[Kobi]

I found this very interesting tho I'm not sure if it was meant to put things in perspective or if it was meant to be its own brand of propaganda.

The question I find myself asking continuously ever since someone realized Trump was not going to go away is....if you look at the process going on here, the question what is wrong with this picture keeps cropping up in one way or another. Like most processes, it is a puzzle with pieces here and there. And the more pieces people try to add to the puzzle, the more the overall picture keeps changing.

So, I have no answers but many many questions. Let's look at what the article says:


Hours after a new poll revealed that he’s trailing Ted Cruz in Iowa, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump issued a statement advocating “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what’s going on.” His spokesperson later clarified that this exclusion even includes Muslim-American citizens who are currently outside the U.S. On first glance, it seems accurate to view this, in the words of The Guardian, as “arguably the most extreme proposal to come from any U.S. presidential candidate in decades.”


What Trump said was - he advocates“a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what’s going on.” That means that people are properly vetted before they step foot in the country.

Obama, Ryan, Cameron, Abedin, the oil person from Canada (of course oil figures into the picture), JK Rowling, and even Dick Cheney were among the "influential" people who came out to denounce Trump for wanting to ban Muslims.

The question this raises for me is a bunch of people are deliberately changing what was said into something that wasnt said, trying to sell it as truth, and adding in doomsday prophesies akin to the Holocaust and Hitler. For a little extra, we are adding in Japanese Americans being interned after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

So why is this being done? Why is a deliberate mistruth being perpetuated and used to instill and incite the very same fear mongering they are supposedly trying to quell? What's wrong with this picture?

Notice in the fear mongering tactics what isnt being used. When America marched the (no matter what term I use someone will have a problem with it... so my post, my choice) Native Americans off to Reservations, what do you really think we were doing? And, why is this not being used as an example doomsday?

When Obama said on Thanksgiving Day, we should think of the Syrian refugees like the Pilgrims, it was a slap in the face to Native Americans. No one said a word. No one corrected him. No one addressed it. Everyone, including the media just let it slide. Why?

Why are we not using what Joe McCarthy did to Americans who were"suspected communists"?

Why is no one talking about what Jimmy Cater did during the Iranian hostage crisis? Maybe because Carter actually did what Trump was advocating? Do we even remember what Carter did?

"First, the United States of America is breaking diplomatic relations with the Government of Iran. The Secretary of State has informed the Government of Iran that its Embassy and consulates in the United States are to be closed immediately. All Iranian diplomatic and consular officials have been declared persona non grata and must leave this country by midnight tomorrow."

"Fourth, the Secretary of Treasury [State] and the Attorney General will invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly. " Read all of it here.

10 November 1979

Carter orders 50,000 Iranian students in US to report to immigration
office with view to deporting those in violation of their visas. On 27
December 1979, US appeals court allows deportation of Iranian
students found in violation. (CRS 1981, 38, 71) Source

The pundits are also saying what Trump is suggesting is unconstitutional. If this is true, how did Carter manage to do this? The Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter Act)

So, the question I ask myself again is, who is deliberately misrepresenting the truth, using it as fodder for fear mongering, selectively deciding what of history to use, and why are they doing this? What are they afraid of to be willing to stoop to such levels?

The director of Homeland Security came right out and said Trump or his views were a threat to national security. Hm. Ordinarily, if someone is a threat, we arrest them, sequester them, find or manufacture so weird ass shit on them to prove our point.

Hard to do to a Presidential candidate but not impossible. There is a part of me seeing a group of pundits, sitting around a table trying to figure out how can we pull off an assassination and who can we pin it on.


Some comfortable journalists, however, quickly insisted that people were overreacting. “Before everyone gives up on the republic, remember that not even a single American has yet cast a vote for Trump,” said New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. The New York Daily News Opinion Page Editor Josh Greenman was similarly blithe: “It’s a proposal to keep Muslims out of the U.S., made in a primary, being roundly condemned. We are a long way from internment camps.”


Now they are trying to look like they are applying reason and logic cuz Trump is nowhere near having the power to do anything.


Given that an ISIS attack in Paris just helped fuel the sweeping election victory of an actually fascist party in France, it’s a bit mystifying how someone can be so sanguine about the likelihood of a Trump victory in the U.S. In fact, with a couple of even low-level ISIS attacks successfully carried out on American soil, it’s not at all hard to imagine. But Trump does not need to win, or even get close to winning, for his rhetoric and the movement that he’s stoking to be dangerous in the extreme.

