Prepare for Chaos: Voters Still Have No Idea on Mass Migration

A recurring topic on this blog is how the media and political establishment control debate and discussion, and replace reality with their own narrative of events. This is not the same as common knowledge, a correct or incorrect understanding of events, but a deliberate political act designed to change public perception and public opinion such that the establishment's desired policies can be enacted. Not all narratives fall in this category. Western financial media was convinced China would unleash another major stimulus around 2014, bailing out China and the global economy. Many resource producing companies apparently bought into the narrative and expanded production, with the predictable result of collapsing commodity prices and heavy financial losses. Currently, the financial media and economic establishment is centered on the "trade wars bad" narrative and blaming weak economic data on the trade war or the Federal Reserve's interest rate policies, instead of focusing on China's domestic economy and imbalances between major exporting and importing countries. False financial narratives tend to die though because reality intrudes in the form of losses. The narrative on trade war is already shifting.

Everyone has a narrative or a hypothesis. Expectations either match reality or they don't. When events contradict the hypothesis, people either retreat from reality or move from hypothesis to narrative. The American establishment has a narrative on immigration that is false almost from head to toe, from the economic benefit (it appears to be a net cost if you account for everything beyond GDP) to public support.

Back in 2014 I posted: Immigration Issue Set to Explode in America; Prepare for Political Volatility. UKIP was the first clear warning shot for the Anglosphere on the topic of immigration. UKIP started with a laser-like focus on a referendum to leave the European Union. They focused on topics such as how much money the UK paid to the EU, plus dry political arguments about who decides local policies. When they were out canvassing they heard the same thing from voters over and over: immigration. Being political neophytes, they were naive enough to think they should represent the voters wishes (and not offer false choices that fit into the approve narrative). They began using immigration as an issue and voila, scored a major political upset.

UKIP's reason for existence was to get the United Kingdom out of the EU. There are many issues that fall under the control of Brussels, such as economic regulations, but the big issue that voters wanted to hear about was immigration. UKIP realized immigration was the big issue and it focused on that issue, turning it into a shock electoral victory.

The post went through polling data that shows many voters prefer immigration restriction when the question is properly framed. Many polls put out by American media ask very open ended questions such as "Do you favor immigration reform?" that encompass everything from banning immigration to open borders.

The post concluded with:

UKIP was a distant warning shot. The defeat of Eric Cantor was a much closer shot. Few if any politicians have stepped up to advocate an immigration restriction policy. They have nearly all taken the easy road of bashing President Obama for inaction. This leaves an opening for an ambitious politician.

The final link went to a video of Trump discussing immigration at the time.

What followed? The shock Brexit victory, the shock Trump victory, the League dominating Italian politics and perhaps the quietly biggest news, the Danish center-left swung very hard-nationalist on immigration ahead of its political victory. I made 1700 percent profit on my Trump bets (mainly due to a quirk in the payoff condition, proving the adage the greatest profits are made in the shortest amount of time by the fewest number of traders).

How are things shaping up in the United States? Not good. President Trump has failed to deliver any substantive reform on immigration. Whether through his own failings and personnel choices or because the U.S. courts are now political weapons, nothing has happened. Trump was a gift to the United States and his opponents. If he could pass immigration reform, it would likely take the issue off the table. It would also likely re-anchor the issue to a new center of merit-based immigration. Instead, the border is being overrun by millions of migrants who believe if they simply get their foot in the USA with a bogus asylum claim, they can collect welfare and free healthcare for life. If events continue as they are now, a merit-based immigration system will be the policy of choice for the globalist fringe in a few years.

Meanwhile, Trump's opposition retreated into Narrative Hell. Large portions of the American progressive left live in a world where Trump is an openly-racist, white supremacist Nazi working for the KGB on direct orders from Putin.

Perhaps not incidentally, immigration is now the top issue according to American voters. Gallup: Mentions of Immigration as Top Problem Surpass Record High.

After hitting a new high last month, mentions of immigration as the most important problem facing the U.S. increased further to 27% in July. Since Gallup began regularly recording mentions of the issue in 1993, immigration has been cited by an average of 6% of Americans, though it has been higher in recent years. There have been occasional, typically short-lived, spikes when major immigration events were occurring.

