Lol at Rich's transparent trolling in the European passport thread.
When you enter this country... They check your passport. The reason they don't do that at state borders is because they are states, not countries. They don't check your passport region to region or state to state in other countries either.
Early in the Clinton administration INS decided to try to enforce the immigration laws. Employer(s) in Georgia were busted for hiring undocumented immigrants. The Vadalia onion crop went unharvested that year. Businesses made a big stink and enforcement was eased up.
Again in the last few years of the Bush administration there was an increase in enforcement, mostly packing plants. Again there was an outcry from business for INS to ease up, and they have.
And that's what's up. Seriously, the history of immigration in America can be summed us thusly:
Employers vs. nativists with the government tasked with "mediating" in such a way to avoid pissing off the more powerful group.
In AZ, the nativists have the upper hand for the moment, thus forcing the gov't to have to capitulate. I don't, for a minute, believe this same legislation would have been as successful in an off-cycle political year.
What I'm more concerned about will be subtle attempts at implementing Jim Crow-like political disenfranchisement policies against Latino voters. AZ nativists have to know that demographically, they're going to lose in the long run and if they want to hold onto power, it means finding ways to stem the power of the Latino electorate.
I think the bigger picture here, as with health care and other issues, is corporate and business private interests are using the right wing media as puppets to stir up the disenfranchised whte middle age and elderley middle class. Thier fear and frustration can easily be harvested into hate and is creating a perfect base of soldiers that will do the bidding of these private interests.
Germany in the 30's anyone?
Ask a teabagger specifically what they are scared about or mad at and most are hard pressed to give you a specific answer. Hate is the primary unifying factor.
Even though this situation appears to be a Mexican immigration issue at surface, I truly believe it can and will be applied to Asians (remember how much McCain likes "Tha gooks") blacks and all non whte parties. Even if the courts tear it down, they were able to send a poignant message.
Psycholgical [email]mindfu@@[/email] on all "minorites"
For the record too I want to give a huge heartfelt shoutout to all the AZ residents who feel they have been misrepresented and are protesting and holding vigils. Hold your head up and be safe.
The teabaggers have been instructed over the past month to stock up on weapons and ammunition.
I think the bigger picture here, as with health care and other issues, is corporate and business private interests are using the right wing media as puppets to stir up the disenfranchised whte middle age and elderley middle class. Thier fear and frustration can easily be harvested into hate and is creating a perfect base of soldiers that will do the bidding of these private interests.
I don't know about that. Free enterprisers have always been in favor of liberalizing Immigration. It not only gets them cheaper labor on the front end, but immigrant labor has also been very useful in fending off organized nativist (and usually White) labor. It's hard to see how this AZ law serves the interests of corporate business interests.
Also, I'm definitely not European historian but from what little I do know, I don't think this bears instant comparisons to the rise of Nazi power in the 1920s and '30s. I have no idea to what extent private industry supported Hitler's and the Nazi party's rise to power but I don't imagine the Third Reich was a golden age for German capitalism.
Rather than the Nazis, I think one only need turn to the history of American immigration crises, whether you're talking about the Irish, the Chinese (and later, Japanese and Filipinos), Southern/Eastern Europeans and the post-Bracero Program backlash against Mexican laborers in the 1950s through '60s. In all these cases, it's Industry facing off against Nativists, with the State ultimately called in to have to resolve the issue one way or another. In some eras, they went hard against immigration and mandated mass deportation (see Operation Wetback under the Eisenhower administration). In other eras, they went more liberal (see Reagan's 1986 amnesty act).
Ask a teabagger specifically what they are scared about or mad at and most are hard pressed to give you a specific answer. Hate is the primary unifying factor.
Again, I could be wrong here, but I thought the boilerplate tea party anthem was "smaller government and lower taxes." I don't get the remote sense there's much in terms of unity or organization within "the movement." Seems like a whole bunch of splintered factions operating under a loose umbrella but while the movement has its share of hateful people, I don't get the sense it defines the whole (and again, I'm not even sure how one can define a movement that seems to lack a unified core). Fear might be a more unifying factor than hate there. Similar, but not identical emotions.
