I wasn't calling out your prediction about what the media will do, which is why I clipped that part from my quote of your post. Your understatement was to suggest that, among all of the "criminals" who will be, I suppose you would say, rightfully deported, there might possibly be some little slip up involving a ("
a," singular) family that might also accidentally get deported, which I guess would be a real regrettable whoopsy daisy
if it happens (but it might not! it's a "perhaps"!), but that's all, nothing more to worry about there.
DColeKC wrote: ↑Tue Jan 21, 2025 2:41 pm
Thousands of families were deported under Biden, yet mainstream media barely highlighted their stories. Now, with Trump’s policies, we know those stories will dominate the headlines in no time. It won’t take more than a few days before we start seeing an emotional media blitz.
The first part of this is true for sure. When in power, Democrats do all the same shit as Republicans on immigration. Obama was the "deporter-in-chief" and Biden declined to roll back Trump-era immigration policies (after running on doing precisely that), which were in any case merely built on what Obama had already left for him in the first place. Presidents from both parties continuously ratchet our immigration policy further and further to the right. Neither side is good on this, if we define "good" as recognizing and protecting the fundamental humanity and dignity of immigrants (suffice it to say, many would not define "good" this way).
I'm not very interested in what the media is or isn't going to do, but I guess since we are talking about it, all I will say is, I think how they cover this issue going forward under Trump remains to be seen. The political environment itself has changed a lot in the past few years. Democrats clearly picked up on a shift, as was evident in their own harsher stance toward immigration during the campaign. The media have covered immigration itself far less sympathetically in recent years. I can't say whether media coverage soured because public opinion turned on immigrants or if public opinion turned on immigrants because media coverage soured (or -- I'm sure there is plenty of polling on this, but I don't care enough to look it up -- whether public opinion has actually changed at all or if politicians just think it has because of the tenor of media coverage), but in any case, the question seems a little bit more layered to me than to just expect it to be 2017 again.
And listen, you could turn out to be right. The thing about for-profit media is that they will tell whatever story they judge will generate the greatest returns for them, so maybe that's demonize Trump when he's in office, demonize immigrants when a Democrat is in office, demonize Trump again when he's back in office. That would be generally consistent with the idea that a plurality or even majority of people like neither immigrants nor Trump, which is probably true. But it also ignores all of these other changes, which is why I don't see it as a slam dunk prediction.
If we face issues like a produce shortage, the narrative will likely shift to blaming Trump’s policies or tariffs, even if the causes are more complex. The media machine has always operated in this way, and many people will accept these narratives without doing any research or engaging in critical thinking.
The Democrats just got booted out of office in large part, it seems, because many voters remembered that things were more affordable before 2021, so the "media machine" definitely cuts both ways here. Trump's policies, including/especially tariffs (but also, for that matter, mass deportations), are much more directly inflationary than anything Biden did, but Biden still got stuck as the guy who made everything more expensive. I mean, "house becomes more expensive after construction crew got deported" or "washing machine becomes more expensive after new tax imposed" are not particularly complicated cases. I'm sure the Heritage Foundation will be happy to give you a bunch of money to write a white paper about all of the deeply complex
real causes that those prices went up, but the truth will in fact be fairly straightforward.