The Caravan: The Deadly Invasion That Never Was

Andy Ostroy
3 min readNov 13, 2018

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It’s been almost a week since Election Day. And in the run up to the midterms, Donald Trump waged an unrelenting xenophobic campaign to convince Republicans America was on the verge of a ‘deadly invasion of thugs, MS-13 gang members and Middle Eastern terrorists’ masquerading as a caravan of desperate freedom and asylum-seeking Hispanic immigrants — many of them women and children — walking thousands of miles through difficult conditions to escape persecution and the threat of death.

But miraculously, the nanosecond the election was over, the incendiary rhetoric, which had been feverishly spewing from Trump’s mouth like projectile vomit, immediately stopped. As if the caravan doesn’t exist and never did. Astounding that this grave national-security emergency, a crisis so out-of-control that it required Trump to hurriedly dispatch the United States military to protect the Southern border, has now suddenly and swiftly vanished.

Which if course means there is no imminent danger. And that there never was. No threat. No invasion. Just a rancid cesspool of cowardly fear-mongering. These immigrants are not thugs, gang members or terrorists. Their only crime is that they continue to see America as their great beacon of hope and promise…where they could keep their kids alive, work hard and pursue the American dream.

Which or course also means that Trump was lying. Again. That he shamelessly demonized these poor souls as pawns in his partisan shill-game to gin up the hate-vote. That he unconscionably exploited our troops for self-serving political purposes. That he yet again lashed out like a cornered rat because his fragile manbaby ego and political fortunes were threatened.

And once again he lied to the base. Those zombie-like cultists who would walk through fire for the sociopath who rewards their undying loyalty by summarily disrespecting and deceiving them with each syllable he speaks. By using and abusing their sons and daughters…who patriotically signed up to serve their country and asked for only one thing in return: to send them into conflict as a last resort. But instead of being mad-as-fucking hell they keep lapping up his deceptive bullshit like stray cats to a bowl of milk.

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Andy Ostroy

Director, producer, podcaster, writer, resistor, non-profit-supporter of women filmmakers