And I also don't if the Tea Party even has any kind of reasoned stance on immigration policy. As this article notes, the recent "Contract For America" supposedly spearheaded by the Tea Party has NO immigration recommendations at all: http://www.examiner.com/x-17495-San-Dieg...ther-key-issues
Sorry Oliver, I think your outlook is a little rosey.
Fear doesn't cause teaparty attendees to spit on congressmen and call them [email]ni@@er.[/email] Hate does. Fear recruits, hate unifies.
As far as Nazi labor, I have been posting all this from my phone but if I remember correctly, manufacuring ramped up in Nazi Germany. I could be wrong. I'm phone posting this weekend.
Here's what Ag and industry want with regards to immigration law: ridiculously scary laws with absolutely zero enforcement. This I would not characterize as liberalizing immigration. Immigrants want a path to naturalization. Industry wants no possibility of that becausE that would lead to minimum wage payouts, something ag can't sustain.
That's what keeps the workers scared and without a voice.
The boilerplate tea party anthem may have started as such but ha pretty mch become "the government is going to get us, we wot pay taxes for X" All I see Is hate out here in middle America on tour, the coast intelligencia never sees that. I'm posting from south Ohio right now. Shit is rugged out here.
Oliver, these mutherfuckers are ARMING themselves for something and pretty much just waiting for a good reason to act.
Sorry Oliver, I think your outlook is a little rosey.
It's not that I don't find the Tea Party to be a potential menace but to me, the racist motherfuckers you're talking about pre-dated the Tea Party and they will continue to exist long after this sham of a movement falls into pieces (which it will. That's not optimism, that's calculated political reality). "They" (and again, I'm not even sure who the hell 'they' are...Dick Armery and his cronies?) certainly are benefiting from the populist anger/fear/hate out there but I don't feel, for a minute, this has solidified into anything more than an idea and a media meme. The AZ shit? That's not the Tea Party. That's Arizona. They've been moving in these directions for DECADES. Five years ago, had this law passed, we would have credited the Minutemen.
As far as Nazi labor, I have been posting all this from my phone but if I remember correctly, manufacuring ramped up in Nazi Germany.
That's not the same thing as benefitting private industry, especially if the Nazi's partially or wholly nationalized those industries.
Again: I can't see any rational benefit to private industry to restrict immigration or harass immigrant labor. Private industry doesn't need to engineer populism to maintain/sustain their power.
Example A: THE BANK BAILOUTS. It wasn't Tea Party motherfuckers asking for AIG or bank of America to get bailed out. Believe that. Nor was it "Obama = socialist" wingnuts either.
I think what you're seeing in Arizona is actually from a completely different direction: it's politicians whipping up populist fears to solidify their power. Private industry, if they have a stake at all, are going to try to kiss up to whoever wins that struggle but they have no vested interest in alienating immigrants.
Here's what Ag and industry want with regards to immigration law: ridiculously scary laws with absolutely zero enforcement. This I would not characterize as liberalizing immigration. Immigrants want a path to naturalization. Industry wants no possibility of that becausE that would lead to minimum wage payouts, something ag can't sustain.
Now this I'm feeling. That makes good sense on a few levels but again, I don't see how the AZ law works in their favor. businesses coming out against amnesty makes sense. Businesses supporting policies designed to drive immigrants out of the state? Doesn't make sense.
Plus, if there really is zero enforcement...then what's the issue here? Isn't that EXACTLY what we have now? Zero enforcement of existing immigration policies?
Oliver, these mutherfuckers are ARMING themselves for something and pretty much just waiting for a good reason to act.
Yeah but they were arming themselves in the '90s under Clinton too and I didn't see how that was to the benefit of private industry. I think this current moment could portend greater dangers, especially as the GOP tries to exploit the currents of fear, but to me, this all smacks of insider political machinations rather than some end run by capitalists.
Ask a teabagger specifically what they are scared about or mad at and most are hard pressed to give you a specific answer.
