They shoot horses, don’t they?
With a camera, taking photos at the border.
And those photos got the horses fired because, as Jim Treacher writes, “The Biden administration cares more about how things look than how things are.”
Actually, they don’t care about either, but since things actually are getting pretty wretched under their administration, they don’t want to talk about or confront that but rather to ignore, dodge, or lie about it. They also know that they sometimes find images, incidents, or false reports that they can exploit for propaganda purposes, and that their supporters love and value that sort of thing. So that’s why they do it.
At this point, Whipgate has apparently morphed into Horsegate, because it has been definitively proven that there were no whips being wielded by men on horseback on Haitians at the border. But there were men on horseback and there were others on foot, and something about the horses seems to have got people’s goat and has been used to conjure up images of slavery. I’m not sure why – my picture of Southern slavery in the US conjures up many images, but horses don’t figure prominently in them at all, except perhaps in front of a plow. I’m also not sure how many people, even on the left, actually are buying this particular hype, but my guess is quite a few.
Treacher continues:
It’s about time the Biden administration did something about the biggest threat in America today: horses. First our hospitals filled up with people OD’ing on horse paste, and now those damn horses are killing black people at the border or whatever. Just say neigh! #BanHorses #JustSayNeigh
Biden murdered seven children in Afghanistan with a drone strike, and nobody was fired. Some cowboys enforced the border on horseback, as they’ve been doing for 100 years, and Biden fired the horses.
Here’s a quote from Psaki [emphasis mine]:
“So what he has asked all of us to convey clearly, to people who are understandably have questions, are passionate, are concerned, as we are about the images that we have seen, is 1, we feel those images are horrible and horrific, there is an investigation the president certainly supports, overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, which he has conveyed will happen quickly. I can also convey to you that the secretary also conveyed to civil rights leaders earlier this morning that we would no longer be using horses in Del Rio. So that is something, a policy change that has been made in response.
There are many things I could say about that quote – including the fact that we never get to a number 2, and that Psaki’s use of the word “conveyed” (over and over) is a somewhat odd construction. But the important part is what I have highlighted, which is the admission that it’s the images that have so offended, and caused the horses to be put out to pasture, and that this administration apparently considers these images horrible and horrific.
That is profoundly unserious and strangely hysterical. Just what is horrible or horrific about these images? Is it the horses themselves, which are doing nothing bad to anyone except perhaps acting as a kind of intimidation? Is it the fact that some men are riding them while others are on foot, setting up a sort of hierarchy? But after all, these are border police, and they are trying to police the border. Is it the fact that the men on foot happen to be Haitians and the ones on horseback (whom I can’t see all that well in terms of race or ethnicity) are assumed to be white (many border officers are Hispanic, but we’ll leave that issue aside for now)?
Or is it the fact that we have a border at all and are trying to enforce it against people who are trying to get into this country illegally? Is that just too awful for words? Not to me. There are some sad human stories there, no doubt, but we have a legal immigration policy and people should abide by it. If American voters wish to change it and allow more legal immigrants in, then by all means vote for representatives who pledge to do that. Until then, the border needs enforcement, and in certain types of terrain horses have long been used as an aid to doing this.
As Treacher also points out, there are far more horrible and horrific things this administration has done, but Psaki et al would prefer not to mention them at all and want us to forget them.
Neo wrote:
“[S]omething about the horses seems to have got people’s goat…”
Maybe they’re trying for the image of the Southern chain gang guard on horseback with the shotgun, whip, and the (Biden) mirror shades.
A decent person- an honest person- would have defended the border agents actions upon learning the truth of the situation, and Biden and his handlers can’t use a lack of knowledge as an excuse for the condemnations they have offered up for press consumption. These are liars and backstabbers- each and every one of them. If I were the border control agents- I would simply stop doing my job altogether and let Biden and his slimy supporters deal with the problem. F**k Joe Biden.
As with defund the police, the Afghanistan debacle, the woke training in the military, et al, the object is to get the “wrong” people to quit and thus self-purge the department leaving only those who love power and/or the left agenda in place.
