I know I promised not to revisit this immigration issue again, but it does appear the Repug rightwingnuttery will be using this as a wedge issue for the upcoming mid-terms.
Daily we are rewarded with gems for our choker of xenophobia, the first symptom and tool of fascism. O’Reilly will lead a boycott, the frothing latter day Minute Men will pack assault weapons, Congress will build a wall and force everyone to speak King George’s tortured English. Except, of course, his very Hispanic Attorney General - who is not even clear if his own grandparents’ entry into this country was legal - asserts emphatically that Boss Bush has never supported English as the national language, while his press secretary builds a snowman in May saying Bush does.
Spinning, out of control.
Historical comparisons are so obvious as to risk being utterly simplistic. The Nazis hated the Jews and the gypsies and the Catholics and the Communists. The Communists hate the capitalists, the Catholics hate the Jews, the Jews hate the Nazis and now the Palestinians, and the gypsies – sadly – have all but disappeared.
Closer to home, American powers have urged and used hatred of everyone from the natives to the slaves to the enslaved foreigners, including the Irish, Germans, Asians, Italians, and yes, blacks and Mexicans.
In fact, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that our Mexican brethren have become this election year’s niggers.
[Please know, I hope it goes without saying - even to the PC police - that my use of that thoroughly repulsive word means no disrespect, only disgust that it has ever been used at all.]
Karl Rove has launched this season’s Southern Strategy; time for all the good sheeple to froth on cue, be that an assault on our sacred anthem or a flag without stars and stripes.
The real assault, though, is this infernal wall, conjuring nothing of safety or security, but only images of Berlin and Jericho and China and the Palestinian Occupied Territories.
Not only are there the follies of unspeakable expense and diplomatic disaster (the themes of this administration and its crony congress), but how many more insults to the very concept of freedom can we the people take?
Aren’t these the self-same Republicans who claimed for Reagan and their own that most liberating and inspiring of Cold War events? Don't they take credit for tearing down that wall?
Which makes all the more mind-bending (sometimes the ironies and contradictions and hypocrisies come down so hard you need a hat) this little jewel from Jeff Sessions (R-AL), tightening up the racist necklace like a lynching noose.
Trying to convince us all of the merits of this dividing structure, Senator Sessions evoked the classic Frost poem, The Mending Wall. Referencing the famous line, “Good fences make good neighbors,” he exposes his ignorance on so many levels.
If Senator Sessions ever even read this powerful poem, he certainly never understood it. In fact, he plays the same fool he quotes in Frost’s story, the neighbor who each year insists on rebuilding the useless wall that kept out neither varmints nor hunters, an abundantly bold truth that the willfully blind neighbor refused to see.
Just so, Sessions refuses to see the point of Frost’s wisdom, summed up in his real point - "Something there is that does not like a wall" - even when the poet lays it out in laser clarity.
Before I build a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
It is never enough to listen to the poets; we must actually hear them.
13 comments:
Good catch on the Frost poem; this isn't the first time the cons misinterpreted either art or a Biblical text.
I'll relay my own views on immigration reform once I've fully formed them. I will confess that there is a lrge part of me that would embrace the FDR attitude of protecting the American worker, no matter what.
That said: The only sure way to stop Mexican immigration is for the Meixcan people to replace a malfunctioning and oppressive government. Nothing short of a new Mexican revolution will change the way things work down there.
And if there were such a rebellion -- if there were even the hint of one -- you know damn well what Washington would do.
The CIA and the American power structure has long played a controlling role in Mexican governmental affairs. Most red-stater would scoff at the idea -- but then again, most red staters don't read books or articles that challenge their preconceptions.
For a taste -- JUST a taste -- of the facts, try here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau02032003.html
So. Maybe the "fence" notion would work -- if they built one that could keep American influence OUT of Mexican politics. The laborers will stay at home if they have hope for a better future.
I'm in full agreement with Joseph, Doc. That said, I do think you are slanting this whole issue so that everyone not on your side is a vile racist. That's not fair, and is in fact demogoguery.
The Minutemen are "frothing?" Please.
