Hispanic Fanatic

OK, so everyone’s tax refund sucked this year. Well, if you’re a billionaire, you did better than ever, but for the rest of us, the first year of the GOP’s so-called tax reform was a major bust.

Yes, I know that a smaller tax refund is actually a good thing, financially, for the average person. But that’s not how many Americans are interpreting it.

For example, many Trump supporters are expressing their “feelings of anger and betrayal— some of whom are now surprised to find themselves owing upwards of several thousand dollars to the IRS.”

Personally, I have exceedingly little sympathy for those middle-class people who were naïve enough to believe that the GOP would actually help them. Today’s crop of Republicans could not give a half a fuck about anyone who makes less than million per year, and this is well-publicized news.

The bigger issue is that the Trump supporters who are complaining about their tax refunds are really saying the following: “I am ok with racism, misogyny, lying, corruption and incompetence. I’m even fine with unraveling democracy, endangering America’s security, damaging the planet, and possibly having a Russian mole in the White House. I’m good with all of it, as long as I get a few hundred bucks back at tax time.”

Never have so many people sold out their integrity for such a pathetic pittance.

Of course, many Trump supporters are not just ok with racism and misogyny, they love it, so they have no integrity to sell out in the first place.

Either way, it is not a good look, as the kids say.

Still, just because the GOP tax law was an overt scam that further enriched the wealthy and screwed over the middle class doesn’t mean that we’re doing anything to change the situation.

For example, our buddy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has recently gotten everyone shouting and seething and swooning over her idea of instituting a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the super-rich.

Many respected economists say that she is on to something. But to the Fox News crowd, this is just another example of out-of-control leftists cramming “socialism” down the throats of good, decent Americans.

As many have pointed out, “socialism” is now anything that asks millionaires to pay a little more.

As a side note, criticizing AOC for getting the occasional fact wrong is hilarious coming from right-wingers. After all, they feverishly support a doofus who doesn’t understand the first thing about the US Constitution, the separation of powers, the job of the chief executive, the basics of international diplomacy, the concept of global economics, or just about anything that doesn’t have to do with golf or fast food. Oh, and the guy has lied in public approximately 8,000 times in two years. 

So I would back off.

Now, regardless of whether AOC’s plan is correct on the numbers, it is clearly on the right path. After all, wealth inequality is currently at its highest point since right before the Great Depression, and several indicators of economic calamity are flashing red.

As such, if throwing money at the 1 percent and hoping for the best was really a sound policy for America, the effects would have trickled down (so to speak) by now.

Still, all this talk about wealth disparity and inequality has gotten me thinking about my Mayan ancestors.

Wait… what does all this have to do with the Mayans?

Well, to learn the answer that excellent question, you will have to wait until next week’s post.

As you know, our buffoonish caricature of a president followed through on his threat to undermine the Constitution, declare himself an autocrat, and waste billions on a pointless, hate-filled endeavor that has no chance of success and is just a pathetic sop to the bigots who love him.

I mean, he declared a national emergency over the state of the southern border. That’s what I meant to say.

Yup.

In any case, we all know that Trump’s move is not based in reality, because “the influx of migrant families at the southern border does not constitute a national security crisis, much less a bona fide emergency.”

Also, it will get bogged down in the courts, if Democrats don’t outright kill it first.

And it has set a disturbing precedent for future chief executives, with liberals now hooting for the next Democratic president to declare emergencies over climate change, health care, and guns — all of which are much bigger, graver crises than a few more brown-skinned people showing up in America.

And it has put Republicans in tight spot, as they must choose between their principles of limited government and respect for constitutional authority over allegiance to —

Ha-ha, let’s not even finish that sentence. Because we all know that the meek spineless GOP will say, “Whatever you want, master” to a scatterbrained narcissist who has shown almost zealous “eagerness to undermine the Constitution to serve his short-term political gain.” 

Of course, this is the same crowd that lost its collective fucking mind when it appeared that Obama may have bowed to a foreign leader.

But they are fine with a potential double agent actively doing the bidding of a hostile despot, right down to echoing totalitarian talking points. Yes, that’s a-ok.

About this time, Republicans have to be second-guessing their embrace of an oafish loser who has accomplished few of their party’s goals, but has managed to turn the GOP into a toxic landfill that future generations will avoid like its Ebola.

That’s not much of a stretch, because we’re talking about people who are so vile that they are actively rooting for the return of deadly contagious diseases that infect children. They really want this. I’m not making it up.

But I digress.

The point is that Trump is such a brilliant negotiator that he shut down the government for a month, only to get a worse deal than he would have received in the first place. Now, that is talent.

With that kind of leadership, it’s no wonder that America is in a constant state of chaos.

Or if you prefer, more like a constant state of emergency.

