If there’s one thing about the Trump administration that’s consistent, it’s their laser focus on immigrants – specifically the ones with dark skin or non-christian religious beliefs. This is basically Trump’s political brand, though it’s nothing new in American (and particularly Republican party) politics. This specific strain of bigotry has made its way into national elections for decades, most noticeably since the early 1990s and the Buchanan direct mail scam …. I mean, presidential campaign, right through right-wing hacks like Tom Tancredo and up to the now-sainted (by the phony “resistance”) Senator-elect Mitt Romney, who ran to the right of his fanatical GOP competitors on immigration. So it makes little sense to assign this tendency exclusively to Trump – scapegoating immigrants is central to Republican politics, and as for Democrats, Obama was the deporter-in-chief, despite his uplifting rhetoric.
That said, it’s hard to deny that Trump takes a certain special joy in his work, promoting the basest forms of ignorance, painting refugees as criminals, rapists, etc. The furor around the immigrant caravans from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador ranks among the most despicable initiatives thus far in his putrid presidency, right alongside family separations. This is, of course, a contrived “crisis” intended to gin up the Republican’s racist base in time for the mid-term elections as well as set the stage for clashes at the southern border. They did this by prohibiting asylum seekers from applying for asylum anywhere other than at designated points of entry. This violates the relevant statute (8 U.S. Code section 1158), as asylum seekers are entitled to due process regardless of how they enter the country.
By funneling these refugees to the major border crossings, the President has ensured that there would be a kind of mini refugee crisis in Tijuana. This is all about how it looks on TV, specifically FoxNews. He wants his followers to see hordes of dark people surging toward the border fence, looking angry, being repelled by our brave men in uniform with a generous use of CS gas (a.k.a. chemical weapons). The President thinks this works for him politically, and to a certain extent he is correct. Older white people, pummeled by the gig economy, terrified of losing what little status they have, are susceptible to this anti-immigrant trope along with its sidecar appeals to anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-Muslim sentiments. They want Trump’s wall, and they want him to build it around their lives. Since that’s impossible, they will settle for a TV show about teargassing refugees.
We are way beyond the point of wondering whether this is the kind of country we want to be. We need to stop wondering and start working towards better policy … now.
luv u,
jp
But more than anything else, we are thankful to you, our listeners and readers. (That includes all you little Russian bots – I see you!) And that’s why we have chosen to express our gratitude by posting a warmed-over installment of Ned Trek entitled 
This Pharaoh-like magnitude of personal wealth reflects a failing economy – more specifically, an economy that fails to serve a large swath of the population. It is about more than personal wealth. Any dude with $137 billion dollars (and there’s only one, so yes, it’s a dude) possesses $136 billion more than he could ever hope to spend on himself. The accumulation of untold billions is all about power – the power to affect the lives of millions on a whim, whether for good or ill. When Bill Gates sank a billion dollars of his fortune into distorting our educational system (and helping to undermine public sector unions in the process), he didn’t do it because we asked for his intervention. He did it because he wanted to, and because he thought his wealth gave him license. He was right … but only because we as a people have not taken steps to constrain that license.