Hispanic Fanatic

In my last post, I discussed how the GOP’s war on reality has convinced Americans that we are living in a dystopian hellhole where the solutions are idiotic proposals that will only backfire and cause calamity.

For example, after decades of obnoxious perseverance, pro-lifers succeeded in overturning Roe vs. Wade. As a result, “following the Supreme Court Dobbs decision that revoked the federal right to an abortion, hundreds more infants died than expected in the United States.” So congratulations, pro-lifers, on killing more babies. Oh, and those draconian abortion bans “also affect access to broader health care, which can lead to increased risk for both babies and mothers.”

Thanks again, religious zealots.

The GOP has convinced the populace that up is down, evident in the continued insistence that the Trump years were better for the economy, even though almost every indicator shows that this is not true. Despite our strong economy, a huge chunk of Americans “wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession.”

Republicans also want you to know that ice is hot, and fire is cold.

As a final example, let’s consider the idea that so many Americans think Trump is a tough guy who will stand up for our nation in times of crisis. They “support him precisely because they believe he can protect the country in a way no other politician will.” In truth, his style of incoherent, impulsive governance would create “a politically chaotic” America, where “other countries assert more global influence.” Indeed, our “biggest global rivals believe that a Trump victory will serve their interests instead.”

Clearly, millions of Americans are basing their decisions not on facts or even emotions. Rather, they are clamoring for what they sincerely believe is real, despite acres of easily accessibly evidence that shows them they are wrong.

They are listening to Republicans, whose stated goal is to “make America great again, because it’s not great now, what with Black people protesting the police, Pride flags flying, and immigrants seeking new lives in America.” Conservatives don’t want “to hear Spanish at the supermarket or be aware that someone is dressed in drag,” and they are filled with anger at all those “New York and Los Angeles elites who, in the estimation of many Republicans, are actively discriminating against White people and Christians.”

At this point, “it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality.”

It is also becoming more difficult to deny that the GOP candidate for president has, right before our eyes, gone “from being periodically adrift and sporadically demented to being 24/7 unfit and in need of permanent medical attention.” The guy is “one cloudless night away from baying at the moon.” 

And yet, whole swaths of Americans will vote for him, vote for this Wonderland logic, and insist that the truth is on their side.

In a sane world, a babbling old man who threatened to deploy the US military against American civilians would be shuffled off to nap time at the facility, rather than hailed as a conquering hero to millions of conservatives who have the audacity to call themselves patriots.

But the GOP has succeeded in turning our country into a bizarro world of contradictions and backward logic.

This accomplishment may be Republicans’ only achievement of the century, as every other project they have led over the past 20 years—Iraq, Covid, the economy, etc—has ended in full-fledged disaster.

As an example of the fun-house mirror that America has morphed into, consider that Republicans continue to insist that immigrants are invading the country, raping and pillaging at will, stealing everyone’s job, taking over whole swaths of the country, and eating all our pets.

In reality, immigration is a key reason that our economy is doing better than other industrialized nations. Furthermore,  “the ‘magic bullet’ driving the post-pandemic population revival of major US urban centers is immigration,” and immigrants are filling a labor gapthat, if left unfilled, would lead to financial devastation. In fact, studies show that “the large influx of immigrants” over the past few years have “helped grow the U.S. economy.”

As for those rampaging immigrants killing and looting nonstop, even Republicans admit that they are making those stories up. Immigrants have lower rates of crime than native-born Americans, as we all know.

Any while we’re at it, please note that “crime rose rapidly at the end of Trump’s term but is now dropping.” In particular, the homicide rate recently saw “the largest single-year decline in the last 20 years.”

That hasn’t stopped the GOP nominee from advocating for a real-life version of The Purge, in which one violent day would bring down crime rates that aren’t that high in the first place.

There are more ways in which conservatives have it completely backwards, but I will save those examples for next week’s post.

I recently wrote about the women who believe supporting the Republican Party will somehow protect them from the wrath of angry right-wing men.

But now let me discuss an issue closer to home: the rise of the MAGA Latino.

Seriously—what the fuck is wrong with those guys?

Ponder the cognitive dissonance (a phrase that comes up a lot when discussing contemporary politics) that is necessary to justify voting for a man who has repeatedly, gleefully said that he wants to throw anyone who looks like you into a concentration camp. It’s majestic.

Of course, studies have pinpointed three main reasons why someone named Hernandez or Rodriguez would vote for xenophobic bigots.

These include the fact that Latinos still lag in educational achievement, and the diploma gap has become perhaps the chief indicator of whether someone votes Democrat or Republican. Basically, people who go to college are more liberal, and people who stop with high school are more conservative, regardless of race or ethnicity.

