Well, Obamacare has rolled out, and the results thus far aren’t exactly spectacular. This fiasco has illustrated the vast gap between liberals and conservatives.
Now, I’m not talking about ideology, or even about Obamacare specifically. I’m referring to the differing mindsets of the opposite ends of our political spectrum.
Simply put, conservatives are perennially more confident and exhibit greater faith in their causes. Liberals, in contrast, seem perpetually on the verge of giving up.
So once upon a time, and by that I mean just a few months ago, it looked like comprehensive immigration reform was going to happen, and soon. After all, you had Democrats fresh off an election triumph. And Republicans had finally caught on that you don’t repeatedly insult the fastest-growing demographic in America (Latinos) and expect to win.
But then government shutdowns and botched healthcare websites and Ted Cruz all happened. And now we have reached the point where people are asking, “Hey, whatever happened to that whole immigration reform thingy?”
The answer is that all that forward momentum was “no match for the absurd illogic of today’s Washington, where political imperatives, voter preferences, and even the desires of moneyed interests are powerless to move House Republicans off a default stance of ‘no.’”
So there you have it. I’m glad we spent all that time and energy on something so very, very doomed.
I’ve written before about the bond between Latinos and Jews. There’s even an official alliance to foster this connection.
And now we have statistical evidence that this bond is growing stronger. According to a study by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), anti-Semitism is on the decline among Latinos. About 14 percent of American-born Hispanics hold anti-Semitic views, which “represents a welcome decline” from 2011, when 20 percent of Latinos had issues with people named Goldstein and Silverman.
Of course, 14 percent is still way too high, but at least it’s moving in the right direction.
Now, if you had any doubts that Latinos and Jews are strongly linked, consider this related news story out of my home state of Wisconsin. Apparently, a few weeks ago, a severely inebriated man in Janesville exited a bar late one night and “overheard two men on the street speaking Hebrew. He confronted them, demanding they speak English.”
The drunk guy then hit both men “because he believed they were speaking Spanish.” This member of the English-only league has since been charged with two counts of battery with a hate crime enhancer.
No, it’s not an uplifting story. In fact, it sounds like an Onion headline. But clearly, to some Americans, it doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or Latino — you’re marked for a beat down.
It’s a good thing, then, that Hispanics and Jews have each other’s backs.
Another Hispanic Heritage Month has ended. Yes, there were lots of mentions of Cesar Chavez, as well as a few other well-known Latinos. But I’m always amazed that one influential Latina is never brought up. I’m talking about La Malinche (1502–1527).
Now, in Mexico, the story of La Malinche is a big deal. The woman’s reputation “has been altered over the years according to changing social and political perspectives,” and Mexicans think of her as everything from an “evil or scheming temptress” to “the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or simply as the symbolic mother of the new Mexican people.”
But here in America, you are to be forgiven if you’ve never heard of her. I only encountered her story a few years ago myself. So who was she?
Our babysitter is a recent immigrant (from Africa). She was confused about the concept of Halloween, so she asked me to explain it to her.
Halfway through mentioning the various aspects — ghosts and goblins, people watching horror movies, children going door to door for candy, adults getting drunk, women dressing trashy — she asked, “I don’t understand how that is all one holiday, and what do pumpkins have to do with anything?” She’s right. This is one seriously schizophrenic party.
And I didn’t even get into the roots of the holiday, which are in the pagan celebration of Samhain. And of course, I was remiss in not mentioning the Latin American custom of Dia de los Muertos, which has established more of a presence in the United States over the last few years, largely because of the booming Hispanic population (you’re welcome).
But regardless of how you celebrate today, be sure to maintain the spirit of the holiday. You know, like the kids do.
As I’ve mentioned before, I live in an LA neighborhood that features both apartment buildings with working-class residents and million-dollar mansions. Again, I am much closer to one end of that scale than the other (I will let you guess which).
In any case, the mixed character of my neighborhood may be doomed. According to one study, “the percentage of American families living in middle-income neighborhoods dropped to 42 percent in 2009 from 65 percent in 1970.” Basically, more people are packing up and moving to one end of the spectrum (i.e., very wealthy or very poor), and “the growing physical separation of the rich and poor is hastening the decline of middle-class neighborhoods and could make income inequality even worse.”
