Hispanic Fanatic

Among the 47 jobs I held in college—back when tuition was almost reasonable—was a gig with the US census. As part of the job, I walked around Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods, knocking on doors and asking the inhabitants how many people lived there, how many bathrooms were in the house, and other random questions that constituted the worst ice breakers of all time. I wrote their answers on my clipboard, and then moved on to the next nonplussed resident.

My job with the US census lasted for only a couple of months. Some of the other jobs I had in college were cafeteria worker, phlebotomist, press release writer, and test-tube washer. Seriously, those were my gigs.

In any case, my total contribution to the most recent census was filling it out and marking “Latino” in the ethnicity section. But that must have made an impact. 

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Listen, you wouldn’t teach advanced calculus to second-graders, would you? Nor would you make metaphysics part of the curriculum for nine-year-olds. Therefore, it makes sense to ban teaching critical race theory (CRT) in grade school.

As we all know, CRT “is an academic study at the undergraduate and graduate level that aims to examine the role of racism in the modern era and the ways it has become woven into the social fabric.” Virtually no grade schools are teaching CRT, but you can’t be too careful. Some overzealous teachers out there, somewhere, might abruptly thrust college-level academics onto their unsuspecting grade schoolers, so we need legislation to make sure that doesn’t happen. 

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If you can’t beat ‘em, kill ‘em.

You would be forgiven if you believed that this was the GOP slogan for the midterms. After all, the modern conservative movement is not about lower taxes, traditional values, or all the other supposed principles that long obscured the right-wing predilection for violence. No, the Republican Party has quit the exhausting task of hiding its affinity for head-bashing, and instead, conservatives are openly celebrating mayhem. 

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The good news is that Republicans believe in elections again.

Yes, the GOP was ready to dismiss the gubernatorial race in Virginia as just another larcenous farce, but the election met with conservative approval when the Republican candidate won. You know the new governor — he was the guy who campaigned hard against cancel culture by vowing to cancel books by Black people. 

In any case, pundits are united in declaring this to be a harbinger of doom for Democrats in next year’s midterms, the following year’s presidential election, and every election for the remainder of the millennium. Indeed, Democrats will probably lose control of congress in 2022, and it will certainly be devastating if Republicans take over. After all, the GOP might stonewall Biden’s agenda, in contrast to today, when everything is just sailing through and… oh wait.

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Decades ago, my mother emigrated to America to attend college. She never moved back to El Salvador, but that had less to do with chasing the American Dream and more because, you know, life stuff happens. Oh, my mom also stayed because she discovered that she had been lied to her entire life.

You see, growing up in El Salvador, my mother was never educated about some of the more horrendous facts of her country’s history. These unfortunate episodes had been hidden from her. Once in America, however, she had access to this forbidden knowledge, and after finding out how atrociously her government had acted, she was not in a big hurry to move back. Understandably, she was angry that she had to move to another nation to learn her own country’s history.

However, this cultural behavior—the active covering up of disturbing historical facts—is not unique to El Salvador. Almost every society has a problem admitting its mess-ups, failures, and outright barbarism. 

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In what can only be described as a failed gotcha moment, an anti-vaxxer recently emailed me a diatribe that contained the following question: “Name one time that the people forcing compliance on others were on the right side of history.”

It took approximately 1.9 seconds for me to think, “Brown vs. Board of Education,” but I didn’t bother to email him my answer because I don’t engage with trolls.

In any case, the anti-vaxxer’s sad attempt to stump me did have an unintended effect. It got me thinking about the reverse scenario: “Name one time that White conservatives fighting social progress were on the right side of history.”

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About a year before the pandemic killed millions of people and crushed our souls, a team of scientists made an historic announcement. They had succeeded in capturing the first image of a black hole, about 55 million light years away. 

Of course, right-wingers ranted how it was all faked and that black holes don’t really exist and that the scientists were liars and…

OK, that didn’t actually happen. Aside from a few Christian conservatives who think astronomy is an affront to God, nobody got offended or conspiratorial about this scientific breakthrough. And the reason is simple. A picture of a black hole didn’t threaten anyone’s political viewpoint. Therefore, it was legitimate science.

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There’s an iron law in politics: Regardless of the actual reason for a crisis, Republicans will always blame immigrants.

Yes, as we all know, the GOP leaders of Florida could not unleash more death upon their state if they hired snipers to shoot at random cars on the freeway. But they deny that their disdain for vaccines and refusal to mask up has, in any way, led to the completely predictable and totally preventable surge of the delta variant that is consuming their residents.

No, according to the GOP, it is once again all those filthy Hispanics swarming across the border (and then presumably swimming across the Gulf of Mexico) that are infesting the brave patriots of Florida.

This pathetic deflection is typical of a political party that has to come up with increasingly ludicrous excuses for being so obviously, painfully, and catastrophically wrong about the coronavirus. They are furiously scrambling to come up with yet more convoluted explanations of how two plus two equals nine. We can practically hear the self-doubt and see the flop sweat.

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Jesus Christ was racist.

OK, I’m not saying that the actual historical Jesus — who may have been black — was racist. He seemed to be a pretty chill guy.

But certainly the European Christian concept of Jesus — all blonde and blue-eyed and ready to do some smiting — was crazy bigoted. 

Of course, the link between racism and Christianity has been strong for centuries. Think of the forced conversions of indigenous people in the Americas, or the zealotry of missionaries in Africa.

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Decades ago, you might have heard Republicans say, “Vote for us because we will improve your lives.” They never delivered — unless you were already rich, of course. Otherwise, they didn’t even try to make life better for the middle or working class.

So the GOP eventually changed its appeal to the watered-down “Vote for us because we will get rid of all the stuff you hate.” This time, they really did try to fulfill their promises. But on just about every conservative issue — abortion, gay marriage, Obamacare — the Republican Party failed, mostly because the GOP’s ideas are idiotic, reckless, and unpopular. Conservatives couldn’t get rid of food stamps, establish English as our official language, prohibit “anchor babies,” or really achieve any of their main goals — except tax cuts for the rich. They are extraordinarily good at accomplishing that.

So Republicans have been reduced to their latest sales pitch, which is, “Vote for us because we hate the same stuff you hate.”

That’s basically it.

There is no grand plan or ambitious goal, unless delusional idolization of the 1950s somehow counts as a vision for the future. 

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