POST TRUTH: SEPARATING FAMILY POLICY

We are living in a post-truth era, where emotions of masses are manipulated to make them believe in illogical things. One such huge exercise happened during the separating family policy of US. Discourse lead by mass media was flavoured with a very strong emotional argument. So emotional that it made people forget the root problem.

This article is not about how to handle the immigration problem nor there is any intention to give a suggestion regarding this problem. But, the intention here is to show how emotion is used to hijack the intelligence of mass.

Following is the conversation between little Tommy and his mother on this issue. Why the story? Because our minds are preconditioned, so it is better to see the issue from the perspective of a child, with fresh eyes.

THE STORY

One fine day, little Tommy was sitting on a couch watching TV. News about separating family policy was going on, on the TV. It was obviously uninteresting to him. But his mother was watching it with emotional intensity. By seeing this he simply kept staring at the TV.

His mother suddenly shouted that she wouldn’t have tolerated if someone had taken away her child forcefully from her. Listening to it little Tommy felt happy. He got interested and asked what is news about?

Mom: The Government is separating children from their parents.
Tommy: Really! (with the scared face)
Mom: Don’t be scared. They are doing it only for illegal immigrants.
Tommy: Who are illegal immigrants?
Mom: Those who enter the country from outside without proper permission from Government.
Tommy: Why are they separating children from parents?
Mom: Because the current Government is cruel and bad.
Tommy: That is really cruel!
Mom: Yes, indeed they are!
(After a long pause)
Tommy: Even one of my school friend was separated from her father by heartless Government.
Mom: Oh! Really why?
Tommy: Because her father was a thief so he was sent to prison. My friend misses her father very badly.
Mom: (Pause…) But this is a different issue, your friend’s father was involved in an unlawful activity, so he was sent to the jail. Jail time is given to discourage people from doing an unlawful activity.
Tommy: Isn’t illegal immigration an unlawful activity?
Mom: That is different, in immigration case child are being taken away from parents.
Tommy: You mean should a child be sent to jail along with parents?
Mom: No, look your friend live in her house, but these kids are forced to live in the foster house.
Tommy: (After thinking for a while). But these kids are immigrants who have no house. Shouldn’t they be taken care of, by Government facility?

Now, mom realises that there is no difference between a child getting separated from her parents either because they were a thief or an illegal immigrant. In both cases, parents were sent to prison against the wish of their child. And in both cases, the child would have cried because they miss their parents.

This is how twisting the sentence will mislead the thinking of the people. Suppose the Government was led by media’s favourite person then the heading might have been something like following.

Illegal immigrants who are found guilty are sent to prison while their children are taken care in foster houses.

Above sentence would have created a positive feeling in the readers' mind. Most media houses framed a sentence in the following way.

Children forcibly separated from their parents

Heartbreaking audio of children crying in detention centre.

Above sentence created anxiety and hatred in reader’s mind. It, in turn, created the ripple effect. Above sentence also made people think that all illegal immigrants were separated from their families heartlessly. But the truth is only those who faced criminal charges and needed to be sent to prison were separated from children. Following is the screenshot from vox.

Important details as above are always hidden in the centre of a news article so that only the targeted headlines will be visible to unsuspecting eyes.

As a conclusion we must think, is emotion the only criteria to be considered while making policies? If so don’t you think Tommy’s friend would have cried because she was separated from her thief father? Indeed she did, does that mean, we should remove all prisons, because of emotion only policy? How safe the city would be with such emotion only policy?