The Road to Springfield Roger Franklin
https://quadrant.org.au/features/america/the-road-to-springfield/
EXCERPT
Consider for starters residents’ testimony at a recent city council public hearing (video below) which heard of Haitians fetching their duck dinners from the pond in the local park, of setting up camps on residents’ front lawns, of intimidating shoppers in the aisles at Walmart and getting behind the wheel without knowing how to drive. That last charge has been officially acknowledged by an emergency deployment of state troopers sent to stop a surge in “erratic driving” in the town, where an unlicenced Haitian on the wrong side of the road last year rammed a school bus and took the life of an 11-year-old boy. That Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has ordered the Springfield traffic blitz can be taken as confirmation there is more than racism behind complaints about Haitians’ estrangement from community norms. Spare a minute or two to watch the video below and, when you’re done, compare the witnesses’ sincerity, their end-of-the-rope pleas, with the Panglossian platitudes of a media that favours the agenda over truth, wokeness above evidence.
An obvious thought, one that doesn’t bespeak a hint of racism, is how any of us might react were tens of thousands of uninvited strangers to arrive in our towns or suburbs, few speaking English and bringing with them customs distinctly at odds with, in Springfield’s case, the culture and traditions of a largely white, Grant Wood kind of town. But that’s a matter which simply can’t be addressed, isn’t permitted to be addressed, for it would be a career-killer for any news show producer giving voice to the heresy that diversity might not be such a strength after all.
The trouble in Springfield began, as do many things with the best, of intentions. The DeWine family sponsors a charity in Port-au-Prince and official connections grew, sponsored migration with them. Then came the Biden administration’s open borders and life in Springfield changed suddenly and dramatically. No one is quite sure just how many Haitians now call the town home, with estimates ranging from 12,000 to twice that number. In a town of 58,000 even the lower figure represents a lot of new neighbours. How many are legal, how many undocumented, how many hold long-term temporary visas? Nobody really knows. The driver who rolled that school us flew to Brazil, came overland to the Texas, declared himself to immigration authorities and was granted one of several varieties of long-term visas, then loaded aboard an aeroplane bound for Ohio. The rest is history and a funeral.
So, yes, on all the available evidence, Trump lied about the incidence of catabalism in Springfield. It can’t be denied that the one known case of recent cat consumption occurred not there but in a town 100-odd miles away, and the blurry snap that circulated widely on social media of a black man carrying a dead goose was likewise taken somewhere else in Ohio, although the X posts and memes putting pets on Springfield’s specific menu weren’t identified as misleading until after Trump blurted out his debate remarks.
Accurate or not, as with most of his misstatements, boasts and habitual exaggerations, there’s a resonance to it – fake but accurate, as the Left is wont to say when its own sacred lore is gored. Radically different cultures living cheek by jowl in orchestrated amity is most definitely one of the most hallowed of those myths.
Come election day, as Trump knows and returns to endlessly, immigration and the border will be among the foremost concerns on voters’ minds. Abortion, a big deal elsewhere, won’t figure in Ohio, where a runaway pro-choice win in last November’s state referendum settled the issue once and for all. So when Trump seizes on a social media furphy about Springfield he’s pushing a broader message intended to echo well beyond borders of a state now comfortably Republican. In Denver, the migrant rush has stressed the public hospital system to breaking, just as it has done in Springfield and scores of other US cities. Voters in all those locations — those not irredeemably of the Left, that is — will be wondering even more than presently why their government is giving welfare benefits to illegals, providing free accommodation and, in many states, walking-around money as well. In California, thanks to an initiative Kamala Harris pushed through as attorney-general, illegal aliens in state prisons have been getting taxpayer-funded gender surgeries since 2017. In New York City, catering to 180,000 recently arrived illegals will cost $10.5 billion this year alone.
Night owl McManus at his microphone would know little of this background; Trump is a figure he has been led to believe, eagerly one gathers, who deserves to be held in contempt, and for thousands of the little cogs in the mainstream multimedia machine, that’s enough to know and repeat.
