Leslie Loftis at the federalist.com has an interesting observation in Why Do Refugees Matter Only After The Christians Are Dead?
There she notes all the angst created by the photo of the dead child on the beach and the news of the poor refugees merely seeking a safe place of late. But there was none of that when Christians were being rounded up, killed, or enslaved. She speculates that it is because the legacy media ignored it, and many people only consider something to be "news" when sources like the New York Times tells them about it.
She offers a couple of other theories:
When stories of Christian persecution get told, they are questionably dismissed or billed as stories about something else.
For instance, the Boko Haram girls story played in the Western public as a story of sexism, when really the story was about persecution of Christians. ... Their hope got attention, but not help. The United States is not in an intervening mood. A few of the girls did manage to escape on their own, long after the hashtag died. ...
The last theory I have—the one I hope is wrong—posits that the story is surging now because we can offer help when there is no chance we will ever be judged on success. At this point, really, there are so many intervening factors that any specific bit of help could never, ever be negatively consequential.
Now that's depressing. But we have to face the lesson from the Iraq war. Most Americans are more concerned with feeling good about themselves than about saving lives.
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