I spoke to a buddy in Arizona today and asked him if he supported the law.
He said he did.....but he is not a Teabagger....not even close.
He then went on to say the reason he feels it's needed is that he and his family are afraid that the murderous drug war that has been going on just south of the border will migrate up into his area.
I kinda laughed at that and he said there had been 60 murders in one day in one AZ/Mex border town.
I told him that sounded like a weekend in Chicago and he replied "That's why I don't live in Chicago".
Is this a legit concern?? I don't know, but apparently at least a few people think so, or at least that's the reason they are giving.
By the time we were through he did say that he felt that profiling and random stops of people who "looked illegal" were wrong and suggested that they just set up strategic road blocks and check everyone out.
I can't defend or argue his point of view, but I thought I'd share it here.
We spoke about this shit so long I forgot to ask him what I originally called him for.....a free copy of his latest vinyl release!
Thes: Just so I'm real clear here. I don't disagree with your general concerns around either this fucked up immigration bill OR the Tea Partiers OR the role of private industry influencing public policy.
I think where we disagree is over who is colluding with who and whose agendas are ultimately being served. I guess I just don't buy into some kind of Unified Field Theory. Rather, I think everything is chaos and everyone is jockeying to grab what crumbs they can.
Some what related: I was listening to this historian talk about the New Deal under Roosevelt and how the Supreme Court at the time deaded some of the biggest parts of that legislation and basically BOTH sides acted in the ways they did because they felt like the fate of the Union held in the balance. New Dealers felt like they needed to use federal power as a way to prevent America from going the way of the Weimer Empire. Conservatives felt like the New Deal was going to lead to too much federal power, aka "going the way of the Weimer Empire." Same fears, two completely different ideological stances and policies.
Was your friend able to determine if the people murdered were connected to the drugs or not?
My dad lives half the year in Mexico and suggests that the American attitude toward the drug war going on down there is exaggerated and stoked by sensationalist media coverage. And that basically the people dying are mainly people who are connected to the drug game in some way (police included).
He then went on to say the reason he feels it's needed is that he and his family are afraid that the murderous drug war that has been going on just south of the border will migrate up into his area.
I kinda laughed at that and he said there had been 60 murders in one day in one AZ/Mex border town.
But that was 69 in the entire country, not one city. And the city that took the most casualties is on the TX/Mex border, not AZ.
I think concerns about the drug war slipping over the border are warranted but there's a pretty massive difference between drug cartels bucking wild in Ciudad Juarez vs. trying to pull off that same shit in El Paso. For one thing, I don't think it'd be quite so easy to drive a few trucks full of armed thugs past the border. The reason why the drug violence is so bad in Mexico is because there's been a basic collapse of law enforcement. The U.S. isn't at that stage yet and I don't think any cartel is willing to risk direct U.S. intervention.
That all said, the fear of "drug dealer illegals" was huge rhetoric in the AZ bill's passing. Total bullshit too. Rates of criminality amongst immigrant men is something like 10 times lower than it is for American citizens.
Forgive me for confusing two points in threads - I need a ven diagram app for the iPhone.
I agree that the az law is rogue and not related to ag lobbying. I think the az law is more an attempt to capture the teaparty movement (mind you this is the same state who invited palin down to speak a few weeks ago).
I was referring to the amnesty with regards to industry on immigration, 1070 serves no other purpose than puttin some fear in the brownies.
The teaparty and right wing hate speech we are hearing now is unprecedented in the history of the us. As far as I know not during any prior administration have we had eleceted public leaders urging citizens to arm themselves against the government or using the type of apeehh that insights violence an exploits peoples fear. I put 1070 in with that. Elected Latino officials have been getting sniper death threats.
Sure rascist bitches had movements prior, but nowthanks to Glenn beck and crew they also have an aligned AARP contingency and a middle class crew who were looking for a wayto fit in, the Joe the plumbers are getting turned out on this shit.
I honestly don't think we've seen this level of heat yet. I hope we don't have a boil over, but as I stated earlier, the us was not ready to hve this debate and now they've forced obamas hand.
