Throwback Tuesday: The Return Of Migrant Caravans
They're baaaaaaack!
Migrants. And lots of 'em.
In what has become a Fox News election year tradition, talking heads over at the nation's Naziest network are suddenly up in arms about a new migrant caravan forming on the border of Guatemala and Mexico in the town of Tapachula. This newest iteration of the caravan currently has an estimated 11,000 members with an additional 4,000 more expected to join in the coming weeks. With an expected journey of over 1,000 miles and exactly 158 days until Election Day, Fox News experts are unscientifically predicting that each and every man, woman, and child will seamlessly execute the perilous journey by walking 6.28 miles per day, rain or shine, and will arrive at our southern border at the exact day and time during which the American public will be voting for what type of representative government it wants to have over the next 2 years.
Much like Infrastructure Week, the Fox News Migrant Caravans has become a joke in Democratic circles. It exists solely to whip up voter turnout from the xenophobic right in election years. On November 9th, any and all mention of migrant caravans will cease for 19 months, only to mysteriously start up again in the summer of 2024. Like clockwork, the right only cares about border security when they have the ability to make immigrants into scary boogeymen during election years. While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are doing the work on the ground to actually study the root causes of these annual (yes, annual) migrations, the GOP would like nothing better than to use them as examples of Biden's failed immigration policies and to scare voters, especially those concerned about hordes of immigrants overturning our southern border bringing drugs, crime, and prostitution to our sacred land. Migrant caravans are the perfect issue for the GOP base because they represent an influx of brown people and what better way to subtly inject your White supremacy than to make thousands of poor, starving women and children appear to be ISIS-backed terrorists importing disease and gang warfare at our country's southern border?
Today's Republican Party is not a serious political party. Fear-mongering is all they have. They are a party devoid of ideas. While Kamala Harris has been sent on excursions to the Northern Triangle to analyze the root causes of these types of migrations, the Republican Party under TFG cut hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the region, forfeiting all efforts to think critically about the problem and instead cater to a racist base as part of its America First agenda. It's why Tennessee's other senator, Bill Hagerty, recently criticized the Biden Administration for SEIZING 1,300 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border in April as if the Border Patrol doing its job was somehow a bad thing. But, that's their schtick. They're pot-committed to showing that Democrats are weak on border security. It's a lot easier to convince their simpleton base that scary brown hordes are out to get them rather than having to admit that their perfect president Ronald Wilson Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants and that neither he, Bush The Elder, nor Bush The Younger did anything productive to reform our country's broken immigration system.
Republicans have no answers as to how to fix this system. They have no answer as to how to study the root causes leading to these mass migrations. Because they don't care. They don't care about the suffering of others in our hemisphere. America First means everyone else last. TFG was most obvious in his anti-immigrant views but he only said out loud what the entire party has come to believe: that brown people are un-American. That they don't belong here. That White Europeans should be allowed to immigrate here and assimilate themselves into the culture but brown people should not. That we should praise those who fly here from mainland Europe but should demonize those who trek over 1,000 miles with their children escaping Central American gang violence and poverty while navigating some of the world's deadliest terrain. Republicans demonize these caravans because those that take part in them are some of the bravest people on Earth and they would rather dehumanize, denigrate, and degrade them than admit the simple truth: they don't want them here because they aren't White.
That is the real Fox News fear. Not drugs, or violence, or rape. But integration. Real integration, especially of those immigrants and refugees who have made such a perilous journey. Because those are the types of people who defy the Fox News narrative. They come to this country and make it better. They bring professional training from their native countries. They are bilingual or even trilingual. These individuals scare the right because they need there to be bad guys in these caravans. They need there to be arrests at the southern border. They need there to be smuggled drugs in secret, underground tunnels. They need all this because without it they have to admit the truth: that those in the caravans are brave. That those in the caravans are selfless. That those in the caravans are some of the most hopeful people on the planet who believe that the United States of America is worth a 1,000 mile trek because it is the land of freedom, opportunity, and success. They need to hide this truth from their viewers because if they don't, if their viewers learned the truth about those in the caravan, then they would end up asking the one question that that Republican Party does not want to publicly answer:
Why aren't you helping them?
