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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.
To be clear, people aren't laughing because they think you care about poor immigrants too much, they are laughing because they think your reaction proves none of it was sincere.
I love the idea of stopping the madness, and treating our countrymen better, but trust issues aside, what specifically are you even suggesting?
And how should I react in a way that would satisfy them? Donate money or time to organizations that provide aid to illegal immigrants?
I doubt I'm knowledgeable enough to give you a list of policy prescriptions that will solve the problem overnight, nor does this seem to be the place for that. I'm too lazy to dig up my previous comments on it, but I believe there's room for compromise on immigration and most other issues. The response I got from that was angry conservatives claiming they compromised in the 70s and 80s and why should they listen to me now when they know I'll be back in 20-30 years asking for more compromises?
For lack of a better word, always this: less culture war, please. We're all humans, not moral monsters, let's not cheer the people trying to stoke partisan division for political gain. You and I aren't so different and largely want the same things, yet in some perverse reversal, we spend 80% of our time arguing about the 20% of things we disagree on rather than finding solidarity in the 80% of things we do agree on.
It’s this kind of ultra-smarmy response that makes people laugh at you and dismiss you. You’re openly advocating and voting for policies that many of believe are existentially disastrous for this country - that will literally lead to the financial, cultural and generic dispossession of our people and a disappearance of our posterity from the earth - and when people get angry about it you retreat to “we all want the same things, what about the high road and civility, can’t we just all have a calm and reasonable debate, why all the hate, etc.”
No, Chris, we DON’T all want the same things and just disagree on the little details. Our worldviews genuinely are irreconcilable, and no amount of holier-than-thou ostentatious displays of false empathy - the secular liberal equivalent of “I’ll pray for you” - will bridge those gaps. An uncharitable interpretation of your post is that your main goal here was to “trigger the Cons” and to push OUR buttons, using a conversational tactic that was guaranteed to provoke a hostile response that you could pre-emptively forecast to make yourself look virtuous and us look unreasonable.
It's not smarmy, it's genuine. I'm genuinely sorry that my ethos, policy preferences, whatever it is, infuriate you. I'm sorry that you believe our worldviews are irreconcilable, and we're headed towards whatever conclusion you think that leads us to.
I can't vote.
Alright. How could I rewrite my post in such a way that wouldn't provoke such a response from you, while keeping the same general point intact?
What is your point, exactly? You originally seemed mostly upset that people are picking on Martha's Vineyard, or that some people got used in a political stunt, but now it seems like you're just generally sad that people are upset about this. If your point is that obvious grounds for compromise are getting torpedoed by political stunts, I think it's on you to demonstrate that this is actually the case.
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