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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38196 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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A great man once said feeble minds discuss people, mediocre minds discuss events, and great men discuss feeble and mediocre minds. As befits my station (see: flair), I will endeavor to do the first two.

Yesterday, Ron Desantis proudly shipped 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. See Breitbart and Fox News’ takes as well. The individuals were supposedly offered a plane ticket to Massachusetts, without being told they were being sent to a small, isolated island unprepared to receive them as part of a political stunt. Amusingly, not sharing a border with Mexico, Desantis actually had to source his illegal immigrants from Texas. I suppose rustling up 50 of the 772,000 homegrown illegal Florida Mans was too difficult, or may have upset some core constituency, who knows. The only shelter in Martha’s Vineyard has room for 10 and is obviously not equipped in the way that Boston, New York or DC would be and the plane ticket to those places would have been much cheaper.

Also of note: see the Fox News article for the Florida legislature’s $12 million ‘immigrant relocation program’ Own The Libs/Desantis for President fun.

I can stomach a border wall and even see the necessity, despite disagreeing with what it represents. I can sympathize with people living near the border and dealing with crime and drug cartels. But manipulating impoverished people seeking a better future and treating them as nothing more than chattel to score political points and ‘own the libs’ absolutely turns my stomach. Which, judging by the Breitbart comments and replies I expect here, laughing at my pearl clutching is absolutely the point. You want me to be mad, you want me get up on my soapbox and bleat some self-righteous Soyjak lines about muh poor illegals so you can get mad right back and it feels good.

So I guess I won’t do that, although I never know what to say instead. I’m sorry that you hate Obama and Clinton (see: Breitbart article) so much that the thought of them having to deal with poor third worlders is amusing. I’m sorry that you’re so angry about illegal immigration and the libs that we’ve come here. Please, let’s all try to treat our countrymen better and do what we can to dial down the hate.

Which, judging by the Breitbart comments and replies I expect here, laughing at my pearl clutching is absolutely the point. You want me to be mad, you want me get up on my soapbox and bleat some self-righteous Soyjak lines about muh poor illegals so you can get mad right back and it feels good.

No, I want the people that live in Martha's Vinyard to admit that living around illegal aliens fucking sucks and everyone knows it. I want them to admit that despite having way more than enough wealth to handle 50 people, they don't want to, because they know that it's bad for their community. I want the people that utter platitudes about how diversity is our strength to deal with even the slightest bit of personal consequence for their ideology.

Of course, I don't have any illusion that any of these things are going to happen, but putting it as blatantly front and center as this does might at least make it apparent to fencesitters that the empathy of the very wealthy for illegal aliens only extends as far as some other neighborhood.

I want them to admit that despite having way more than enough wealth to handle 50 people, they don't want to,

The mainstream news coverage I saw, and the mainstream reddit posts I saw, said that MV was loving this and happily making room for them. EDIT I see that MV has since put them on buses and shipped them away at gunpoint.

I have known about this campaign to bus the illegals to the sanctuary cities for a long time, but my wife just learned about a few days ago with the MV story. She wanted me to be angry and I knew not to fall into the trap so I just said "it sounds like win-win-win: the immigrants volunteered to be put there, the receiving community says they want them, the 'donor' community says they cannot handle that many refugees."

I knew not to fall into the trap

What trap? Is this a married thing?

Tip for married life: When your wife says "I just heard about this horrible thing!" you do not say "axxshually you are wrong and misinformed."

The mainstream news coverage I saw, and the mainstream reddit posts I saw, said that MV was loving this and happily making room for them.

Ah yes, that's why they're comparing this to literally hitler.

Good, send about 15,000 to 20,000 up there and I hope they're still living those values.

Massachusetts has ~250k illegal immigrants. They're already living those values.

250k is about 2/3rds of Arizona's number, but since they support illegal immigration and welcome them they should have all of both states total and Arizona should have none if they don't want them.

That might make sense if 100% of the people living in Massachusetts "support illegal immigration and welcome them" and 100% of the people living in Arizona don't, but I somewhat doubt it is quite that black and white.

If AZ and MA want to negotiate that transfer and the immigrants agree to it, that's fine. For that matter, if AZ wants to unilaterally set up a program to send immigrants out of state with consent obtained in good faith, that is fine. But neither AZ nor MA have the authority to unilaterally expel unwanted individuals, and they certainly don't have the authority to transport people under false pretenses.

