False Equivalencies, Logical Fallacies and Memes That Work "Too Well"

A friend posted this complaint about the plethora of memes defending President Trump's immigration policies, particularly putting immigrant in protective custody of DHS while their parents are being processed. Note I didn't use the words "atrocity" or "humanitarian crisis" as my leftist friends do. My friend claims that every one of the memes he's seen uses a "false equivalency" logical fallacy as "proof." This approach, he says, has become the go-to method of influencing public opinion. People simply pass these memes along with no regard as to whether or not the information is factual or misleading. And the frightening thing, he says, is that it seems to be working!

Yes, it is frightening that the left can't make this horrible situation stick to Trump. The trouble with my friend's argument is that the false equivalencies that I have seen are heavily on the rabid anti-Trump side. The media and Democrat side would have you think that suddenly Donald Trump started ripping children from their parents for no reason other than to be mean. This is not true. 

Here's why:

(1) The policy was started under Bill Clinton and expanded under Obama. Bush tried to close the border and create a guest worker program, but neither party was having it.

(2) It was a good policy to place kids in custody of DHS (which does the same thing if American parents are arrested). Trump started processing illegals as misdemeanor offenders. You don't leave kids in detention facilities with adults who may be smugglers, sex traffickers, drug mules, cartel enforcers or terrorists. It's not safe and ICE doesn't have enough family-friendly facilities to handle the surge of illegals.

(3) The kids are only kept until the parents are processed and then they are reunited and returned to their home countries. I think it's that "returned to their home country bit that's causing the Democrats to have the flutters.

(4) The hyperbole about kids whose mothers are in Mexico and the kids still in the states? That kind of thing happens when you write a phone number on the kid's forehead and send him across the border alone or you bring a whole undocumented family across illegally and can't prove the kids are even yours. Sometimes kids are over here along because Mom never crossed the border in the first place but came alone or with a "friend" or was abducted by traffickers. That's one of those things where you need to know the rest of the story. I know ICE agents and they aren't cruel people. 

Children of illegals thrown into "jail".  This was 2015 in
California. Want to guess who was president and
over the ICE at the time. Want to guess. I'll give you a
hint:  Big ears, goofy grin, wants to fundamentally change
America? How did that work out for you anyway?

(5) One reason kids get separated from "parents" is because they are "undocumented" and DHS is reluctant to reunite kids with adults who may not actually be their parents. An immigration attorney in Texas just got through sending out the word through the Associated Press that if you have a child with you, ICE won't prosecute you. She just encouraged drug mules, cartel enforcers, terrorists, sex traffickers and such to grab a random child before they cross the border to protect themselves from prosecution.

(6) ICE is overloaded because after 8 years of catch and release under Obama, Trump is talking a border wall. Illegals are rushing the border to try and get across before he builds a wall. That's why the facilities for detaining illegal immigrants are overcrowded and inadequate.

(7) If you want to talk about false equivalency, check how many of those pictures of kids behind chain link were taken back in 2014 under the Obama Administration. The mainstream media did a spate of investigative reports on ICE separating kids from their parents and tried to pin it on the GOP. The stories died very quickly when the blame didn't stick with Republicans but started to fall on President Obama. Obama "solved" the problem by transporting illegals and their kids north and deeper into the US and then releasing them with instructions to come back for "processing" later. Guess how many showed up with their kids to be processed.

(8) Trump is being blamed for a problem he inherited from Obama. And the left is busy wailing about Trump refusing to take responsibility and that conservatives are blaming Obama. Takes a lot of nerve when Bush blaming got so bad under Obama that it became a joke that every time Obama had a problem he would blame George Bush for it. Sad really.

(9) The left is mad at Trump now because he's announced an Executive Order to "handle the problem" of separating kids from incarcerated parents. Have you read the order? There are all these phrases like "as far as possible"; loopholes salted into the thing that leave the President and ICE free to continue incarcerating parents and putting the kids under the protection of DHS as they should be. That's an old Democrat trick to issue some fine-sounding paperwork to make people feel better and then leaving yourself an out to do what you want. Trump learned that when he was a Democrat.

(10) Democrats like Chuck Schumer are advising Democrats to oppose any attempt by the House and Senate to deal with the problem, lest it make Trump look good. That's the real humanitarian issue here. Immigrant kids being used to try and unseat a President and to seize political power.

Colonias in America - no water, sewer or electricity.

This is about memes alright, but it's not the relatively tepid memes defending Donald Trump that are the worst offenders here. I'm sick of the exploitation of the misery of those seeking to escape the horrors of life south of the border. We could do something but the political parties are too busy struggling for power.

Actually President Bush had the answer but he couldn't get either party to come together on the solution. The solution is simple and powerful and frees illegals from what is virtual low-wage slavery her in the US.

