America, America…
Dear America (It’s really neat to be able to write a real letter to America on Independence weekend—thanks for that),
I can see why you called your open letter to Donald Trump “Thank You, Donald Trump!” The Donald did indeed do the supporters of illegal immigration a big favor by attaching his obnoxious face, words and character to the proposition that the United States has an obligation to control who comes into the country, like every other responsible nation. It is easy to pretend that any assertion by a big, loud-mouthed jerk is wrong, even when it is right, because most people can’t distinguish a message from its messenger. Similarly, a dishonest and dangerous message communicated by an attractive, Hispanic American celebrity and actress is typically accorded more legitimacy than it deserves, especially since the historical and political acumen of professional actors tends to be limited.
Well played. But that’s not the same as being right.
Your letter begins with a multi-layered lie. “You’ve said some pretty offensive things about Latino immigrants recently,” you say. In fact, Trump said nothing about immigrants. Did you read a transcript of his remarks, or just the portion clipped out of it by news organizations because this is Donald Trump, rich Republican buffoon, and fairness and ethical journalism don’t matter. My guess is that you didn’t read the transcript, which makes your open letter incompetent and irresponsible. Or, if you did, it is intentionally misleading, and an attempt to increase the ignorance of people who take policy screeds from actresses seriously.
Aside: Kim Kardashian just told the prestigious Commonwealth Club in San Francisco :
“I see so much from social media, that there’s this generation of people—girls—that are beautiful, but I don’t see a strong work ethic.And I think people sometimes think that with looks, things will come easy, with modeling jobs here and there. I really just encourage people to put in the work.”
And she wasn’t jeered and laughed off the stage, this coming from a woman whose entire career is based on having a big, round derriere and a tape of her having sex. So yes, you are on solid ground, America. People will think you know what you are talking about.
Here is the entire section that Trump is being attacked over, by you and many others:
When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically.
The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. It’s true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They’re sending us not the right people. It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably — probably — from the Middle East. But we don’t know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast.
Now, America, no one could read that entire statement objectively and not know that Trump is talking only about illegal immigrants, not all immigrants. Nor is he talking about Mexico only. Did you not understand that? If not, then you owe Donald an apology, as in Emily Littella’s “Never mind!” If you did read the entire statement and are still accusing him of saying offensive things about “Latino immigrants,” then you are intentionally misleading your readers. Choose one, mistake or dishonesty: there is no third choice.
There is no defense for the proposition that foreign citizens should be allowed and encouraged—those are the same things, you know—to defy our borders and break our immigration laws. I have never heard one, an honest one, that wasn’t based on lies or rationalizations. The Democratic Party’s despicable plan is to keep allowing illegal immigrants to enter the country in droves until their relatives and citizens of the same national origin reach a critical mass where they will vote into office Democratic officials who are willing to forfeit their duty to the national well-being and the rule of law by allowing this disastrous policy to continue. The fact that allowing non-citizens to break our laws without consequence, and, if they have children, to reap tangible benefits for doing so is wrong in every way doesn’t matter to these cynical Machiavellian, just as it doesn’t matter to you. I believe that, given time to absorb the vibrant culture of this nation (should it survive in any recognizable form) American citizens of Hispanic descent will oppose rewarding lawlessness as much as their responsible fellow citizens do. For that to happen, however, they need to occasionally be exposed to the truth. That’s where the liars need people like you.
Truth: There is nothing racist about declaring that illegal immigrants don’t belong here. That is undeniable.
Truth: There is nothing racist, or even anti-immigrant, about correctly stating that illegal immigrants bring problems from Mexico that it is not the duty of the U.S. to solve.
Truth: there is nothing racist about saying that illegal immigrants are not Mexico’s best. They are overwhemingly poor, uneducated, and have a significant criminal component. If the Mexicans coming into the U.S. were Mexico’s best, you can be sure Mexico wouldn’t be pushing so hard for them to keep coming. Mexico has a border too, you know.
