Foaming Republicans - Great Piece...
... found at Common Dreamsby Larry Beinhart
Today’s Republican Party is a stool that rests on three legs of fear: fear of foreigners, fear of dark people and fear of sex.
The issues that touch on these fears are usually called hot button issues. But a better term is ‘foam at the mouth’ issues. Because they make Republicans foam at the mouth. As does any person or any idea that challenges that foaming.
Foaming is now most visible around the “immigration” issue.
The “immigration” issue is not about immigration.
It’s about Mexicans, those dark foreigners. There are no Minute Men, or Second Men or Hour Men for that matter, out to patrol the frozen wastes from the Straits of San Juan de la Fuca to the St. Lawrence Seaway. There are no foamers screaming for the Navy to get out on Lake Superior and shoot those Canadian canoes out of the water before the illegals reach Minnesota and take up residence in Lake Woebegone.
The reality is that the illegal immigration may be a problem, but it’s not a big problem. Their impact on health care, for example, is utterly trivial compared to our real health care problems. Their impact on wages is irrelevant compared to congress’s refusal to raise the minimum wage. Their impact on jobs is minor compared to the wide variety of ills that affect the American job market; globalization, the growth of corporate power, America’s disinvestment in infrastructure, the weakening of unions and the misplaced economics policies of the government (if you take at face value the claim that they are designed to stimulate the economy and create jobs).
When Republicans are in full foam at the mouth mode it does no good to discuss reality with them. That only makes them foam more. Rightly so, because reality is their enemy.
George Bush usually knows this. More...
Larry Beinhart is the author of Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin, The Librarian and Wag the Dog. He can be reached at beinhart@earthlink.com.
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