Hispanic Fanatic

One of my favorite novels is Stephen King’s The Stand. But that doesn’t mean I want to live it.

Yes, as we all know, the coronavirus is here to decimate our population, destroy our civilization, and in an absolute worst-case scenario, cause our millionaires to lose some money in the stock market.

Experts are still trying to figure out if this is the second coming of the Spanish Flu (which killed 5% of the world) or if it’s the most overhyped near-calamity since the Y2K bug.

But in any case, we shouldn’t worry. Because our mega-super genius of a president has a master plan to —

Ha, no.

As we all know, the odds of Trump handling this crisis well are about the same odds as your pet schnauzer winning the Kentucky Derby.

Even his hardcore supporters know that the guy can’t handle this. They elected the man to shake things up, or burn down the system, or undertake some other metaphor that conjures up images of devastation. Trump voters never dreamed that their beloved doddering reality-show host would actually have to deal with a national emergency. He was just supposed to ban the Muslims and deport the Latinos, not come up with a comprehensive approach to fighting a global pandemic. Oh, the injustice of it all.

Early indicators are that the most racist chief executive in history is not up to the task. After all, we’ve already endured disastrous news conferences where Trump has claimed that we will develop a vaccine for the coronavirus quickly, “when in fact there is little chance that will happen.” Hell, the president doesn’t even appear to know how vaccines work, and he’s implied that stricken people should just go into work and spread the disease among their co-workers.

So our prevention efforts are off to a good start.

Now, it’s not just that Trump distrusts science, “always believes he knows more than the experts about any given subject,” and “has increasingly surrounded himself with a team of acolytes who will not challenge him.”

No, there is also the fact that it is difficult “for the public to believe a president who has made more than 16,000 false or misleading claims in his first three years in office.” 

Put it all together, and there is a slight chance that the virus may yet accomplish what impeachment, the Mueller Report, and myriad scandals, fuck-ups, and immoral actions have not, which is to “throw a spotlight on the Trump administration’s criminal negligence,” massive corruption, and idiotic incompetence.

Hey, even Wall Street analysts are saying that a botched response to the virus “may increase the likelihood of Democratic victory in the 2020 election.”

But I will go even further. I will state the following:

This is the election. This microscopic bug — right here. This will likely decide who the next president is. We are in its hands.

You see, if coronavirus unleashes a wave of illness across America — and in a truly horrific scenario, kills thousands — it will be impossible for even Trump and his squad of conspiratorial lunatics to claim that it is fake news. If the stock market plummets, and the economy shudders, many Americans will finally declare that they have had enough of Trumpian chaos.

Conversely, if the virus burns itself out and doesn’t sicken too many Americans, and the economic turmoil is relatively slight, well then, team Trump will claim that the president vanquished the bug and singlehandedly saved the nation (even if, as is virtually 100 percent certain in this scenario, the administration just got lucky despite its inevitable bungling).

Everything that has come before this has just been set-up, politically speaking. This virus now controls our fate.

You can ponder the insanity of that all you want.

Just don’t forget to wash your hands.

Let’s say your kid punches another kid in the face for no reason. According to the GOP understanding of human psychology, you should respond by taking your child out for ice cream and saying, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

Yes, in this post-impeachment era, our favorite man-child of a chief executive has gone from barely hiding his criminality to openly boasting of his ability to do whatever he wants. He is more or less “doing that Joker dance down the courthouse steps.”

We would like to believe that all those Republicans who said Trump would learn a lesson have, in fact, learned a lesson themselves. And this would be that a president who is supposedly repentant does not, in general, threaten his political opponents, retaliate against witnesses, pull strings for his corrupt cronies, and treat the Department of Justice more like it is the Ministry of Information — all within mere days of surviving impeachment. It just shows (as if there were any doubt) that “the only lesson Trump ever learns is that he gets away with everything.”

Still, we haven’t heard any apologies or admissions of serious misjudgment from top Republicans. Presumably, many of them are too damn embarrassed to acknowledge their weak-willed naivety and degrading capitulation to an orange buffoon.

However, maybe some of them are not embarrassed in the least. In fact, maybe this entire political nightmare isn’t just a case of Republicans putting up with kakistocracy in exchange of tax cuts and conservative judges. Oh, that’s no doubt true for many of them, and it remains a pathetic excuse for coddling a wannabe dictator. But at this point, it appears that a lot of conservatives are not only fine with a failed businessman becoming king of America, but are actively rooting for an authoritarian despot to run roughshod over democracy.

Keep in mind that studies show that almost one-third of Americans display at least some support for ending democracy and instilling either a strongman or converting to outright military rule. Furthermore, “the highest level of openness to authoritarianism came from voters who supported Donald Trump.”