...Race relations or racism (7%) and healthcare (7%) are the only other two issues to receive as many as 5% of mentions this month.

This is not a short-lived spike. It is the predictable new normal.

The media rejects this reality though, and bends every event in contradiction to the truth. A few weeks ago there were mass shootings in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH. As with almost every mass shooting, the shooters are alienated young men with mental health issues, often taking brain-altering medications. Yet the lunatic in El Paso wrote a manifesto about immigration. The NYTimes: El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language.

The gap between reality and media narrative is vast. Mass shootings are a very difficult problem because they're centered on mental health issues and wider societal developments, including social mood and historical cycles (an increase in mass shooting fits Turchin's model in Ages of Discord). Yet if you were a yellow journalist trying to manipulate random or unconnected events into a somewhat reality-based narrative, you might say the El Paso shooter was caused by mass migration. That is is a reaction to an extreme policy, pushed by government, media, corporations and other major institutions against the wishes of the public. I'm not arguing for that narrative. Shooters grab onto anything they find. If some nut has a website about a fast food chain being evil incarnate, another crazy might write a manifesto about it before shooting up a restaurant. I'm merely highlighting how the major media and everyone who consumes their output is unmoored from reality. The "immigration rhetoric caused a mass shooting" narrative is total nonsense, yet it is the widely-believed official narrative of America's political, social and economic establishment. The people running the United States are like Soviet commisards being told the people love the new 5-year plan and only the imperialst, running dog capitalists oppose it.

The reality is even worse though, because the media has created a situation where the public is almost as misinformed.

Unz: Media Failing Spectacularly

Anyway, a Harvard-Harris poll last Spring asked respondents “about how many people do you think are caught trying to enter through the southern border each year?”. Five possible ranges were offered as answers in multiple choice format.

The subsequent graph is extraordinarily generous in what is counted as a correct answer. Respondents are given credit for answering either “250,000 to 500,000” or answering “over 500,000”, since the reported total number of apprehensions for calendar year 2018 was 467,000, while 2019 is on pace to come in somewhere around 1,000,000.

So on a five item multiple choice question, we’re giving credit for two possible responses. If participants randomly selected answers, the rate of correct responses would be 40%. Well, not a single demographic category of the 26 the survey reported results for did as well as they would have had they randomly guessed:

The American public doesn’t just lack knowledge about what is happening along the southern border, it has anti-knowledge of the situation.

Republicans are only 9 percentage points more informed than the average voter and that was enough to produce President Trump. The average Republican voter is ignorant of the scale of mass migration, two-thirds are cluless along with roughly 75 percent of the general public.

Contrast the reality of mass migration against the reality that a clear majority of the public favors immigration restriction and more than one-quarter voluntarily name immigration as the biggest issue facing the country. That the public is shifting even more in favor of immigration restriction during a period of declining social mood that will turn extremely negative around the time the economy tips into its next recession.

A total ban on immigration that lasts at least one generation is becoming a major possibility. Mass deportation of illegal aliens and possibly foreigners on welfare is also likely if there's a deep economic downturn. That's the bright side. If the establishment instead pushes in a more extreme direction towards open borders, it will grow even more out of touch with the general public, setting up a cataclysmic collapse in legitimacy.

Back in 2014, I posed this video of a woman complaining about migrant children getting resources while her own children didn't. She is a black woman who statistically is not a Trump voter, and yet she expresses an opinion that is more nationalist that President Trump's rhetoric. This video should terrify the American establishment, but it does not because they believe they have enough control over the narrative such that the truth will not get out, that they'll be able to shape opinion. That anyone who points out the emperor's new clothes can be successfully silenced with charges of racism. My warning is that this woman is expressing the centrist immigration policy of the American voter, and yet she is to the "right", more nationalist, than President Trump. If and when this dam breaks, there will be a rush to a new political center. If the American establishment is far enough out on a limb, they will be wiped out be the flood and create an opening for whatever rises up to fill the power vacuum.