I’ve gone to Breitbart a number of times and am both repulsed and intrigued by the articles and commenters. I find arguing with commenters over there forces me to focus on my positions in my own head and work on communicating more clearly. When I challenge their bumper-sticker assertions on anything that might be considered “librul”, or “dimocrap” my objective is not to change them but to strengthen my own inner core beliefs. Below is my response to a man who writes he lives in San Diego county and knows first-hand the kind of destruction and harm “illegals” do and why only the “wall” can fix it:
Calling someone a moron doesn't make your argument any better. Just makes you seem kind of immature like a kid in a schoolyard.
I was born and raised in Texas and saw the bad conditions many farmers made their immigrant workers live under. Bad employers could force the issue by threatening deportation to any worker and their families who asked for decent living conditions. These immigrants picked the food that my family served at the table and kept the prices we paid for it down. I was too young at the time to know about the exploitation of labor we continually use to enrich the wealthy and increase economic inequality in this country but I am aware of it now.
Competition increases pressure on employers to pay as little as possible for labor. The inhuman extent they are willing to go to is shown by having used the enslavement of other human beings to try to further lower costs. As a society advances, laws are made to curb exploitation but the pressure of competition causes employers to skirt as close to breaking the law as they can without paying a price for it.
Today we have millions of undocumented migrants who came, basically, at the invitation of American employers who wanted cheap labor. To maximize their control over immigrant labor, employers, through their bought and paid for representatives, made sure no kind of comprehensive immigration policy was ever made law. That way, if their cheap labor source ever demanded too much the trouble makers could be deported and replaced. Scapegoating immigrants is just a way for this country to absolve itself from responsibility for the role it played in creating such a mess. The foreign workers I've been around are just hard workers who keep their heads down not wanting attention much less trouble. I've felt much more physically threatened by American born citizens who feel they need to dominate others out of a false sense of pride. These workers and their families are thrown together with asylum seekers coming from the southern continents and are jumbled into the "immigrant problem". A wall will not fix this. Comprehensive immigration reform is needed to address the millions of undocumented workers who made lives here,raised families here, and contributed to the nation's wealth through their work. The asylum seekers need to be addressed with the laws already in place. We, as a country, need to quit laying blame on others and be responsible for finding a fair solution instead of spreading convenient lies.
Your reply to me stated “real Americans” want a wall. I am a real American with the birth certificate to prove it. And I accept naturalized citizens as equal. People like you can't take that away. The crisis does not lie at the southern border from unarmed civilians, it comes from those who cannot tolerate people who are different in thought or color and want to see them punished for their difference. That is what Trump promises, to divide the nation in any fashion that will advantage his base. That is the real crisis.
I need to push back against the swampy tide of Trump’s followers mindless conspiracy theories and insults that get repeated across social media and present an alternative reality to those who might be influenced by a different story and set of facts. Too often I have let rightwing extremists go unchallenged because their intense insanity frightens me and I don’t like confrontation. But, when I’m quiet theirs is the only message heard and constant repetition has an impact no matter how crazy the message. Pre-Trump I laughed at the extremists and reassured myself that no one would buy their crap. I’m not laughing anymore. I am now committed to providing forceful arguments in any way that I can. Getting common sense progressive narratives into people’s awareness that counter the fringe positions on the right and not ceding the field to Fox and Limbaugh is critical. I may only be able to write letters to the editor and get opinion pieces published in local papers but I will use the tools available to sway those that I can. We will all do what we can to fight back against the current national nightmare.