Well, it sure didn't take long to get there.
Democratic Roanoke Mayor David Bowers announced Wednesday that the city would not be spending any resources on resettling Syrian refugees, pointing to the internment of Japanese nationals during WWII as precedent.
Yep, He's a Democrat. And yes, the mayor is referring to the placement of Japanese Americans into internment camps as a defensible, positive thing.
"I'm reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis is now just as real as that from our enemies then."
As a reminder, we interned American citizens, not just "foreign nationals," and the forcible relocation of Japanese-American men, women and children into fenced, heavily guarded camps, stripping them of their homes and businesses under the theory that some small number of them might be sympathetic to their ethnic roots and therefore "dangerous," is now considered one of the most horrific examples of American xenophobia since the genocide of Native Americans. It continues to be defended only by the most racist elements of the far-far-right, and is considered by the rest of us to be a really fucking disqualifying stance for the mayor of anygoddamntown to have.
So Mayor Bowers might want to: 1) read up on that chapter of history and 2) apologize right the hell now. Before the various American survivors of those camps feel the need to explain his error to him in very public terms.