Fog Of History, Immigration, Jamie O, Political Crack

The Newest Know Nothings

A U.S. border agent gives water to migrant children at Eagle Pass, Texas.

History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme, so goes the saying.

Back in the mid-19th Century, right before the Civil War, there was a goofy political party that was called The Know Nothings, so named because if members were asked if they were part of it, they were to say “I know nothing.” Their opponents, of course, had a lot of fun with this even if there was no Twitter in the 1840s.

The Know Nothings were fiercely anti-immigration and also seemed to revel in the idea that they were ignorant. Sound familiar? This is pretty much what the Republican Party has become.

Among the first people to warn us that they were transforming into a neo-Know Nothing Party were historians, who were swiftly lectured by the Very Serious and Reasoned Centrists of the Discourse about how mean and divisive they were. Nevertheless, as the last few paragraphs here demonstrate, they saw parallels as early as the Tea Party movement.

Right now, the GOP is going full Know Nothing on immigration and it’s all about getting Trump elected. Full stop, that’s it.

Immigration is a very confusing issue for a lot of Americans. The mainstream media right now is painting a picture of complete chaos, but when a whole caravan of neo-Know Nothings went down to the border to do God knows what, they didn’t find the all-out invasion they were expecting.

Something that did not make a huge splash in the news, perhaps because it didn’t fit the narrative of a total out-of-control shit show, is Biden convinced Mexico to reduce the flow of migrants. This did indeed slow down the flow. I imagine a lot of it was fear of a political party and their leader not being shy about potentially invading Mexico militarily, and how if that party takes power in November it could be something that actually happens.

Some of what is going on right now is the Steve Bannon Flood the Zone with Shit strategy. Over the weekend, I had a sort of alarming conversation with several people who are Democrats who were reciting Republican immigration talking points back at me. One of these was “well, illegal immigrants cannot be allowed to vote in Congressional and presidential elections so they must pass a bill changing that” and when I said that it is illegal right now they replied “that’s not what I heard.”

I think at least a partial source of this was Cretin Senator Ted Cruz and Professional Dim Bulb Senator Katie Britt trying to introduce legislation for something that is already a law. The obvious Republican goal with immigration is to make the entire country as clueless as they are because that will help them win in November.

So far, at least with immigration, it’s working. Americans view Biden as too lenient on immigration, which is really not what is going on. But it’s a vibes world that we are living in, as we have seen with the economy and crime.

Immigration is a weapon that Trump very much wants to use, and despite a pretty GOP-heavy immigration compromise bill, key Republicans are declaring it DOA.

Likely because if this passes then the GOP will not have as effective of a weapon. Republicans like Confederate Governor Greg Abbott and Failed Presidential Candidate Ron DeSantis have invested a lot into making the immigration situation much worse and therefore a bigger problem for Biden by bussing (read: human trafficking) migrants to large Democratic cities like New York and Chicago, creating a manufactured crisis in those cities.  I don’t think passing a compromise bill would remove it as a weapon entirely, because the GOP would still campaign on it as a failure because nothing matters to them.

But it would make it harder for Trump to set up his immigrant concentration camps and mass deportations that he brags about doing if he gets elected. This, of course, would be a total disaster both from a humanitarian and an economic perspective. DeSantis’ tough immigration law that he signed last year has been a real mess for Florida businesses now struggling to find enough workers.

Nothing is easy with immigration. We need immigrants, but at the same time, we need to come up with a better system that is both fair and humane, especially given the specter of climate change displacing populations in the future due to weather causing places to be unlivable. We won’t get that if the neo-Know Nothings grab power. That’s one thing I do know.

The last word is a bit different, and it goes to Ian McKellen, with The Stranger’s Case from Shakespeare’s play “Sir Thomas More.” Hatred and violence against immigrates, it seems, has been a blight on humanity for centuries.