Racist targeting of migrants is “easy”; fixing what is really wrong with this country won't be, since what is wrong starts at the top

 

Oh look at those pretty fences there now, except that they were not needed this time for the electoral vote count, because, you know, “liberals” actually believe in democracy:

 

Anyways, since white women are “special victims” in this society, it was easy for some House Democrats to take up on Joe Biden suggestion of “bipartisanship” with Republicans—and likely in the Senate and Biden’s pen hand—and pass the Laken Riley Act, which claims to target illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes, but in fact is being used to vastly expand the injustices of Bill Clinton’s personal “bipartisan” 1996 immigration “reform” law. 

Like that law, it also targets “noncitizens”—which is to say anyone who is a legal resident but not a U.S citizen—but now subjecting them to deportation for merely being charged with “petty crimes,” meaning that police, ICE agents or racist neighbors who merely feel “unsafe” can make faked charges leading to arrests and put those brown-skinned people in the deportation line.

In voting against the Act, Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal pointed out the injustice in promoting a law that would put even innocent people in jeopardy on the basis of false accusations without the right to due process, but for Republicans, as reported by the New York Times who only see “criminals” like Rep. Mike Collins, anyone who isn’t a “citizen” who commits “minor-level crimes,” needs to be “off the street. These criminals are getting bolder and bolder while our communities become more unsafe.”

The racist hypocrisy is more apparent with the claim by Rep. Tom Emmer that “This bill is more than just a piece of legislation; it’s a return to common-sense American values.”  You know, like the “common sense” values expressed by Trump and Republicans after 59 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017, or the El Paso mass shooting in 2019 which of course Trump’s racist rhetoric against migrants had nothing to do with. What did Republicans do about it? Nothing, of course, except to claim that there would be less mass killings if there were more guns on the street. It’s an “American value” to have a gun and use it once in a while.

Notice how quickly Trump and the media swiveled from the New Orleans terrorist attack by a man with an ISIS flag posted on his vehicle to suggesting that such attacks would “end” if the border is sealed, as if migrants committed the act. The man who did conduct the attack was a former U.S. Army soldier and a U.S. citizen, just like the man involved in the terrorist attack in Fort Hood in 2009. Ok, so yes that illegal immigrant who claims he was “drunk” set fire to a woman on a New York subway, a horrendous act among hundreds that happen every day. But that never happens on NYC subways, right? But the culprit was already under arrest when a 67-year-old man was found burned six days later on the subway system.

We are also told that a week ago someone who witnesses claimed was a Hispanic woman in Seattle made an “unprovoked” attack on a man, punching him and stabbing him once before simply walking casually down the street; the victim spent a day in the hospital and was released, and the suspect has not been “found,” and it seems that what her “ethnicity” was is no longer “clear.”  But again, it’s not like stabbings are “unusual” occurrences in Seattle 1.

Yet Trump and his supporters act like all crime would end if we just “closed the border”; they even think that the “scourge” of fentanyl would end, forgetting where it actually originates from and its domestic demand for all illegal drugs. Chinese online “pharmaceutical” companies who deal directly with U.S. “customers” through commercial delivery companies are quite clever on what to call their “new” wonder drug next after it is put on a U.S. “banned” list. If the “demand” is high enough, we should remember that fentanyl was first created as a new, more powerful “painkiller” in the U.S. back in 1959. Someone can probably figure out how to bring “manufacturing” back here again.

But what you worry? Even the so-called “liberal media” is running scared. Forget that migrant labor is largely responsible for the avoidance of a recession during the last four years, that GDP has grown because of it, and Social Security is remaining “solvent” for at least a couple more years longer than it would have. And sorry, Thom Hartmann, raising wages isn’t going to bring anyone back to working in poultry plants—it’s just going to raise prices. Of course the “natives” will actually have to come back, like they didn’t when the Bracero program was ended in 1965.

We found out in 2019 how even “progressive” populists promote racist ideas that don’t “fix” the problems they imagine. Months after ICE thugs invaded those Mississippi poultry plants that resulted in 680 arrests of suspected “illegals,” one reporter who visited the sites noted that employees (most of them immigrants) still working at them had observed greater efforts at, but the continuing difficulty of, finding and retaining “native” replacements, many of whom quit soon after being hired because they simply did not like the work, or were fired because they were not motivated to come to work on time or every day.

Of course why would they? OSHA lists poultry plants—similar to other food production like meatpacking—as places where there is “exposure to high noise levels, dangerous equipment, slippery floors, musculosketal disorders and hazardous chemicals…biological hazards handling live birds or exposure to poultry feces and dusts which can increase risk for many diseases.” And you wonder why employers can only persuade undocumented workers to take unfilled jobs?