In the meantime, no more az shows for us.
Also, and I can agree to disagree, but I firmly believe private industry has been engineering populism in this country for decades. I believe that the primary purpose of governments at this poin is to regulate and protect us from this effect, which they have not been pretty goosnat thus far because of the way Washington works - and that's in both parties.
I honestly don't think we've seen this level of heat yet.
I wasn't alive for most of this time period but I have to think that America was a far more turbulent nation in the 1960s and early '70s then now. America survived MLK, JFK and RFK's assassinations plus the U.S. government firebombing activists, all during a time of massive deindustrializaiton, white flight and urban rioting.
What we have here may very well be a ticking time bomb but if/when it goes off, it will be isolated and it will bring down a fucking sledgehammer of federal heat that will make COINTELPRO look like kids playing cops and robbers. You can thank Bush for that, btw.
Also, and I can agree to disagree, but I firmly believe private industry has been engineering populism in this country for decades.
See, I look at it from a different direction: I think private industry has been engineering government. Populist sentiment is a wildly unpredictable force; once you stoke those flames, it's not so easy to prevent them from spreading out of control and initiating blowback. It's a lot easier to engineer government to do your dirty work for you, whether that means weakening labor laws, de-regulating watch dog agencies and influencing foreign policy to benefit trade relations in your favor. Above all else, capitalism desires stability. Populism, by its very nature, is an unstable force. EVEN COMMUNIST REGIMES FEAR POPULISM. Think on that for a moment.
All in all this is probably one of the only civil multiside debates on the Internet, reading the comments sectionof the az news makes my head explode.
And see, if we assume that speaks for "people at large", I could totally see why we'd think the country was on the verge of collapse. But those voices were ALWAYS out there, they just never had a public forum to mouth off in.
Above all else, capitalism desires stability. Populism, by its very nature, is an unstable force. EVEN COMMUNIST REGIMES FEAR POPULISM. Think on that for a moment.
ok, but i think what we are experiencing is the promulgation of a "false populism". look no further than the sarah palin phenemenon.
Well yes and no. My view on American stability comes from travelling and touring Half the year in the us, the most beautiful country in the world to me.
A large portion of "populism" is being manipulated by fox news. I don't see any way around that. And this is new in the us, and forgive me for not having my research ducks in order, since bush administration allowed news programs to be commercial enterpises. That changed the whole game.
I believe, and I may be wrong, that via fox news private crporate industry have been very successful at controlling a portion of popular reason.
Let?s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called ?Imagine.? The way it?s played is simple: we?ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we?ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we?ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.
No need to imagine. Just look at the history of Black militant groups in the 1970s. If the Tea Party were Black, their membership would already be under surveillance if not straight up martyred.
only an idiot would think its reasonable to draw parallels between the tea parties and black militant groups. The million man march would be a far more sensible comparison.
I have a different and much harder test of the imagination. Imagine Tim Wise is not a grotesquely fat pile of shit who secretes lies from every orifice and pore of his huge and disgusting body. It is impossible. I tried my damnedest to imagine that his blog post was something worthwhile and yet the idiocy of it kept penetrating my conscious. Examples
- the events he describes at the very beginning of his verbal turd were not tea parties. They were gun rights rallies. As is typical of these terrifying, fringe, crazy, racist, naziesque, rage filled events there was not a single reported incidence of violence.
- There has been, in fact, at least one black person who showed up at a tea party armed and Wise will be heartened to know this was cited by some in the media as a reason to fear the tea party phenomenon. Unfortunately this was not in the way Wise imagines. Click the following link for video of MSNBC doctoring video to hide the race of the armed man in order to insinuate that the tea party is a jamboree for violent white racists
- What has Pat Buchanan employing a racist got to do with the tea parties? By the way, our sitting black president for decades was a member of, and huge donor to, an overtly bigoted organisation known as the trinity church. Given this its hard to see why a black racist getting hired by an organisation unrelated to his imagined black political movement would be seized upon as evidence to delegitimatize and smear that black movement the way Wise does of the tea parties.
