Britts Out! (Katie Britt, immigration, and sex-trafficking)

(a very similar version of this was published as a guest opinion in the MSM paper for Boulder here) 

 

(That’s what I say about Ireland and the US Senate!)

As you probably know, a month ago GOP Sen. Katie Britt was under a storm of criticism in response to her rebuttal speech after the State of the Union address by President Biden. She told the story of a Mexican woman sex-trafficked when she was a young teen in Mexico- well, for the most part Britt didn’t want you to know it was in Mexico. Britt’s been less than consistent about this, but the idea was to make you think it was in this country and on Biden’s watch (when in fact it was during the George W. Bush administration).

In addition to everything else that has been said about Britt’s rebuttal, I have some more to add. Crucially, read the two paragraphs towards the bottom that are in italics, they’re very important.
 
She was talking about the surge in migration from Mexico to the US, but she also talks about sex-trafficking and Mexican drug cartel activity and she is conflating all three of them (it should be noted that the Mexican woman who was trafficked was not a victim of the cartels contrary to what Britt implied). Has sex-trafficking surged? I’ll be honest- I don’t know, but I think Britt wants you to think it has and that it's coming here with Mexican migrants.

At one point in a March 10th The Guardian article, she is quoted as saying:
 
“We have to tell those stories, and the liberal media needs to pay attention to it because there are victims all the way coming to the border, there are victims at the border, and then there are victims all throughout the country.”
 
I believe that although this is in conflict with what she was saying the rest of the time, she was trying to say in that quote that this kind of sex-trafficking is common in Mexico and Mexicans want to come here and rape your wife or daughter, etc. and only Donald Trump can stop them. She was saying that the sex-trafficking inside Mexico, deaths of migrants at the border and deaths of Americans at the hands of immigrants inside America are one unbroken chain that can only be addressed comprehensively by Trump’s approach to immigration. This is nonsense.

Tough immigration policies will not affect the Mexican drug cartels (it certainly wouldn’t have stopped what happened in Britt’s anecdote because the cartels and the the border had nothing to do with it). Separating children from parents at the border will do absolutely nothing to the cartels. I’m not sure what WILL stop the cartels because I’m not as familiar with recent Mexican history as I should be, but tough immigration policies are not going to help.

As far as “there are victims at the border,” I am not sure what she’s talking about, but there are reports that migrants waiting to cross the border often find themselves in bad situations, which probably does include all kinds of sex crimes. I am not sure how much time is spent at the border by migrants who are not asylum seekers, but as far as the asylum seekers, you must remember that Britt’s party and her hero, Trump, strongly support the “Remain in Mexico” policy where asylum seekers must wait in Mexico until a decision is made about granting them asylum. So, the GOP believes that Mexico is just one big nightmare for teenage girls trying to get to America, but they want such survivors to either wait in Mexico for months or years, or to just stay in Mexico permanently.

As far as victims in this country, yes, it occasionally happens as it might have recently with Laken Riley (I said it- satisfied, MTG?) (I said “might have” because of the presumption of innocence). Those are tragedies but you need to consider a few things:
1) From what I have read non-immigrants here are more likely than immigrants here to commit crimes (yes, that statement probably is based on ignoring the “crime” committed when they enter this country without documents- but that’s a victimless crime).
2) That percentage of the immigrant population that commits violent crime must be incredibly small- why punish everyone in that population because of a very few bad apples?
3) I cannot remember a lot about how often this happens but what about the immigrants who die at the hands of racist and violent white people who listen to the anti-immigrant rantings of people like Britt? Fueling that racism as Trump does will only increase the number of immigrants who get viciously beaten to death by angry teenage males.

In her statement that I quoted above Britt implies that liberals ignore what she's talking about. There are probably better counter-examples than this, but I’m going to go with something that I think is important and probably doesn’t get mentioned very much. The TV show Law and Order: Special Victims Unit FREQUENTLY makes it clear that NYC is a "sanctuary city" where cops don't collaborate with Immigration authorities and not only do they oppose all kinds of sex crimes in general, there was one season 19 two-part episode (Remember Me and Remember Me, Too) about a "coyote" (someone who helps undocumented immigrants get across the southern border and to their destination in the US) who repeatedly raped women he was transporting. Another episode, “911” in season seven, is about a young girl who was brought over the Mexican border by someone who then sold her to child pornographers. In season 16 there is an episode “Girls Disappeared,” about sex-trafficked teenage girls crossing that border. There might be other episodes like that.

