I was volunteering with homeless people in downtown Austin during the protests against Trump’s immigration policies. Every week, I saw people with dementia, head injuries, and psychosis sleeping in their own feces under the 6th street bridge. I saw mentally ill women being trafficked behind dumpsters (some economically privileged men “get off” on the depravity of street prostitution – it’s considered a “kink” that should not be shamed. Grrrr..). Yet I saw no one protest on behalf of those who were suffering right on their own doorsteps.
I begged the downtown churches to offer their sanctuaries to the city as spaces where homeless women could be sheltered at night (homeless women are raped multiple times a year, and “disappear” with horrific regularity). The churches refused, even though their large buildings sit empty every single night while homeless women – many of them elderly – suffer and die outside their doors.
These same churches, who refused to provide sanctuary to their disabled neighbors, put up big signs advertising their support for immigrants and sanctuary cities for undocumented people. Their hypocrisy made me choke.
To the “woke”, poor people in the USA are not worthy victims – especially poor people who are white and conservative (almost all of the homeless people I worked with, including black, hispanic,and native american homeless people, were deeply religious and expressed fervent support for Trump).
The “woke” only care about attractive victims, not victims they can actually see, hear, and smell.
That’s why the “woke” care so much more about historical slavery than they do about the modern day slavery (sex trafficking) happening right under their noses: historical slaves only exist in books and movies, so they all smell sweet, have perfect teeth, and are visually appealing. Modern day trafficking victims have bad breath, broken teeth, severe addictions, inconvenient opinions, and horrific body odor. Who wants to help THOSE people? It’s easier to just shrug them off and say “sex work is work”.
Anyway, thank you for expressing concern for the poor and working class in the USA, and not sacrificing their interests to serve your own ego, as the “woke” love to do.
You are quite right to highlight the hypocrisy of those proclaiming their compassion but refusing to help those actually suffering and in danger. The problem, of course, is that those you describe so eloquently are both unappealing in the flesh and chaotic in their behaviour.
No doubt the Churches saw that taking the humane step to let the homeless women in would require them to control and supervise a process that could turn ugly with an influx of those wishing to exploit the women together with potential legal responsibilities.
Compassion in former times often involved rigorous control and restrictions on those who were the object of compassion. Today the liberal mindset is not willing to undertake such essentially authoritarian but necessary measures to protect and preserve order among the afflicted but prefers like Pontius Pilate to wash their hands of such processes. Hence the increasing chaos on the streets of Democratic cities.
That’s why the “woke” care so much more about historical slavery than they do about the modern day slavery (sex trafficking) happening right under their noses
In the case of UN virtue-signallers, they’re probably using the trafficked.
The thing is, though, they don’t actually care about any *individual* people, at all. They care about the idea of victims that they have have formed *in their own heads*. So it’s very much a form of solipsism, or selfishness, or lack of empathy; that is, that one’s ideas and perceptions of the world matter more than the actual reality of what is happening to real individual humans in the real world.
But what all of us – “woke” or whatever the opposite of that is – need to keep to the front of our minds is that the “they” that I refer to is actually an “us”; that we all can and do partake in this egotistic othering; that he who commits no sin shall cast the first stone; and that there is absolutely no use, truth, justice, love, or beauty in getting ourselves trapped in a false-binary culture war. Doing so only aids and abets the tiny minority of sociopaths who want to control us, just for the sake of it. I know that you were not advocating that but I just wanted to say it.
Gandydancer x
1 year ago
“Trump may have gone too far with his family separation policy…” the “family separation policy” wasn’t Trump’s, but was the creation of Democrat kritarch Dolly Gee.
Yes, and the images of the ‘kids in cages’ were taken during the Obama administration. There is no end to the duplicity of the media and the gullibility of most people. That said, only 11% of Americans now trust the TV news, so they are waking up.
Rafael Aguilo
1 year ago
“Big-city Democrats want to flatter the moral vanity of their elite base by rhetorically supporting illegal immigration, but only so long as border states such as Texas and Arizona are the ones who foot the bill.”
This about encapsulates the whole enchilada.
Douglas H
1 year ago
Good article. This is simple economics and Labour arbitrage — importing poor people to do indigenous poor people’s jobs is going to benefit … exactly who?
The exception is jobs local people do not want to do, but even there the issue is more about why they don’t want to do them: i.e. it’s about how attractive these jobs are financially. Importing desperate poor workers keeps those jobs low paid and unattractive.
Katy Hibbert
1 year ago
Trump may have gone too far with his family separation policy,
Started by Obama, as were the “cages” for children.
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
So, left and right in the US are both anti-immigration, in effect. A rare point of national unity
No….. You seem to have entirely missed the point of this article. The current ‘identitarian’ Left who dominate the Democratic Party do not believe in any border control at all – the real (as opposed to the stated) reason being that this policy helps the privileged ‘progressive’ wealthy classes.
Douglas McNeish
1 year ago
“Big city democrats want to flatter the moral vanity of their elite base by rhetorically supporting illegal immigration.”
Bingo! The unholy alliance of big corporations and the upper middle class social justice warriors creates a fertile ground for mass illegal immigration. And their activists in the ranks of MSM insure that any dissenting voices are named, shamed and blamed for any migrant misfortunes.
Fred Paul
1 year ago
I’ve lived in the States for 33 years. I’ve returned to Canada for the summer. It’s different up here.
The article is not one of the most critical thinking pieces I have read. Let’s start with the law. Biden doesn’t create them. Neither did Trump. It’s a legislative function. Whatever Trump did, it’s gone back to normal. Normal is the laws in place now. If America thinks the laws are antiquated to stem the tide of illegal immigration (I used the legal route), then change the laws… or enforce them.
Illegal immigration is a result of Americans offering to hire them illegally. There are laws against that, and they are not enforced. Cut the reason for illegal immigration, and you stop it.
Illegal immigration is not a felony. At best, a minor misdemeanour. And there’s only one federal department with the power to enforce them. Local police departments do not have the power to hold someone who is an illegal immigrant. So, most work up a stupid charge to hold them until the feds show up. That is illegal. And the cities that enforce the law are called what? Before you challenge me on this, google it in the right places. That’s part of critical thinking.
The article implies that these illegals are huddled together somewhere south of the border, listening to every word that Biden says for clues to cross the border. Really? Most Americans under the age of 28 don’t listen to the news and haven’t the foggiest idea about what’s going on. This is what’s going on. There’s a lot of misery, and grief south of the border and people are dying. There are rumours floating around, and we know all to well about rumours in the States, that offer a better life if they cross that border. If you were in their shoes, would you do differently? If you were a criminal, would you not take advantage? Be real.
I could go on, but I think you got the idea. And I can bet that most of you who are caught up in this American First idea have stopped reading. But what did happen to that wall? After four years, it’s not the wall expected. And who was going to pay for it? And how about draining the swamp? You people are looking for shortcuts. It’s not going to happen. My wife attended a wedding in New England and, on her return to Canada this week (she’s American), was challenged twice by Canadian customs reminding her she has only 6 months in Canada a year. For Pete sakes, we own a house up here; I’m Canadian and pay taxes. Believe me, she knows. Turns out, a lot of Americans visiting are not returning to the States. I guess we need to build a better wall.
I was volunteering with homeless people in downtown Austin during the protests against Trump’s immigration policies. Every week, I saw people with dementia, head injuries, and psychosis sleeping in their own feces under the 6th street bridge. I saw mentally ill women being trafficked behind dumpsters (some economically privileged men “get off” on the depravity of street prostitution – it’s considered a “kink” that should not be shamed. Grrrr..). Yet I saw no one protest on behalf of those who were suffering right on their own doorsteps.
I begged the downtown churches to offer their sanctuaries to the city as spaces where homeless women could be sheltered at night (homeless women are raped multiple times a year, and “disappear” with horrific regularity). The churches refused, even though their large buildings sit empty every single night while homeless women – many of them elderly – suffer and die outside their doors.
These same churches, who refused to provide sanctuary to their disabled neighbors, put up big signs advertising their support for immigrants and sanctuary cities for undocumented people. Their hypocrisy made me choke.
To the “woke”, poor people in the USA are not worthy victims – especially poor people who are white and conservative (almost all of the homeless people I worked with, including black, hispanic,and native american homeless people, were deeply religious and expressed fervent support for Trump).
The “woke” only care about attractive victims, not victims they can actually see, hear, and smell.
That’s why the “woke” care so much more about historical slavery than they do about the modern day slavery (sex trafficking) happening right under their noses: historical slaves only exist in books and movies, so they all smell sweet, have perfect teeth, and are visually appealing. Modern day trafficking victims have bad breath, broken teeth, severe addictions, inconvenient opinions, and horrific body odor. Who wants to help THOSE people? It’s easier to just shrug them off and say “sex work is work”.
Anyway, thank you for expressing concern for the poor and working class in the USA, and not sacrificing their interests to serve your own ego, as the “woke” love to do.
Great comment.
You are quite right to highlight the hypocrisy of those proclaiming their compassion but refusing to help those actually suffering and in danger. The problem, of course, is that those you describe so eloquently are both unappealing in the flesh and chaotic in their behaviour.
No doubt the Churches saw that taking the humane step to let the homeless women in would require them to control and supervise a process that could turn ugly with an influx of those wishing to exploit the women together with potential legal responsibilities.
