I imagine that a society that votes in a wannabe fascist dictator will continue to be a bastion of safety for people of different racial backgrounds. I know if I was fleeing violence and gangs I look for somewhere with a nice welcoming camp just waiting for me.

For clarification I am Australian so I have a bit of experience with a national bias of racism leading to poor outcomes for asylum seekers.

I am taking a more positive view than I was about what’s happening over there though. I think that the Trump presidency may well serve as an unambiguous demonstration of the end results of allowing democracy to become necrotic. I really hope Australians heed this lesson before our next election, although I won’t be at all surprised if they don’t.

My family has extras cover, for Dental and Optical, that’s all we ever use. My wife and I have both used up enough dental to make it worthwhile. But my son is getting braces soon which will basically Max out his lifetime orthodontics cover. So at that point we need to change insurers.

On a tangent I don’t get lifetime covers. It seems like they are so focussed on not letting an individual recipient cost them more than an approved amount that they instead cause recipients to jump ship once it’s used up without contributing any more into the fund. That seems like a perverse incentive to me, or am I ignorant of some gotcha there?

So I was thinking about the way he worded this, 25% tariff until the border crossings stop. I think he might be onto a 4D chess move here.

If he tanks the US economy so badly that it’s financially detrimental to cross the border then the flow of people across the border will definitely come down. If he tanks the economy hard enough we may even see the flow reverse, at which point he can lift the tariffs and declare the job done.

He is already happy to make Americans ignorant, illiterate, and spiteful to outsiders; is he really going to baulk at making them dirt poor as well?