Biden is “dealing with the problem” just not the problem we see there or anywhere else.
Absurd non story with misleading images exploited by leftists, the media and a corrupt, incompetent, narcissistic administration to further advance the latter’s purge of anyone in the federal government who doesn’t toe the ‘woke’ line.
And…the sun came up today…
Just a few scattered thoughts about why Biden et al. might be triggered [apologies to Roy Rogers and his noble steed] by horses: 1) the statue of Robert E. Lee recently removed in Richmond depicted Lee on horseback, as do the bas-relief portraits of Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson on Stone Mountain in Georgia– there may be something about a horse with a uniformed human rider (in this case, a border patrol officer) that fairly screams “Confederate General!” to the addled mind of a Biden; 2) we all know that Biden accuses anyone who challenges him with being a “lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
Can’t help wondering whether Biden was kicked in the head by a horse at some point– it would explain a lot about the present condition of his frontal lobes and his predilection for what the docs call confabulation, charitably defined as “the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world.”
America ain’t rural no more. Most Americans have never seen a horse, except grazing at a distance as they zoomed by at 65mph.
So its easy to posture to the sheeple.
Yancey: Biden and the Democrats are in fact “dealing” with the border by erasing it. It no longer exists. The BP is now a social service entity, housing, clothing and feeding the human rubbish thundering in for lifelong goodies.
I like the Horsegate locution, but being picky here: horse goes before the plow, not behind it!
Remember, to the left, a cotton plant conjures up “ images of slavery”. Never mind if they wear cotton clothes.
Somehow, food does not. Never mind that slaves also cooked food in wealthy , slave holding households. Literally, all thru history….
I wonder if manmade clothing materials conjure up pictures of oil and gas wells in their little closed circuit brains?
Probably not. I am convinced, in spite of how many degrees leftist have, most are not deep, broad thinkers.
Margaret Ball:
Oopsies! Thanks; even I know that horses don’t go behind a plow.
Fixed now.
The specific words from Psaki are entirely irrelevant: mere mouth noises. The whole thing could be summarized as “Look! a squirrel!”
Of course, in agriculture, horses have been entirely replaced with Deere.
Babylon Bee: “DEL RIO, TX—Americans are outraged after whistleblowers produced credible evidence that the U.S. Border Patrol has been patrolling the U.S. border and doing so with impunity for many years.”
https://babylonbee.com/news/border-patrol-agents-accused-of-patrolling-border
In our far-suburban area north of Raleigh, there was recently a cow seen standing at the edge of a state highway with a 55 mph speed limit. Two cowboys with horses and tracker dogs came to the rescue, lassoed the cow, and carried it off to pasture.
This wasn’t even as odd as the emu who got loose.
Good thing it wasn’t a Man on a White Horse.
Those incompetent grifting election-stealing scumbags have nightmares too, you know.
The threat of men on horseback is a common element in certain B film genre’s, and often portrayed as a human cattle drive or a shock tactic used by raiders against helpless innocents. I suspect that’s what people are ‘responding to’ – though their response is actually to the Biden admin’s characterization of the events.
@Kate:
Never seen an emu in the wild in Australia. Sometimes wonder if they’re a myth! Scrub turkeys abound.
Just out of idle curiosity what in the name of all that is holy was the emu doing in NC? Livestock or pet?
I seem to remember an emu farming craze back in the 90s with lots of dodgy investment schemes aimed at the public.
Large squawking feathered bipeds have prior form.
Tribal Anthropologists may be interested to know that the first noticeable incursion of Lithuanian Jews into Southern Africa occurred here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oudtshoorn
This during the first Ostrich (Feather) Boom — before the Kimberley Diamond and Rand Gold rushes kicked off.
@Tryo may have a point.
Time to wheel out the Patented Zaphod Equine Triggering Hypothesis:
Cossacks, anyone?
Sorry 🙂
Been reading too much Sholokhov.
