Más Wankery Sobre Inmigrantes

Did you ever notice how, when things are looking really bleak for the President, all of the sudden some new, stupid outrage seems to come from out of nowhere and start making headlines? Missing Americans on tropical islands, "wars" on tree-themed holidays, maintaining the precious lives of the brain-dead and so forth? Could it be that the American press and the government both massage the news away from stories critical of the Chief Executive, in the same way that they both manufactured negative news stories during the Clinton years?

I mean, take our present situation. Everyone except those with less brain activity than the Unfortunate Ms. Schiavo accept that we are led by a semi-literate fascism-inclined bozo, the kind of man who, had he been alive during Caveman times, would have gotten himself immediately entangled in a tar pit for future generations to unearth while his fellow tribesmen were out hunting mammoth and inventing wheels.

And just when talk is becoming seriously dire (major newspapers, for example, start seriously talking about censure and even the Big I), Congress starts debating obscene, angry-white-guy legislation punishing...sigh...illegal immigrants.

Don't you people watch "The Simpsons"? A politician shifting blame from himself by focusing everyone on hating illegal immigrants is actually the single oldest trick in the book. Okay, maybe it's second after simply walking up behind your opponent and just shooting him in the head. But it's an extremely old trick.

Before I take on any of these drooling right-wing mouthbreathers getting all riled up about illegal Mexicans polluting their fair country, I'll give you my take on the entire issue in a nutshell.

Illegal Mexican immigrants don't do shit to you white people, particularly you rich white people, so you should all just calm down and stop being racist.

See, here's the thing. White Americans live either in BFE or in big cities. Those living in the middle of nowhere don't meet a lot of foreigners, and the ones they meet they tend to ignore, so they rely on the opinions of their racist parents and racist images in our racist American media. So they think Mexicans are lazy, sweaty guys with big hats and moustaches because that's what they have come to know.

When you live in a big city, there are lots and lots of people around. It gets very irritating to be in close quarters with so many different people from all over the world. So a lot of city dwellers, out of frustration at their living situations, develop racist attitudes towards those of different ethnicities who live around them. New York City has its reputation as a hotbed of angry racists for a reason.

Mix it all together, and you get a lot of white Americans who resent Mexican people, both those here illegally and those with every legal right to live and work in America. I include myself, though I try to keep these feelings in check. Sometimes, I am awoken early in the morning by Daddy Yankee or Mexican polka music, and this upsets me greatly. I just try not to let life's little frustrations color my overall perspective.

So, anyway, a lot of white Americans are unfortunately receptive to this idea that illegal Mexican immigrants are fucking up our country, even though it's not true. It's just a myth, I swear. Really. There are a lot of people coming to America from all over the world, and not all of them come here legally. They come here because our country has so much, and almost every other country on Earth has so little.

This is not their fault. It is our fault. They just want a little extra money to help out their families, you know? And they do all kinds of menial labor that big, greedy American companies rely upon to pay their rich executives.

What's the solution to the "problem" of illegal immigration? To not worry about it so much. Okay, there's a bit more to it than that. I'm all for border security, though I'm far far far far more concerned with, you know, people bringing in explosives and the Hanta virus than a couple of guys who just want gardening work. But once they're here, I see no reason why we shouldn't try to help them become productive citizens.

I mean, they're here, right? If you don't help them get jobs and learn the language and send their kids to school, you're going to have a society where there's this whole underclass of people who can't have normal, fucntional lives, leaving them angry and alienated and crippled by cyclical poverty. Think that sounds nice? Ask South Africa and Israel how well it's working out for them.

Which brings us to right-wing hate festival Captain's Quarters. Captain "Special" Ed is upset about the student protests throughout Los Angeles area schools as part of the massive outpouring of anger about Congress' latest proposals, to criminalize undocumented immigrants and anyone providing themn with aid. The first paragraph is like a How-To manual for writing with hate and ignorance:

It's hard to imagine that the schoolchildren who engaged in a pro-illegal immigration rally yesterday helped their cause much, except to harden the polarization already felt on both sides of the issue. While our politicians in Washington talked about how the illegals came to the US to enjoy the American dream, their actions speak much more towards the reconquista that, as Michelle Malkin has written, lies at the heart of the triumphalism that they now espouse. The Los Angeles area school districts allowed 22,000 students to protest border security and the enforcement of immigration law Monday...

