“Obama spoke about the slow-moving migrant caravan from Central America bound for the United States as another example of a Republican scare tactic.
“’Now the latest, they’re trying to convince everybody to be afraid of a bunch of impoverished, malnourished refugees a thousand miles away,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing that is the most important thing in this election,’ he said. ‘Not health care, not whether or not folks are able to retire, doing something about higher wages, rebuilding our roads and bridges and putting people back to work.’
“’Suddenly,’ he continued, changing his voice to a high-pitch to strike a mocking tone, ‘it’s these group of folks. We don’t even know where they are. They’re right down there.’”
Current scare tactics are reminiscent of the main reason many people supported the war in Vietnam — the domino theory.
Protagonist Wilfred Carmenghetti in Cologne No. 10 for Men muses:
“He thought of freedom and democracy and heard the machine-gun clatter of falling dominoes hitting each other, knocking the next to the tabletop. Then he remembered Robert Kennedy’s comment: ‘We’re killing innocent people because the communists are 12,000 miles away, and they might get 11,000 miles away.’ How could that justify the killing?”
Author Richard Morris speaks about the domino theory in his post: https://richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/the-vietnam-war-part-1-on-pbs/
Richard Morris, Author 