Alternatively, you might have an Administration composed of closet Eisenstein Battle on the Ice fans.
https://youtu.be/vKZPgGbUuX0
Back to Cossacks… This is how you handle Psakis and Bidens:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_of_the_Zaporozhian_Cossacks
Horse culture, is historically and culturally linked to Anglo-American and European elites.
Even those eastern steppe peoples who rode their ponies into Europe during the post classical period and early middle ages to wreak so much damage on Europe, had probably adopted the technique from the Indo-European ancestors of Bronze Age populations that later became “Europeans”. Or who were at least the ancestors of a significant number of the speakers of Indo-European languages.
Riding horses signifies relative independence and superior social status for the owner; the potential for dominance over the unhorsed population, and wealth enough to maintain the animals.
Of course the left goes ballistic seeing them ridden by men in authority.
@DNW:
Bingo. Runs deep.
One might even say it’s Aryan.
One Riot, One Scythian.
Not just to be mean to my usual whipping boys of Ur of the Chaldees and Environs who got the shivering spritzing from Steppes horsemen coming down like the wolf on the fold long before Cossacks were even dreamed of… but we’re all, most of us… ‘Anatolian Farmers’… Thunder of hooves and what it behooves is in our genes.
I actually came back here today to drop a link.
Much has been written and discussed about the casual and shameless lying used by the left to advance their “narratives”.
This indifference to truth has been linked to post-modern sensibilities which have been especially manifest in the last 20 years, although the antecedents go way back; especially with Marxist theorists.
But as we all know, it is not simply people who call themselves “marxists” who adopt the “narrative” framework and reject the notion of truth.
An interview with my favorite philosopher to despise, Richard Rorty.
I think that this video is well worth watching for those who might wish to hear the doctrine out of the horse’s mouth so to speak.
Start at 1:47, and listen to what he is saying: that it is all just narrative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azeqs20Watw
Zaphod,
Since our Saturday nights are spoiled [I’ve been riding a lawn tractor for the last 5 hours anyway so what the hell], your assignment should you choose to accept it, is to sit and listen to that interview with Rorty.
He advances a perspective he has endorsed in numerous interviews before; but this one neatly encapsulates his views; and pretty much stands as the core intellectual catechism of the modern liberal.
It’s all right there, in a 20 minute interview.
No, you cannot reason with people like that. And it’s why half the people here cannot communicate with their own children or in-laws. Because, they live by a completely different standard, in an alternate psychological and moral reality.
Thanks DNW. I’ll go listen to him for my penance.
Plowmen of the Apocalpyse…
Chiropractors of the Apocalypse…
It don’t scan.
Perhaps if we re-shot that border atrocity scene with Nancy Pelosi as Cat Ballou…
Touché. I can see where this is going. Pot/Kettle.
@ Zaphod,
I don’t know when the first ridden horses became militarily useful in a head on clash, as opposed to offering an intimidation, maneuvering and speed advantage.
We all know it had something to do with the introduction first of the proper bit, then of the stirrup, and finally of the high cantle medieval war saddle. But the finer points between the capabilities of a Byzantine cataphract versus a Norman knight, I’ll leave to others.
In any event, if you have not had a chance yet, make sure you read: “The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East”, by Robert Drews, classics historian, Vanderbilt, Uni.
I just spent 5 minutes looking for a cheap copy for you, but as with many of these semi-popular but deep in scholarship works, they never seem to go for 5 bucks.
Still, $30 is not bad, if you missed it the first time around.
LOL It was not aimed at you.
I think that despite yourself, Zaphod you will somehow be saved, embrace all the classical virtues unashamedly, and that all traces of cynicism will disappear in a blinding flash of light.
I’m counting on it. Because if it happens in your case, I”l know that there may yet be hope for me.
The Xiden administration’s objection to horses is solely due to their effectiveness. They obstruct the ingress of America’s new ‘visitors’. (Psaki’s label)
“since things actually are getting pretty wretched under their administration, they don’t want to talk about or confront that but rather to ignore, dodge, or lie about it.” neo
True, which will lead to them experiencing one of life’s lessons; ignoring and running away from reality is an action guaranteed to result in failure, unintended consequences and in this case, tragedy. But Bidet did get one thing right, someone is going to pay alright.
