Hispanic Fanatic

What do measles, anti-abortion laws, and overt racism all have in common?

Actually, not much except for this: All three were thought to be eradicated decades ago.

But now, as I’m sure you’ve heard, these three social maladies have made a roaring comeback. Really, when it comes to catching contagious diseases, treating women like cattle, and screaming at ethnic minorities in public, well, it might as well be 1965.

For example, “this the most severe year for measles in 25 years — and it’s looking like we’re even on track to break that record.” This is because many parents are scared of science and have opted not to vaccinate their children, a truly terrifying combination of ignorance, misanthropy and societal suicide that has been endorsed by the great scientist of our time, Mr. Donald Trump.

As for Roe vs. Wade, many progressives figured that after nearly a half-century of stare decisis and settled law — and the progress that women have made toward gender equality in the interim — that there would be no way that conservatives could possibly yank away this constitutional right in a fit of blatant misogyny.

Let me tell you something. The hard right wing of the GOP will tell you when they have finally gone too far, and you will have no say in it (and also, their answer will always be, “We have not gone too far”).

That brings us to racism. Oh sure, the more wide-eyed among us thought that bigotry was dead around the time Obama got elected, and that we had entered a post-racial world… sorry, it’s hard for me to type that phrase without bursting into derisive, cackling laughter.

Regardless, most Americans agreed that racial prejudice still existed. But many of us believed that racism was so beaten down and socially unacceptable that we no longer had to worry about, say, a guy mowing a swastika into his lawn for all his neighbors to see. And the very idea of thousands of neo-fascists marching through the streets chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans… that was just nuts. Never gonna happen — nope.

So why are we here? How are we here?

There is, of course, no all-encompassing answer. But we can look at one undeniable cause for America sliding into retrograde.

And that is because a certain mindset — making America great again — has been embraced by people who are too fearful, too overwhelmed to face the present day. And fetishizing a glorious past that never existed leaves a culture unprepared for the issues of the future. The yearning for a simpler time only leads to simplistic answers.

One of the prevailing attitudes of America’s bygone decades was blatant ignorance masquerading as charming naivety. With the rise of the internet, information is easier than ever to find. But when facts are too upsetting or truths are too difficult to face, many Americans deny their existence and whiplash toward the bad ideas of previous generations. And people start saying kids are better off without vaccinations, or that women shouldn’t get the right to choose, or that segregation isn’t so bad after all. All the decayed norms that were thought dead and buried long ago crawl out of the nation’s grave.

Perhaps this maddening lurching of one step forward, nine steps back will one day be viewed as a necessary stage of America’s evolution. However, even if we eventually look back on this time and sigh with relief that we made it through, I am positive about one thing:

Nobody — and I mean, nobody — is ever going to glamorize 2019.

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.

I recently received a manifesto (there is no other word to describe it) from a longtime reader who hates me.

Over the years, this reader has frequently sent emails calling me an idiot and/or a racist, with colorful phrases throw in that describe his feelings about Latinos in general.

In any case, he is — shockingly — a hardcore Trump supporter who has been clamoring for that fabled wall on our southern border, which his messiah promised back in 2016. But this same reader just wrote me to say that he is now completely against the wall and thinks constructing one would be a disaster for America. 

Has he seen the light and renounced his bigotry? Has he realized that the wall is nothing more than a moronic campaign slogan? Did my writing influence him to change his flawed thinking?

Ha… no.

My longtime pen pal has informed me that he’s uncovered the brilliant double-cross, long-con, super-duper reverse psychology that leftists have engineered. He says that liberals only claim to be opposed to the wall, when in actuality, they want it built. In his words, “the bloodthirsty socialists are going to seize power” after the last brick is put in. At that point, the wall will be a barrier to trap all good, decent Americans in the hellhole that leftists have inflicted on this nation. He just wanted to let me know that he’s on to this, and that “patriots are not going to support your plot to turn us into East Germany.”