 

(UPDATE 7/19/24 The woman Britt talks about was sex-trafficked far from the border)

Liberals and progressives believe that migrant women and girls being sexually exploited and/or assaulted is a serious problem, but they don't support Trump's extreme approach to immigration.

Trump, Masks and Conspiracy Theories

Two miscellaneous thoughts about Trump. The first about masks and the second one about right-wing conspiracies.

 1. First, Trump has said (three times with large audiences) that a recent CDC study found that 85% of people who wear a mask get COVID-19. I’m going to rely primarily on a CNN article to refute that and add a couple things. First, the CNN article is here. Second of all, this shows that trump, like many Americans, still doesn’t get it- a mask isn’t supposed to offer more than partial protection to the wearer. It protects people around the wearer in case they are pre-symptomatic  or asymptomatic- in case they have COVID-19 and don’t know it. You can still  get it with a mask because the mask doesn’t protect your eyes, but the only way for the virus to get out is through your noes and mouth (well you also sort of have to worry about your hands as well to some degree). Third, I can only imagine how much damage he did tossing around that fake information. Bearing in mind what CNN says about its accuracy, he must have strengthened the resolve of mask skeptics like a steel beam placed in their spine. I mean, if 85% of mask wearers get COVID-19, who in the world would wear a mask?

2. In the NBC Trump Town Hall that partly replaced the second debate, Trump was asked to reject a popular conspiracy theory. Referred to as QAnon, it is basically saying that Democrats are part of a satanic conspiracy based on pedophilia. I’m not sure how connected it is to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory or if it is separate. Pizzagate resulted in an incident of armed violence and QAnon could, too. Pedophilia (a sexual attraction by adults or adolescents towards pre-pubescent children) is a serious problem. And Trump refuses to say this conspiracy theory is nonsense. Instead he says that all he knows about them is that they’re against pedophilia and apparently that makes it okay. He also emphasizes that he only RE-tweets QAnon stuff. But A) he has the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community at his fingertips- he knows that QAnon is slanderous, politically-motivated nonsense, B) Who ISN’T against Pedophilia? and C) when you retweet something you are, to one degree or another, endorsing it.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews K

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Real Fake News” Season 18. Wikipedia summary is: “The SVU squad is asked by a US Representative (James Waterston) to debunk sexual assault rumors currently against him, but it takes a surprising twist when they are led to something much more deplorable. Things eventually become extremely personal when Benson and Rollins are targeted by a news website of questionable validity, with pictures of them and their children spreading false rumors about the nature of their families. Both detectives become infuriated and upset, vowing to stop the website and the man running it.”

This is inspired by the popular right-wing conspiracy theory “Pizzagate” which alleges that Democratic Party officials are connected to an underage teenage sex ring. The episode illustrates how ridiculous a theory it is as the detectives investigate the restaurant and find nothing incriminating. The person pushing the theory is without ethics or integrity. It ends with a US Congressperson being killed by a follower of the theory.

“Conversion” Season 18. Wikipedia summary is: “A church group from Indiana visits New York and reports to the Special Victims Unit that one of their members was sexually assaulted by another member. When the rapist (Casey Cott) is found, he claims it was curative intercourse to cure the girl of her homosexuality and that he was saving her soul. The detectives investigate and must decide whether the rapist is sincere in his beliefs or if something else happened to cause him to attack the victim. They end up finding out that the rapist is hiding a secret.”

 

Homophobia

This is a very anti-homophobic episode. The rapist hides behind his religion as a defense and the detectives say that that doesn’t matter, that it’s still rape. Which reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to say for years. A lot of people who oppose homophobia tie the bigotry of their opponents to the religion of the homophobes. This is flawed because A) there are religious people who oppose homophobia and B) there are homophobic atheists. I think the approach should be to say something like: “your religion doesn’t matter, your bigotry is the problem” and then explain what I just said in the previous sentence. I also think it would be easier to convince someone to abandon their bigotry than it would be to convince them to abandon their religion. And for many people, religion is a good thing. It makes it easier for me to deal with my mom’s death.

This next review is of a two-parter. The first part is called “American Dream” and the second is called “Sanctuary.” The wikipedia summaries are:

“An extremely brutal hate crime is committed against a Muslim family who owns a restaurant, resulting in two deaths. The detectives investigate, but things become extremely complicated when a crucial witness is suddenly and unexpectedly deported back to his own country. This forces Barba to drop the charges, causing extreme tension, anger, and violence between communities on opposing sides of the case.”

and

“The Special Victims Unit continues to investigate the hate crime against the Muslim family who were viciously assaulted in their restaurant. When their main suspect in the crime is released from custody, Benson and Barba become caught between the Muslim family and the suspect's family, both seeking justice for their loved ones. Protests in the streets start to turn extremely violent and Benson is faced with a tough decision that she has never had to make before in her entire career in order to make an arrest and get justice.”

