“Politician granny with your high ideals
Have you no idea how the majority feels?
So without love and a promise land
We’re fools to the rules of a government plan.” — Roland Orzabal
We take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to take a look at a couple of commercials from the Texas governor’s race between Greg Abbott and Beto O’Rourke. As it stands, I only hear pro-Abbott commercials. I suppose sports fans must all be conservatives. Three things have struck me from these ads.
Beto O’Rourke is for defunding the police.
If there are any dedicated Democrats reading this please read the following sentence carefully. For the love of everything good and holy, please stop doing this. You come up with these slogans you think are winning slogans, but the other side just uses them against you. This has been an ongoing problem for as long as I have been following politics.
People don’t understand nuance. I know you don’t literally want to eliminate police departments. I know you are not literally for anarchy. The average voter doesn’t understand the idea of spreading resources around to other agencies that would be in a better position to handle certain issues. They just see a hoard of criminals coming to your door.
Of course, Abbott has to throw in a reference to Black Lives Matter. Again, they have successfully linked BLM with crime and anarchy. Is it fair? Of course it isn’t. Are most of them lawless thugs? Of course they aren’t. People don’t stick around long enough for a lengthy explanation. So, being for BLM and being for police reform means you are pro-crime and for the forces that are bringing crime to our neighborhoods. It’s a bunch of excrement, but it is all most people hear.
Beto is for Open Borders
Clearly he isn’t. He has said this multiple times. What he is for is streamlining our immigration policy and process so that people can enter the country safely when they need to or be sent back when they need to. He has talked about tearing down the wall because most experts agree the wall is virtually useless. Of course, most people only hear the first half of that particular statement.
So, this argument came down to two statements. First, hoards of drug dealers and mules are bringing over fentanyl. That’s oddly specific. That statement is both true and misleading. China actually produces the most fentanyl, but Mexico is seeing an increase. The one that got me was that the border between Mexico and the United States is the most dangerous border in the world. I almost pulled off the road into a ditch laughing. Apparently the border between Syria and Iraq is a bunch of snow cones and rainbows.
Beto is too dangerous for Texas
So, you see where this is going. As we teach our students, pathos (emotion) is the most effectively logical appeal there is. To hell with facts or credibility. We just want you to believe that Beto O’Rourke would somehow kill thousands because he’s inherently dangerous. What happens if you are dangerously incompetent or reckless? A simple Google search on COVID showed that over 90,000 Texans have died from COVID since March of 2020. Most of those came in the first year when our beloved governor decided to lift protocols and keep local governments from imposing their own.
Everyone remember the great freeze in December of 2021? You know the one where our grid virtually shut down statewide because we were in a hurry to deregulate everything that moves. Yeah, this is the one they still haven’t fixed and came close to having more blackouts this past summer. Yeah, THAT freeze cost 246 Texans their lives.
If you count the period when Greg Abbott was attorney general in Texas, we have had a rash of mass shootings in Texas. Take a look at the timeline. Most happened under his watch as governor. Yet, he and the legislature have hurdled head first into policies that would virtually give anyone unfettered access to any weapon they might want. Yet, we cannot predict or control what might happen at our schools and are just dumbfounded when these things happen. So tell me, isn’t Greg Abbott too dangerous for Texas?
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