Apparently there is a petition circulating around Britain barring Donald Trump from ever entering the country. So far this has attracted 430,966 signatures. Another petition doing the rounds is asking the government to close all the UK borders until ISIS is defeated and this one has garnered 443,769 signatures. The sheer irony that one appears to contradict the other will likely have been lost in the process.
Donald Trump’s declaration that if elected president he would ban Muslims from ever entering the country “until we can work out what the heck is going on.” has justifiably sparked widespread condemnation from free-world leaders, uncle Tom Cobbly and all, but amongst America’s conservatives, his popularity increases daily.
It’s not as though there’s a dearth of credible aspirants for the Republican Party’s nomination lining up against him. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, African-American neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Cuban-American senator Marco Rubio would all give the Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton a run for her money, but all three are lagging in the polls due to Mr Trump’s populist pronouncements.
To tap into the apprehensiveness of America’s and to some extent the world’s trepidation of the potential carnage caused by a terror group who appear to have no fear of death is clever politics, however distasteful.
America as we know it was birthed by its liberal immigration policy poetically expressed on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty that reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
Most Western nations, observing America’s success story, followed suit
Today we have to rely on governments using sophisticated surveillance systems to sort out the wheat from the chaff as far as immigrants are concerned as some seek to destroy our way of life.
Paris has clearly shown that despite having a secret service agency that would probably make our GCSB look amateurish, the French were woefully inept at containing terrorist attacks on at least two occasions.
This is a game on a number of levels, a numbers game, a time game and in the end a game that risks horrendous defeat by introducing more potential jihadists. That’s why Donald Trump has a point, however unrealistic, when he says we need to stop the flow until governments can devise a foolproof system of identifying the chaff.
Trump also gains some traction and support because the unpalatable truth is that most of us are more comfortable living amidst our own kind. Orthodox Muslims praying towards Mecca five times a day, their women wearing top-to-toe clothing and the patriarchal nature of their Sharia laws makes us feel uncomfortable.
And so although we enjoy the diversity that other population groups bring, we prefer to coalesce with our own kith and kin on a day-to-day basis.
Illegal aliens have always been a problem for New Zealand. In fact I would imagine that there will be an unmeasurable segment of Maoridom today who, when Captain Cook and his vulgar boatmen first set foot on Aotearoa, will have wished that their Rangatira’s had circulated a petition declaring that no white honkeys ever be allowed to come ashore again.
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