Friday, September 23, 2016

M&Ms, Skittles and Poison

Exactly where are you "importing" these M&Ms?
There has been a lot of reverse analysis on these Skittles/M&Ms analogies, and generally I enjoy them.  Overall, I think they miss several points.  The first, of course, is a hasty generalization fallacy.  These memes are citing 1% or 10% or sometimes even 20% as “poisoned” for which, of course, there is no substance of support.  It’s also reflective a general xenophobia that has pervaded thinking for some time, but which has very little basis in reality.  Further, if we’re to believe these memes, then the incidence of “poison” would be immediately obvious from the start, and practically pervasive given that we’re now five years into the Syrian conflict.

But the real response here is we’re not talking about poison pills, we’re talking about 13.5 million human beings.

Fathers, mothers, children and innocents who have fled the violence of their country and are in need of assistance.  They didn’t want to leave.  Most of them would never have left in the first place.  Would youwant to leave your home?  They had no other choice because their government is more interested in maintaining power throughcampaigns of indiscriminate violence than it is in taking care of its people.  More than that, though, any nation that believes itself to uphold moral integrity and human rights, any nation that claims to be Christian and based on Christ-like ideals, any nation that wants to be "great again" should be willing to do everything in its power to prove to the world that we act in the same way as we chant our beliefs from political stages and preach from our pulpits.


Or, to put it more simply, we have nothing to fear from Skittles, M&Ms or stupid analogies but fear itself.  That’s exactly what these memes are designed to generate.

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