- WTF has a poor taste joke Ann Coulter made years ago(misquoted by Wise as is to be expected) got to do with the tea party movement?
- His whole post is premised on the idea that the tea parties have received better media treatment than other protest movements. He believes this to be evidence of white privilege. This is not just wrong but is in fact opposite to the truth.
Its has been treated far worse by most media outlets and it is precisely it's 'whiteness' that has served as a main target of attack by the New York Times, ABC, CNN, MSNBC ect. ect. When have you ever before seen inferences made about a protest movement purely based on its racial composition? Wise knows full well that a predominantly Black or Asian protest would never have its validity or motives challenged by any one of those media outlets simply because of its being predominantly black or asian.
I think the bigger picture here, as with health care and other issues, is corporate and business private interests are using the right wing media as puppets to stir up the disenfranchised whte middle age and elderley middle class. Thier fear and frustration can easily be harvested into hate and is creating a perfect base of soldiers that will do the bidding of these private interests.
Germany in the 30's anyone?
Ask a teabagger specifically what they are scared about or mad at and most are hard pressed to give you a specific answer. Hate is the primary unifying factor.
Even though this situation appears to be a Mexican immigration issue at surface, I truly believe it can and will be applied to Asians (remember how much McCain likes "Tha gooks") blacks and all non whte parties. Even if the courts tear it down, they were able to send a poignant message.
Psycholgical [Email]mindfu@@[/Email] on all "minorites"
This is nothing but 'reasoning' based on hate. Everyone knows that corporate interests are strongly in favor of loose immigration policies and enforcement. The alleged relationship between corporate interests and those opposed to illegal immigration is entirely a product of your rationality destroying hatred for those two parties. They produce evil, this is evil, ergo they produced this evil seems to be as sophisticated as your thinking gets.
man fuck that hispanic bullshit and fuck a latino republican.
my beliefs are hardly what you would call "normal" but I don't understand how any latino can roll with the GOP, a party that hates that we fucking exist.
Comments
you have the right to remain silent.
FUCK ARIZONA
When you enter this country... They check your passport. The reason they don't do that at state borders is because they are states, not countries. They don't check your passport region to region or state to state in other countries either.
And that's what's up. Seriously, the history of immigration in America can be summed us thusly:
Employers vs. nativists with the government tasked with "mediating" in such a way to avoid pissing off the more powerful group.
In AZ, the nativists have the upper hand for the moment, thus forcing the gov't to have to capitulate. I don't, for a minute, believe this same legislation would have been as successful in an off-cycle political year.
What I'm more concerned about will be subtle attempts at implementing Jim Crow-like political disenfranchisement policies against Latino voters. AZ nativists have to know that demographically, they're going to lose in the long run and if they want to hold onto power, it means finding ways to stem the power of the Latino electorate.
Germany in the 30's anyone?
Ask a teabagger specifically what they are scared about or mad at and most are hard pressed to give you a specific answer. Hate is the primary unifying factor.
Even though this situation appears to be a Mexican immigration issue at surface, I truly believe it can and will be applied to Asians (remember how much McCain likes "Tha gooks") blacks and all non whte parties.
Even if the courts tear it down, they were able to send a poignant message.
Psycholgical [email]mindfu@@[/email] on all "minorites"
The teabaggers have been instructed over the past month to stock up on weapons and ammunition.
I don't know about that. Free enterprisers have always been in favor of liberalizing Immigration. It not only gets them cheaper labor on the front end, but immigrant labor has also been very useful in fending off organized nativist (and usually White) labor. It's hard to see how this AZ law serves the interests of corporate business interests.
Also, I'm definitely not European historian but from what little I do know, I don't think this bears instant comparisons to the rise of Nazi power in the 1920s and '30s. I have no idea to what extent private industry supported Hitler's and the Nazi party's rise to power but I don't imagine the Third Reich was a golden age for German capitalism.
