Sunday, April 1, 2018

Is The Caravan America's Aylan Kurdi Moment?

The cynic in me wonders if the border hysteria using the 2013 photo of the Honduras girl and the organized "caravan" marching toward our Southern border will end with another Aylan Kurdi moment. Aylan Kurdi was the three year old Syrian boy whose body was photographed, on a Turkish beach, after he drowned supposedly trying to make it to Europe with his family. His death, on September 2, 2015, forced Europe's borders WIDE OPEN.
The whole of Europe reacted with horror and guilt. Angela Merkel used the emotional moment as an excuse to significantly increase migration into Germany and Sweden. Facts did not matter. Emotion, combined with guilt, opened the borders wide, and triggered the flow of millions of migrants, mostly young men, into Europe (versus the "families" narrative we saw on TV.)
The facts behind that picture were quite different. The Syrian boy's father was not an asylum seeker. He was gainfully employed in Turkey and had no reason to leave. They had lived there 3 years, had $5,000 in savings and lived in an apartment paid for by a sister in Canada.
They obviously did not get very far because the boy was photographed on a Turkish beach. Critics believe the photograph was staged. The father declared he saw his family drown in front of his eyes and then later stated he looked for them lost on the beach. His story had many holes. But the photo changed Europe forever. It will never recover.
20 years ago, in Europe, 16 children were slaughtered in a UK school. Within a year, UK lawmakers made registration mandatory for shotguns, banned semi-automatic and pump-action weapons and banned private ownership of handguns. In the wake of the Florida school shooting, eerily similar to the UK shooting two decades ago, the gun grabbers are using the event to emotionally justify repealing the 2nd amendment and our right to bear arms. The little children are shouting: "No more guns. Never again." It worked in the UK. They are hoping it will work in America.
Never underestimate the power of a single horrific event, doctored narrative or frothy emotional appeal to move people to change their minds on positions they said were unchangeable. As the first caravan marches toward our Southern border, ask yourself what America will do when faced with its own Aylan Kurdi moment.

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