I’ve avoided writing much of anything the current immigration debate so far, but we’re now into the third week of this story dominated the news cycle.
Like a lot of people, I was surprised at just how big this story has become. I’m not terribly surprised, however, at how this issue is ripping apart the GOP. In one camp, we have the “round ‘em up, send up back, and build a wall,” cretins. Make no mistake – these people are fanatics. They deserve the fanatic title if only because they labor under the delusion that deporting 12 million people back to more than two dozen countries is somehow feasible or worthwhile. You hear echoes of this argument, from a lot of the same characters, regarding issues like the Iraq war, general terrorism, etc. According to these idiots, wild and implausible scenarios are possible if “we” would simply just exert some willpower.
George Bush, on this particular issue, remains firmly within the sane camp. His guest worker initiative is pretty bad, but is a plan with at least the guise of rationality. But Bush does not control the howling fanatics demanding a mass round up of “vermin” (to quote Michael Savage). On his website, James Wolcott writes that he keeps coming back to Terri Schiavo when thinking about the current immigration debate:
“I keep going back to the Terri Schiavo case. That's when I think the rightwing carousel began to break down and the painted horses lost their rhythm, pawing the air to no avail. Talk radio and cable news tilted heavily for Schiavo's parents and against Michael Schiavo, Jeb Bush jowlily postured and interposed himself with shameless zeal, Congressional Republicans stuck their beaks into this private turmoil, Bush broke precedent to interrupt his precious downtime in Crawford to sign a hocked-up bill,--and they all misread the public's mood. The American public wanted them to butt out. That they could get it so wrong was a sign that they had lost touch and couldn't mold public opinion on every issue as if it were the mashed-potatoes mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Sign. But so thick, rich, and impacted was their arrogance that they ignored the warning sign, just as they ignored the warning signs in Iraq until it turned into a danse macabre.
But the misreading of public opinion re Schiavo didn't cost Republicans much. The misreading, the mishandling, of the immigration controversy will.”
I’ve had this same thought regarding the Schiavo carnival for some time (Really. I should write this stuff down more). It eventually became claar to George Bush and the GOP leadership that they had lost control of the Schiavo PR battle, and yet the lunatics trying to bring a brain-dead lady water and bread would simply NOT go home, much to the embarrassment of Bush and Co. Just as there was no control then, Bush and Co. cannot control the “round ‘em up” alliance of minor politicians (James Sensenbrenner, Tom Tancredo) racist pundits, (Savage. Michelle Malkin) and militia (The Minutemen).
Finally, a word on racism. The “racist” label is a powerful tag and should be used sparingly. I’ve had a few people subtly accuse me of using it indiscriminately to refer to political opponents in general. I do no such thing. I do not, however, shy from applying the label when it is richly deserved. Savage, Malkin, Ann Coulter, Little Green Footballs, and Pamela (from Atlas Shrugs) are all racists. Some of them occasionally couple their racism with veiled and not-so-veiled incitements to violence (Savage, Coulter, LGF, and Pamela, though not Malkin to the best of my knowledge). These people deserve to get called on their racism as often and as clearly as possible. They are free to continue their utterances, just as reasonable people are free to dismiss them from the public discourse.
But because these racists are so noxious, it is important that we not abuse the term. George Bush, for all his faults, is not a racist. He does not “hate Latinos.” In fact the idea that George Bush “hate sbrown people, as I've read a few times now, is laughable. Lou Dobbs is a nationalist. He consistently advocates on behalf of native-born Americans, often to the detriment of the foreign-born. As an anti-nationalist, I have no truck with the Lou Dobbs’s of the world. But Dobbs is not a racist. Calling him one (looking at you Steve Gilliard) is not helpful. In fact, Dobbs’ nationalism does not even rank up there with some of the crazy hyper-nationalists – you know, the kind that get all bent out of shape when they see brochures in English and Spanish, and demand that everyone “speak English”, even during private conversations. No, Dobbs is not the problem.
Dobbs’ cohort over at CNN, Jack Cafferty, might be another story. He consistently refers to illegal immigrants as having “no rights” (really, Jack(ass)? Can we just do whatever we want to them then?) He also likes to lump foreign-born US citizens together with foreign immigrants, legal and non-legal, and advocates a basic “round ‘em up” policy. Here he is on the immigration rallies:
"At some point this could all turn very violent as Americans become fed up with the failure of their government to address the most pressing domestic issue of our time ... where's the immigration service? Why don't they pull the buses up and start asking these people to show their green cards? And the ones that don't have them, put them on the buses and send them home."
Oh, and he once ran over somebody on a bike with car and then fled the accident scene. But I digress.
But as least Cafferty is consistent with his disdain for all things foreign. Here he is on “The Arab World” (whatever the fuck that is):
"The Arab world is where innocent people are kidnapped, blindfolded, tied up, tortured and beheaded, and then videotape of all of this is released to the world as though they’re somehow proud of their barbarism. Somehow, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the sensitivity of the Arab world. They don’t seem to have very much." He added: "It’s going to come down to them or us."
Yeah, Jack. And you know what else, “The Black World” or as I like to refer to it, “The Negro Urban Jungle” is where people live in ghettos, sell drugs, neglect their babies, wear their clothing in too loose a fashion, walk in a manner disrespectul towards white citizens, and haugtily refuse to speak the Queen's English. So I’m not too concerned about…blah, blah, blah……it’s going to come down to them or us. Well, hopefully them and just you, Jack.
A rambling post, but the moral of the story is save your fire for the real problems.
Ha!
Pefect. Now Democrats need to work in the phrase "Tom Delay Republicans" into each and every one of their speechs. Guilt by association seems to work very well in this country.