Saviors on the Horizon

Yes, we’re all surprised that America’s economy is still doing well, considering that we’re two years into the reign of a president who doesn’t understand basic financial systems, seems determined to destroy whole industries, and has had more bankruptcies and failures than anyone should be allowed, to say nothing of the zealots and incompetents who staff his corrupt administration.

Seriously, how are we all not starving to death in abandoned towns and fighting for scraps in hollowed-out cities right now? 

In any case, the economy will inevitably turn sour soon. And when it does, we may all rely on, you guessed it, Latinos to bail out America.

You see, researchers have found that “the Hispanic community in the United States has contributed significantly to U.S. economic growth in recent decades and will continue to do so over the next 10 to 20 years.” In fact, the “outsized contribution of Hispanic immigrants to U.S. economic growth results from thequality of the workforce, not just quantity.” 

In other words, Latinos are one of the main influencers of the American economy, even if certain individuals, media figures, and political parties deny it.

Studies have found that within five years, Latinos will make up about 20 percent of the U.S. workforce and that “the increase in employedHispanic laborcould contribute more to U.S. GDP growth than non-Hispanic labor.” 

Of course, these numbers assume that America will still be around in five years. And if Trump wins a second term… well, it’s best not to finish that sentence.

Now, I know what you’re saying: “Sure, there are a lot of Hispanics out there, stealing jobs left and right. But the only occupations those swarthy immigrants can handle are the low-level, menial gigs.”

OK, maybe you’re not saying that. But trust me, someone in the White House or on Fox News is saying that even while you read this. 

The immediate rebuttal to this sad mode thinking is another data point that research has uncovered, which is the following: “Hispanic arrivals have exceeded contemporary native-born Americans… in their entrepreneurial capabilities and integration into economically relevant parts of the workforce.”

That’s right — when it comes to starting new businesses and creating new jobs, Latino immigrants are far more important than your ninth-generation white working class voter waving an American flag. In fact, “foreign-born and Hispanic populations have become engines of U.S. entrepreneurship, especially since the Great Recession.”  

Let’s emphasize this again: “The growth rate of Latino businesses in the United States has outpaced the growth rate of all other groups,” and Latino-owned firms “compose a significant — and still growing — percentage of U.S. businesses.”

The reasons for this include the growth of the Hispanic population, the fact that Latinos tend to be younger than the general population, and the truth that throughout American history, there has been a “universal positive benefit that immigrants have on theeconomy and entrepreneurship.”

Of course, if you really want to get exact, Americans should drop to their knees and thank the strong Hispanic women among us. 

That’s because according to a Stanford University study, Latinas are the leading entrepreneurs in United States. Specifically, immigrant Latinas “start businesses at a higher rate than non-Hispanic white women,” despite the unpleasant fact that they often struggle to obtain credit and have “the lowest rate of financial institution-based loans among all other groups of employer firms.” In addition, “the wage gap for women who identify as Hispanic or Latino is larger than that of any other racial or ethnic group.”

Does any of that institutionalized nonsense stop Latinas?

That would be a resounding no.

So when the economy inevitably tanks, and the coal mines don’t magically reopen, and jingoistic Americans across the nation keep repeating, “Who could have possibly foreseen this disaster?” over and over again, just keep one thing in mind:

Ultimately, it will be the Latinas who save us.

We Are All Mexicans Now

I had a friend in high school who thought my mom came from San Salvador. I corrected her a few times by pointing out that the mi madre’s homeland is actually El Salvador. But eventually I just gave her partial credit for at least naming the nation’s capital city.

As annoying as my friend’s misstatement was, it’s important to note that she was a teenage girl living in the pre-internet era.

What excuse do we have for paid journalists in 2019 who think El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — three Central American countries —  are more or less Mexico? Of course, I’m talking about Fox News’ infamous chyron screw-up that recently blared, “Trump cuts aid to 3 Mexican countries.” 

As many people have pointed out, the perplexing statement illuminates a right-wing mindset that is more than just simplistic and laughably ignorant. It is also highly disrespectful, in that this thinking homogenizes all of Latino culture under the term “Mexican.” 

Oh yeah, it’s also a bigoted ploy to dismiss all Hispanics as “a race of ‘others’ who can easily be scapegoated for a whole slew of structural problems.”So I’m pretty sure that counts as racist bullshit as well.

You see, once you’ve decided that all Latinos are Mexican, it’s just an illogical, prejudicial jump or two to deduce that all Mexicans are undocumented immigrants, and that all undocumented immigrants are drug-dealing rapists and murderers.