If you paid attention in history class, you know that we developed the U.S. Constitution to protect against monarchies. But many conservatives are rethinking the whole point of that old parched document.

Of course, nobody really thinks the Constitution is perfect. We may love it, warts and all, in the same way that we love our crazy uncles who think the moon landing was faked. Yeah, we try to dwell on the Constitution’s good parts, and not the Electoral College or that thing about three-fifths of a person.

But what’s interesting about modern conservatives is that, despite their bellicose grandstanding about how much they revere the Constitution, they really kind of hate it. They hate the separation of the branches of government, the power of the judiciary, and the dominance of the federal government over the states. They hate the 1st Amendment, the 14^thAmendment, the 17^th Amendment, and… well, all them except the 2nd Amendment. They despise most of the principles the Constitution was founded upon, and most of the specifics that it consists of.

They don’t like it — not at all. Nope.

What these anti-Constitutionalists really want is someone to take charge, to wrestle the whole messiness of American life and condense it into a simple, easily understood system.

The fact that this is impossible deters them not at all.

Life, as we know, is inherently messy and complicated. It’s unruly and complex even if you live on an island with dozens of people. So the idea that a nation of 330 million individuals — consisting of hundreds of different races, religions, values, and sports team fandoms — can somehow be squeezed into a pleasing, conflict-free flow of humanity is absurd, even pathetic.

And yet, social conservatives yearn for “a strong sense of social hierarchy (the notion that everyone has their place) [that] can arguably provide a coherent structure that makes the world seem less chaotic — and theoretically more controllable.”

Meanwhile, all of us progressives come dancing along — talking about radical upheavals to healthcare and other discombobulating changes to the old-fashioned way of doing things — and conservatives promptly freak the fuck out.

In addition, all the ideas that “multiculturalists believe will help people appreciate and thrive in democracy — appreciating difference, talking about difference, displaying and applauding difference — are the very conditions that encourage authoritarians not to heights of tolerance, but to their intolerant extremes.”

Trump’s hardcore supporters don’t want to “appreciate difference” or stop using plastic straws or try Ethiopian food or acknowledge any of your crazy commie ideas. Instead, they want things to never change, especially if they reside within an even mildly privileged class of American society. 

More than anything, they want someone to do all their thinking for them. They want the strongman to make it all ok, and to make it simple, and to make all the complexities go away.

Yes, it’s true that this approach has culminated in “an indifference to the health of U.S. political and judicial systems on the part of the president, and a willingness to destroy trust in institutions that could take decades to recover from his power plays.”

But hey, that’s not their problem.

As we careen full throttle into the holiday season, it’s important to keep your stress level low, avoid getting sick, and maintain a positive attitude.

Of course, if you’re Latina, you can forget about all that, because it’s impossible for you to do any of those things.

You see, a recent study has revealed that “Latinas’ economic worries and anxiety about health costs are more intense than for other women overall.” In fact, Latinas are far more likely than other American women — especially white women — to worry about affording rent or a mortgage, getting decent health insurance for their families, snagging a job with good benefits, or keeping their family safe from mass shootings. And Hispanic women rank second only to black women when it comes to fear of white nationalism.

Wow, that’s a lengthy list of anxieties. And let’s not forget that almost half of Latinas report that they have experienced discrimination this past year, which is an enormous increase from the Obama era.

Of course, that implies that there is some kind of link between the well-being of Hispanics and the person in the White House. And that’s just crazy, really nuts and…

What’s that?

Oh, it seems that “half of Latino citizens and legal residents, as well as three-quarters of undocumented immigrants, feel unsafe because of comments made by the Trump administration.”

Hmm, it’s almost like having a raging xenophobic president target you specifically for all of the nation’s ills — and putting an overt white supremacist in charge of immigration policy — has a negative effect on people.

Well, researchers point out that “statements coming from the administration and the president really do have significant effects on Latino populations.” Specifically, the rhetoric and policies of this gang of bumbling sociopaths have not only “induced fear in undocumented immigrants, but they have also caused a substantial proportion of Latino citizens to have concerns about their safety.”

This refers to all Latinos — whether they are newly arrived, born and raised here, undocumented, or third-generation citizens — all of us.

For one concrete example of this plague, look to the fact that one-quarter “of undocumented immigrants said they were so frightened they delayed going to the emergency room for days,” which I’m sure is just fine with the contingent of Americans who love stuffing kids into cages and advocate for shooting people at the border.

But Trump’s words and actions “can be dangerous, and they can even kill when they create barriers to healthcare access.”

And what about all those ICE raids, and all the Latinos (many of them citizens) who have been arrested on their way to work or school? Well, studies have shown that “Hispanic Americans may experience worsening mental health when immigration arrests spike.” 

