Harbors open their arms
Harbors open their arms
Trump's immigration rhetoric crosses a dangerous line
Casper considers the indoors
.
The blaze cut down from the north, slipping behind the tallest eastern tree in my yard to emerge bright toward the south for a brief instant before disappearing into the night.
It’s not unusual to see one or two shooting stars in the morning before dawn.
Orion has moved to the south, up to his waist in trees as he chases the seven sisters of the Pleiades. His faithful companion Sirius — the Dog Star, actually two stars — follows at his heels. Behind them I see a dim triangle of stars inside a brighter triangle of stars — part of the Gemini twins? — and large swathes that seem devoid of light, until I train my binoculars on the darkness. Then, distant stars appear. Something always fills the void. An applicable lesson?
With fall finally kicking in, I bundle up for my morning meditation. The piebald cat I call Casper is often around this time of day, too, and will sit close by on his haunches, waiting for morning light and breakfast.
I usually leave the back door open while I’m eating my own breakfast so that Casper can exercise his curiosity; he’s explored every room of my tiny cottage. I do have to be wary, though. I wouldn’t want, like, a hundred raccoons to run in.
He thinks I don’t see him.
.
There’s a long-haired gray cat named Grandma who lives nominally with the good people next door. It’s really her neighborhood. She’s not taken kindly to Casper’s presence, and on occasion I see her chasing him from my driveway. The other morning when that happened, as Casper skittered toward the woods in the back, I stepped out to have a word with her.
“Now, Grandma, look,” I gently admonished. “You have a home. You have a family. You have all the food you can eat. Why’re you picking on a little stray? Let him sit here. He’s not hurting anything.”
She looked me in the eye, skeptical. Then she turned and sauntered home, bored with my lecture.
Casper remained away. Throughout the day, as I moved around the house, I’d look out the windows for him. A few times, I stood at the back door and called, “Casper! Casper!”
I’m not a softie, I’ve just gotten used to his face.
It was the following day before he returned, quietly meowing: “Here I am! Here I am!” I welcomed him home with some tasty treats.
Later, while listening to something stupid that former president and convicted felon Donald Trump said, the analogy hit me. Is it too much of a stretch? I wondered. Am I forcing it? I don’t think so.
Grandma is the xenophobic nativist, aggressively defending her abundance from a threat that doesn’t really exist. Casper is the undocumented immigrant, seeking a square meal and a safe spot on which to rest. She reviles him for no good reason. He’s not hurting her in any way, not taking a thing from her.
That makes me … Vice President Kamala Harris? The Catholic church? I don’t know. Who stands up for immigrants these days? Maybe I’m still just me in this illustration.
Not only are more conservatives following in the footsteps of their leader, opposing any kind of immigration, illegal or legal, but there’s some suggestion that more liberal Americans are less accepting of them, too. According to data from Gallup, in 2016, 30% of Democrats wanted to increase immigration. In 2020, with Trump in office, the number grew to 50%. But then, “from June 2023 to June 2024 alone, the percentage of Democrats who favored decreased immigration jumped by 10 points,” Rogé Karma writes in The Atlantic.
Is that, perhaps, a reaction to the constant drumbeat of “open borders” from Republicans? It’s certainly not in response to any facts on the ground; undocumented immigrants continue to stimulate our economy — every single one is a consumer of American goods — while exhibiting lower rates of criminal behavior than U.S. citizens. They enrich our culture, which otherwise might be limited to square dancing and golf.
They come here to work, to find safety for their children, to escape oppression and crime, to partake of the American dream, which we boast to the world is the best dream ever.
Borders are important. Laws are important.
But people’s lives are more important.
Oh, the stupid thing:
“We allowed them to come in and raid and rape our country,” the convicted rapist complained during his appearance at the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday, speaking of immigrants. “That’s what they did.”
“Oh, he used the word ‘rape,’” he continued, mimicking an imaginary “woke” critic.
“That’s right, I used the word ‘rape.’ They raped our country.”
No, they didn’t. It’s just more Trumpian gaslighting. You’d think we’d all have learned that by now. Every faux atrocity Trump cites, from “They’re eating our dogs!” to overwhelming desperados in Aurora, Colorado, turns out to be bullshit.
They built our country. They revitalized communities like Springfield, Ohio, that were dying. They clean our homes and mow our lawns. They pick crops for minimal salaries, keeping our food affordable. They care for our elderly. They contribute millions in taxes for which they’ll never be compensated. They give much more than they take.
