The Sum of All Fears
A jackass at my daughter’s school has decided to call in bomb threats on two consecutive days. The local police are on the case. The sheriff’s office is on the case. The FBI is on the case. I’m sure every teacher and principal are studying the voice on the other line to see if they can identify him. There are all kinds of silly rumors as to why this kid is doing this. The answer is simple. He wants others to feel afraid because that somehow gives him power.
Calling in terroristic threats is a felony. This kid will be found and it won’t be pretty when they do. However, that knowledge in the background hit me when I heard an Eva Guzman ad again this morning. She is running for attorney general in Texas. She will presumably have to go through Ken Paxton and the infamous Louie Gohmert. You have to try really hard to out-slime those two.
Guzman’s ads tell us that she will tackle the immigration problem as attorney general. The only thing is that she doesn’t call it a problem. She calls it an invasion. As you might suspect, she also goes into the other stereotypes and misconceptions about them stealing our resources, committing crimes, and coming after you and your grandchildren. Democratic policies are making it worse and we are at a crossroads.
Except we aren’t. Illegal immigration is not a growing problem. Illegal immigrants are not committing crimes at the same rate. It is illegal for them to collect social security. It is illegal for them to get welfare. Hell, it is illegal for them to work at all. So, what exactly are we doing here? These ads are long on emotion. They want you to feel afraid. They want you to feel angry. They want you to hate. They just aren’t all that long on facts. Facts don’t help them. Facts just get in the way of a good story.
The 64,000 pound elephant in the room hits you squarely across the chest when you realize that Eva Guzman (and those like her) are using the exact same tactics as that kid calling in a bomb threat. The reality of Guzman’s threats are about as valid as the boy’s threats. There’s no bomb. There’s no invasion. The world isn’t going to hell in a ham basket because someone came across the border or because a boy decided to become a girl or vice versa. Oh, it might be going to hell alright, but it won’t be because of any of those things.
The hell we fear is a hell of our own creation. It was one that spins out of our fear. It is one that comes from the notion of life as a zero sum game where everything someone else gets is something that we don’t. It’s a fear where we point at people that aren’t like us and turn their desire just to exist into an existential threat to our humanity and culture. Be afraid. Be very afraid and while you’re at it why don’t you try on this hate for size. It fits you well.
Hitler knew exactly who to get the populace behind him; Goebbels who said if you get people afraid, they’ll follow you anywhere. That’s what these people are doing now.
I am beginning to believe our best option is to fight back now.
1What happens if the USA gets serious about its undocumented residents? One gets the impression that any number of essential industries or services will grind to a halt, the meat packing industry for one.
All this yammering about illegal immigration strikes me as theatre.
2Heaven and Hell? Check out Sheila Kennedy’s blog today. Interesting article on how major parties view the afterlife.
3Good post, Nick. And I got a laugh from “ham basket.” The expression is “going to hell in a handbasket.”
4Nick, our indispensable ranch foreman who our boys call Uncle Freddie was once ‘an immigrant.’ Jane and my parents wrangled the system beyond belief to where Freddie is now a legal citizen. In so many ways it was a costly and unnecessary process. He is so much more of a citizen than most of the mutts in Congress. We were not seeking cheap labor; we wanted GOOD labor, a good person.
When I was a student at ASU some of my best neighbors were the 19 immigrants who shared the condo above me. Their immigration status was probably sketchy, at best. But through no fault of their own. Without a doubt our immigration system is broken, when as a country we cannot offer a path to citizenship within a reasonable time frame.
Consider the Haitian refugees who arrived here at the turn of this century. They’ve had time to establish multiple connections and businesses in the community, bear children and educate their children – here. They deserve a path to citizenship, not a cost prohibitive obstacle course.
OMG say the fear mongers and naysayers: there are 10,000 refugees seeking asylum at our southern border. Yeah. And how many babies do we ‘Americans’ produce daily? The answer is we can easily accommodate large groups of immigrants and asylum seekers, “if only” we committed the legislation and court resources to make that happen in a fair and expeditious manner.
5Several years ago a bomb threat was called into our local high school. Everyone had to be evacuated and the school searched. Of course, there was no bomb. As it turned out, the perpetrator was the seemingly nice kid I always talked with at the drive-thru window of the Dairy Queen. His reason for the threat? He wanted his girlfriend to get out of school for the day. As the result of a tipster, he was arrested and sent to prison. I wonder if he’s still doing time.
6Kenosha Krocodile tear Krying Killer Kyle was a registered student at ASU in nursing program until Dec 1th.
7I heard this somewhere. Anybody remember it?
“Give me your tired, your poor,
8Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
We should take a cue from the Book of Revelation where we are told that Heaven has twelve gates, and the gates are open day
9and night and are never shut. So, if we are to emulate the
heavenly kingdom, we should do likewise.
Never to be found in Magats political platform, ever.
10slipstream and e.p.o., Corrupting ideologies, beliefs, and anything noble to fit their worldview is something Republicans historically , tea baggers more so, and now magats most of all are repugnantly effective at.
11So I think think they use those words.
But in their version, the golden door leads to whatever labor market has the biggest need for disposable people.
Fear is all they have. They used to have ideas, e.g., lower taxes, smaller government, etc., but we tried those things and found they didn’t work, at least not as well as they promised.
It occurs to me that that’s the reason for their gun nuttiness. They know that a gun in every hand doesn’t make us safer, but if every hand has a gun, then we will all walk around in fear.
Sunamumbidgin’ bastidges!
12RE fear,. see the second paragraph, last sentence in this quote:
“…the sentiment of the statement ‘we have nothing to fear except fear itself’ originated with Montaigne in the sixteenth century, was probably picked up from Montaigne by Francis Bacon in the seventeenth, and then became a common proverb or axiom in later writers.
The fact that it has become closely associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt has much to do with Roosevelt’s reputation and influence over the world during the 1930s and 1940s; it may have helped that FDR was still ‘the leader of the Free World’ when the Allies went to war against the Axis powers in the Second World War. As war plunged the world into uncertainty, it was worth being reminded that fear itself can be the most powerful weapon our enemies have to disarm us and render us defeated before the fact….”
https://interestingliterature.com/2020/04/nothing-fear-except-fear-itself-quotation-origin/
13