How do you feel about the US State Dep't telling the Mexican gov't exactly what sections of the border the Minutemen are patrolling on any given day? That's what they're doing. Have you stopped and thought about that? Why would they do that?
The Minutemen are, whether you agree with them or not, like any "neighborhood watch" group--and I doubt you have a problem with those groups. Is there any evidence at all that the Minutemen are breaking laws? On the contrary, they are preventing laws from being broken! Or is it okay with you that laws are broken if they are laws you don't happen to agree with?
You are also wrong in blithely treating the issue of immigration (illegal or otherwise) as a simple wedge issue. Not only are the Republicans clearly split on how to deal with it, (so much so that Bush is trying to straddle the fence in his own party!), but a hell of a lot of Democrats and Independents are outraged about the porousness of our borders.
There are a multitude of reasons to be on the other side from you. Racism isn't the primary one, if it is one at all.
The minutemen are in fact frothing. I saw one on C-SPAN last week, spittle literally flying as he speechified in DC. He frightened me.
my my. so interesting how inflammatory this immigration fight can be. not a wedge issue? just because the wedge cuts across dems and repugs does NOT mean it's not a wedge issue. in fact, that would make it one by definition. it's dividing everyone, even families, just like slavery and abolition did in the early nineteenth century.
we're all entitled to our opinions, and i happen to feel that race is the not-so-subtle subtext of this immigration wedge. just because i disagree with you on this, unirealist (again, so rare), does not make me a demagogue. our opinions just differ.
even so, i would ask you to examine very carefully just how the story is being hyped, and then what the ultimate fallout is. who suffers, and who stands to gain?
clearly, the mexicans suffer, and joe, to blithely suggest that the mexican people rebel is like blithely insisting the battered wife leave, or the slave strike back at his oppressor.
you don't have to look terribly deep to see just why there is a long history of oppression in sub-us western hemisphere. it's the same mentality that imported slaves and started a war for the 'right' to keep them. the oppression of native and other poor hispanics is enabled by a ruling class mentality imported from europe, and now for decades actively aided and abetted by "us interests."
this is the very same reason, unirealist, that our officials alert mexico to the movements of the minutemen. our government - and bush is hardly the only culprit, but certainly the very worst - has NEVER enforced immigration laws at the source of the problem, which is where these people are hired. have you ever thought about what fool would enter our country if there were no jobs? that will only happen if the hiring corporations suffer serious consequences. but they pay out too much in campaign contributions to the repug party to expect anything other than enabling of their own greedy agenda.
but the upshot is that the mexican people, whose livelihoods in their own country have been destroyed by the very same forces of corporate greed, would be fools NOT to come to this country and work for slave wages that are better than at home, but worse than what american workers will tolerate. hell, why would they even risk a revolution when a better life is no more than a belly scramble over desert for a couple of days?
i have hardly treated immigration as a "simple" wedge issue. so much the contrary. i have tried - clearly failing - to expose the deeper complexities of the entire problem. again, as succinctly as i dare put it, corporate power in this country (and europe) - interests promoted and guarded by our military - have pillaged the resources of virtually every country on this planet (including our own), leaving natives deprived of what is rightfully theirs as well as bereft of any potential to eke out a living on their native soil. that's the stick; the carrot is the fantasyland american dreamlife we lure them with.
all i can say to the immigration problem is a great big DUH. when you carefully construct a cause and effect process, why be stupid enough to blame problems on the effect? especially when those "problems" are not even affecting you directly. what rich ceo ever feels anything from the immigration situation, except if anyone were to actually get a clue and go after the real cause. which would of course dminish their obscene profits, so we can't have that now, can we?
my opinion is what it is precisely because i have yet to see an argument stricken FOR these strong vigilante immigration positions that bothers to get at the core reasons for the problem. everyone is flailing about at this point here, everyone with their personal pet peeve, and no one actually gets to the bottom of gosh, why do we have all these immigrants here? why is it life is so damn hard in their own countries? no one is asking what our policies have done and are doing to create and perpetuate the problem.
the image i get is parallel to the guy sitting on the dung heap complaining about the smell and the flies, so his solution is to use perfume to mask the smell and cannons take out the flies. all the while continuing to add his own crap to the heap.