Damn… we progressives almost had you there.

Now, besides illustrating the bottomless depths of paranoia that passes for conservative thought, my faithful reader has also shown that the wall — once a symbol of Trumpism — has turned into a farce of epic proportions and the biggest reason why the word “boondoggle” exists.

You see, we’ve already endured the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, ugly political fights over the power of executive orders and eminent domain, and a misguided reshuffling of our military’s priorities — all to serve the personal whims of a scatterbrained wannabe despot who has “the long-term decision-making ability of an empty chair.”

And still there is no wall.

Things have gotten so desperate that right-wing citizens are raising money to fund the wall themselves. As I’ve previously written, one group has collected $20 million, which is enough to build about a mile of Trump’s barrier. But even that pathetic scaling down of expectations doesn’t look like it’s going to happen because… well… um… the money cannot be accounted for. 

Apparently, $20 million has just gone missing, all by itself.

Yes, the founder of this delusional endeavor is “a prolific operator of hoax pages on Facebook, and money he raised in the past to help veterans’ programs in hospitals never actually went to those hospitals.”

And now, the proposed deadline for groundbreaking on the privately funded wall has come and gone. At this point, “Trump supporters who donated to the crowdfunding effort want to know where their money went.”

It’s a good question. Although an even better question is how could people be so consumed by bigotry that they would give their hard-earned cash to a guy with a shady past to fund a xenophobic project that would accomplish nothing? And as a follow-up, are they aware that, even if the money reappears and is applied to construction, “the vast majority of the border … exists on land owned by the federal government — land where private citizens cannot build their own walls”?

Oh well, at least their hearts are in the wrong place.

With such a cavalcade of corruption, incompetence, and stupidity coalescing around all things related to the wall, it is no wonder that my conspiracy-obsessed reader is now dismissing the barricade that he once so aggressively championed. He says it’s because he has uncovered a left-wing plot to commandeer the wall. But clearly, he just wants to distance himself from total failure. 

It’s hard to say definitively, and I’m not going to ask him to find out.

Because I don’t correspond with crazy people.

I live in California, where Cesar Chavez Day is a state holiday, and you can’t walk a mile without glimpsing a sign of the region’s strong Latino history and culture.

But most states are not California. 

For example, I grew up in Wisconsin, and at the time, there were so few Hispanics around that my family supplied most of the Latino culture, and whatever I did on the weekend instantly became the state’s Latino history (hey, at least it felt that way).

The point is that despite the many contributions that Hispanics have made to America, and our current status as the largest ethnic minority in the nation, running into public displays of our heritage is about as common as meeting a bilingual Trump supporter who listens to NPR.

In fact, a report last year by the University of California, Los Angeles “concluded that not enough is being done to recognize and include Hispanic contributions, with the report going as far as labeling it ‘a pattern of willful neglect’ toward the Latino population in the United States.”

Hopefully, that is about to change. You see, this month, a group of bipartisan legislators reintroduced a bill in Congress to create a national Latino museum in Washington, D.C.

The building would be located near Smithsonian museums devoted to the history of African Americans and Native Americans. This, of course, would give us a tightly packed trifecta of museums about ethnic groups that this country has just loved, loved, loved nonstop.

In any case, legislation to create a national Latino museum has been introduced in the past, but the bills have died in Congress. One congressman has said that the proposal “is not a partisan issue, and it shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” which would be cute in its naivety if it weren’t so sad. 

Because the truth is that everything is partisan in Trump’s government. These are the same people who see glaciers melting as a partisan issue.

So will we live long enough to see a national Latino museum? Well, America’s attitude toward Hispanic history has not been encouraging thus far.

Many historians say that the few sites marking Latino history are often “shabby, largely unknown and at risk of disappearing.”

In addition, many of the historical sites dedicated to Hispanic influence “usually center around the Spanish exploration era, colonial times and Old West settlement periods” because these are regarded as “safe” sites that downplay the racism and segregation Latinos had to overcome.

