Quote:
Originally Posted by August
Nothing hip about it and not very accurate. Hating foreigners is a time honored tradition that precedes the nazis by a few millennia and it's the leftists who tend to accuse everyone they don't like of being nazis not the right.
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I could say touché and let it stand, but i do not entirely agree.
You are right, xenophobia precedes our recent
accomplishments (ahem) for a long time. And "leftists" cry out wolf (or nazi) a bit too often, even for my taste.
But our (not limited to the US) problem is that there is a new trend of publicly criticizing democracy, diplomacy, international treaties and communities, making fun of disabled persons, foreigners, and of 'political correctness' (in lacking a better word for a level-headed, neutral point of view), because the social standard of getting along together is now being regarded as "weak" and "for pussies".
And it is not Trump alone in what Mrs. Streep recently mentioned (well she's an actress of course
) but it is also Romania, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Austria, Germany and England in which the populistic and despising attitude towards international community, science and those
foreigners is celebrating a new peak.
As long as politicians or the media have a level-headed attitude and are not easily alienated by a few muddleheads, the people usually behave like that themselves. But when certain views are suddenly spread publicly and e.g. Facebook becomes the soapbox, all those usually silent folks seem to suddenly come out of their hiding. From Farage to Erdoghan, the being thought long-dead chauvinism raises its ugly head once more.
If some bigmouth becomes the paragon of modern "freedom of expression", which is understood to be the same as "telling lies without fearing consequences", or publicly denigrating certain ethnic groups and foreigners, a lot of people will follow this shining example, for a good part because it appeals to their base motives and feeling encouraged to give in to them.
All education will be forgotten when being able to be "politically incorrect", which is nothing else than good old nationalism.