Donald Trump and the most recent presidential election sparked debate on a wide range of issues, ranging from his well-known record of misogyny, to the xenophobic platform on the back of which he won the election. The political climate today relies a lot on appeasement, which can be seen in a variety of facets of life. Most noticeably perhaps in the issues of education, and female reproductive rights; The cultural change away from, the old school, traditional middle American life style has definitely been happening for a while, but thanks to a variety of factors(especially the globalization of businesses, and influx of immigrants) over the last 10 years it has only been happening much faster.  Donald Trump exploited this volatile political climate to his advantage, and has been using it to try to push the agenda of certain fringe elements of American society. The most recent topic that attracted attention was the immigrant ban. It isn’t that difficult to analyze this from the point of view of conflict. More specifically class based, and economic conflict. Americans for quite a long time have been losing out on skilled jobs, to immigrants either willing to work harder, or for less pay; or in lesser skilled jobs to Mexico from across the border. As much as the administration refuses to admit it, this struggle is at its core a classist one, with the biggest force behind the movement coming from people who desire to “take back America” without having to consider their own situation, ancestry or heritage. For the most part the moral outrage of the far right, stems in part from an extension and corruption of Manifest Destiny, in the sense that it seems to regard jobs in America as well being able to take living here comfortably as an exclusively American concept. More recently the problems faced by immigrants have taken a more racist turn, to the level where even American born citizens of foreign origin, are genuinely at risk from a sizable if small portion of the country they call home.
The moral outrage stems from the idea that allowing immigrants to come to the United States with limited hassle was a corner stone of how the country was built; but looking back through our history it’s quite clear this hasn’t been the case, there is a definite classist divide in how we treat and looks at our foreign imports. Beginning with the Polish, Irish and Italian immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and culminating with our government having sanctions against Muslim countries in 2017. Has anything really changed? There was a definite elitist attitude in how the European immigrants were treated to the extent that, one can see insulting terms for Poles, and Irish which became ingrained into our lexicon; the same in terms of our lexicon changing significantly can be said about the Muslim immigrants. In the current political climate it’s all too easy to insulate ourselves, from the outside world and pretend that the only threat we have to our culture and society is from the world at large around us. Historically, immigrants from less privileged countries have for the most part like second class citizens; so it’s no surprise that in a political climate where misinformation rules supreme, and xenophobia is at an all time high that the status quo remains the same.