(a) Close the border tight. Until we stem the flow, we're fighting a losing battle.

(b) Create a guest worker program. If we need workers for jobs Americans won't do, let's make a legal way for them to come over and do those jobs.

(c) Register illegals already in the country. If they're obeying the law and willing to work put them in the guest worker program. If not, deport them.

(d) Make companies, farms, dairies and others which depend on migrant labor pay a fair wage, taxes and it should at least reach minimum wage for even unskilled labor. That takes care of the whole "jobs Americans won't do" argument.

(e) Close the colonias and arrest the people who profiteer off the fear and isolation illegal immigrants face trying to dodge ICE. If we make them legal through a guest worker program you solve the problems that promote poverty, crime and disease in immigrant communities. Once they are no longer illegal, they are protected by the American justice system from exploitation.

(f) Cut off all aid to nations sending their surplus populations north until they stop it. Let them participate in the guest worker program and let them receive an economic boost from the money that guest workers send back to their countries. The money will got to poor families rather than being filtered through corrupt governments that take 3/4 of all aid money to cover "administrative costs" so that only the tiniest trickle ever gets through to the people it's intended for.

East Texas colonias look like this. Rose growers, dairies, and
chicken plants send pickups to bring the men to work.

I worked for 40 years with kids, adults, the disabled, seniors, poor families and immigrants - illegal and otherwise. I saw the conditions in the colonias firsthand, the exploitation of illegals by chicken processors, rose growers, farmers and dairymen (all good Democrats contributing regularly to their congressmen, senators and such to buy protection for illegal immigration and what amounts to slaver labor and exploitation of illegals).

The Democrat party claims to have undergone this big change back in the 60's and renounced white supremacy and slavery utterly. I don't see it. They just changed their tactics for keeping minorities enslaved and on the plantation. I saw too much over the past 4 decades to buy the memes about Democrats being for the working man. I served during the time the Democrats were in power in Texas and watched the rise of the Republicans. Things got better under Governor Bush and his successors, let me tell you. And like with Trump, the Democrats ran the most shameless disinformation campaign trying to discredit the GOP in Texas that you ever saw. I was part of efforts to disrupt the Democrat good old boy networks and for a time I had to check under my truck before I started it up in the morning to see if there were any funny wires under there. I was warned. 

Don't kid yourself, the movement behind leaving our current system
in place is about cheap labor and keeping migrant workers living
in fear of ICE in order to keep them submissive to the bosses.

Democrats, I found in my years working in human services, are about accumulating power above all else. They will tell you it's all about having the power to "make things right". But they never do. Things always seem to get worse. Too many country club Republicans, though, have become afflicted with the same lust for power and are afraid to do what's right lest it cost them an election. Shame on them too.

It's time someone really helped these people for a change. I just don't hold out a lot of hope. Slavery is too handy a tool for hanging on to your wealth and power. And I am here to tell you, that what unrestricted illegal immigration is all about is virtual enslavement of minorities, particularly Hispanic "undocumented" immigrants. The term "undocumented" is kind of revealing. If they aren't documented, you don't have to pay them much and they can't complain because ICE might catch them and send them back to where they were starving or being murdered in their beds. The workers may earn a pittance for their very hard labor, but they are still slaves in my books.

That's the humanitarian crisis. Remove the fear and create a legal means for refugees to cross the border and you'll solve the problem. The trouble is, if you remove the fear, you remove the necessity to vote Democrat and if you're a good Catholic or Christian and a documented worker so you don't have to be afraid of ICE, you might just vote for a party that shares your family and Christian values, opposes abortion, disapproves of gay marriage, promotes religious and family values and espouses greater opportunity to rise in the world if you are poor.

No wonder Dems support catch and release. It keeps the fear in place and makes it easier to keep "undocumented" workers down on the farm and subservient.

© 2018 by Tom King

Answering "Zingers" from the Left.

Have you ever noticed that when you argue with a Democrat they jump on you with one of a specific set of responses designed to strike you down and leave you speechless. They are as follows:

1) You're a racist.
2) You don't understand what it's like to be poor.
3) You see everything in black and white.
4) It's George W. Bush's fault.
5) You're stupid and ignorant (I get this when they really run out of logical arguments).
6) The Republicans obstruct everything Obama tries to do.
7) You only get your information from Fox News.
8) (My personal favorite) I'd really like some of whatever you're smoking.

I have decided to go ahead and answer these "killer" arguments all at once so I can just post the link to this page and not waste an hour trying to reason with someone who's working a set of talking points.  Let me start with an observation.  Each of these arguments is an excuse for two things:  1) a lack of a real argument and 2) the obvious failure of the Democrats to accomplish anything more than collapsing the economy, extending the recession and so burying American business in regulation, taxes and debt that millions of Americans have flat our given up looking for work - the only thing that has reduced the "unemployment" rate.  So, let's just start with that on the table.  

