several other Facebook posts ended up similarly. But there were some lessons. First, there are many loud and obnoxious people out there who try to prevent any real meaningful discussion by raising the temperature of everyone. Second, I realize that I came to automatically assume the worst of any Trump supporter (or anyone who disagreed with my point), due to the vileness of these most extreme and loud folks. This is just a version of the straw-man argument fallacy, which is deeply ingrained in most political discussion: We immediately associate anybody on the other side with the most extreme and vile elements of their tribe. Even if your are ‘right’ on an issue, you should be able to articulate the opposing views in a fair way. We should be generous in our assumptions about others, not so stingy.

The above quote motivates my optimistic Conjecture of Human Decency:

The vast majority of people are decent and want to do the right thing. If equipped with true facts and knowledge about the world, most people will agree on things. They may quibble about details, but will be on the same side: that of goodness.

This is a bit squishy and untestable, I admit. But it has big implications. For one, it suggests that most Trump voters are NOT racists and mean spirited bad people. Perhaps they disliked his more provocative statements and despised his disgusting sexist video. But they think he’ll be outside the corrupt Washington system and bring needed change, or that he’ll bring economic opportunity back to their communities, or that he’ll defeat the terrorists who are threatening our way of life. Voting for Trump based on these criteria seems quite reasonable. It might be that they are misinformed on some of these issues (a subject for other blog posts), but regardless, they are coming from a good place. Let’s talk about corruption in Washington and whether Trump will reduce it, and economic policy, and the right way to fight terrorism. But let’s not pigeon-hole every Trump supporter as an ignorant racist. That cuts off all possibility of civil discussion. It just widens the gulf between our tribes.

Of course the same goes for Trump supporters views of us liberals/progressives. Speaking for myself, I don’t actually like corruption, or lies, or evil murderous politicians (to take some of the most extreme accusations against Hillary).

Ok sure, sounds nice. Kumbaya and all. But there are just nasty people out there who are not worth communicating with. People beyond hope. Right?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe it’s just a matter of how much effort we are willing to put in.

Befriending the Klan

Consider Daryl Davis, an African American musician who, unbelievably, befriended many KKK members while traveling through the south playing gigs, causing dozens of them to eventually leave the KKK. The Imperial Wizard, Roger Kelly, gave Davis his robes when he quit. This is a great story, and I encourage you read more about it in The Atlantic, or hear the story in this podcast.

How did this too-good-to-be-true miracle happen? According to Davis, he didn’t start communicating with Klansmen with the purpose of befriending them or converting them to non-racists. He just wanted to understand them. He’d been perplexed and fascinated his whole life about why people hated him when they didn’t even know him, just because of the color of his skin. He wanted to know: “Why do you hate me when you know nothing about me?”. He succeeded in getting those answers. In his own words:

The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself. So if you have an adversary with an opposing point of view, give that person a platform. Allow them to air that point of view, regardless of how extreme it may be. And believe me, I’ve heard things so extreme at these rallies they’ll cut you to the bone.

Give them a platform.

You challenge them. But you don’t challenge them rudely or violently. You do it politely and intelligently. And when you do things that way chances are they will reciprocate and give you a platform. So he and I would sit down and listen to one another over a period of time. And the cement that held his ideas together began to get cracks in it. And then it began to crumble. And then it fell apart.

He summarizes the core lesson of all this nicely, if a bit Yoda-like:

The lesson learned is: ignorance breeds fear… If you don’t keep that fear in check, that fear will breed hatred. If you don’t keep hatred in check it will breed destruction.

Surely, if Daryl Davis can find the patience to listen to actual KKK members and learn what really makes them tick, we can find it in ourselves to listen to folks who we might disagree with, but who are almost certainly NOT members of an actual hate group.

I’ll try to boil this down to an almost formula:

Respectful communication
==> true knowledge and understanding of others
==> less ignorance
==> less hate

Converting this to the national political discourse now, we all suffer from some form of ignorance. We are ignorant about the real thoughts, hopes, and dreams of the other side. And this ignorance persists because we don’t know how to talk to each other. We want to score points and be ‘right’. We imagine ourselves heroes of history, standing up to a great menace threatening our way of life.