@DNW:
Still made me think. A bit too 11:59 / 12:01 ish for comfort — For which thanks. I may need to go join the Dominicans (Pit and Pendulum Department).
To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Abjure the Lie — apparently the creed of the old Persian and Parthian aristocracies.
Book ordered. Will get to it after working through Sean McMeekin Russo-Ottoman backlog.
Comanches, a most aggressive tribe, used to run 50 miles round trip at night to raid an Indian camp, kill the men, bring the women and kids back as slaves. Plus the odd captive they turned over to the women, who were fearful, inventive torturers (e.g. stake the captive flat, cut off his eyelids, leave him for the buzzards).
That was before the horse.
Once they got horses, they were constantly on the go, displacing the Chiricahua Apaches(!) from TX to NM-AZ. Much of the central US Great Plains became “Comancheria”.
Those dudes could ride! Ride, raid, and kill was what they did. They gave rise to the Texas Rangers in the 1840s when the frontier was east of present-day Dallas and Austin. After a Comanche raid on a pioneer farm, the solitary Ranger in the area was charged with assembling a posse and chasing the raiders until they were all killed, chases that sometimes covered hundreds of miles. Probably when “The only good Injun is a dead Injun” arose.
DNW —
No, you cannot reason with people like that. And it’s why half the people here cannot communicate with their own children or in-laws. Because, they live by a completely different standard, in an alternate psychological and moral reality.
James Lindsay addressed that a year ago:
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/
Convenient, that. I guess it all comes down to power, and us resisting their efforts to twist our own principles and morality against us to grant them power they don’t deserve.
Well Cicero and Zaphod have one point of likely agreement: both Larry McMurtry fans.
On reading the reference to the Comanches above I was going to mention McMurtry. I had always assumed his work was pop fiction that wouldn’t especially interest me. A few years ago a friend whose literary judgment I trust talked me into reading Lonesome Dove. And it turned out to be a really good book, but I was not prepared for the Comanches. They gave me some bad times when I happened to wake up in the wee hours with them in my head.
Biden’s a swamp creature so I don’t expect much good out of him, but amplifying the narrative that the Border Patrol agents did something wrong is heinously despicable. A true leader would have stood by his employees but Biden is more interested in preening for the woke crowd, well, that is if he’s still capable of independent thought.
I don’t know about you but I would assume that the DHS—horses or no horses—is the PERFECT vehicle for destroying the USA…
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dhs-touts-counter-domestic-extremism-plan-rights-groups-cite-threats-civil-liberties
(Well, one of those “perfect” vehicles, anyway, along with the Executive, Legislative and Justice branches of government…nor should one forget Law Enforcement and the Armed Forces…. Yes, absolutely “perfect” for a consummate perfectionist such as Obama…)
Yep, that oh-so-special Obama sense of humor kicks in again!
@Zaphod: The emu was a pet, I think. So also was the very dangerous cobra which escaped in another location in North Raleigh, found sunning itself on someone’s front porch. That created more of a stir than the emu.
Zaphod: Agree!
But read “Comanches” by the TX historian Fehrenbach. McMurtry commends it!
This guy really shoulda bought himself an emu…but I guess he was overly impressed by appearances. Well, looks can kill (as they say…).
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/a-florida-man-has-been-killed-by-his-pet-cassowary/
Read “Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans” by the same author first.
It is what used to be called narrative or even “romantic” history; somewhat, in its narration of the lives and events covered, in the vein of say, Prescott’s “History of the Conquest of Mexico”, or Samuel Eliot Morison’s much later work [relative to Prescott] on the voyages of Columbus.
Read it. Before the book burners get to it.
Is the movie, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” worth revisiting?
I remember it as depressing. Though worthwhile in that earnest 50s/60s manner. Which, to tell the truth, I miss. The world would be a poorer place without “On the Waterfront.”
It seems we get plenty of films today that attempt to be socially meaningful but are so obvious and contrived virtue signaling there aren’t any stakes for the viewer and remain empty exercises.