Extremism in the United States Creates a New Generation of ‘Migrants’

Teachers, librarians and politicians area leaving their jobs because they can’t deal with neo-Pentecostal paranoia and the normalization of lies.

Who needs doctors, scientists and academics? What system of public education functions without dedicated professors who have the independence to teach? Today, a minority in power in the United States seems willing to pay to see.

Donald Trump did not invent the political polarization in the United States. Its most recent version has its origin in the behavior of the Republican Party during the Bill Clinton presidency in the 1990s.

But the Trumpist vein of the ultra-right, far from losing steam after the attempted coup of Jan. 6, 2021, is driving long-term consequences within the U.S. In recent years, there have been signs of an internal migration wave and a brain drain from states whose legislatures have adopted laws that are too extreme for the majority of voters.

Public school teachers, and there is a shortage of them in this country, are retiring early today in certain states because the poorly paid profession requires confronting fanatical neo-Pentecostal parents who want to censor curricula and who are generously funded by the same interest groups who supplied the judiciary with ultraconservative judges.

A once peaceful occupation, that of librarians, today requires a degree of paranoia now that campaigns to ban classic books make those professionals the favorite targets of demagogues, such as the ignorant Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida whose campaign for the Republican presidential nomination cannot even be elevated by the lifts he hides in his boots.

The number of applications for medical residencies in obstetrics, a specialty that already faces a shortage of doctors, fell more than 10% in the states that have reinstated the criminalization of abortion supported by a Supreme Court decision in June 2022. It is too early to examine the demographic and economic consequences of that decision, but we know that clinics of reproductive medicine in neighboring states can barely deal with the influx of patients. One-third of American municipalities don’t have maternity care clinics, a sign that the Christian right prefers to protect fetuses rather than newborn children.

A recent study among university professors in Republican-majority states such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas revealed that two-thirds recommend that colleagues avoid undertaking academic research in these states, and at least one-third are actively seeking employment in other states.

Trump was elected, in part, thanks to the flight of professionals from states with vast rural areas facing post-industrial decline. This week, the new House speaker, a man who considers abortion to be the “American holocaust,” lamented that the Republican Party isn’t able to attract more college-educated voters. Mike Johnson of Louisiana blamed Democrats, who he says control academia and specialize in brainwashing.

An increasing number of representatives and senators will be throwing in the towel and declining to seek reelection. Of the 37 who have already decided not to run, the majority are Democrats, but the motivation seems to run across parties. Republican Rep. Ken Buck explained why he wants to return home to Colorado. He said he is fed up with the normalization of lying and of playing the villain when he challenges his colleagues from the bench who characterize Jan. 6, 2021, as a tourist visit to the Capitol.