Terror Attacks Like El Paso Aim to Topple Government, Experts Say

news.yahoo.com

1 point·AnimalMuppet··3 comments

I know this heads toward politics, but I thought it was an interesting enough (and important enough) view to be worth posting.

And (to get all sides mad at me politically): If this is right, it seems that one way to cut the ground out from under the alt-right would be to secure the border.

What does secure the border mean? There's already 650 miles of fence, and net immigration from Mexico has been negative for years now.

And how long's the border? 1950 miles? 650 miles of fence is one third of that.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, how many people attempt to cross illegally (per year, say), and how many succeed? My Google-fu is letting me down; I can't find those numbers so far.

And even that isn't really the point. The point (per the article) is that these people think "This is an invasion, and we're about to be overrun, and the government isn't doing anything, so we have to". Having a better-secured border (or a more-obviously-secured border) might drain part of the swamp that these peoples' ideology breeds in.

It won't drain all of it. They will move on to legal immigration, or to those who have been here for multiple generations, or whatever. But there might be fewer people believing this alt-right garbage if the border was removed as a focal point.

Presuming that this line of thinking is correct (both the article and my thinking here), it presents Democrats with an interesting dilemma: Would you give in to Trump on the border (and, from their point of view, waste all that money), if doing so would cut down on mass shootings?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com