I feel constrained to post this after someone suggested that in the Bret Stephens essay I was bestowing Ethics Hero status on the Axis media’s top propaganda mouthpiece. The op-ed by professional illegal immigration romanticizer Isabel Castro (above) is a far more representative piece in a genre the Times is particularly fond of: demanding sympathy for individuals facing deportation entirely because of their own choices and conduct.
The title is a hoot: “How the ICE Raids Are Warping Los Angeles.” It is like a Chicago paper during the Prohibition and Capone’s zenith publishing a column called “How the FBI is Warping Chicago.” A sample..
A federal appeals court on June 19 extended its block of a Judge Breyer’s flamingly partisan order that directed President Trump to return control of California’s National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was obviously determined to let pro-open border crazies harass ICE agents and riot across Los Angeles.
The three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals in the 9th Circuit issued a unanimous order, and one of the three judges was a Biden appointee! The roughly 4,000 National Guard troops can now stay in Los Angeles, to protect federal property and U.S. immigration agents, while preventing a replay of George Floyd Madness that the Mad Left would dearly love to see. Could a “Undovument Migrants’ Lives Matter” group be far behind?
I almost made this an Ethics Quiz, but I ultimately decided that I know the correct answer. The right course of action is clear. Derek Guy, above, and all long-time illegal immigrants who come forward to say, “I’m illegal and I’m proud” are ficks. And their candor should place them at the top of the deportation list.
I pay no attention to fashion, fashion mavens, and fashion world news, and I don’t have a lot of respect for those who do. So I was blissfully unaware of Derek Guy’s existence [“Derek Guy, also known as Menswear Guy, who is well-known on on X for his men’s fashion tips and analysis…”] and that he has been thrilling the Trump Deranged for his mockery of J.D. Vance’s and the President’s attire. Nevertheless, the completely trivial celebrity posted this screed on Twitter/X that has “gone viral,” as they say…Don’t worry, it ends eventually:
Well.
The thing is full of every rationalization, straw man, appeal to emotion and unethical spin that you and I have ever seen regarding open borders and illegal immigration. In no particular order…
It’s bad enough that she has a name that automatically thrusts us into an Abbott and Costello routine [“Who?” “Her!” “Who’s Her?” “She’s Her!” “Of course she’s a her, but who is she?” “Her!”], but the fact that she also appears to have no compunction about lying, rationalizing law-breaking and making a fool out of herself along anyone silly enough to support her makes Her one more example of what’s wrong with Minnesota, the Democratic Party, and the advocates for illegal immigration.
During a debate on the Minnesota House floor that touched on illegal immigration, Her announced that she entered the United States as a child illegally. “I am illegal in this country. My parents are illegal here in this country,” she said.
Oh! That’s interesting: that means that she can’t hold elected office legally, that she shouldn’t be on a ballot, and that she can’t even vote in elections, much less on bills. The fourth-term lawmaker’s confession “ignited a firestorm in right-wing media,” The Minnesota Informer writes. I guess Democrats and progressives don’t care if an elected official isn’t holding office legally as long as she votes their way, just those racist conservatives who are sticklers for details like citizenship. One of her Republican colleagues in the House, Rep. Walter Hudson, called for Her to be investigated. What a meanie! A state rep admits that she’s in the state illegally, and this Fascist wants to have her kicked out of the legislature. Xenophobe!
“We know what this administration is doing, so we are saying to Donald Trump and all of his allies, we will not, we will not scapegoat immigrants, we will not—the people who have built this country—we will not stand by and allow you to do that.”
—-Becky Pringle, President of the NEA, declaring her union’s support for open borders and illegal immigration while demonstrating dubious critical thinking skills.
Pringle just got up at a microphone and screamed all of that, and more. There’s a video here that I can’t embed; I have to say that I am suspicious that YouTube does not yet have a video of the hysterical display and that Pringle’s rant has not been more prominently shown on broadcast media. For it is tey another clip that will make a wonderful campaign ad for Republicans. Here is more of her craziness: I could have picked almost any sentence as an “unethical quote”:
This morning, CNN pinged me with an alert that read, “CNN analysis: Trump’s deployment of the National Guard is a warning to other cities opposing his migrant policies.” You know, just like arresting and locking up serial killers is a warning to others who want to murder people, and giving tickets to speeders is a warning to irresponsible drivers who like to speed. Of course, CNN uses the deceitful cover-word “migrant” to avoid reminding dim-wit readers that these are law-breakers.
The news is that both California Governor Newsom and LA’s incompetent mayor showed that they were supportive of the rioting just as they have been supportive of illegal immigrants, and since the violence is aimed at blocking ICE from doing its job, the situation demanded Presidential action. In short, the riots are not about Trump, but the direct result of the refusal of the previous administration (whoever was in charge of it) to enforce the law (unless it was enforced against perceived political foes).
Meanwhile, in the hopes that I can make “A Friend” [see comments to this post]choke on his shredded wheat, here is how the New York Times is rolling out the Axis propaganda:
1. This morning, while CNN and MSNBC were raging about the riots, Fox News had an extended feature about how to make faux cocktails using coffee. Gee, it would be nice to have a responsible, trustworthy broadcast news network that was both unbiased and that didn’t assume that is viewers dropped out of junior high school.
