Calling out symptoms as The Problem, is a recurring theme for politicians and media. In my lifetime, my initial encounter with this propaganda technique was the War On Drugs, the Nixon administration’s scheme to suppress movements for social change.
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
~John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
In fact, creating sentiment against perceived enemies is a time-honored tradition used to justify policies the public would otherwise find distasteful. Ignorance, stereotypes, and fear of the other are what makes these tactics work. By the time facts and/or nuances are revealed, the targeted audience mostly remembers to act in ways intended by the perpetrators of these schemes.
Remember Reagan’s ‘Welfare Queens’ driving around in Cadillacs sipping cognac paid for by US Taxpayers? How about escaped convict Willie Horton?
“By the time we’re finished,” said Lee Atwater, who managed Bush’s campaign, “they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.”
Today’s targets for generating anger and fear are migrants coming through Mexico, and humans left to exist on the streets. Or, as empathy-free political entities call them: illegals and drug addicts.
Extrapolating what seem to be logical courses of action in both instances results in an expansion of carceral forces and institutions. In other words, lock ‘em up and throw away the key, regardless of the underlying factors leading them to being perceived as a problem.
Oliver Darcy at Reliable Sources:
Led by Fox News, the right-wing media machine is using the increase in migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment and bash President Joe Biden. To be clear, the crossings are worthy of news coverage (CNN has coverage here).
But there is a way to cover the humanitarian crisis in a humane way — and that is sadly not reflected in so much of the programming you see on Fox News and elsewhere. Instead, Fox News viewers are being inundated with on-screen banners aimed at inciting fear, such as: "GET READY FOR ANOTHER SURGE OF ILLEGALS." Rather than explaining the various factors that have led to the increase in crossings, Fox News is blaming the issue solely on Biden and portraying him as an "open borders" president. "BIDEN'S BORDER CRISIS," is a graphic that regularly is shown on screen to open up segments on the matter.
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This migrant fear mongering is only going to get worse, as hundreds of thousands of people are flowing into Mexico, driven by poverty, malnutrition, violence, and one other thing rarely mentioned.
Fox News and KUSI will be reminding viewers early and often about terrorists, criminals, and cartel members lurking at the border.
President Biden is mostly unable to change the situation, just like his predecessor. The tools at his disposal (badges & guns) are lacking. Trump tried cruelty (as several Republican governors continue to do). Now we’ve added paperwork to the mix, with understaffed and overwhelmed processing centers in origin/transit countries. Yet they still come. Texas Gov Abbott’s underwater barbed wire traps have merely shifted the paths being taken by border crossers.
I suspect that one of these Republican superheroes will call for or actually go for a military solution, whether it’s drones, missiles, or commando teams. The dead bodies strewn across the Mexican landscape or washing up on our beaches will do nothing but momentarily disrupt the “invasion,” as right wingers like to call the situation.
Our nation’s stupid-headed gun laws have enabled creation of a well-armed force to our south, namely cartels willing to protect sources of income. They won’t play nice (domestic terrorism) and they won’t be sitting in plazas available to be neutralized.
Our border is a huge profit center for the fifth largest employer in Mexico, with 175,000 employees. Cartels are now making $13 billion annually smuggling migrants, up from a mere $500 million in 2018.
Stories of migrants as cartel drug smugglers are mostly just another part of the scare scheme. Why tape ounces of white power or pills on somebody, when you can get kilos of the same product across the border via commercial transportation?
There is a bottom line here, and it makes the present situation at the border unsolvable within the limits of humanity’s capabilities, regardless of political party in power.
Here’s one reason: climate change, something Congressional Republicans think it’s okay to snicker about. At least the Biden administration is studying the matter of climate change refugees.
Via the Associated Press:
Policy debates on migration have long centered on locking down borders. Climate change is changing that.
With hundreds of millions of people expected to be uprooted by natural disasters, there is growing discussion about how to manage migration flows rather than stop them, as for many people migration will become a survival tool, according to advocates.
