The Evils Of Illegals

by digby

Paul Glastris has posted this Washington Monthly article from a year ago (that I’d read and then typically forgot where I’d read it and went crazy because I couldn’t find it.) thank yooooo

This article points out that one of the big reasons for this new obsession with the evils of illegals is that the migration pattern has changed: many are settling in towns that never saw any latinos before. The culture shock is disturbing to people who aren’t used to hearing Tejano music and seeing burrito stands crop up in their neighborhoods. And it’s not just that they are settling in regions that are unfamiliar — it’s that they are settling in smaller towns which are by definition less cosmopolitan. This is new for them.

And, because all these things are happening in smaller towns in the south it is evoking certain anxieties and knee jerk reactions among some people — and panic among business owners and others who are desperate to keep migrant workers in the labor pool or lose what they have. Culture meets economic necessity in places like Kentucky and it isn’t an easy problem to solve. Read the article.

There is another angle to all this that is much more disturbing, however. Immigration has been a political football for as long as I can remember. This too shall pass, I think. But there is a dark force at work underneath all this that I mentioned the other day in the context of that startling post by Vox Day about the Nazi’s terrific success at deportation. Glenn Greenwald sees this happening too and put it this way:

They’re … clearly tired of slogging through the political and ethnic complexities of Iraq. That country just doesn’t lend itself to any morally clear good/evil dichotomies. There are no good cartoon villains to hate. Calls for increased “ferocity,” less “sensitive” approaches (“bomb some more mosques!”), and less discriminate bombings can generate some temporary enthusiasm — as it did for a day or so with Shelby Steele’s column — but Iraq is so muddled and ambiguous, and not all that emotionally satisfying. It’s pretty depressing, actually, to think about how everything they said would happen there is not happening, and trying to figure out solutions, ways out, is just not very invigorating stuff for those who thrive on Hating and Warring Against Evil.

As a result, attention gets turned to immigration — Mexican immigration specifically. It entails the opportunity to rail against “appeasement” (of Vincente Fox); to create the anti-terrorist/pro-terrorist dichotomy on which they thrive; and to demonize a clear, foreign enemy as threatening not just our economic prosperity but also our national security (the “Mexican invaders”). And if the weakened, ready-to-be-tossed aside failure, George Bush, is one of the spineless appeasers this time, so be it.

I see that people are beginning to make the national security/mexican invasion argument successfully, now, and that liberals are beginning to discuss explicitly what that means. It’s a problem. And there’s a very apt historical example as to why it’s a problem. From Jesse Walker at Hit and Run:

It reminds me of one of Charles Alexander’s explanations for the nativist and racist sentiment that surged following the first world war:

During the war the American people had been subjected to the first systematic, nationwide propaganda campaign in the history of the Republic. From both official and unofficial sources poured a torrent of material having the objective of teaching Americans to hate — specifically to hate Germans but, more broadly, everything that did not conform to a formalized conception of “100 percent Americanism.” In the fall of 1918, just as the indoctrination process was reaching its peak, as patriotic feeling was mounting to frenzy, the war came abruptly to an end. Americans who had stored up an enormous volume of superpatriotic zeal now no longer had an official enemy on whom to concentrate this fervor.

Walker observes that the war isn’t over, so this may not be a perfect example, but I wonder if that’s true. Isn’t the “war” as constructed by the Bush administration over? World War IV seems to have shriveled overnight into a smallbore police action without a bang a whimper or even a muttered grunt. We’ve just spent the last four and a half years in a frenzy of nationalistic passion, going so far as to burn The Dixie Chicks in effigy and change the name of french fries in the congressional cafeteria (a direct homage to the World War I era change of the word saurkraut to “liberty cabbage.”) Now it looks like we are settling down into an acceptance of the fact that we need to do everything we can to stop terrorist attacks, but if one happens the country will survive and life will go on. We have, after all, just proved that.

So where are the fevered 101st keyboarders and their yellow elephant buddies going to put all that frustrated, video game-fueled testosterone and hatred for “the enemy?” They’re going to put it where it’s easiest, where they can enjoy it and where they don’t have to put their own miserable lives on the line: against illegal immigrants, including women and children.

It’s pathetic, but predictable. When the government gins up martial madness, talking about “gittin’ em dead or alive” it’s hard to put it back in the bottle until the true believers just run out of steam. We aren’t there yet. Somebody has to pay. The newest brownest foreigner in town will do.

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