The lengths to which the Left and the shameless news media will go to deny this is illustrated by Phillip Bump’s deceitful article for the Washington Post. To “prove” that Trump is wrong, he combined statistics on legal and illegal immigrants (Trump was not talking about the legal ones), used incarceration rates as a substitute for crime rates (might criminal individuals who are avoiding public records and contact with authorities be more difficult to apprehend?), and most of all, accused Trump of saying what he did not. Trump said some of the illegals bring crime, some rape, and some are nice people. There is no other way to read the statement; it literally cannot be interpreted to mean all are rapists, all are criminals, but only some are nice people, or that all are criminals, rapists and nice people. Got that? Well, you know what, America? If a single rape, murder, robbery or crime is committed by someone who crossed into the United States illegally, that’s still too many.
The game of blurring the lines between illegal immigrants, who are law-breakers and who steal the benefits of this country, and legal immigrants, a.k.a immigrants, is really all the defenders of the indefensible have. Of course it would be bigoted and wrong to denigrate all immigrants, so your tactic, and those of your party and allies, is to pretend that’s what those who want to enforce U.S. borders are doing. The entire illegal immigrant support movement is based on deceit and race-baiting. You don’t want “immigration reform,” you want non-enforcement of immigration laws. Calling any responsible advocate for the rule of law and enforcing borders a racist isn’t an argument, it is a strategy designed to suppress a position that cannot be rebutted by facts or logic.
The heart of your reply to Trump, America, isn’t logic, or fairness, or good policy, or anything else that could be called patriotic, admirable or ethical. It is just a statement of brazen power, a Borg-like “Resistance is futile,” a Khrushchev-style “We will bury you.” And it is every bit as sinister as those were:
You see, what you just did with your straight talk was send more Latino voters to the polls than several registration rallies combined! Thank you for that. Here we are pounding the pavement to get American Latinos to the polls, while your tactic proves most effective. Remarks like yours will serve brilliantly to energize Latino voters and increase turnout on election day against you and any other candidate who runs on a platform of hateful rhetoric.
Do you know why that’s such a big deal, Donald? Because Latinos are the largest, youngest and fastest-growing constituency in the United States of America. That’s right! You are running for President in a country where the Latino population grew by over 49 percent from 2000-2012, while the rest of the country grew by 5.8 percent. What’s more, we are the future. The median age of the average Latino is 27 years old, compared to 42 years old for white Americans. In case you need a translation, that means there are a whole lot of Americans who are Latino and have the right to vote. And, we’re not going anywhere.
Thank YOU, America. This is as honest a statement of the real motivation for Democratic officials to abandon their duty to do what’s in the best interest of the nation and its citizens, and to prompt Republicans like Jeb Bush to mouth fatuous rationalizations. (No, compassion for law breakers is not ethical, virtuous or wise.) “Tell the truth,” you say, “and we will hurt you. It doesn’t matter if you are right, you weak, venal, pathetic Anglos: we have broken the law for so long that we will soon outnumber you, and all your archaic values and principles, like obeying laws and not basing policy on color.”
That’s it, isn’t it? That’s the whole reason why Trump is being attacked, because he dares to state the obvious, so the obvious must be reframed as racism, with a clear threat of worse to follow for anyone who dares to make the same mistake. Granted, Trump makes it absurdly easy: he is inarticulate and rude, and has the charm of a barker for strip club, so he can, and does, make the truth sound uncommonly ugly. It is still the truth.
Your next point is less useful, but illustrative of the quality of thought among mindless progressives:
You, Mr. Trump, are living in an outdated fantasy of a bigoted America. Last week, America celebrated some amazing milestones — marriage equality, universal healthcare, removing of the confederate flag — making it clear in which direction the country is moving.
Hmm…let’s see, what do those things have in common? Marriage equality—basic human rights. Universal healthcare—uh, wishful thinking? Policies from a parallel universe? (Psst! America! The U.S. doesn’t have universal healthcare, and given the fact that it is already broke and unable to afford the entitlements it has, I wouldn’t bet on that happening any time soon. The decision saved an incompetent and dubious law from being destroyed by its own slovenly drafting. I bet you didn’t read the opinion either: policy certitude is so much easier when all you read is talking points.) Removing of the confederate flag—speech suppression and historical whitewashing. Sorry, America, I don’t get that clear direction, and I’m afraid your civics literacy is a bit weak. More than a bit, actually.
