Immigrants and Islam: We're All Rednecks Now (Part 2: Latinolicious):
If you think about it in the most perverse, bizarro way, it's actually kind of encouraging to hear that Christian Vasquez was beaten and robbed on Staten Island, New York, by at least one Liberian who is a naturalized American citizen. The obvious hate crime against the Mexican Vasquez (who said the assailants yelled, "Go home, you fucking Mexican," as they punched and kicked the 18 year-old) is a demonstration that the Liberians have gotten with the program and melted into our swinish pot. Here's your citizenship papers. Welcome to the USA. Remember: we hate the Mexicans. Truly, the right wing should be embracing these African-Americans as immigrant heroes, people who have truly transformed themselves, who know that any unemployment or economic woes are caused not by the white people in power, but by those Mexicans (or, you know, their ilk). That's stepping up to the plate, man, and swinging for the fences of freedom. That's saying that, no matter how dark one's Liberian skin can be, the neck can still be red.
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit talk about how the ridiculous response to the Muslim cultural center being built near Ground Zero in New York City was indicative of how much we've all become a bunch of fucking rednecks. It's also one form of anti-immigrant hysteria, that recurring fear in this country that whatever population is moving here in large numbers will dilute the gene pool and turn us all into demi-human mongrel people or, worse, Mexicans. Our entire history is pockmarked with this fervor to deny American citizenship to people who the dominant race or ethnic group finds odious. Ask the Eastern Europeans. Ask the Irish. The Italians. The Chinese. All, all were supposed to drag us down into the fetid swamp of the mud people. But, as those violent Liberians demonstrate, once they got here, they learned to hate the people who came after them. It's the privilege of seniority, you know.
But, like midget whores who wait on a corner for the johns who have a fetish for little person pussy, Republican after Republican is getting on board with one of the most racist, redneckiest ideas to emerge from our current dalliance with a white power movement (known as "The Tea Party"). That would be the call to amend the Constitution and eliminate the 14th Amendment's Section 1 guarantee that if you're born in the United States, you're a citizen. Or, really, if your parents are illegal and Mexican (or Salvadoran or Ecuadoran, etc.).
(Fun fact: Section 3 says that no one in government who has taken an oath of office may "have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." Michele Bachmann, is that the Constitution knocking?)
In order to pander to the nutzoid racists of the Tea Party, the couple of remaining Republicans who are undeservedly still considered "moderate" have jumped on board the anchor baby wagon (which is probably being pulled by illegal immigrants for low wages, but still). Lindsey Graham said that "birthright citizenship" needs to go. Even Wee Johnny McCain supports hearings on the matter. Arizona is ground zero for these Constitution changers. Senator Jon Kyl's on board, and some fucking Gomer named Russell Pearce, who is a Republican State Senator, picked up on an ultraconservative thread, declaring the 14th Amendment "unconstitutional," which must be some kind of gold standard for stupid.
Of course, the effort has almost no chance at success, so when Graham uses the issue to demonstrate some Tea Party street cred, he's doing it without any threat that he'd have to carry through with it. And perhaps they should all heed the words of Jack Kemp, who wrote back on July 21, 1997, in the Washington Times, during the last time there was a surge of anti-14th fever, "No aspect of today's illegal immigration problem justifies an assault on the 14th Amendment. Everything in our character as Americans regardless of our party affiliation, regardless of where we were born should lead us to venerate and preserve the structure of civil rights protections that the struggle and sacrifice of Abraham Lincoln and countless Americans produced a century ago."
The rednecks, though, from sea to shining sea, fear a brown nation and will do anything to stop it. But they are too caught up in their own bullshit to understand that populations shift. And you can stand there with a bucket and try to stop a tidal wave, but you're just gonna drown.