Rather than the Nazis, I think one only need turn to the history of American immigration crises, whether you're talking about the Irish, the Chinese (and later, Japanese and Filipinos), Southern/Eastern Europeans and the post-Bracero Program backlash against Mexican laborers in the 1950s through '60s. In all these cases, it's Industry facing off against Nativists, with the State ultimately called in to have to resolve the issue one way or another. In some eras, they went hard against immigration and mandated mass deportation (see Operation Wetback under the Eisenhower administration). In other eras, they went more liberal (see Reagan's 1986 amnesty act).
Again, I could be wrong here, but I thought the boilerplate tea party anthem was "smaller government and lower taxes." I don't get the remote sense there's much in terms of unity or organization within "the movement." Seems like a whole bunch of splintered factions operating under a loose umbrella but while the movement has its share of hateful people, I don't get the sense it defines the whole (and again, I'm not even sure how one can define a movement that seems to lack a unified core). Fear might be a more unifying factor than hate there. Similar, but not identical emotions.
And I also don't if the Tea Party even has any kind of reasoned stance on immigration policy. As this article notes, the recent "Contract For America" supposedly spearheaded by the Tea Party has NO immigration recommendations at all: http://www.examiner.com/x-17495-San-Dieg...ther-key-issues
Fear doesn't cause teaparty attendees to spit on congressmen and call them [email]ni@@er.[/email] Hate does. Fear recruits, hate unifies.
As far as Nazi labor, I have been posting all this from my phone but if I remember correctly, manufacuring ramped up in Nazi Germany. I could be wrong. I'm phone posting this weekend.
Here's what Ag and industry want with regards to immigration law:
ridiculously scary laws with absolutely zero enforcement. This I would not characterize as liberalizing immigration. Immigrants want a path to naturalization. Industry wants no possibility of that becausE that would lead to minimum wage payouts, something ag can't sustain.
That's what keeps the workers scared and without a voice.
The boilerplate tea party anthem may have started as such but ha pretty mch become "the government is going to get us, we wot pay taxes for X" All I see Is hate out here in middle America on tour, the coast intelligencia never sees that. I'm posting from south Ohio right now. Shit is rugged out here.
Oliver, these mutherfuckers are ARMING themselves for something and pretty much just waiting for a good reason to act.
It's not that I don't find the Tea Party to be a potential menace but to me, the racist motherfuckers you're talking about pre-dated the Tea Party and they will continue to exist long after this sham of a movement falls into pieces (which it will. That's not optimism, that's calculated political reality). "They" (and again, I'm not even sure who the hell 'they' are...Dick Armery and his cronies?) certainly are benefiting from the populist anger/fear/hate out there but I don't feel, for a minute, this has solidified into anything more than an idea and a media meme. The AZ shit? That's not the Tea Party. That's Arizona. They've been moving in these directions for DECADES. Five years ago, had this law passed, we would have credited the Minutemen.
That's not the same thing as benefitting private industry, especially if the Nazi's partially or wholly nationalized those industries.
Again: I can't see any rational benefit to private industry to restrict immigration or harass immigrant labor. Private industry doesn't need to engineer populism to maintain/sustain their power.
Example A: THE BANK BAILOUTS. It wasn't Tea Party motherfuckers asking for AIG or bank of America to get bailed out. Believe that. Nor was it "Obama = socialist" wingnuts either.
I think what you're seeing in Arizona is actually from a completely different direction: it's politicians whipping up populist fears to solidify their power. Private industry, if they have a stake at all, are going to try to kiss up to whoever wins that struggle but they have no vested interest in alienating immigrants.
Now this I'm feeling. That makes good sense on a few levels but again, I don't see how the AZ law works in their favor. businesses coming out against amnesty makes sense. Businesses supporting policies designed to drive immigrants out of the state? Doesn't make sense.
Plus, if there really is zero enforcement...then what's the issue here? Isn't that EXACTLY what we have now? Zero enforcement of existing immigration policies?
