Are Monsters Living On Springfield’s Maple Street?

Created
Sat, 21/09/2024 - 00:30
Updated
Sat, 21/09/2024 - 00:30
The echoes are pretty strong Here’s a radical notion. People’s worth isn’t based on their citizenship status or economic output. One would think we wouldn’t need an essay on the topic to remind us. But since Team MAGA is floating rhetoric reminiscent of Radio Rwanda, sadly, we do. All this time, Republicans scare-mongered about “illegals” and “migrant caravans” and “bad hombres.” After the fact-free smears of legal immigrants from “Haitia” eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Sen. J.D. Vance made plain he considers even legally admitted immigrants worthy of deportation en masse. MAGA isn’t interested in documented vs. undocumented immigrant status. What’s at issue for them is nothing new and, dare we suggest, a matter of white, northern Europeans vs. everyone else. SNL spoofed that in 1988 when Gov. Mike Dukakis ran for president against George H.W. Bush: Bush Political Ad: He’s Whiter. President Joe Biden called the smears against Haitians legally in Ohio “simply wrong.” They have “no place in America.” Biden added, “We don’t demonize immigrants. We don’t single them out for attacks. We don’t believe they’re poisoning the blood of the country. We’re a nation of immigrants and that’s why we’re so damn strong.” Prem Thakker explains at Zeteo: Missing in the broader defense of migrants and immigrants is a dispositive case, a reclaiming of the conversation instead of conceding to the right-wing presupposition that newcomers’ must inherently be justified, rather than welcomed. The assumption of scarcity that the powerful imbue into society, feeding impulses of self-preservation, and…