Oh Hell: O'Rourke Campaign Takes on Trump's Border Claims

February 20, 2019

The Skinny

As Shakespeare said, “If music be the food of love, play on.” But, in today’s day and age please play the music and turn it up really loud so I can’t hear the garbage being circulated by the right-wing media, the President, and the Republican Party.

Some important bulletins brought to you by the right-leaning media this week (all who have ruined my love of the color red):

1) Trump makes sense.

2) The border wall is needed as there is an emergency happening at this very moment.

3) Immigrants are everything negative in the world: scary, outlaws, terrorists, drug-sellers, rapists, poor, uneducated.

Hold up though. 

This three-headed dog of inflammatory rhetoric does NOT include my points of view. Instead, this week, I choose to align with the POV of Beto O’Rourke.

Why? Well, I received a powerful bit of writing from the politician via his e-campaign. It came to me like a searchlight while I was lost in a forest of Trumpian misinformation and theatrics.

However, it doesn't seem to be online. After many boolean searches, I was unable to find the powerful piece of writing online. As a result, I went ahead and took screenshots of the e-mail and posted it to my blog. The screenshots of the e-mail titled, “The President Came To El Paso” can be found here and are the subject of this critique.

As the title suggests, the President in all his gilded and glorified depravity did indeed take a recent trip to the border town of El Paso.

Although I would truly like to believe the e-mail's sole writer is Beto, I am certain the e-mail was instead crafted by a whole team of ghostwriters, wordsmiths, and junior politicos-in-training.

That aside, the writer(s) of the campaign e-mail makes a solid point. 

What is it? The President continually and purposely refutes news and government agency reports to say that immigrants are violent and dangerous and need to be kept out by a wall. He continues the fearmongering with the idea that the border being pretty damn safe just is not the case. He does all of this to further his agenda. 

In my opinion, what's his agenda? To further his brand and to ultimately own E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. A scary thought. And, in the midst of the trappings of his power and wealth, millions of immigrants and families of immigrants exist in the throes of his political chess moves. 

Millions of immigrants and sons and daughters of immigrants call the United States home.

The severity and humanity of this situation is not lost on the writer(s):

“...it’s worth thinking about how we got to this place. How it came to be that 11 million undocumented immigrants call American home, how we came to militarize our border, how we arrived at such a disconnect between our ideals, our values and the reality of our lives.”

Instead, the President no longer pretends to be interested in a bicameral, international conversation about immigration policy. Further, the op-ed says the President advances forward with divisive language and strategies.

“At almost every step of modern immigration policy and immigration politics we have exacerbated underlying problems and made things worse. Sometimes, with the best of intentions, sometimes with the most cynical exploitation of nativism and fear.”

It is a powerful piece of writing. Returning to the concept that all immigrants are criminals and sinners, the op-ed uses information backed by news articles, history and links to research. And, while bias is a definite thing when trying to prove a point, I want to believe this point.

Onward to My Critique

This piece was an extremely quick and informative read. Aside from defending immigrants and border communities, the e-mail gives a substantive policy approach for a “safer, more successful country.”

One of the most inspiring parts of the article is highlighted for your purview below. It makes me want to scream, “WE THE PEOPLEEEEEEEE.”

“But we still have a choice. In this democracy, if in fact the people are the government, and the government is the people, we still have a chance to prove it.”

O’Rourke (or his shadow writer(s)) is, in this blog post, definitely underselling the drama of the border, drug wars, violence, etc. But, this e-mail is well written. And, the author has a firm grasp on grammar, prose and creative writing. But, I would expect nothing less than a young politician with a lot of buzz.

Finally, it should be noted that O’Rourke may be considering a run for President or to join a Democratic ticket as the Vice President. So, with this piece of writing, he is definitely trying to get his stance known and his ideas out there to rally the base.

And, why should we believe him? Well, he is positioning himself as a sort of borderland aficionado in direct opposition to what Trump stands for. Where does his expertise come from? He is from El Paso, comes from a lineage of El Pasoans and has championed the city for many years, having worked previously as a legislator and owning a business there.

One important point about this piece of writing, though...while this was to state his stance and back it by evidence, it was not found online. So who is for? Well, as mentioned, it was sent to his campaign e-base. Thus, the intended base of readers are:

•       zealous;
•        civically and politically engaged;
•        exercise some sort of issue constraint around immigration policy;
•        already engaged in the Democratic Party;
•        already supportive of Beto.

So, in conclusion, whether or not we believe the point of view O'Rourke is dishing out is up to us. The odds are though, if you are reading it or receiving this e-mail, that you already believe him. That being said, the writing does give us plenty of solid sources to do our own reading and make our own conclusions. It also seems diplomatic enough to be stomached by people on both ends of the political spectrum.

Rating? Educational and enthusiastic. O'Rourke is the artist and we are the canvas. Read this if you want to believe that there is good in the world and that politicians can be OK people.