Trump's immigration & voter suppression could be related

[yurbud]

Republicans know they are dying demographically, so to postpone the inevitable, they are trying to keep non-whites from voting.

They can't stop immigrants who are already here and legally in the pipeline for citizenship from eventually becoming citizens and voting, but they can make the country a lot less attractive for legal and illegal immigrants.

One side effect of the child separation policy is illegal immigrants being less likely to bring their kids with them, but since families still need the money & businesses LOVE exploitable cheap labor, dad and/or mom will still come but more likely for limited stays instead of setting down roots.

I don't think it will work long term because minorities are too large a percentage of our population unlike Jews in Germany who were less than 1%.

But to fight back, we need candidates motivated more by principle than the big payday at the end of their time in elected office.

[Sophia4]

1. You are probably right in that that is the Republican strategy.

But it won't work because the more Republican policies Republicans enact, the more Republican leadership turns vicious in order to carry out those policies, the more Democrats they create.

We Democrats are destined to be the majority, and there is nothing Republicans can do about it.

[unblock]

2. you're correct in the long run.

but as a famous economist once said, "in the long run we are all dead."

[yurbud]

6. Minorities (in this case white conservatives) can rule if they resort to violence

Saddam Hussein was part of the Sunni minority in Iraq and ruled for decades.

Jews were the minority at the time of the founding of Israel, and on and on.

The Tutsis in Rwanda were a minority, anointed by their colonial masters to rule over their Hutu neighbors and it worked (until it didn't).

And South Africa was ruled by a minority for over century until internal and external pressure broke their rule.

The problem with rule by a minority is it does take escalating violence.

The irony is that people who are kept poor have more kids because it takes more people to support a household, so one of the means of control is also part of their ultimate undoing.

[appalachiablue]

3. Suppressing votes eps. of minorities, Poc and immigrants

has been in place for a long time in the US. The first Literacy Tests for voting were used in 1855 in Connecticut to prevent Irish immigrants from voting. After centuries of slavery and Jim Crow, black Americans fought for and finally achieved fairer voting access with the passage of the VRA, Voting Rights Act in the 1960s under LBJ. There's also a long history of Hispanics being intimidated and obstructed in trying to vote; and women didn't attain the franchise here until 1920.

So yes, policies to block the path to citizenship, building a 'Wall,' harassment, discrimination and white supremacist ideology and actions are absolutely intended to reduce the voting power and presence of non-white Christians. But this nation was founded on IDEALS, not the concept of German 'Blut und Boden' (blood and soil). We're a nation of immigrants and will remain so.

[Sophia4]

4. So true!

[yurbud]

5. I thought the "build a wall" shit was just symbolic for the rubes

since we have walls and fences already, but people can pay to get through or businesses can pressure pols to let people through (especially during harvest), but the separating families business is a whole different thing.