Convictions Or Clout: What Are We Really Defending

Ever notice how our outrage shifts depending on who’s holding the megaphone? We take a hard, honest look at immigration, enforcement, protest tactics, and the stories we tell to excuse what we’d condemn in our opponents. The goal isn’t to score points—it’s to find the ground where compassion and consistency can both stand.

We start by pulling immigration debate back to the right branch of government. Presidents enforce; Congress writes and rewrites. That frame matters when people remain undocumented for decades while temporary fixes masquerade as reform. We call out fraud in public programs—not to smear communities, but to insist that stealing from a safety net robs those it exists to serve. Getting away with it for years never turned theft into policy.

Civil liberties sit at the center of the enforcement segment. Identification, warrants, and probable cause are non-negotiable if we want trust. We push for visible, lawful policing and tighter coordination with local departments, while reminding listeners that interfering with lawful duties crosses a clear line. Documentation, lawsuits, and policy change work better—and last longer—than harassment or spectacle.

Double standards get their own spotlight. If storming buildings is insurrection, why is tailing officers, disrupting hotels, or blocking operations somehow noble when our side does it? We also test cultural reciprocity: expecting English in the U.S. doesn’t demand cultural erasure, but it does recognize shared infrastructure and safety. And we interrogate performative allyship that romanticizes symbols while ignoring women living under coercion; real solidarity expands freedom, it doesn’t shrink it.

We close by challenging social programs that trap people with benefit cliffs and no exit ramps. A serious safety net should smooth the path to stability, not punish progress. Throughout, we invite you to hold multiple truths: protect due process and punish fraud; welcome newcomers and require shared rules; protest boldly and stay within the law. If you value honest debate over easy applause, press play, then tell us where you agree, where you don’t, and what we missed. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a thoughtful listen, and leave a review with your strongest counterpoint.

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Transcript

Setting The Stage And Intent

Who Makes Immigration Law

Long-Term Illegality And Responsibility

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Welcome to incoming Marjorie Avery where we consider life how to get through it happily. It was built to be rough, but that's what makes a lot of fun. Hello and welcome to incoming. So this week I'm going to be super controversial. I hope everybody's prepared for it. I'm going to start with saying these are my opinions. And I'm going to preface all of this with my intent here. Because you're going to find when I start giving my opinions that I don't really land in one easy-to-fit camp. You might be surprised at some of my opinions. Some of you will agree with them, some of you will vehemently disagree with them. And that's okay. That's what I hope to do. I want you to think. The reason that I'm not strictly in one camp or the other is because I listen to both camps. I weigh all that information out against my own moral standards, my own belief, based on, you know, whatever experiences I've had in life. So the big topic in everybody's mind is immigration. Immigration, immigration, immigration. And I've talked about this in other episodes, and I'm going to get into this again, that first of all, it is not the president. The president is enforcing existing laws. You need to talk to your congressional leaders, many of whom have been sitting in there for 30 years. And whichever party they're from, at some point or another in the course of the last 30 years, your party has had enough control that you could have changed these laws if you wanted to. All you ever did was put in temporary things, like a temporary reprieve that if you're illegal, we're not going to kick you out. You got a little bit of time, two, three years, whatever, to get representation and get this together. Now, first of all, I do not believe that you have been in a country illegally for 20 years and have been completely unable to get any kind of legal status. That if you have truly diligently been working at this, it is next to impossible for me to believe that in the course of 20 years that you have raised a family, worked a job, put your kids in college, bought houses, gotten cars, done all these things. And yet you couldn't take any steps towards getting yourself legal in some way. Not to mention the other thing I'm going to say. You live in any country, they expect you to follow the laws, to be a law-abiding citizen. That is a basic tenet of getting citizenship anywhere. People, no country is going to accept someone who has become some sort of a burden on their society that doesn't have to be there.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Next thing I'm going to say.

