The reason behind the outrage

There is so much media and social media coverage about Donald Trump's "Muslim ban". People have taken the document, interpreted it in one particular way, then advertised it as a "Muslim ban". Many people are commenting on it, even protesting against it, without actually knowing what it says.

As with many commentaries on current affairs, exaggerations are made in order to gain popularity and force a particular agenda (e.g. the addition of the suffix "-phobia" such as "homophobia" or "islamophobia", causing people to want to disassociate themselves from that label, despite the label being horribly inadequate). The current agenda is to bring down Donald Trump. Errors are made in the way people are going about this, but other errors are made by not looking at all the reasons behind the outrage.

1. Ultimately, people feel they have a fundamental "right" to travel wherever in the world they wish to travel. But this inherently selfish attitude rears its head in the form of the outwardly-appearing benevolence of, "We should allow other people to come to my country and live in it."

The process of visa applications can be annoying, time-consuming and overly complex, but it is the responsibility of the traveller to ensure they are entering another country in a legal manner. On the one hand, people hear this perspective and agree with it. But when it comes to people who call themselves "refugees", somehow the goalposts move and it is considered "racist" to suggest that such people should not be allowed in unless they go through the proper process. (Something which came out of the whole "Brexit" campaign.)

2. People feel that "equality" is the best way, because surely everyone just wants to get on with each other? Whilst this attitude may be true of the majority, it is naive to assume that everyone shares this altruistic belief.

If the media reports are to be believed, the majority of terrorist attacks in the last 20 years are implemented or orchestrated by Muslim extremists. Whilst, on the one hand, people tend to agree that Muslim extremists might be to blame, their attitudes become hypocritical at the mention of the idea of having greater security measures for a particular group of people. Complaints emerge that airport security is outrageously intrusive, or that white, non-Muslim natives should not have to go through that process. But this is what "equality" entails. And then, of course, the complaints that it is a waste of resources to thoroughly check every person, and the authorities have to find a way to prove that "random searches" truly are random, despite knowing that a particular people group might be more at risk of terrorist involvement than others.

3. People want to be with their friends and family. Again, this shows itself by appearing to care about all people, but in reality, they just don't want to be physically separated from certain people they care about.

It's interesting: despite the increase in the use of technology to be able to communicate with others across the globe, humans have an in-built need to physically be in the presence of others. It's a hole that social media just can't fill, despite the advertising. But this desire to be with the people they care about goes beyond security measures. When the authorities identify something they want to check out a little further, just to be sure, it's easy for a journalist to jump in and make a story. Even better if there turns out to be no threat at all: it puts the authorities in a bad light and seems to make a case for looser security. Imagine a headline which read: "Woman detained for 8 hours whilst immigration offer correctly follows out his duty to ensure our protection."

But, no: instead we get photos such as the one at the top of this article, with a comment at the end of the article which reads: "Woman of Iranian descent... cries as she waits for a family member after the immigration ban..." It's aim is to pull at the emotional heartstrings to make us feel how "bad" the people trying to protect our country are.

4. Sore losers always cause a ruckus. The attempts to cover up the selfishness mentioned above land again in another area of selfishness: people who didn't want Trump as president don't like that they lost the political game.

The whole point of democracy is that people are able to share their differing views and - hopefully - the majority wins out. Unfortunately, although the majority of individuals who voted did not vote for Trump, the way the system is set up allowed for it. It's not the first time it happened, and it's also not even the first time since a long time ago, as the US election in 2000 shows. If the rules are unpopular, seek to change the rules instead of whinging about the outcome. But the losers hope that their voice will not just be heard, but be acted upon, so much so that they find every excuse to pull down the victor. It could be likened to a footballer who gets angry that his team loses or that he got a red card and starts a fight. Or like the fanatical hooligan whose team he supports loses beginning a fight at the local pub. It doesn't change anything, it only displays selfishness.



An interesting point: in point 2 above I mentioned the complaints regarding increased security measures at airports. The link I included was to an article about a US airport, written in November 2010. This was during Obama's presidency. Ironically, this is conveniently ignored when it comes to "Trump-bashing".