So my answer to the 8 Deadly Excuses is as follows:

1) You're a racist:  I grew up in a small college town in North Central Texas. We had kids from all over the world. I never understood racism. I stood with black friends on civil rights. When my own kids grew up in the same town, our house looked like the United Nations with young people of every race and color represented.  I worked for 40 years as a teacher, therapist and director of nonprofit agencies working with people from every race, class and economic level. 

2) You don't understand what it's like to be poor:  I grew up in a home where boloney sandwiches were a treat. We were dirt poor most of my life. I worked 40 years in the nonprofit sector. They don't call them nonprofits for nothing. I've been on Food Stamps. I once had to ride a bicycle to town to buy groceries for my hungry children and rode back with 3 sacks balanced on my handlebars along country roads dodging dogs.  I once got a job after 3 months unemployment, the loss of my car and home where I had to get up at 4 am and ride a bicycle through the country (again dodging angry dogs) 7 miles each way to catch a bus to ride 45 miles each way to work as a laborer on a nuclear power plant in order to feed my family.  We've been so broke we've made a meal off wild food we gathered.  Don't tell me I don't understand being poor.  What I understand is how hard it is to escape poverty when the government reduces you to dependency and then punishes you for even trying to lift yourself back up.

3) You see everything in black and white:  I spent 40 years working in the nonprofit sector picking up the wreckage of a child welfare system and government "helping". I worked with kids who were brutalized, battered and sick and watched bureaucrats shuffle them around, plugging them into boxes trying to meet their agendas with little ability to get them real help. In some cases they didn't care - after all they get paid every Friday.  I watched one-size-fits-all, designed-in-Washington social programs fail and fail and fail till it made me sick.  I saw it all and in full color. Many of my colleagues gave it up because they just couldn't take it anymore. I'll tell you who sees everything in black and white - political ideologues and bureaucrats who are more concerned about ticking off boxes on their evaluation sheets than they are about whether people in trouble get any real help or not.

4) It's George W. Bush's fault.  It take 18 months for the laws and budgets of a US Congress to show an effect in the economy. In 2006 the American people gave the Democrats control of the House and Senate.  18 months later in the summer of 2008, the housing bubble burst and the economy began to collapse despite assurances over the past decade by Democrats that there was nothing wrong at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and that they were doing great things. Apparently they weren't and George Bush in the middle of a war against terrorism and with a Congress working against him had precious little to do with it.  Once Obama was elected it was an all Democrat show and it's pretty much been downhill all the way since then. Might as well blame it all on Ronald Reagan for all the sense that argument makes.

5) You're stupid and ignorant.  I tested out of my Freshman year of college, I have a bachelor's degree in communications and I had the highest GRE scores in my graduate school psych program. I'm a published author, have written more than 2000 articles for which I was paid and have a measured IQ that makes me eligible to join MENSA. I read the equivalent of one or two books a week and have done so since they started letting me check out books from the library in 3rd grade.  Mentally, I'm okay.

6) The Republicans obstruct everything Obama tries to do:  Thank God they do or we'd be in a worse mess than we are.  The president can't even get a budget past the senate which has a Democrat majority.  Since he took office he has yet to get a budget through Congress because his own senate won't allow it. He had two years at the beginning of his administration where he had both the house and the senate.  His great triumph?  Obamacare which, to this day, he keeps giving exemptions to Obamacare for his cronies in the unions and to big corporations that supported his presidential campaigns. A little obstructionism from Republicans is probably the only reason we're not in a massive Depression right now with a socialist government and gulags.
  
7) You only get your information from Fox News:  I should get my information from the Huffington Post?  ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN?  The New York Times?  The left-leaning partisanship of these media outlets is shameless.  I do watch them by the way.  I actually get most of my headline type news from Yahoo News which is no right wing news organization by any means.  I listen to speeches, read political opinion pieces, and am a student of history (you should check my bookshelves if you don't believe me). I've read HG Wells' History of the World for the Progressive view of world history.  I get most of my history, however, from the works of actual historians like Catton, Ryan, Foote and from the actual historical figures like Churchill, Grant and Einstein  and not filtered through agenda laden "textbooks".  My information comes from many sources and I form my own opinions thank you.

8) (My personal favorite) I'd really like some of whatever you're smoking:  No you wouldn't.  The only thing I smoke are the biscuits when I forget I have some in the oven because I'm writing a blog post or working on a book I'm ghost-writing.  I never bought the "better living through chemistry" approach. I'm a teetotaler, avoiding alcohol, coffee, hallucinogenic drugs, chewing tobacco, snuff or other mind-altering substances so far as possible.

To my friends on the left:  I hope this helps us avoid the need to go over this same stuff again next time we talk.

© 2013 by Tom King