Yeah — who wants to learn about all that icky racism and segregation? Talk about a buzzkill.

But if you despair that there may never be a national museum dedicated to the history of Latinos in this country, cheer up.

Because you can always road trip to the National Mustard Museum. It’s right there in my home state of Wisconsin.

Wait… I can’t tell if you’re laughing or crying.

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.

Look, if you want action on climate change, it’s best to support a progressive candidate.

But if you want old guys to rant in Congress about how evil the Green Deal is — and to display pictures of Ronald Reagan firing a machine gun while riding on the back of a dinosaur– well, then I’ve got a political party for you.

Yes, we all know the Republican Party has long denied the existence of global warming. But that ideological stance — which has long hit the sweet spot between appalling ignorance and mind-boggling denial — is wavering. This is because overwhelming scientific data, personal experience,and the influence of young GOP moderates are all merging to make the conservative dismissal of climate change as antiquated as floppy disks and mall hair.

In fact, recent polls show that “a surging numberof Americans understand that climate change is happening and believe that it could harm their family and the country.” Even a slight majorityof Republicans understand that climate change is a real problem, and not something Hollywood celebrities just made up for the hell of it.

Of course, whenever Republicans admit — through gritted teeth — that the Earth is maybe, possibly heating up, they suggest solutions like “having more American babies to save the planet fromclimate change.”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that crowding even more people onto the planet will only make things worse, but thanks for trying.

In any case, the effects of climate change have already begun. And as usual whenever something terrible occurs politically, economically, or sociologically, it is Latinos who get hit hard.

You see, “much migration from Central America and, for that matter, around the world, is fueled by climate change.”

For example, in my family’s homeland of El Salvador, up to 28 percentof the coastline may disappear by the end of the century, due to rising sea levels. Once that happens, it’s a fair question to ask what happen to the people who live near the coast. Yes, they will ill need to move — to migrate — somewhere.

Elsewhere in Latin America, rising sea levels are “destroying the mangrove forests, the marine life that relies on them, and thus he fishermen who rely on that marine life to feed themselves and eke out a meager economy.”

In essence, climate change may make summers in Kansas more uncomfortable. But it will positively fuck up Central America.

But of course, this is not the first time that Latinos have had an adversarial relationship with climate change. For example, a mere 500 years ago, “European colonizers killed so many indigenous Americans that the planet cooled down.”

Think about that — Columbus and his pals wiped out so many New World natives that the entire Earth felt the chill. You see, a new study shows that when the Europeans brought war, enslavement, and smallpox to the Americas, the result was a death toll that represented about 10 percent of the world’s population at the time, or “more people than the modern-day populations of New York City, London, Paris, Tokyo, and Beijing combined.”

Researchers believe that following such a drastic population decline, “large swaths of vegetation and farmland were abandoned. The trees and flora that repopulated that unmanaged farmland started absorbing more carbon dioxide and keeping it locked in the soil, removing so much greenhouse gas from the atmosphere that the planet’s average temperature dropped by 0.15 degrees Celsius.”

As if slaughtering millions of indigenous people weren’t bad enough, the European explorers created an actual blizzard from their bones.

But ultimately, whenever people talk about the Earth dying, or the planet being in crisis, or some other terminology that implies Mother Nature is suffering, it is misleading.

Because the Earth is merely a big rock, without feelings or desires. For the first billion years of its existence, it went from molten lava to airless sphere, devoid of life. And the Earth wasn’t suffering then. And it won’t be suffering if it heats up and wipes humanity off its surface. It is indifferent to our strong drive to keep living and to thrive and to savor all the joys of existence.

Unfortunately, far too many humans share this indifference.

If we’ve learned anything from the release of the full (heavily redacted) Mueller Report, it is this:

Don’t trust William Barr to summarize anything.

Seriously, our attorney general would summarize Lolitaas a novel about a guy who has a harmless crush on a younger woman. Then Barr would add that you don’t have to read the book yourself, so just trust him. 

