The Time to stop Racist Hysteria is before it starts
Some Hispanics urge Rep. Obama to do more to appeal to immigrants, especially in large swing states like Pennsylvania. This urging became pronounced after Hillary trounced Obama in the Puerto Rican primary. Ironically, besides McCain, another Republican candidate got some very enthusiastic Latino support, Ron Paul, who never supported the domestic Hispanic agenda. He urged for the US to stop meddling in Latin American affairs, claiming, they and us would be better off. Clamming people enter the US because US foreign policy makes them poorer. He also lobbied against banning agricultural goods being sold to Cuba. The only other non Don Quixote-like lobbying of his colleges was against the Armenian Genocide Amendment which Ron Paul thought was an insult to Turkey at just the wrong moment. Thus many Turkish-Americans support Ron Paul who is against US aid to other countries including Turkey. He wins support of ethnic groups the opposite way most politicians do.
Pennsylvania is a problem for Obama. Philadelphia, is where the Latin vote is usually connected to street money which Obama disavows. Could some other group than the Democratic party give out street money?
After the election of George Bush some fundamentalist Christians bragged about their election clout but when he became unpopular, this got connected in a lot of peoples’ minds with anger at moral busybodies snooping into one’s bedroom, and then unfairly that both Bush and bin Laden prove the dangers of taking religion too seriously. Many seriously religious people never supported Bush, others stopped supporting him, but those who stopped didn’t publicaly state that their religion was the reason why they changed their mind like the dwindling number of fundamentalists that still support Bush. So condemning people for taking religion too seriously continues.
Some immigrants cheer McCain’s threats against radical Latin governments – Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, (the first Native-American led government since Christopher Columbus changed the equation). And are infatuated with McCain’s angry claims that Raul Castro’s reforms are just cosmetic and that Cubans were torturing him while he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Other Hispanics are terrified that McCain’s vow for “a partnership with the democratic forces of the world” could lead to a contractor frenzy like in Iraq. But it seems, though I can’t yet prove it, even if they were former Ron Paul supporters, when they publicly state why they support Obama, they emphasize the war in Iran like other McCain opponents do.
How could this be? Why do people who fear McCain for other reasons nevertheless state the war in Iraq as the reason for opposing McCain?
Perhaps, maybe, this is due to Obama strongly disavowing Rev. Wright’s support. Also, when Hamas endorsed his Presidential campaign, Obama suddenly stated that he wasn’t going to negotiate with Hamas. Perhaps the word is out; if you praise Obama for such things as his earlier pro-Palestine vote as a legislator, he will run from it to appear more moderate. Also, many progressive Cuban-Americans have at least one extremely conservative relative or neighbor and avoid serious argument by claiming that the war in Iraq is the main reason they oppose McCain.
There are fears people avoid talking and even thinking about such as the possibility that McCain’s saber-rattling and economic inexperience could lead to a depression, new wars, and currency collapse. Many fear bin Laden, with McCain’s help, may succeed at getting a war between the US and most of the Muslim world instead of with two countries as with Bush, but don’t want to remind Americans how they feared their ordinary Muslim neighbors after 9/11.
Bush unconvincingly claims that war protesters oppose the troops. But during Vietnam, a few did shout “baby killers” several even spit in the directions of uniformed soldiers. Latinos disproportionally join the military, some entering the US for this purpose. With new wars, military recruiters may get desperate for new recruits.
Already people can serve despite shoplifting and drunken driving offenses. With desperation for new recruits people serving prison time for manslaughter while drunk could be let out early to join up Families might be paid to come to the US, as long as all the able-bodied members of the family sign up and serve as long as they are able. So a Latin immigrant wounded in war might be hated for supposedly causing the next depression. If life gets a lot more miserable in Latin America, due to McCain, they might be hated there as well. Cuban-Americans might not be welcomed in Cuba any more than, in Iraq, the Iraqi Congress in Exile. Latino GI’s and conservative Latinos, more and more blamed for upcoming extreme tensions perhaps wars with Latin America under McCain, may not feel welcome in the US and perhaps pour into Puerto Rico. Note the anti-immigrant riots in South Africa.
Most Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania keeping quiet while other local Hispanics enthusiastically lobby their support for McCain might give the local impression that Latinos support McCain, reminds me of another local issue. The pro-capital punishment, and anti-parole lobby, claims that Philadelphians believe that Mumia abu Jamal and the Move back-to-nature group, he was supporting, are a bunch of guilty criminals deserving as much punishment as they can get. However, when I talk to people locally about my once personal acquaintance, Mumia, they usually state they want to avoid talking and dealing with racially polarizing subjects. They express to me no desire to see anyone punished, but want to avoid issues that are hateful and diversive. The pro-Mumia people spread the story that fear of supporting Mumia is intense. Fear is at least a slight factor. Young Move woman put up the pro-Mumia and Move posters, the men don’t dare. – So as matters now stand if McCain becomes President and this leads to a depression, Philadelphia will be mad at the local Puerto Ricans, the majority of which would have never voted for McCain.
As various countries cut labor costs to compete better, there is a worldwide race for the bottom. Roosevelt and Johnson systematically fought against this race, Carter, and Kennedy tried as well. Under Eisenhower the US supported the Arabs and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. Russia and China are now part of the efforts to cut local minimum wages, standards and benefits. If McCain changes Cuba and Venezuela, will the race to the bottom ever stop declining?
A bonus for lobbyists (and for what Eisenhower referred to as the Military-Industrial-Complex) is that a majority of people are blaming a bungling President for the war, not the elites. After World War I, there was much anger at the munitions merchants similar to the more low key anger today at Haliburton. If immigrants stop making themselves available to be the scapegoats for McCain, and thus for the next depression, I doubt that what was once called the ruling class would risk being blamed again, by putting their bets on a McCain Presidency.
Bush ransacked the treasury and Obama could be cornered into some austerity measures that could make him and perhaps Blacks less popular, but nothing compared to the hatred of McCain and immigrants if McCain imposes austerity measure, while bleeding the treasury with foreign interferences and lobbying.
RichardKanePA
Richard Kane (RichardKanePA) is an elderly gadfly. His father opposed World War II and being Jewish the draft board couldn’t decide whether to put him in Conscientious Objector camp or a mental hospital, so he went to neither. Richard’s mother was Russian Orthodox and a protester against racially segregated lunch counters.
Some people are called Red Diaper babies, because they grew up in a radical or Marxist household. Richard is a Peace Diaper baby. Single, being extremely hyperactive he only kept janitorial jobs, but somehow managed to “retire” to a computer screen.
Google RichardKanePA https://capitolhillblue.com/cont/blog/2419 https://www.phillyimc.org/en/node/68764 https://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did
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