This stridency and absolute certainty of one’s righteousness rarely leads to good outcomes. And it is ineffective in changing anyone’s mind. Do you think Davis would have converted dozens of Klan members if he started conversations with “You’re a hateful racist and horrible human being”? I think not. Such statements might garner lots of Likes on social media from people who already agree with you, but accomplish nothing other than make you feel good.

Rules of Engagement

I’ll end with my new personal rules for talking to people, particularly those I disagree with. These rules are meant to facilitate respectful communication. The ideal situation is where all parties have their views heard, all parties are open to questioning and updating their views, and folks feel like they’ve gained from the conversation, not scored points. Let’s genuinely try to understand each other.

Take a moment and ask: ‘Am I adding value?’

Being ‘right’ is not enough. How you say it matters. Are you framing your point in a way that can engage folks who don’t already agree with you? If not, then reconsider your approach.

Assume the best intentions of people

We’ve already touched on this, but it is important. They probably did not vote for Hillary because they like corruption. They probably did not vote for Trump because they like racism or sexism.

Avoid echo chambers

Let’s stop talking to ourselves, scoring points, and growing more sure of our righteousness.  Let’s challenge ourselves to talk to people of different tribes and understand them. Start reading those you disagree with. Try to be the contrarian when everyone else agrees and is nodding their heads.

Don’t use tired, loaded words

If you’re a liberal/progressive like me, avoid using these words:

racist, sexist, fascist, bigot

This doesn’t mean you should not stand up against these things, it just means we should be intelligent about how we do it. The Right and Trump supporters are inoculated against these words, and using them capriciously will just get you tuned out.

Meanwhile, if you are a conservative or Trump supporter, avoid using:

libtard, brain dead,  hippy, clever name-plays like ‘HilLIARy’, ‘corrupt Hillary’, etc.

Everyone: Avoid curse words, polemics, and direct insults.

Truly understand the opinions of the ‘other side’

If you think you are right about something, and the other side is wrong, you should at least have an accurate understand of the other side’s opinions. This is the spirit behind the Ideological Turing test. Can you explain the views of your opponent in a way that an impartial observer would not be able to tell the difference between you and a true believer? If not, you probably don’t have an accurate understanding of your opponent.

I originally was going to write a blog with the full timeline of Trump’s political career and campaign, but that became too exhausting (and well, I ran out of time), so I settled on doing just the first year of his campaign. Most of the following was condensed from the Daily Kos timeline, though I had to leave a LOT of stuff out. I added color-coded commentary, labeling his statements with the following categories:

Racist    Sexist    Lies    Anti-American    Ignorance   

Anti-Science    Pro-Violence  Authoritarian

Narcissistic Megalomaniac   Random Nonsense

It’s fun to see all the different combinations of colors he can achieve in one statement! Note that because I chose just one year (June ’15 – June ’16), we miss all the gems from the past few months, like him bragging about sexual assault and what-not.

According to the Pew Research Center, 70% of Americans view immigration as a “very important” issue in this election.

This immigration problem is perhaps the foundational issue Donald Trump’s campaign. He famously started his campaign by railing against Mexican immigrants as being criminals, rapists, and drug dealers. He later made big waves by calling for a halt to immigration of Muslims to the U.S., and for proposing a task force to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. And of course there’s Trump’s famous wall, which Mexico is going to pay for.

These are drastic measures. But maybe they are justified because of this terrible problem we are facing, right?

This is the perfect parable for Trump’s campaign as a whole. As I’ll argue below, the entire narrative around Trump’s immigration policy, and that of his supporters, is based on falsehoods and misinformation, and fueled by racist stereotypes. The real problem related to immigration is that our national conversation is completely skewed by bogus facts perpetuated and exploited by shameless politicians trying to win votes by scaring people. Let’s take the claims one by one.

Violence and crime is high among immigrants

Trump’s headline grabbing claims are just plain false. It is a denial of reality to claim that immigrants are more violent than native-born citizens. In fact the opposite is true.  

The first sentence of a comprehensive study by the non-partisan American Immigration Council spells things out bluntly:

“For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime.”