ICE Tactics And Civil Liberties

SPEAKER_02 3:10

If you are breaking a rule anywhere in any way, the fact that you have, there could be a multitude of reasons why you've been getting away with it, that does not make the rule null and void. If you're getting away with tax fraud somehow, didn't change the tax code. One day, someday, if somebody wants to take a look at that, you're still going to be violating the law. If you are defrauding government programs, getting financing for businesses that are not real or not really participating or operating at the level that you claim to the government program, that is illegal. And when you get caught, you cannot put up what is the only way I can describe it, it's a very juvenile argument. You know, when you're a kid, teenager, let's say, and you get in trouble for something, you try to, you know, you start throwing out smoke bombs. You know, you you you push any button you can in your parents to try and elicit some kind of sympathy from them so that you don't get in trouble. Grown people know better than this. So you can't suddenly play the race card or the immigration card because you know that's going to get a bunch of sympathy from people for you. But it doesn't excuse the fact that you were defrauding government programs and not just in Minneapolis, but in probably every major city. Now, when they set up any government program, when you set up any program anywhere, even in corporate America, there is a percentage of failure rate or a percentage that you know is going to be defrauded. Just because the government let it go, let it slide, didn't put the manpower into enforcing it, did not change the fact that it was illegal. Here's the next one. ICE. Now, I will say this. I do not agree in any way, shape, or form that any police officers, federal, state, county, city, should be able to roam the streets dressed in full tactical gear, like they're going into battle, with their faces covered and nothing really clearly identifying on them. Because you want citizens to comply because that's the law, but there are certain places where if a person wearing a full-on snowmobile mask and tactical gear comes at me, how do I know for sure you're a police officer? You got a badge hanging, you can get badges. But the way that they're approaching this is wrong. I understand the doxing. But doesn't every police officer anywhere, again, operating at the state, county, city level, take that risk? When a cop pulls you over and gives you a ticket, they're looking at you from like a foot away, full face. They got a badge with their name.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

They're wearing a camera to show everything that happened, but I could dox that police officer.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

And there are steps that you have to take, just like anybody else, you know? People who have stalkers after them, they have to use the law as well as they can. Online crap happens to everybody. Now, that said, I do think that they should have more support from the local police departments, and I think that it would avoid a lot of these problems. More cooperative effort. You're the local guys, you know your city, you know your neighborhood.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

So now you have them at odds with their fellow officers. That's not right. Next thing.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

I do think that they should have to follow the same laws as any other police officer. You cannot knock in my door and come in here unless you have gotten a warrant or someone has approved that you have probable cause to do so. It's a foundational right in this country. Every police officer on earth knows things and wishes they had the ability to just kick in a door to get somebody that they know full well is guilty of something, but you don't get to do it. You got to follow the rules.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Next one, people who are interfering. Okay, that is illegal anywhere, anytime.

Protests, Double Standards, And Insurrection

SPEAKER_02 7:42

You're interfering with police officers conducting their duties, and that is a chargeable offense. We have laws in this country, civilized laws, where you can document and you can take this up. It may not change overnight, but it can be changed. Let's not forget, during the civil rights movement, that was police officers out there turning fire hoses on people, sicking dogs on people. Where that happened, it was perfectly legal, but it got documented and it got out and it took time, but the laws got changed. That is what a civilized society does. Now, if those same people that are out there saying that they want to stand up for the immigrants, here's my question to you. You're the same people that said that people unhappy with the election results in 2020 held an insurrection. Insurrection. Now, I'm not going to deny storming into the capital, our capital, that belongs to all of us and behaving the way they did was utterly ridiculous. There were civilized ways to handle their annoyance with the results. However, if that's insurrection, what is any different than what you're doing? You are putting up roadblocks anywhere you can to impede the current administration from carrying out the law. Every administration has a right to do what they want to do. So if it was an insurrection when people were so unhappy with the fact that Biden got re-elected and so convinced that the election was somehow rigged, why is that any different, what you're doing? Following police officers around, getting in their face, knocking drinks out of their hand when they stop to get lunch, damaging hotels that they're staying at. It's no different. You need to stop and think about that. If you're on the higher ground, you need to behave like you're on higher ground. But you're not behaving like you're on higher ground. You're behaving like you would do anything to just be seen.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

And I see very few of the people that are actually affected by this as part of those activities.