This is all very A=B=C.

However, maybe we are being too hard on Fox News and its right-wing fan base. After all, these are people who routinely confuse opinion with fact.

We’re talking about people who believe that cutting off aid to those aforementioned “Mexican” countries will reduce immigration, when in reality, it would have the opposite effect. 

We’re talking about supporters of a president who believes shutting the border is a viable strategy, when all it will do is bludgeon the American economy. 

We’re talking about people who desperately, obsessively want a massive new infrastructure project (i.e., a wall built on the Mexican border — or three walls for the three separate Mexicos). But they don’t care that our existing infrastructure is collapsing, and that our country’s bridges are falling down. 

We’re talking about people who are genuinely confused about why Latinos don’t vote Republican in overwhelming numbers, even as the GOP routinely demeans and threatens Latinos (or just dismisses all Hispanics as “Mexican” as Fox News did).

In short, we’re talking about people who are either not too bright or who engage in willful delusion. So maybe they can’t help but say bizarre, insulting things and then stumble around half-ass apologies.

Perhaps they deserve our sympathy.

Of course, there is one more explanation. Our country’s educational system pales in comparison to just about every other industrialized nation. So maybe people who work at Fox News just didn’t learn basic geography.

Along those lines, just in case you thought our nation’s ignorance is confined solely to Latin America, let me tell you about a recent conversation I had. 

I was talking to a fellow American, and I mentioned that I had once lived in Minneapolis. She furrowed her brow and asked, “Is that anywhere near Minnesota?”

And I had no idea how to answer that. But I should have told her that it was in Mexico.

The God That Failed

I’m going to make a bold guess: If you asked most liberals a month ago what the reaction would be to the Mueller Report’s release, they probably wouldn’t have said, “Trump supporters literally dancing in the streets and waving Confederate flags.”

And yet that is exactly what happened over the weekend, when Robert Mueller ended his lengthy investigation into the president’s shenanigans by more or less saying, “The guys looks shady, but I can’t definitively prove it.”

Yes, the president was neither indicted, nor forced to testify (and almost certainly perjure himself). The fact that the GOP somehow celebrates these developments as a "victory" shows how abysmally low the bar has been set for Trump.

In any case, for nearly two years, liberals have been hoping — even predicting — that Mueller would uncover nefarious crimes so appalling, so brazen and shocking, that even the president’s die-hard enablers in Congress would be forced to admit, “You’re right. This lunatic has got to go.” And just like that, we would be rid of Trump forever, and every guy wearing a MAGA hat would fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness, while promising to never, ever question progressives again.

Instead, smug right-wingers are shrieking, “exonerated!” — even though the report summary clearly says it “does not exonerate him.”

Yeah, the GOP isn’t so good with the details.

What Republicans are excellent at, however, is whipping up racial animosity, tapping into authoritarian impulses, and smothering objective facts under a frothy mix of conspiratorial thinking and anti-intellectual disdain.

Because of this, many commentators have pointed out that “Mueller's report was never going to deliver easy justice, because even if it somehow got Trump kicked out of office, the factors that put him there in the first place, or what has been unleashed since his malice-laced campaign, wouldn't suddenly evaporate.”

If it’s true that the fabled white working class needed a savior in the form of Trump, then it is also true that many progressives cast Mueller in the same role. Perhaps it is a human need, therefore, to believe that one white knight in shining armor will ride over the mountain, vex our idealogical enemies, and make everything right and pure again.

But let’s be honest — when has that ever been reality?

In truth, “Trump won the 2016 election largely because of deep problems with the U.S. and American democracy that all preceded his candidacy,” and even if this xenophobic meglamaniac “vanished from the White House tomorrow, none of these problems would go with him.”

Next year, Americans will vote for president. Currently, about 40 percent of Americans approve of a guy who has coddled dictators and neo-Nazis. They like the man who has denigrated every demographic other than white men. They admire the chief executive who still doesn’t know how the government works, and whose own advisors regularly question his sanity, intelligence, and competence.

Clearly, no white knight is coming to convince those 40 percent of Americans that they are wrong.

Something in the Air

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of catching even a split second of oldies radio, you may have heard a terrible song by the Hollies that contains the following chorus:

Sometimes all I need
Is the air that I breathe
And to love you 

However, for ethnic minorities, the air that they breathe is often filled with crap, so I guess they just have to settle for the ability to love you.

You see, a recent study has shown that “pollution, much like wealth, is not distributed equally in the United States.”

Specifically, “air pollution is disproportionately caused by white Americans' consumption of goods and services, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic Americans.”