Of course, the full Mueller Report is far more damningof the president’s fumbling, inchoate, fantabulist style of leadership than Barr’s quick dismissal a few weeks ago led us to believe.

However, we don’t need the Mueller Report to tell us that Trump lives in a universe where his word is law, his ideas are heaven-sent, and his policies never, ever backfire in spectacularly cataclysmic ways.

You see, for most of his life and all of his presidency, Trump has ignored reality in favor of his own simplistic, hate-filled vision of how the world supposedly works, and in the process, he’s created a bizarre self-fulfilling prophecy of his worst fears.

For example, the president has been declaring — shrieking, actually — for years now that there is a crisis at the border. These declarations came despite the fact that immigration was down, with multiple experts saying the border was the safest it had been in years.

But now, in a feat that would be impressive if it weren’t so darkly ironic and disastrous, Trump’s own policies have provoked an actual crisis at the border.

Currently, thousands of migrants are caught in a hellish purgatory that sickens all but the most reactionary among us. This is because Trump’s decision to suspend aid to Central American countries, combined with “his determination to build a wall and his grand gestures to demonstrate his desire to cut off illegal immigration” have incentivized migrants “to get to the border as fast as possible.”

The president has “sent the signal that this may be the last best chance to find safe harbor in the United States, and existing laws make handling migrants from Central America — as opposed to Mexico — much more complicated for the administration.”

The result is a humanitarian crisis that Trump is unable to alleviate until “he stops creating more reasons for migrants to come to the U.S., and starts treating them more like human beings.”

Good luck with that.

The president’s delusion has continued, unimpeded, with his idea of sending undocumented immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities, despite the fact that this grade-school-level taunt to liberals has “previously been rejected by administration lawyers in internal White House deliberations, as probably illegal and emblematic of the administration’s failure to conceive of a fair and coherent immigration policy.”

And the president’s insistence that reality bend to his will has infected his most fervent followers, such as the right-wing militia members who have beenillegally detainingmigrants at the border. These fun-loving vigilantes have kidnapped thousands of migrants in a xenophobic, Gestapo-like maneuver that is not even vaguely legal or ethical.

By the way, these nativist goons, who often put on “full military fatigues… with handguns strapped to their sides, wearing gloves and black facemasks” were also training “to assassinateGeorge Soros, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.”

Yes, someone clearly needs a hobby.

Finally, let us examine the Trump supporters who are trying to build that mythical wall on the border by themselves, without that pesky U.S. Congress getting in the way.

These rugged go-getters have so far raised about $7 million for their quixotic cause, which sounds semi-impressive until you realize that this would finance the construction, at best, of a half-mile of the wall.  This means any migrants arriving at the midpoint of this privately funded structure would have to walk upwards of ten minutes to get around the barrier.

It’s true that the wall backers could give their money to charity, or fund years of chemotherapy for cancer patients, or provide more than 100 kids with free college.

But it is far more crucial to inconvenience a migrant undertaking a treacherous journey, in the hopes that those extra minutes of walking will convince him to turn around.

In the world of the Trump supporter, this is not insane or delusional. In fact, it all makes perfect sense. 

Yes, we’re all surprised that America’s economy is still doing well, considering that we’re two years into the reign of a president who doesn’t understand basic financial systems, seems determined to destroy whole industries, and has had more bankruptcies and failures than anyone should be allowed, to say nothing of the zealots and incompetents who staff his corrupt administration.

Seriously, how are we all not starving to death in abandoned towns and fighting for scraps in hollowed-out cities right now?

In any case, the economy will inevitably turn sour soon. And when it does, we may all rely on, you guessed it, Latinos to bail out America.

You see, researchers have found that “the Hispanic communityin the United States has contributed significantly to U.S. economic growth in recent decades and will continue to do so over the next 10 to 20 years.” In fact, the “outsized contribution of Hispanic immigrants to U.S. economic growth results from thequality of the workforce, not just quantity.” 