Yeah but they were arming themselves in the '90s under Clinton too and I didn't see how that was to the benefit of private industry. I think this current moment could portend greater dangers, especially as the GOP tries to exploit the currents of fear, but to me, this all smacks of insider political machinations rather than some end run by capitalists.
I spoke to a buddy in Arizona today and asked him if he supported the law.
He said he did.....but he is not a Teabagger....not even close.
He then went on to say the reason he feels it's needed is that he and his family are afraid that the murderous drug war that has been going on just south of the border will migrate up into his area.
I kinda laughed at that and he said there had been 60 murders in one day in one AZ/Mex border town.
I told him that sounded like a weekend in Chicago and he replied "That's why I don't live in Chicago".
Is this a legit concern?? I don't know, but apparently at least a few people think so, or at least that's the reason they are giving.
By the time we were through he did say that he felt that profiling and random stops of people who "looked illegal" were wrong and suggested that they just set up strategic road blocks and check everyone out.
I can't defend or argue his point of view, but I thought I'd share it here.
We spoke about this shit so long I forgot to ask him what I originally called him for.....a free copy of his latest vinyl release!
I think where we disagree is over who is colluding with who and whose agendas are ultimately being served. I guess I just don't buy into some kind of Unified Field Theory. Rather, I think everything is chaos and everyone is jockeying to grab what crumbs they can.
Some what related: I was listening to this historian talk about the New Deal under Roosevelt and how the Supreme Court at the time deaded some of the biggest parts of that legislation and basically BOTH sides acted in the ways they did because they felt like the fate of the Union held in the balance. New Dealers felt like they needed to use federal power as a way to prevent America from going the way of the Weimer Empire. Conservatives felt like the New Deal was going to lead to too much federal power, aka "going the way of the Weimer Empire." Same fears, two completely different ideological stances and policies.
I feel like we're in a similar moment now.
My dad lives half the year in Mexico and suggests that the American attitude toward the drug war going on down there is exaggerated and stoked by sensationalist media coverage. And that basically the people dying are mainly people who are connected to the drug game in some way (police included).
I'm assuming he's talking about this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/mexico-suffers-69-murders_n_419791.html
But that was 69 in the entire country, not one city. And the city that took the most casualties is on the TX/Mex border, not AZ.
I think concerns about the drug war slipping over the border are warranted but there's a pretty massive difference between drug cartels bucking wild in Ciudad Juarez vs. trying to pull off that same shit in El Paso. For one thing, I don't think it'd be quite so easy to drive a few trucks full of armed thugs past the border. The reason why the drug violence is so bad in Mexico is because there's been a basic collapse of law enforcement. The U.S. isn't at that stage yet and I don't think any cartel is willing to risk direct U.S. intervention.
That all said, the fear of "drug dealer illegals" was huge rhetoric in the AZ bill's passing. Total bullshit too. Rates of criminality amongst immigrant men is something like 10 times lower than it is for American citizens.
I agree that the az law is rogue and not related to ag lobbying. I think the az law is more an attempt to capture the teaparty movement (mind you this is the same state who invited palin down to speak a few weeks ago).
I was referring to the amnesty with regards to industry on immigration, 1070 serves no other purpose than puttin some fear in the brownies.
The teaparty and right wing hate speech we are hearing now is unprecedented in the history of the us. As far as I know not during any prior administration have we had eleceted public leaders urging citizens to arm themselves against the government or using the type of apeehh that insights violence an exploits peoples fear. I put 1070 in with that. Elected Latino officials have been getting sniper death threats.
Sure rascist bitches had movements prior, but nowthanks to Glenn beck and crew they also have an aligned AARP contingency and a middle class crew who were looking for a wayto fit in, the Joe the plumbers are getting turned out on this shit.
I honestly don't think we've seen this level of heat yet. I hope
we don't have a boil over, but as I stated earlier, the us was not ready to hve this debate and now they've forced obamas hand.
In the meantime, no more az shows for us.
Also, and I can agree to disagree, but I firmly believe private industry has been engineering populism in this country for decades. I believe that the primary purpose of governments at this poin is to regulate and protect us from this effect, which they have not been pretty goosnat thus far because of the way Washington works - and that's in both parties.
