# Is it Time to Tone Down the Wokeness, Especially about the Past? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 15, 2024, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-tone-down-the-wokeness-especially-about-the-past/1010287 "2024-11-15T15:14:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1089
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2025, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-tone-down-the-wokeness-especially-about-the-past/1010287/1089 "2025-01-26T12:52:08Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Immigration had surged in 2019, and Trump was able to quickly reduce it again. And the next surge started in mid-2020. As I said. > [@DemonTree](#): > > However, Trump’s first presidency appears to have negatively polarised a lot of people on the left to support something akin to an open borders position. This isn’t remotely true, which explains the weasel words in it. “Appears to”, “a lot of people”, something akin”… People didn’t oppose Trump’s border policy because they wanted an open border, despite the right-wing false narrative about this. People opposed it because it was fucking stupid. “Just build a wall” sounds obvious but it’s an extremely inefficient and ineffective (and expensive) method of border control. The majority of illegal immigrants don’t cross secretly cross the southern border, many do so in ways that a wall wouldn’t stop, and for those faced with a wall there are these things called ladders and ropes. And Trump’s policies were largely bluster. Hundreds of millions spent and very little achieved. During the 2024 campaign he stood in front of a section of unfinished wall and declared it a failure of Biden while pointing to a section of finished wall and claimed credit - except that the unfinished wall was from his presidency and the finished one from Obama’s. Trump’s policies were also (like most of his policies) incredibly cruel. Children who were literally with their families (including nursing infants) were taken and placed into the US adoption system (via private agencies owned by Trump cronies), while other children as young as 3 faced deportation hearings on their own and with no translators or carers present. Speaking of Obama, let’s recall that in 2013 a massive border security bill was introduced to Congress and the GOP blocked it - not because it was bad but because the GOP strategy was to block anything Obama proposed. > [@DemonTree](#): > > However, when it rose to ever greater heights during Biden’s presidency, Biden did little, and continued welcoming and paroling record numbers of migrants until election year. Also not true, although I’m enjoying the irony of your “It did happen and if it didn’t it’s bad” position. > [@DemonTree](#): > > It almost certainly contributed to Trump winning the popular vote this time around, since the issue has greatly increased in salience, and the majority of people are unhappy with Biden’s handling of it. **Really** not true. The “majority of people” - which seems to include you - believe that the “border was open”, that there was an “invasion” in progress, that there was a “migrant crime wave”, that “Venezuelan gangs had taken over American cities”, that immigrants were “eating pets”. And the reason they believed and continue to believe these things - none of which are even close to being true - is > [@Gyrate](#): > > Because the right are **really good** at lying. You are attempting to claim that the election result was a referendum on Biden’s actual immigration policy, which even you don’t appear to fully know, when the reality is that it was heavily skewed by the sort of propaganda above. > [@DemonTree](#): > > Additionally, with the election approaching and public disapproval of Biden’s policies clear Again - not his **actual** policies. > [@DemonTree](#): > > It likely resulted in more encounters, but reduced the number of migrants admitted to the US, which was the actual aim. [/quote] > “Likely”? No. Quite the opposite. Lots more “gotaways”, and lots more actual criminals coming through. > > [quote]Why do you think Biden continued it if the results were so bad? Because he was afraid of the exact public perception that you keep echoing. > [@DemonTree](#): > > Because she was part of the Biden admin, and represented a continuation of it. The administration that, as I showed, brought illegal immigration dramatically down again? No, it was definitely the “right wing lies” thing. > [@DemonTree](#): > > If the Dems had held a real primary, they could have picked someone who took an ideologically more hardline stance on illegal immigration, and could convincingly claim they would do things differently. Too late to change that, though. Who did you have in mind, specifically? Must be a person who actually exists. > [@DemonTree](#): > > According to the quote in my previous post, he asked her to address the ‘root causes of emigration’: > [@DemonTree](#): > > The US has rather limited powers to address economic and safety issues in other countries, unless it’s willing to take them over and become a genuine empire. Or she could have done what she **actually** did, which is to use the powers the US has to address economic and safety issues in other countries. Which is a process that actually _works_, unlike “just build a wall”. To quote a different thread: > [@The Trump Administration: The Clusterfuck Continues](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues/1010068/1055): > > This kind of ‘soft power’ is extremely influential; under the Biden administration, we were [paying some Central and South American countries to provide housing and employment for immigrants fleeing desperate political and social situations in order to reduce pressure on our border](https://youtu.be/HyzGkEV3p2g?si=OSMxts0Nqc_xEAas) which costs pennies on the dollar in comparison to direct border enforcement and interdiction. Buying influence in this way is cheaper, more effective, and often prevents getting engaged in political and military conflicts. But what the Republicans were damning her for was not doing a meaningless performative photo op at the border, as if they expected her personally to turn back all crossers. > [@DemonTree](#): > > Truth is, the Federal government should have been doing this already, if it was unable or unwilling to reduce the numbers entering through the border The Federal government _did_ do some of this (which, funnily enough, the GOP complained about). Whereas randomly dumping asylum seekers with no notice and no resources under false pretenses out of cruelty and spite, like Abbott and DeSantis did, is not a policy they should have adopted. > [@DemonTree](#): > > No, I don’t. This sounds like one of those things that’s technically true but in practice full of loopholes. Oh look: Did you actually read the article? The President has some discretion to re-distribute funds that have **already been allocated by Congress**. Which is a point most of that article makes. It also points out that attempting to do so outside of a narrow set of circumstances is legally dubious, and that the previous Trump administration’s stance was effectively “We’re doing it anyway - so sue us”. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-tone-down-the-wokeness-especially-about-the-past/1010287)._