Basically, white Americans have more money and therefore buy more stuff. This consumer demand for products, in turn, increases air pollution. However, the shitty air doesn’t linger in white neighborhoods. It tends to concentrate in poorer neighborhoods, where ethnic minorities often live.

The result is that “minority communities are exposed to pollution that they bear less responsibility for.” In fact, when the researchers crunched the numbers, they found that “whites experience about 17 percent less air pollution than they produce … while blacks and Hispanics bear 56 and 63 percent more air pollution, respectively, than they cause.”

The inequity and murderous irony of this situation can be summed up thusly: blacks and Latinos are less likely to buy junk they don’t need, but they are far more likely to inhale the toxic garbage that comes from creating that junk.

Now, certain commentators — such as the overprivileged offspring of ignorant bigots — have mocked these results by claiming that the study has created the ludicrous concept of “racist air.”

Of course, it’s a well-known conservative ploy to dismiss complex concepts with short, catchy phrases that mislead and misinterpret the data, which also has the convenient effect of provoking distrust and even contempt for facts, science, and anything resembling fancy book learnin’ by bleeding-heart eggheads.

Remember “death panels”?

However, as many real-life experts have pointed out,such smug condescension “contradicts what we know, and it’s based in ignorance.” Furthermore, such a dismissive attitude “is no joke,” except to rich jerks who “think structural inequality and environmental racism aren’t real because they are as invisible to them as the air they breathe.”

In the reality-based world, “scientists and policymakers have long known that black and Hispanic Americans tend to live in neighborhoods with more pollution of all kinds than white Americans.” In addition, “because pollution exposure can cause a range of health problems, this inequity could be a driver of unequal health outcomes across the U.S.”

Those are the facts of the matter. And smirking about “racist air” will not make them go away.

So will the propagators of such lies, misinformation and scientific illiteracy ever stop embracing this vile tactic?

Hey, don’t hold your breath.

Haters Gonna Hate (A Lot)

It’s worth discussing how much the social fabric of this country has been altered — perhaps shredded permanently — by a bigoted ignoramus whose chief claims to fame before snagging the presidency were a third-rate reality TV show, gag-inducing self-aggrandizement, and boorish public behavior.

For example — in a development that Republicans will call pure coincidence — the number of hate groups in America has reached “an all-time high,” according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Yes, there are now more than 1,000 U.S. organizations dedicated wholly to the abuse of people who don't look like their members, and this is “the most the SPLC has ever counted.” 

Now, it’s fair to ask if this surge in bigotry is in any way related to the current occupant of the White House, a man who, as we all know, could not get through the speech announcing his candidacy without slurring Latinos and who believes every non-European nation is a shithole.

Well, the SPLC dispels any doubt about cause and effect. The researchers state that “white nationalist groups have been particularly electrified by Trump’s presidency.” In fact, the number of white supremacist groups increased by nearly 50 percent last year. New members “are often motivated by fear of demographic changes these extremists falsely believe is causing ‘white genocide.’”

In essence, through word and deed, the president has normalized racial animus, and this has provoked mild racists into becoming active storm troopers in a theoretical race war that — if the neo-Nazis get their way — will soon be coming to a city near you.

But it’s not just angry white men targeting ethnic minorities. No, in a truly bizarre backlash, many black nationalist hate groups have used Trump’s disparaging remarks about African nations and black football players to recruit members. So their numbers are increasing as well.

However, the SPLC points out that these groups, while just as bigoted and crazy as their white peers, do not pose the same threat. Not only are their numbers smaller, but they are “very different than white hate groups” because they have “no supporters in mainstream politics.”

Basically, there are no African American Steve Kings or Tucker Carlsons spewing epitaphs and cajoling their supporters to get their hate on.

And the numbers support the idea that white nationalists are becoming stronger and more violent. The SPLC found that “domestic terrorism has also been on the upswing,” with 40 people murdered in the U.S. and Canada by radical right extremists, including the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the killing of two black people in a Kroger's grocery in Kentucky. 

Of course, let’s not forget that a Coast Guard lieutenant who espoused extremist and white supremacist views was recently arrested, allegedly before he could conduct a mass killing. His hit list included journalists and Democratic politicians — basically, the enemies of his idol Trump.

By the way, just in case you thought only ethnic minorities should fear tiki-torch-wielding lunatics chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” keep in mind that the SPLC says, “rabid misogyny is [also] an integral part of America’s hate scene.”

Yeah, it’s come to this. Our country now has a “hate scene.”