Uploaded July 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Mass immigration, J.D. Vance points out, has made Western societies poorer, less safe, less prosperous, and less advanced. Western populations keep on telling their leadership that they want less immigration and their leadership keeps on refusing to listen to them. This is a fundamental broken-translation function in Western democracies. Why? One, the Western élites benefit from the cheap labour. Two, they dislike the people who make up the domestic populations of their countries, their fellow citizens, although the wars that the Western élites want are of course going to be fought by the people in the heartland and not by people walking through the streets of, say, Washington, D.C. The real threat to democracy is that voters keep on voting for less immigration and politicians keep on rewarding them with more.
Mass immigration, J.D. Vance points out, has made Western societies poorer, less safe, less prosperous, and less advanced. Western populations keep on telling their leadership that they want less immigration and their leadership keeps on refusing to listen to them. This is a fundamental broken-translation function in Western democracies. Why? One, the Western élites benefit from the cheap labour. Two, they dislike the people who make up the domestic populations of their countries, their fellow citizens, although the wars that the Western élites want are of course going to be fought by the people in the heartland and not by people walking through the streets of, say, Washington, D.C. The real threat to democracy is that voters keep on voting for less immigration and politicians keep on rewarding them with more.
