Land of the Freeze-Dried Whackaloons

Wednesday, June 17, 2009
I believe that illegal immigration is a problem that needs to be addressed in this country. It's a complicated problem with many facets, including the issues of migratory labor, the tax base, education, Mexican drug violence and health care entitlements. These issues need to be addressed, as the consequences of not addressing them is high. The issue is illegal immigration, as opposed to legal immigration, as noted by UCF blogger Nathan.

However, that doesn't appear to be a distinction made by Shawna Forde of Everett, Washington. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Ms. Forde heads a group called "MAD," or the Minuteman American Defense. This is a group so extreme, with members so out in the weeds that other Minuteman organizations have disavowed them.

Ms. Forde, along with two other people, is currently under suspicion in the May 30th home invasion and shooting death of a man and his nine year old daughter in Pima County, Arizona, as well as injuring the girl's mother. Ms. Forde and her compatriots are being accused of invading the home in order to finance their organization's activities, and allegedly were searching for both cash and drugs.

Because, really, if you have brown skin and MAD thinks you're a drug dealer, you deserve to be shot and killed and your property stolen. Due process? Don't be silly. Due process is for REAL AMERICANS, i.e., those with white skin. The RULE OF LAW applies only to those who are BENEATH us REAL AMERICANS.

Yikes.

I really don't understand this type of extremism, but if I had to make a guess, I'd say it was driven by fear. Fear that soon the white majority will be outnumbered by people of color, fear that their unearned privilege will disappear in a more egalitarian system, fear that their sense of superiority over the brown and black people in this country will disappear along with their majority status.

How insecure do you have to be, how mentally unstable, to believe that killing people in order to financially support your political cause is okay? How do you convince yourself that your cause is so righteous that gunning down a nine-year-old girl in her own home is perfectly justified? Does killing or driving out those uppity Mexicans make the U.S. a better place to live, a more admirable place to live?

I don't know if the allegations against Ms. Forde and her buddies are true or not. That's for our system of justice to determine. But her publicly expressed views make such an accusation at least plausible, and convinces me (once again) that extremists of all stripes are to be feared and contained.

7 comments:

Steve Buchheit said...

Because to the FDW crowd, they aren't real people to begin with. And it starts with the sense of entitlement and the vague notion that they aren't getting their due, and it's all because of the (insert ethnic minority of choice here, Jews, Roma, Africans, Chinese, Indians, Irish, Muslims, Gays, etc). And then said minority is also out to get them and would just as easily shoot them because they are supposed to be privileged and said minority 1) resents them and 2) wants what they have. So it's justifiable race war.

Should I give examples in the mainstream media (looking at Fox News, BIll O'Reilly and Limbaugh), or do you wish examples out of their own paranoia (the black helicopter crowd).

But I'm sure you knew all that and it was a rhetorical question.

John the Scientist said...

Yanno, Joseph Stalin was a murderer and bank robber for the Bolsheviks before he became Party Secretary in Baku.

Eric said...

Tell me you're not surprised. The history of anti-immigration advocacy has always been tainted by racism and bigotry, whether you're talking about those who railed against the slave trade not because of the evils of slavery but because it brought people with dark skins, or those who railed against the "lazy, drunken" Irish or "criminal" Italians, or those who blocked the entry of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe, or those who didn't think this country ought to accept Asian refugees in the 1970s, or those who rail against Mexican immigrants today.

The whiff of racial prejudice is so ancient and has impregnanted immigration opposition so thoroughly that any non-racist immigration opponents out there must be concerned about who their fellow travellers are.

Coming to this country to work, to achieve, to serve one's family and fellows whether they come with you or stay in your motherland ought to be celebrated, not condemned. And those who come to this country to flee tyranny or oppression should be embraced. A while back the French gave us a rather nice bit of sculpture with a little sonnet carved on the interior, with words that can't be quoted too rarely:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


Are there problems with illegal immigration? Yes--security concerns, making sure we can provide for the health, safety and education of every human being we can harbor in this vast land, making sure that such folks and us aren't exploited by employers maximizing profits by underpaying the workers and under-collecting tax revenue (and let us note here that this isn't the fault or sole fault of much-maligned illegal immigrants who put in their day of hard labor--show me a migrant worker who "stole" a job or social security number and I'll show you a business owner who knew exactly what the score was, the deceitful fuck)--all legitimate concerns. But crackdowns and legal wrangling aren't solutions, and neither is racist horseshit whether it's the thinnly-veiled soft bigotry of some of our elected leaders or the all-too-predictable violence of hoodless Klansmen like the Minutemen.

(There, Nathan--some foaminess in spite of myself. Satisfied? Thank Janiece.)

Steve Buchheit said...

"show me a migrant worker who "stole" a job or social security number and I'll show you a business owner who knew exactly what the score was, the deceitful fuck"

Second that motion.

Janiece said...

The question was rhetorical, actually, but I get extra points for making Eric get all foamy. Janiece FTW!

John, I'm did know that. And Anwar Sadat was a terrorist before he became President of Egypt.

Eric, I understand exactly what you're saying - my desire to address the issues of illegal immigration (including their exploitation) is based on infrastructure, not race. I'm a proponent of legal immigration for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it allows a society to remain vibrant.

Jim Wright said...

Whackaloons indeed.

Forde and people like her are xenophobes, and their fear blinds them to real situation. You can't fight illegal immigration by attempting to intercept boarder jumpers or by attacking illegals or by killing people. You can't stop illegal immigration for the same reason you can't stop drug smuggling into this country - because the vast majority of Americans want it. They want cheap illicit drugs and they want cheap illicit labor.

People in Socal and Arizona and New Mexico bitch about illegals until the cows come home, BUT they are the ones who hire them. They hire them to cut the grass and clean the gutters and paint the house and fix the car and every other menial task that they don't want to do. You see it on every street corner. Get rid of the illegals and you'd have to pay people a living wage, you'd have to pay social security and union dues and insurance and all the rest of it. Get rid of the illegals and every restaurant in the southwest would be out of business overnight. Get rid of the illegals and socal would be overgrown in weeds and grass, there isn't a white guy south of San Francisco that owns a lawn mower or a weedwacker or would know how to operate one. Get rid of the illegals and the price of vegetables in the local supermarket will go through the roof - nationwide. Get rid of the illegals and damned near every commericial farm in the country would go out of business at the next harvest.

Americans want illegal immigrant labor. And they want it to stay illegal because otherwise they'd have to pay for it or do without the things they've gotten used to since the 1950s.

I know a hell of a lot of folks in the agriculture sector and the worst fear they have is that the illegals will be kicked out - or worse yet, given legal status and then UNIONIZE. Same in the garment industry.

What Forde and her ilk fail to understand is that illegal immigration is not the fault of the Mexicans (since they only seem to be concerned with Central American Illegal Immigration) but rather the fault of Americans themselves. Both illegal immigration and illegal drugs have the exact same root cause. Until we deal with that, you're going to have both.

John the Scientist said...

Yup, walk into any Chinese restaurant in this country and yell "INS" and you not only won't get your dinner, you should probably never order Chinese in that town ever again.