In other words, Latinos are one of the main influencers of the American economy, even if certain individuals, media figures, and political parties deny it.

Studies have found that within five years, Latinos will make up about 20 percent of the U.S. workforce and that “the increase in employedHispanic laborcould contribute more to U.S. GDP growth than non-Hispanic labor.” 

Of course, these numbers assume that America will still be around in five years. And if Trump wins a second term… well, it’s best not to finish that sentence.

Now, I know what you’re saying: “Sure, there are a lot of Hispanics out there, stealing jobs left and right. But the only occupations those swarthy immigrants can handle are the low-level, menial gigs.”

OK, maybe you’re not saying that. But trust me, someone in the White House or on Fox News is saying that even while you read this.

The immediate rebuttal to this sad mode thinking is another data point that research has uncovered, which is the following: “Hispanic arrivals have exceeded contemporary native-born Americans… in theirentrepreneurial capabilitiesand integration into economically relevant parts of the workforce.”

That’s right — when it comes to starting new businesses and creating new jobs, Latino immigrants are far more important than your ninth-generation white working class voter waving an American flag. In fact, “foreign-born and Hispanic populations have become engines of U.S. entrepreneurship, especially since the Great Recession.”  

Let’s emphasize this again: “The growth rate of Latino businesses in the United States has outpaced the growth rate of all other groups,” and Latino-owned firms “compose a significant — and still growing — percentage of U.S. businesses.”

The reasons for this include the growth of the Hispanic population, the fact that Latinos tend to be younger than the general population, and the truth that throughout American history, there has been a “universal positive benefit that immigrants have on theeconomy and entrepreneurship.”

Of course, if you really want to get exact, Americans should drop to their knees and thank the strong Hispanic women among us. 

That’s because according to a Stanford University study, Latinas are the leading entrepreneurs in United States. Specifically, immigrant Latinas “start businessesat a higher rate than non-Hispanic white women,” despite the unpleasant fact that they often struggle to obtain credit and have “the lowest rate of financial institution-based loans among all other groups of employer firms.” In addition, “the wage gap for women who identify as Hispanic or Latino is larger than that of any other racial or ethnic group.”

Does any of that institutionalized nonsense stop Latinas?

That would be a resounding no.

So when the economy inevitably tanks, and the coal mines don’t magically reopen, and jingoistic Americans across the nation keep repeating, “Who could have possibly foreseen this disaster?” over and over again, just keep one thing in mind:

Ultimately, it will be the Latinas who save us.

I had a friend in high school who thought my mom came from San Salvador. I corrected her a few times by pointing out that the mi madre’s homeland is actually El Salvador. But eventually I just gave her partial credit for at least naming the nation’s capital city.

As annoying as my friend’s misstatement was, it’s important to note that she was a teenage girl living in the pre-internet era.

What excuse do we have for paid journalists in 2019 who think El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — three Central American countries —  are more or less Mexico? Of course, I’m talking about Fox News’ infamous chyron screw-up that recently blared, “Trump cuts aid to 3 Mexican countries.” 

As many people have pointed out, the perplexing statement illuminates a right-wing mindset that is more than just simplistic and laughably ignorant. It is also highly disrespectful, in that this thinking homogenizes all of Latino culture under the term “Mexican.” 

Oh yeah, it’s also a bigoted ploy to dismiss all Hispanics as “a race of ‘others’who can easily be scapegoated for a whole slew of structural problems.”So I’m pretty sure that counts as racist bullshit as well.

You see, once you’ve decided that all Latinos are Mexican, it’s just an illogical, prejudicial jump or two to deduce that all Mexicans are undocumented immigrants, and that all undocumented immigrants are drug-dealing rapists and murderers.

This is all very A=B=C.

However, maybe we are being too hard on Fox News and its right-wing fan base. After all, these are people who routinely confuse opinion with fact.

