Obama calls out obsession with Titanic sub while people turn blind eye to migrant boat tragedy
Obama calls out obsession with Titanic sub while people turn blind eye to migrant boat tragedy
Last week, a fishing boat packed with about 750 men, women and children capsized off the coast of Greece, with hundreds believed to have died
It's more fun to publicly comment on, mock, shame, and laugh about a bunch of idiots that died doing something stupid than reflect on the driving forces behind a boat with 700 people on it capsizing in the Mediterranean.
It's a result of compassion fatigue. When the first dead migrant children washed up on the Greek coast on people were appalled and transfixed. But the next month there were more dead bodies, and then more. Eventually people stop caring.
I'm old enough to remember "Live Aid". When Bob Geldof got up on stage and said we were going to end world hunger people really believed it was possible. Since then there have been dozens more famines in Ethiopia, and the deaths run to the tens of millions. And now no-one mentions them.
Only things that entertain us are things we care about. As the world's sorrows and tragedies grow by the day, everything from climate change to mass shootings of toddlers, we're numb. The one thing that helped is that it was rich people, we all (except republicans apparently) want to eat the rich, and these guys said sure we'll just go drown, they're pretty much allies. Gotta celebrate that.
we all (except republicans apparently) want to eat the rich
The dude in the headline sure seems upset about the "eat the rich" attitude, and however hard it is to see a practical difference, I am pretty sure he is not one of those Republican ghouls you are referring to. Perhaps you should reconsider how narrow the circle you are drawing is.
Who is this Obama dude? The only Obama I know used to bomb civilians, so this must be some other guy
he the drone pro... even droned a wedding
I think that is the same dude iirc.
Interesting. A lot of people joking around really don't know anyone or have any connections or money to put behind migrant rescue. But then, people criticizing the rhetoric usually don't have such resources either.
It is good that he's using his platform to call attention to this, and I'm glad he seems to have evolved his stance on immigrants. However, I would hope a former US President who's Vice President is now President would have made a few phone calls about this before yelling at the layman.
He hasn't "evolved his stance on immigrants," that's pure wishful thinking. He's a rich asshole who's always been principally interested in defending the rich and wagging his finger at people who are too mean to his corporate masters.
He's from the liberal camp that doesn't believe in politics.
The President is a celebrity figurehead that sells his moneyed backers' ideas to the public. That's it.
It kinda seems convenient to me ngl. What a big machine that needs to be dismantled first to save a few souls. It's pathetic tbh
Well, tbh, if I knew people who participate in people smuggling, I'd immediately shun them out of my life anyway.
It's not cool to smuggle people, mmhkay?
As he should call it out. The number of dead is wild in that migrant boat tragedy. 5 people are not better than 500.
Even if those 5 people happen to be uber-rich.
I think their richness factors in pretty significantly, actually -- both to how tragic their deaths are and whether or not Obama wants to jump to their defense shaming leftists for being "too radical".
Obama was talking to a Greek audience and called out that people were more interested in the Titan. Had he been speaking to a North American audience he would have likely called out the lack of attention on the Southern border. The reality is that Obama is speaking to the audience.
The other issue is that the Titan is overwhelmingly unique. And that makes it news worthy. Right or wrong, when something is common we stop paying attention. So the problem is not that we were interested in the Titan trajecty, but that we lost interest in the migrant crisis for Europe and the US. The problem is that for most, they don't know. The injustice is not in the fact that billionaires died, but that the uniqueness of how the billionaires died caught our attention.
Spare me when one of the countless butchers for the American Empire has something to say about "tragedy". Maybe take a few million from your endless funds for your Martha's Vineyard parties with dogshit celebrities and pitch in to help instead of giving us a lecture, you sanctimonious, neoliberal prick.
Hey Obama, where are those migrants coming, from war-torn Syria? Did you happen to do anything in Syria while you were the commander-in-chief of the US Armed forces?
A Netflix documentary cannot be made from the refugees. There is nothing to dramatise unlike the sub case.
Well you can dramatize their whole journey from war torn Syria and what happens on the boat so I disagree
dang, I haven't seen Obama since the presidency, man is getting old :(
Tbh, all these politicians can kick rocks imo. They don't know what it's like to be down here, and we aren't even down here down here. We're on the internet lol. I'm lucky and privileged af, and i had a shitty go of things. I can't even imagine being propped and puppeted by the machine of suffering and then to have the gall to say some shit like that, like I had some spiritual awakening. Nah. Fuck you, acting like you didn't already know the whole time Lol. I hope your grandchildren lead real fulfilling lives. Seriously I do.
It's kinda crazy
I'm pretty sure it's the media/Twitter that's obsessed. None of my friend groups have mentioned the sub.
That's fucking rich. That many immigrants died every year at the Mexican border while he was president. While it was the lowest in the last 30 years, it's still shitty. Just because your less evil doesn't mean your good.
Economic migrants / illegal immigrants… fact!
Nobody forced them on the boat..and nobody wanted them to drown…
Idiots drown. The technical term for it is called evolution.
It applies equally to gummyboat migrants and billionaire make-shift submarine passengers. One should not discriminate in their compassion for fools. We should be equally glad about them meeting their proper evolutionary fate.
People who die during the commission of a crime aren't sympathetic figures.
That is proven wrong so many times by history it's not even funny. That's just an uneducated take.