So, I see a customer I hadn't seen in a couple months. He's ex-Navy, Republican, NRA member, mid-fifties. I've known him 15 years and he's always been a decent enough guy. Yeah, he watches Fox 'News' but he'd always listen to reason. He's really pissed off about the way Iraq was botched and about how it's all gone to Hell over there. So I ask him today, "I bet you're gonna vote Democrat next year."
"Nope," he says. "Republican across the board."
So I gotta ask. "Even after all this horseshit in Iraq?"
"Yup," he nods.
"How come?" I ask.
"Niggers and spics," he replies.
My jaw drops open. "What?"
"Niggers and spics," he says again. "The Republicans don't like 'em and neither do I."
"You're kidding," I say.
"Nope," he shakes his head. "Fuck them people, taking jobs from real Americans."
"But the blacks have been here from before the Revolution, they
are Americans," I say.
"Fuck them," he says again. "All we do is support 'em. Lincoln shoulda never set them free."
"But what about me," I say. "I'm a first-generation child of immigrants."
"You're white," he says. "And you work for a living."
"So," I say. "It doesn't matter the Republicans have fucked up everything they've touched, wasted all those American lives, our brothers and sisters, wasted all that money, and you'd vote for 'em just because they don't like blacks and Hispanics? Regardless if they run the nation into the ground?"
"Yup," he says.
And that's what it's all about. The hard core will only be happy in a lily white, apartheid state, regardless of how bad living in it might be and the way to get there is to vote Republican. I guess there's some people you just can't reach. I hope his daughter comes home for summer vacation with the biggest, blackest, linebacker on her university's football team and tells him they're getting married.
Addendum:For all to know, this conversation didn't happen in Texas, Kansas, or Alabama, it took place within sight of Manhattan.
Update:And you really should read
the Rude One's post on the new immigration bill that's causing all the hubbub.
...
The guest workers program is, more or less, the creation of an official servant class, one that'll serve to undercut the unionization of working class Americans and legal immigrants. By the way, the whole "guest workers" thing sound like we're gonna provide them with fresh towels and scones every morning. Why not just call them "shit detail workers"? The bill's filled with bizarre rules like if Jorge from Guatemala is a guest worker for two years, he's gotta go back to Guatemala for a year before he can come back here for another two years, for a total of six years. 'Cause no one's gonna break that law and stay, you know, illegally.
Oh, and then there's the fines, the total of $5000 that illegals would more or less have to pay if they want a green card, thus making the United States government into the largest coyote operation. The most festive provision is forcing the head of a household, no matter how many American kids that person has, to return to whatever country he or she got the fuck out of to come here and then turn around and come back legally, hoping that he or she gets back in to the kids, the job, the life that's been established. Immigrant rights groups are cautiously pessimistic about the bill - it's something, but, hell, that something ain't much.
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