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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."

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.

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?

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