It might make you feel good in the short run (although I’m not really sure why), but know this: It is dumber than the dumbest thing that the dumbest dumbass on the other side could ever thinking of saying. You go out in the middle of the desert and whisper “Abolish ICE” and 50 million white voters in the middle of the country hear “Open borders”…with a background chorus of “Amnesty, amnesty, oooh.”
After the Republicans lost the election of 2012, there were some serious discussions of reaching some kind of consensus with the Dems on immigration and putting that particular issue to bed for a while. A significant number of Republicans thought that the issue of immigration was a loser for their party, especially in the long run, what with the inexorable march of shifting demographics.
But somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of the right, somebody realized that the topic of illegal immigration was still a winner for Republicans, especially if you could strip away any pretense of it being a political issue and turn it into a warning cry of “The Brown People are coming. They’re coming by the thousands in the middle of the night. They want free stuff from the government…and they talk funny.” That strategy worked, and it continues to work. And it works so well that cries of “Abolish ICE” play right into its sweaty little hands.
I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of Americans—Republicans, Democrats and independents—support what ICE’s mission is supposed to be. Obviously, they’re not doing what they’re supposed to, and certainly, the current administration has weaponized the agency. But calling for its abolishment without anything to take its place is political suicide.
We realize that the Republicans somehow managed to elect a Giant Illiterate Turd to be President. His lowbrow gravitational pull has yanked the middle of the country far to the right. But we can’t react to his vulgar rhetoric by going all the way over to the left and then try to start tugging. That’s not going to work.
We need to go to what used to be the middle and try to find a message that will resonate. These people are already terrified of the aforementioned brown wave. Telling them that we want to get rid of the line that stands between them and “Despacito” becoming the new national anthem is not smart.
ICE doesn’t need to be abolished, but it could certainly use a course adjustment. That job should fall to Congress, but the nearly 300 Republicans in the House and Senate don’t have 33 vertebrae between them. It’s up to us.
Instead of shouting about getting rid of ICE, why not use the Giant Illiterate Turd’s words against him? His favorite boogieman is MS-13, the violent gang, many members of which are in this country illegally. Why not use ICE to go after them full force and after you’ve rid the country of that menace, then you can go after the guys working in the meat-packing plants and the women picking produce in the fields?
We’re letting the Giant Illiterate Turd have it both ways. He wants to scare the average American with the gangs, but then he uses what should be his elite gang-fighting force to go after 5-year-olds so that the gang menace can always be there to scare people over to his side.
I’d be willing to bet that a huge majority of Democrats (myself included) believe that our country needs to be in control of our borders. We need to know who is entering and under what circumstances. That’s not a Republican standard; it’s an American ideal. Unfortunately, the G.I.T.’s words are so vile, some people feel they must flee all the way to the other side to maintain some kind of ideological purity.
There’s an old joke about a guy who goes up to a woman at a party and asks her if she will go to bed with him for a million dollars. She says, “Yes, I suppose I would.”
He then asks if she would go to bed with him for $50. She gets very upset and asks, “What do you think I am?” He responds, “We’ve already established that. Now, we’re just haggling over the price.”
The fringe is not where the battle will be won and it is not where we should establish our beachhead. I’d guess that maybe 10 to 15 percent of Americans don’t want any immigrants, legal or otherwise. And maybe .01 percent (if that) want to let everybody in. The rest of us are in the middle, so it just becomes a matter of numbers and nuanced philosophy.
Almost all Americans want secure borders. It can be argued that ICE isn’t fulfilling its stated mission, but in order to get it to do so, we’re going to need a Congress willing to nudge ICE back on track. Calling for the abolition of a law-enforcement agency is doing Trump’s work for him and is not going to win us any elections.
And if you still have the urge to shout “Abolish ICE,” just think how stupid Trump-ers sound when they say they want to get rid of the FBI.
This article appears in Jul 19-25, 2018.
Since you are giving Dems advice, you may want to cover their other 2 non starters. These, along with the call for un protected borders, are turning the Blue Wave into a quiet pond. First is Medicare for all . Right now, people contribute to Medicare for 30+ years to get benefits. And even with that, the system is suppose to be bankrupt in 10 or so years. Benefits after contributing for 30 minutes probably won’t improve the situation.
Finally, there is the universal wage. Probably affordable if we get rid of all the current welfare schemes like food stamps, rent subsidies, Medicaid, WIC, Obama-phones, etc. but I’m sure that’s not the plan. Too many gov’t workers ( i.e. Dems) would lose unionized jobs. While paying people not to work may be the progressive dream, it probably isn’t affordable for a country $20 trillion in debt.
Before you say this advice is worth what you pay for it, I’ll say it for you.
The illegal immigration problem will not be solved until we fix the legal immigration system, which is broken.
We as a nation have always relied upon the next wave of immigrants (Italians, Irish, Poles, etc) to do the work that the previous wave no longer are willing to do, as they have realized their piece of the American Dream.
That problem has not gone away. However, the next wave of immigrants have.
And don’t give me that crap about if they paid enough, there are workers available. That is not the case, and never has been..
The only thing that is truly “dumbass” here is this column and the half-baked, ignorant, indefensible ideas it contains.
First and foremost, you’re essentially saying we should coddle the racists, which is indefensible on any level–morally, strategically, or any other filter you want to put it through. The border is arguably the most distorted issue in our nation’s politics, and it is racism that drives a lot of the distortion. Coddling the racists who completely misunderstand the reality of the border (or worse, purposefully miscast it) will have exactly the opposite effect of what you claim to want–it will make it impossible to make any headway at all on real immigration reform.
