Hispanic Fanatic

It’s time for our semi-annual look at the state of Latinos in America. Actually, this is not a regular feature, because I don’t write regular features. But it’s either this or try to catch up on the latest Trump travesty, attempt to decipher once again what Republicans mean by “woke,” or analyze the latest celebrity breakup.

Trust me, this is a much better option. 

So what news?

First, my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will now offer its first bachelor’s degree dedicated solely to Chicano and Latino studies. This means that “Hispanic students will be able to get a degree in the study of their collective history and culture.”

Yes, it’s about time, and good news from my home state. When I went to UW-Madison, I was one of about 200 Latino students on a campus of 40,000. This degree would have been a great option for me, although I likely would have stuck with my BA in journalism, because otherwise I would not be able to bring you fast-breaking news stories like the following:

“For the first time in modern American history, most white people live in mixed-race neighborhoods” which “marks a tectonic shift from just a generation ago.”

This is not so much good news for Latinos as much as it is good news because of Latinos. You see, diverse neighborhoods, which are beneficial for society, “have expanded from urban cores into suburbs that once were colored by a steady stream of White flight from inner cities.” And the main reason is that “a soaring Hispanic population powered the diversification.”

You’re welcome, America.

Racially mixed neighborhoods “are increasing the most in the suburbs” and introduce “new groups of often left-leaning voters into typically conservative White-dominated enclaves.”

And speaking of voters, and Hispanics, please note that researchers believe that “young Latino voters will be vital to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.”

That’s also good news, because there is no way that Latinos, so long demonized by the Republican Party, would ever vote GOP.

Um, wait. A recent poll implies that many Hispanic voters are “drifting toward the GOP.”

Apparently, many Latinos, especially older Hispanic men, “preferred the way Trump handled the economy when he was in office to Biden’s performance so far.” I guess they really like that economic collapse and the fact that Trump left office with fewer jobs than when he started, the worst presidential job record since the Great Depression. 

The poll also showed that Latinos often line up with the GOP on “issues ranging from the funding of police departments to the ‘greatness of America’ to the continued use of fossil fuels.” This just goes to show that you can punch people around, blame them for every problem, and even threaten to kick them out of the country, and many of them will say, “I’m going to ignore all that because gay people make me uncomfortable.”

Hell, even Republican Latinos in Congress struggle to keep their GOP colleagues from going full-on xenophobic. So do these old Latino male voters really think the Republican Party is going to give a damn about them?

Sorry, this post started as a compendium of good news but quickly morphed into a list of travesties. So let’s end on a high note.

OK, here’s something:

“While the face of the opioid crisis has predominantly been considered white and rural, overdose deaths among Latinos have skyrocketed in recent years,” nearly tripling over the last decade.

Damn, forget I said anything. Bad news has carried the day.

Better luck next week.

The jargon changes every few years. Over the decades, it’s gone from “bleeding-heart” to “politically correct” to “social justice warrior” to “woke.”

We have no shortage of derogatory terms for people who exhibit compassion toward others.

In contrast, we don’t alter our terminology to describe hardcore right-wingers. The word “sociopath” works just fine.

Of course, there are numerous reasons why conservatives mock those who express concern for others. There is sadism, self-loathing, selfishness, and a few other motivations that don’t begin with the letter S.

But one of the oddest is the bizarre fear of conservatives that any attempt to display basic decency will inevitably lead to widescale cultural weakness and, therefore, societal collapse. Republicans are constantly shrieking that Americans are lazy snowflakes dependent on government handouts, so we need to whip ‘em to keep them tough. In the GOP worldview, businesses that grant paternity leave are turning American men into effeminate wimps and emasculating the entire country in the process.

I’m pretty sure, however, that being too meek is not one of the American populace’s big problems. Look at our political discourse, social interaction, and rate of gun violence.

Does anyone seriously believe that the main issue with Americans is that we are too nice? Really?

But if you insist that keeping one’s nose to grindstone, feet to the fire, and balls to the wall is the only way to ensure Americans behave, you might be interested in a few statistics that show how well that hard-driving philosophy actually works.

For example, red states are less likely to offer government support to their citizens. This keeps their citizens honest and creates a thriving population of happy, prosperous… oh wait.

Red states are pretty much a hellhole when compared to blue states, evidenced by the fact that liberal areas outperform conservative areas in just about every economic or sociological category. 

Even the Republican argument that a red-state existence is better because of the lower cost of living is not entirely accurate. Yes, it is cheaper to live in Mississippi than in Minnesota. But wages are usually lower as well, so it’s at best a tie, or even a slight advantagefor blue states. 

OK, so rugged individualism isn’t such a winner in those cases. 

But surely our approach to healthcare is tops in the world. After all, we don’t have socialized medicine and all the government dependency it fosters, so our citizens must be the healthiest on the planet.

Yeah, you saw that setup coming, didn’t you?

As everyone knows, the United States spends far more on healthcare and gets worse results than every industrialized nation in the world (and several non-industrialized ones), simply because we refuse to accept universal healthcare.

Studies show that just during the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans died because we don’t have a system like Japan, Australia, or Finland.

But don’t worry, because “nationwide, many hospitals have grown wealthy, spending lavishly on advertising, team sponsorships, and even spas, while patients are squeezed by skyrocketing medical prices and rising deductibles.”

Still, at least all those sick, destitute people aren’t dependent on big government.

And speaking of poverty, America stands alone when it comes to our high rate of homelessness. Other industrialized countries have homeless citizens, of course. But those nations, big governments all, don’t just have a lot fewer homeless people. They actually try to solve the problem.

In America, we believe that giving people housing will make them soft, even though research has shown that providing free or inexpensive housing with no strings attached is an effective way to reduce homelessness.

No, we won’t be having any of that commie crap here. We would rather have a half-million Americans live on the street, even while there are “hundreds of thousands of vacant properties owned by city and state governments” that just sit there empty.

But at least we’re tough.

In fact, we’re so tough that we are committing suicide in record numbers. Yes, while the rate of suicide has declined in every industrialized nation, America is the “one high-income country [that] is a particular exception to the downward trend.”

And that’s part of a larger development brought on by “years of widening economic inequality, compounded by the pandemic and political storm and stress.” And this development is that “life expectancies have been falling” for Americans, which is odd for a nation that takes such great pride in being exceptional.

Yes, we can’t even keep our own residents alive, but we’re number one!

Our declining life expectancy has opened “a window on a set of pathologies unique to America among developed countries.”

And a root cause of this pathology is the belief that trying to help one another is wrong. In truth, however, this demented credo is only making us weaker.