Liken Trump to Hitler, swear he must be kept from the Oval Office “by any means necessary”, to quote Liz Cheney, or that he “has to be eliminated”, as fellow Democrat Dan Goldman puts it, and lots of people will take you seriously. Some will believe, hate silently and leave it at that. Others, like 3AW’s overnighter and thousands of his media peers, will further spread the lies and libels drawn from the poisoned well of obscenely distorted news coverage. And others such as would-be golf course sniper Ryan Wesley Routh, well they might just reach for their guns.
Two assassination attempts in 63 days and 48 more yet to run until all ballots are cast. As an actuary might warn, don’t be surprised if there is a third.
The trouble in Springfield began, as do many things with the best, of intentions. The DeWine family sponsors a charity in Port-au-Prince and official connections grew, sponsored migration with them. Then came the Biden administration’s open borders and life in Springfield changed suddenly and dramatically. No one is quite sure just how many Haitians now call the town home, with estimates ranging from 12,000 to twice that number. In a town of 58,000 even the lower figure represents a lot of new neighbours. How many are legal, how many undocumented, how many hold long-term temporary visas? Nobody really knows. The driver who rolled that school us flew to Brazil, came overland to the Texas, declared himself to immigration authorities and was granted one of several varieties of long-term visas, then loaded aboard an aeroplane bound for Ohio. The rest is history and a funeral.
So, yes, on all the available evidence, Trump lied about the incidence of catabalism in Springfield. It can’t be denied that the one known case of recent cat consumption occurred not there but in a town 100-odd miles away, and the blurry snap that circulated widely on social media of a black man carrying a dead goose was likewise taken somewhere else in Ohio, although the X posts and memes putting pets on Springfield’s specific menu weren’t identified as misleading until after Trump blurted out his debate remarks.
Accurate or not, as with most of his misstatements, boasts and habitual exaggerations, there’s a resonance to it – fake but accurate, as the Left is wont to say when its own sacred lore is gored. Radically different cultures living cheek by jowl in orchestrated amity is most definitely one of the most hallowed of those myths.
Come election day, as Trump knows and returns to endlessly, immigration and the border will be among the foremost concerns on voters’ minds. Abortion, a big deal elsewhere, won’t figure in Ohio, where a runaway pro-choice win in last November’s state referendum settled the issue once and for all. So when Trump seizes on a social media furphy about Springfield he’s pushing a broader message intended to echo well beyond borders of a state now comfortably Republican. In Denver, the migrant rush has stressed the public hospital system to breaking, just as it has done in Springfield and scores of other US cities. Voters in all those locations — those not irredeemably of the Left, that is — will be wondering even more than presently why their government is giving welfare benefits to illegals, providing free accommodation and, in many states, walking-around money as well. In California, thanks to an initiative Kamala Harris pushed through as attorney-general, illegal aliens in state prisons have been getting taxpayer-funded gender surgeries since 2017. In New York City, catering to 180,000 recently arrived illegals will cost $10.5 billion this year alone.
Night owl McManus at his microphone would know little of this background; Trump is a figure he has been led to believe, eagerly one gathers, who deserves to be held in contempt, and for thousands of the little cogs in the mainstream multimedia machine, that’s enough to know and repeat.
Liken Trump to Hitler, swear he must be kept from the Oval Office “by any means necessary”, to quote Liz Cheney, or that he “has to be eliminated”, as fellow Democrat Dan Goldman puts it, and lots of people will take you seriously. Some will believe, hate silently and leave it at that. Others, like 3AW’s overnighter and thousands of his media peers, will further spread the lies and libels drawn from the poisoned well of obscenely distorted news coverage. And others such as would-be golf course sniper Ryan Wesley Routh, well they might just reach for their guns.
Two assassination attempts in 63 days and 48 more yet to run until all ballots are cast. As an actuary might warn, don’t be surprised if there is a third.
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