This stands to reason, as it can be just a little bit stressful to be walking down the street, minding your own business, and then be abruptly handcuffed by black-jacketed thugs who cart you away toward a waiting van.

Happy holidays indeed!

Researchers point out, in a totally unnecessary aside, that this “anxiety could have a detrimental impact on mental health, particularly among racial/ethnic groups that have been disproportionately targeted for arrest and deportation.”

And again, this psychological assault is not limited to the undocumented. Because these policies and actions have an impact on all Latinos, who “might also experience more discrimination, which worsens mental health.”

OK, now that we’ve established that every Hispanic has solid reasons to get sick and feel overwhelmed, is there anything we can do about it?

Well, medical professionals are actively trying to recruit more Latinos for clinical trials, so that we can better understand how these maladies affect the Hispanic population specifically. You see, Latinos are severely underrepresented in clinical trials, so doctors don’t always know if there are subtle differences in, for example, reactions to drugs that are caused by genetic differences.

As such, doctors really want Latinos to sign up for medical studies.

So the good news is that if you’re going to be sick and stressed as hell, maybe you can get paid for it.

As we all know, Latinos are a vast demographic, consisting of about 18% of the American population, and as such, we have an enormous range of backgrounds, philosophies, and behaviors.

Hey, we can’t even agree on whether we are Latinos, Latinx, or Hispanic. So what possible unifying force could exist to bring us together?

Well, there is something: 

It seems that the vast majority of us hate the president. 

Yes, recent polls find that somewhere between 70% to 80% of Latinos disapprove of Trump. For context, keep in mind that this is a much higher number than the percentage of Americans who believe in democracy. Really, it’s incredibly difficult to get three-quarters of a group to agree on anything, but our illustrious commander in chief has found a way to accomplish it.

Digging even deeper, we find that over half of all Hispanics say the situation for Latinos has worsened since Trump took office, and a significant percentage of us are literally terrified to be living in America right now.

I’m no statistician, but I can say with confidence that those numbers are horrific on multiple levels. And those few Latino conservatives who have stuck by our doddering chief executive have noticed this, with more than half of them admitting that “it is hard to support Republican candidates right now.”

Yes, it is indeed difficult to endorse a political party that exists for no other reason than to demonize ethnic minorities and “own the libs.” 

The fact is that the GOP’s cultish devotion to Trump and open embrace of bigots has galvanized Hispanics to vote for somebody — anybody — else.

So your socially conservative tio — the guy who praised Ronald Reagan and thought Bush Jr. wasn’t such a bad guy? Yeah he ain’t voting for Trump.

Indeed, “while different generations of Latinos can still hold divergent views, these views appear to have become more muted” under the onslaught of Trumpism.

This is because “some conservative, older Latinos may believe in more stringent immigration measures or restrictions, [but] they may draw the line at putting kids in cages.”

Hey, that’s more than you can say for the average GOP senator.

The disdain for Trump among Latinos has brought together different generations and subsets of the Hispanic population, with most of us agreeing that a man who pals around with Nazis and mocks Central American refugees may not have our best interests at heart.

This hasn’t stopped our delusional White House occupant from claiming that he is super, mega popular with Hispanics. However, “while the president claims Latino support is growing, that is not based in reality. In fact, he has brought down the overall likability of the entire party.”

Wow, who could have predicted that the entire GOP would suffer for aligning itself with a xenophobic moron who is unable to go more than eight minutes without insulting a Latino, a woman, and/or a world leader? Well, actually, pretty much everyone said that this would happen, but Republicans are not big on listening to anyone who isn’t a Fox News contributor, so they are honestly surprised at this development.

Yes, it seems that you can’t stuff the racially loaded toothpaste back into the tube.

Still, it will be a great day when Latinos can forge strong bonds over something other than our shared hatred of a bigoted Baby Boomer. 

Maybe we can all agree that pupusas are better than hamburgers, or that Adam Sandler movies suck, or that Carlos Santana should have a statue put up to him on the National Mall.

Clearly, it’s time to start debating the really important stuff.

If I speak

At one constant volume
At one constant pitch
At one constant rhythm

Right into your ear

You still won’t hear
You still won’t hear!

Faith No More

A Small Victory

Yes, it is a bit ambiguous.

On the one hand, you have William Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, stating clearly and without qualification that the Trump Administration engaged in an unconstitutional quid pro quo, testimony so shocking that it “reportedly elicited sighs and gasps” from stunned congressmen. 

And as anyone with a grasp of politics (or indeed, the English language) knows, this is about as definitive as it gets. So even though there is “no need for a smoking gun by now, because Trump has all but admitted to the crime… Taylor’s testimony delivered a still-warm pistol with Trump’s fingerprints all over it to congressional investigators.”

But on the other hand, you have Republicans saying, “I didn’t see it. I didn’t hear it.”

