Hispanic Fanatic

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you are walking down the street, and you pass two people having a private conversation. You overhear them, and to your shock and horror, they are not talking in English.

Do you immediately turn around to berate them for not speaking god’s favorite language? Do you seethe in anger that they are offending every decent American by speaking Mandarin or French or Klingon or whatever the hell that noise is (but let’s face it — it’s probably Spanish)? Or do you mind your own damn business and just keep walking, barely even noticing that non-English words had briefly buzzed around you?

Well, if you are a white conservative, the odds are about even that you’ll get pissed off. Yes, a new survey has found that 47 percent of white Republicans say it would bother them “some” or “a lot” to “hear people speak a language other than English in a public place.” In contrast, just 18 percent of white Democrats say this would bug them.

Keep in mind that conservatives regularly accuse liberals of being “too sensitive.” A fair question is, what could be more hypersensitive than getting offended at total strangers having a private conversation, using rights that are constitutionally protected, performing actions that will not affect your life in even the smallest way?

Talk about fragile snowflakes.

In any case, the study also found that “among all racial groups, whites are most likely to be bothered hearing foreign languages.” More than one-third (34%) of white people clench their teeth if they overhear a “muchas gracias,” but only about one-quarter of African Americans (25%) and Asian Americans (24%) are similarly repulsed. Meanwhile, a mere 13% of Latinos get irked when people start jabbering in some foreign tongue.

Now, the good news is that a strong majority (70%) of Americans rated their level of unease at “not much” or “not at all” when it comes to hearing a different language. However, only about one-quarter of white Republicans (26%) fall into this category.

Clearly, this is a group that is very uncomfortable with different ethnicities and the changing makeup of America. Sure, we all knew that already, but the study puts some disturbing numbers on this commonly accepted idea.

For example, did you know that 37% of Republicans believe that “having a majority of the population made up of blacks, Asians, Hispanics and other racial minorities” would be bad for the country? And in case you’re wondering, yes, this is indeed the highest share among any demographic group surveyed.

Hell, more than half of Republicans (60%) believe that a majority nonwhite population will “weaken American customs and values.” Whew, it’s a good thing that it was “economic anxiety” that motivated Trump voters. Otherwise, I might start to think there was something racial going on here.

Ahem.

Of course, there is more in the study that implies the GOP is not the place for ethnic minorities. For example, “Republicans also stood out in the survey for their skepticism of interracial marriage.”

In 2019, who the hell is still “skeptical” of interracial marriage? And is this the message that the GOP wants to send to all those multiethnic Millennials?

The key point to remember is that a powerful trope of conservatives — one that is hammered home every minute on Fox News and relentless driven into the psyche of the nation — is that Republicans are the “real Americans,” and that their values represent mainstream thought. For example, certain right-wing commenters bemoan “radical” progressive ideas and mock the idea of diversity.

However, most Americans (57%) say it is “very good” that “the U.S. population is made up of people of many different races and ethnicities.” Just 39 percent of Republicans agree with that statement, meaning that they are the outliers when it comes to diversity.

So who is out of touch here? Who is outside the mainstream?

Hey, look at the numbers and do the math.

I’ll leave you with one final statistic: More than 20% of American residents speak a language other than English at home.

This means that, statistically, if five different people invite a white Republican to their place for dinner, there’s going to be a screaming argument in at least one of those houses.

But hopefully, everybody will be shouting in English.

The Earth consists of about 37 billion acres of land. And at some point in human history, someone has claimed, fought, lived, or died over every damn inch of it.

The idea of owning land, or having an ancestral tie or mystical connection to a patch of dirt or swath of forest, is an ancient one. Almost every war in civilization’s long, sorry run has involved — or even been solely provoked — by the concept that a group of people have a right to a given plot of land.

So it is no surprise that today, much of our political energy is devoted to arguing over who owns various chunks of the planet. For example, recently, a small and particularly ill-behaved group of“white nationalists stormed a bookstore in Washington, D.C., to protest an event for a book on racial politics.”

Personally, I believe they were offended at the idea that anyone would read a book. But in any case, did this cadre of neo-Nazi lunatics shriek about the cultural significance of diversity, or point out the economic consequences of governmental policy, or bemoan the ubiquity of Avengers: Endgame spoilers? (they’re hard to avoid.)