Professional political analysts have underestimated Trump’s impact by failing to take into account his massive, long-standing cultural celebrity, which commands the attention of large numbers of Americans who usually ignore politics (which happens to be the majority of the population), which in turn generates enormous, highly charged crowds pulsating with grievance and rage. That means that even if he fails to win a single state, he’s powerfully poisoning public discourse about multiple marginalized minority groups: in particular inciting and inflaming what was already volatile anti-Muslim animosity in the U.S.

As The Atlantic‘s Matt Ford put it yesterday: “The immediate danger isn’t Trump’s actual policy, but the bigotry and violence that it both legitimizes and encourages.” Muslim Americans (and, for that matter, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans) don’t have the luxury that people like Douthat and Greenman have to be so dismissive. That’s what Al Jazeera’s Sana Saeed meant when she said that she’s “tired of people telling us to not be afraid – Trump may not win but his words will last & there are people who support” the bile he’s spewing.

So now they are trying to spin another scenario. Now they are calling what Trump said a policy. It not a policy. He advocated. Advocating is not policy. Just like Trump, the media knows exactly how to spin words in such a way to create a certain picture but make it appear like they are being neutral. More fear mongering. Why?

All that said, it’s important not to treat Trump as some radical aberration. He’s essentially the American id, simply channeling pervasive sentiments unadorned with the typical diplomatic and PR niceties designed to prettify the prevailing mentality. He didn’t propose banning all Muslims from entering the U.S. because it’s grounded in some fringe, out-of-the-mainstream ideas. He proposed it in part to commandeer media attention so as to distract attention away from his rivals and from that latest Iowa poll, but he also proposed it because he knows there is widespread anti-Muslim fear and hatred in the U.S. Whatever else you want to say about him, Trump is a skillful entertainer, and good entertainers – like good fascist demagogues – know their audience.


This is my favorite part. Here they are speculating on Trump's motivations, feeding off of certain things, feeding into certain things, playing to his audience.

And Obama, Ryan, Cameron, Abedin, the oil person from Canada (of course oil figures into the picture), JK Rowling, Dick Cheney, every other presidential candidate and the media - whether conservative, liberal, or radical is not doing the same thing? That sounds a lot like the pot calling the kettle black kind of thing.

And the one thing they do not address. There are factions in this country that have been silenced in service to political correctness. We want to project a certain image, a certain belief system, a certain whatever and anything contrary to that must be squashed, dismissed, ridiculed, or whatever will silence them.

For the first time in decades, those factions have a voice. It's name is Donald.

So again. What wrong with this picture? As I said, I dont know. The older I get the more comfortable I am saying I dont know. But, my gut is feeling something not good here. Just dont know what.

There are a couple of things I'm pretty confident in tho. Politicians and the media are experts at manipulation - of people, of the truth, of history. of the lunch menu. You name it, they know how to spin it for their own purposes. Figuring out what those purposes really are is a life long and very tiring endeavor.

The other thing Im pretty confident in is that for every person, regardless of the issue or what side of the issue they are on, if you agree with them, they will see you as well informed and intelligent. If you disagree with them, they will see you as opinionated, radical, dumb, crazy, stupid take your pick of derogatory terms.

Tick, you also posted an interesting article somewhere a while back. It was a study on how people, once they learn something or believe something, they are reluctant to let go of it, even when evidence to the contrary is staring them in the face, they will cling to what they know. Havent found the post yet for the reference. But this, is also sticking in my head these days.

And, while all this was going on yesterday, it was taking attention away from this:

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to tighten restrictions on travel to the United States by citizens of 38 nations who are allowed to enter the country without obtaining a visa.

The bill, the second major piece of security legislation approved in the chamber in response to the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, passed by 407 to 19.

The measure would require visitors from the visa waiver countries, which include much of western Europe, to obtain a visa to travel to the United States if they had been to Syria, Iraq, Iran or Sudan during the past five years.

It would also require countries participating in the program to share information with U.S. authorities about suspected terrorists or risk being suspended from the scheme.

"This legislation will help close gaping security gaps and improve our ability to stop dangerous individuals before they reach our shores," said Republican Representative Michael McCaul, the House Homeland Security Committee chairman.

What was Trump advocating for? People being checked BEFORE they are allowed in the country. They will crucify and demonize Trump and then pass legislation about the exact same thing? Was the problem that Trump said it specifically about Muslims while the House is broadening it to every one of the 20 million people allowed to come here every year without a visa? What's wrong with this picture?


Twenty million visitors a year enter the United States under the program, which allows them to stay 90 days. It was started in 1986 to boost tourism and tighten the country's relationship with close allies.

Congress has been focused on visa waivers since Paris because some of the militants behind the attacks were Europeans radicalized after visiting Syria.