Secondly, “secure border” is a Republican talking point, and when you repeat this shiny chimera, you are displaying yourself as the dumbass. By any measure, the border is more secure now than it ever has been in our nation’s history, by far. Apprehensions are at 40-year lows and the border security apparatus is by far the largest law enforcement operation in our nation’s history. In continuing to repeat and reinforce this manipulative Republican talking point, you are simply enabling the push toward amping up the fascist, de-constitutionalized, racially-profiling police state in our borderlands. A reasonable person would question the definition of “secure border”, and follow that with another: “At what cost?” You clearly do not fit this “reasonable” description. Don’t count me in your “all Americans want secure borders” canard–that’s fascist rhetoric, my dumbass friend. I (and many others) do NOT want secure borders as defined by Republican racists, so please do NOT speak your idiocy on my behalf!
When you blather on about MS-13, you are also playing right into the racists’ hands. ICE is already “going after MS-13 full force”, the same way other racist law enforcement entities in this country go after crime–by targeting people of color as entire demographic groups that are inherently suspect, and certain neighborhoods in particular, where everyone who lives there is automatically considered a likely criminal. Many innocent people have already been swept up in this fascist crusade and wrongly treated as MS-13 gang members in order to facilitate what is essentially a grand ethnic cleansing program being run by the racist-in-chief and his evil little poodle Jeff Sessions. Do a little homework and look at the real numbers–MS-13 is nowhere near the threat in the U.S. that Republicans say it is–it certainly doesn’t come anywhere the danger posed by angry white men with guns–and when you blather on about it, you are again playing right into their racist playbook.
It is not the Republicans who lack spine, but the Democrats. Republicans are clearly pushing for what they really want, and winning. It is the Democrats who have repeatedly acquiesced to this fascist, racist nonsense, approving billions of dollars for more unnecessary and extremely damaging border walls and detention beds, failing to go to bat for DREAMers despite many promises to do so, voting for vast increases in funding and personnel for the Border Patrol while demanding little or nothing in the way of cleaning up what is by far the least accountable and most corrupt (funny how those things go hand-in-hand) law enforcement agency in the U.S., and so on. If the Democrats had a spine–for example, if they had nominated their best candidate last time around rather than a stale retread who could be counted on to not upset the apple cart and cowtow to the usual corporate power structure, then Tchump never would have gotten elected and we wouldn’t be listening to children wailing as they are ripped from their mothers’ arms.
Not surprisingly, your column is devoid of any actual discussion of what ICE is, how it was created, etc. Used to be there was an agency that just dealt with immigration, one for customs, etc., and other agencies that dealt with “national security” issues (however that squishy Orwellian term is defined). The creation of ICE was part of the Patriot Act-rush after 9/11 to create the vast, unwieldy, profoundly wasteful and dysfunctional Dept. of Homeland Security. ICE was a cobbling together of somewhat disparate agencies, some of which actually had conflicting functions to a certain extent, in order to locate them all under the rubric of “Homeland Security”, even though a fair bit of what they do has nothing to do with that. This was done for very specific reasons, namely to weaponize immigration administration and enforcement, demonize immigrants of color as inherent threats, and facilitate the evolution of our nation into a police state under the guise of “national security”. In saying “abolish ICE”, people are simply saying that we should split these agencies up again and let them go back to doing their real jobs, free from craven racist politics.
Lastly, your “joke” is incredibly stupid, stale, sexist, unfunny, and profoundly offensive. Moreover, it really seals the “dumbass” label for you, buddy, since it’s not even clear why it’s here–it certainly is not an appropriate analogy. Calling for humane, rational immigration policy–which includes logically organized agencies to implement it–is not a far left thing. It’s right down the middle of what any decent, thinking person should want, regardless of party labels and ideology. There is no whore (of any gender) in this call to abolish ICE, haggling over the right price for selling out. There are merely conscious, morally aware people demanding that their government stop reorganizing itself, and our society, into a fascist police state.
Another installment of whiney Tom’s liberal insult rants, I want my Hillary, all conservatives are stupid, blah blah. Them and Us, not we. Whatever
Danehy manages to wrap sexist remarks into a xenophobic column that is completely out of touch with the resistance, out of touch with Tucson, and out of touch with reality. Move over dude, it’s time to pass the mic.
I want some of what Skinnyman is smoking.
His rant is so far out there, it could be circling the planet Jupiter.
Why do conservatives read the Weekly much less Danehy? So they can go on a Fox News talking point rant? If I read an opinion piece with which I disagreed with-week after week-my head would explode.
As always, Danehy make an ecellent point.
As always, Danehy’s column oozes with White privilege and patriarchy, and the only ones who don’t notice are him, his editor, and trolls. ABOLISH ICE!
Must admit to a bit of cognitive dissonance when balancing Danehy’s admonition not to say anything too provocative (Abolish Ice) with labeling Trump The Giant Illiterate Turd.
Say what?
Detractors should mildly respond to the federal government’s kidnapping young children, separating them from their parents, holding them hostage (and apparently as of today, losing many of them entirely). Instead, we should maunder about seeking a middle ground where we can all agree to be non-provocative while joining hands and singing Kumbayah?
If you haven’t noticed, Tom, there is no center today, only tribes of snipers. Problem is the bad guys show up with really exotic rifles while your good sensible folks show up with fistfuls of wilted kale.
Nah, Abolish Ice.
The mere suggestion drives the Giant Illiterate Turd even more insane and gives nervous liberals a serious case of the vapors.
we want a do over, we want a do over, shoulda had one in 2000, no do over no peace
ain’t gonna happen boys & girls
Tom, you just get more dumb with age. Pretty sure Dems wouldnt be all in for letting everyone into the country if those illegal crossers were future Republican voters.