Really, that’s what they’re saying.

Now, you might expect some kind of complex refutation or logical argument from the GOP, which has tied its destiny to a sputtering man-child who is most likely spending his days plotting which Republican he can throw under the bus to save his own skin.

However, the GOP long ago ran out of logical arguments, or principled stances, or semi-coherent opinions. Having been reduced to the Party of Stupid, they are now in full-on toddler mode, denying Taylor said what we all heard. Or they are bum-rushing hearings that they have no right to interrupt in some sort of pathetic stalling action that accomplishes nothing but possibly appeases daddy a little bit.

Note to GOP: Looking like a band of angry lunatics, barging into rooms and shouting at people, is not convincing anyone that you have your shit together.

In any case, it is not really a surprise that Republicans can’t see or hear the perfectly obvious. And it’s not just because conservatives long ago surrendered their common sense and basic decency in a futile effort to charm a misogynistic sociopath.

No, this failure to acknowledge reality appears to be a long-time problem. Their denial of climate change, their belief that Iraq had WMDs, and their embrace of crackpot economic theories are all fine examples of the conservative blind spot and deaf zone.

But for the most impressive proof of this disturbing phenomenon, let’s look at racism.

You see, for many conservatives, acknowledging the existence of widespread bigotry undermines their whole philosophy that everyone just needs to pick himself up by his bootstraps, without whining about institutional barriers and societal hindrances. This idea is as antiquated and nonsensical as, well, bootstraps themselves (seriously, who the hell wears bootstraps anymore?).

Also, dismissing racism means ignoring unpleasant historical facts like the GOP’s Southern Strategy or Reagan’s “welfare queens” or just about any other Republican approach that has succeeded in conjuring up racial anxiety among white voters. It all never happened, don’t you see?

Finally, throwing a blanket over the prevalence of prejudice allows white conservatives to feel ok about themselves for, say, voting for an overt bigot. It also allows conservatives to mock political correctness or “own the libs” or whatever stale terminology they use to excuse backward thinking.

As such, conservatives “have convinced themselves that actual racism is basically a thing of the past, and so any accusation of racism must be nothing but liberal claptrap.”

What does this look like? Well, it means the following:

Nothing is racist against blacks (even slavery). 

Nothing is racist against Latinos (even putting kids in cages). 

Telling someone to go back to their own country is not racist (even though you can fired for saying that).

The FBI stating that white supremacy is on the rise doesn’t prove that bigotry is a problem.

Now, anti-Semitism is a tricky one, in that conservatives believe that in general, it doesn’t exist, even if we see guys with torches chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” The GOP caveat, however, is that any criticism of the Israeli government whatsoever is virulent anti-Semitism.

That sticky situation aside, conservatives cannot see racism anywhere — unless, of course, it is against white people. In that case, there is a shitload of racism. Like, wow, we can’t believe the oppression.

In fact, over half (i.e., a majority) of white Americans “think that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem in the United States as discrimination against blacks and other minority groups.”

Looking specifically at conservatives, we find that “a whopping 75 percent of registered Republican voters said that white Americans face discrimination.”

So what do we make of people who insist that only white people — and no one else — are the victims of bigotry?

For starters, we can be honest. 

This is beyond mere denial or simple delusion. It is a life choice. And it is a mindset that has the power to provoke horrifying consequences.

After all, we see it every day.

Perhaps you remember when our totally innocent and not at all corrupt president boasted that he could murder people in the street and not lose any support?

Yeah, good times.

In any case, murdering the country has been a slightly tougher sell for the guy.

Recently, many Trump loyalists went on television to quixotically defend the president’s shenanigans with Ukraine, and as we all know, “their efforts did not go well and produced a number of cringe-worthy moments.”

Indeed, it’s difficult to spin an open-and-shut case of pressuring a foreign government to interfere in American elections, and our most esteemed Republicans appear to be “woefully unprepared to defend a president whose conduct is becoming increasingly hard to justify.”

In fact, one hot rumor holds that “if it was a secret vote, 30 Republican senators would vote to impeach Trump.”

By the way, that’s over half the GOP representation in the Senate and, assuming that every Democrat would vote for conviction, far more than is needed to remove the president from office.

But of course, any impeachment vote — if and when it happens — will not be in secret. It will be a very public, very messy spectacle.

And in those circumstances, those 30 anonymous senators will gulp and say, “not guilty,” for fear of offending their psychotic overlord.

Imagine such a scenario, and then realize that it is far worse than mere cowardice. It is treachery. After all, these senators are saying, “Yeah, I know that the president has committed grotesque crimes against the Constitution and has unleashed lasting devastation upon America, but I really, really don’t want to lose my cushy job.”

And that is clearly jamming personal ambitions ahead of the nation’s interest, which is a sickening dereliction of duty from people who constantly boast about how patriotic they are.