“One problem is just the complete lack of understanding as to how climate is forcing people to move,” said Amali Tower, founder and executive director of Climate Refugees, an advocacy group focused on raising awareness about people displaced because of climate change. “There is still this idea in the Global North (industrialized nations) that people come here because they are fleeing poverty and seeking a better life, the American Dream. In Europe, it’s the same spin of the same story. But no one wants to leave their home. We’ve got to approach climate displacement as a human security issue and not a border security issue.”
By the turn of the century, one to three billion people (dependent on human ingenuity and dumb luck) will be living in parts of the planet considered uninhabitable,
Via the BBC:
On average, climate niches – the range of conditions at which species can normally exist – around the world are moving polewards at a pace of 1.15m (3.8ft) per day, although it's far faster in some places. Adapting to the changing climate will mean chasing our own shifting niche – which for much of human history has been within the temperature range -11C to 15C (12F to 59F) – as it migrates north from the equator.
True livability limits are the borders we must worry about as the world warms over this century, bringing unbearable heat, drought, floods, fires, storms, and coastal erosion that make agriculture impossible and displace people.
There are other factors driving migration; brutal dictatorships, a breakdown of order, poverty, and wars are all in the mix.
Solving this problem can not be short-term, and anybody who says otherwise has an agenda that should be considered outside the range of ‘human decency.’
In the case of today’s GOP, the solution to the ‘decency’ problem centers around weakening political or societal institutions to the point where they’re no longer considered relevant. Everything from the military to retailing to education and beyond is being tarred with the ‘woke’ brush in the name of instilling standards (which do evolve on their own) beyond what a democracy-based society has considered normal.
Biden Democrats, now that neoliberalism is waning, purport to redirect government and society in ways that shore up the economic bottom 90%. Sometimes it feels good, like the reincarnation of a Civilian Corps to work on environmental issues, or a Department of Labor not totally subservient to employers.
Additional things the Biden folks want to do are, generally speaking, popular with voters, but the government as an agent of change concept is running headlong into a scorched earth approach from the right. They’d rather shut down the government than allow acceptance of our changing society and world.
The real underlying issue is directly connected to the growth of inequality.
Dare I say it? It’s the economy.
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Part Two: Unhoused People Are Economic Refugees, coming next week. (Whenever I finish the research needed to make my case.)
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Friday’s Partisan Quibbles
*** I’m gonna try a different approach today. Click on the link (headline in green type) to see the underlying story. Listicles below headline are reactions/commentary.***
Sen. Bob Menendez and wife Nadine indicted on bribery charges Via NBC
John Fugelsang This indictment of Senator Menendez is a HOAX and a WITCH HUNT of an innocent man by the DEEP STATE and- Oh, wait. I just realized I'm not in an amoral cult of unmanly obedience. Resign, dude.
Rachel Bitecofer You know who else hid money from the IRS and ran his bribes through his wife?! (See below)
Ben Collins Did you ever consider that he needed those gold bars for something important? Maybe his family was out of gold bars. Ever think of that? Please think twice before you judge others.
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Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events Via ProPublica
Ted Lieu Justice Clarence Thomas continues to bring shame upon himself and the United States Supreme Court. He should resign. What are we going to find out next? A fundraiser for Trump headlined by Clarence Thomas? Ridiculous
Jay Willis Sorry am I clocking correctly here that one of the Koch events Clarence Thomas secretly attended happened to be one where they rolled out a new campaign to promote stacking the bench with conservatives, and put a Ginni Thomas lackey in charge of it
Jane Mayer Does Justice go better with Koch? Clarence Thomas will judge a momentous case this term affecting all federal regulations after secretly partying for years with involved polluters
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Who’s Bankrolling the Shutdown Showdown? By the Center for Media and Democracy
Alex Cole So, just to be clear. A former president is demanding that his acolytes shut down the government and hurt millions of innocent people, because he's freaked out he got busted breaking the law 91 times? Could any republican explain that to me?
Amee Vanderpool Biden: deals w/Covid, rescues economy, starts infrastructure, brings back climate protections, helps Ukraine, eliminates student debt, puts Black woman on SC, issues abortion EO's, and on and on... Trump: Congress should shut down government to stop my criminal prosecutions.
Sahil Kapur Reminder: A government shutdown wouldn't hinder Donald Trump's prosecutions. Criminal cases continue unhindered in a funding lapse, per earlier DOJ guidance