OBAMA AND THE LEFT’S CONFUSION: Were the Pilgrims Good ‘Refugees’ or Bad Murderers?
To be fair, Obama didn’t invent the comparison of Syrian refugees to the pilgrims. He “didn’t build that”, to borrow from his own vernacular. His avid leftist supporters in media, infotainment, and the blogosphere were trafficking in such nonsense in the days prior to Thanksgiving with all the snark and knee-jerk-know-it-all-attitude they could muster. One can almost imagine the scene at their dinner tables as they packed their guts full of a meal they had just spent days denouncing -– jaws churning through turkey and stuffing in between bleats about white privilege, racist Pilgrims killing off native Americans, and how much capitalism they planned to engage in come Black Friday, income inequality be da@#ned! So often, the left serves as their own worst caricature.
When they –- whether a comedian on a late night show or the President himself -– equate the Syrian refugees with pilgrims that arrived here 395 years ago, they do so ignorant of their own narratives.
For years now, hasn’t the left informed us that the Pilgrims were a bunch of mean-spirited white people that purposely brought weapons and diseases to the new world? And that their arrival signaled the beginning of cultural decimation and enslavement of harmless, brown, woodland people who were living a utopian existence in lands Europeans would soon steal from them? If this particular revisionism has any merit at all, doesn’t that mean that in the left’s view Syrian refugees would culturally decimate the west in an effort to steal our country and impose their will upon us? They, after all, are just like the pilgrims, making us the harmless woodland people naïve to the hazards of our own charity.
To the slack-jawed guy sitting in mom’s basement taking a pause on the bong hits to try and formulate a comment that makes this all the author’s fault, stop -– your argument’s not with me. Just taking Obama’s words and leftist talking points to their logical conclusion here, nothing more nothing less.
And why America? According to the left, from the moment the first white pinky toe touched Plymouth Rock to the present this country has been built on the backs of people of color. Racism here is systemic such that our very structures are infested with it. Our singular founding principle of white privilege has thrust us into imperialistic wars abroad while at home fostering inequality. Income inequality. Marriage inequality. Religious inequality. Ethnic inequality. If there’s inequality to be found rest assured it’s taking place somewhere in America. To be white and of western European origin in the United States is to be born a winner –- set for life. But to be a person of color, especially one from somewhere other than western Europe, is to be consigned to a life “at risk” for which “safe zones” are helpful but incomplete remedies. Syrian refugees are to be placed into this toxic environment? They’ll be victimized all over again, won’t they?
No doubt at this point the slack-jawed progressive is apoplectic having made it this far into this article. Surely there must be some shrill cry of an “ism” that can be cried out to mobilize other knee-jerk-know-it-alls into action. Then, with a sufficient assault conducted using social media, dissenting speech can be squashed and the narrative can once again prevail.
But which narrative? The one about refugees being just like pilgrims? Or the one about systemic racism and inequality? How about the one that places the pilgrims as the seventeenth-century version of the Khmer Rouge — no wait, make that Gestapo — just to make sure that the sins of the west aren’t forgotten even as those of the east are excused. (It brings back memories of the infamous “Holla” video in which a woman walked New York City to “expose” the attention she received from men. It was initially a shining moment for feminists until some realized men of color were a bit more colorful in their admiration of the woman’s backside –- at that point, progressives lost their collective mind trying to determine which offense was greater, racism or sexism. Oh, the humanity).
Perhaps the left should have stuck with the administration’s original Thanksgiving guidance and talked gun control. If nothing else, they’d have appeared less ridiculous.
Image: http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=32144