Compassion in former times often involved rigorous control and restrictions on those who were the object of compassion. Today the liberal mindset is not willing to undertake such essentially authoritarian but necessary measures to protect and preserve order among the afflicted but prefers like Pontius Pilate to wash their hands of such processes. Hence the increasing chaos on the streets of Democratic cities.
In the case of UN virtue-signallers, they’re probably using the trafficked.
Agree with J Bryant, great comment.
The thing is, though, they don’t actually care about any *individual* people, at all. They care about the idea of victims that they have have formed *in their own heads*. So it’s very much a form of solipsism, or selfishness, or lack of empathy; that is, that one’s ideas and perceptions of the world matter more than the actual reality of what is happening to real individual humans in the real world.
But what all of us – “woke” or whatever the opposite of that is – need to keep to the front of our minds is that the “they” that I refer to is actually an “us”; that we all can and do partake in this egotistic othering; that he who commits no sin shall cast the first stone; and that there is absolutely no use, truth, justice, love, or beauty in getting ourselves trapped in a false-binary culture war. Doing so only aids and abets the tiny minority of sociopaths who want to control us, just for the sake of it. I know that you were not advocating that but I just wanted to say it.
“Trump may have gone too far with his family separation policy…”
the “family separation policy” wasn’t Trump’s, but was the creation of Democrat kritarch Dolly Gee.
Yes, and the images of the ‘kids in cages’ were taken during the Obama administration. There is no end to the duplicity of the media and the gullibility of most people. That said, only 11% of Americans now trust the TV news, so they are waking up.
“Big-city Democrats want to flatter the moral vanity of their elite base by rhetorically supporting illegal immigration, but only so long as border states such as Texas and Arizona are the ones who foot the bill.”
This about encapsulates the whole enchilada.
Good article. This is simple economics and Labour arbitrage — importing poor people to do indigenous poor people’s jobs is going to benefit … exactly who?
The exception is jobs local people do not want to do, but even there the issue is more about why they don’t want to do them: i.e. it’s about how attractive these jobs are financially. Importing desperate poor workers keeps those jobs low paid and unattractive.
Started by Obama, as were the “cages” for children.
So, left and right in the US are both anti-immigration, in effect. A rare point of national unity
No….. You seem to have entirely missed the point of this article. The current ‘identitarian’ Left who dominate the Democratic Party do not believe in any border control at all – the real (as opposed to the stated) reason being that this policy helps the privileged ‘progressive’ wealthy classes.
“Big city democrats want to flatter the moral vanity of their elite base by rhetorically supporting illegal immigration.”
Bingo! The unholy alliance of big corporations and the upper middle class social justice warriors creates a fertile ground for mass illegal immigration. And their activists in the ranks of MSM insure that any dissenting voices are named, shamed and blamed for any migrant misfortunes.
I’ve lived in the States for 33 years. I’ve returned to Canada for the summer. It’s different up here.
The article is not one of the most critical thinking pieces I have read. Let’s start with the law. Biden doesn’t create them. Neither did Trump. It’s a legislative function. Whatever Trump did, it’s gone back to normal. Normal is the laws in place now. If America thinks the laws are antiquated to stem the tide of illegal immigration (I used the legal route), then change the laws… or enforce them.
Illegal immigration is a result of Americans offering to hire them illegally. There are laws against that, and they are not enforced. Cut the reason for illegal immigration, and you stop it.
Illegal immigration is not a felony. At best, a minor misdemeanour. And there’s only one federal department with the power to enforce them. Local police departments do not have the power to hold someone who is an illegal immigrant. So, most work up a stupid charge to hold them until the feds show up. That is illegal. And the cities that enforce the law are called what? Before you challenge me on this, google it in the right places. That’s part of critical thinking.
The article implies that these illegals are huddled together somewhere south of the border, listening to every word that Biden says for clues to cross the border. Really? Most Americans under the age of 28 don’t listen to the news and haven’t the foggiest idea about what’s going on. This is what’s going on. There’s a lot of misery, and grief south of the border and people are dying. There are rumours floating around, and we know all to well about rumours in the States, that offer a better life if they cross that border. If you were in their shoes, would you do differently? If you were a criminal, would you not take advantage? Be real.
I could go on, but I think you got the idea. And I can bet that most of you who are caught up in this American First idea have stopped reading. But what did happen to that wall? After four years, it’s not the wall expected. And who was going to pay for it? And how about draining the swamp? You people are looking for shortcuts. It’s not going to happen. My wife attended a wedding in New England and, on her return to Canada this week (she’s American), was challenged twice by Canadian customs reminding her she has only 6 months in Canada a year. For Pete sakes, we own a house up here; I’m Canadian and pay taxes. Believe me, she knows. Turns out, a lot of Americans visiting are not returning to the States. I guess we need to build a better wall.
Please do, and keep your smug racism in Canada.