{"id":22426,"date":"2018-05-08T22:47:21","date_gmt":"2018-05-09T04:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=22426"},"modified":"2018-05-08T22:47:21","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T04:47:21","slug":"faggs-ad-dips-into-dark-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2018\/05\/faggs-ad-dips-into-dark-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Fagg’s ad dips into dark side"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Russ Fagg’s new ad bluntly appraises the impact of illegal immigration.<\/p><\/div>\n

My favorite right-wing retired local news anchor is Dave Rye, even though I shamelessly allowed Roger Clawson to regularly call Rye a \u201cweenie\u201d in his weekly column at the Billings Outpost.<\/p>\n

I never figured out why Roger used that term and never bothered to ask. As I used to tell people who disagreed with something Roger wrote, \u201cWhy would you agree with him? He\u2019s barely even sane.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t agree with Roger either. I like Rye and consider even his most bullet-headed opinions worthy of respect.<\/p>\n

\"DC\"<\/a>

David Crisp<\/p><\/div>\n

So I was inclined to nod my head when I read Rye\u2019s Sunday letter to the editor<\/a> in the Gazette praising Russ Fagg, the former district judge now running in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe he is as good a man in politics as I have ever known \u2013 good in the senses of both virtue and ability,\u201d Rye wrote. \u201cNo vitriol, no sham, no pretense, no phoniness.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really know Rye as well as it feels like I do, and I know Fagg even less well, but Rye\u2019s description struck a deep chord. In my few dealings with Fagg, he always has come across as courteous and genuine.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that I beat up on him<\/a> for writing that the U.S. Constitution was \u201cdivinely inspired.\u201d As I pointed out, the founders were perfectly well aware that blame, or credit, for the document rested with them, not with God.<\/p>\n

But I figured everybody is entitled to believe one crazy thing, and maybe that was Fagg\u2019s. All those years weighing evidence and the law ought to have cultivated the trait most desirable in a judge \u2013 good judgment.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m rethinking Fagg, both as a candidate and as a human being. His latest ad on illegal immigration is the slimiest political ad I have seen this campaign season.<\/p>\n

Actually, I wanted to write \u201cslimiest political ad I have ever seen,\u201d but that caused me to reflect on the slime of campaigns past, and that was too dispiriting to endure.<\/p>\n

You really have to see the ad<\/a> to get the full effect \u2013 it is quite professionally done, complete with tattoos and gun barrels aimed directly at the viewer. But the words alone, perhaps fueled by the desperation of a flagging campaign, are chilling enough: \u201cThe difference between right and wrong is black and white because facts don\u2019t lie: Criminal illegal aliens threaten America,\u201d the ad says.<\/p>\n

When I saw those words \u201cblack and white,\u201d I thought I heard a dog whistle. Then there was that ominous \u201cfacts don\u2019t lie.\u201d Of course, they do, sometimes in this very space.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Just last week<\/a>, I quoted a Washington Post article that said President Trump had made 2,000 false or misleading claims in the first year of his presidency. The statement was accurate but obsolete. By May 1, the Post reported<\/a>, the total already had risen to more than 3,000.<\/p>\n

Fagg\u2019s lying fact was more reprehensible: \u201cCriminal illegal aliens threaten America,\u201d the ad said. He could have said \u201cCriminals threaten America\u201d and been just as accurate, while waving a less bloody shirt.<\/p>\n

Anyone running for one of the highest offices in the land ought to know that, except for the initial crime of entering the United States, peer-reviewed<\/a> studies<\/a> have shown that illegal aliens are less likely to commit crimes than certified Americans. Aliens have good reason to obey the law: Even a traffic ticket could mean imprisonment and deportation.<\/p>\n

Fagg might just as well have shown shots of illegal aliens risking their lives, hugging their families goodbye or slaving away at low-wage jobs, all to accomplish that most American of goals: to create a better life for themselves and their families.<\/p>\n

But he did not. Instead, he ends with this: \u201cMurderous illegal aliens must be stopped from killing again. If we don\u2019t secure our borders, they\u2019ll never stop coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fagg\u2019s ad was running as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was announcing a \u201czero tolerance\u201d<\/a> policy along the Mexican border, even if that means separating families and even if the illegal immigrants are facing violence and unrest back home. That\u2019s what passes for \u201cpro-life\u201d in America.<\/p>\n

I confess to a bias against border walls. I grew up in South Texas, a place where the quality of the Mexican food in local restaurants might hinge on how recently the last immigration raid had occurred. My hometown was where 17 immigrants were found dead<\/a> in the sweltering, abandoned trailer of a truck.<\/p>\n

In the Army, I spent over a year on the Elbe River, following the radio transmissions<\/a> of border guards ordered to stop desperate illegal emigrants from escaping East Germany in search of a better life in the West. My sympathies in both places were with those who wanted to get across the border, not those who wanted to stop them.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to favor open borders to believe that immigration policies must be tempered by mercy. And you don\u2019t have to be a liberal patsy to expect politicians to show some of the virtue and ability Dave Rye thinks he sees in Russ Fagg.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. Maybe the founders got it wrong. Maybe they didn\u2019t inspire the Constitution; maybe God did. But I\u2019m sure of this: God had nothing to do with Russ Fagg\u2019s anti-immigration ad. That came purely from the dark side of his soul.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My favorite right-wing retired local news anchor is Dave Rye, even though I shamelessly allowed Roger Clawson to regularly call Rye a \u201cweenie\u201d in his weekly column at the Billings Outpost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3864],"tags":[6960,69,6880],"class_list":["post-22426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-dave-rye","tag-roger-clawson","tag-russ-fagg","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22426"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22431,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22426\/revisions\/22431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}