Six of them died in March while filling potholes in the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore as it collapsed. They weren’t drug-dealers. They weren’t rapists. They were hard-working family men.
Many of them, bused north by Gov. Ron DeSantis, will be returning to Florida in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton to put roofs back on houses.
Yet much of Trump’s appeal to his white evangelical base is built on making them sound like demons from Hell. He calls immigrants “animals” and “vermin,” says they’re “poisoning the blood of our people” and even, last week, said that they’re bringing “bad genes” into the nation. (“Bad genes,” incidentally, isn’t really a thing. Racists sure like to talk about them, though.)
We journalist-types try to avoid comparing modern-day situations to the unique horrors of slavery and the Holocaust, but Trump is putting a strain on that standard. His descriptions of immigrants are the same as Hitler’s descriptions of his chosen scapegoats, the Jews. His threats of deportation, imprisonment and/or violence are the same that preceded Germany’s concentration camps.
How is it that even members of “the Greatest Generation” fall for Trump’s crap?
If he was able to do what he says he’ll do, it would not only destroy America’s reputation in the world; not only inevitably leave blood on our hands; it would devastate our economy. Undocumented immigrants represent about 20% of our workforce. Who’s going to fill their shoes? Who’s going to buy the products they’re not here to buy?
We’d miss them.
But pointing this out is not likely to sway the supporters who have already accepted Trump’s distorted world view, his lies, his sexual offenses, his serial adultery, his grifting, his waffling on abortion rights, his threats to national security, his disdain for military service, his fealty to Russian President Vladimir Putin, his affection for fascist dictators, his assault on workers’ rights, his cheating of contractors on his construction projects, his policies (or lack thereof, when it comes to health care, infrastructure and electric vehicles), his failure as an economic leader (costing us millions of American jobs), his deadly mismanagement of the COVID crisis, his attempted coup, his promises to shred the Constitution and his deteriorating mental capacity.
So we’ll just have to outvote his voters.
Saturday morning before dawn, Casper crouched near my feet, tail wrapped around his flanks. Grandma was nowhere in sight. She must have a safe place to doze — one that Casper could never steal from her.
It’s hard to fault Grandma; she acts on primitive instincts, as cats do.
We expect a little more from people.
We’re sometimes disappointed.
In the dark, dim satellites crossed the sky. Jupiter stood directly overhead, a lighthouse beacon. I sat, watching the sky, until it brightened.
…….
Overflow:
Trump’s racism is indefensible:
And it’s nothing new:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/13/how-trumps-rhetoric-compares-hitlers/
The Baltimore bridge workers were immigrants:
Last week, Samaritan’s Purse leader Franklin Graham stood by quietly as Trump lied about the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/06/politics/fact-check-trump-helene-response-north-carolina/index.html
Evangelicals “wasted their witness to the world” on Trump, evangelical writer David French says. Graham has wasted his claim to the Gospel message by supporting Trump’s racism and lies. He’s corrupted himself by embracing a corrupt messenger.
All of Trump’s self-serving racist claims about deporting immigrants — that it would make the country safer, that it would make housing more affordable, that it would improve the economy — fall apart when scrutinized.
Deporting millions of people “would be folly and absurdly expensive and counterproductive, not to mention profoundly cruel.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/mass-deportation-migrants-trump-actually-work-rcna161637
https://www.yahoo.com/news/data-shows-migrants-arent-taking-040445122.html
Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair and retired Gen. Mark Milley calls Trump “a total fascist” in Bob Woodward’s new book:
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4929487-trump-dangerous-milley-woodward/
Is our support for immigrants slipping?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/immigration-public-opinion-reversal/680196/
I was going to quote something horrible that Trump operative and attorney Mike Davis said, until I read this, an in-depth portrait of a man who may not know himself when he’s serious and when he’s trolling:
Sedaka knows:
My book, Stardust and Scar Tissue, is on sale in bargain bins everywhere. It’s available directly from my friends at Bookmarks, the Book Ferret, the Central Library or the publisher, Press 53.
Thanks for being here today. If you know anyone who’d like to join us, please pass the word.
Everything about this is soft, kind, and brilliant. Thank you for the 100 raccoons...
Brilliant and kind. Thanks, Mick.