Immigration Reform: Comprehensive Disinformation Part I

We can always tell when politicians are trying to pull the wool over our eyes. They telegraph their disinformation punches in the same way every time. Constant pounding on whatever it is they want to K.O., using a barrage of vague, but very inflammatory, posturing. Congressional addresses, press releases, fancy footwork in flowery speeches brim full of lofty platitudes and even taller tales. Bobbing and weaving with combinations of jabs, hooks and rabbit punches, so we’ll throw in the towel before raising a single thought in defense.

Because, if you’re a politician, thinking voters are dangerous people. When voters think, politicians need reason and substance in their corner. But, those things are hard for them to come by. It’s much easier to pulverize whatever stands in the way of their agenda with crushing marketing blows. To make sure we keep our brainpower in the locker room, our leaders don’t just rely on throwing a flurry of punches themselves. They get as many organizations as they can doing the same thing. The idea is to overwhelm us with so much pounding that we eventually accept their phony line, hook and sinker.

Let’s look at some disinformation specifics in the immigration reform/anti-Arizona law barrage. This week, I’m going to examine the fancy footwork in Obama’s flowery immigration reform speech. Next week, Riley will review the constant hammering on the Arizona law, including the law suit filed against it yesterday by the Justice Department.

Obama delivered his hallmark speech last Thursday. It was the first of his Presidency on the subject and it had been so long in coming that we expected more. It was painfully short on detail and very long on rhetoric. That’s because the purpose was to shore up eroding Hispanic voter support. And Obama was at his flowery best. He used several of his fancy footwork disinformation bobs and weaves. One of Obama’s favorite moves is to confuse facts with effectiveness. He did that a couple of times on Thursday: “We have more boots on the ground on the Southwest border than at any time in our history.”  And, “The southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years.”

Those statements, even if true, are meaningless in and of themselves. “More boots” doesn’t equate to enough of them or to effective use of them. “More secure” does not mean that it’s secure at all. Without actual success, “more” is merely a costly gesture. And for Arizona, it’s just that. Phoenix is now the second kidnapping capital of the world thanks to the unfettered expansion of the Mexican drug trade across the Arizona border. And that trade translates into more than drugs flooding our streets. It also means violence in our streets and the eventual disintegration of civil order. Welcome to Mexico’s newest northern state.

And how about those eloquent Obama whoppers about Lady Liberty designed to bring pro immigration reform tears to our eyes? Like, “[T]he Statue of Liberty…was funded in part by small donations from people across America.” In fact, the Statue, at a cost of 2 million francs, was paid for entirely by citizens of France. Americans picked up the tab for the pedestal after the French bankrolled the Lady.  But, no one is going to get all choked up over a pedestal so Obama revised history to support his histrionics.

And then there’s Emma Lazarus. Lines from her poem, “The New Colossus”, grace the Statue’s pedestal. To emphasize the importance of immigrants to our country, Obama places Lazarus among them: “Emma Lazarus, whose own family fled persecution from Europe generations earlier, took up the cause of these new immigrants.“ The truth is her folks first landed on the continent in 1654, over a century before the birth of our nation. But, claiming the poet’s ancestors immigrated to our country made Obama’s point so much stronger he just couldn’t resist. In fact, he doesn’t seem able to resist much of anything in pushing through his agenda.

If we’re so out of shape that we can be done in by this kind of disinformation, we deserve to be decked.

See you on the left-side.