Things are getting mighty ugly. This week two Boston men beat up a homeless Hispanic immigrant. They used a metal pole to break his nose and batter his chest and arms. They also left him soaked in urine.
According to the New York Times, one of them told police that he was inspired by the anti-immigrant message of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. The man, Scott Leader, age 38, told the police, “Donald Trump was right, all those illegals need to be deported.”
Trump’s reaction upon hearing of the attack? “It would be a shame. I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”
Trump’s view of illegal immigrants is now well-known. He considers many of them to be rapists, criminals, drug dealers, and stealers of jobs from Americans. It is clear that in Trump’s mind, illegal immigrants are the root cause of America’s economic woes. Cleanse America of the estimated 10-11 million illegal immigrants and build a Berlin Wall along the Southern border and Trump will make America great again.
Of course, we have seen this type of scapegoating before, only with Jews rather than with immigrants. It was the same sorts of thing that Adolf Hitler said about Jews:
The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people.
“that bacillus which is the solvent of human society, the Jew.”
“a real leech who clings to the body of his unfortunate victim and cannot be removed.”
According to Hitler, Jews were the root cause of Germany’s woes. Cleanse Germany of Jews and Hitler would make Germany great again. Just like Trump is promising to do with America if he is elected president and finally wields the power to cleanse the United States of illegal immigrants.
What Trump cannot do — indeed, what no GOP presidential candidate can do — is recognize the real root cause of America’s woes — the welfare-warfare state apparatuses that have been grafted onto our original governmental structure. It’s the welfare state and the warfare state, together with the out-of-control spending and debt that come with them, that is bringing our country down. That’s what socialism, imperialism, and militarism do to a nation.
But Trump, like all his Republican cohorts, cannot bring himself to acknowledge that. They all love, adore, and glorify the welfare-warfare state. They all believe in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, militarism, a military-industrial complex, a national-security state, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, a Federal Reserve, fiat (i.e., paper) money, drug laws, government-business partnerships, immigration controls, trade restrictions, economic regulations, foreign interventionism and wars of aggression, and corporatism.
And so did Hitler. He too embraced all of those programs as a way to make Germany great again, just as Donald Trump is promising to do for America.
Of course, Democrats and liberals are as fervent believers in the welfare-warfare state way of life and all those statist programs as Trump and the Republicans are. The fight is over control, not over ideology or principle.
Trump’s scapegoating of illegal immigrants is standard fare. He knows that illegal immigrants are unable to defend themselves and, therefore, they make the most convenient scapegoats.
Trump also knows that there is always a segment of people in society who are at the bottom of the intellectual ladder and easily seduced by such scapegoating. That’s how Hitler was able to garner support for his scapegoating of Jews, and it’s how Trump is able to garner support for his scapegoating of illegal immigrants. I have no doubts that those two men in Boston would have fit in perfectly in Germany in the 1930s and would have been doing to Jews what they did to that homeless Hispanic immigrant.
And don’t think it’s going to stop here. Wait until Trump starts turning his attention to the “war on terrorism” and ISIS and to all those Muslims here in America who are just waiting to rape, torture, behead, and kill Americans. When that happens, things are likely to get even uglier because that segment of Americans at the bottom of the intellectual ladder are just champing at the bits to go after people of Muslim faith living here in America, just as those two men in Boston went after that homeless Hispanic immigrant.
The Trump campaign — and the positive reaction to it among Republican voters — also brings to mind Benito Mussolini, the fascist president of Italy. Like Trump, he believed in running government like a business, a notion that is resonating positively among Republican voters. The voters are convinced that since Trump is a successful businessman, he will be the savior of the welfare-warfare state, the man who will figure out how to save Social Security and Medicare and finally win the drug war. Why, Trump’s supporters are convinced that he’ll even make Amtrak run on time.
Where does Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev fit into Trump’s presidential campaign? Don’t forget — he’s the person who built the Berlin Wall. That’s what Trump wants to build along the Southern border because obviously the Berlin Fence that was built there a few years ago and which was supposed to solve the immigration crisis hasn’t quite worked.
Trump says that he’s going to make Mexico pay for his Wall. Such being the case, here’s an idea that Trump and the lower intellectual classes might like: How about building Trump’s Wall on the Mexican side rather than on the American side? In that way, people will get shot by Mexican officials for trying to come into the United States, just as East Germans were shot by East German officials for trying to get into West Germany. That way, Americans might not have to concern themselves with things like conscience and religious principles.
Oh, and just think: the Mexican government could even hire East Germans who served as sharpshooters on the Berlin Wall to serve as sharpshooters on Trump’s Wall. But they would have to be legal, of course. We wouldn’t want any illegal aliens to be killing illegal aliens, would we?
I’m sure glad I’m a libertarian. I’d be ashamed to be a Republican. And a Democrat.