we have to be smarter than that. like everything else, until we dare to tackle the problem at its roots, we're just wankin' and have no right to expect anything resembling a satisfying result.
fdr's approach, joe, did not just support the american worker; he also placed a few real limits on corporations. unfortunately, had he really had the power to do it then (corporations were well on their way toward locking in their unassailable 'personhood' and would not tolerate restrictions on their 'rights,' despite the fact that the depression was caused by their greed and failed responsibilities), he'd have gone back to keeping corporations on a very tight leash, with charters requiring annual renewal based on fulfilled community responsibilities and a record clean of fraud or misleading the public they should be serving. in theory, bush could do this very thing right now, especially given how much power he has claimed for himself. but zilch odds on that one.
again, watch who's gaining from all this, and who's losing.
as for "frothing" minutemen, i did indeed fully intend that term and all its implications. i have seen several of these guys interviewed, and by and large, they are indeed frothing, and as sunny says, they can be scarey. not a single one of them has considered the immigration problem any more deeply than their fear of someone bringing in a bomb or taking a job they don't even want. they proudly call themselves vigilantes. i will never be comfortable with anyone taking the law into their own hands. isn't this the very thing we are all so damn upset with bush about?
i don't know about your 'hood, but my watch group does NOT take the law into our own hands, and we do NOT pack assault weapons, or weapons of any kind. and there is no push to deputize any of us. and we sure as hell don't build impenetrable fences; that is left to the ultra-paranoid residents of gated communities.
my 'hood watch group does what good citizens have been doing forever, in 'hoods and communities and yes, on our borders. we keep our eyes open and report suspicious behavior, leaving the frontline action to the police. if we have a problem with the police, we go through the department or the city council or the mayor's office. civilized. not vigilante.
granted, it is awfully hard to get bush's attention on anything that really matters, discouraging the normal line of approach. but if all those guys who want to head to the border were instead to head to washington, they might get more solutions. the problem is that there are far less of these vigilantes than there are visitors and "neighborly" americans, as those enormous demonstrations showed.
this should give the minutemen something of a clue; there is a problem, yes, but their perspective on it does not appear to have strong support by the numbers. by the guns, sure, but that's just this administration using the issue anyway they can to insert a wedge in a really serious election year. otherwise, why didn't bush bring this issue in with him from texas when he was first campaigning? should we think that he really cares about any of this, given his performance protecting our borders his first few months of office? or even since then; how much safer do you feel? will you really feel safer with a wall? remember to consider before you answer that frost's line about 'walling in or walling out.'
and one last point that actually relates to the previous one: our concerns about our porous borders is part and parcel to the fears being inflamed by our wedge issue buddies in the neocon camp. we've managed extremely well through several foreign wars and even a civil war without a freakin' wall, for chrissake! and please don't whine that the world changed after 9/11. the most salient change since then has been the ease with which folks have been waltzed into fearful and xenophobic territory. and don't kid yourself; every single fear issue has involved racism. with the possible exception of bird flu.
to gain a broader sense of this perspective (which, i feel the need to remind, is getting NO airplay ANYWHERE), i highly encourage all of you to read frost's original poem:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html
and then visit this guy's post, which i ran across this morning after combing through joe's incredible stuff. finding myself on commondreams for the first time in many weeks, the headline of course struck my eye after having posted about frost myself.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0519-22.htm
anyone who has read and understood the mending wall could not miss the connections i made to it, or that david benjamin has made. it's the same image: the wall closes us up and leaves us in isolation from the world, afraid and alone on the porch with our shotgun. is this who we want to be, trying to convince ourselves we're happy with the freshly repaired fence and the loaded 12-gauge that keep all the neighbors out?
not a world i aspire to or want to contribute to. thanks, but that is not my america.
ps. just read the landau piece, joe, and it actually makes my point that mexico - and all other countries around the world - are actually subservient to american interests. his focus is slightly different here, tunining in on castaneda's role in current immigration negotiations instead of the role that this history of subservience to american interests plays in why there is an immigration problem in the first place.
like i said, until the debate starts looking at the root cause of all this, we will never have a workable solution. and that will only happen when we are willing to take on corporate power and strip it down significantly.
take just a few minutes to consider just now many of our current problems could be addressed by that single move.
lobby corruption
the war machinery
environmental needs
healthcare
justice in the workplace
justice in the judicial system!
poverty
...etc.
you get the picture. i hope.
