The mainstream media will not cover deeply political issues like immigration as a journalistic search for truth but as a debate in which they cover both sides. It’s maddening. That structural defect in MSM is why the ‘open borders’ myth is never addressed.
We are having this discussion now due to a major political failure by the Administration. What started as a supplementary funding bill to send military aid to the Ukraine and Israel morphed into a border bill in a bid to get Republican votes. When the anti-government soreheads in the so-called Freedom Caucus plotted to extract concessions from Biden by demanding a suite of highly punitive and restrictive border regulations in exchange for their support, he caved.
Predictably, the Freedom Caucus fanatics then rejected their own bill once the Administration team accepted the ill-advised offer. So this entire week has been consumed with the sidecar issue, the sweetener Biden threw in to get Republican votes. Once again, chumps that they are, Lucy pulls up the football, and they are flat on their back. When will these centrist liberals learn? When they finally squander any hope of ever holding power?
The GOP contention that the border under Democratic administrations is “wide open” is a vicious piece of racist propaganda that should be called out every time it is stated in public. That Big Lie of ‘Democrat open borders’ is the #1 bald-faced manufactured propaganda meme that the Republican leadership deploys cynically to rile up the hoople-heads at election time. That’s what Trump is running on in 2024.
The fact that our MSM so-called journalists have let GOP guests go on TV for a decade and never did the basic fact-checking to make that nasty ‘open borders’ libel a slur is emblematic of their abandonment of the mission of journalism. Chuck Todd and Jake Tapper and the rest of the MSM stuffed suits just sit and nod like bobbleheads as the Tommy Tuberville Confederate clan goes on CNN and MSNBC and makes that patently false statement over and over without a whimper of a challenge. No wonder the MSM has lost credibility.
A simple Wikipedia search can show reams of references to the fact that the southern border has been increasingly militarized for decades under both Democrats and Republicans. And the fact that DHS and ICE do not change their policies because a new Democratic Administration comes into office has been decisively resolved by Congressional testimony. There is not, nor has there ever been, an ‘open borders’ policy in modern times by either party.
The Republican operatives who say that canard regularly should be immediately fact-checked in real time on air and given the opportunity to retract the falsehood. If they persist, they will be admonished by the host and not be invited back on the show. Fewer liars on TV would be a step toward a more civil public square. We are succeeding if they have to go only to right-wing media to run that game.
The record number of border arrests, detentions, and deportations is cited by the Democratic Administration as proof of their diligence in protecting the borders. Those same stats are cited by GOP talking heads as proof that ‘illegal immigration is out of control.’ The Republican Party has manufactured the ‘open borders’ trope to inflame their bigot base. We don’t have to normalize their fact-free talking points.
On the local scene, I was alarmed by the newspaper reports about multiple police encounters with a local grassroots group who were protesting the Mattson/Lefever property management company outside The Cheese Factory at the Plaza while Mattson was inside attempting to hold a meeting with other merchants on the Plaza to discuss business. I have been at dozens of rallies and marches at the Plaza, and the cops were always chill. In fact, they almost always stayed out of sight unless called on. WTH is going on with that?
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