I’ll preface my different angle of approach to the latest immigration episode concerning President Trump’s zero-tolerance policy by first addressing those of you who think droning children overseas, snatching them from parents at the U.S. border, physically abusing them, or injecting them with anti-psychotic meds without consent or proper diagnosis is symptomatic of a healthy democratic society.
It’s not. Plus, screwing around with the brains of young children like that will only create the kinds of angry adults some of you think are already “infesting” America.
Which of course leads to higher social costs, whether you dig that outcome or not.
But I want to make another point —something I hinted at in my opening paragraph — which raging Conservatives and pearl-clutching Liberals in Washington won’t do: the current immigration debate is an EPISODE.
Not story arc that most political leaders are ready to resolve.
An episode.
During an election year.
The Party of No Brains needs to hold its current majority positions in Congress and want to grab more seats, while the Party of No Guts will need more loot going into November. The latter’s been a bit financially anemic these days and has been jonesing for an issue firestarter.
Need proof?
Tell me how many politicians are talking about the reasons WHY we have a so-called immigration problem.
For brevity’s sake, let’s focus on Mexico and Central America only.
The so-called immigration problem has been in the making for more than 100 years.
Thanks to America’s role in actively installing, funding and defending dictators in its own backyard; deploying US troops to kill LatinX natives and secure banana plantations for ambitious and colonizing American entrepreneurs; looking the other way while fruit-company-sponsored right-wing death squads slaughter poor workers protesting for better wages; ignoring state-sponsored roles in drug and gun-running; support for trade deals that supoort income inequality on all sides, in addition prohibiting Mexico and Central America from establishing tariffs on US goods while lacking the financial means to subsidize their farmers the way America can with its own; these countries are impoverished to the point where economic and social conditions will almost invariably breed dangerous places for families grow.
If America is interested in stopping the so-called immigration “problem,” the U.S. would help to stabilize the crises it created among its neighbors by cleaning up the aftermath of the banana republics it’s sponsored during the past century. Creating new collaborative platforms for economic development would also help.
But that won’t happen. Washington has a decades-old practice of baiting us to chase episodes …
song currently stuck in my head: “you and me” neil young w/ nicolette larson
mentalunrest.com 