In essence, this is the new segregation, but along class lines rather than strict ethnic boundaries. Of course, those two concepts are strongly linked, so it’s really just racial segregation again, but not as overt and with a twenty-first-century twist.
But keep in mind that “the growing divide has been especially striking in the country’s black and Hispanic communities, where the rich and poor of each racial group are dividing from one another at a pace far quicker than in the white community.”
I suppose this means that I have to start packing.
So the United States has resumed its wild, impetuous stab at having a functioning government. After this latest farce, internet sites are alive with comments along the lines of the following:
“We need to kick out every member of Congress and start fresh.”
I know we live in a country where nearly half the citizens people can’t name the vice president, but I find it hard to believe anybody is so ignorant of the political process that he or she thinks voting out all 535 members of Congress is a realistic option.
We’ll start with the fact that elections are staggered (hence the term “midterm election”). As such, I doubt anybody’s rage is going to last another five years or so, which is how long it would take to excise all the offending congressmen and women. And we’ll add on the stat that while most people hate Congress, they tend to like their own reps, so we will likely see most of these supposedly toxic incumbents return.
This idea is even less practical and more insane than the delusional belief, which I’ve written about before, that we can easily deport 11 million undocumented immigrants.
In the interest of saving time, here are some other political ideas I’ve heard recently that appear just as likely to happen.
“We need to separate into two different countries. Red states and blue states.” (I’m pretty sure we fought a war about this, and the outcome was rather conclusive. We appear to be stuck with one another for the foreseeable future.)
“We need a task force of really smart leaders who will come up with bipartisan solutions to our problems.” (That’s what Congress is supposed to be.)
“We need to mandate IQ tests to make sure people are smart enough to vote.” (Anyone who thinks an IQ test accurately measures political acumen probably doesn’t have a very high IQ.)
“We need to confiscate every gun in America that’s not in the hands of the police or military.” (It amazes me how liberals think that Second Amendment advocates—many of whom are paranoid and all of whom are armed—will somehow go along with this idea.)
“We need to use Jurassic Park-type technology to reanimate the Founding Fathers so they can tell us their original intent regarding the Constitution.” (OK, I made this one up, but wouldn’t that be cool?)
As we know, the Affordable Care Act went into effect this month.
So-called Obamacare “is particularly critical to Latinos, who have the highest rate of being uninsured in the nation.”
Yes, about nine million more Hispanics will now be eligible for health insurance, and this thought terrifies the Republican Party, which sees nine million more voters who will think positively of the Democratic Party.
So we just had to have this shutdown nonsense, so that the GOP could stop its collective foot and scream, “Socialism!” one more time, for nostalgia’s sake.
Interestingly, many Americans blame the Democrats for this mess. While I have my own issues with the Democrats, which I’ve written about in the past, I am stumped over how this cannot be construed as a 100% GOP-manufactured crisis.
As many people have pointed out, the ACA passed Congress, was signed by the president, upheld by the Supreme Court, and put into effect. That’s the way our country works.
We don’t say, “Hey, the minority party, which overwhelmingly lost the last election, doesn’t like the law. So we have to negotiate.”
What in fuck’s name is there to negotiate?
It’s the law. Deal with it.
Let’s be clear. Nothing is funnier than Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The combination of the surreal, the obtuse, and the plain vulgar is still hilarious decades later.
The Python comedy troupe was well-known for skewering religion, social class, and other touchy subjects. But even these brilliant Brits had an Achilles’ heel. Python’s few forays into racial humor were uninspired, coming across more as juvenile than biting.
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Now if I spent 21 straight hours bitching about something — taking breaks for random tasks such as reading Dr. Seuss — you would think that I would be against it.
But as Ted Cruz has shown, that’s not necessarily the case.
Maybe it’s all part of his genius master plan to destroy the thing he hates that he voted for that he railed against that is good for his constituents that he can’t even fully explain that he swallowed the spider to catch the fly…and so on and so on.
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a cynical ploy to grab headlines.
In any case, it’s good to know that Latino politicians can be just as megalomaniacal and illogical as those of any other ethnicity.
