It\u2019s been a rough week for us liberals, and there\u2019s a lot going on in the county right now. But for today\u2019s anagram, I want to focus in on just one thing that I think deserves more attention than it has been getting. We’ve all heard about the children in cages, but I want to focus on the process that makes it possible to put children in cages without losing your political supporters or facing consequences of any kind.<\/p>\n
Last Friday, the Republican president held a press event<\/a> featuring families of the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. He calls them \u201cAngel Families,\u201d which is a term coined by him to describe this very specific and highly selected group of people.<\/p>\n Now, I was brought up Jewish, and in my religious education, we learned how scapegoating<\/a> was used to turn European populations against the Jewish people during the Diaspora, most notably in Nazi Germany. This was something we were always taught to be on the lookout for, but I honestly never thought I\u2019d see it to this degree in America during my own lifetime.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s display last Friday was not only disgusting, but frighteningly dangerous. I certainly empathize with the genuine grief of the families, but parading them up on stage to exploit that grief for cynical propaganda is an abomination. You could cherry-pick victims of any group and put their families on the dais. What if the families were selected because they had lost their loved ones at the hands of black people? Or Christian fundamentalists? Police officers? How about families of people who were killed at Walt Disney World? <\/p>\n Imagine how you might be made to feel if the president gathered up the families of all of the people who died in vending machine accidents. (It\u2019s a thing; the stuff doesn\u2019t come out, they shake the machine, and it falls on them.) Family member after family member gets up to share how their lives have been torn apart by loved ones lost to vending machines. Given enough time, you might come to feel that vending machines are an existential menace, one that must be immediately addressed with urgency and ruthlessness. Using this technique to vilify an entire class of people should earn you a special place in hell.<\/p>\n The matter has been well researched. Immigrants (both documented and undocumented) commit crimes at a lower rate<\/a> than the native born. As Paul Krugman points out<\/a>, this is not a poor solution to a pressing issue; it\u2019s an entirely manufactured issue:<\/p>\n What\u2019s almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it\u2019s not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren\u2019t happening. They\u2019re just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is where checks and balances are supposed to kick in, but the Republicans control both houses of Congress, and are currently abrogating that responsibility. We can all agree that stoking hatred toward minorities is not what America is supposed to be about, but we should also remember that it is not even what the Republican party is supposed to be about. Take a look at the 1980 Republican primary debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The two future Republican presidents are asked about illegal immigration and both respond with empathy and compassion.
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