But neither AZ nor MA have the authority to unilaterally expel unwanted individuals, and they certainly don't have the authority to transport people under false pretenses.

--MA appears to disagree with you, since they literally called out the national guard and shipped the illegals out with all possible speed.--

[EDIT] The above appears to be flatly incorrect. The national guard troops appear to have been activated to provide service at the destination base, not sent in force to Martha's Vineyard to collect the migrants. I was wrong.

Evidence they were forced to leave?

Or are you just assuming what's convenient?

More comments

A non-trivial number are from Ireland. Slightly different linguistically and culturally.

Rural, Catholic, poor, stereotyped as violent, lazy, and criminal? Maybe not that different.

The closest I can find to a hard number on Irish illegal immigrants estimates it at around 50k. Even if 100% of them were in MA, which they're not, that's still be ~200k other illegal immigrants.

Or to put it concisely, they should incur some actual costs so their virtue signalling actually carries some signal and stops being pure noise and posturing.

Either they can suggest that taking in these immigrants is good and thus agree to accept more from southern states, or they can scream about a humanitarian crisis and resources stretched thin, at which point they acknowledge that the Southern states have it way worse.

So where's the evidence of them screaming? NPR reports that they're working on helping those immigrants, but they didn't have the items or capacity on hand.

"Everything from beds to food to clothing to toothbrushes, toothpaste, blankets, sheets — I mean, we had some of it ... but we did not have the numbers that we needed," said Lisa Belcastro, who runs the island's homeless shelter

For that matter, where's the virtue signaling? What proof is there that MV is supportive of illegal immigrants?

The Border Patrol didn't have toothbrushes or toothpaste or blankets or sheets on the border either. You might not have noticed, but they were reduced to herding people into pens under freeway overpasses for lack of places to put them.

What proof is there that MV is supportive of illegal immigrants?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/florida-flies-migrants-to-sanctuary-destination-of-marthas-vineyard

Martha’s Vineyard has styled itself as a “sanctuary destination” that welcomes migrants — a position it took early in former President Donald Trump’s administration.

From back in 2017:

https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2017/04/06/immigration-issue-stirs-heartfelt-response-island

I assume this is sufficient proof.

So where's the evidence of them screaming?

Perhaps 'heated discussion' is the more accurate way to put it.

The apparent official response is they can't stay and will be transported away... which seems to bely the idea of providing a 'sanctuary.'

https://twitter.com/NYCHomoCon/status/1570456702390267905#m

Meanwhile, the residents themselves seem rather torn over the situation, with the ones most angry about Desantis' action turning out to be the least likely to support housing the migrants locally.

https://twitter.com/DoctorTurtleboy/status/1570571488956395521

Which is pretty damned classic NIMBYism if you remove the specific context.

Meanwhile, many southern towns are getting twice this many migrants on something like a daily basis and it causes minimal national headlines for some reason.

Absent any of the above, the 'virtue signalling' part arises from a town declaring itself a sanctuary city whilst, apparently, lacking the infrastructure to actually handle people seeking sanctuary.

As in, signalling support for a cause whilst not actually acting in support nor putting any skin in the game, but only so they can claim to be virtuous.

My bet is they will continue to claim support for illegal immigrants whilst making zero changes to accept such immigrants, and in fact taking measures to prevent this particular type of shenanigans.

And in such case I won't mind seeing red tribe politicians calling their bluff and helping them put their money (or, alternatively, their foot) where their mouth is.

Thanks for the links. You're certainly correct that Martha's Vineyard appears to have pledged itself to not obeying federal immigration laws. I don't like this kind of political action, but I can't deny that MV wasn't walking the walk.

As far as I can tell, they've "helped" them straight onto a bus and far away from them:

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1570786066025836545

With the help of the National Guard (who needed to outnumber them more than 2 to 1, obviously):

https://twitter.com/EmilieIkedaNBC/status/1570775078828388353

I'm sure the illegals were persuaded to pose for a few feel-good photo shoots to project the image of virtue. Certainly the MSM is making hay of it. But when push came to shove they bundled the diversity onto a bus and sent it away.

sounds like they're making room for the next group DeSantos sends there.

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