Credit: Pixabay
Right now, right here in San Diego, we have prototypes being built for a wall of shame.
The facts about our border with Mexico don’t matter; that border cities generally have low crime rates, unlawful border crossings are down, people and/or drugs are being mostly smuggled through regular ports of entry.
The Trump administration is dead-set on spending tens of billions of dollars for a symbolic barrier as a testament to their success in selling fear of the ‘other’ as a vehicle for dismantling the social safety net and lining the pockets of their loony financiers.
The President took time out yesterday from disrespecting grieving widows and boosting conspiracy theories floated by Putin’s propagandists to Tweet out a video of the construction in Otay Mesa.
Let’s look around at what Trump’s allies have been up to lately and see if we can find anything in common.
Three of the recent falsehoods aimed at provoking phobias making the rounds involve California.
Lie # 1: The Mexican Cartels started the October 2017 California wildfires to gain a strategic advantage over the legal marijuana industry.
Fact-checking site Snopes.com found no basis for this bit of fiction, originally published at Got News, and picked up by Proud Patriots, Freedom Daily, and Gateway Pundit:
The Got News article can most charitably be described as thinly sourced, claiming that anonymous law enforcement officials and cannabis industry leaders believe that cartels “had a hand” in starting the historically destructive fires. However, there is no statement attributed to anyone, even an unnamed person. A spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection told us the investigation into the fires was still ongoing and that it could be a matter of months before a cause or causes are determined.
However, there is ample evidence to implicate windblown power lines in at least some of the wildfires…
…Got News is a disreputable web site run by the infamous internet troll Chuck C. Johnson, and has previously published thinly sourced and fabricated claims and often-xenophobic conspiracy theories.
Lie #2: Right wing sites claimed the Sonoma County fires were started by a Latino immigrant.
From USA Today:
Conservative media sites on Tuesday attempted to link the Sunday arrest of a Latino man on suspicion of arson in Sonoma to the massive, deadly cluster of wildfires burning in California’s wine country.
But Breitbart News and InfoWars offered no evidence to link the man’s arrest to the fires and their accounts of the man’s arrest were disputed the same day by Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano.
Lots of folks learned about this conspiracy through Twitter:
The Sonoma Sheriff called a press conference to decry these stories, appearing on Breitbart and lesser-known outlets, including Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.
From the Sacramento Bee:
Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano forcefully shot down the allegations at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
“There is a story out there that he’s the arsonist in these fires,” Giordano said. “That’s not the case. There’s no indication he’s related to these fires at all. … I wanted to kill that speculation right now, so we didn’t have things running too far out of control.”
Right-wing websites including Breitbart and InfoWars Tuesday each published stories on the Sunday arrest of Jesus Fabian Gonzales, whom sheriff’s deputies arrested on a single count of arson.
Lie # 3: Immigrants are responsible for the major Hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego.
The story originated by September with an article in America’s Freedom Fighters:
The ultra liberal city of San Diego, California which incidentally is inundated with illegal aliens is facing a health crisis and authorities have declared PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY.
A public health emergency was declared Friday over an outbreak of ‘hepatitis A’ that has been linked to at least 15 deaths and 400 hospitalizations.
The Pacific Pundit and others picked up the story:
Ah yes, those wonder illegal aliens and “Dreamers” that bring so much to this country. Now they are importing their hepatitis to San Diego, a border city in California and it may spread to more densely populated Los Angeles, a sanctuary city.. How fitting. The diseased illegal aliens are dropping their feces in the streets and spreading hepatitis A.
Snopes.com spoke with San Diego County’s Health and Human Services department and members of the City Council, who said there was no evidence of a connection.
Last week California Governor Jerry Brown California issued an emergency proclamation allowing the state to increase its supply of vaccines as cases were being reported in Santa Cruz and Los Angeles Counties.
The wack-a-doos at Info Wars, ran with the headline: “The Liberal Utopia is Slowly Falling Apart.” Their angle was to connect the outbreak with recently signed legislation authored by San Francisco’s Sen. Scott Wiener and San Diego’s Asm. Todd Gloria lowering the penalty for exposing partners to HIV from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Meanwhile on Twitter…
Insane failure by Gov Jerry Brown. Hepatitis-18 dead..100s afflicted. Brown trying to thin his pop for illegals. https://t.co/oGWC73Gozd
— CTruthforTrump 🇺🇸 (@cs0058sc) October 15, 2017
Several helpful people responded to this individual, pointing out various bits of truth, like the epidemic starting in San Diego, which has a Republican Mayor and a solidly GOP Board of Supervisors… but it was to no avail.
These types won’t let a few facts get in the way when it comes to racism.
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Doug Porter
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I believe we should hold the City Council and the Board of Supervisors accountable for their respective roles in the epidemic. There is evidence of city or county officials keeping the evidence secret while alerting employees who might be infected. I’m glad alerts were given to public service employees, it would be less than responsible not to alert them.
Likewise the public which these officials ultimately serve. I realize it would be difficult to attach a number to the transgression. We have hundreds of infections, how many could have been avoided. Even one, blah, blah, blah, I get that but every day it was delayed kept informed people from altering their behavior and protecting themselves. Many of us had homeless encampments scattered around that we ignored until we were advised that there was a good chance they and their immediate areas might harbor the disease. That changed everything and our landlord took measures also. I’m glad the tent city was erected, because the homeless numbers are out of control and growing. The word is out, California won’t let you starve. We are becoming a stop on the homeless trails leading west out of the dying rust belt. It is only going to get worse. If we don’t help we’ll have other infections getting loose.
“The word is out” implying that homeless humans are flocking to California is one of those urban myths, right up there with the one saying “street panhandlers are making $800+ a day.” There is no empirical data coming out of research to indicate this is the case.
There is however, proof that thousands of inexpensive rooms in San Diego were destroyed without regard to impact over the past decade as part of the private/public quest to remake downtown.
I’m not saying there are no homeless who migrate; this has always been the end of the line for some folks. But to think those fearful faces on the streets are here for the perks is to dehumanize them and buy in to a narrative that followed to its logical end, leads to an authoritarian “solution.”
also, many street people report that they came to San Diego and then became homeless for one reason or another. Mr. Rohde, i fear you are again cherry-picking your data.