In a recent article in Spanish published in Colombian News Magazine, Razón Publica, I concluded that during 2018 everything the Democratic Party did would be geared not to promoting productive policies but rather to sabotaging them in order to maximize the party’s prospects for the 2018 Congressional elections.  It did not take long for my sad prophecy to become reality and the “Dreamers” and the immigrant community are the first victims.

The setting:  President Trump took the initiative to push for resolution of the decades old immigration conundrum on a highly praised bipartisan basis, even agreeing to yield on important points at the acknowledged risk of alienating his base, which it did.

How did the supposed defenders of immigrants’ rights react?

The same way the always have.  Immigrants, like blacks, like women, like gays, like all of the polarized subgroups generated to advance Democratic Party electoral ambitions are mere tools.  In an effort to continue the constant efforts to delegitimize the elections of 2016, the Democratic Party and of course, its allies in the “mainstream” media, have sabotaged the negotiations alleging that the President, in supposedly confidential inter party negotiations to attain meaningful immigration reform, used the pejorative term “shithole” to describe countries from which new immigrants should be discouraged in favor of countries from which immigration should be encouraged in conjunction with his merit rather than azar based immigration reform proposals.

An unfortunate term but most of all unfortunate because of its unfortunate accuracy.  An ironic accuracy given the reasons why such countries, to some extent, deserve the description.

Haiti is a shithole!  A country mired in poverty and disease in no small part because of United States exploitation and that exploitation, in no small part includes its economic rape orchestrated by the Clinton Foundation following the earthquakes in 2010 and the ensuing shattering of its society and resulting flow of refugees.  Central America is in part a shithole mired in violence, in no small part because of United States exploitation and that exploitation, in no small part includes the rape of Honduras’ political system under the supervision of then Secretary of State Clinton with the ensuing shattering of its society and resulting flow of refugees.  The same is all too true of much of Africa.  The same is all too true of most of the Middle East, especially in Syria and Libya as to which then Secretary of State Clinton once cackled “we came, we saw, he died”.  A cackle with repercussions today as far away as the Korean peninsula.

Just how stupid are we if we continue to allow ourselves to be manipulated by such evilly cynical politicians?  By such an evilly cynical mainstream media?

I was and always will be an immigrant to the United States albeit after a bit more than half a century, I am now oddly an expatriate in the land of my birth, a dual national deeply committed to both of the countries that I love and claim as my own and deeply committed as well to global welfare and peace, to political honesty and transparency and to minimization of the worst social disease we face, overwhelming hypocrisy as the best means for keeping us virtually enslaved economically and politically, hypocrisy all too well illustrated by the Democratic Party’s success in controlling and exploiting the black vote in the United States and now attempting to do the same for immigrants.

I guess we’ll have an opportunity once more during the 2018 Congressional elections to demonstrate just how stupid we are, just how susceptible we are to arguments based on fear and hyperbole, just how willing we are to vote against causes and people rather than for the real reform we need, a political system without the Democratic Party or for that matter, the Republican Party, perhaps less hypocritical than the former but just as wrongheaded.  Just how willing we are to permit turning our own countries into shitholes.

“Wolf! “Wolf! “Wolf! “Wolf! “Wolf! “Wolf! Scream the mainstream media headlines.

Now that Russiagate has been shown to have been a farce bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party and implemented through Obama administration political subversion of our system of justice, a new Wolf is presented for our further delusion.

So?

Just how stupid are we?
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2018; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia although he has primarily lived in the United States of America (of which he is a citizen).  Until recently he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.