The Cruelty and the Crazy
Migrant airlifts and the Unabomber candidate.
Sorry, but shipping migrants to Martha’s Vineyard is brilliant — a political masterstroke, an epic troll, and, above all hilarious.
You can tell because of the reaction on the right: a cascade of LOLS and triggering-the-libs-huzzahs as Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis stick it to the hypocritical Blue State elites. Donald Trump may have come down a golden escalator to denounce Mexican rapists, but these guys are actually putting them on buses and sending them to Chicago.
And, sending a busload of migrants to Vice President’s Kamala Harris’s residence is … I’m sorry, but right-wing Twitter needs to catch its breath, it’s laughing so hard. Delaware — Joe Biden’s home state — is next!
Even the respectable cons at Commentary think it’s a “political coup.” Anti-Trump conservative Matt Lewis has also come around. “Blue states are finally getting a taste of what red border states have to deal with every day.”
In DeSantis’s case, he’s using Florida tax dollars to fly Venezuelan refugees fleeing communism from Texas to Massachusetts (which has a Republican governor). But don’t get hung up on the details, because this is priceless political theater that supremely owns the libs, whose tears are the sweet, sweet aphrodisiac for the base.
The cruelty is, of course, simply a bonus. And the “narrative” is more important than cuckish concerns about… morality.
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Let’s stipulate of couple of things. First: there is a real problem at the border, and there’s a legitimate debate over how migrants should be handled and who should share the burden.
Abbott and DeSantis have every right to raise questions about border policies; they can make speeches, hold press conferences, run ads, raise money off anti-immigrant outrage, and even stage political events to highlight their positions.
And there is nothing inherently awful about political stunts, especially in our media-besotted political environment.
But this one is different, because they chose to use people — including vulnerable children — as their pawns and props.
ICYMI, JVL wrote yesterday about DeSantis’s gambit:
Those planes were filled with actual human beings. People with dignity. People with hopes and dreams, problems and challenges. People with names and families.
And this Christian man used them as props. He didn’t clothe the naked or feed the hungry. He literally did the opposite: Evicted them—and not because he felt that he had to, because it was a requirement of the law.
But because he saw that he could use them as a means to the ends of his personal ambition.
DeSantis knows exactly what he is doing. The Wapo’s Greg Sargent writes:
What’s striking is how the DeSantis administration appears to have deliberately orchestrated this event for maximum cruelty and confusion. “There was no advance notice to island officials,” Julian Cyr, a Massachusetts state senator who represents the area, told me.
Some of the smart kids in the room insist that it’s not so bad, because the migrants themselves actually like this sort of thing. Noah Rothman explains that “the migrants themselves don’t seem especially put out by the offer of free transportation to and accommodation within America’s major urban centers.”
But the latest airlift reeks of fraud.
Some [of the migrants who were flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard] said a woman identified as “Perla” told them they were headed to Boston for expedited work papers. Massachusetts state Sen. Julian Cyr (D) also told The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that he had been told that a “woman approached them outside the shelter and essentially lured them into taking the plane.”
For the fanboys, the deception is a bonus dollop of cruelty. And they love it.
“If they got screwed over I think it’s funny.”
The laughter is the point. And it is very much on brand for any politician wishing to inherit the mantle of MAGAism.
As Adam Serwer wrote back in 2018, we heard “the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era.” Because, of course, cruelty isn’t just the point; it’s the juice that animates millions of voters, “whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.”
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There’s a problem, however, with DeSantis’s troll.
In Martha’s Vineyard, we can see another narrative unfolding.
State and Island officials, faith-based groups, nonprofit agencies and volunteers rallied quickly to accommodate 50 mostly Venezuelan migrants who arrived unexpectedly at Martha’s Vineyard Airport Wednesday, part of a coordinated political campaign to divert migrants from border states.
The Unabomber Candidate
The crazy is so widespread that it’s sometimes hard to keep up. And there’s an understandable temptation to become numbed by it all.
But here’s a detail that really shouldn’t be overlooked:
PHOENIX (AP) — An interviewer asked Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters to pick a “subversive thinker” whom people should know more about.