That’s weird, huh. Well, maybe the high crime rates of the bad immigrants (we know who they are right) are getting washed out by the low-crime rates of law abiding good immigrants (wink-wink)? Sorry, no dice. According to the study:  

“for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants”

A Pew Research Center study comparing the crime rates of 1st generation immigrants, 2nd generation, and native born citizens. Here’s a nice summary plot.

Perhaps you think this is just hogwash from a bunch of untrustworthy liberals and academics. Nope, the facts are the facts. There is broad bi-partisan consensus on all of this among folks who have studied the issue. The conservative Wall Street Journal has a nice article debunking the The Mythical Connection Between Immigrants and Crime. And the conservative Cato Institute agrees, pointing out that immigrants self-select for those who are more likely to want to work hard, and less likely to be criminals. This is in direct contradiction with Trump’s claims opening his campaign. Finally, the conservative Washington Post had an article titled Surprise! Donald Trump is wrong about immigrants and crime last year.

Of course, the arguments being made by the alt-right and Trump supporters do not typically involve a nuanced look at the data. Rather, they point to specific horrific crimes committed by immigrants and use those anecdotes to work people into a frenzy. This type of anecdotal reasoning is how groups come to be demonized and how racial and ethnic stereotypes are perpetuated.

For fun, let’s keep a scorecard. So far it’s Reality 1, Trump 0.

Immigrants take our jobs

Again, not true.  According to a 2007 report from the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) titled “Immigration’s Economic Impact”:

“immigrants not only help fuel the Nation’s economic growth, but also have an overall positive effect on the American economy as a whole and on the income of native-born American workers.”

More recently the folks at the Cato Institute said:

“Immigrants tend to fill niches in the labor market where demand is highest relative to supply, complementing rather than directly competing with American workers.”

Once again the popular narrative is just plain wrong. In fact, most everyone who studies immigration agrees that it helps native-born workers. Here’s a summary of the win-win situation from the ACLU:

“Immigrants have different skills, which allow higher-skilled native workers to increase productivity and thus increase their incomes. Also, as the native-born U.S. population becomes older and better educated, young immigrant workers fill gaps in the low-skilled labor markets.”

“With respect to wages, in a 1997 study, the National Research Council estimated the annual wage gain due to immigration for U.S. workers to be $10 billion each year in 2007 CEA estimated the gain at over $30 billion per year.”

The same study quoted above does find that immigration likely has some small negative effect on wages of low-skilled native workers. But this effect is very small compared with the overall positive effects mentioned above.

Let me conclude with a perhaps controversial opinion: Even if it were true that immigrants displaced native-born workers from their jobs (which by and large is not true), it is not clear to me that it would be an argument against immigration. History has proven that protectionism is not effective economic policy, and that openness leads to better outcomes for all.

Reality 2, Trump 0.

Immigrants suck up money from social programs

Not surprisingly, another false claim. An article in The New Republic titled  “Immigrants Don’t Drain Welfare. They Fund It.” makes this case strongly. In particular, illegal immigrants are (a) not eligible for most forms of public welfare, and (b) pay far more in taxes than they take from the system.

According to the Cato Institute, immigrants

“contribute to the workforce and make huge net contributions to old-age entitlement programs, primarily Social Security”

Reality 3, Trump 0.

Muslim Refugees are not vetted! We don’t know anything about them!

With the recent wave of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, this argument is one that really scares people. In regards to Syrian refugees, Trump said in Nov. 2015 that the refugees “could be greatest Trojan horse of all time.” He suggests that both

• There is no system (or it is completely inadequate) for vetting the refugees, and
• Large numbers of these Syrians are likely ISIS sympathizers who are going to commit terrorists acts in the US.

Both of these claims are demonstrably false. First, here’s a summary of the vetting process:

1. Refugees are first vetted by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. If they are recommended to be settled in the US…
2. They are then vetted by
   1. National Counterterrorism Center
   2. FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center
   3. Department of State
   4. Department of Defense
   5. Department of Homeland Security
3. During this process they have fingerprints taken, biographical information is collected, and they are “interviewed by U.S. officials trained to verify that they’re bona fide refugees”
4. The whole process takes 18-24 months

So while you might be able to argue that we should improve this or that part of the vetting process, there does exist a very intense process already. And as The Economist points out:

“If a potential terrorist is determined to enter America to do harm, there are easier and faster ways to get there than by going through the complex refugee resettlement process.”

