In a democracy you get the government you deserve, but when your country is as massively influential as the United States, the rest of the world unfortunately gets it, too. This election season has seen an increasingly paranoid and bizarre backlash against the tiny number of Syrian refugees the Obama administration has committed to taking in, with Ted Cruz introducing a “Terrorist Refugee Infiltration Prevention Act” (nothing provocative there) to bar Syrian refugee resettlement, and Donald Trump calling for an outright ban on Muslims.
“We are concerned that the rhetoric that is being used in the election campaign is putting an incredibly important resettlement program at risk that is meant for the most vulnerable people—the victims of the wars that the world is unable to stop,” a United Nations spokeswoman told Reuters, confirming that campaign rhetoric really can be toxic enough to impact innocent people outside the U.S.’s borders. Let’s hope the hot stuff is just red meat for a tense base, and not an indication of what could happen once the election season is over.