No, instead, they stood “in a line before the audience chanting, ‘This land is our land,’ and at least one man yelled white nationalist propaganda into a megaphone.”

Of all the ominous slogans they could have picked, they chose one that implied ownership of American soil and, by extension, possession of America itself.

After all, if one owns the land, one owns the country. And if it is “my country,” it cannot be yours.

This is clear in the conservative insistence that they are “taking this country back” (long a favorite catchphrase of the right wing). It is inherent in social and political policies that restricted ethnic minorities to certain neighborhoods, or pushed Native Americans to reservations, or for that matter, snagged us the whole damn state of California.

And of course, any discussion of immigration will inevitably conclude with shouting about who was here first, and who is the real immigrant, and who cheated whom out of their land.

All of which brings up the following question: Does it really matter who was on the land first?

Ideally, the land of a nation should belong to all the law-abiding residents of that country. The idea that you get dibs because your great-great grandfather happened to build a house that no longer exists is, at its core, an illogical claim.

And of course, if we’re talking about irrational resolutions, foremost among them is that damn wall. 

You see, “after all their invading and butchering and land-grabbing, it’s the white people who want to build a wall to protect them (and their stolen land) from brown people.”

Yes, Trump’s wall is not just racist, xenophobic, idiotic, and impossible. It has the bonus traits of being hypocritical and preposterous.

Because this land is not their land. It belongs to all of us, or more accurately, to none of us. We can never really own it.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of catching even a split second of oldies radio, you may have heard a terrible song by the Hollies that contains the following chorus:

Sometimes all I need
Is the air that I breathe
And to love you 

However, for ethnic minorities, the air that they breathe is often filled with crap, so I guess they just have to settle for the ability to love you.

You see, a recent study has shown that “pollution, much like wealth, is not distributed equally in the United States.”

Specifically, “air pollution is disproportionately caused by white Americans’ consumption of goods and services, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic Americans.”

Basically, white Americans have more money and therefore buy more stuff. This consumer demand for products, in turn, increases air pollution. However, the shitty air doesn’t linger in white neighborhoods. It tends to concentrate in poorer neighborhoods, where ethnic minorities often live.

The result is that “minority communities are exposed to pollution that they bear less responsibility for.” In fact, when the researchers crunched the numbers, they found that “whites experience about 17 percent less air pollution than they produce … while  blacks and Hispanics bear 56 and 63 percent more air pollution, respectively, than they cause.”

The inequity and murderous irony of this situation can be summed up thusly: blacks and Latinos are less likely to buy junk they don’t need, but they are far more likely to inhale the toxic garbage that comes from creating that junk.

Now, certain commentators — such as the overprivileged offspring of ignorant bigots — have mocked these results by claiming that the study has created the ludicrous concept of “racist air.”

Of course, it’s a well-known conservative ploy to dismiss complex concepts with short, catchy phrases that mislead and misinterpret the data, which also has the convenient effect of provoking distrust and even contempt for facts, science, and anything resembling fancy book learnin’ by bleeding-heart eggheads.

Remember “death panels”?

However, as many real-life experts have pointed out,such smug condescension “contradicts what we know, and it’s basedin ignorance.” Furthermore, such a dismissive attitude “is no joke,” except to rich jerks who “think structural inequality and environmental racism aren’t real because they are as invisible to them as the air they breathe.”

In the reality-based world, “scientists and policymakers  have long known that black and Hispanic Americans tend to live in neighborhoods with more pollution of all kinds than white Americans.” In addition, “because pollution exposure can cause a range of health problems, this inequity could be a driver of unequal health outcomes across the U.S.”

Those are the facts of the matter. And smirking about “racist air” will not make them go away.

So will the propagators of such lies, misinformation and scientific illiteracy ever stop embracing this vile tactic?

Hey, don’t hold your breath.

Let’s take a moment to revel in the magnificence of a fully operational government. I mean, wow, how special are we?!

OK, that moment is over.

Now let’s another moment to discuss edgy ideas and their importance to society. No, I’m not talking about innovative concepts that challenge the status quo, such as raising the marginal tax rate on millionaires or offering universal health care.

I’m talking about theories like “racial inequities can be explained by the idea that black people are dumber.”

Hmm, that’s odd. That supposedly edgy idea just seems like idiotic, boilerplate racism.