There has been much talk — justified talk — that Republicans regularly put party ahead of country. But the truth is that they put their individual needs ahead of even their party’s future viability, leaving the country a distant third priority, at best.

But they are not the only ones who live in fear of offending a man who flies into a rage if, for example, he’s asked to answer basic questions about his lunatic behavior.

No, the Log Cabin Republicans, the country’s best-known conservative LGBTQ organization, recently endorsed the president’s 2020 reelection bid. It’s interesting that the group “declined to endorse then-candidate Trump in 2016,” back when they thought they had a choice.

But now, the Log Cabin Republicans have fallen into line, displaying “a certain level of perverse chutzpah, or a certain level of confidence in your gaslighting abilities, to claim that President Trump is good for LGBTQ people.”

The Log Cabin Republicans suddenly got into groveling because Trump’s hardcore supporters are the real power in the GOP. And they will not be dissuaded, even if the administration’s disastrous policies nail them personally.

For example, my home state of Wisconsin continues to top the nation in family farm bankruptcies. No one seriously disputes that Trump’s idiotic trade war is “contributing to their economic hardships.”

So those Wisconsin farmers must be mad as hell at the president— right?

Well, these rural soon-to-be paupers are “appear to be sticking by Trump — not just the Republican they largely supported in the 2016 election, but the trade warrior who has put their industries in China’s sights.”

Many of these farmers don’t blame Trump for destroying their livelihoods. Instead, they aim their ire at unknown, nameless “Washington bureaucrats,” (always an easy target). And in an impressive feat of cognitive dissonance, some farmers will continue to vote for oligarchs because they are “not in favor of any kind of socialism,” even while lining up to receive their government-funded bailout packages.

But don’t worry, because most of the $8.4 billion of Trump’s farm bailouts has gone to the richest farmers, the top 10% of all recipients. Yes, even farmers have an elitist class that grabs most of the cash from everyone else, so I guess they really are like the rest of us.

As a final reminder of just how fervently, how obsessively Trump’s base clings to his aura, please keep in mind that about 40% of Republicans don’t even think the president mentioned Joe Biden’s name on that phone call with the Ukrainian president. Never mind arguing whether or not Trump pressured anyone or jeopardized American foreign policy or committed impeachable offenses. Four out of ten Republicans deny that the president even said Biden’s name, which is of course, an undisputed fact, and the most innocuous aspect of this whole sordid fiasco.

So how are you going to convince this crowd that their messiah did anything the slightest bit wrong?

Now, there is a sliver of optimism in this depressing compendium of right-wing fanaticism. Many political experts believe that “the good news for Democrats is that for every argument that pushing ahead on impeachment will hurt them, there is another that it won’t hurt much and may even help.”

And for the first time, “a plurality of Americans now support impeaching Trump and removing him from office.” Furthermore, support for impeachment is only growing with each passing day.

So maybe, possibly, in some distant future, one or two GOP senators will meekly stand up and say this administration is just the slightest bit shady.

But they probably won’t.

The imagination of children is limitless. 

For example, recently the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History inquired about obtaining some charming drawings that kids had made showing their lives. 

And just what were the carefree doodles that these adorable scamps created? Oh, they were just drawings made by migrant children “recently released from immigration custody depicting themselves in cages.”

Wait… in cages?

Um, yeah — in motherfucking cages.

Clearly, the Smithsonian curators recognize history in the making. And they already see that Trump’s reign of xenophobic authoritarianism is something that future generations are going to have trouble believing. Hence, the need to preserve first-hand accounts of this nightmare.

That is, unless you somehow believe that the Americans of twenty or thirty years from now will read about our current era, look at the drawings of kids in cages, and think, “What a wise leader Trump was. Thank goodness he saved our nation from the invading horde.”

I’m more certain that they will speak only of Trump in hushed tones reserved for shameful stories of the past, or pull his name out when they need a scary story to tell their children around the campfire.

In any case, the situation at the border is still a humanitarian crisis. But this hasn’t stopped the U.S. Supreme Court from saying, “Hey, let’s allow chief executive lunatic to be even more out of control and psychopathic. Why not?”

You see, recently the court sided with the administration and issued a ruling that effectively locked nearly all Central American migrants out of the asylum process. 

The whole process was so shady that our friend Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented. She implied that the Supreme Court is doing “extraordinary” favors for Trump. 

What Justice Sotomayor doesn’t understand is that it’s simply inefficient to have three branches of government, when you can have just one.

In any case, the court’s decision follows another recent travesty in the ongoing shit show unfolding on the border. I’m talking, of course, about the administration’s decision to “divert $3.6 billion in military construction funding to buildthe president’s border wall.”