The laziest man ever to be president of the United States is spending his few working hours vainly, sadly trying to construct an expensive, pointless wall that will never be built. Of course, this is primarily because he’s trying to appease his most ardent supporters, who are either the sole patriots left in this PC-infested country, or the biggest pack of 10-tooth rubes you ever did see.

Yes, opinions vary.

In any case, Trump may be desperately trying to kick out all those pesky Latinos, but it may already be too late for him and the terrified rednecks who worship the man.

This is because “for the first time, Hispanics are on track to be the largest racial or ethnic group to be eligible to vote in a presidential election.” The next time Americans go to the polls to pick a chief executive, “32 million Hispanics will be eligible to vote, just slightly more than the 30 million voters who are black.”

Put another way, “Hispanics are projected to be about 13.3 percent of the electorate in 2020, which would make them the largest racial or ethnic minority of the electorate for the first time.”

Now before any racial alarmists out there get outraged about this news, keep in mind that “white voters will continue to make up the largest share of the electorate, 66.7 percent,” which means almost exactly two out of every three voters will still be white.

It’s also worth noting that fewer than half of eligible Latinos actually go out and vote, a troubling statistic that has held true “in every presidential election since 1996.”

For some perspective, 1996 was the heyday of this crowd:

Plus, there is the disturbing, perplexing fact that despite Trump’s nearly constant attacks upon Latinos, his approval rating among Hispanics is merely very bad, rather than absolutely abysmal. 

It’s at this point that we must acknowledge that there is “a reactionary segment of the Hispanic electorate who is aligned with some of the Trump administration’s thinking on immigration and on some social issues.” To say nothing of those Latinos who are self-loathing and/or deranged enough to think President Tiny Hands is looking out for them.

In sum, more Latinos than ever will be voting for president in 2020, which can only be bad mojo for the Trump Administration. But it is not as slam-dunk negative for the GOP as we would like to believe.

Still, keep in mind that “a record 47% of Americans already say they believe the Trump presidency will be unsuccessful.”

This number, which “is higher than any poll taken at any point for any presidency in the last 25 years” means that “Americans don’t just disapprove of Trump in the moment but believe they won’t ever change their minds about him.”

So that’s a number we can all cheer.

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

OK, that moment is over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is apparently what counts as winning.

• Republicans have agreed that Iowa Rep. Steve King is kinda, sorta, a little bit fucking racist.
• A smirking teenage boy in a MAGA cap may or may not be a smug, sociopathic thug.
• Trump may have obstructed justice by telling his lawyer to lie to Congress, but we can’t be sure.

In the first case, conservatives have feigned innocence and shock. In the other two, they have gloated about vindication.

However, these recent events aren’t positive developments that shine brightly upon the conservative movement. They are either the acknowledgement of something horrible that was perfectly obvious for decades, or the absence of clear proof about something sinister.

In other words, the modern Republican Party has been reduced to celebrating basic decency and/or inconclusive evidence.

Clearly, actual victories are hard to come by.

To be fair, there is not much for Republicans to laud as we pass the halfway point of the Trump Administration. The government is still shut down, the economy is displaying troubling signs, and the president is more unpopular than ever.

The GOP’s one big victory of the past two years — a tax cut for billionaires — is widely regarded as a sham, and unless every liberal justice on the Supreme Court retires or dies soon, there is little hope that anything good will happen for conservatives for the reminder of Trump’s term.

Oh, and Mueller has yet to release his report, which even Trump’s allies believe will be “devastating.”

So why are Republicans still supporting a guy who has shown them the very best he has to offer, yet been an unqualified disaster, and who, in all likelihood, will now drag their party so far down that the shellacking they received in the last midterms will soon seem like a pleasant memory?

Well, we are talking about a political movement that still thinks climate change is a myth — despite the science being overwhelming that the world is getting hotter, and more Americans than ever believing in that scientific truth.

For that matter, Republicans are the only group that still insists the Iraq War was worth it.

Obviously, we’re not dealing with people who adjust to reality quickly. 

So this might take a little time. 

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

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

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

So once again, moderation is key.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feel free to draw your own analogies to that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liberals

Atheists

Muslims

Blacks

Latinos

Gays

Transgender people

“Uppity” women

Democrats

Journalists

Scientists

East Coasters

West Coasters

Urbanites

The college educated

Never Trumper Republicans

Anyone who likes kale

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

Because their values are weird?

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

Because they have dared to question the mighty leader?

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

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

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

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

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

Kind of catchy, don’t you think?

We start the new year as we ended the old one:

With a deranged old man holding the country hostage over a xenophobic fever dream that will never come true.

I’m talking, of course, about the continued government shutdown over the president’s insistence that he can bully Congress into funding his idiotic (and totally imaginary) wall on the Mexican border.