Respect all around
Saw y'all out here in Tempe before at The Clubhouse and it was the shiznit. Damn racists fuskin up my hopes for another PUTS show.
I wasn't alive for most of this time period but I have to think that America was a far more turbulent nation in the 1960s and early '70s then now. America survived MLK, JFK and RFK's assassinations plus the U.S. government firebombing activists, all during a time of massive deindustrializaiton, white flight and urban rioting.
What we have here may very well be a ticking time bomb but if/when it goes off, it will be isolated and it will bring down a fucking sledgehammer of federal heat that will make COINTELPRO look like kids playing cops and robbers. You can thank Bush for that, btw.
See, I look at it from a different direction: I think private industry has been engineering government. Populist sentiment is a wildly unpredictable force; once you stoke those flames, it's not so easy to prevent them from spreading out of control and initiating blowback. It's a lot easier to engineer government to do your dirty work for you, whether that means weakening labor laws, de-regulating watch dog agencies and influencing foreign policy to benefit trade relations in your favor. Above all else, capitalism desires stability. Populism, by its very nature, is an unstable force. EVEN COMMUNIST REGIMES FEAR POPULISM. Think on that for a moment.
And see, if we assume that speaks for "people at large", I could totally see why we'd think the country was on the verge of collapse. But those voices were ALWAYS out there, they just never had a public forum to mouth off in.
ok, but i think what we are experiencing is the promulgation of a "false populism". look no further than the sarah palin phenemenon.
in the world to me.
A large portion of "populism" is being manipulated by fox news. I don't see any way around that. And this is new in the us, and forgive me for not having my research ducks in order, since bush administration allowed news programs to be commercial enterpises. That changed the whole game.
I believe, and I may be wrong, that via fox news private crporate industry have been very successful at controlling a portion of popular reason.
Ok, this I totally buy.
So let?s begin...
http://ephphatha-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/04/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html?spref=fb
- the events he describes at the very beginning of his verbal turd were not tea parties. They were gun rights rallies. As is typical of these terrifying, fringe, crazy, racist, naziesque, rage filled events there was not a single reported incidence of violence.
- There has been, in fact, at least one black person who showed up at a tea party armed and Wise will be heartened to know this was cited by some in the media as a reason to fear the tea party phenomenon. Unfortunately this was not in the way Wise imagines. Click the following link for video of MSNBC doctoring video to hide the race of the armed man in order to insinuate that the tea party is a jamboree for violent white racists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKQJ4-N7LI
- What has Pat Buchanan employing a racist got to do with the tea parties? By the way, our sitting black president for decades was a member of, and huge donor to, an overtly bigoted organisation known as the trinity church. Given this its hard to see why a black racist getting hired by an organisation unrelated to his imagined black political movement would be seized upon as evidence to delegitimatize and smear that black movement the way Wise does of the tea parties.
- WTF has a poor taste joke Ann Coulter made years ago(misquoted by Wise as is to be expected) got to do with the tea party movement?
- His whole post is premised on the idea that the tea parties have received better media treatment than other protest movements. He believes this to be evidence of white privilege. This is not just wrong but is in fact opposite to the truth.
Its has been treated far worse by most media outlets and it is precisely it's 'whiteness' that has served as a main target of attack by the New York Times, ABC, CNN, MSNBC ect. ect. When have you ever before seen inferences made about a protest movement purely based on its racial composition? Wise knows full well that a predominantly Black or Asian protest would never have its validity or motives challenged by any one of those media outlets simply because of its being predominantly black or asian.
This is nothing but 'reasoning' based on hate. Everyone knows that corporate interests are strongly in favor of loose immigration policies and enforcement. The alleged relationship between corporate interests and those opposed to illegal immigration is entirely a product of your rationality destroying hatred for those two parties. They produce evil, this is evil, ergo they produced this evil seems to be as sophisticated as your thinking gets.
BONG BONG!
my question: what are the chances this draconian law is struck down by the courts as unconstitutional?