Apples and Orange Men
Or why the Brexit isn’t an omen of a Trump victory
Several of my friends and loved ones expressed concern that the Brexit referendum portends a Trump presidency. To them and others who share that worry: chill, bruh. Like many of you, I shuddered at the success of the referendum campaign, which drew its support from xenophobia more than any flimsy pretense about the economy or sovereignty. But the folly of England’s uninformed racists does not suggest that their U.S. counterparts will usher their lumpy, fraudulent avatar into power.
Though this post-referendum shitshow looks pretty bad, I invite you to calmly relax with me on a pillowy heap of public opinion data. As you’d expect, British and American attitudes meaningfully diverge when it comes to immigration, its impacts, its volume, and its importance in our politics. Pew Research’s polling indicates that 59% of Americans believe immigrants strengthen our nation. Meanwhile, only 46% of British respondents to an Ipsos MORI poll view EU immigration as a net benefit to them. However, the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford’s research shows that a majority of British respondents still directly identify immigration and the number of immigrants in their country as problems. Therefore, we shouldn’t mistake Ipsos’ findings for strong evidence of British inclusivity on par with ours.
If that contrast doesn’t compel you, then consider the Gallup tracking poll that found that 40% of Americans favor our current level of immigration and 25% even support increased levels, leaving only around 35% who desire less immigration. Across the hate pond, 77% of British folks want at least some reduction in immigration, with 56% in favor of a severe decrease. That means, and this is dumb important, the percentage of Americans who want fewer immigrants is LESS THAN HALF of the percentage of Brits who also want fewer immigrants.
It becomes even harder to connect the dots between the Brexit and Trump’s prospects when you look at opinions of specific policies. Pew’s findings show that 74% of Americans, including 57% of Republicans, support a path to legal residency for undocumented Americans. With that in mind, let’s also remember that Trump started his fucking campaign by referring to undocumented immigrants from Mexico as rapists and murderers. That isn’t a recipe for a popular nativist revolt, it’s delusional, political suicide. Even though his hobgoblins number in the millions, Trump has almost no chance of prevailing based on his immigration stance. If anything, his smegmafaced rhetoric and spiteful fifth grader policy ideas render him unelectable to one too many pivotal voting blocs.
Moreover, compared to British voters, most Americans don’t care about the impacts of immigration. We’ve come to the point where fewer than 10% of American voters view immigration as a top priority, whereas British voters currently rank immigration as the most important issue they face today. To do for Trump what immigration opponents did for the referendum, you’d need an engaged anti-immigration majority that simply doesn’t exist here now.
Admittedly, our idiots do share some qualities with theirs. Consistent with its general ignorance about the referendum, a majority of British voters have no idea how many EU immigrants actually live among them. Even more embarrassingly, the towns and cities that most strongly supported leaving the EU experienced the smallest influx of immigrants. That means these motherfuckers got incensed enough to jeopardize their country’s future not just because of an immigration problem, but a damn near imaginary immigration problem. They remind me of the irrational Trump voters who perceive undocumented immigration from Mexico as an endless, unchecked horde when in reality it has declined for years in tandem with a long, cruel surge in deportations. Thankfully, the American anti-immigrant vote doesn’t have, and won’t have, the momentum that we see in Britain, at least not soon enough to enable a Trump victory.
“But Soul Khan, the bigots are loud and scary! And the Supreme Court just blocked deferred deportations!”
Yeah, but if the rest of us show up in sufficient numbers, which we will, they’ll yell themselves into withered political irrelevance. Cable news and social media, which overrepresent many terrible people, do not accurately measure the influence of these wretched anti-immigrant fucks. The same goes for the Supreme Court. It still has four GOP appointees who have each been around for at least a decade and do not reflect where the public stands, which, as we have established, is strong support for legal residency for undocumented immigrants. It doesn’t even reflect its own future given that Clinton’s nominees will ultimately solidfy a liberal judicial majority for the next several decades.
As an aside, please don’t take any of this as an argument for America as a morally superior country. We still owe our existence and prosperity to genocide and cruelty on par with anything Imperial Britain did, plus our own institutional white supremacy manifests in countless vile ways. Nor do I mean to disparage British people, especially the large English minority that, along with most Scottish and Irish folks, sensibly rejected the referendum. My heart goes out to y’all because American millennials know what it’s like to get politically and economically fucked by our elders.
But we’re still not Britain, so we don’t eat what they shit or however the saying goes. White people comprise 87% of their population, while white people “only” make up 62% of our population. We have more immigrants in our country than any other nation in the world does, though both countries’ immigrants constitute just a little under 15% of our populations, which isn’t remarkable by global standards. However, our immigrant population is so large that on its own, it would be the 30th most populous country on Earth. Whereas Britain fusses and frets over this issue, immigration remains integral to not only our country’s function, but our history and character, a sentiment a majority of Americans seem to share.
Recapping our lesson today, this wasn’t Trump’s geopolitical prologue, so you shouldn’t worry about him. Instead, maybe worry about why Clinton surrogates on the DNC platform committee voted down measures supporting a $15 minimum wage, single payer healthcare, and a carbon tax, as well as platform measures against the TPP, fracking, and the occupation of the Palestinian territories. This election was a total giveaway ever since Trump became the GOP frontrunner, so if we can’t get the best Democratic nominee, then we should at least come out swinging with the best progressive policies possible. Or we could just keep writing panicked thinkpieces.
YOU DECIDE, AMERICA ❤