Does Trump live in a fantasy of an America that respects laws, unlike, say, you? I don’t think that is a fantasy. I even think that you might be surprised to find that a lot of immigrants came–legally—to this country precisely because it is a nation of laws. Lying to them is the only way to keep them in line, and eventually the truth may do what it often does. Prevail.
(I do congratulate you, an actress, for accusing someone else of living a fantasy. Pretty funny. Thanks for that, too: I needed a laugh)
Then, predictably, you end your dishonest screed by the by now hackneyed appeal to our nation’s immigrant past. Yes, my grandparents were immigrants; it took them years to get from Greece to the U.S., and they did it legally, according to the rules. Their experience, and the fact that others like them “are at the core of our ideals, and… the foundation that keeps us afloat” has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump’s remarks about law-breaking, illegal immigrants. Among our ideals are respect for law, honesty, responsibility, accountability, citizenship and integrity, all of which are rejected by the illegals you are falsely extolling. If we similarly reject those values under your bullying and threats, the foundation you profoundly misconstrue will crumble.
As you close your open letter to The Donald by thanking him “for helping us in our work to energize the Latino vote and to usher in our shared future,” I will thank you for nicely exposing the dishonesty, the arrogant power tactics and the civic illiteracy behind the entire anti-American “immigration reform movement.” It is all predicated on the cowardice of your adversaries and the gullibility of the public. It might even work.
But with the help of Hispanic-Americans who properly see themselves as Americans first, we might surprise you yet.
Sincerely,
Ethics Alarms 
The scary thing is she’s probably right. The Democratic party will get votes however it can, and putting the richest jerk in the world out there as the enemy is a very easy way to get them, particularly from a demographic that thinks it is entitled to not only come here, but squeeze the system for every penny in benefits, after all, to quote a bumper sticker I just saw “no human being is illegal.”
I just saw one that said “No Bumper Sticker Is Stupid.”
I would love to get a stack of stickers with that on them….maybe zazzle.com will oblige.
Be my guest. I kind of like it myself.
Wouldn’t it be unethical to post this open letter to America without also sending it to her as a personal letter?
No, because it’s not a personal letter. The Open Letter is a hoary journalistic device, and not intended for the addressee alone.
Jaaaaack…are you dodging? (I just read what you said about George Takei’s lame explanation of blackface.) If I was a blogger like you, I would receive every comment on my blog the same way I would receive a copy of the same comment in a personal letter, or e-mail. (Not that every commenter is ethically obligated to e-mail you a copy of every comment.)
I seriously don’t know what you think you are saying. Did you read the link? An open letter isn’t a letter. It’s a column. It uses the pretense of writing a personal letter to address a public person directly, or, in the case of the infamous “open letter to my (dead, aborted) baby,” to someone who couldn’t read the letter anyway. There is no more reason to send America and open letter than to send Hillary every column I write trying to wake up the irresponsible fools who want her to be President. There is literally no difference. Do you think she sent her column to Trump? She obviously understands the form, because she just wrote one.
I would love to hear her response to this letter, as, intellectually, she has a lovely smile.
You never know. That blogger who wrote that A-Rod was a role model wrote back, and the best she could do was accuse me of being biased as a Red Sox fan.
Racist!
You know… I should stop doing that… Just because the Democrats have hollowed out that word to be almost meaningless doesn’t mean I should help it along. I always think of these things the moment I hit the post button. I’m going to call it an impulse control issue.
While her Open Letter is exactly as you say, filled with Democrat talking points and appeals to sensitivities, the more distressing part was reading the comments. That is a good barometer of where the nation is. There is absolutely no coherent debate on immigration policy. There are the “Illegals Go Home” crowd and the “You Go, Girl!” crowd, both cyber-yelling at each other, never discussing whether unfettered illegal immigration is good for the country. I wonder what the nation is going to look like when our 11 year old son is an adult.
jvb
What makes you think there’ll be one? Because unfettered, illegal immigration is a symptom of the mind set that can and will destroy this country.
“… the more distressing part was reading the comments”
Unh huh. Like a duck to water swam America to the Internet, expressing any and all frustrations in our lives as our conveniently constitutional (sic: physiological definition of) computer-given right to free and unlimited bitch, winge, wail and whine, preferably off the subject onto a personal tangent, attacking from a safe, virtually anonymous distance to ambush reason, logic, truth and, well, anything being said online — even if we passionately agreed with the main post, any subsequent reply can set us off — with our singular unsupported opinion, ignorance, prejudice, psychopathology, and often malice afore- and after-thought. To be repeated 24/7.