But it shows what you know. Because one of the guys who believes that theory — a “notorious alt-right figure and accused Holocaust denier” — is held in such high esteem that he recently met with a couple of Republican lawmakers in Congress.

Hey, when was the last time you got an audience with multiple congressmen?

Well, perhaps you would if you were regarded as a mighty intellectual, as a great many right-wing xenophobes are in Trump’s America. Yes, people who would have been identified as racist fools or paranoid nutjobs just a few years ago are now “edgy” truth seekers. 

Apparently, there is “a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades, and media personalities” who promote ideas such as, for example, black people have a “violence gene” that makes them more prone to aggression.

By the way, I’m fairly certain it wasn’t black people who murdered six million Jews. It was… well, you know the racial makeup of the perpetrators, so just imagine how much worse it would have been if the Aryans possessed a “violence gene.”

Ahem.

In any case, overtly racist arguments and blatantly prejudicial thinking are now considered valid debate points, creating a “milquetoast both-sidesism” that argues “on the one hand, you have people who think bigotry is acceptable, and on the other, you have people who think it is not, and the only way to determine which group is right is to treat them as equals, and hear them both out.”

However, “edgy” conservative ideas all pretty much boil down to one basic thesis: white Christian men are superior. Clearly, there is nothing edgy or innovative about this. In fact, it is one of the oldest ideas in existence, and one of the intellectually laziest. It is only a bizarre incarnation of right-wing PC, mixed with liberal politeness, that provokes mainstream outlets to say, “Wait a second, let’s give these ideas some respect.”

In truth, we are now giving platforms to people who watch Schindler’s Listjust so they can point out the stray historical inaccuracy as proof that it’s all made up. These are individuals who say, “Hey, hold on, maybe George Wallace had some good ideas.”

It has gotten to the point that espousing bigoted ideas apparently doesn’t make one a racist.  In the era of Trump, it appears that a person can’t be labeled a racist unless he personally lynched an African American while wearing a Nazi armband. Otherwise it’s just political correctness and snowflakes getting all sensitive and shit.

Now, before you think that I’m being melodramatic, let me point out that at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, members of Identity Evropa relished their newfound respectability in political circles. Members of this group, if you’ve never heard of it, have been “emboldened by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on race and immigration, [and] they advocate for allowing only Caucasians to immigrate to the U.S. in order to maintain a white supermajority.”

Their plan, they say, is “to take over the GOP as much as possible.”

Sounds like a perfectly respectable, somewhat edgy plan — right?

Humans are social animals. Yes, even you sullen loners, shy introverts, and lone-wolf bad boys out there — deep down, all of you need to connect with other people, at least on occasion.

One aspect of our social nature is that we take cues from one another. Although we want to believe that we think for ourselves 100 percent of the time, and are not subject either to the overt influences or the subtle hints of our peers, the truth is that we are constantly looking at, listening to, and measuring ourselves against others. Deny it all you want — science backs upthe idea.

By the way, if you bend too easilyto the will of others, you may end up a Nazi, and if you don’t bend at all, you may end up a sociopathic killer.

So once again, moderation is key.

However, it’s not just basic concepts such as personal space, small talk, and sarcasm that we learn from our fellow humans. We also learn how to be aggressive.

For proof of this, let’s look at the famous Bobo experimentsof the 1960s, which were held at Stanford University.

In addition to having the most adorable name ever for a psychological study, the Bobo experiments showed that children learn through the observation of adult behavior. 

The study used inflatable plastic toys called Bobo dolls, which are basically large cartoon clowns bottom-weighted so that they return to an upright position when knocked down. 

You’ve probably seen one, or at the very least, had a terrifying nightmare involving them.

The researchers divided preschoolers into one group that observed aggressive adult behavior, another group that saw nonaggressive adult behavior, and a third group that didn’t watch any adult behavior.

The kids in the first group saw adults punch, kick, and generally pummel the Bobo dolls. And you guessed it —  children in that group later modeled the adults’ behavior by attacking the doll in the same fashion.

In sum, if kids saw a grownup kick the shit out of the Bobo doll, they were more likely to be violent too.

The researchers said that the kids had, more or less, gotten permission to be aggressive little jerks because they saw an authority figure do it first.

OK, that’s all very interesting, you say. But certainly it’s not the case that grownup, voting American citizens “get permission” from authority figures to, for example, be racist — right?

Ahem.

