Posted by
T. Thomas on Thursday, May 15, 2008 10:03:15 AM
An esteemed colleague, Virginia Patriot, asks me how I can contemplate voting for John McCain even though I share with VaPat his deep concern that open borders and the invasion of our Southwest by economic refugees of Mexico’s failed government is an act of cultural suicide. Many believe that a presidential candidate who says he will seal the borders and expel the invaders can and will seal the borders and expel the invaders. The American presidency, alas, is far too meager an instrument to accomplish either.
How does a president articulate a closed border policy against both the public’s addiction to cheap service labor and the ruling class lust for its potential voting power? These economic refugees are here in the first place, and by the tens of millions, not only because of Swift Armour and Lennar Homes, but because of every roadside diner in America that employs a Mexican line cook, every woman who gives her children over to the Mexican nanny, and every proud American homeowner whose immaculate green lawn is the result of Mexican gardeners. Most all of us bear some degree of culpability in creating the conditions that cause millions of Mexican peasants to flee the economic basket case to our south.
A year ago, 70% of the American electorate rose up angrily to stop the federal government from a total giveaway of unearned American citizenship, and yet both parties are already back trying to do it again. We blame the political leadership entirely and exonerate ourselves, yet we send them mixed signals, and in the muddle of message, both parties not surprisingly see opportunity.
This is a nation of a hundred million or so voters divided into two political camps who hate each other’s guts. We demand that our parties rise up and deliver a knockout punch to the other side and salt the earth afterwards, yet no matter how hard they try, no matter who they put their money and muscle behind, the divided American public refuses to grant one party dominance over the other. Election margins are razor thin; the public keeps returning the same mix of battling boobs to office and everything we do as an electorate seems to ensure political gridlock
It is little wonder then that the frustrated leadership of both parties looks at the tsunami of undocumented and non-aligned Mexican humanity roiling through every city and state of the nation and yearns to harness it. Republicans hope these conservative family-value Catholics will break their way, and Democrats see a vast new source of working class consumers of government services breaking theirs. Both parties drool salaciously over a bulge of population so huge it could smash political deadlock for generations to come. They’re like junkies staring at a brick of black tar heroin.
Most of this season’s national presidential candidates articulated some sort of a “path to citizenship.” Those that tried to make illegal immigration central to their campaigns were ignored both by the parties and the electorate. A couple of those failed right-wing candidates now want to reenter the process outside the purview of the national party, but these were never candidates whose positions taken as a whole interested more than a few quirky percentage points of the conservative electorate.
To vote third party at this point is to wail in protest towards ears that will not hear; who will ignore the noise, yawn, and go on to divide the spoils. Ron Paul is never going to be President. Neither is Bob Barr. The president is either going to be John McCain or Barack Obama. That’s America’s choice this year. For me and as regards immigration, I will look first at the bigger picture of which party’s political philosophy I want to preside over the rebirth of America from the smoldering ruins of the failed Bush presidency, and only then at which party I want to continue battling to keep it from selling out our birthright.
The unanswered question concerning the millions of Mexican economic refugees in our midst is ultimately not about who is president but about our national schizophrenia on the issue. It will not be resolved by an election, but by a long and painful process of coming to grips with our addiction to their nearly indispensible usefulness.