Three recent events which initially seemed to be separate may nevertheless be linked by a superior agency directing human perception and subsequent opinion in a way meant to promote a certain socio-political result that reinforces one political side. Say what?
For the last few months soccer fans have been watching soccer teams from all over the globe compete during the preliminary FIFA matches. As I write, the Belgium team has just defeated the English one for Third Place in the 2018 FIFA playoffs. In a couple of days the French-Croatia soccer team match will decide which is the champion soccer team for 2018. (I've picked France, though my heart has slowly turned toward the team from Croatia whose entire national population is about equal to that of the City of Paris plus its Inner Ring.) Naturally, this has garnered the attention of a vast global market of non-uniform demographics.
Secondly, for many months in the United States the issue of illegal immigration has been a commonly discussed topic. President Trump, the U.S. congress, federal and state courts, media and a variety of organizations have routinely brought forth ideas not likely to fuse into a single policy. In such matters proponents of "open borders" express amazement that anyone could be so heartless as to obstruct or bar illegal immigrants and/or refugees seeking a better life in America. "We are a nation of immigrants," they commonly assert by way of argument. They suggest that for a previous group of immigrants to treat a subsequent group shabbily flies in the face of "our traditions." Often there will be cited the words on the Statue of Liberty composed by "founding poet" Emma Lazarus.
The late television producer, Norman Lear, gleefully analyzed America's group personality thusly, "America love wet." By this he opined that tears will usually win the American approval and vote.
I believe that it is this insight by Lear that explains the major media relentlessly using maudlin terms such as "dreamers" to describe one set of illegals. It would be rare to read or hear them use terms such as "deceitful," "conniving," or "cynical."
Now, the third element which I want to introduce is the recently absorbing tale of an adolescent band of Thai soccer players and their coach somehow managing to get marooned on a spit of land - really a shelf - fairly deep in a cave abutting the sea and subject to tidal forces. How could this happen? Really? The way inside this cave was often very narrow, watery and very dark. This inexplicable situation seemed to be something a low-budget Hollywood production crew might dream up. True, it's not quite as unreal as "Sharknada" but competitive.
Here, once again we find kids seemingly abandoned and incalculably endangered. America and the world tuned into this tragedy-in-the-making. Abandoned kids? It's unthinkable. Remember Norman Lear's words, "America loves wet."
The tie-in of the kiddo soccer team and the FIFA 2018 championship competition is a natural. The heroic group of skilled rescuers fighting to save the kids from daunting, life-threatening danger vied with the less compelling but nevertheless emotional struggle among soccer teams from various nations for another week of life. The stranded Thai kids and the stranded-at-the-border Latino kids would similarly be absorbed by Americans watching such events as they were being related by the major media. At the minimum there must have been some sort of subliminal merging of these issues by viewers. I do believe that was the intent.
President Trump even expressed heartfelt concern for the Thai kiddo soccer team in their peril. I do believe that the media hoped that the Americans would wonder why the president didn't have the same heartfelt concern for the "caged," abandoned kids held by his border authorities. Why didn't he rescue those kiddos the way the heroes of the Thai rescue team saved the soccer kids?
America loves wet - even if it ultimately drowns in its own tears.