Also, male Latinos are more likely to be drawn to GOP misogyny because “if you’re a man in a low-status group, masculinity may become more important to claiming high status.” In essence, a lot of Latino men like the false machismo of Republican blowhards.

Latinas are far less likely to fall for this nonsense, and “like female voters across ethnic categories [they] were repelled by Trump’s disrespect toward women and his bragging about sexual assault.”

Yes, many pundits are still offering “the tortured and narrow analysis that Latino votes for Donald Trump correlate with ‘economic anxiety,’ but reactionary sexual politics and religiosity are usually missing from media commentary on this political shift.” 

The final reason is that many Latinos believe that if they go along with white supremacy, they will soon be allowed into the powerful majority. About a third of Latinos “see themselves as a group similar to European American immigrants who can join the mainstream.” A lot of Latinos think that if Italians and Greeks were eventually considered white, maybe they will be too.

Yes, that’s a sad motivator, but it’s a very real one.

The Republican Party knows this, which is why they employ “language that is designed to trigger racist stereotypes associated with whiteness.” Conservatives are well aware that “this status anxiety is inseparable from this racist hierarchy.” 

And how has appeasing white conservatives worked out for Latinos? Well, the Trump campaign has threatened to create the largest deportation program in history, end birthright citizenship, and install neo-Nazis in positions of power. So they are clearly interested in the needs of the Latino community. 

No, the Republican Party doesn’t care that a record number of immigrants have become citizens, or that young Latinos hate the GOP, or that most Latinos still vote for Democrats.

They know that they just need to chip away at the Latino vote to ensure victory. So they can go right on blaming Latino immigrantsfor mass shootings, shrieking about the “great replacement” theory, hanging out with militant white supremacists, and encouraging white Americans to fear everyone with brown skin.

Because their approach is working. The bigotry and “radicalization of the GOP on the issue of race isn’t sending it down some entirely new, irreversible path of stigma among communities of color.”

They are doing just well enough with Latinos to hang in there. And many Latinos are just fine with MAGA.

Sin vergüenza.

It’s time for another update on how my fellow Latinos are doing.

First, the good news. 

Ongoing efforts to mobilize Latino voters are paying off, and Hispanics are poised “to become a consequential voting bloc influencing contested races in the 2024 presidential election.”

So instead of leaving it to Black women to save America over and over again, perhaps we Latinos can step up for democracy this time.

Your other bit of good news is that scientists are testing new technology on immigrant workers that will “send alerts when the core body temperature rises critically or when other alarming signals indicate heat stress.” The innovation could save the lives of many Latin American immigrants, who often toil in brutal heat to keep the nation’s economy humming.

But that leads to the bad news.

You see, recent studies have shown that Latino kids in states with more anti-immigrant laws “are in poorer health.”

Yes, bigotry is lethal. The study found that Latino children living in states with more anti-immigrant laws and policies—and its “resulting inequities in access” —are more likely to suffer chronic physical health conditions and mental health issues.

On a related note, Latino kids nationwide are also being kept ignorant about their own history.

Recent research has shown that “most of the seminal events” in U.S. Latino history “are not a subject of study in high schools across the country.” The study found that “87% of key Latino topics were either not covered in U.S. history textbooks or were mentioned in just five or fewer sentences.”

And speaking of education, you will be disconcerted to discover that over half of Latino college students considered dropping out last year, which is a substantial increase since 2020 and comes “after Hispanics had made significant gains in higher education.”

As if that weren’t enough, another study has shown internecine strife among Latinos. The study says that most Latinos who struggle with Spanish say another Latino “has made them feel bad for it.” So it’s bad enough that we have white supremacists targeting us. But here is fresh proof that we can be our own worst enemy.

Take it from someone whose abuela was constantly muttering “sin verguenza” about my lack of fluency. That attitude doesn’t magically make someone bilingual. 

Well, that’s about it. As usual, the bad news seems to outweigh the good.

Oh, and one more thing. The recent surge in hate crimes, which includes spikes in antisemitism and Islamophobia, also includes a “significant increase” against Latinos.

So there’s that.

Aren’t you glad that I led off with the good news?

I was a kid the first time I heard of Martha’s Vineyard. Someone told me that the movie Jaws had been filmed there. Of course, I wondered who this Martha was and how she owned an entire ocean that she could just rent out for filming.

I’ve since learned that Martha’s Vineyard is a destination for rich liberals, and as such, it is a prime target for those conservatives who hate nothing more than a wealthy person who has committed class treason by rejecting ethno-fascism.

To continue reading this post, please click here.

In the weeks since Vladimir Putin launched his “genius” invasion, more than 2 million Ukrainians have fled their country. These refugees have scattered to neighboring European nations, where they have received warm embraces—unless they are black, in which case they are roughed up and detained. 

