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I grew up in the West right in the middle of ranching country and can't recall any of the cowboys I knew twirling their reins like we see in that video. (If anything, the swinging of the excess reins would make you less stable on a saddle, not more so.) And as a kid who got up to plenty of mischief, I can directly attest that you can be whipped by LOTS of things that technically aren't "whips". What's important here isn't the instrument, but the action. Now, that said, I'm happy to wait for the investigation to conclude before drawing any further conclusions.

The thing that really gets to me from this video, though, is the thorough lack of professionalism on the part of the Border Control agents. Fifteen seconds into the video above, we see an agent yelling at one of the Haitians about how their "country is shit", when the only words out of their mouths should be instructions to go back to the border and get back to Mexico. This wasn't acceptable when Trump was talking about "shithole countries" and it's not acceptable from a representative of the US government and the Biden administration. It casts doubt on the agent's ability to uphold the law impartially, and I'd fire the guy were I in charge. And if there are any 1/6 sympathizers in the Border Patrol (or law enforcement in general), they should be purged from the ranks and told to find employment elsewhere.

Now, before this is interpreted as me making excuses for Biden (as opposed for calling for more professionalism in those representing the US gov't), I agree with you 100% that this is his problem to solve. In the last year of the Trump administration, Trump received a "bye" in dealing with this policy as COVID did a pretty effective job reducing the crossings as the demand for employment in a shut-down economy and a closed border reduced the illegal immigrant flow an order of magnitude. Biden entered office under those conditions and had a decent baseline to start from in crafting his administration's response to the border. And as we see here, whatever policy that is ISN'T working, and we need a different approach. In a past post, I suggested that Biden embrace being a one-term president and tackle issues like this boldly in a way that someone eyeing their next reelection would shy from. Immigration is one of the places where he can afford to piss off members of his own party to get something better into place.

And as for the media protecting Biden "at all costs", have we already forgotten the coverage of the Afghanistan debacle? The media did him no favors there.

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Either this was trained and completely legitimate… A tactic to keep the people from getting trampled by the horse….or it’s not…

No one cares what we “think” ….what we “think” we saw…

I don’t care about any of your “opinions” because it doesn’t seem like any of you actually know what happened… you’re just commenting on what you “think” you saw…

This is a terrible terrible way to judge anything.

If it was you being misunderstood for doing something completely right …something that you knew was legitimate and someone was accusing you of something wrong …what would you want?

Wouldn’t you want an investigation to show that what you were doing was actually a good thing?

or at least an investigation first?

….prove that you were doing something wrong “before” it is just blasted over the Internet and over the media ….convicting you as “whipping slaves”.

Innocent until “proven” guilty

A speculative conversation about what we “think” before knowing the facts is ridiculous…and breaks the golden rule

“Treat others the way we want to be treated”

None of us would want to be tried and convicted over social media or television media.

Right?

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