The truth doesn’t matter. The Wall Street Journal reported that Mark Zuckerberg, now unashamedly sucking-up to Trump, is ending "fact-checking" on Facebook and Instagram. According to the WSJ, it is now "OK" to make demonizing and dehumanizing false claims about migrants because limiting such content based on lack of facts is "out of touch with mainstream discourse." It isn't hard to read between the lines there: lies are on the same level as truth in this country now. 

I have an updated volume of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World which includes his 1958 essay “Brave New World Revisited” in he which examines the similarities between the world related in his novel to that of Nazi Germany. He notes that “Hitler's aim was first to move the masses and then, having pried them loose from their traditional loyalties and morali­ties, to impose upon them (with the hypnotized con­sent of the majority) a new authoritarian order of his own devising.”

Sounds “familiar,” doesn’t it?  Any Jordan Klepper video will tell you that:

 

 Huxley goes on

 

Let us see what Hitler thought of the masses he moved and how he did the moving. The first principle from which he started was a value judgment: the masses are utterly contemptible. They are incapable of abstract thinking and uninterested in any fact outside the circle of their immediate experience. Their behav­ior is determined, not by knowledge and reason, but by feelings and unconscious drives. It is in these drives and feelings that "the roots of their positive as well as their negative attitudes are implanted." To be success­ful a propagandist must learn how to manipulate these instincts and emotions. "The driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them into action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door of their hearts." . . . In post-Freud­ian jargon, of their unconscious.

Huxley observes that while Hitler’s “theories” on race were incomprehensible and despicable drivel, his ability and knowledge of the people he was delivering that drivel to through speech was uncanny. Is it that difficult to believe that Trump learned some “lessons” from Hitler? Haven’t we been told that Trump’s former wife, Ivana, stated that Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches that had been given to him by a “friend”—one who made of point of saying he was not Jewish as Trump had claimed as a way of “defending” himself—in their bedroom for nighttime reading?

Why shouldn’t we believe that Trump is privately contemptuous of his supporters when he knows he can say the most ridiculous lies and they believe him? The only other explanation is that Trump is a pathological liar who lives in world that isn’t real, as his supporters appear to do anyways. Of course even many in the mainstream media stupidly follow Trump’s lead to “explain” why people support him—thus those who are not ignorant about what is going on in this country should now be skeptical about what they are being told in even in the “liberal” or “moderate” media (meaning CNN) if it “justifies” what Trump is doing to this country.

But as long as he can keep his people “focused” on the brown-skinned “vermin,” they won’t spend too much time thinking about all those other things he is—or isn’t—doing, like “fixing” the real “problems” he keeps insisting didn’t exist when he was president the last time. Sure it is easy to deport those millions because they are easy to kick around and the Hispanic community won’t take to the streets to protest because it is itself divided and full of people who are racist against those “ugly” little indigenous people.  

It will only be later when people say “Wow, what happened to all those jobs we were promised, or why didn’t my pay go up, or why are prices going up instead of down, or why are same people who commit most of the crimes in this country still committing crimes?” People have been asking that since 1965, and the only people who saw any “improvement” were those billionaires.

Of course, MAGA types were stupid enough to believe any of that in the first place. Trump’s deportation and tariff plans if implemented fully will reduce domestic production and the peripheral jobs (including white collar jobs) that depend upon those “illegal” jobs being filled. Hell, just close whole businesses because they cannot operate on the margins without “illegal” labor because nobody wants to make it legal to bring any of those “vermin” here, because they might actually stay long enough to have kids who can vote in our elections and have that “say” that they otherwise are not allowed to have in this country.

Yeah, as I pointed out a few posts ago about Clinton’s “brave new economy,” the new “tech” economy does not really improve said economy or create long-term jobs at all (where do you think all those “call centers” with frustratingly unhelpful “customer service” agents who speak in funny accents are located at?)—and those new “data centers” in rural areas only create temporary jobs and reek environmental, water and electrical grid havoc on poor and rural communities. And of course Elon is more interested in sharing American space secrets with Russia and creating jobs in China than he is in the U.S., which seems to be against what Trump promised but is being pushed aside by his "co-president":

But you know what? What? Trump’s short-sightedness and purposeful ignorance is like an infectious disease, and people do not know what they have is a disease. Trump “unchained” is making both himself and the country look ridiculous and out of control not just with his cabinet picks, but also on the foreign policy side, with his desire of sending “shit-hole” Puerto Rico out to sea while adding Greenland, Canada and Panama (or at least its canal) to his list of personal playthings, whether they like it or not.

