Trump hits back: "Death and destruction caused by people that shouldn't be here."
Murderers vs. Toddler.
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| White House, Friday |
He is responding to the image of himself making a little girl cry by creating a blunt image of his own. Those immigrants aren't so little or so harmless.
The signs "said it: "Secure the Borders." Protect our Communities." There is a grave threat out there, murderers of young women. He brought to the White House parents of children killed by people in America illegally, and they brought photos..
He is putting his own face on the issue of immigration to America--other nice, sweet, sympathetic young girls. Blot out the image of the little girl. Put this picture in mind instead.
Fox News focused on the outrage. There was only one story, the terrible injustice and tragedy of their loss. Fox showed context in the form of Democratic support for sanctuary cities and immigration. I did not observe context in the form of crime statistics, nor of "good" immigrants. Fox's story is Trump's story: menace, danger, outrage over murderers in our midst.
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| NY Times, today |
The statistics don't matter.
Trump understands that, and Democratic candidates got a lesson on the subject this week. What mattered politically is one crying toddler and the sounds of crying children. What matters politically is one pretty girl victim.
Dueling images of immigrants. One dangerous, one benign.
Democrats have a disadvantage. Trump is stoking fear with his image, but the reality is that there will always be crime. Fear of murder is universal. However, the image of the diligent, hard working immigrant--whether here legally or not--is a mixed message. That person will look foreign and he or she will be working hard, perhaps taking a job from a native born American. Or won't be working hard, so why are they here? The pro-immigration story is complex, while the immigrants-might-murder-you story is simple.
Trump's campaign started with a broadside against Latin American immigrants. Europeans and Americans were getting more restless about immigration. Meanwhile, Democrats had moved "left" on the issue, abandoning the Bill Clinton position (legal yes, illegal no) toward broader amnesty and inclusion. Democrats were defining as "racist" the language their own leaders were saying eight years prior. This created more political space for Trump.
Trump ran a campaign of ethno-nationalism and is doubling down on it as president, encouraging fear and resentment of immigrants with a simple clear message: they are dangerous and the bad ones are mixed into the good ones. MS-13. Future gang members. Murderers.
Look at the victims.
He lost a round with the photo of the little girl, but Trump is not done.
6 comments:
You forgot to mention that the photo of the crying toddler on ogat Time cover was one where the mother snatched her from the rest of her familiy, leaving her husband and other children behund.
Mom had been deported once before, and was not seeking asylum.
Stick to the facts. AP and Time have corrected their story.
"ogat" should be "on that"
And that is fundamentally different from the Kate Steinle case in what way?
I don't want to get into "whataboutism", but there are facts and there is spin.
Carefulnreaders of my blog post see that I am commenting about the cover story because it is commentary. Obviously it is a created photoshopped cover. Look. There is no background. They are in blank space. The girl’s tears were not caused by separation from the mother. But the crying toddler became the symbol. It’s actual Backstory became irrelevant because the crying toddler photo got a life ignite own as the representation of the policy. It is the exact equivalent of the symbolic use of photos of the people killed by undicemented immigrants. Statistically one is safer among them than among native born Americans but that is as irrelevant as the reason the toddler cried. Trump used them as symbols to represent the typical immigrant—potential murderers. It is a potent symbol. Most of my readers seem to “get it”, but possibly I need to be more clear. Both the toddler and the pictures of murdered young women were a-typical but used to represent two notions of immigrants. One dangerous and the other innocent and harmless. They manipulated the public understanding with a useful lie—both of them.
"The Other Issues? Illegal Immigration is the Only Issue"
The NPR program The Takeaway on June 22, 2018 boldly tries to put it in Democrats' faces that if we don't do a serious course correction on illegal immigration then we risk remaining out of national power. Listen, "The Political Price of Betting on Immigration", The Takeaway, https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381444253/pri-the-takeaway.
Hillary Clinton lost on the illegal immigration issue. But she didn't just lose, she lost to a theretofore unthinkable candidate. How could any credible Democrat lose to Trump? Illegal immigration, that's how. And that may be the dark political reality in this year's midterms and in 2020. Illegal immigration is now the only issue in American politics. In German politics. In Italian politics. In British politics. Border insecurity is the issue that will determine whether the European Union survives in its present form. Illegal immigration will determine who controls the U.S. Supreme Court for the next several decades.
What are Democrats doing about this dark reality? Too little too late. We are happy in our Robert De Niro "f _ _ _ Trump" bubble. We get standing ovations-- from ourselves. Illegal immigration single-handedly derailed our birthright to the "new Democratic majority". Latinos were supposed to deliver that to us. They didn't and they aren't, according to The Takeaway's analysis. Worse, the panel cites empirical data that "white liberals" are giving only "soft" support on immigration issues. The more white liberals are exposed to images of border chaos, the more they become anti-illegal immigrant.
Trump is hyper-confident in this political reality. He's now told the GOP Congress to not "waste time" with immigration reform. He has the media and the country where he wants them-- obsessed with what's happening at the border. Sure, put the crying kids front and center. But in the background many voters are seeing huddled dark skinned people, obviously poor and uneducated, telling the cameras they are fleeing "gang violence", rape and murder. The media agrees with Trump that they have also brought gang violence-- MS-13. Everyone agrees large parts of Mexico and central America are hell-holes. Liberal whites ask "and the gangs, rapists and murders, what, they just stayed behind, they aren't embedded with these people on the camera?"
"We don't want it here" is irrefutable emotion and politics.
The Takeaway discusses immigration from history and political strategies to Trump's current "zero tolerance". The separated children actually never were at the center of the debate-- border security has been. The political reality is that little girl on the Time cover didn't displace fear of immigrants, she displaced the political mojo of Dreamers. The political theater isn't that she's pleading with Trump, she's demanding exception from border law, and tax dollars. And Latino voters, who are closest to the immigrant waves, they aren't rallying to throw open the borders like immigration activists are demanding. Nor are black voters. Nor Asians. And, the data shows liberal whites are getting queezy with what, on camera, looks like "an invasion".
The show ends with a prescription: Democratic leaders need to start addressing border security. But the conclusion is that probably won't happen because those leaders are afraid in doing so they will further fracture the frayed Democratic base. It is shaping up that we are losing to Trumpism all over again. We need that course correction.
Facile and simple; watchwords of MSM coverage of *45. 15 second "in depth " reports that should take a couple of hours. When any guest on a Sunday Talking Head Gabfest tries to get substantive, on any subject of real concerns, the Shuck Toads go straight to their standard fallback "we're out of time, we need to leave this here for now" and cut to a commercial.
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