Masters gave it some thought and came up with a risky response for someone running for elected office.
He picked the Unabomber.
“I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this,” Masters responded. “How about, like, Theodore Kaczynski?”
Uhhhhhhhh.
The AP reports that Masters “was careful to point out he doesn’t condone the bombings that killed three people and injured dozens between 1978 and 1995 and terrorized the nation until Kaczynski’s arrest in 1996.”
But, while the Arizona Republican “said he doesn’t endorse all of Kaczynski’s views,” he thinks there is “a lot of insight there.”
“He had a lot to say about the political left, about how they all have inferiority complexes and fundamentally hate anything like goodness, truth, beauty, justice,” Masters said.
This is not a one-off for Masters, whose campaign — like J.D. Vance’s — was bankrolled by billionaire Peter Thiel. A few months back, the NYT reported:
Blake Masters, a Republican candidate for the Senate in Arizona who won the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, has been dogged by a trail of youthful writings in which he lamented the entry of the United States into the First and Second World Wars, approvingly quoted a Nazi war criminal and pushed an isolationism that extended beyond even Mr. Trump’s.
But let’s go back to the Unabomber.
Why is Masters so fascinated by the musings of a domestic terrorist and murderer? And why do many on the far-right share his passion?
Our friends at Lawfare explained why the new extremists love the Unabomber:
The far-right’s valorization of Kaczynski is evidenced by the degree to which his words and ideas have spread both on the broader internet and in right-wing spaces in recent years. While some anarchist admirers of Kaczynski have attempted to live out his ideology by learning survival skills and adopting a primitive lifestyle, Kaczynski as a figure has been profoundly meme-ified by right-wing fans.
For instance, their invocation of the phrase “the industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race” as a response to perceived failings of modern society has spread beyond far-right corners of the internet and begun to permeate mainstream spaces, including YouTube and TikTok. Adopting both joking and sincere tones, documents describing Kaczynski’s ideology to a right-wing audience circulate on spaces like 4chan’s “Politically Incorrect” board. In a thread titled “Ted Kaczynski General,” a document that explains Kaczynski’s appeal responds to concerns that the real problem is “International Jewry/Zionism, blacks, diversity and Multiculturalism” by arguing that “nobody is denying” those things are a “net negative” but that those “grave problems are dwarfed when compared to industrial society and its consequences.”
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ICYMI: Masters continues to tell us who he is. But, please don’t call this “semi-fascism.” Via Vice News:
Blake Masters, the Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona, has repeatedly said the U.S. should clean house on the senior ranks of the military, pushing the claim that all the generals and admirals are “woke” and “left-wing” losers who’ve never won a war.
His solution? Fire them all, and promote “the most conservative colonels.”
“Your entire general class, they're left-wing politicians at this point. It's very hard to become a general without being some kind of left-of-center politician,” he said at an Apache Junction Ladies for President Trump event in August 2021, according to audio obtained by VICE News. “I would love to see all the generals get fired. You take the most conservative colonels, you promote them to general.”
Quick Hits
1. A Wrinkle in Journalism History
Must read from from Marvin Olasky, who recently resigned as editor of the Christian magazine, World.
Sadly, the magazine and website now appear afraid to offend the right. World in 2020 and 2021 ran two dozen articles that emphasized the importance of vaccination while puncturing claims for Ivermectin and other supposed remedies. This year, story after story on vaccination has played to the anti-vaccine prejudice rampant among many evangelicals: “Challenges to military vaccine mandates mount,” “Thousands of protesters vent frustration with government, COVID-19 restrictions,” “Vaccine maker secretly dumped contaminated doses,” etc., etc.
In 2020 one of our reporters learned that Madison Cawthorn, a young Republican running for Congress from western North Carolina on a faith and family platform, had a history of harassing female students during his time at Patrick Henry College. That was a classic World story and we ran it, but The New York Times last November reported that a World business executive criticized it. This year from March 22 to May 17 the Washington Examiner ran forty stories on Cawthorn’s claims about Washington orgies and cocaine use, photos of him in lingerie, airport gun charges, etc. During that two-month period World covered none of Cawthorn’s dubious deeds and had a total of two sentences about him, one on his introducing legislation to stop sending aid to Ukraine, the other citing Trump’s endorsement of him.
