Double standards, hyperboles and a complete lack of historical knowledge

That's one thing that the NYT's facebook page was full of idiots comparing Hungary to the Nazis because they have decided to detain asylum seekers until their status can be verified. I mean this is quite expected from the virtue-signalling part of the "liberals" who love to show how pious and true to the cause they are by condemning anything and anyone.

This, obviously, was not the first time. A certain Austrian chancellor did the same in 2015, the Romanian Prime Minister did the same, and several newspapers alluded to the same issue: just because a country does not agree with Brussels and Germany (and upholds the law as it is bound to do), it's essentially a Nazi country. (Although Orban makes it hard to agree with him; he is kind of a douche.) It's a difficult concept apparently: just because a country has a different take on how it imagines its future, and decided it does not wish to share the problems with large-scale immigration of low skilled Muslim immigrants (and what comes with it: enclaves, increased crime rates, etc., etc.), it does not mean that they are Nazis.

And now a Saudi prince has stood in line of the Nazi-train. It seems like we have finally reached a breaking point where even the most socially sensitive countries, the well-known bastions of humanitarianism have had enough and are now forced to say it how it is: Hungarians are Nazis for obliging the law, and making sure that only people who are bona fide refugees can get into Europe. Amid the huge outcry I still have not heard any alternative solution how to deal with hundreds and even thousands of people who can just disappear at whim after submitting their paperwork (if they bother to submit it at all). Strangely silent are Merkel and Junker about this whole issue; what I suspect is that everyone are secretly relieved that this is being done, but submit to the whole charade so that they don't look like they approve. Let someone else take the blame for an unpopular decision.

What I would like to know is how the "progressive left" feels like being on the same side as the Saudis... (Although to be fair it never really bothered anyone in the West. Beheadings, slavery, women's rights, illegal wars in Yemen never really appeared on the radar of these newspapers and politicians. Not to mention those millions of people they took in on humanitarian grounds.)

We want your data. Or else

This has been a law a long time: Border Control has a right to search any and all electronic device you bring into the USA, 4th Amendment be damned. Obviously the Founding Fathers felt that laptops don't fall into the same category as sealed letters. Obviously. And it happens in Canada, too.


So this happens, and then the whole of Western world applauds US politicians expressing concern about data privacy laws in China and Russia without any obvious discomfort from cognitive dissonance. Where is this concern when it comes to the USA?

The latest furore in certain parts of the media when it actually happened to a real person (meaning: American) is quite loud nevertheless.

Let's stop for a second and think about this, shall we? Aside from the strange legal twisting of the Constitution so that you can claim that it is legal to essentially seize anyone's most private information at the border, there are things to consider here. One thing particularly.

The US is claiming it can do legally what even the Stazi, the KGB and the Gestapo could not really hope to achieve: get everything, every single piece of data you own. You have to give them access to all your files, all your information, otherwise you are either denied entry and/or arrested. It claims powers that the only the most autocratic regimes have ever claimed: an absolute right to every single piece of your private life. (The US also claims it has an absolute right over your life -namely it can end it without any legal processes, but it's also something we should not discuss at this present junction.)

Because let's face it: nothing can be hidden, unless you are content living in the Virginia mountains along with the rest of the nutjobs who are stockpiling canned food and ammunition before the inevitable FEMA crackdown on freedom (sorry, Freedom) comes. We all have our lives encoded in bits and bytes; it's a fact of life. Regardless how it's stored, you should still should have right to privacy. The US can just force anyone to give it up (the parts they have not already captured through the NSA) and -aside from some "fringe" lefties, like Chomsky- nobody is raising an eyebrow.

So where was the furore from these very same media outlets over these years? A couple of feeble articles on how to deal with the situation were all I could find from the "mainstream"; some reports on the CIA's capacity to hack into anything, and use cars to kill people; it's hardly the angry media response on an unprecedented infringement on personal privacy by the torch-bearer of freedom.

Despite of this we still claim the US is a liberal democracy. All this after the NSA, illegal wars and torture. Weird, isn't it?

Terrorism and the Balkan route -perceptions last year and today

So it seems like Abdeslam did use the Balkan route for smuggling terrorists into Europe. So did others.

Let this sink in for a while. Even though it seems like people have a memory of a goldfish (not to mention politicians and journalists, who are entirely possible that not members of the same species as the rest of us), let's just recall a couple of things from last year. Like that infamous cartoon with the rats. (Let's forget that the whole outrage was manufactured since the cartoon did not suggest what the outraged journalists said it did.) Or that the EU's counter terrorism chief said there was unlikely to be a connection between migrants and terrorists. Or ask the UN High Commissioner for refugees. Or the fact that the entire Left in Hungary (and the international press) used this as a political tool against the Hungarian government instead of actually recognising the threat unchecked migration (or worse, if they did, they used it as a weapon against Orban nevertheless. Priorities, I guess.)

Curiously all these people are silent now. The news that terrorists indeed used the Balkan route is quietly dropped and forgotten. No mea culpas, no retrospective analyses how they could been so wrong, how the others who were right were painted as the villains... No; this whole business is best left forgotten, and move on to the next shouting campaign without any lessons learned.

Guess what. This is what gave you Brexit and Trump. This is why the Far Right is getting stronger everywhere. You can't just call everyone you disagree with a racist neckbeard, and you especially can't do that (and keep doing it) when they are right and you are wrong. You might have the bullhorn to shout, but the credibility deficit is growing. You probably should have noticed after the Brexit vote or Trump's victory that things are not so swell outside your bubble, but you apparently have not.

I guess we're all going to suffer for it.