Distraction and Misdirection: The Demonic Shell Game

Two essential elements of magic are misdirection and distraction.  These two elements enable the magician to perform all sorts of “magic” tricks.

Confidence tricksters also use these two elements, along with some slick sleight of hand, to make the “shell game” work. The intent in the shell game, however, is outright deception for profit, not entertainment.

Some magicians also use “smoke and mirrors” to provide the distraction required to perform a magic trick.  The smoke and mirrors add an element of mystery while obscuring some of what is really taking place on stage.

But as with many phases “smoke and mirrors” has taken on new meaning.  Eventually it moved from the stage to everyday use.  Today “spin doctors” use smoke and mirrors as a means of embellishing, obscuring, and distorting the truth to fool the public.  Implied in this use of the phrase is the notion that the spin doctor is manipulating what he or she wants people to see and believe.

It should not take too much insight for any follower of Christ to figure out that the greatest spin doctor / manipulator in the world is the devil.  He distorts and blurs moral situations with trigger words, falsehoods, and ideas he has already injected into our society. In so doing, Satan successfully pulls gullible, ill-prepared, and lukewarm Christians into his shell game of moral and eternal doom.

Two very prominent target areas for his mind games are the issues of abortion and immigration.

The Immigrant Shell Game:  The Illegal Side

If something is legal, that means that it follows the law.  Something illegal clearly violates the law.  But if a law is being violated, a logical question arises.  Does the law have a moral and ethical basis in the first place?

In the case of immigration laws, the purpose of such laws are to regulate the movement of people into a country.  Ideally they will balance national interests, like economic growth and national security, with humanitarian and cultural concerns such as providing safe refuge to people escaping oppression as well as fostering cultural diversity.

In their purest and most virtuous sense, immigration policy and laws are a win/win.  They provide a nation with a vetted influx of productive diversity while providing individuals with the chance to fulfill the dream of a better life.

The bottom line is that people have the right to seek that better life, but nations also have the right to regulate how and when immigrants come into the country. Implied and tantamount in this interchange is respect for national laws and human rights, with neither ignoring nor trashing the other.

By definition, illegal immigration is immigration which violates and disrespects the laws of a nation. Illegal immigration is, by definition, defiant, self-serving, and disrespectful of the nation it enters.  A nation which ignores its own immigration laws commits national and societal suicide by allowing unvetted immigrants into its society.

Scripture tells us to love and respect the immigrant (Leviticus 19:34 and Deuteronomy 10:19) and not mistreat or oppress that foreigner (Exodus 22:20).  However, political authorities likewise have the right, for the common good, to apply judicial conditions and restrictions to the right to immigrate into that nation.  And immigrants have an obligation to respect and obey that nation’s laws and assist in carrying civic burdens (CCC 2241).

In other words, immigration respect and responsibility is a two-way street.  Nations have the right to restrict, control, and regulate their borders for the common good of the nation.  Immigrants have the obligation to respect and obey the laws of that nation.

There are parallel applications in other laws.  A homeowner, for instance, has the right to restrict who enters his home, but he also has an obligation to provide a safe environment for those who do enter it.

Show me a society where people have the right to break into a home they do not own because it is nicer than their previous home, or because they are afraid their current home will collapse on them.  Worse still, show me a society where those trespassing into your home can claim that they have a right to trespass, and that they must be given privileges in your home despite having entered it unlawfully.

When one enters a place unlawfully, without permission, one is a trespasser.  Human dignity and charity, as well as basic Christian teaching, indicate that we should not abuse or harm a trespasser, but neither should we encourage trespassing.  And we should not give preference to a trespasser over members of our own home.

At its core, illegal immigration mocks a nation’s immigration system.  While legal immigrants struggle to enter the nation by following its laws, illegal immigrants ignore those laws.  And they often struggle to eke out a better life once they get in.

Any system which allows those who follow the law to be at a disadvantage to those who ignore the law is per se immoral and unethical.  Statistics show that illegal immigration has a devastating impact on the nation’s educational, social, medical, and financial systems. Taken as a whole, uncontrolled and rampant illegal immigration is neither a moral nor an ethical or practical good for any nation.

