Which are the True S*holes? Hard-pressed Nations or the Brain and Mouth of our "President?"
45's unbelievably cruel and crude remarks made yesterday have yanked me out of my lethargy of lingering illness to compose this blog! There are so many important issues converging here that it's hard to know where to begin.
Let's start with the overt and unvarnished racism of Trump's reference to places such as Central America, African nations, and Haiti as "s*holes". What conditions in such places cause people to want to leave their homes in these places to start over here?
Consider the following:
- Extreme poverty
- Famine and dislocation
- Drug cartel violence aided and abetted by government and police corruption, sustained by US drug demand and provision of weapons
- Lack of educational/work opportunities
- A dim future for residents' children
- Impact of natural disasters
- Totalitarian suppression of dissidence and a free press
- The ongoing destructive aftermath of white colonialism
...and this is only the beginning of a much longer list that I'm sure many readers could add to. Are these conditions chosen or created by the people of the non-elite class who must endure them, or are there other, external or historical forces at play?
It's often struck me that Trump's obsession with deportation of large groups of non-white people such as Salvadorans and Haitians speaks to a desire on his part to rid the US of people of color in the most efficient manner possible. "Ethnic cleansing," if you will. And I suspect that he regards the island residents of Puerto Rico--disgracefully neglected in the aftermath of hurricane Maria--as a group of swarthy, Spanish-speaking foreigners positioned to "flood across our borders." He probably does not recognize them as the US citizens they actually are, who are legally entitled to move to the mainland where they can establish residency and--yes--VOTE in national elections!
And please, media, let's not boil this down to simply white-on-black racism, which is what so often happens in the national discourse when discussions of race arise. While it's my belief that slavery is the ultimate form of violence, let us not allow the seriousness of that shameful and ever-present episode of our history to minimize or overshadow white American racism toward other groups: Latinos--which Trump expresses repeatedly--Muslims and Asians; and not to be overlooked, the survivors of land theft and genocide, our Indigenous first nations.
And let's not forget either the sadly normalized white animosity toward people of mixed race; as expressed most publicly in the hostility toward President Barack Obama, and yet to fully manifest in the inevitable media harassment campaign focused on the courageous Meghan Markle as she marries into Britain's royal family.
Why should "we" (powerful whites) allow such people to cross "our" borders and become American residents or citizens?
Many journalists and academics have written about the great social, economic, and cultural benefits to the US of welcoming immigrants to our nation, and of affording opportunities and basic human rights to racially and otherwise non-privileged groups. Furthermore, the role of American foreign policy and colonial, military, and intelligence operations in the degradation of developing nations has been well documented by scholars. As an emerging writer of negligible academic pedigree I won't attempt to add my unschooled thoughts to this extensive body of knowledge.
But why, pray tell, do people in countries like Norway not want to come here?
I don't have the social indicator stats at my fingertips (that's my husband's job!) but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that that nation, like other Scandinavian and northern European countries, has a government responsive to the needs of its people, resulting in a high standard of living and a universal social safety net.
Why should those fortunate folks want to relocate to a place where the current administration's policies are associated with
- Dismantling the health care and educational systems
- Increasing rates of maternal and infant mortality
- Causing a decrease in the national life expectancy
- Increasing income inequality through "tax reform" and other regressive economic policies
- Degrading the natural environment
- Suppressing voting rights of young, elderly and minority citizens
- Sustaining one of the world's highest rates of incarceration
- Decreasing transparency and oversight of the highly polarized and politicized legislative process
- Attempting to intimidate the free press and other media
- Conspiring with foreign entities that seek to undermine confidence in our national institutions and otherwise act in opposition to American interests.
..and so forth.
Indeed, if ordinary US citizens allow another year of such hateful and incompetent governance to pass, we may wake up one morning and discover that we have devolved into a "s*hole country" ourselves.
"MAGA"? I don't think so!
