Stupid Ideas

Immigration isn’t the real fault line. It’s just the surface where deeper cracks show up. When politicians point at newcomers and cry “problem,” what spills out isn’t danger from outside but the mess they’ve made inside: weak services, insecure jobs, and a social fabric stretched to snapping. Blaming immigrants becomes the shortcut for leaders who won’t face the damage they’ve overseen. And because public life has been turned into a kind of endless team sport, many people don’t stop to ask whether any of it makes sense — they just pick a side and wear it like a jersey. The simpler the slogan, the easier it is to grip. Much of history has been steered by the kind of stupidity that passes for intelligence when loud certainty gets mistaken for understanding. Fear is cheaper than fixing anything, so fear is what gets sold.

Another layer sits beneath all this: the very people who generate the turbulence then learn to surf it. Chaos becomes a career path. The noise they create is the same noise that keeps them afloat, and many don’t even realise it. And here’s the quiet trick — the more they stir up arguments about immigration, the more the old tropes and easy oppositions get recycled. Those recycled stories then get treated as proof that the “threat” was real all along. The pattern feeds itself. Some may start with decent intentions, but they speak with a confidence wildly out of proportion to their grasp of the issues.

They mistake a narrow frame for a full picture and present their own uncertainty as fact simply because they deliver it with enough force. Meanwhile, people with the least power cling to whatever simple story gives them a sense of footing, even if the story comes from someone who sees them as expendable. In a media environment tuned for quick, low-effort signals, these reflexive identities get reinforced every time a simple message hits the feed. The weakest ideas travel the furthest, and a nation ends up guarding its borders with great passion while letting its real foundations — fairness, stability, community — crumble quietly underneath.