Well, it may intrigue you to know that researchers have “found empirical evidencethat Trump’s rhetoric has indeed lead whites to express more bigoted views of ‘the other.’”

After analyzing white people’s attitudes toward race and individuals of different ethnicities, researchers found that since Trump began his campaign in 2016, many white Americans have expressed more bigoted views about Latinos, blacks, and other groups, and as a bonus, they are more comfortable saying these statements out loud.

The researchers conclude that “Trump is giving respondents tacit permissionto be bigots.”

You see, Americans heard a major party nominee for president begin his campaign by slurring Mexicans, and as a result, years later, we discover that “Trump’s language [about Mexicans] doesn’t just embolden people to say more negative and more offensive things about the group he’s talking about, but it actually leads them to say more offensive thingsabout all groups.” 

For these Americans, Trump has been an authority figure punching Bobo dolls. They think that if the president “is using this language, then it must be acceptablefor me.”

They have, psychologically speaking, been given permission to be racist.

By the way, the original Bobo study found that the effects of modeling violent behavior lingered in children for months after witnessing aggressive actions. The researchers believed that once people have deemed a behavior to be acceptable, it is difficult for them to regain their previous mindset. So the kids had their personality altered in the long term.

Feel free to draw your own analogies to that.

So our malignant clown of a president recently commandeered a couple of television networks and, to no one’s surprise, proceeded to spew lies, racist innuendo, and bizarre conspiracy theories — all in the service of appeasing his base and making a final, desperate gambit to get his idiotic wallon the Mexican border constructed. 

And just today, he stormed out of a meeting when it became clear that Democrats had not inexplicably come around to his xenophobic worldview, stomping out like a belligerent toddler who has been denied playtime at Chuck E. Cheese.

Note: I have been saying since 2016, and will continue to say, that no damn wall is ever going to be built — as in never.

In any case, while Trump is prone to exaggeration and mendacity on a level never before seen in a chief executive, he does often tell the truth — usually when revealing his sincere, horrific opinions about “very fine people” who happen to be Nazis and his distaste for individuals who come from “shithole countries.” Oh, he’s also being honest about his feelings when he denigrates women and/or ethnic minorities via Twitter.

But Trump’s supporters have now one-upped the president by speaking the truth — at least their sick, twisted version of it.

You see, the New York Times recently profiled a Trump supporter in Florida, a woman whose fragile livelihood has been threatened by the president’s moronic shutdown. In between expressing shock that Trump might not have her best interests at heart, she also issued this truly intriguing quote:

“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

As others have pointed out, this Trump supporter has let the truth slip out, which is that “one aim of the Trump administration is to hurt people — the right people. Making America great again … involves inflicting pain.”

And as we should know by now, “this is not an accident. Trump’s political victory and continuing appeal depend on a brand of politics that marginalizes and targets groups dislikedby his supporters.”

So just who are these people who Donald Trump “needs” to be hurting? I imagine a brief list, in rough order, goes something like this:

Liberals

Atheists

Muslims

Blacks

Latinos

Gays

Transgender people

“Uppity” women

Democrats

Journalists

Scientists

East Coasters

West Coasters

Urbanites

The college educated

Never Trumper Republicans

Anyone who likes kale

Of course, I’m probably missing a few, and the exact order may vary with some Trump supporters, and there may be some overlap in those categories, but you get the gist. In essence, conservatives have a long list of targets, people who are not “real Americans,” who not only deserve pain, but actively need to be hurt. They require a beat-down, whether literal or figurative, because … well, why again?

Because their values are weird?

Because they are not sufficiently respectful of white, Christian, straight America?

Because they have dared to question the mighty leader?

Yes to all of that. But the chief reason is because people like the Trump supporter in Florida — people whose lives are often a mess — see no relief in sight. The GOP has no interest in helping anyone other than their billionaire donors. So the only way a struggling working-class conservative can feel better about herself is to drag others down, to make others suffer, to make all those smug liberals pay. Because it has to be their fault, right?

Or maybe Trump, through his embrace of sociopathic deviance, just attracts people who love to hurt others.

Keep in mind that “the crueltyof the Trump administration’s policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected.” For his most ardent supporters, it is not an unpleasant distraction that Trump maligns and mocks the vulnerable. It is a selling point. The president’s “particular brand of identity politics— the racist attacks on blacks and Latinos, the Muslim ban, his cruel treatment of women — similarly depends on negative rather than positive appeals” and “is the dark heartof our political moment.” It is, more or less, “what makes Trumpism work.”

