There’s no room for violence in our political discourse? But politics is merely war by other means. Political discourse within the state inherently involves the threat of violence and is ultimately backed by it.
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Arizona
There are many responses one might consider for the vile and hateful Westboro Baptist Church, which plans to picket the funeral of Christina Green, the 9-year-old girl murdered along with five others in Saturday’s shootings in Tucson. My initial thoughts, admittedly not in keeping with my philosophy of non-aggression, involved swinging a baseball bat. Hard.
Fortunately I am nowhere near Tucson, and cooler heads have prevailed; one good approach, as organized by resident Christin Gilmer, is a so-called “angel action” — people wearing tall “angel wings” who surround and block out the Westboro slimeballs so that mourners will be able to grieve and say farewell to Christina in peace.
There are also not-so-good ways to handle this, as the Arizona legislature has demonstrated by attempting to restrict the Westboro picketers, who nonetheless are free to carry on their disgusting crusade in public areas. (The worst thing you can ever hear a politician say is “I’m gonna fix this,” as state senator Kyrsten Sinema did.)
If roads and parks were privatized this would not be necessary; I doubt many property owners would want to be associated with such demonstrations, and no cemetery owner with any respect for the dead would allow them near the entrance. But so long as the state monopolizes roads and other rights-of-way, we have to put up with these fools. Better to have them shunned and blocked from public view by private citizens than to have them silenced by the state.
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For decades, some elements of the Right (occasionally abetted by people who should have known better) have peddled the notion that Mexico has created a vast and well-organized “fifth column” within the United States dedicated to La Reconquista — the re-conquest of territories seized by the U.S. during the Mexican-American War. In this scenario, non-assimilated Mexicans by the millions are stealthily enlisting in a campaign of subversion orchestrated by the Mexican government with the help of foundation-funded anti-American groups on this side of the border — and, when the time is right, this fifth column will erupt in an orgy of violence and mayhem.
Whatever revanchist sentiments may exist in Mexico are the residue of Washington’s seizure of roughly half the country through a war of aggression. Washington’s proxy narco-war, which has killed tens of thousands of people since 2006 and displaced hundreds of thousands more, has done nothing to palliate those feelings. An actual U.S. invasion might be the only thing that would turn the alarmist fantasy of a nationalistic uprising on the part of Mexicans living on the U.S. side of the border into something akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Since 2007, when the Fed’s most recent economic bubble collapsed, immigration from Mexico has tapered off dramatically. In Arizona, immigration (both legal and illegal) and violent crime have both been in decline for a decade. Yet the state’s Republican leadership, and much of its law enforcement apparatus — from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the corrupt septuagenarian headline whore, to Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeau, his younger and more telegenic understudy — insist that the state is under unremitting siege. Governor Jan Brewer, who claimed that the “majority” of illegal immigrants from Mexico are “mules” in the employ of drug cartels and that illegal immigrants had committed “beheadings” in Arizona, was headed for electoral oblivion following an unpopular tax increase — until she seized on the immigration issue, which propelled her to a dramatic political recovery.
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Not that a politician caught stating a mis-truth is shocking news to anyone, but this particular lie was pure gasoline poured onto the already-raging firestorm surrounding illegal immigration:
In a column released online today, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted that Arizona Republican governor Jan Brewer, a strong proponent of her state’s controversial immigration bill, has claimed that Arizona’s “law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded.”
As Milbank noted, the Arizona Guardian checked that claim out and found no evidence of beheadings; Brewer’s office did not respond to a request from the columnist for documentation for the beheading claim.
Months later, as Brewer campaigns to remain Arizona’s governor, she finally admits she might have, sort of, kind of, not really told the truth:
But the claim has come back to haunt her after her stammering debate performance in which she failed to back it up and ignored repeated questions on the issue from a scrum of reporters.
Brewer has spent the time since backtracking and trying to repair the damage done from her cringe-worthy debate against underdog challenger Terry Goddard.
“That was an error, if I said that,” the Republican told the Associated Press on Friday. “I misspoke, but you know, let me be clear, I am concerned about the border region because it continues to be reported in Mexico that there’s a lot of violence going on and we don’t want that going into Arizona.”
She said she was referring to beheadings and other cartel-related violence in Mexico in comments she made earlier this summer about decapitated bodies found in the state’s southern region.
No, that’s not what she was referring to. She didn’t say anything about headless bodies found in Mexico, unless Arizona law enforcement is now engaging in operations south of the border (emphasis added):
Appearing on a local television show Sunday morning, Gov. Jan Brewer described how bad Arizona’s illegal immigration problem has gotten.
“Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded,” she said.
No reasonably literate person could read that statement and interpret it to mean that she was referring to drug war violence in Mexico. Brewer lied in a grandstanding attempt to gin up support for the state’s fascist anti-immigration bill. Everybody knows she lied, including her Democratic opponent in the governor’s race, the press, and most other people paying attention. Unfortunately, that doesn’t include Arizona voters, who still favor her over Goddard by a nearly two-to-one margin.
What’s worse, Brewer’s mendacity, or the Arizona electorate’s gullibility? It’s an embarrassment in either case.
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So what’s a politician to do when his candidacy is flagging and he’s taken a hard shot to the breadbasket for appearing “soft” on illegal immigration? He gets medieval on . . . well, somebody:
Florida Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum unveiled a sweeping immigration bill Wednesday that in some ways goes further than Arizona’s controversial law to apprehend undocumented workers and residents….
“Arizona is going to want this law,” McCollum said. “We’re better, we’re stronger, we’re tougher and we’re fairer.”
The proposed law would require immigrants to carry valid documentation or face up to 20 days in jail and would allow judges to hand down stiffer penalties to illegal immigrations who commit the same crimes as legal residents.
That’ll show ‘em! If you’re unfortunate enough to look like an illegal immigrant in Florida, be prepared to carry a portfolio proving you have the government’s permission to exist inside its borders. Apparently the “fairer” part of the bill is that unlike Arizona’s SB1070, it doesn’t hold legal residents criminally liable for harboring illegals.
Naturally this bill has raised more than a few concerns among Florida’s Hispanic lawmakers, who fear it will lead to racial profiling (a claim I’d happily dispute as soon as I see a Florida cop shaking down some Yankee retiree for being unable to prove he didn’t just step off the boat from Oslo), and there are the obvious obstacles such legislation would face in the courts. A Federal judge has already slapped an injunction on the most odious parts of Arizona’s bill, even as McCollum’s proposal takes it a step further.
In short, chances are slim the bill will survive intact, if it becomes law at all. But what’s a few violations of civil liberties, if it means the Sunshine State lowers the boom on the Brown Peril?
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