Tuesday, June 26, 2018

When the Washington Post unpacks an inconvenient immigration truth

It's time to sit up and take notice.  So for over a week, I've watched claims about Trump's policies, Trump's lies about the "Border Crisis (TM)", and the actions of previous administrations walked back, contradicted, changed and altered.

The initial stories ran as if we never even heard of Immigrants, and now Racist Trump was initiating the new Holocaust out of the blue aimed at murdering children in cages while families were sent to concentration camps.  Cue hysterics and protests by the donkey masses.

Problem is, almost everything that has come out since the initial days' reporting has torn down that narrative.  Of course the protests, like a train, aren't easily stopped.  They continue on as if nothing has been released to change the story.  It's still SatanHitlerTrump and America's Great Holocaust out of the blue.  Facts and truth mean little in this day and age.

In another setback for people who don't seem to care about immigrants, the United States, Americans or the Truth, however, the Washington Post has released a story suggesting why Trump is trying to finally fix this decades' long problem.  That's the Washington Post.  It turns out that, under Obama's policies, immigrant children were being handed over to slave traders.

Well, they're called human traffickers because we call modern slavery human trafficking.  It's slavery.  Calling it slavery reminds us that human slavery was only out of the picture for a few decades in the last half of the 20th century.  The last country to outlaw slavery did so in the 1950s I believe.  Before that, slavery had been practiced in some form or another - often in different forms in the same region - since the dawn of time.

Of course the sex industry is one of the main driving forces of the modern slave trade. Since the media is loathe to focus on the dark underbelly of issues it supports (like the modern sex and drugs culture), the modern slave trade and the sex industry's part in it get about as much coverage as the occasional hot air balloon race.

Beyond the Slave Traders who we'll call Human Traffickers, the children were also neglected as those entrusted to care for them engaged in systemic abuse.  On the whole, it was a disaster.  As the immigration issue has been for some decades.

Like gun violence and overall violence in America, if you only care about that which is usable for political gain, accusing appeals to the wider issue of being a defense for Trump  or hating immigrants, then you're actually the main problem.  Nor are you pro-life in any sense of the term.   Because following the latest hysterics that only erupted under Trump instead of Obama because it's politically expedient, suggests you care far more about scoring political points than helping the least of these, either in America or outside of its borders.

And that, children, is not what Jesus would have us do.

5 comments:

  1. "Most of the children at the border weren't separated from anybody."
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH8yowrM84k

    This is what Trump warned them about with his whole "I could shoot somebody..." statement - because at this point if he did shoot someone I doubt I'd be able to believe any of the news reports or images of it.

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    1. Yep. Almost all credibility is lost at this point. I said years ago that I fear people don't listen to different news outlets despite the fact that the outlets are biased, they do so precisely because they know they are biased.

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    2. What frustrates me is that I get these people being bleeding heart and all - I do*. But they will NOT listen or even consider that what they're advocating could put the children into more harm as if the consideration there could be criminals abusing those kids is beyond their comprehension (all minorities are saints I guess).

      *About the whole "but it was happening back then"/selective outrage you've been talking about lately, for some like Shea I legit believe that "true believers" group is just so led around by their emotions that they weren't ignoring it back then, it just wasn't in front of them so they ignored it. It's like Evan Sayat talked about in a recent podcast - they believe we need to get back to the Garden of Eden, so in order to do that we must abandon knowledge and thinking because that is what brought sin into the Garden.

      As for those who are much more cynical on the left... who can say. It wouldn't surprise me honestly if they set up something like Obama's policy so they would have something to complain about later if a Republican had to deal with it (continue it: he's being mean to families, stop it: he's not doing enough to stop human trafficking).

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  2. Mark Shea's latest contortions on the immigration topic are, erm, interesting:

    Why didn’t you know about this? Chances are, that if you get your information from non-right-wing sources, you did. A Google search for “Obama “deporter in chief”” will give you 30,800 hits. Even “”72,410 children” separated ICE” will give you over a thousand hits.

    However, if you tend to only consume right or midstream media, you probably never had this story register on your consciousness. Why? Because the Right Wing Lie Machine did not want to cover it since they did not want to praise Obama.

    But now that Trump is torturing children at the border and taking them hostage, the Right Wing Lie Machine is suddenly playing up Obama’s horrendous record of deportation, not out of the slightest interest in his victims, but in order to defend Trump for making still more victims.



    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2018/06/just-a-reminder-trump-didnt-invent-family-separation.html

    So, we have a story about Obama separating over 70,000 children from their parents, just like Trump is accused of doing... and this provides yet another excuse to bash Republicans with. I've met closed-minded people before, but none of them could hold a candle to Mark Shea.

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    1. I've learned that Mark's posts are exercises in bad arguments. Which itself isn't horrible. We all don't have to be the greatest since Cicero. But he adds calumny, insults, name calling, judgmentalism, spreading falsehoods, and generally encouraging hatred toward fellow believers, and allowing hatred even aimed at God, Christ and the Church. How does a 'Christian minister' do such a thing?

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