Comments are economical, too. Think about how much “Forever” postage it would take otherwise.
Not that it isn’t distressing to consider the polarization of political and social thought, of terrorism foreign, domestic and campus, of the future of today’s young and … what was it? I’d concentrate better if I wasn’t so mad about my local theater dumping their scheduled double bill of Contempt and Mulholland Drive noir just for a night of Kardashian. Disgusting. … oh yeah … illegal immigration … that’s a problem …
Do you think there’s a way we could deport Kim back to where her ancestors came from as a persona non grata? Probably not, but it’s worth a try.
Too late, Wayne. She’s second-generation Քարտաշեան of the only notable Armenian-American family of that name. Daddy put the celebrity tag on the clan way back during that 1995 murder trial: Robert K was bosom buddy and defense attorney to O. J. Simpson. To give the family even greater role models going into their third generation, Robert’s first wife, Kim’s mama, now a grandmama, split from her second husband when she (Bruce, not Kris) transmogrified into Caitlin and became Kim’s ex-stepmummy.
These people are not deportable; they are constructs. Hundreds of holograph animators slave away day and night to preserve the fantasy that they are real, and not just “reality.” {Proof of that was the faked arrivalS of “Kim” in three different limos — the first two were reported to have been dummies. Which leaves the third to be Herself, indistinguishable from the first two, ergo: unreal.}
p.s. Thanks a bunch for making me google. I almost didn’t find my way back from Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.
Those who support illegal immigration are traitors to my country, the United States of America. They have no share in Independence Day.
Those who support ideas you don’t support — however wrongheaded they may be — have as much share in Independence Day as you do. That’s what y*o*u*r country is all about.
The left’s incessant conflation of “immigrant” and “illegal alien” is analogous to “established by the State” meaning “established by a state or the federal government.” Language is just there to be abused.
No, she isn’t attractive, not if that’s her in the image up there. She’s beady-eyed, too sallow, grinning far too widely (dragin_dragon is wrong about that), and looks a bit too thin. What? Some people actually like that? But that’s the point – de gustibus non est disputandum, so it’s wrong to ladle out such a description as casually as that.
Yes, there is: mistake and dishonesty.
A defence is implied in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, when it condemns measures against that for the North American colonies. Also, “who comes to equity must come with clean hands” – and in the past U.S. citizens gained in just that way in the Floridas, in Texas, in California, in the then Oregon Territory, and in Hawaii, which would seem to bar any objections from being made to the practice though that is not quite the same thing as a defence. (Please don’t infer that pointing this out is mere anti-Americanism from the coincidence that the U.S. situation is under consideration here: the same has occurred in other times and places, e.g. the mostly British uitlanders in the Boer Republics; even if it were anti-American, in intention or “objectively”, it should still be considered on its merits of fact and analysis rather than being dismissed because it is disliked for its consequences.)
This whole issue is an instance of corporate “agency costs” in representative democracies, analogous to incentives for companies to be run in management interests at shareholder expense by means of diluting the equity; here, incrementally electing a new people. In the past, the same dynamic drove widening the franchise, just as an opposite one narrowed it in Athenian direct democracy. Just as most readers here emerged from that widened franchise and so have taken it on board and internalised approval of it, so also will happen to the people who emerge from this round of electing a new people, if it runs its course. Not only tempora mutantur but also et nos mutamur in illis.
All bad arguments, especially the “equity” one, which applies equally to all countries, but thanks for summarizing some of them.
The point in mentioning Miss Ferrera’s attractiveness—which she sabotaged as a gimmick in “Ugly Betty,” her main claim to fame—is that this is, as with most female celebrities, her primary qualification for anyone reading what she says.
Bingo, Jack. Hottie = instant cred, or at least instant low-fo audience who doesn’t think too much.
