Syrian refugees are being resettled in Virginia. And no, not in Fairfax, Loudoun or Arlington—some of the wealthiest counties in our nation. The refugees are being resettled in towns at least 100 miles away from our nation’s capital. According to data from the State Department, the Syrian refugees “have been placed in towns with lower incomes and higher poverty rates, hours away from the wealthy suburbs outside of Washington, D.C.”
There is something going on here. The top is detaching from the bottom, with the leaders detaching from the led, writes Peggy Noonan in the WSJ.
In Germany:
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s unilateral decision to allow 800,000 refugees into Germany has inflicted untold consequences on millions of Europeans.
… more than a million came. The result has been widespread public furor over crime, cultural dissimilation and fears of terrorism.
… the entire burden of a huge cultural change not on herself and those like her but on regular people who live closer to the edge, who do not have the resources to meet the burden, who have no particular protection or money or connections. Ms. Merkel, her cabinet and government, the media and cultural apparatus that lauded her decision were not in the least affected by it and likely never would be.
On Wall Street
CEOs are consumed with short-term thinking, stock prices, quarterly profits. They don’t really believe that they have to be involved with “America” now; they see their job as thinking globally and meeting shareholder expectations.
In Silicon Valley
… the idea of “the national interest” is not much discussed. They adhere to higher, more abstract, more global values. They’re not about America, they’re about . . . well, I suppose they’d say the future.
In Hollywood
… the wealthy protect their own children from cultural decay, from the sick images they create for all the screens, but they don’t mind if poor, unparented children from broken-up families get those messages and, in the way of things, act on them down the road.
Throughout the West, concludes Ms. Noonan, “it is not only a detachment from, but a lack of interest in, the lives of your countrymen, of those who are not at the table, and who understand that they’ve been abandoned by their leaders’ selfishness and mad virtue-signalling.”
Accepted but not welcomed: Refugees face difficulties moving to troubled US areas
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