Let's add up the Captain's infractions together, shall we?

(1) Note how he disingenuously pretends to offer the protestors a "critique" on how to further their cause, as if he's an impartial media expert. "Hmm...that won't help their cause much, and I should know because I hate them and everything they stand for." You know what will really hurt their cause, Cap'n? Ignorant pricks spewing venom on obscure blogs.

(2) Dehumanizing the protestors, immigrant and non-immigrant. He can't even call them "protestors." Only "illegals."

(3) Citing Michelle Malkin, a woman whose most recent book was edited by a 24 year old disgraced serial plagiarist, as an expert in immigration affairs! She thinks the government has a right to place immigrants in pens without charge and with no access to lawyers!

(4) Mischaracterizing the entire nature of the protest. I twas not "pro-illegal immigration." Nor was it protesting "border security" or any such nonsense. It was protesting a brand new law passed last week by the House that would criminalize living in the U.S. without documentation and criminalize helping anyone who lives in the U.S. without documentation. To call that law draconian is like calling the Iron Maiden slightly unpleasant. I've got another law that Captain Ed would probably love - "All Americans are equal but some Americans are more equal than others."

(5) Referring to this completely bogus "reconquista" myth, propogated often in insane conservative wank-off circles.

For those of you who don't often read the loopy screeds of the conspiracy-minded, the concept of the "reconquista" refers to a movement from the 60's known as "La Raza." La Raza was a radical group that supposedly wanted to re-annex large portions of the American Southwest back to Mexico, to retake what was stolen by Americans in the previous century. El Capitano Guano has more:

The rallies in Southern California only ripped the lid off of a well-known dynamic in the culture that mixes native guilt with radical illegal-immigrant activism to fuel the La Raza dream of Aztlan, the reconquest of the the Southwest and its return to Mexico or existence as a separate nation. This radical notion has been around since 1969 and plays a part in the fringe politics of the Southwest. However, the increasing sense of entitlement for illegals in the area has led this impulse out of the shadows and into the forefront of the amnesty movement by enabling people to argue that the illegals are returning to their own land and that the US lacks the sovereignty to declare otherwise.

Does Ed not realize this paragraph contradicts itself? He opens by saying that La Raza's dream of Aztlan is "a well-known dynamic." Then, two sentences later, he says that La Raza is a fringe group that is only now starting to achieve any sort of prominence in the debate. Which is it, Ed? Is this a well-known phenomenon, or a new trend you have just discovered? (By the way, I know it's confusing, but in this paragraph, white Americans living in California are called "natives." Um...sure...)

Anyway, the whole theory is ludicrous. Illegal Mexican immigrants (a group, I'd like to stress, that's impossible to tell apart in photos or media from the legal immigrants and illegal immigrants from other Latin American nations) are not organizing in order to topple the American government's control over California. This is incredibly retarded. They're not organizing at all, except to protest. They want incredibly simple things, like the right to work without being thrown in jail. That's not unreasonable. That's what we want people to want, isn't it? When people are productive and happy and not afraid that being their race constitutes a felony, everyone's better off.

Again, this whole "Aztlan" thing is just projection. Racists like the Cap'n actually want dominance and control over America, all of it, from California to New York, and part of that is that they don't want too many brown people around. Oh, sure, you can have a few to clean up after you. But they don't want to have to see them all the time, especially in their own neighborhoods. And forget about helping them if they get sick, or teaching their punk kids the multiplication tables!

So they make up this ridiculous nonsense about re-annexing the Southwest, as if such a thing were even theoretically possible. The whole line of argumentation is pathetic, really, and sad.

But what really really upsets the Captain is the protestors insistence on flying Mexican flags! How dare they!