We can assume, therefore, that Trump’s campaign slogan in 2020 will be the following:

“This time, he’ll hurt the people who need to be hurt.”

Kind of catchy, don’t you think?

It took a while, but it has now become clear that the Democrats had a pretty good midterm election.

They took the House, snagged a few governors’ mansions, and made enormous inroads into red states. In essence, if this was a referendum on Trump, it is clear that most of the country is saying, “You suck, Mr. President.”

Of course, one reason for this welcome development is that Latinos — finally and at long last — expressed their anger at the Republican Party the only way that really counts: by voting.

Yes, voting info from several areas with high Latino populations “indicate record participation compared to previous elections, with hopes of building on that success in 2020.”

Furthermore, “early indications are that Hispanic voters came out in historic numbers, and… this made a difference for Democratic candidates.” In addition, “voting data showed tremendous energy among Latino voters; there was an estimated 174 percent increase in Hispanic early voting.”

And if you require more proof that Hispanics were fired up for the midterms, consider that “polling showed that Latino interest in this midterm election matched Presidential year election levels.”

Now, keep in mind that “a large majority of Latinos disapprove of the way President Donald Trump is handling his job, far more than the general public.” In fact, just 22 percent of Latinos approve of the small-fingered commander in chief, compared with his overall approval rating of 38 percent with the general public.

With numbers like that, it shouldn’t be surprising that many experts say Latino voters, especially young ones, are a key reason that Democrats did so well.

Wow, it’s almost as if Republicans were unwise to have the standard-bearer for their party lacerate, insult, and demean an entire ethnic group — repeatedly — and then expect that group to vote for you.

I mean, who knew?

Another aspect of increased Latino turnout is increased Hispanic representation. In fact, “the new Congress will have a record number of Latino members.”

Of course, it’s worth noting that for Hispanic representation in Congress to truly be proportional, the number of representatives would have to double, and the number of senators would have to quadruple.

So clearly, there is still work to be done.

 

Good news — the most dangerous hostile force that America ever faced has now been defeated.

That’s right. The infamous immigrant caravan — a bigger threat than the Nazis, the Communists, and Al Qaeda put together — has been destroyed.

I know this is true because the Fox & Friends morning show “used the word ‘caravan’ an average 21 times per episode in the six days prior” to the midterms. Yet that same show “only mentioned the topic once on the day after the election.”

The only logical conclusion is that the immigrant caravan has been turned back… or destroyed… or vanished into thin air — who knows?

The important thing is that we are safe. After all, we’re talking about an invading army here.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: How could a group of impoverished people on foot, presumably unarmed, with absolutely no element of surprise, be a threat to the most powerful nation on Earth, which has built the largest military force in the history of the galaxy? And did we mention that a huge portion of the caravan consists of malnourished children? It’s not exactly an elite killing force that we’re talking about.

Well, that doesn’t matter. Because in the weeks leading to the midterms, many conservatives insisted that these immigrants were a Soros-funded plot to sway the midterms… although it has never been explained exactly how a group of refugees slowly walking toward the border could be remotely beneficial to the Democrats. If anything, the whole story has been a blessing for the Republican Party, which was briefly able to recapture that old xenophobic spirit of 2016 again.

In any case, these refugees — who apparently are going to reintroduce polio while providing cover for Isis agents— have so alarmed our nation’s right-wing overlords that they are spending taxpayer money to send U.S. troops to guard against bedraggled people fleeing for their lives from drug cartels. So we may soon have “up to 15,000 members of the world’s greatest fighting force, sitting in the desert, watching for poor refugees approaching on foot.”

But you see, it has to be this way. Trump supporters have to believe that the immigrant caravan is an invading army. That’s the only way to justify using military force to threaten people who are following U.S. and international law regarding asylum. Otherwise, these right-wingers might be the kind of people who advocate gunning down thousands of unarmed refugees, including children.

And that might make it difficult to sleep at night.

Fortunately for Trumpists, they already have a unique worldview that allows them to believe all kinds of factually inaccurate, conspiratorial, logic-defying propositions, including the following:

“The MAGA bombs were fake (they weren’t). There’s going to be a middle-class tax cut by the end of the year (there isn’t). US steel has opened seven new plants in the US (it hasn’t). The trade tariffs are working (they aren’t). The US is the only country with birthright citizenship (it isn’t).”