Doc, no one on this planet is more outraged than me about the way most people on this planet are forced to live. In that frame of reference, I agree with everything you have said.
And, no doubt you are correct that the reason so many people want to come here to the US is because we, following in the footsteps of so many other colonial powers, have raped and robbed their home countries, and continue to do so. NAFTA, for just one example, has actually widened the gap between manufacturing wages here and in Mexico. Hard to believe it could have made things even worse for our southern neighbor, but it did.
That's as far as I can go toward your position, because that IS your whole position. I have been clear on mine--I would prefer to see all immigration halted, until it is evident that our environment can tolerate more population growth. You, on the other hand, refuse to look at the immigration problem (and yes, it is a huge problem in numerous ways), arguing that it has a root cause. While that is insightful of you, it is no help. When the house is burning down, I'm not concerned about what started the fire.
unirealist,
i will make no apology for my position of going to the root of the immigration problem in order to consider its fullest scope. it is a bit odd you will then say 'as far as it goes.' getting to the bottom of things is not far enough for you?
you then offer your position as better because it looks ONLY at the environmental effects ONLY within our borders?
which is the narrower vision?
you will find no environmentalist more fierce than i, but my environmentalism knows no boundaries, either of geography or creatures. an environmentalism that narrows its concerns for pollution only within one country does NOT understand the fullest impact of the dangers; nature does not honor the map of our country any more than the polluted air and waters do!
and an environmentalism that ignores the impact of this broadest rape of the planet AND its peoples is not an environmentalism at all, but elitism,
this world will never survive this environmental crisis if we at any point fall into elitism (and that paradoxical image is fully intended) of any kind.
and as for the image of fleeing the fire you offer, i can only say that those who dare to put out a fire are at all points intensely concerned about not only the where but the how of the fire's origin, as that information - if they're lucky enough to have it - guides them in their rescue mission.
i'm hoping more of us will choose to be heroes in this crisis, and not simply flee.
ps.
just ran across this from molly ivins, who's lived in texas long enought to know a little something about immigration, the border, and these republican scalliwags. i quote her last paragraph here:
By all means, reform immigration with this deep obeisance to the Republican right-wing nut faction and their open contempt for "foreigners." But do not pretend for one minute that it is not a craven political bow to racism (yes, racism -- I am actually calling them racists, although they pretend it hurts their feelings. Try reading their websites and see for yourself), and to nativism, to xenophobia and to Know-Nothingism. Just don't forget what you are throwing away in the process.
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1374
Doc, I suggest we establish our contexts before debating further. You know, I get furious when some unthinking guy (usually a guy) speeds down the cross street by my house. My kids walk across that street. I also realize that we are on the brink of both civil war and a WWIII. And, in a larger context, that none of those things really matter: the universe itself is sentient, and we are all part and parcel of the same spirit, and it cannot die.
What I'm saying is that context is important. Everything you say is true (except your insinuation that racism is the exclusive heart of the immigration debate--although I agree that it is a significant part of it), but...
It is possible to see things in one light, and still another or even a third, simultaneously. I can want to stop all immigration from a strictly national point of view, in one context, while in another context I seek a global environmentalism.
We aren't really arguing, are we? Your sense of outrage is palpable, and justified. But it isn't that the Minutemen are wrong, it is just that they are operating in a narrower context than you. The issue of border security isn't at all irrelevant, in their context, and it isn't bad, what they do.
Nor am I wrong. I would be a liar if I said environmental issues are my only concern, but I tell you truthfully they are paramount. And I feel no less strongly about global environmentalism. In fact, I was exorciated a few years ago for posting a comment to the effect that I would rather see the human race 90% eradicated than see the Siberian tiger go extinct.
