The unfolding crisis involving Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, has the potential to define this entire moment in U.S. history.
For instance, while we rightly lay responsibility for the crisis at the feet of establishment politicians like President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, we must also acknowledge a much deeper and darker truth about the other culprits, who sadly number in the millions.
In an interview Thursday with Lawrence B. Jones of “Fox & Friends” on Fox News, longtime Springfield resident Diana Daniels described life in the town as “like living in a dystopian nightmare” and declared that “we’ve needed help for several years.”
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Daniels’ “dystopian nightmare” attracted national attention for one of the unlikeliest reasons anyone could have imagined.
According to recent rumors, Haitian migrants in Springfield have allegedly abducted and eaten both geese in the wild and — incredibly — family pets.
Earlier this week, those rumors prompted a slew of memes on the social media platform X. Many of those memes cleverly depicted former President Donald Trump fighting to save the animals. Predictably, both the rumors and the memes sent liberals into fits of apoplexy.
Then, during Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump mentioned the pet-eating rumors.
On CNN afterward, establishment mouthpiece Kaitlan Collins tried to shame Ohio’s Republican Sen. J.D. Vance — Trump’s running mate — for what she characterized as false claims on the part of both the former president and his vice-presidential nominee.
Vance expertly replied that journalists should have cared about Springfield’s plight long before the pet-eating rumors and memes materialized.
After all, whether or not the rumors turn out to be true, the massive influx of Haitian migrants has created all the problems associated with unchecked immigration, including strained resources, suppressed wages and skyrocketing housing costs.
Now, thanks in part to Trump and Vance, Springfield finds itself at the center of a national controversy.
Indeed, exasperated and desperate residents have welcomed the sympathetic attention, which so far has come primarily from independent journalists.
While speaking to Jones, Daniels voiced the same exasperation.
“It’s like living in a dystopian nightmare. You hope you wake up and it’s 2019 again, and then you realize it’s 2024, and it’s the same thing, over and over again, day after day,” she said.
At the same time, however, she expressed gratitude for the sudden attention.
“If it took something like this to get the spotlight flashed on us, then so be it. We’ve needed help for several years, and maybe we’re gonna finally get it,” she said.
Thus far, much of the controversy has focused on the truth or falsehood of the pet-eating rumors.
Meanwhile, in the context of a national election, those rumors have once again highlighted the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous border record.
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To understand the full meaning of Daniels’s “dystopian nightmare,” however, one must look beyond policy and peer into human nature.
For instance, Jones observed that Daniels and others have incurred accusations of race-based hatred due to their concerns over the town’s migrant crisis.
Daniels did not deny that those accusations had stung her, but she also did not blame the establishment media.
“Some of those comments are being made by people that I’ve known for many years. And that’s probably the hardest thing to deal with,” she replied.
Of course, she denied the accusations.
“It’s not about color. It’s about culture,” she said.
But that has not prevented city officials from posing as concerned residents’ moral superiors.
“It’s not helpful when our own city government has printed those very comments in city documents — that the challenge Springfield faces is race,” she said.
Then, when Jones asked her who she blamed for the crisis — even prompting her with references to Biden and Harris — Daniels gave a surprising and illuminating answer.
The problem, she said, came not only from the top down but from the “bottom up.”
“So, how did Springfield get the target put on its back for this many Haitians?” she asked.
Without being able to identify a lone culprit, she simply said the key is to “follow the money.”
What do the accusations of racial hatred and Daniels’s cryptic “follow the money” comment have in common?
In short, each suggests that some of Daniels’s own neighbors have undermined the town from within.
To illustrate, consider conservative Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson’s comments about the COVID pandemic during a May interview.
“In Canada, 30 percent of my neighbors were thrilled that they had the opportunity to inform on their — on the people around them. Thrilled,” Peterson said in a clip posted to X.
“They would have worn those…masks for the rest of their life if the payoff would have been they could feel morally superior and inform,” he added.
Have human beings ever succumbed to any temptation so easily as that of pride? And has pride ever taken a more insidious form than when it tempts people to purchase feelings of moral superiority at the bargain price of simply informing on one’s neighbors or denouncing them as racists?
Daniels had it right. Some of her neighbors — not to mention millions of her fellow Americans — would sell out the citizens of Springfield to a foreign army if it meant they could crow about their compassion.
Furthermore, in the Springfield tragedy, pride and interest have united.
In a ghastly article published last week, The New York Times sounded a condescending and elitist tone toward Springfield residents.
But the Times story also inadvertently illustrated what Daniels meant by “follow the money.” Glowing comments about the Haitians came from employers and landlords who profited from lower wages and higher rents.
In sum, to any fair-minded person looking at Springfield from the outside, the true culprits are not the Haitians.
Nor can we pin total blame solely on the admittedly criminal Biden-Harris administration.
Instead, we must acknowledge that Daniels’s neighbors, including employers and landlords as well as city officials, along with millions of her fellow Americans, have effectively conspired to destroy her town because they cannot resist the twin temptations of pride and money.
This article originally appeared on The Western Journal, and is reposted with permission.
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