Of course, the Ukrainian refugees deserve the world’s sympathy and assistance. However, it is worth noting that because they are often blond and blue-eyed, their plight is eliciting far more empathy than, say, people fleeing war in the Middle East.

To continue reading this post, please click here.

Here’s a charming number for you to ponder: Over the course of American history, over 50 million people have been kicked out of this country — deported, banished, exiled, gone daddy gone. And of that 50 million, about 90% of them were not White.

Today, that percentage is closer to 100%. Latinos, Asians, Middle Easterners — you name it, we’re deporting them by the thousands. So when our beloved ex-president said that he wanted more immigrants from Norway, he was just expressing what so many Americans believe, which is that the only good immigrant is a White immigrant.

To continue reading this post, please click here.

In 1937, a young Cuban woman became America’s first “illegal immigrant.”

No, she wasn’t the first person to enter the country without permission (that would be Christopher Columbus). But when the New York Times wrote about Sara J. Rodriguez’s attempted suicide, she became the first person to be described as an “illegal immigrant” in an American news story.

Naturally, the bastards would start all this off by slandering a Latina.

In any case, the subsequent decades have seen terms such as “illegal immigrant,” “the undocumented,” or even “the brown invasion” used to describe people who cross or crowd America’s southern border.

To continue reading this post, please click here.

We have heard from disgraced presidents and esteemed journalists, from nervous demographers and right-wing bigots, from talk show hosts and the oversampled, oversimplified residents of mythical Middle America.

Any they all agree.

Today’s immigrants — primarily Latinos — are just not assimilating. In fact, they seem determined to sequester themselves in ethnic enclaves and keep jabbering away in Spanish. They certainly are not merging into mainstream American culture the way previous immigrants (of good and pure European stock) once did.

Harrumph.

Well, there’s just one problem with that analysis. Actually, there several problems with it, ranging from petty ignorance to overt racism, but we’ll focus on one flaw in the argument: 

It’s not true.

You see, numerous studies have found that Latino immigrants “assimilate very well,” when looking at such factors as educational attainment, labor market integration, and yes, English proficiency. The assertion that Hispanics refuse to join American society is a well-known conservative talking point that has the unfortunate trait of being a pathetic lie.

Now, one can argue over what we mean by “assimilation,” and even whether the term itself is prejudicial. But there is no debate that Latino immigrants and their children are adapting to America very well.

Still, what about those sainted immigrants of yesteryear? We have all heard myriad variations of “My grandfather came here from Norway and never spoke Norwegian again!” Or perhaps it was “My grandmother arrived from Italy and banished everything remotely Italian from her house forever!”

At the risk of busting two myths in one article, I have to point out that this trope — the European immigrant who became “American” overnight — is ludicrous.

Hey, I’ve written before about my home state of Wisconsin, which had a thriving German-immigrant community well into the 20^thcentury.

But since we’re on the topics of Germans — and how perfectly they assimilated into America — this might be a good place to point out that as late as 1938, the German-language Staats Zeitung newspaper was selling 80,000 copies a day in New York City.

This was right around the time when 20,000 Nazis held a rally at Madison Square Garden, an event sponsored by “the German American Bund, an organization with headquarters in Manhattan and thousands of members across the United States.” 

Yes, I said 20,000 Nazis in Madison Square Garden.

The German American Bund “had parades, bookstores and summer camps for youth,” offering a vision that “was a cocktail of white supremacy and fascist ideology.” 

Also, there was that whole Nazi spy ring, made up primarily of German ex-pats, who tried to steal American military secrets and pass them to the Fuhrer.

So I’m pretty sure that rallying thousands in support of your homeland’s murderous ideology, and actively working to defeat your adopted country in a war, isn’t quite assimilating perfectly.

My intention is not to demonize European immigrants. Just to be clear, the vast majority of Germans who moved to America displayed great patriotism. Also, that Nazi spy ring was broken up by a German immigrant who hated fascists.

Plus, I married a fine Wisconsin girl of German ancestry, so there’s that as well.

The point is that we have allowed Latino immigrants to be slandered, slurred, and denigrated, insisting that they can never truly be part of America. And we have done this while shouting that the European immigrants of a century ago became instant patriots about nine seconds after they set foot on U.S. soil.

Neither assertion is true, and to perpetuate them goes beyond simple disservice to the truth. It advances the goals of racists and xenophobes. It harms America.

One final point about Nazis. Recently, students at a Georgia university burned the books of Latina author “following a lecture in which she argued with participants about white privilege and diversity.”

Burning books, of course, is a straight-up fascist move. And this begs the question:

When are those students going to assimilate to American values?

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.