Jun 29 2007
Dafydd Tries To Salvage The GOP’s Soul
Dafydd over at Big Lizards is trying to save the GOP from the fallout of its disaster on the immigration bill. Laudable idea. Completely useless though. This is what Hispanics hears plenty of over the last couple of months from the underbelly of the GOP:
I’m with you. Round them ALL up and toss their anchor babies (anchors only around our necks) into the trucks and get them the hell to the border!
If this doesn’t cause extreme prejudice against the Mexican criminal class who have invaded our county I don’t know what will.Furthermore, I wouldn’t be a tourist in Mexico for hundreds of thousands of pesos!
Boycott Mexico and boycott ANY Mexican laborers.
That’s mild. And the bashing of our President was on a par with Democrat Underground:
Bush is more than a moron. There’s weird intent behind his actions. Bush thinks we all own big ranches like his friends… and Bush thinks we need an untouchable class to do the dirty work.
It’s sooooooooo American. NOT.Bush gets to take a big hit on his brother Jeb too – who has a son with brown skin. A son who will forever more be confused with the second class citizen/worker class.
Will any of us ever look at our brown skinned neighbors the same way? I’ve always seen them as “Americans” – now I’ll wonder if they broke into my country to clean the toilets. I hope Bush enjoys the cheap labor…
This crap left a big stain. One which, I for one, can never get near. I cannot ally with people who think like this. I grew up hating racists because, honestly, they were everywhere and all they did was prattle on about ‘nigger’ this and ‘nigger’ that and how those trying to give the blacks equal standing where destroying this nation, blah, blah, blah. And now that ugly side of humanity has raised its head again, blaming race and creed and nationality as causes for what is really a problem we have had for decades trying to manage the temporary workers our economy has been based on for at least 100 years.
Our “neighbors” down south are different – not poisonous evil scum. Their economies are not as strong as ours, they are not was wealthy – they are not lesser beings. My one visit to Argentina showed me a kindred people who were part Texas and part Spain. They had their economic problems, but they were proud and honorable people. The immigrant kids and families in our community who come from south of the border are wonderful additions to our neighborhood in nearly all cases. There are bad apples. Crime is a human condition, not a national one.
The people south of the border do not magically transform from the dark side to angels based on whether they have work permits or not. Their cultures do not change based on whether a representative is documented or undocumented. The stain left from this battle is not rational. One thing is clear. I will take my neighbors over these hot heads any day of the week. Good luck Dafydd, but there are more fleas than anything else in that bed your lying in. It is not 100% bad, but bad enough to need to be disinfected.
Update: Yeah, and the death threats – that wasn’t a good tactic either.
I wonder how many Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, esp.
Sarajevans (remember the peaceful Olympic showcase demonstrating intra-ethnic harmony there?) wish they
had been more skeptical of a longterm , peaceful, forcibly integrated
Yugoslavia across clashing ethnic lines before the dam of civil
war broke during Clinton’s presidency?
And isn’t it funny how AJ sounds like a near-hippie (ex) rock musician
on Anglo-Hispanic relations, but a crew cut militarist (maybe playing Barry Sadler’s Green Beret one hit wonder) when it comes to relations with non-threatening people on the other side of the globe?
Loneferret: I understand your point but it’s not very strong. First of all the La Raza/Mecha hysteria was overblown and overplayed from the git-go. Second, Hispanics shouldbe fearful and wary of speaking up… hello? That’s a pretty normal response given what they’ve been treated to. Lots of Hispanics took president Bush’s words seriously and 44% voted for him in 2004. Well, now they’re taking the non-stop Savage Sewer Mouths seriously and hearing what “The Base” has to say about GWB. Afterall, the nuts got their “kill” yesterday, as the entire nation witnessed. So, if you’re expecting some kind of ethnic uprising or group mea culpa, I’m guessing it won’t happen for a looooong time, when the brown people feel just a teensy bit less threatened and kicked around. Heck, I’d be hedging my bets too if I was a brown voter, and I’d be none too eager to join the white mob or prove my worthiness to the creeps. I’d be watching very closely to see who the GOP nominates and whether it can stand up to The Base.
Loneferret: I understand your point but it’s not very strong. First of all the La Raza/Mecha hysteria was overblown and overplayed from the git-go. Second, Hispanics shouldbe fearful and wary of speaking up… hello? That’s a pretty normal response given what they’ve been treated to. Lots of Hispanics took president Bush’s words seriously and 44% voted for him in 2004. Well, now they’re taking the non-stop Savage Sewer Mouths seriously and hearing what “The Base” has to say about GWB. Afterall, the nuts got their “kill” yesterday, as the entire nation witnessed.
So, if you’re expecting some kind of ethnic uprising or group mea culpa, I’m guessing it won’t happen for a looooong time, when the brown people feel just a teensy bit less threatened and kicked around. Heck, I’d be hedging my bets too if I was a brown voter, and I’d be none too eager to join the white mob or prove my worthiness to the creeps. I’d be watching very closely to see who the GOP nominates and whether it can stand up to The Base.
BigLSU,
I agree, this situation could have been handled a lot better. My only point is that it’s going to be really hard for the GOP to reign in its hot heads by pretending they exist in a vacuum. For the hard right, when they see millions of people in the US waving the flag of a foreign country (many of who aren’t exactly legal), they will not be very open to calls to tone down the rhetoric. This is not a justification for all the hateful comments, merely an observation. If all we do is call for the far right to stop using hate speech, while ignoring it on the other side, the far right is not going to listen to you. This is even harder when a lot of the exposure of the Hispanic community on the national stage (protests, etc) is negative.
AJ,
The GOP is our only hope. Independents have simply marginalized themselves and have no voice in outcomes.
The anti-immigration folks who try to be reasonable still use inflammatory language and hype unrealistic fears to the insecure among us. Words like “invasion” and “amnesty” are designed to arouse fear but have the certain result of letting the Hispanics know who their friends aren’t.
It will be a tough job convincing Latinos to join the GOP and oppose the Dems who advocate the same failed policies that they fled in coming here. Tough because of the baggage the “know Nothings” have saddled us with.
Sallyvee
Late last night I heard some Hispanic guy on the radio and he was saying long term native Hispanics are very concerned about the rise of LaRaza and MS-13 in this country and observed it is setting back all gains that have been made my mainstream Hispanics over the last few years.
I would trust him to know more about his own community than you or I could.
Also, this wasn’t just some Hispanic man in the street, he was either a Texas or New Mexico State Legislative Representative.
I take those comments seriously Merlin. I am sure that Hispanic guy is just as worried about LaRaza and MS13 as I am about worried about extreme nativists “setting back all the gains” of mainstream conservatives. I am also worried about the scourge of methamphetamine which is becoming a white/rural menace in many states, and which is transported and traded by [white] gangs. Or what about the militias, neo-nazis and “patriot” groups of the Pacific Northwest which prior to 9/11 consumed a majority of the FBI’s resources tracking domestic terrorism. They haven’t gone away… in fact there is evidence that militias were on the rise throughout the 90s and beyond. Hello Oklahoma City?
One important reason for “bringing people out of the shadows” as A.J. has often discussed is to reduce the tendency of especially young people to seek a replacement for family & community among gangs, or to become so resentful and marginalized that they end up turning to crime or falling into the arms of sinister elements or even the ultimate gang — the Islamonuts.
Again, the brawl that just ensued and which produced no legislative results and little reason for Hispanics to have confidence in our system, now leaves the situation festering and boiling for at least another two years. Remind me again what a great victory we just achieved.