To be honest, it must be exhausting to come up with preposterous scenario after preposterous scenario, all designed to reinforce the delusion that Trump knows what he is doing, liberals hate America, scientists are making everything up, and that there is nothing racial about locking Latino kids in cages.

Yes, I have to admit that up until now, I have been empathizing with my fellow progressives, who are weary from the almost daily outrages that cascade from the White House.

But Trump supporters must be even more fatigued, coming up strained explanations, convoluted theories, and secret coded messages that, in the end, add up to no wall on the Mexican border, no locked-up Hillary, and no decrease in the number of pesky minorities in America.

Really, it’s got to be fucking exhausting.

According to certain individuals of a more conservative mindset, this week’s midterms were actually a big win for the Republican Party — so impressive, in fact, that it was“very close to a complete victory.”

Hey, who says the GOP is delusional? Certainly not me.

In any case, the fact is that the Democrats have captured the House, which means they will be able, in theory at least, to launch investigations into the most corrupt administration in history and slow down, if not stop, the freight train of disaster that Trump has sent hurtling toward the American people.

Of course, if they could just protect the Mueller investigation, we would all be pretty happy about that.

The new Congress set to take office in January “is slated to be the most racially diverse in history,” and “record numbers of Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and women of color will serve in the next legislative session.”

Within just a few weeks, Congress will be full of young Latinas and Muslims and Native Americans, with some states having the absolute chutzpah to send all-minority delegations. It’s a white nationalist nightmare.

It’s undeniable that this is a major political and cultural development for America. And it has the potential to be a much-needed course correction to our nation’s recent detour into overt xenophobia, fear-based hatemongering, and rambling insanity.

Of course, white supremacists are still getting reelected to Congress, so it’s not all pride flags and wins for la raza.

But for the first time in two horrific years, there is a spark of hope.

 

One thing I admire about conservatives is their adherence to a narrow set of principles, as well as their political consistency.

Ha, just warming things up with a little joke there, people.

But seriously folks, the GOP, which once believed in “forceful moral leadership of the world, promotion of the free market and fiscal conservatism,” abandoned those silly ideas the second that Trump became president, and conservatives realized that they could pass tax cuts for millionaires and intimidate ethnic minorities, which are, when you think about it, the only things that the Republican Party currently stands for.

And now another supposed GOP value is quite dead. That would be the questionable virtue of demanding a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. You see, our very conservative president “claims he can defy the Constitution and end birthright citizenship.”

I bet you thought something as well-established and bedrock ingrained as the 14^thAmendment could not be altered just because a president signs an executive order. Well, this shows how little you know. Trumpism, which has supplanted conservatism, means that a president can do whatever he wants — as long as he’s a Republican.

In this case,Trump can do away with any pesky Constitutional rights that he dislikes. And the man dislikes nothing more than immigrants, particularly Latino ones.

So that section in the Constitution that says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”? Yeah, he can just end it with the stroke of a pen and, if he likes, the snap of his tiny fingers.

And who knows — he just might get his buddies on the Supreme Court (at least one of whom apparently owes him one) to uphold his dictatorial edicts.

Of course, Trump’s promise to end birthright citizenship most likely reflects his complete ignorance — and total indifference — to the laws of this nation. And it has even less chance of happening than his idiotic wall does of being built.

One more time: there will be no wall constructed on the Mexican border.

However, Trump’s offhand musings about crushing our legal system and throwing the entire citizenship process into absolute chaos are really designed to fire up his base. It is “about the midterm elections and the desire of the president and his team to change the channel, grab the news cycle by the throat and talk about immigration rather than the domestic terrorism that we’ve seen in the last week.”

Yes, if there is one thing that will convince an elderly bigot to pull the lever for the Republicans again, it is the idea that no more Hispanics will become citizens, ever ever ever.

The fact that Trump’s ramblings are “a pure political stunt” that is “offensive, deeply troubling, racist, and unconstitutional” is of little concern to a voter who views Latino newborns “not as a source for society’s renewal but as threats.”

And even though that voter could most likely not even pass the U.S. citizenship test himself, he will still support a decrepit, unhinged political movement that can offer nothing but fear, hatred, denial, and a dark, pessimistic view of our changing world.