Time’s up, secret bigots
Still standing with Trump? You might be racist too.
Jeffrey Denny
Why does Trump say and do racist things?
“A lot of people love it,” he said, obviously referring to his MAGA base.
But Trump and his people get snitty if you even hint they’re bigoted. I understand. Racism is ugly, ignorant, hateful, cowardly, un-Christian and un-American. Them’s fightin’ words.
Yet what else but racial bigotry can explain when Trump’s base of immigration hardliners:
· Are predominately white, from his voters to his rallies and defenders, to online commentators.
· Live in lily-white communities in the Northeast and Midwest with few if any Latin American immigrants, legal or otherwise, who mostly settle in California, Texas and New York.
· Don’t know or encounter any border-crossing “illegals” in their daily lives or aren’t personally affected by immigrants or their alleged illegality whatsoever.
· Don’t worry about the 13 percent of immigrants from Canada and Europe.
· Don’t care about the 170,000 “illegals” from Canada and Europe here on expired papers, per U.S. Homeland Security. Of these, Canadians are the overwhelming top “illegals,” double the number from Mexico — 101,000 versus 52,800.
· Don’t fret that Asians will surpass Hispanics as the largest immigrant group by 2025.
· Huff “it’s the law” to cheer Trump’s hard-line immigration crackdown but drive while texting, drunk, speeding and without seat belts, which kills thousands of Americans every year. Also care not about the millions of American citizen tax cheaters who cost the country, and every honest taxpayer, $300 billion a year, far more than illegal immigration does. And if Trump has broken the law? Witch hunt.
· Get more worked up about immigration than more urgent national issues, from healthcare to 21st century job retraining to Russian cyber-war hacking our social media, elections, democracy and freedom.
· Believe and parrot whatever cockamamie “facts,” rationale, cherry-picked and overwrought anecdotes and whatabout talking points are fed by selected Trump-licking Fox and alt-right media.
· Think government is a bunch of stupid lazy bureaucrats who squander taxpayer dollars, impose burdensome regulations, and routinely screw up paperwork. Except when it comes to Homeland Security, the largest federal bureaucracy after the Pentagon and VA, with a nearly $50 billion budget. ICE bureaucrats and paperwork are flawless and should get more taxpayer dollars and regulatory control of our lives.
· Worry about jack-booted government thugs breaking down doors and invading homes, taking away our Constitutional rights, and even injuring and killing people, as the NRA has warned in defeating gun laws. But demand that jack-booted ICE thugs raid homes of Hispanic immigrants who might not have flawless papers.
· Don’t make the connection when parents or grandparents came or escaped to America from countries where ethnically cleansing government jack-booted thugs rounded up, jailed and slaughtered people for lacking flawless papers.
· Are gun-loving Second Amendment experts but don’t realize or accept the Constitution protects everyone in America, granting the same due process and other rights and protections to “illegals” that citizens enjoy and expect.
· Are nice, caring, generous people whose hearts go out to friends, family members or neighbors in need, or the plight of shelter dogs. But they wouldn’t mind — maybe they’d even cheer — seeing a Hispanic neighbor pulled from his home in the middle of the night, handcuffed and taken away to jail while women scream and children wail, all because his papers weren’t flawless. Makes you wonder what kind of decent American would turn a cold shoulder and say, serves them right!
· Believe in God, love Jesus and send “prayers” when kids are shot, but are willing to ignore Christ’s teachings when it comes to rounding up, separating, caging, or sending poor brown refugees back into harm’s way.
Conservative Republican, evangelical Christian and former adviser to President George W. Bush, Michael Gerson, is pleading with Trump to knock off the racism and dehumanizing the poor:
Trump is trying to make desperate, suffering people the villains of our national story. He compares refugees fleeing repression and violence to snakes. He smears them as rapists and invaders. In his warped moral vision, mercy is a form of national weakness. Kindness and respect are crimes against the state. His approach to nationalism involves slander against the voiceless. It demands further oppression of the oppressed. Trump wants to change not just the policy of our government, but also the character of our country, into something hard, and dark, and dishonorable, and pitiless.
This is surely the kind of thing that people of faith exist to oppose. Christians in particular worship a God who put on the cloak of human need and weakness. A refugee God. A scarred God. A God sacrificed to political necessity, in front of a crowd claiming to serve justice and law.
What does “God is love” mean if it does not mean love for refugees? What does the “image of God” indicate if we refuse to see it in the wandering poor?
Amen.
