You Don't Have to Use a Young Woman's Death to Flo

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You Don't Have to Use a Young Woman's Death to Flog Your Agenda. You Can Be Decent.

Conservative media and ambitious politicians jumped all over the Mollie Tibbetts case.



By Charles P. Pierce
Aug 22, 2018

On Tuesday evening, the body of missing Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts was found in a cornfield. She had been missing since July 18. An undocumented immigrant named Cristhian Bahena Rivera guided police to her body and he is now being held on $1 million bail on a charge of first-degree murder. And an insupportable tragedy comes to a tragic end, right?

Not when there are crooked politicians willing to exploit tragedy for political gain. Like our president. From CNN:

"You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in very sadly from Mexico. And you saw what happened to that incredible beautiful young woman. Should have never happened. Illegally in our country," he said. "We've had a huge impact but the laws are so bad, the immigration laws are such a disgrace. We're getting it changed but we have to get more Republicans."

The Trumpified conservative media jumped all over this case, and so did ambitious politicians from around the country. Fox News led with the story, nearly dripping with gratitude to not be talking about how the president*'s former campaign manager was convicted and how his former fixer copped a plea. Texas Governor Greg Abbott leaped onto the electric Twitter machine.

Greg Abbott
✔ @GregAbbott_TX

An undocumented immigrant is charged for murder of Mollie Tibbetts, the Iowa college student who went missing on July 18. This is why so many Americans are angry about sanctuary cities. It’s why Texas banned sanctuary cities. It’s about safety

Greg Abbott does not have the class god gave the common goose.

And, as a warning against hubris, as if all of Classical Greek literature wasn't enough, The Des Moines Register reported that Rivera, the undocumented immigrant, worked on a farm owned by the family of a prominent Iowa Republican. The going around and the coming around are happening at an alarming rate these days.

But there's another story of another murder of another resident of Iowa in the year 2018. In June, a high-school student named Manuel Pacheco, brought to this country by his parents from Mexico at the age of three, and a participant in the DACA program, ran into misdemeanor trouble with the law.

He was getting ready to graduate from high school. Instead, ICE officials picked him up and dropped him at the Mexican border, essentially saying he didn't have to go home, but he couldn't stay here. This is called a "voluntary departure." The alternative is to be deported.

The Des Moines Register picks up the story from there.

In Zacatecas, Manuel had gone out to get food with an acquaintance of his cousin's, who apparently was known to the killers, Verduzco said. "He was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Both were killed. Manuel's throat was slit.

There is now a President* of the United States who encourages his audiences to believe that there is no difference between Cristhian Rivera, the alleged murderer, and Manuel Pacheco, a murder victim in a native country he barely knew.

There is an entire political party dedicated to promulgating that that viewpoint, and an entire media universe dedicated to blasting it out to an audience of timid shut-ins who hate punching 1 for English.

The final word should go to Sam Lucas, who identified as one of Mollie's cousins on the electric Twitter machine and, in a counterpunch to Candace Owens, a new celebrity nuisance on the wingnut right right, wrote:


@samlucasss

sam Retweeted Candace Owens

hey i’m a member of mollie’s family and we are not so fucking small-minded that we generalize a whole population based on some bad individuals. now stop being a fucking snake and using my cousins death as political propaganda. take her name out of your mouth.

Indeed.

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