Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a 32-year-old Venezuelan immigrant legally residing in the United States, has apparently been disappeared to El Salvador’s notorious Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) after mistakenly turning onto the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, Michigan.
The bridge, one of North America’s busiest international crossings, links Detroit with Windsor, Ontario. Due to the complexity of nearby highways, even local residents occasionally take the wrong ramp. For Prada, this innocent mistake led to arrest, imprisonment, and deportation—culminating in his disappearance into a foreign prison.
“trafficked” is the word we’re looking for here
“Disappeared” is the word typically used when authoritarian regimes arrest and incarcerate (or worse) people extrajudicially, without due process. “Trafficked” doesn’t have the authoritarian government connotation.
No, disappeared means no one outside the government knows where they are.
Trafficked is a catchall term used by the government to justify abuses, same as terrorism. They like to accuse Abrego Garcia of “human trafficking,” which conjures images of evil men smuggling frightened young women into forced prostitution, when in reality, Garcia’s “human trafficking” accusation stems from being pulled over while driving a van of men to a construction site for work.
In the old days, the goverment used to frighten citizens with warnings about “white slavery.” They just updated the phrase, but the meaning and its intent are the same.
We can split hairs on terminology, but human trafficking for the purpose of slave labor is what this administration is actively engaging in. I don’t care if the government coined it as a “catch-all” term to justify abuses of terrorism when that’s exactly what crimes they are committing
One of the main problems the Dems have had over the last 30-40 years is that they let the Conservative Propaganda Machine frame ALL political messaging in this country, and they’ve gone along with it 100%, and definitions are a major part of it.
For instane, the accepted party definitions are that Republicans are the party of smaller government, lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, family values (even if they are the opposite of all that), and Dems are just the “Tax & Spend” party, and I never hear Dems deny it. There have been a million other examples.
It’s finally starting to change, now that things are so obvious. With President Skum throwing up celebratory Nazi gang signs on national TV, its kind of hard to deny being called Nazis. Actually, they kind of like it because they respect the Nazis, and it instills a visceral fear in most people.
We need to keep taking back the messaging. Tariffs should be called taxes because many people dont understand tariffs, especially since the Conservative Propaganda Machine is deliberately muddying the definitions to confuse their morons. But they also spent decades making their morons despise every tax for any reason, and they have a very deep hatred toward taxes. The MAGA Morons are very clear on their hatred for taxes of ANY kind. Dems should tap into that deep set hatred, and turn it against MAGA. Tariffs should be referred to as Trade Taxes.
MAGA is another big one. There is no Republican Party anymore. There are only two parties - Democrats and MAGA. The Republican party is a 3rd party, at best, if they even exist at all. All Democratic politicians should just refer to the MAGA Party, the same way they like to call it the Democrat Party. Make them defend their very name and identity. Force them to differentiate between the two. It will make them sound weak and defensive. Relegate the word Republican to the political dumpster, and when MAGA finally crashes like all fascist goverments eventually do, they will be forced to dig the Republican party out of the dumpster and try to clean it up and revive it, but the stains will never fade.
90% of politics is marketing, and the Dems have to actively control their marketing by taking back the definitions and messaging. Dont use their terms, force them to use ours, or defend themselves.
Yes traffic is the word because El Salvador is making money off each prisoner we send.