It was all the rage a few years back. News outlets salivated at the videos and reports of citizens creating public disruptions in dining establishments when they would loudly -- sometimes physically -- disrupt Trump administration figures. The justification for this was the accused human rights abuses taking place with regards to the immigration policies being enforced, leading to accusations of kids being placed in cages, the creation of baby jails, and concentration camps for minors.
The emotion was that anyone who was permitting these ‘atrocities’ should not be permitted to dine out in comfort. They should be challenged, and people were encouraged to get in their faces. Well, here we are in 2021 and the country is facing a crisis at the border, and regardless of how desperately Press Secretary Jen Psaki wants to cloak it in euphemisms, this is a major problem of Joe Biden’s own doing. Currently Biden has more children detained at the border than seen during the peak of the avowed 2019 crisis.
But note the severe swing in tone seen in the press. Or, to be completely accurate, that tone not seen in the press. Where are the declarations of inhumane treatment and human rights abuses? They are non-existent. Under President Trump we all heard the wails of accusations that he was engaged in tearing children from the arms of parents. The truth; well over 90% of those children were arriving here unaccompanied. That is a designation the press today goes out of their way to note when reporting on Biden’s maneuvers at the border -- yet he is also still engaged in separations as well.
Along with breaking his pledge to not deport anyone during his first 100 days the president has reversed course on demonizing Trump’s immigrant housing policies, reopening those accursed holding facilities at a fast clip and resorting to the very standards that the media declared inhumane. NPR details the children being subjected to the same harsh conditions which had the general public, at the guidance of a hyperbolic media, gnashing their teeth in outrage.
Many children can't even get transferred to more hospitable shelters that can have bunk beds, video games, classrooms, medical facilities and ball fields because those are already at 94% capacity. That backlog explains why kids are staying on average 107 hours in the sprawling and sometimes jail-like Border Patrol facilities — longer than the 72 hours allowed by law.
So a question: Where are those howling harridans in the media calling for us to accost Democrats as they are dining out at Johnnie Palmer, or The Occidental Grill? Stories came out of politicians being challenged at meals and conservative pundits getting water thrown on them. During this period was when Sarah Huckabee Sanders had her family chased off by the proprietors of one establishment. (This move was repeated with Sanders’ replacement, Kayleigh McEnany.) These episodes, and others, were not only covered dutifully by the press but they lacked anything approaching condemnation.
More than a tacit approval, there were calls going out for people to expand on this level of intolerance in public. At The Guardian Jessica Valenti outwardly encouraged people to continue with this practice, and she gave all the needed justification. ‘’When it comes to kids in cages, you’re not just accountable for your actions from 9 to 5,’’ was her justification for confronting politicos nibbling on portabellas.
But when you’re talking about the kind of human rights violations the Trump administration has unabashedly enacted and defended, there is no public/private line worth honoring...If you’re responsible for the jailing of Latino toddlers, you do not have the right to enjoy Mexican food free from protest. If you are defending internment camps where children are leaving with bedbug bites, lice and irreparable emotional trauma, you don’t get to have a fun dinner out without servers and restaurant owners taking umbrage.
Now then, where is that same umbrage seen today? Joe Biden has provoked a renewed crisis and is fostering children in a manner as egregious as that alleged of Trump, if not worse. He had provoked this inhumane treatment in less than 50 days in office, a clear sign that he wanted this result. He is not only deserving of harsh condemnation but his staff, and administration workers are worthy of the public scorn.
It is just another facet reflected in the double-standard that has long existed with this issue. Policies put in place by the Obama administration never earned much notice until Donald Trump carried them forward. Facilities opened ahead of his arrival became intolerable hellscapes when Trump took over. Now that Biden is continuing the policies, and possibly expanding upon them, it is also time to carry on the tradition of gustatory confrontations.
Unless, as suspected, it is all a convenience of partisan morality. As Valenti explains, this is all about ‘’community members sending a clear message about what they’re willing to tolerate, and what none of us should have to.’’ It is becoming evident that the left and the press are willing to tolerate what they previously called inhumanities, so long as it is a Democrat who is enforcing those policies.
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