Maybe this is just a lot bluster he himself doesn’t take “seriously,” but if it is, what about everything else he has “promised”? Deportation is the “easy” part—just look for anyone who looks “Mexican” and demand their “papers.” But all the rest of that “stuff” that for now is just a lot of media-friendly blurbs that sound “cool” but is more like a stick of gum that tasted good at first but soon wears out its welcome. 

Well, we’ll just say the illegals are the problem for everything until they are all deported, and then we’ll think of someone else to blame it all on, like those “crazy liberals.”

Trump is 78 years old, so it isn’t surprising that he thinks in terms of short-term greed. He has his “legacy” to think about. Being elected by stupid people he knows are stupid was “easy”; after all, they were not “smart” enough to be born into wealth and inherit most of it from his father. 

Of course, Trump’s many branded business failures proves that he wasn’t that “smart” after all, and depended on smarter people to make him look "bigger" by whatever means necessary (like the illegal kind that landed Allen Weisselberg in prison) than he actually was. But then again, Hitler was a failed “artist,” but he could sure “talk," and Trump has proved that his real "talent" is in the infomercial business, where can sell himself.

Thus the future means nothing to Trump, it’s all about what’s good for him now, with no thought to the consequences of self-serving cupidity. Trump says he wants to make the country “great” again, but that is only through his own eyes and how it serves his self-promotion. Others may view things differently, but that is “fixed” by surrounding himself with sycophants instead of truth-tellers.

Is Trump worried about what happens to the planet or the country 10 years from now? Certainly not, because either complete dementia or death will likely catch-up with him before that part of the “future” arrives, and like William Barr, why worry about your “legacy” when you are dead, as long as you have “happy” thoughts about yourself when the end comes? Who will be around to him he is full of it? Probably not the “baby-boomer” generation—the kind that came of age in the 60s and 70s—which is on its way to oblivion along with their hopefulness for a better world.

Today the nihilism and narcissism of the generations that have come afterward will be asking themselves what happened? Why didn’t we listen? It’s like people who hate “old music” because it is just a bunch of songs about love and peace—they only like listening to music about being nihilistic and narcissistic. Maybe there will come a time (which I doubt) that people will ask themselves “why do we think like this?” It will because they didn’t listen, or didn’t want to.

People have been warned, and but by the time of reckoning comes it will be too late. Trump’s drill-baby-drill ignorance is manifest by his demands of Germany and the UK to end their renewable energy initiatives; the leaders of the countries shouldn’t even try to conceal their contempt of this for-the-moment fool. Trump thinks threats and retaliation for imaginary bullying by foreign countries with their own domestic problems but have leaders who are smarter than what we have now makes America "great." It doesn't. Such stupidity brought about our “problems” today, from the racist immigration policies from 60 years ago targeting Hispanics, to allowing China to enter the WTO in the belief that it would turn into a “democratic” country 10 years after the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests.

USA Today columnist Rex Huppke tells us that with Trump’s certification as president, it is time to “declare war” on “stupidity”:

The best thing sensible Americans who oppose him and the MAGA leadership can do is remember that stupidity should be embarrassing. Trump exists in our political sphere because he persuaded people to forget that simple fact. He somehow turned dunderheads like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and, of course, himself – public figures who routinely utter abject nonsense – into people who get taken seriously. Following the New Orleans terrorist attack on New Year’s Day, Trump ranted about immigration when the suspect killed in the attack was a U.S. citizen. That was stupid and unhelpful. For a president-elect and elected leaders who protect him, it should be deeply embarrassing.

Huppke tells us that ignorance and stupidity should not be allowed a way to become “comfortable.” But that is exactly what Trump and his MAGA supporters have done. By blaming migrants for “everything,” they have allowed themselves not to look at their own selves in the mirror and see who is to blame. Some of the fixes should have been "easy" to see, like raising the income limit on Social Security taxes, or investing more in green energy. But we live in a country that is reactive to problems rather than proactive, like waiting for a bridge to collapse before "fixing" it.

Until they feel shame and embarrassment about what they allowed to happen by believing and promoting lies, lunatic conspiracies and paranoid delusions that led to the kind of disastrous policies that Bill Clinton allowed to happen during his administration, the same “problems” that have occurred in differing relative forms from one administration to the next will continue until people realize that what they thought was the “problem” really wasn’t the problem after all, that the “fixes” as enunciated by Trump and the “dreams” of far-right Republicans were always the real problem after all.