Migrants. And lots of 'em.
In what has become a Fox News election year tradition, talking heads over at the nation's Naziest network are suddenly up in arms about a new migrant caravan forming on the border of Guatemala and Mexico in the town of Tapachula. This newest iteration of the caravan currently has an estimated 11,000 members with an additional 4,000 more expected to join in the coming weeks. With an expected journey of over 1,000 miles and exactly 158 days until Election Day, Fox News experts are unscientifically predicting that each and every man, woman, and child will seamlessly execute the perilous journey by walking 6.28 miles per day, rain or shine, and will arrive at our southern border at the exact day and time during which the American public will be voting for what type of representative government it wants to have over the next 2 years.
Much like Infrastructure Week, the Fox News Migrant Caravans has become a joke in Democratic circles. It exists solely to whip up voter turnout from the xenophobic right in election years. On November 9th, any and all mention of migrant caravans will cease for 19 months, only to mysteriously start up again in the summer of 2024. Like clockwork, the right only cares about border security when they have the ability to make immigrants into scary boogeymen during election years. While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are doing the work on the ground to actually study the root causes of these annual (yes, annual) migrations, the GOP would like nothing better than to use them as examples of Biden's failed immigration policies and to scare voters, especially those concerned about hordes of immigrants overturning our southern border bringing drugs, crime, and prostitution to our sacred land. Migrant caravans are the perfect issue for the GOP base because they represent an influx of brown people and what better way to subtly inject your White supremacy than to make thousands of poor, starving women and children appear to be ISIS-backed terrorists importing disease and gang warfare at our country's southern border?
Today's Republican Party is not a serious political party. Fear-mongering is all they have. They are a party devoid of ideas. While Kamala Harris has been sent on excursions to the Northern Triangle to analyze the root causes of these types of migrations, the Republican Party under TFG cut hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the region, forfeiting all efforts to think critically about the problem and instead cater to a racist base as part of its America First agenda. It's why Tennessee's other senator, Bill Hagerty, recently criticized the Biden Administration for SEIZING 1,300 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border in April as if the Border Patrol doing its job was somehow a bad thing. But, that's their schtick. They're pot-committed to showing that Democrats are weak on border security. It's a lot easier to convince their simpleton base that scary brown hordes are out to get them rather than having to admit that their perfect president Ronald Wilson Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants and that neither he, Bush The Elder, nor Bush The Younger did anything productive to reform our country's broken immigration system.
Republicans have no answers as to how to fix this system. They have no answer as to how to study the root causes leading to these mass migrations. Because they don't care. They don't care about the suffering of others in our hemisphere. America First means everyone else last. TFG was most obvious in his anti-immigrant views but he only said out loud what the entire party has come to believe: that brown people are un-American. That they don't belong here. That White Europeans should be allowed to immigrate here and assimilate themselves into the culture but brown people should not. That we should praise those who fly here from mainland Europe but should demonize those who trek over 1,000 miles with their children escaping Central American gang violence and poverty while navigating some of the world's deadliest terrain. Republicans demonize these caravans because those that take part in them are some of the bravest people on Earth and they would rather dehumanize, denigrate, and degrade them than admit the simple truth: they don't want them here because they aren't White.
That is the real Fox News fear. Not drugs, or violence, or rape. But integration. Real integration, especially of those immigrants and refugees who have made such a perilous journey. Because those are the types of people who defy the Fox News narrative. They come to this country and make it better. They bring professional training from their native countries. They are bilingual or even trilingual. These individuals scare the right because they need there to be bad guys in these caravans. They need there to be arrests at the southern border. They need there to be smuggled drugs in secret, underground tunnels. They need all this because without it they have to admit the truth: that those in the caravans are brave. That those in the caravans are selfless. That those in the caravans are some of the most hopeful people on the planet who believe that the United States of America is worth a 1,000 mile trek because it is the land of freedom, opportunity, and success. They need to hide this truth from their viewers because if they don't, if their viewers learned the truth about those in the caravan, then they would end up asking the one question that that Republican Party does not want to publicly answer:
Why aren't you helping them?