2. I am surprised that so few readers have commented on this morning’s introductory post. Was everyone at church? “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”
3. Here’s the comment on Facebook by an old friend, a retired journalist, and, of course, a Trump Derangement sufferer:
It is mordantly amusing to listen to progressives on MSNBC bemoan the incursion of ICE into the “sanctuary” of churches attempting to extend their invisible force field around illegal immigrants. These are the same people who have shown no respect or reverence for Americans who assert their religious beliefs regarding, to take one infamous example, compelled speech.
In the case of church sanctuary, they are oh, a couple centuries behind the times. Allowing a church to harbor criminals and others sought by the state is a tradition that goes back to Roman times, and here and there it has been bolstered by the law. Not here and now however. The tradition makes no sense in modern times, and if churches have no legal grounds to protect lawbreakers, the claims of so-called sanctuary cities and states are weaker still.
The political and ideological Left has dashed itself on the rocks of illegal immigration, and based on some of the talking head nonsense I saw on MSNBC and CNN today, they are still dashing. When they are not crying “Think of the children!” (Note: law-breaking parents who put their children in untenable positions by their parents’ conduct are 100% accountable for those children’s plight) the apologists for illegal border-crossers are asserting that they are “human beings” and deserve to “have their humanity respected and recognized.” That’s fine: nobody denies that they are human beings. They are also human beings who do not belong in the United States.
This, for some strange reason, seems difficult for some progressives and Axis hacks to grasp. One of the two women I saw rending their garments over the Trump deportation policy, stuttered, babbled, shrugged, sighed and finally said, “I just can’t believe that this is happening! It’s so cruel!” Her partner in absurd “Good Illegal Immigrant” rhetoric nodded and agreed that deporting illegal immigrants who weren’t violent criminals is a violation of human rights.
There is apparently, according to these revolutionaries, a human right to live anywhere you want to. This is pure “Imagine-ism,” probably caused by hearing John Lennon’s fatuous paean to brainless utopianism one time too many. Both women also bemoaned the “collateral damage” of deportations. All law enforcement has “collateral damage” to families and others who depend on the law-breakers. That is a reason not to break laws, not to stop enforcing them.
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Bonus cultural literacy quiz: Who is that lovely young actress playing Esmeralda in that clip from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”? No cheating, now: this is an ethics blog…
The video of former Disney star Selena Gomez weeping over the deportations of illegal immigrants who should be deported is a brilliant reminder that Hollywood makes you stupid. Gomez posted it on her Instagram which has 424 million followers and I want to kill myself.
Gomez is difficult to understand amid all the sobbing and histrionics, but here’s the text: “I just want to say I am so sorry… all my people are getting attacked [by Trump’s deportations]. The children. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something, but I can’t, I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”
To state the obvious, being subject to law enforcement isn’t being “attacked.” It is breathtakingly obnoxious for Gomez to call illegal immigrants “her people”—she’s an American citizen, and we are her people. Of course she plays the always popular “Think of the children!” card. And the hubris necessary for a B-list celebrity—she was okay in “The Dead Don’t Die”— to apologize for something she has no power over whatsoever, and to promise to “try everything” to stop it when there is nothing she can do is especially staggering.
“Entertainment Tonight” isn’t much better, saying in that clip that the deportation policy mostly “targets Latinos.” No, you hacks, it entirely targets illegal immigrants.
You can say this weepy virtue-signaling is harmless, but the fact that an ignorant woman like Gomez has over 400 million followers means that a political, cultural and ethics dunce can influence a dangerous number of people, making them stupid, fearful, and bad citizens. It has always been thus that our most talented artists (not that Selena is one of those) usually lack intellectual and critical thinking abilities on par with their performing abilities. They also tend to be emotionally frozen somewhere between the 6th and 11th grade. There are exceptions, of course, but social media has given these Dunning-Kruger victims a way to spread their juvenile politics and poor civics literacy far and wide, usually infecting the young most of all, and most damaging of all.
Maybe I’ll make a video of myself weeping over this…
The toxic wokism that oozes out of Harvard and the other educational institutions in the Bay State have finally infected Massachusetts to the point where the it is too deranged even for the long-time Democratic Party’s mouthpiece, the Boston Globe. The propaganda rag that hasn’t endorsed a Republican President since… hmmmm, never, actually, though it has occasionally endorsed Republicans for governor if they sounded and acted like Democrats…issued an editorial this week headlined, “Massachusetts can’t handle the influx of migrants on its own.” Good ol’ Globe: it can’t stop spinning for the Left even when its criticizing it. The issue is illegal immigrants, not “migrants.” And it’s not an influx: it’s a completely predictable occupation in response to persistent invitations.
Two days ago, the Legislature passed a bill granting in-state tuition at public colleges for all illegal immigrants who graduate from Massachusetts high schools, where they shouldn’t be allowed to attend in the first place. State Rep. Paul Frost, a Republican, rose to make the obvious critical observation about the measure, saying, “This is another incentive to encourage more illegal immigration to the Commonwealth, that the taxpayers and the residents of Massachusetts will have to subsidize.”
Ethics Alarms 