Yes, some Republicans were briefly upset that this will strip money from their home states, and in some cases, possibly weaken the military that they supposedly hold in such high esteem. But ultimately, this band of hollow cowards fell into line.

Still, I don’t know why conservatives are obsessing about our southern border. Don’t they know that hordes of people are crossing our northern border with Canada? Yes, there’s a self-described “caravan” zipping back and forth across the Canadian border to…

What’s that?

Oh, that “caravan” is actually U.S. citizens headed for Canada “in search of affordable medical care in a country where they can get the exact same life-saving drugs for a dramatically lower price.”

I can’t imagine why a caravan of ill Americans is headed to Canada when we have, in the words of many conservatives, the “best health care system in the world.”

Wow, just imagine how many sickly Americans would be headed abroad for help if we ranked, say, the worst in the industrialized world in health care? Yeah, that would be embarrassing.

But getting back to the southern border, it might interest you to know that there is indeed a “little-noticed surge across the U.S.-Mexico border,” but that it is “Americans, heading south.”

You see, “the U.S.-born population in Mexico “has reached 799,000 — a roughly fourfold increase since 1990.” And that is probably an undercount, with some experts estimating the real number at 1.5 million or more.

By some measures, “the flow of migrants from the United States to Mexico is probably larger than the flow of Mexicans to the United States.” Unfortunately, many of the Americans living there are, well, “illegal.”

That’s irony on a major level.

Maybe we can send the U.S. Border Patrol to round them up. But of course, those officers are too busy sharing “memes mocking dead migrant children, photoshopped images of elected officials performing sex acts, and discussions of throwing things at elected officials who visit Border Patrol detention facilities.”

Looking at the infamous U.S. Border Patrol Facebook group’s homepage reveals acres of “vile stuff, and confirms many of the worst suspicions regarding the agency accused of running torture facilities.”

Who would have thought that individuals who yank screaming children away from their parents could be bad people?

Regardless, we’ve now come full circle when it comes to the border crisis. It comes down to kids in cages.

So let’s allow the final word to come from those right-wingers who combine their love of the Second Amendment with their hatred of Latinos. Mixing together this toxic stew creates the fresh argument that “Americans need guns in order to potentially fight off unlimited immigrants coming into the United States.” I bet you were unaware that “citizens need the ability to defend ourselves because we don’t know who is coming into the country.”

Well, now you know.

Hey, remember Ronald Reagan?

Sure you do. He was the devil.

Woops, I meant to say that he was the 40th president of the United States whom many people consider the last great Republican leader. Well, it turns out that he was also an unrepentant bigot.

Hey, remember the Tea Party?

Yeah, they were the band of rabid racists who freaked out because America elected a black man.

Sorry, I meant to say they were the highly principled patriots who protested rampant government spending. Well, it turns out that they were actually hate-filled hypocrites who latched onto a convenient excuse to spew irrational, prejudicial nonsense.

In both cases, present-day conservatives shrug and say, “Who could have known?”

Yet all the clues were there, and even at the time, lots of progressives said Reagan was a racist and the Tea Party were lunatics who hated ethnic minorities.

But today’s GOP insists it’s a left-wing lie that racism has had a cozy home within its party’s confines for, oh, the past 50 years or so. Just ignore the Southern Strategy and Nixon’s anti-Semitism and people hanging Obama in effigy and hard data that shows Trump’s win was fueled by xenophobia more than any other factor and… well, what do you have?

OK, there are real-life Nazis in the Republican Party and GOP congressmen praising white supremacists and nationalistic terrorists gunning down Latinos.

But besides that, what do you have?

Yes, I’ll give you the fact that Trump has hurled racial slurs at members of Congress — insults that would get him fired at any normal job. And it’s true that racial resentment correlates with voting Republican. And yeah, hate crimes have increased since Trump was elected, especially in places where he held campaign rallies. And Fox News spotlights white men who demean immigrants and praise white homogeneity. And more than half of all Americans say the president is flat-out racist.

But really, isn’t all that just coincidence?

No? Not even a little bit?

Um, no.

It is clear to everyone in America that plausible deniability is gone.  You simply can’t say that you don’t know.

At this point, if you support Trump, there are only four possibilities:

1. You are a racist
2. You are supportive of a racist in exchange for a bigger tax refund or the achievement of some vague conservative goal (like Supreme Court justices who still think it’s 1959)
3. You put up with a racist because you’re in too deep, and to admit your error in voting for this corrupt fraud opens yourself up to a flurry of “told ya so” by those damn liberals
4. You have suffered a grievous brain injury and don’t know what the fuck is going on

But to say the president is not a bigot, or to dispute the cancer of racism that has a chokehold on the modern Republican Party, is to indulge in fantastical thinking that can only lead to more chaos and, eventually, to a searing rendering of the American nation itself.