Well, no system is perfect, and we certainly must have let in some terrorists from Syria, right? An excellent piece in the Washington Post breaks down the facts:

“… nearly 785,000 refugees admitted through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program since 9/11, “only about a dozen — a tiny fraction of one percent of admitted refugees — have been arrested or removed from the U.S. due to terrorism concerns that existed prior to their resettlement in the U.S.  None of them were Syrian.””

While any terrorist acts are unacceptable and awful, it’s useful to have some perspective. Since 9/11 (admittedly an artificial cutoff date that excludes the largest attack in US history), only 94 American’s have been killed by Jihadist terrorist attacks in the US. Meanwhile, right wing terrorist attacks have killed 50, a comparable number. In fact, until the horrific Orlando shootings, right-wing terrorists had killed more Americans than had the Jihadists in that time period. More people (mostly kids) are killed by televisions falling on them than terrorism in most years!

Reality 4, Trump 0.

A Huge wave of illegal immigrants is flooding into the country

In the hysteria over illegal immigration, it is sometimes lost that in fact the rate of illegal immigration has been falling for years. Here’s a nice plot from Pew Research:

What about just Mexicans? Here the trend is even more dramatic: More undocumented Mexican immigrants are leaving the US than entering nowadays!

Given all the myths we’ve debunked above, showing that in fact immigration (illegal or legal) has a net positive effect on our economy and society, we should be saddened by this drop, right? Well, to be clear I think we should have a more honest fact-driven debate on the subject, and reform immigration laws making it easier to enter legally, so that so many people don’t have to make the difficult choice to come here illegally.

Reality 5, Trump 0.

Conclusion

The foundational ideology of Trump and many (not all) on the right revolves around an ‘us vs. them’ mentality that demonizes foreigners, immigrants, and refugees. The salient facts lay bare the complete falsity of this world-view. The facts are

• Violence is lower among immigrants (legal and illegal)
• Immigrants do not take our jobs, but in fact allow for more and better paying jobs for native-born citizens
• Immigrants do not suck money from social services and welfare, but instead pay in more in taxes than they get from the system
• Refugees from Syria are extremely well vetted, and none have been implicated in terrorist attacks
• There is NOT a tidal wave of illegal immigration coming into the US, rather the number of undocumented immigrants has been falling for years

The final score is: Reality 5, Trump 0.

Hopefully, the country can back down from the hysterical scare-mongering around immigration, and start to have a meaningful and compassionate debate about the human beings that are trying to flee chaos and misery, and come to our great country, in the same tradition as all of our ancestors.

One final plug. An excellent episode of the podcast This American Life a few weeks ago inspired me to look at the immigration issue more deeply. I highly recommend the listening to the whole episode, or at least the first 20 minutes.

I’ve wanted to start a blog and get to writing regularly for while. Because, ya know, people are just clamoring to know what I think about things, right?

But, like any good procrastinator, the thing driving me to start a blog now is a deadline. My deadline is Election Day 2016, a few days away. And the thing driving me most is a deep fear that we are going to elect Donald Trump, which I believe will do long-lasting harm to this country.

My philosophy is an optimistic one. I truly believe that it is misinformation that is driving people apart, and that most folks will come to rational conclusions when armed with the facts. My goal over the next few days is to break-down some of the relevant issues, hopefully dispensing with the misinformation, hyperbole, and polemics. I hope to engage a diversity of opinions to respectfully discuss and debate.

I ask that folks who comment abide by two rules:

1. Please be respectful.
2. Please stick to the subject of the blog post.

My rough plan for the first few blogs is “The Immigration Problem”, then a timeline of problematic statements from Trump, and then a blog dissecting the Clinton email drama.

Oh, and here’s a pretty sunset (sunrise?), curtesy of the default 1st blog template at WordPress. Thought it was nice, so I kept it.