Language, Culture, And Reciprocity

SPEAKER_02 9:45

So you're standing up for them, that's fine. But you're disobeying the law and you're doing the very same things that you've accused the other party of doing and saying they were wrong, but yet somehow it's right when you do it. And can you please make up your mind where you stand on something and stay with it? Because it's like a moving target what their opinion is of who's right and who's wrong. If we do it, it's okay. But if you do it, it's not okay. And here's some examples. You know, for decades when I was growing up, Europe used to be a huge vacation spot for well-to-do Americans. Europe made a lot of money on American tourism. And you know what the big complaint was? For decades. Those Americans, they come here and expect us to speak English. They're so rude. They expect everything to be the way that they want it. They have no respect for our culture in our country. But somehow now, when other people come here, supposedly fleeing tyranny, they don't have to respect our culture. They don't have to know how to speak English when they're actually in our country. We're supposed to learn their language. So is there ever a time and a place where it's okay to insist that you speak English?

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Ever. Doesn't seem to be.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

So Americans were bad when they were vacationing, spending their money in other countries because they expected those countries that were hosting them to speak their language. Okay, I can see the argument there. But now when you come here, we're supposed to learn your language? So is there ever a point where you have to learn our language?

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Just wondering.

Minneapolis Fraud And Profiling Claims

SPEAKER_02 11:24

And it's okay when you say that white people are against brown people, and this is not a white country, and we need to act accordingly. But can you imagine if a black person said that? Oh, I know. There was a time when white people said that. Can you imagine if a white person said that I misspoke? There was a time when they said that white people were supreme and that races shouldn't mix, so black and white couples couldn't get married. My parents could not get married, by the way, until they moved out of the state that they lived in. The white people said that this is a white country, but it's okay for you now to say that this is a brown country. That's prejudice, and it exists on both sides. Being biracial myself and born in the 1960s in the South, I can tell you racism exists on every side. But the funny thing is, I don't even think that these people have the strength of their conviction convictions. They're just, again, throwing those smoke bombs, blowing up an argument, so that, you know, it excuses their other bad behavior. And you know, this whole thing with the Super Bowl, bad bunny. I'm sorry, I'm dumping load today. You cannot listen to Hollywood or any of these entertainers. These people are attention whores. They would agree with the KKK if that was the popular vote today, and that would get a microphone in their face and a camera on them.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Okay, that's just the bottom line.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

But okay, how would you like it if we went to a Hispanic-speaking Hispanic country, you know, let's say somewhere in South America for a soccer world cup, and we insisted that, you know, everything be done in English. Funny how it seems when you flip that to a different, different perspective, isn't it? And that's all I'm asking people to do. Try to listen and get a different perspective. Okay, if I go to Germany as a tourist, guess what? That's German country. Their main language is German. And although I know most of them do speak English, I might run into problems places if I don't have some means of communicating in German. Well, it's no different when you come here. And then circling back to ICE, I wonder why they hit straight from Minneapolis, because that's where all the national news was reporting. They were literally, how can you deny it, showing up at businesses that are supposed to be functioning, daycare centers, and there's not a kid in sight. If you're not doing anything wrong, why would you why would you mind opening the door and going, no, no, no, no, no. We're just the kids aren't here today. You know, here's all the classrooms and here's the activities they do. Nothing, nothing, not a thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

It's fraud, it's theft. And you know what?

Historical Parallels With Immigrant Mobs

SPEAKER_02 14:23

If that's somehow racial profiling and now your your immigration status, I should not pay attention to the fact that you've been violating federal law because you're a poor immigrant and I'm picking on you because you're an immigrant. Well, if that's the case, I think we need to go back and pay restitution to a lot of Italians that were involved in the mob because it was the same thing. Many of them were not born here. They were immigrants, they were violating the law. Some of them, like Lucky Luciano, got sent back to Italy. I think we owe those people an apology based on the current argument. If I agree with your current argument that you are being picked on because you're an immigrant, and this is really an immigration issue, it's not a you have been lying to government programs to defraud them of money. We owe apologies to the Irish mob, to the to the Italian mob, to the Jewish mob. We we owe restitution because it's the same thing. What if they had stood up there and said that? And some of them did, actually. Nobody paid any attention to it. They stayed on point. And what is on point, you defrauded a government program out of hundreds of millions of dollars. And the fact that you got away with it for a long time, again, doesn't make it legal.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Doesn't make it okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

I don't think anybody's saying that they're against an immigrant coming here. But if you come here, and this can't be said enough because where you left was so terrible, then why do you want to come here and live just like you did there?

Why Flee Tyranny To Recreate It

SPEAKER_01 16:03

I would want to come here and do nothing like what was in that other country. I would want to do something completely different. And here's another one. Do you know how many women let's start with Gloria Simon?

