Lessons from Martha’s Vineyard • Hit the Elites Where They Live

Over the past 20 months an estimated 5 million people have illegally crossed the southern border of the United States.  Border patrols regularly stop trucks filled with enough fentanyl to kill thousands of Americans across the nation; and those smuggled into the country often end up in new forms of slavery, beholden to the cartels as they try to pay off their debts.

In a well-choreographed made-for TV political moment, Florida Governor Ron Desantis recently shuttled dozens of illegal immigrants to the neo-liberal wonderland that is Martha’s Vineyard, which contained everything one could want in a juicy cultural soap opera: exposure of hypocrisy on a grand scale, comeuppance for the elites wrecking the nation, and of course - crocodile tears from the corporate controlled news media.

This is the modern tale of two cities: one where the privileged Country Club classes that populate Martha’s Vineyard are made to bear the brutal impacts of how their policies impact the rest of America and label the move a ‘theatrical political stunt’; and the other where average people in small-town Texas get flooded with illegal immigrants and it’s just another Tuesday.  If they complain to the government that’s supposed to control border crossings, they are denounced as bigots.

“We don’t have the resources to house them,” lamented Martha’s Vineyard homeless shelter coordinator, Lisa Belcastro.  When she explained to reporters that the 50 new immigrants had to find someplace else to live, the hypocrisy became blatant. Imagine the gall.

Martha’s Vineyard is one of the wealthiest locales in the whole country. If it can’t swing the resources to house and feed 50 new immigrants, how can cash-strapped cities across the US like Brownsville, Texas be expected to handle millions of migrants every year illegally trampling over the border into its hands?

The reality is that Belcastro doesn’t care what affect their illegal presence will have on the society or economy of the mainland. As she explained at the press conference, she just wants them off her lawn – out of sight, out of mind – so she and her neighbors can get back to the real work of virtue-signaling in peace, free from the strain of their presence.

Within less than 48 hours of their arrival to Martha’s Vineyard, the newly arrived Sacred Immigrants of Color©, Our Greatest Strength©, whom the island’s residents uniformly adore and celebrate as a matter of religious conviction, were unceremoniously shipped off to a nearby military base.

So what is the take-away?   When the corporate state overlords become first in line to feel the pain, they’re likelier to act responsibly; therefore, we as a nation have to force them to reckon with the consequences of their own policies. In addition to continuing nonstop service to Martha’s Vineyard, regular planeloads/busloads of new arrivals should be regularly delivered supply chain-style to other sanctuaries of the elite including: The Hamptons, Suburban DC, Silicon Valley/Palo Alto, Beverly Hills, Wall Street, and Department of Homeland Security Headquarters.

In addition, the government actors, “nonprofit” philanthropists, and corporate social engineers should also be the very first in line to be made to wear carbon trackers to document their amount of fuel consumption (their frequent private jet-setting would break the meter).   After all, what’s good for the goose should be  good for the gander.

UN Report: America Becoming a Third-World Country

The US, the Shining City on a Hill famous the world over, now lands between Ukraine and Bulgaria on the UN development rankings, which uses metrics such as clean water and sanitation, education, health, and poverty levels.

This isn’t to say that immigrants are to blame for America’s descent into a coast-to-coast shanty town – that’s obviously the doing of the multinational corporate state that views the middle class as its primary enemy and has been stealthily working on its annihilation for the past 40-50 years.

That said, importing millions of new people from the Third World into an already-collapsing system won’t help anyone, “documented” or “undocumented,” outside of a tiny elite minority.  What mass importation of non-Western, non-educated people will do is further drive down wages, collapse the middle class, and pour fuel on the raging culture war along ethnic lines.

All due credit to DeSantis for the ingenious play aside, it was at the end of the day a theatrical production – not serious policy. However cathartic it was watching the melodramatic meltdown by neo-liberals who purport to love diversity, but will actually go to great lengths and expense to avoid it, was revelatory in terms of how theory translates into reality.

While it was gratifying to watch them taste their own bitter medicine, the question remains how many eyes will be opened by their temporary discomfort of being forced to reckon with a consequence of their own misguided policies.  Almost as quickly as they came, the migrants were cleared out and shipped elsewhere within the US territory to become a burden to the middle and working classes as designed.

In the absence of further, more meaningful action, the island’s inhabitants, by way of their vast resources and political influence, will make sure no such event occurs again. Illegal immigration will continue unabated.

In the final analysis, nothing will have changed — aside from, perhaps, DeSantis’ poll numbers. Real border security, and other means of effective governance, require  a buy-in from all of the members of the society in question. We can’t maintain a functional system with a group of elites in charge who, for a variety of reasons, are doing all they can to break the middle class.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter.