Tag Archives: immigration

Political Rants

Fading to black.

We all knew he would get an early start, and true to form, sixteen months before the general election, Donald Trump has completely poured himself into being Drunk Uncle Twitter Troll, spewing overtly racist attacks on duly elected members of the House of Representatives while his Republican colleagues lamely play rhetorical defense, desperate to hold onto their party’s precious rubber-stamp chief executive who is giving them all they ever wanted and more. Pretty amazing to hear the likes of GOP congressman Tom Cole on NPR gaslighting us all on the issue of whether or not Trump is race-baiting (clue: Cole says “no”), then engaging in some truly ridiculous what-about-ism (speaking to NPR correspondent Noel King):

KING: You just don’t think it was racist.
COLE: No, I don’t.
KING: OK.
COLE: And frankly, I also think that if you – you have to remember here, too, there’s – we’ve had colleagues that are routinely called down by presiding officers for using inappropriate language toward the president. We’ve had people that have said federal workers are running concentration camps. We’ve had people that have said if you support Israel, you do it for the money. We’ve had people that have referred to the president with vulgar epithets and said they’re going to impeach him. None of those people were subject to resolution. So the double standard here, in terms of accepting comments on your own side of the aisle and criticizing essentially – what, you know, others might think are a similar thing to another is just – you know, it’s breathtakingly inappropriate.

(NPR Morning Edition, July 17, 2019)

See what he did there? He literally attacked the same four representatives Trump baited on Twitter. Cole predicated this on his earlier statement that the president’s tweets about the four congresswomen of color were “inappropriate” and “offensive”, but not racist. That little twist makes the president’s comments equivalent to, for example, Rashida Talib’s using the word “ass” when talking about impeaching Trump, or Ilhan Omar making virtually the same observation about the effect of AIPAC political contributions that Thomas Friedman made without any negative reaction. This is a standard package of what-about-ism that Republican strategists whipped up quickly over the last day or two, and they’re all reading from the same hymnal.

Drunk uncle twitter troll strikes again.

Of course, the corporate media spends a lot of time pondering whether or not Trump is racist. That’s immaterial. We should have zero interest in what that fool thinks or how he feels. It’s what he projects and works to engender in other people that should concern us. It’s no accident or mere caprice that he chooses the targets he chooses, as I’ve said here before. It all follows the same theme, from the birther conspiracy, to bashing immigrants from Mexico at his campaign launch, to announcing his Muslim ban, to telling the toxic lie about Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey, to calling out Colin Kapernik or any one of a dozen women of color in Congress. It’s about othering people. It’s about framing black, brown, and non-Christian people as not true Americans, somehow disloyal, a fifth column, from somewhere else. Even his claim that 3 million undocumented immigrants voted in 2016 rolls into this – he’s basically saying that the margin of popular vote victory for Clinton was delivered by people with no right to vote … people of color.

This is not just Trump being Trump. This is his 2020 campaign, and it will get worse, just wait and see.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Skin game.

Not so very long ago – within the span of many Americans’ lifetimes – crossing the southern border wasn’t that big of a deal. People from Mexico and points south would make their way into the U.S. for seasonal work mostly, do the jobs Americans tend not to want to do, then make their way back. Most of them wouldn’t stay very long because they had families back in Mexico, so they might travel back and forth as their work allowed, bringing their meager earnings back with them. There was an explicit guest worker program during World War II, but otherwise it was kind of an informal, administrative matter for many years.

Gradually, though, immigration across the southern border became more heavily policed. The option to harass migrant workers and other visitors was always available to law enforcement, but in more recent decades it became a matter of policy. As PBS journalist John Carlos Frey details in his new book, Blood and Sand, the crackdown really began in earnest during the Clinton Administration, reflected most shockingly in Clinton’s second State of the Union, which included a section on undocumented immigrants that might have been ripped from Trump’s current playbook. There were a couple of things going on in those days. Implementation of NAFTA was decimating rural agriculture in Mexico, pitting small farmers against U.S. agribusiness conglomerates. But most importantly, politicians were re-discovering the efficacy of targeting brown people. Clinton and the Republican Congress funded the construction of walls in major border cities, forcing migrants into the harsh desert and mountain terrain that straddles the border between populated areas.

Not the desired effect.

Similar to Trump’s policies now, Clinton’s approach was formulated specifically to discourage people from even attempting to cross into the U.S. The result was a spike in migrant deaths as families and individuals continued to be driven north by need and in search of safety and sustenance. That policy set the template that we have operated under ever since, though Bush, Obama, and now into Trump. Of course, Trump has ratcheted up the pressure, making it impossible to adjudicate asylum claims, incarcerating immigrants regardless of their personal histories, treating all crossers like murderers, rapists, gang members, etc., holding terrified people – even children and infants – in squalid, dehumanizing conditions under the hateful eye of bigoted officers.

We have to take the administration at their word that they’re doing this to discourage migrants fleeing the remnants of the countries we worked so hard to destroy in past decades. That makes Trump and his crew terrorists, plain and simple – they are deliberately terrorizing people for political ends, and the longer we tolerate it the more complicit we are in these crimes against humanity.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Them-ism.

This week started with our president, Donald Trump, threatening to close our southern border, from the Gulf to the Pacific, to keep brown people from entering the United States. There’s nothing surprising about this display – immigration is Trump’s signature issue, specifically the demonization of anyone attempting to emigrate from what he would term as “shit hole” countries. And yet, he seems hell-bent on policies that are practically guaranteed to increase the flow of migrants and refugees from south of the border rather than stem it. The recent increase in apprehensions of undocumented immigrants is illustrative of this.

Of course, part of the increase is simply due to the time of year – people are trying to cross before the summer heat sets in. But I think it’s pretty obvious that Trump’s hateful and aggressive policies and rhetoric on this issue are prompting desperate families and individuals to attempt the crossing between ports of entry, which have effectively been closed to asylum seekers. Bear in mind that it is completely within their legal rights to present themselves for an asylum claim wherever they cross, whether it’s at designated points of entry or in-between. By making it impossible for migrants to present their case in an orderly and timely fashion, the administration is leaving them no alternative to making the crossing at some other point. These are people who have no home to return to. Many have friends, family in the U.S. Threatening a total closure of the border only increases the urgency.

That wall makes your ass look big.

I think Trump’s policies may reflect a view of these migrant families as something akin to animals. It’s as if they don’t expect these people to have human concerns or any level of perception. Migrants are, in fact, reacting in understandable ways to the threats being hurled at them. Is it possible that Trump doesn’t understand that?

Call me a cynic, but I think the administration knows that their policies and rhetoric increase undocumented immigration. They want to create a sense of crisis so that their voters will remain in a state of frenzy over the impending invasion of caravans of brown people. Though I suspect they may be a little reluctant to follow through on their threat to close the border “100 percent”, as Trump has said. As much as he affects not to like NAFTA, it is the law of the land, and as such, there’s a tremendous amount of cross-border commerce, supply chain activity, etc., not to mention many, many thousands of people crossing back and forth on a daily basis. Closing the border would effectively shut down large sectors of our industrial base, throwing a monkey wrench into what is literally Trump’s only substantive argument for re-election: the supposedly strong economy. (Strength is a relative thing. It’s stronger than it was, but mostly to the benefit of the wealthy.)

Trump may be an idiot, but he’s probably not enough of a fool bring the economy to a screeching halt in an effort to rile up his bigoted base of supporters. We shall see.

luv u,

jp