SPEAKER_02 16:21

How many women burned bras fought for literally hundreds of years to get women the right, the right that their husband couldn't beat them like they were a child, the right that they could get a divorce because they didn't want to be in the marriage anymore, the right to be treated equally in a workplace, the right to be able to open a bank account on your own, the right to rent an apartment or buy a house on your own. Okay, the right to walk the streets and not have to have a man do everything for you.

Women’s Rights And Performative Allyship

SPEAKER_01 16:54

The right to, if your husband died, all your money went to your son, not you. And it didn't even matter if your son was younger than you.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

I mean, like a younger than an adult age.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

But yet, we have white college students going around campuses wearing a hijib.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Who are you standing up for? Do you think that those women want to wear that and live like that? Don't put a microphone in their face because I can tell you what they're gonna say because they're afraid of the retribution they're gonna get if they say anything differently. But the fact of the matter is, you are setting women back hundreds of years with your nonsense. You are in You are supporting an ideology that wants to set women back to how they lived globally, what, in the 1800s? They have no freedom of choice, they can't be educated, they can't handle anything, they have to have a man, even if it's a child, handle things for them. They can't go out uncovered, undressed, your husband can beat you. There's no such thing as marital rape. Your husband can do anything he wants to do, any man can do anything he wants to do, or you can be beaten, stoned, burned alive, thrown in prison. Are these women even thinking about what they're standing up for? You think you're supporting a religious ideology? You're not. You're supporting a regression of women's rights that a hell of a lot of women fought really hard and paid a big price for you to get.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Why do you want to do that? You have knowledge an inch deep and a mile wide. You aren't even bothering to try to learn more, to try to stop and think.

The Middle Ground And Broken Social Programs

SPEAKER_02 18:40

You're just out there, again, videoing yourself on social media on a campus while you do this stuff, and I'm supposed to believe the convictions that you're standing up for. You're not standing up for anything. You just want to be seen. You're a child showing out. But you're doing harm, real harm. There is a middle ground, people. There's a middle ground between being a Trumpist and being a liberal. And half the real liberals, I mean, I've watched them in the course of my lifetime. They actually used to stand for something. They marched for rights, they marched for women's rights, they marched for civil rights, they marched for uh young people's rights, for voting rights, all these things. And you know what they all turned into? Rich assholes in Washington that forgot what they once used to stand for. And they're still banging that drum from 1969, hoping somebody's still stupid enough to listen to it and believe that they still mean it. And they set up social programs that did nothing but create another form of enslavement. Because I can tell you right now, I have been on some of the social programs. If you're putting a social program out that's really intended to help somebody, there should be a way out. There should be an exit ramp. But there isn't. It's a permanent thing that you're locked into. Because once you start getting the food stamps, God forbid, if you go out and you earn like 50 bucks, oops, sorry, you don't qualify for food stamps anymore. Once you stop having babies, oops, sorry, you don't sit you don't qualify for WIC anymore.

Final Appeals: Think, Learn, Follow Law

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Okay, that is not a hand up, that is another form of enslavement. And that's what they gave you. That's what all these wonderful liberals gave you. So these are the kind of things that I want people to think about. Stand up for anything you want to stand up for. But consider, listen to both sides. Consider other perspectives than your own. Follow the law. If you want to help somebody, find the proper legal way to help them.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

And you know what? Don't turn around and become the prejudice that you're supposedly fighting against. Because picking on white people and pigeonholing white people and making it like every white person is a racist and every white person thinks they're superior to somebody else just because they have an opinion? Just because they want to live differently than you do? And they would like your way of living to not impede theirs? They don't want you moving into a neighborhood and having the mosque called a prayer going off so loud every day that they can't even have their own peace in their own neighborhood? I don't know. Put a reminder on your watch.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Have it go off on your watch. The same city that wouldn't allow the church bells in Christian churches to be played because it was disturbing the neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Think people, think, dig, look, educate. And then if you still feel that that side is a viable argument, do it.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

But right now, you just sound like hypocritical morons. So that's all I ask of you.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

You've heard my opinions. You can leave comments and tell me your opinions. I'll see you next time.

unknown 21:58

Work hard under pressure.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

If you got no time, work smarter than ever. Don't ever let them tell you that you can't ever say never. And turn your mind into the truest of go-getters.