We’re talking about people who believe that cutting off aid to those aforementioned “Mexican” countries will reduce immigration, when in reality, it would have the opposite effect. 

We’re talking about supporters of a president who believes shutting the border is a viable strategy, when all it will do is bludgeon the American economy.

We’re talking about people who desperately, obsessively want a massive new infrastructure project (i.e., a wall built on the Mexican border — or three walls for the three separate Mexicos). But they don’t care that our existing infrastructure is collapsing, and that our country’s bridges are falling down.

We’re talking about people who are genuinely confused about why Latinos don’t vote Republican in overwhelming numbers, even as the GOP routinely demeans and threatens Latinos(or just dismisses all Hispanics as “Mexican” as Fox News did).

In short, we’re talking about people who are either not too bright or who engage in willful delusion. So maybe they can’t help but say bizarre, insulting things and then stumble around half-ass apologies.

Perhaps they deserve our sympathy.

Of course, there is one more explanation. Our country’s educational systempales in comparison to just about every other industrialized nation. So maybe people who work at Fox News just didn’t learn basic geography.

Along those lines, just in case you thought our nation’s ignorance is confined solely to Latin America, let me tell you about a recent conversation I had. 

I was talking to a fellow American, and I mentioned that I had once lived in Minneapolis. She furrowed her brow and asked, “Is that anywhere near Minnesota?”

And I had no idea how to answer that.

But I should have told her that it was in Mexico.

I’m going to make a bold guess: If you asked most liberals a month ago what the reaction would be to the Mueller Report’s release, they probably wouldn’t have said, “Trump supporters literally dancing in the streets and waving Confederate flags.”

And yet that is exactly what happened over the weekend, when Robert Mueller ended his lengthy investigation into the president’s shenanigans by more or less saying, “The guys looks shady, but I can’t definitively prove it.”

Yes, the president was neither indicted, nor forced to testify (and almost certainly perjure himself). The fact that the GOP somehow celebrates these developments as a “victory” shows how abysmally low the bar has been set for Trump.

In any case, for nearly two years, liberals have been hoping — even predicting — that Mueller would uncover nefarious crimes so appalling, so brazen and shocking, that even the president’s die-hard enablers in Congress would be forced to admit, “You’re right. This lunatic has got to go.” And just like that, we would be rid of Trump forever, and every guy wearing a MAGA hat would fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness, while promising to never, ever question progressives again.

Instead, smug right-wingers are shrieking, “exonerated!” — even though the report summary clearly says it “does notexonerate him.”

Yeah, the GOP isn’t so good with the details.

What Republicans are excellent at, however, is whipping up racial animosity, tapping into authoritarian impulses, and smothering objective facts under a frothy mix of conspiratorial thinking and anti-intellectual disdain.

Because of this, many commentators have pointed out that “Mueller’s report was never going to deliver easy justice, because even if it somehow got Trump kicked out of office, the factors that put him there in the first place, or what has been unleashed since his malice-laced campaign, wouldn’t suddenly evaporate.”

If it’s true that the fabled white working class needed a savior in the form of Trump, then it is also true that many progressives cast Mueller in the same role. Perhaps it is a human need, therefore, to believe that one white knight in shining armor will ride over the mountain, vex our idealogical enemies, and make everything right and pure again.

But let’s be honest — when has that ever been reality?

In truth, “Trump won the 2016 election largely because of deep problems with the U.S. and American democracy that all preceded his candidacy,” and even if this xenophobic meglamaniac “vanished from the White House tomorrow, none of these problems would go with him.”

Next year, Americans will vote for president. Currently, about 40 percentof Americans approve of a guy who has coddled dictators and neo-Nazis. They like the man who has denigrated every demographic other than white men. They admire the chief executive who still doesn’t know how the government works, and whose own advisors regularly question his sanity, intelligence, and competence.

Clearly, no white knight is coming to convince those 40 percent of Americans that they are wrong.