The Immigration Shell Game Part Two:  The Distraction

People with a vested interest in uncontrolled immigration continually lump illegal immigration with legal immigration.  They say that any restriction on illegal immigration is an attack on all immigration. By replacing the word “illegal” with “undocumented,” these entities seek to blur the distinction between illegal and legal immigration.

Such efforts are not accidental but sinister and manipulative. Worse still and, for the life of me, confusing, are the passionate efforts of legal immigrants to encourage this blurring.  Would bank patrons want to be lumped with bank robbers?  Would legal taxpayers wish to be lumped with those committing tax fraud? Of course not.

Yet here we see large numbers of legal immigrants gleefully joining ranks with illegal immigrants and defiantly proclaiming any restriction or legal consequences on them a direct attack on all immigrants. Such actions make no sense to me, and I am a legal immigrant and now a US citizen myself.

By blurring the distinction between illegal immigrants and themselves, legal immigrants spread the animosity against those who break immigration laws and themselves, despite the fact that they have respected those very laws!   Many foreign-born celebrities, such as Shakira, speak of the immigrant experience in the US as being one of living in constant fear.

I am an immigrant from Shakira’s same country of Colombia, and a US citizen for over 40 years.  But I have never lived in the “constant fear” of which she speaks.  Of course, if I had broken laws and had to live off the grid, I would definitely be living under constant fear.

Those favoring unrestricted illegal immigration pretend that all and any immigrant today, even legal ones and US citizens, live under the constant threat of deportation. This is patently false.  It is nothing more than an effort to use smoke and mirrors to portray any efforts toward greater vetting of immigration as gestapo-like treachery.

I am mystified by the way celebrities and those who favor such unrestricted illegal immigration, who are legal immigrants themselves, choose to lump illegal immigration with legal immigration under the umbrella of “immigration.” Instead they should be supporting and promoting legal immigration and calling for legal immigration reform. This is nothing but a distraction to push and promote illegal immigration regardless of its devastating impact on the nation.

Frankly, hearing wealthy celebrity immigrants like Shakira, Juan Leguizamo, and Selena Gomez speak of the nation that has greatly enabled their wealth as a place of immigrant terror and oppression is more smoke and mirrors than I can take.

The abortion parallel: Another Distraction

We are all well versed in the abortion industry’s distraction of depicting the willful murder of the unborn as “reproductive rights” and a violation of basic human rights.  This ignores, of course, the human rights of the unborn baby.

Likewise, abortion advocates often even refuse to recognize the unborn baby as a person. This is much like those promoting slavery who refused to recognize slaves as people.

Abortion advocates pretend that abortion is some life-saving entity most often needed to protect the life of the mother.   In fact, it is more often used as a convenient eraser for unfettered sexual behavior.  Today, it is not uncommon for celebrities to highlight and cheer their past abortions as some declaration of human independence and right.

The Ultimate Distraction: Illegal Immigration and Abortion

And we have now come full circle.  Today we hear cries that illegal immigrants have an equal right to abortions which are being restricted by restrictive immigration laws.  We are told that “undocumented” immigrants are being marginalized and abused by a system which restricts their right to “reproductive freedom.”   Basically, illegal immigration and abortion are now viewed as human rights which must be protected in law!

The distraction, of course, is in fooling illegal immigrant women, and other desperate women, into believing that abortion is their best option. And people who wish to use these groups for their political and social goals are doing the manipulating. The smoke and mirrors of the stage are now a sorrowful game of deception.  But it neither fools nor helps anyone but those gleefully gaining from its consequences.

Conclusion

Fr. Chad Ripperger , well-known Exorcist and Catholic speaker, cites distraction as one of the primary tactics of the devil in spiritual warfare.  Nowhere is this distraction more evident than in the areas of illegal immigration and abortion.

In both instances those who would benefit from confusion and distortion blur the and play the shell game with the truth.  The most tragic part of this sad situation is that the ultimate victims of this sinister game are the innocent, naïve, and desperate.