How Red is Your Herring

Ah, the politics of misdirection. Build your supporters by anointing them with a sense of moral superiority. "The other side just doesn't get it", "they don't love freedom", "they're free riders", "they're stealing American jobs." I don't know when politics just got weird. Or people just got really stupid and gullible. Maybe they always have been but when you look at them in a historical context, you just get a filtered version.

The latest Giuliani-Romney feud as the temporary front runners until a long overdue Republican tide of commonsense takes hold is over immigration, and who has let more Mexicans in the door. Of course, what many Americans should really be concerned about is crumbling infrastructure, an unsustainable Social Security/Medicare system, an overstretched military, nuclear proliferation, etc but those things are really hard to explain or but in a bumper sticker that may say something like, "why should I press one for English."


I know that there were dirty campaigns in the past. But the level of vapid discussion could never have been this great. Certainly racial and ethnic politics have played a part in American politics, from the fear of slave rebellions to the Civil War and reconstruction on through integration, the thinly veiled Nixonian law and order campaign to Willie Horton and on to the current immigration debate. Of course, the immigration argument is not all about race but suffice to say if the majority of immigrants were 6 foot tall Norwegian bikini models rather than persons of Mestizo descent, the discussion may be quite different.


BUILDING A FENCE
Much of the discussion is economic wrapped up in a certain American fear of change and outsiders, immigrants are "stealing our jobs". Immigrants are taking spots in public schools, in hospitals (particularly the use of emergency rooms for primary care) and other social services. Illegal immigrants are These are valid arguments in my mind, but arguments should have discourse. For me, it is my secular and Christian feelings of the need for social justice battling the feeling and belief that while America is built on immigrants and the great majority of us are the descendants of immigrants, what makes America great in my mind and separates us from many others is the rule of law. And undocumented folks/illegal immigrants flaunt that rule of law. It certainly is a dilemma.

However, in the same manner that many thought we would go into Iraq with the mightiest military, best trained soldiers and best equipment and dispatch our enemies is the logic that such simple things as building a multi-billion dollar fence will "secure our borders." Any discussion of immigration reform is painted as amnesty or surrender analogous to the idea of pulling our troops out of Iraq before final victory. As a subject it is an anathema to the new target of Republican candidates, those Reagan democrats and independents whose conservative populism drove them away from an out of touch Democratic party of the 1970's and 1980's.

The misdirection of course is to find a scapegoat for the problems of America. To build a nostalgic image of a better past where Americans had life long job security at good wages. And the enemy of course is not a rapidly evolving global economy or the corporations that pump money into all campaigns both Republicans and Democrats but the guys who's washing dishes, picking fruit, and cutting up chicken parts. And what does a mass deportation of millions of immigrants look like? Should I anglicize my name?


SANCTUARY
The sanctuary
I'm sure in her you'll find
The sanctuary
And the world and the world
The world turns around
And the world and the world
The world drags me down-THE CULT

The latest Giuliani-Romney "Real World" battle is over the idea of Sanctuary cities. Now sanctuary cities is something that "holier than thou" liberal cities usually declare. The reasoning of course outside of political correctness and a "we are the world" coca-cola moment is that undocumented immigrants are more likely to report crimes including domestic abuse, get treatment for diseases that may be communicable, and otherwise participate in activities that support the common good. The argument against is that it encourages illegal immigrants to move to these communities, as if making 5 bucks a day shoveling gravel in Chiapas, running away from machetes in Sierra Leone, or escaping countryside gangs in El Salvador is enough to make you want to take that gamble on Wal-Mart, clean water and the American dream.

Mayor Giuliani of course was the leader of the city with the most immigrants in America, (ok, likely, LA but work with me here) and they're all not here on H-1B visas making microchips, and as Romney governed Massachusetts, the People's Republic of Cambridge among others led the movement to provide "protection" to undocumented residents. Of course, most public servants, police and fire included have little desire to become immigration agents, there's a lot other work to do, then ask everyone "paper's please." The key to this type of politicking is it really part of what sells easy to Americans, not any sense of large scale policy or realistic change. And the image that some crazy liberal cities are offering backrubs and jacuzzi's and limo rides to people who are flaunting the law while they're punching the clock really roils them in Peoria.


ED ANGER, WE HARDLY KNEW YA
This week's Washington Post weekly reported sad news. The Weekly World News would cease to be published. For a guy like myself, who neglects research and kinda writes off the top of my head, mostly based on some weird picture, this loss is of huge historic significance. The Weekly World News brought me though some tough times, the end of the Reagan years, the Bush years,even to Clinton's first administration. It was not often a week would come without reading it, to find out what was happening in the alien world, what old friend and early right wing crazy adopter Ed Anger was "pig biting mad" about, and finally the evolution and chase of the Bat Child around the country by the FBI.

The Internet was the death of the Weekly World News as the profound collection of idiocy and strangeness in the world collected itself around one nexus. Ah but that bat child, hopefully he'll rise again.