2. Chris Murphy: “Since Sandy Hook I’ve Been Trying to Make Up for Lost Time”
Tim Miller’s latest ‘Not My Party”
[Editor’s note: For this week’s Not My Party, Tim interviewed Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in his office in Washington. A transcript of the full interview appears below.]
Tim Miller: I’m going to start out with a pretty tough one. Toddlers, when they don’t get what they want, throw a tantrum. Grownups, when they don’t get what they want, work to find a solution. Why are there so few grownups in Washington?
Chris Murphy: This place has really become a little bit dystopian in that there’s a whole incentive structure now to be outrageous, to not cooperate…
Cheap Shots
Reports of state governors transporting illegal immigrant to other states without apparent coordination have been in the news lately and are likely attempts to score political points with their base. This transportation is against the federal law and would be prosecuted for anyone other that politicians engaging in this transportation.
1907. Title 8, U.S.C. 1324(A) Offenses
Domestic Transporting -- Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii) makes it an offense for any person who -- knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law.
Conspiracy/Aiding or Abetting -- Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(v) expressly makes it an offense to engage in a conspiracy to commit or aid or abet the commission of the foregoing offenses.
Unit of Prosecution -- With regard to offenses defined in subsections 1324(a)(1)(A)(i)-(v), (alien smuggling, domestic transporting, harboring, encouraging/inducing, or conspiracy/aiding or abetting) each alien with respect to whom a violation occurs constitutes a unit of prosecution. Prior to enactment of the IIRIRA, the unit of prosecution for violations of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2) was each transaction, regardless of the number of aliens involved. However, the unit of prosecution is now based on each alien in respect to whom a violation occurs.
Penalties -- The basic statutory maximum penalty for violating 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(i) and (v)(I) (alien smuggling and conspiracy) is a fine under title 18, imprisonment for not more than 10 years, or both. With regard to violations of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(ii)-(iv) and (v)(ii), domestic transportation, harboring, encouraging/inducing, or aiding/abetting, the basic statutory maximum term of imprisonment is 5 years, unless the offense was committed for commercial advantage or private financial gain, in which case the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years. In addition, significant enhanced penalties are provided for in violations of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1) involving serious bodily injury or placing life in jeopardy. Moreover, if the violation results in the death of any person, the defendant may be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years. The basic penalty for a violation of subsection 1324(a)(2) is a fine under title 18, imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(A). Enhanced penalties are provided for violations involving bringing in criminal aliens, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(B)(i), offenses done for commercial advantage or private financial gain, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(B)(ii), and violations where the alien is not presented to an immigration officer immediately upon arrival, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(B)(iii). A mandatory minimum three year term of imprisonment applies to first or second violations of § 1324(a)(2)(B)(i) or (B)(ii). Further enhanced punishment is provided for third or subsequent offenses.
How is the behavior of these elected officials not subject to prosecution?
3 notes I think on the refugees sent to Massachusetts:
1) For the MAGAts, The Cruelty is the Point™ and we are kidding ourselves if we ever think it's not. In early 2019, after Trump shut down the government because Congress refused to fund his harebrained schemes on the border, a woman in Alabama in a town with a federal jail was quoted as saying "He's not hurting who he's supposed to be hurting". See, the jail was closed during the shutdown, so employees were furloughed and inmates relocated, and the jail was the town's only real, consistent employer for pay and benefits. So, does this woman call Trump out for his chicanery? Nope, she says he's not hurting who she want him too. Again, The Cruelty is the Point™
2) I'm not surprised to see the good people of Massachusetts respond how they are, because the people of DC and New York have responded similarly. Grace is accessible to us all but the, again for the MAGAts, The Cruelty is the Point™, so we should not be surprised they're galled at the fact others are actually responding to a crisis with Christian Charity
3) The GOP (again, really GQP) is wholly and utterly uninterested in solving the crisis at the border. We have had opportunity after opportunity to do so and they keep killing any agreements offered. Why? Solving it takes away a key animus for their base because, once more for the record, The Cruelty is the Point™.