Thread: The left is starting to jump the shark on its child migrant 'crisis'

The left is starting to jump the shark on its child migrant 'crisis'


June 20, 2018

Monica Showalter

For the left, it's finally springtime. After months in the political wilderness, followed by the crushed hopes for the great blue wave, leftists are finally getting a grip on an issue they can pin on President Trump: family separations among detained illegal border-crossers. They're going wild with this issue, and the press is running stories about it nonstop, complete with crying children to tug at the heartstrings. But there are signs it's getting to be too much for them, driving them to overplay their hand.


The child migrant crisis they have drummed up, with media cameras shamelessly exploiting the faces of crying children (they blank out unconsenting children's faces otherwise) separated from their parents, at first glance seems to be the magic bullet they've been looking for.


Many Republicans, for instance, are caving on the real issue, which is border enforcement, hastily offering up new legislation that incentivizes more illegal border-crossing. Many are condemning the migrant separations and blaming Trump, too. It's a panicked response to polls showing public approval numbers dropping, and never mind that the issue itself is problematic, not quite what the left's narrative says it is, premised on laws enacted well before President Trump took office and enforced the same way by past presidents. Only Trump is getting the blame for a now saturation-coverage situation. Instead of fighting back, as Trump does, the Republicans are caving, and this emboldens the left. Yes, indeed – this is what passes for springtime for the Trump-hating left.


Signs are emerging that this euphoria on the other side is not going to last long. For one thing, Trump really is holding firm, and so is his Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen. For another, foreigners are thinking twice about coming here illegally, which is the point of border enforcement. (The left is upset about this.) Most important, the left is doing what it always does, which is overplaying its hand, going overboard, diving off the deep end, something that will guarantee a turnaround in public sentiment. Leftists are starting to do lunatic things, actually, and on multiple fronts.


Start with this, spread by #OccupyWallStNY, making the rounds on Twitter:

The Twitter account of Occupy Wall Street published a cartoon Monday promoting the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
What To Do If You Encounter An ICE Agent pic.twitter.com/SsZKAa6DJi
— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) June 19, 2018

The post features a CPR infographic altered to include instructions on how to kill ICE agents.
Occupy Wall Street captioned the picture, "What To Do If You Encounter An ICE Agent."
One of the instructions reads: "Grab the ICE agent from behind and push your knife into his chest with an upward thrust, breaking through his sternum."

Seriously, did this really go out as a "public service announcement"? Even as "satire," which is what Occupy later claimed? What kind of a mind so much as thinks of such a thing, let alone puts all that creative energy into creating a sick, repulsive, violent cartoon graphic designed to fool people into thinking it's a government-produced "how-to" guide? What kind of mind is this? Only one so full of rage and unhinged hate that it can't see how repulsive its output is. The tweet has since been deleted, probably because the Twitter police knew how bad that made the left look, or more likely feared liability problems should one of the leftists reading it go act on it, but it's really amazing that this is the kind of unhinged thinking going on on the left side, staying on Twitter for hours, in the age when conservatives are banned and shadowbanned.

Update: Here's a related item featuring Peter Fonda urging his fellow leftists to target the children of ICE agents in their schools.


Then there are the leftist displays of raw rage.
In this Fox News account here, a rabid leftist "intern" yelled the F-word to President Trump in the halls of Congress, and then a group of congressmen yelled at Trump until their veins were popping. Here is what Fox observed:

First, as President Trump's entourage made its way to House Speaker Paul Ryan's office, a congressional intern yelled, "Mr. President, F--- you!" across the Capitol Rotunda.


It was unclear whether Trump heard the remark. The incident occured [sic] after visiting hours.
Then, several members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) gathered outside Trump's meeting with senior Republican officials. When Trump emerged, the representatives heckled him until some were blue in the face, holding signs and screaming.

Blue in the face? These people are becoming unglued. Voters don't like anyone who's blue in the face.


It then descended into another of the left's specialties, mobbery, in the case of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was driven from a reportedly Mexican restaurant last night by the baying mobs of the Democratic Socialists of America. The latter proudly claimed the deed, so redolent of Castro's turba mobs targeting dissidents in one of their "repudiations" that happen over in their beloved Cuba. The left, of course, thinks that speaks well for it. Leftists were seen cheering on Twitter and playing the footage over and over of the "repudiation," amounting to what Tom Wolfe called "porno-violence," or the enjoyment of looped violent film footage. Once again, this kind of behavior designed to bludgeon Trump into submission won't win any voter hearts and minds for Democrats.


There were some impressive instances of press misbehavior, too, driven by rabid sentiment from the reporters.


Powerline's John Hinderaker has a good one on how some leftist employed by the New Yorker claimed she saw Nazi symbols in the military tattoo of a U.S. war veteran who had since become an ICE agent. It was pure garbage, but she was convinced he had to be a Nazi, because, well, anyone enforcing border law has to be a Nazi. The Nazi charge has been going around since the inauguration of President Trump, and now it's taken new momentum.



Hinderaker observes:

An obvious question is, what on God's green Earth would cause anyone to think that the vaguely cross-like symbol on Gaertner's elbow is a Nazi or white supremacist sign? Only a person far gone in hatred for ICE employees would leap to such an irrational conclusion.
Part of the story, I think, is that the Left is hard up for white supremacists. Liberals talk about them all the time, but to the best of my knowledge, I have never met one. Have you? Liberals need to come up with someone other than Richard Spencer; hence the eagerness to libel a heroic ICE employee.

Yelling "Nazi" didn't work for the left during Trump's inauguration, and now, with the economy booming and peace breaking out on the North Korean peninsula, it sure as heck isn't going to work.


Then there were the bawlers. Don't forget the bawlers.


Lefty TV host Lawrence O'Donnell was crying about the children on his broadcast, making a spectacle of himself to persuade voters to reject President Trump. Because he bawled.


He was joined in that activity by the lizard-tough MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who bawled for the cameras, too. Why should Honduran toddlers get all the cry time? They want to join in.


Is that going to persuade voters to abandon President Trump and support open borders? Quite likely, the opposite.


It's hysteria. And an overplaying of one's hand. This is what the left has repeatedly done in its Wile-E.-Coyote quest to Get Trump. It's not going to work this time, either, but leftists sure are making a spectacle of themselves as they do it.

Call it "Peak Left."


https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...nt_crisis.html

They are rhetoriticians, and will get carried away. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool......