this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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this is an incredibly comical misinterpretation of what the article is saying, and i'm sure you realize that.
Absolutely.
I just find this sort of article kind of pointless. Response to a situation in one place was drastically different than a response in a completely different place involving completely different people and agencies with their own different priorities. I don’t think it’s all that illuminating in any global way, except it shows the priorities in one of those places aren’t great. A commentary on the same agency (or even country) responding differently to rich and poor would be more meaningful, but I think the US Coast Guard was pretty proactive when Cuban refugees were crossing in makeshift rafts (a commentary on the difference between US and Greece in those much more similar situations would be interesting, but wouldn’t hit the rich/poor or anti-immigrant angle).
That's fair as far as it goes, but there are analogous behaviors on the US side of things as well. This is just another instance in which the US government has gone to incredible lengths to rescue tourists who got in over their heads (Wendover Productions touched on this in recent video about the National Park System, if you're interested) at the same time that Border Patrol and local vigilantes have been recorded sabotaging water caches left as life-saving measures for migrants crossing arid parts of the southern border. That's a pretty clear indication of which sorts of lives out society thinks matter, and just as in the Mediterranean it more or less comes down to "which ones look and talk like I do?" rather than "which ones are most deserving of the limited resources available to help them?"
but that unto itself is kind of important, is it not? these are social tragedies which do not need to happen--but they're basically allowed to happen by a mixture of social apathy, lack of scrutiny, and inhuman social and political incentives. you're demonstrating why this is illuminating, and why we should talk about it: because the alternatives you describe can happen and are happening but don't with certain groups, or from certain countries.
We are a global people. We could do more, and we actively don't. We should all be ashamed and just because it makes you feel uncomfortable or helpless doesn't mean you have to rationalize the shame of our species.
We need to face it if we'll ever change it.
this is an incredibly spot-on description of most banger comments on read-it sorts of sites