This comes despite the fact that Trump abandoned his early promises that Mexico would pay for the wall, and then couldn’t get funding for his simplistic, fear-based solution even when his party controlled both chambers of Congress for multiple years. And it comes despite the fact that Democrats have absolutely no incentive to compromise with Trump on anything. And it comes despite the fact that fewer than 40 percent of Americans support this boondogglish foolishness in the first place, and that the percentage of support dropsinto the 20s when people are asked if the wall is worth shutting down the government. And it comes despite the fact that ex-Trump officials, who are becoming as plentiful as cicadas, are now admitting that the wall is nevergoing to happen. And it comes despite the fact that illegal immigration is down, and a damn wall wouldn’t stop anybodyanyway. And it comes despite the fact that… well, you get the picture.

Basically, the president has gambled the tattered remnants of his pathetic reputation on fulfilling a bizarre campaign promise that only the hate-filled, the ignorant, and the delusional ever believed in the first place.

Trump now says that the resulting government shutdown could last “a long time.”

It could indeed last a long time. Not because Trump is a shrewd negotiator who is standing firm on principle, but because he is a sociopath who doesn’t care about the people he’s hurting and the country he’s damaging.

Yes, within this whole sad spectacle, there is just one thing that all Americans can agree upon:

The Steel Slates is a great name for a rock band.

If you’re anything like me (and let’s face it, who isn’t?), then you are starved for the tiniest semblance of good news from the White House of Horrors.

Well, in what can only be called a Christmas miracle, or just a fluke happenstance that statistically was bound to happen, we have our first significant positive political development in the two years since Trump began wrenching America from its moral moorings and started flaying the Constitution.

Yes, it looks like criminal justice reformis finally coming, not because Trump endorsed it or even understands it, but because for once he got out of the way of social progress and decided to not do the worst possible thing just because he could.

The legislation was championed by an oddball mix of social justice warriors, surly libertarians, religious types on both the right and left, and basically anyone who believes pot dealers shouldn’t get longer prison terms than rapists.

Of course, the impact of this on ethnic minorities cannot be overemphasized. After all, it is primarily Latinos and African Americans who have been the victimsof the misbegotten war on drugs and idiotic mandatory-minimum-sentencing laws.

And all it took was a couple of decades of ruined lives, destroyed communities, and gruesome injustices to convince America to be a little more civilized and get in line with just about every other industrialized nation in the world.

Hey, forgive us — sometimes we’re not the brightest. 

In any case, I am happy to report this sliver of good news at this most joyous time of the year.

So never let it be said that I am just a seething cauldron of cynicism, misanthropy, and bitter rage who focuses all his energy on the dark devastation that has befallen America.

Well, at least that’s not me all of the time, and that’s something.

Oh, in other news, the president’s moronic idea of building a wall on the Mexican border appears to finally be dead, dead, dead.

Merry Christmas.

There is a persistent myth that depression and suicide increase during the holidays.

It was even a memorable line in When Harry Met Sally(yeah, I’m a straight guy who loves that movie — deal with it).

In any case, there is no doubt that suicide — whether related to the holidays or not — is an American crisis. In fact, “nationwide, suicides have increased nearly 30 percent since the turn of the century.”

Clearly, this is grim news.

However, a weird paradox has developed within this surge in self-harm. You see, “even though Latinos face economic disadvantages and other stress in their lives, their suicide rate is about one-third that of non-Hispanic whites.”

It’s odd that Hispanics are much less likely to take their own lives than other demographics. After all, Latinos “earn less than non-Hispanic whites, and are more likely to lack health insurance coverage.”

And if that is not enough, “Latino immigrants contend with the challenges of moving to a new country, sometimes after leaving violence and other traumatic conditionsat home.”

So why are Latinos less likely to want to end it all?

Well, “experts attribute the relatively low suicide rate among Latinos to the culture’s strong family and community support systems, which appear to provide some degree of protection.”

Yes, the legendary Hispanic emphasis on the familyseems to give us a boost when it comes to psychological health. I’ve written beforeabout how obsessed Latinos are when it comes to blood relations. There are some negative elementsto this cultural trend, but the positives overwhelm them, and to this lengthy list of benefits can be added the results of this latest study on suicide.

As for community bonds, well, I’ve always found it freaky that so many Americans don’t talk to their neighbors, don’t partake in any group activities, and often maintain an aloof presence.

And I say that as an introvert (but a Latino one). Trust me — it’s good to socialize.

Of course, there are other reasons for the Hispanic tendency to avoid suicidal actions.

For starters, there is the strong Catholic foundationthat underpins so much of Latino culture. The religion’s teaching that suicide is a sin may have a preventative effect on some Hispanics.

In addition, numerous studies show that Latinos are more optimisticthan other groups, which can only help. And there is a theory that Hispanics may even be more genetically predisposedto being happy.

Put it all together, and Latinos may have “relative immunityto suicide” compared to other demographics.

In any case, if you are having difficulty this holiday season, reach out for help at the National Suicide Prevention Lifelineor another organization.

Take care of yourself.