Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Paul Krugman: Return of the Blood Libel
The speed of America’s moral descent under Donald Trump is breathtaking. In a matter of months we’ve gone from a nation that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to a nation that tears children from their parents and puts them in cages.
What’s almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it’s not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren’t happening. They’re just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities.
And you know what this reminds me of? The history of anti-Semitism, a tale of prejudice fueled by myths and hoaxes that ended in genocide.
First, let’s talk about modern U.S. immigration and how it compares to those sick fantasies.
Catherine Rampell: The real hoax about the border crisis
It’s all a hoax. A great big hoax.
Not the family separations, the babies alone in cages, the drugged immigrant children, the stolen toddlers too traumatized to speak, the wailing children whom Ann Coulter slanders as “child actors.”
Sadly, those cruelties are all too real.
The hoax is the premise that President Trump’s administration has invented to rationalize such crimes against humanity: his narrative that America has been “ infest[ed]” with hordes of crime-committing, culture-diluting, job-stealing, tax-shirking, benefits-draining “aliens.”
No part of that description is remotely true. Yet the Trump administration seems to have successfully shifted the national dialogue away from “Do we have a border immigration problem?” to “What’s the right way to fix our border immigration problem?” [..]
It’s hard to comprehend how Trump has so successfully hijacked the national conversation around immigration. With virtually no facts on his side, he has managed to fabricate a multipart border emergency, and convince a majority of his own party that this imagined emergency necessitates state-sanctioned child abuse. Sadly, Trump’s manufactured crisis has now led to very real tragedy.
Arwa Mahdawi: The great Melania Trump mystery. Does she really care?
For about two hours on Thursday, the optics were just the way the White House wanted them. Melania Trump made an unannounced trip to McAllen, Texas to get a first-hand look at the border crisis and the media was filled with pictures of the first lady looking caring and concerned, while she asked officials how she could help reunite children with their families. Melania was even sitting in front of the words ‘acts of kindness’ in the press photos, which one imagines was no happy accident.
A few hours later, however, rather different pictures of Melania started to circulate. The first lady, it was discovered, had worn a $39 Zara jacket which said “I really don’t care” on it on her way to Texas. The internet was immediately filled with speculation as to the significance of her outerwear. Had it been an unfortunate oversight? Or had it been deliberately chosen, either to send a message to Trump’s base or distract the media? “It’s a jacket. There was no hidden message,” the first lady’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. “After today’s important visit to Texas, I hope the media isn’t going to choose to focus on her wardrobe.” [..]
So does Melania really care? It’s certainly possible but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Jay Michaelson: Trump Locks Up Immigrant Kids, but Not Bankers or Polluters
“We are just enforcing the law.”
This is how the Trump administration has justified its shocking “zero tolerance” immigration policy that has resulted in over 2,000 children being forcibly separated from their parents in just six weeks. It’s also the rationale for the new executive order: that the law must be changed in order for families not to be torn apart.
“It’s the law, and that’s what the law states,” said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Numerous administration officials have concurred.
They are all hypocrites. If the Trump administration were really enforcing laws without exceptions, it would have enforced them against Wells Fargo, Exxon Mobil, Devon Energy, Bank of America, and Equifax. In fact, the government chose not to enforce the law against each of them and many others, on numerous occasions over the last year.
But of course, “zero tolerance” is not how the law works. As administrative law and even Jesus of Nazareth have agreed, no law is meant to be enforced without exception. Justice is always tempered by discretion—and mercy.
Juan Escalante: Republicans Want To Cage Immigrants Indefinitely And Call It A Compromise
Make no mistake: Donald Trump’s executive order has not and will not free immigrant children from their cages. Instead, he’s asking Republicans in Congress to produce legislation that will keep immigrant children locked up with their parents ― indefinitely.
The president’s Wednesday order to backtrack on his administration’s policy of family separation now sets the stage for two immigration bills that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is scheduled to bring up for a vote in the House on Thursday.
One of the bills has been conveniently labeled a “compromise” that would purport to stop the separation of families and protect Dreamers from the claws of Trump’s “deportation force.” In reality, it’s nothing but a Trojan horse that disguises the White House’s xenophobic agenda; Trump and the GOP don’t negotiate in good faith with anyone ― especially when it comes to the issue of immigration.
This “compromise” is hardly a breakthrough agreement between House Republicans and Democrats. It’s an agreement between Republican extremists and Republican slightly-less-extremists that the speaker has orchestrated to kill two birds with one stone: put an end to the crisis that Trump and his senior adviser Stephen Miller created (children being taken from their parents at the border) while selling the American people a poisonous legislative package that further erodes our nation’s values.
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