Because you know the truth. Let’s all stop denying it.

I’ve never gotten into the concept of hate-watching movies you despise, or hate-reading the Family Circus, or having hate sex with someone you loathe.

It’s a weird drive to embrace that which repulses you, but the closest I get is when I peruse one of those clickbait articles that features interviews with hardcore Trump supporters.

Why do I do this, when I know, well in advance, that it will do nothing but drive up my blood pressure and further diminish my rapidly evaporating faith in humanity?

For example, a recent article interviewed Trump fans at the site of the president’s infamous North Carolina rally. You know the one — “Send her back! Send her back!” — yeah, that one.

In any case, these lovers of authoritarianism denied that the president was racist (predictably) and insisted that his issues with the Squad were grounded in principle.

Well, there was that one guy who referred to the four progressive congresswoman as “disrespectful wenches.” But hey, nobody asked about misogyny, did they?

In any case, one trait of Trump supporters is their embrace of the idea that if a given American has issues with this country, he or she should promptly and immediately get the fuck out. 

So I am sure that these Trumpian patriots would be the first to demand the deportation of any person who said the following critical statements:

— “The idea of American Greatness, of our country as the leader of the free and unfree world, has vanished.”

— “Other nations and other countries don’t want to hear about American exceptionalism. They’re insulted by it.”

— “Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in third-world condition, and 43 million Americans are on food stamps.”

Why, how dare someone insult our flawless nation with such a pack of hate-filled, anti-American, horrible… what’s that? 

Those are all statements by Trump himself?

Oh dear.

Yes, it might shock those presidential admirers who believe that “You hate the country, you don’t like it, you trash the country—get out of the country! Move on!’”

But the fact is that no one has been more critical of America in the last few years than the guy who insists it’s unpatriotic to be critical of America.

This is a person whose campaign slogan was famously “Make America Great Again,” (which obviously implies that we are no longer great) and whose inauguration address bemoaned “American carnage,” (which remains an awesome name for a punk band).

Trump wrote a book (well, paid a ghostwriter to writea book) called Crippled America. He has sneered that the nation’s leaders are stupid and that the country is a “laughingstock.”

And he equated America’s moral standing with Putin’s Russia, snapping, “You think our country’s so innocent?”

I’m trying to imagine what Fox News would say if AOC uttered that same question.

By the way, for a pack of supposed commies, it’s interesting to note that “no Democrat in Congress has praised the economic performance of communist countries” or said that he had fallen in love with a communist dictator who has often threatened to destroy America.

But Trump has.

In essence, Trump’s supporters believe that a black woman or Latina who points out issues in America “justifies her banishment, but Trump’s similar transgressions justify his presence in the White House.” It’s a tricky balancing act, to be sure, but one that rests on the premise that “under Trumpism, no defense of the volk is a betrayal, even if it undermines the republic, and no attack on the volk’s hegemony can be legitimate, even if it is a defense of democracy.”

And yes, volk in this quote means, “White, straight, conservative Americans.”

So how many Republicans would take their own advice (i.e., never criticize America) when it comes to, for example, gay marriage? After all, if you don’t like the fact that two men can get married in this country, maybe you should just leave. 

And for the sake of consistency, I’m positive that every pro-lifer — knowing full well that Roe vs. Wade has been American law and a constant in American culture for almost a half century now — never criticizes the decision and is now packing to get the hell out of here.

Hey, love it or leave it.

Still, for a moment, let’s set aside the very large issues of hypocrisy and racial animus. The whole idea that it is treacherous to criticize one’s nation is dubious at best and vile at worst.

It should be common knowledge — but it is not — that Americans don’t pledge allegiance to one person (say, a xenophobic president), nor do we jettison our First Amendment rights and cultural value of freedom of speech simply because it might be too unpleasant for jingoists to hear.

And on a practical level, what nation could possibly thrive, or even survive, if every critique of the country’s political situation were viewed as out of bounds?

I’m trying to imagine this argument in 1776: “Hey, Thomas Jefferson, if you don’t like British rule so much, why don’t you just leave the colonies?”

The United States would still have slavery, women would not be able to vote, and all our children would work in coalmines if we listened to people who said, “Don’t question our greatness, or you are out of here.”

No thank you. It is cowardice, not patriotism, to refuse to examine a nation’s standards. 

And to improve one’s country — to inch it closer to its ideals and create a better nation for all its residents — not only should you stay, but you should shout, and you should fight against all the people trying to hold it back.

In our lesser moments, we have all accused our political opponents of being crazy, foolish, ignorant, or just plain stupid.

Such tactics do nothing to advance the culture and minimize the chances of finding common ground. Plus, it’s just not very nice.

So we should never refer to our political adversaries as lunatics or hate-filled ignoramuses. 

Unless, of course, we have scientific studies that verify our insults.

Fortunately — or more accurately, unfortunately — a recent synthesis of psychological research has revealed that all those negative thoughts you have about Trump supporters are, to a disturbing degree, pretty damn accurate.

You see, the magazine Psychology Today has looked at the reasons for Trump’s political invincibility among his staunchest supporters. Or in the words of the researchers, “those supporters who would follow Trump off a cliff.”

The psychologists point out that “not all Trump supporters are racist, mentally vulnerable, or fundamentally bad people,” which is just the kind of disclaimer that puts your mind at ease — right?

The researchers state, however, that is “harmful to pretend that there are not clear psychological and neural factors that underlie much of Trump supporters’ unbridled allegiance.” The authors warn us that the list of these motivations start with “benign reasons for Trump’s intransigent support,” but that “as the list goes on, the explanations become increasingly worrisome, and toward the end, border on the pathological.”

Again, I’m very relaxed reading that statement. Aren’t you?

On a most basic level, hardcore fans of our president tend to “put their practical concerns above their moral ones.” To such individuals, as long as the president delivers on tax cuts and keeps pushing through right-wing judges, “it does not make a difference if he’s a vagina-grabber, or if his campaign team colluded with Russia.”

Remember, this trait is regarded as one of the more innocuous rationales for supporting Trump.

Moving up the list, we see that “the loyalty of Trump supporters may in part be explained by America’s addiction to entertainment and reality TV.” 

Or it could be that “fear keeps his followers energized and focused on safety.” Because when people are scared of, for example, Latino immigrants, they look for a protector, and subsequently “become less concerned with offensive and divisive remarks.” Indeed, who cares about insulting a few easily offended liberal snowflakes when there are hordes of “illegals” raping and pillaging at will? 

Now, the researchers drop a few academic phrases and psychology buzzwords here and there while discussing Trump supporters. That’s why the article lists “power of mortality reminders and perceived existential threats” as motivators. It also explains the truly awesome term “terror management theory,” which would be a kick-ass name for a punk band.

In actuality, terror management theory refers to fear mongering, which provokes people to “more strongly defend those who share their worldviews and national or ethnic identity.” Of course, we haven’t seen any of that among Trump supporters… nope.

In any case, as we climb the list of motivators, we see old favorites like the Dunning-Kruger effect, as well as “a misguided sense of entitlement.” We also run into “growing evidence that Trump’s white supporters have experienced significantly less contact with minorities than other Americans.”

The researchers don’t really get cooking, however, until they point out that many Trump supporters “suffer from psychological illnesses that involve paranoia and delusions, such as schizophrenia, or are at least vulnerable to them, like those with schizotypy personalities.”

And in case you’re wondering, the researchers believe that “Donald Trump and media allies target these people directly.”

That can’t be good.

But hold on — we still haven’t gotten to “collective narcissism,” which is an “unrealistic shared belief in the greatness of one’s national group.” Collective narcissism occurs when a group believes it represents the “true identity of a nation — the ‘ingroup,’ in this case white Americans,” who also perceive themselves as being “disadvantaged compared to outgroups who are getting ahead of them unrightfully.”

Go ahead and ask a Trump supporter if he believes immigrants are stealing our jobs, or if certain “urban types” are sponging off of their hard work. 

I’ll wait here.

Things get more ominous when we reach “social dominance orientation (SDO).” This refers to people who clamor for a society in which the “high-status groups have dominance over the low-status ones.” Americans who score high on SDO are “typically dominant, tough-minded, and driven by self-interest.” And they were more likely to vote for Trump.

Finally, we get to the top of the list, which features the one-two punch of authoritarianism and bigotry.

The researchers point out that authoritariansprioritize “strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom,” and often display “a lack of concern for the opinions or needs of others.”

In case you’re wondering, authoritarian personality “is more common among the right-wing around the world.” Trump’s speeches “are naturally appealing to those with such a personality.” In fact, a 2016 survey found that “high authoritarians greatly favored then-candidate Trump, which led to a correct prediction that he would win the election, despite the polls saying otherwise.”

As for racism, the researchers say, “it would be grossly unfair and inaccurate to say that every one of Trump’s supporters have prejudice against ethnic and religious minorities,” before adding that “it would be equally inaccurate to say that few do.”

After all, a recent study has shown that “support for Trump is correlated with a standard scale of modern racism.” And about forty bajillion other studies have found that bigots tend to support the small-fingered con man in the White House.

Still, before you get too depressed looking over this list of, shall we say, less than admirable behaviors, keep in mind that this research applies only to Trump’s hardiest fans, the ones who would support him no matter what.

Of course, many studies put that number at about 20% of the American population.

Yes, that’s a whole lot of deplorables.