At the risk of being repetitive, I’m going to broach a subject that I’ve talked about at least once before. I previously asked this question after another gun incident in the United States. The Pittsburg synagogue shooting I think, but it may have been Vegas or one of the schools.
Or maybe a nightclub or a church.
In any event, after each of these ammunition expenditures there are unfailingly politicians, news commentators and law enforcement who make the same proclamation. They solemnly declare that this isn’t who we are as a nation.
And so I’m always left with puzzlement about that assertion. For starters it seems a given that guns and people shooting guns at other people is part of the American identity. I don’t know for sure, but I’m reasonably certain that the list of countries with an amendment addressing the right to own handguns and assault rifles is a short one. Also if we’re talking specifically about shooting political figures, then a quick Google search will tell you that there have been seventy one prominent political whackings in the United States. That’s not counting politically motivated shootings for religion or race, or whatever was bothering the shooter at any given moment.
Like the sexual orientation of people that go to nightclubs.
I’m sure that there are people out there who would disagree with shootings at a gay nightclub being politically motivated, More of a social disagreement that has nothing to do with politics. I understand where that argument comes from, but I have a question for anyone forwarding that thought. My question would be, then why are there so many politicians who include gay bashing on their platforms? And the answer to that question is, because they really hate gay people, or they want the votes of the people that hate gays.
So they’ve made resistance to gay rights part of their political agenda, and that suggests the shooting was embraced and encouraged by politicians. That sounds kind of political to me.
I think it’s safe to conclude that the American identity has a political element, which is occasionally problematic when mixed with the firearm element. Lately though I’ve been wondering about what I initially thought was a new American characteristic. That being what I like to call the Johnny Lang disorder. Or the Lie To Me malady. I’ve been wondering if this desire for deception isn’t a new phenomena but rather a time tested American characteristic. But, I’m inclined to believe that this particular condition is common to every nationality on the planet, because evidence would suggest that people like to be lied to as long as the lie validates a predilection. So, assuming that an affinity for being lied to is often times a human as opposed to American condition, then it follows that embracing specific lies is an insight into the characteristics of a distinct group of people.
And so in order to better understand the America of 2025 I decided to look at which lies get the most likes in the United States.
The immigrant lies are a good place to start. I think the best example of this particular lie isn’t the caravans or the idea that all immigrants are pet eating gang members. It isn’t that all immigrants are benefit collecting rapists who vote illegally. The best immigrant lie is that white South Africans are being murdered on a genocidal scale. This story is revealing not just because it’s bullshit. But it also speaks to the root of the whole immigrants are bad narrative, by clarifying that for a large number of Americans the immigration problem isn’t about how many. It’s actually about skin tone and the associated language and cultural idiosyncrasies that comes with those skin tones.
Some people might call that racism.
But resentment toward immigrants isn’t necessarily racism as much as it’s a mixture of tribalism and xenophobia. Every time some social or economic disaster happens on the other side of the oceans there’s an influx of immigrants. Irish potato famine, European religious persecution and the two world wars saw boatloads of white immigrants head to Canada and America. We promptly labeled them DP’s, squareheads, polacks and dago’s. And if you have a glance at North American history you’ll find that there has always been a group of politicians who labelled all immigrants as hordes of the unwashed here to steal our women and our jobs.
What’s new in America is that for the last fifty years or so those hordes haven’t had to sail across an ocean. Except for the Cubans. They had to manage a water obstacle. It wasn’t the Atlantic but sometimes swimming was involved. But most of the American immigrants that are drawing the attention of Crispy Gnome these days were close enough to walk into Texas and California.
As a result there’s lots of them. They all speak another language and they’re almost exclusively brunettes with darker skin. Because of the demographics, the resistance to immigrants is now racist. Whereas previous resistance was called something else because the boat people were mostly white.
But my point is that resistance to immigrants has always been a part of the American identity. Now though, that resistance has seen a boost because the immigrants are much easier to identify. And Don and MAGA have made it much more acceptable to say the quiet stuff out loud. Another new element to the immigration issue is birth control. Since its advent, the white women of America have stopped having children. As a result the average number of kids per family in America is 1.94. That’s not enough future labor to pick fruit, man the takeout window and build houses. And so it would appear that the illegals are needed to keep the economy humming along. Plus most white people expect their 1.94 children to go to college and don’t have expectations for their offspring to practice asking if you want fries with that.
I could be wrong, but I’m guessing it’s difficult to live illegally in the U.S. for 20 years without a job, and it always amazes me that this detail gets ignored when the immigrant issue gets air time. I think that I.C.E. needs to reevaluate their operating procedures. If you don’t want Spanish speaking illegals in your country then they need to arrest the people that are hiring them. Throw the owners of Walmart, Taco Bell and Home Depot in jail, and maybe a realistic look at the availability of labor will cause a rethink about immigration policies.
Because another defining American characteristic is the so called dream. If you strip away all the bullshit around the dream what you’re left with is the concept that anyone can get rich. And that leads me to the next lie that Americans like.
That Republicans are good for the economy.
Like all really good lies, there’s a smidgen of truth hiding among the bullshit. The beauty in the lie that the Republicans are good for the economy is the detail they neglect to mention. Which is that you already have to be rich for a Republican economy to provide benefits. For some reason this minor codicil seems to be ignored when Americans head to the polls.
If an honest Republican were to address the masses it would be a nice change to hear them say, we want to eliminate birth control so you birth more white laborers. We want you all to go to church for your education instead of us having to fund public education. And we want you to learn how to pour concrete and put up a pony wall.
Also, we’re going to cut veteran benefits, and limit Medicare because we need to pay for a tax cut for billionaires. Because who needs health care when you’re going to die anyway.
But honesty from Don and his minions is an unrealistic expectation. They’ve invested too much energy in the art of the spiel, and I think that they’ve decided that America is ready for the next phase of their plan. Now, the strategy has shifted to aggressively attacking anyone who calls bullshit on their bullshit. Lately the volume and vitriol towards the media has increased to where they’re branding anyone who questions their lies as a traitor who should be fired, jailed or deported.
That’s absolutely fucking astonishing, and sadly I think that America has enough people who are willing to accept the behaviour as acceptable.
So, I think that there’s a really good chance that America as I’ve known it for my lifetime is very close to being over. When a government starts to arrest adversaries simply for being adversaries, then a Rubicon has been crossed. And if Americans accept the lies that allow them to pervert the justice system to the point of jailing their opponents then I’ve got to say that I know who you are.
And it’s horrifying.