Bigotry and immigration are the main themes here.

1. An inter-racial couple are witnesses. I know that’s more common and more widely accepted than it was 20 years ago, but it’s still worth noting.
2. At one point a suspect suggests that Donald Trump is right about Mexican immigrants and rape.
3. A suspect’s wife complains that nobody cares about straight white people who aren’t transgendered.
4. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid a pro-immigrant protest. That’s pretty lame. It’s like police raiding a protest against police brutality.
5. A crucial witness is a gay Syrian who is in the country illegally. First, it’s significant that he’s a gay muslim- you don’t hear about them very often. Second, he is certain that if he’s deported back to Syria or a refugee camp he’ll be killed because he’s gay (that’s another thing you don’t hear much about, homophobia among Muslims). Shortly after he’s picked up by ICE at the pro-immigrant protest he’s deported. Not only does SVU lose a crucial witness thanks to Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, it’s as damning of our immigration system as the execution of an innocent person would be damning of the death penalty.

“No Good Reason” season 19. Wikipedia summary is: “The Special Victims Unit is called in to investigate the sudden disappearance of a high school student (Brighton Sharbino). They soon discover that she was the victim of a nasty cyberbullying attack from her fellow peers and best friend (Madison Pettis). When she is finally found, she claims that she was raped by three boys from her school at a party, one being one of her best friends. The case goes well until the victim becomes reluctant to testify due to hatred and bullying from her peers and Benson must convince her to be brave. Meanwhile, Sheila Porter attempts to challenge Benson's parenting skills as a mother, which infuriates Benson.”

The survivor tells SVU that there was underage marijuana smoking and SVU says they don’t care- either much or at all (I can’t remember for sure and I’m not going to watch the episode again now, but in at least one other episode they ignore illegal marijuana use by survivors).

Star Trek: Enterprise Reviews T

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“Bound” See this for a plot summary.


This episode brings up the issue of slavery. The Orion Syndicate traffics in slavery, although this episode makes it unclear whether or not the Orion female slaves are really slaves.

Although I kind of spaced on this the last time I discussed the slavery of the Orions, it reminds me of the trafficking in slaves, often of a sexual nature, today. I’m not familiar with that, but hopefully some progress can be made at stopping that.

One thing that was disappointing was Archer’s interest in dialogue with the Orion Syndicate. Criminals such as they should be stopped, not reconciled with.

“In A Mirror, Darkly” parts 1 and 2 See this and this for a plot summary.

In some ways it’s very political and I could write for hours about this two-parter, but I’m gonna keep this brief. It’s about an imperialistic, amoral, bigoted and more or less fascist StarFleet in a different dimension. When Archer learns of his counter-part who was important to the founding of the Federation, he says: “Great men are not peace-makers- great men are conquerors!”

Earth’s empire includes many alien species who are considered inferior to humans. Discipline within StarFleet is quite harsh and physical.

I give this two-parter four stars out of five.

“Demons” and “Terra Prime” See this and this for a plot summary.

Once again, a two-parter that I could spend hours typing about the politics involved. But I’m going to keep this fairly short. It’s largely about xenophobia and extreme hostility to people who are half-human and half-alien (obviously in real life it would be people of two or more different races).

There are three things that I want to comment on:

1) A friend of Travis apparently told him that exploration of space is a form of colonialism. In Star Trek, at least the vast majority of the time, only planets with no indigenous intelligent population are colonized by the Federation. It’s not colonialism.

2) The leader of the xenophobic organization benefits from alien medical science. When he is confronted about his hypocrisy, he says that he’s not the first leader to fall short of his own ideals. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some situations where that’s not a big problem, but in general it is hypocrisy of the sort that should be held against the leader involved.

3) I generally like the idea of mergers between different nations and states, and I like how this episode is about an effort to establish some kind of inter-planetary alliance which will later turn into the Federation.

I give this episode four stars out of five.

“These Are The Voyages...” See this for a plot summary.

Aside from something about movement towards creating the Federation, which I referred to in the review immediately above for the episodes “Demons” and”Terra Prime” there is more or less nothing political in this episode. The part about Riker studying Tripp’s dis-obeying Archer’s order is a very creative way to end the series. It would have been better if Tripp had done something else- for example, in some battle where Archer is wounded and he tells Tripp to leave him and Tripp stays, and gets killed. Something like that I think would have been better.

I give it four stars out of five.