[charcoal23]

It's probably both, but leaning much more towards the grifting side of things. There's something about conservative politics in the US which encourages grifters and cons.

When my very Republican stepfather fell into dementia, I helped my mom monitor his mail so he'd stop spending so much money on things he didn't understand. It was a deluge of stuff every day. Often from groups I had never heard of who wanted money to stop Sharia law or stop the "war on Christmas" or whatever the big conservative cause was that day. And even the mainstream GOP got into the act. More than once, a FedEx envelope would show up with a plea that everything was doomed unless a check was overnighted. Once the GOP FedEx solicitation contained a letter accusing my stepfather of no longer being a member of the Republican Party, but he could clear up this misunderstanding by writing a check.

[ZeroGravitas]

A great, in-depth article on this is here:

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con

The conservative movement is elder abuse on a grand scale.

[fleitz]

And on the flip side it's Donate or get deported. Scare tactics work, both sides use it.

[fmihaila]

Except the stated policy of this executive is to deport large numbers of people, whereas there is no danger of Christmas being outlawed, or of Sharia becoming the law of the land.

[fleitz]

That’s funny given that deportations are down 80% since the previous admin, also far less wall has been built than the previous admin was able to build on a yearly basis...

Wouldn’t you characterize that as scaremongering given the facts?

[fmihaila]

Certainly not. The only things keeping the official policy from progressing faster are the utter incompetence of the administration and the relative sanity of the court system. Both can change.