Sounds like a You problem

Conservatives: “Sympathize with us, libtards!”

© 2016 / © 2017 Gage Skidmore, both used under a Creative Common license

Regarding the border “crisis” I keep hearing about from the rightwing press, I have yet to hear what the actual nature of the crisis is. It seems to be that there are a lot of immigrants attempting to get into the country — something we used to be proud of! — and some of them actually get through, bless ‘em.

So what’s the problem?

Here’s CNN:

The expiry on Wednesday of a Trump-era order [Title 42] that exploited public health justifications during the pandemic to turn away thousands of migrants is expected to severely strain an already stretched border, immigration and asylum system.

The Department of Homeland Security unveiled Thursday an emergency six-point plan to tackle the crisis as Republicans preparing to take over the House brandished the potential chaos as proof of their claims of gross White House negligence over the border.

So, the authorities have to work harder to process and (mostly) turn away immigrants. The Post Office has to work harder to handle the mail at Christmas, too. Is Christmas a “crisis”? Get Congress to man up and fix what DHS calls our “outdated immigration system,” or quitchur bitchin’.

Seriously, what’s the problem, I haven’t seen a crime wave associated with the new people — maybe because conservatives have been screaming CRIME WAVE ceaselessly since Biden got in and they haven’t been able to think of a segue. (“Black criminals are robbing all the Walgreens — hang on — now I’m told they’re all Honduran!”) Or is the problem that the refugees are, as isolationists always say, “taking all the good jobs” that no one allegedly wants to work at?

Notwithstanding you see this line of gab all the time on TV and in the papers, Byron York, bullshit bubbler at the Washington Examiner, has written something called “Most people don’t know how bad the border crisis is” (and by the way, you know how people like to say “that’s not the way you use the expression ‘begging the question’”? That just came to mind for some reason).

Anyway York warms us up with some stuff about how when Joe Biden got in he “essentially opened the nation's doors to millions of illegal border crossers” and as soon as Title 42 ends (which can’t happen yet because John Roberts played his part in this charade and froze it in place pending a fresh load of Federalist Society sophistry about how the Founders, or perhaps a 17th-century witchfinder, thought Mexicans were inimical to democracy and spread The King’s Evil) “a flood of illegal crossers, all coming into the United States confident that they, like hundreds of thousands before them just this year, will be allowed to stay.” Can’t you just see those guys sauntering past something that looks like a disused toll booth as “Low Rider” plays behind them, being greeted on the other side by blue-haired lesbians and NPR hosts whom they will embrace before cutting their throats and stealing their wallets and laughing like Mapache’s men after they capture Angel in The Wild Bunch?

The “unheard-of levels” are a “disaster” and “disastrous,” York says, but you guys aren’t freaking out like he is because… well, let him tell it:

But perhaps just as extraordinary has been the decision by many major media organizations that what is happening on the border is no big deal. In particular, major television news networks, with the notable exception of Fox News…

lol

…have virtually pretended that the crisis was not happening. Recently, Fox's Bill Melugin, who has covered the current crisis close-up since it began, was asked about coverage on the national networks. "I can count on one hand the amount of times I've seen them down here in my 19 months of covering this," Melugin said.

Maybe they just don’t want you to know they’re around, Bill.

Now, we are seeing what happens when so many in the media ignore a story. A new Harvard-Harris poll shows that the public has no idea how bad the crisis is. When asked how many illegal crossers are entering the U.S., they grossly underestimate the number. They are, in short, in the dark about what is happening on the border.

If only we knew how these border states suffer from the presence of immigrants! Say, maybe that was why Greg Abbott and Greg DeSantis bused all those immigrants to northeastern cities last summer, he wanted us to empathize with them… oh, wait, now I remember, that wasn’t it at all — says here: “The Republican governor said his moves are intended to expose Mr. Biden, who has fostered the most chaotic southern border situation the country has faced in decades.” Also, to own the libs!

And now no one’s showing Abbott and DeSantis et alia any sympathy. How about that.

I think York is even more wrong than (I’m sure) he secretly knows himself to be. I think Americans generally have heard all the screaming about immigrants, and all about Abbott’s and DeSantis’ use of these poor broke-ass refugees as props in their culture war, and decided they knew who the bad guys are, and it wasn’t the folks who were trying to give these people who fled poverty and God knows what else a break.

I’m not sure how many of these allegedly “in the dark” Americans are also aware that conservatives are increasingly mobbed up with Great Replacement/White Nationalist freaks who are obsessed with keeping the country (or at least its power sector) as white as possible. Or how many of them are familiar with the loathsome visage of Stephen Miller, the architect of the racist and exclusionary Trump immigration policy that Biden threw out. But if they were aware of these things, I don’t think that’d make them more favorable toward Byron York and his crew.

In short, maybe Americans are not in the dark — they just know you all too well. ¡Lo siento, pendejos!