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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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'They enriched us.' Migrants' 44-hour visit leaves indelible mark on Martha's Vineyard

I encourage people to read the article before reading my impressions.

Incidentally, this article made me really wish for the Bare Links Repository back.

There is so much about this article that is just amazing to me. I don't know how to describe it. Maybe "witlessly mask off"?

First, I want to note the tic where every time the author notes an age, he specifies that the migrant in question looks younger. It's just so artlessly manipulative.

Second, the people patting themselves on the back for the casual, mild, one-off generosity. Wow, a Martha's Vineyard homeowner reached into his wallet and gave a migrant a $100 bill. Then there's the guy who spent $100 on candy for the kids, which is extra Wholesome 100 because he lives in his car because the rent is too damn high. It's like Ray Sanchez crammed an entire scathing allegory about life and housing in the blue zones into a sentence and didn't even notice.

Third, I'd really like to see the argument for how offering people a plane ride to a rich resort town is a human rights violation.

But the thing that really gets me is the detailed, yet uselessly vague, descriptions of the incredible dangers the migrants had to overcome to get to the US. Murderous mud and murderous cartels, and floods and cliffs. Coming from Venezuela, it's 2,684 miles by plane. Map software can't even calculate a route by land, I'm guessing it's something more like 4,000 miles, going through at least seven other countries. The article quotes the migrants clearly describing themselves as economic migrants, but repeatedly calls them asylum seekers. No one seems to notice that these people trekked, apparently on foot, halfway across the hemisphere, losing something like 2/3rds of their number to the assorted lethal dangers for exactly the storied rewards they want these people to get, quoting the article, "access to services including legal, health care, food, hygiene kits, and crisis counseling" along with housing.

The MV people celebrating themselves in this article seem to bear a large portion of moral blame for creating the exact incentive for people to take these risks and find themselves in these situations. Imagine if some billionaire was offering people a large sum of money to take their children and hike across a deadly desert. I think there would be mass outcry at how incredibly fucked up that was. And the few people who reached the other end are instead greeted with a king size Snickers bar and a crisp Benjamin to fuck off. Do you want people dying to get to you or not?! How many dead kids is worth a few hours of cultural enrichment?

I'm at a loss for how to categorize this, but it all just strikes me as appalling. This is the most cruelly champagne socialist shit I've ever read, and it's being presenting as flattery by CNN!

Martha's Vineyard

Was it legal what DeSantis did? As far as PR stunts go, it was a huge success and way boosts his odds for 2024, assuming he isn't criminally charged for this stunt.

What exactly would the crime be? And why wouldn't it apply to every NGO, congressional staffer and lawyer doing similar things to get people to and over the border in the first place?

It is almost certainly illegal in some capacity to fly illegal immigrants further into the country. I’m almost certain the federal aviation code, at least, has something against flying around people who have no legal right to be in the country. There’s probably also a law against inducing people to travel under false pretenses and you can no doubt get some of the migrants to testify that they did not know they were going to Martha’s Vineyard.

Now getting charges to stick is probably another matter but I would be very surprised if the DOJ can’t find something, assuming it wants to.

The Biden administration has been doing exactly this for years.