We have too many people who have never seen the dark side of the United States. When Donald Trump came down those escalators in 2015, I immediately realized that the world was going to change for people like me. It was his birthday gift to me. That was the last year that I voted for a Republican. My last vote cast for a Republican was in the 2016 primary. I realized that after Trump won the Texas primary, he would be the Republican candidate. I have voted for many Republicans who ran for president, the last one being John McCain. Ten years later, the rest of America is starting to see and understand what Trump was unleashing when he came down those stairs with his trophy wife.
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While I am glad that many Americans are starting to realize that the brown skinned folks are being blatantly discriminated against, unfortunately, we still have a lot of Hispanics with their heads stuck in the ground. Those who refuse to see that anyone who does not meet the characteristics of what an American should look like will have their day come, but like they said about helping protect those who do not look like you in Nazi Germany.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Paul Krugman, one of my favorite writers, had this to say today.
Immigrant Derangement Syndrome
Blaming brown-skinned people for everything bad
… But few incidents were more shocking than the two-month siege of Chicago, in which America’s third-largest city was terrorized by a gang of violent, sadistic thugs.
The gang members in question were, of course, agents of the Trump administration, mainly although not all from ICE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If you think I’m being hyperbolic in calling them sadistic thugs, read the Chicago Tribune’s long article about Operation Midway Blitz, which describes scene after scene of what went down:
“What happened here for more than two months is unlike anything in recent American history: the federal government sending agents dressed for war into neighborhoods of the country’s third-largest city to arrest mostly people who look Latino and to ask questions later. To target people largely on the basis of their skin color, on the presumption that they may be in the country without documentation, or that they may have a criminal record, or an association with a gang.”
Or consider the spectacular Sept. 30 raid carried out on a South Side apartment building — a building administration officials claimed was a base for a Venezuelan gang. “SWAT teams,” reports ProPublica, “rappelled from a helicopter, knocked down doors and hurled flash-bang grenades. They arrested 37 immigrants, most of them Venezuelans, who authorities say were in the country illegally. Agents also zip-tied and, for several hours, detained many U.S. citizens.” After all that, Federal prosecutors didn’t file charges against a single resident of the building.
And while the ICE tactics are blatantly illegal according to legal experts, they have been allowed by a corrupt Supreme Court that is clearly more intent on enabling authoritarianism than on than protecting the Constitution.
Immigrant Derangement Syndrome is therefore a top-down phenomenon, not a broad popular movement. It reflects the perverse obsessions of MAGAdom, with racism a key component. If you are an immigrant with brown or black skin, you’re a target regardless of how exemplary your behavior – as the growing attacks against Indian-Americans show.
But I would also serve a warning to MAGAdom: Movements centered on bigotry eventually eat their own. Don’t imagine that your political record will protect you. Consider how JD Vance, while spouting Christian nationalism, has to defend his Yale-educated Indian-American wife from racist, anti-Hindu attacks. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Trump-endorsed Republican senatorial candidate for Ohio, is now pleading for an end to the bigotry and hate directed at him by other Republicans.
And now we have Ben Shapiro, of Jewish descent and a long-time MAGA stalwart, calling out Tucker Carlson for platforming the antisemitic and anti-Indian Nick Fuentes. Because who could have seen the movement’s antisemitic turn coming — other than anyone who knew anything about history?
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