I wasn’t suggesting that those were good defences, just that those defences do indeed exist. It was rubbish for the U.S. Declaration of Independence to imply that illegal immigration was O.K. despite being illegal, since it would only be O.K. if the laws themselves were to be rejected – but counting that while trying to assert it is begging the very question the document was asserting. The parallel sound argument (which means sound, not accurate), made explicitly, was that that immigration should be made legal, and that it was wrong to fail and refuse to do so.
As for the equity one, it’s not a defence as such, it’s just pointing out that the U.S.A. has no moral standing to oppose illegal claims to enter since it, itself, already burned that boat. While the entry is illegal, so is the U.S. claim to much if not all to which the entry is sought (I gave a list, which may be incomplete). And there are some countries without a similar history, e.g. Bermuda, though precious few. Bluntly, this topic, while important, isn’t susceptible to a genuinely ethical general treatment.
A mistake can’t be a lie, of course. But you know that.
On the same single point, normally yes, but she could easily be mistaken about some things and lying about others. Also, I would count it a lie if she genuinely but incorrectly believed it but was under some special obligation to find out first, making it negligent rather than wilful, just as repeating a slander while thinking it true is still slander; however, I do not suppose that she is in any such position, for the very reasons you give not to reckon her an authority.
We should observe what immigration brings in other countries like Sweden .
I think New Zealand has the only intelligent immigration policy left: If you don’t have skills we want, we don’t want you!
That’s the right policy, all right.
I wonder why so many countries are willing to embrace immigration.
Do you mean immigration, as in letting people in who you want in, or illegal immigration. Embracing illegal immigration is an oxymoron.
Sweden isn’t that homogeneous, since the islands, Scania (formerly Danish) and Dalecarlia have distinct identities and traditions, and perhaps there are also other such areas I have overlooked. However, policies of relocating key groups blurred all that before living memory, and there’s an element of “no true Scotsman” to it, in that the parts that didn’t come together got separated freely or forcibly (Norway, Finland and various other sizeable holdings around the Baltic).
Also, Sweden allowing in outside cultures isn’t a new thing but has centuries old precedents; it can be reckoned as starting for modern Sweden in the eighteenth century with allowing and encouraging Jewish entry for a select group for economic purposes. Part of the Jewish stipulation was that they should be allowed to keep their culture. Of course, neither their numbers nor their particular (non-proselytising, non-demographically dominant) culture were destructive of Swedish culture, but that no doubt led to expecting much the same to apply to all future cases.
I wonder if we should charge this lady with treason as well as the murder of Kate Steinle.
Under traditional notions of freedom of speech, even pro-illegal-alien speech falls under this freedom. Under a straightforward analysis set forth under Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 at 710-719 (1997) , such a law would be unconstitutional.
But that was then. Times can blind. New dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations,often through perspectives that begin in pleas or protests and then are considered in the political sphere
and the judicial process. The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions,and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning. And the Supreme Court just abandoned the Glucksberg analysis.
What we are dealing here is a concerted effort to destroy America. The authors of the Bill of Rights could have never envisioned an anti-American media. They could have never envisioned open support of illegal immigration. They never could have imagined what happened to Kate Steinle.
Time did blind us in this case. Those who wrote the First Amendment never had the perspective of a treasonous media, setting out to undermine our country in every manner. Pro-illegal-immigration speech is an injustice, an injustice we did not see until the murder of Kate Steinle. We have a right to be free of the threat of illegal aliens, a right to be free of the threat of an anti-American media hostile to our values and our country. We need to protect these rights. And we must do so by classifying pro-illegal immigration speech as treason, and punishing it as such. We must regulate the media to ensure that it does not promote anything hostile to America. For freedom of speech goes too far, as we have learned, when it protects anti-American speech.
If you argue that this is unconstitutional, under a Glucksberg analysis,I agree. But Glucksberg is no longer the test. And unless Glucksberg is restored, my arguments for regulating the anti-American media and banning speech in favor of illegal immigration should withstand constitutional challenge.
I was going to write a rebuttal to her “Thank you” to Trump, but you said it very well. There’s nothing racist about believing that the immigration laws created by our forefathers should be respected and upheld. NO ONE should be exempt, no matter how much chutzpah (or criminal tendencies) they have.
Donald Trump did two things – he exercised his right to free speech, and he pointed out that the emperor has no clothes. Nothing wrong in that.