It's a matter of contexts, that's all. I hope I haven't offended you in any way. Thanks for the lively debate.
ah, unirealist, thank you so much for this most gracious comment on our debate. i've been thinking with each post how odd it seemed to be at odds with you, and i think i alluded to that sense more than once. and these recent words from you confirmed tenfold my intuition; we share many many perspectives.
or contexts, as you say.
i had last night a deeply educating conversation with a dear friend who is an immigration lawyer. she is very sympathetic to the plight of immigrants, defending many in her line of work. but she also noted the foolishness of having no regulations at all. point taken, and i hope i didn't convey that this would be my position. we of course need to have some rules about the numbers of legal immigrants, where they come from, and what character criteria they must meet, just as we need some rules about how our borders are defined and guarded.
but she also reminded me of the role the sierra club has taken in the immigration debate, and that this was a strategic goal on the part of this rather conservative faction to shift the tone of both the environmental and immigration debates.
i still say that, given the number of illegal immigrants amounting to 4% of the entire US population does not impose a crisis or environmental risk overall. a 20% of AZ, where water is dear, is another story, of course.
my friend is a reformed republican. and she was not just a voter; she was actively involved in caucusing and representing her party, through campaigns and primaries. but something happened to the party over the past fifteen years; an immigration of sorts from southern states moved into her midwestern region and began to take over the party. these were the rightwingnuts we're all familiar with: pseudo-christian, nationalist, not just a little racist, and staunchly capitalist. (hm; note how closely this fits the definition of fascism.) she left the republican party because it was 'taken over by aliens', much the same way the sierra club was invaded.
i dropped my membership to the sierra club when they made that shift. i found what was happening pretty appalling and transparent, but there it was.
i've since become philosophical about the environment - and all these other issues - in much the same way you have. i figure nature can take care of herself, really. humans may not survive what convulsions she must suffer to recover her own equilibrium, but nature will always prevail. like you, i'd much rather save the tiger than fret about the livelihood of a group of humans. we can never replace the tiger once it's gone, and there are way too many humans, anyway.
in fact, that's the largest piece of the problem, though it also requires a look at just why there are so many of us.
in any case, i'm terribly glad you took the time to extend words of peace, and there was never any chance for offense. i only hope i never caused any on your part.
i suppose the trigger issue on that count might have been the race card (i use that phrase intentionally). please know that i was not attempting to accuse folks who take a strong position 'against' immigration as being racist. i was only cautioning folks to consider how the repugs are clearly using racist impulses to fuel the debate. it's an old strategy, as i reminded.
on that note, i would also encourage you to read kevin baker's piece in this month's harper's on how the right has for decades also used the scare tactic of accusing its enemies of betraying real americans. we see this over and over again; rove uses it to death, so to speak. watch how they draw the country into the immigration debate with this lure. racism, anti-americanism (those flags?! the anthem in spanish???! horrors!!), it's all the same; whatever gets folks riled up enough to threaten violence, because this threat keeps most citizens under control by clamoring for more control. yet more fascism.
these are the most insane of times, but i am eternally grateful for those like you who present a considered and respectful perspective in debate. i always look forward to your thoughts, and i will now even more so.
thank you again for being there.
ps.
just had to mention that the lone dem amendment to this godforsaken immigration bill that hopefully will NOT pass is what soledad this morning described as a 'stiff' fine: $20,000.
say what? stiff?? they pay just one worker less than this in a year. how is that stiff??
the other thing is that mccain has rightfully pointed out that this debate is getting inflammatory fuel from rush, savage, and wolf:
http://www.observer.com/20060529/20060529_Jason_Horowitz_pageone_newsstory1.asp
it will definitely be a wedge issue if rove has anything to say about it.
Doc, I don't know what the Sierra Club shift is about. Please clarify at some point. Due to local concerns, I've been unhappy with the major environmental groups lately.
You're right, the idea of fines is demented.
Thanks for your gracious reply, and your equanimity.
Oh, I misinterpreted your comment on the fines, I think. I was referring to the fines that are to be assessed on the illegals, before they can have citizenship. The figure there is to be $2000.
Also, I do suscribe to Harper's, and have been reading the Baker article. Slowly! Too much going on.
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