at least, to the extent there exists what you'd call a "solution". Healing those rifts is our challenge as a society, to come together, rejecting the exclusionary kitschy pseudo-patriotism of fascism, to embrace a stronger more-perfect union. Hey, ask a vague question, get a vague answer, amiright?
If you want to look directly at immigration in particular, you can go another step further along that line by asking: why would people want to leave their home country so desperately that they'll risk everything to go somewhere far away, where they would live and work as part of a semi-permanent underclass? In a way, as you might say, the fact that we're the nation of choice for refuge puts the onus upon us to look at the situations that motivated them, to see if there's a humane way to improve living conditions thus reducing excess immigration through the mighty power of inertia.
Sometimes, that won't be an issue, and maybe there's nothing to be done immediately in that direction. Maybe it's about keeping a family together, or having decent wages for honest work -- not to be confused with predatory opportunism. Then there's ways to handle these things (families, labor) humanely too, through legal concepts that lead to accelerated pathways to citizenship for upstanding behavior over time. Sometimes immigrants might be motivated by criminality of some kind, for which legal penalties may already exist; here, we still exercise a humane alternative by allotting due process in the pursuit of a safer, more just society.
Above all, as Hank notes later in the video, we need to start asking, "Why do we have laws?" What is the guiding concept behind them? Are they good ideas overall? Are they created with respect for humanity in mind? If we extend their guiding principles generally, do we want to live in a society operating under those rules?
Here-in lies the core of the rift so to speak, deep in the heart of humanity itself, the competing dialectic of kindness to strangers struggling against the fear of the unknown. Somehow the balance must be shifted towards kindness.
Coalitions. There's the "solution", so to speak. Our opponents feed on artificially-amplified distances between us; as we shrink those distances, democracy can re-emerge, but it must do so carefully, in light of what has happened.
= new reply since forum marked as read
