Donald Trumps triumphant march through the South comes as no surprise to anyone who understands the nature of the Hispanic presence in southern towns and the poor white" tradition of voting for the local strongman.
I was born and raised in Fort Worth Texas. I recall that our district was represented by a woman named Betty Andujar when I was a child… and that believe me was a long time ago! I would have asked a girl named Janet Garza out on a date when I was a timid freshman at TCU if only I could have mustered the courage. No one ever told me that there was any we/they" opposition in these matters.
In states like Texas New Mexico and Arizona a Mexican influence has been spread evenly through our architecture our food our pop-cultural phrases and even our family structure and DNA for several generations. We dont see the name Chavez" or Ayala" and instantly think Invader! One of them! Why dont they go home?" To be honest we may have precisely that reaction now whenever we find that parts of our towns have been taken over by people who wont speak English and eye you suspiciously if you happen to stray into one of their shops or restaurants. When they come into my wifes clinic and demand an interpreter they refuse to understand any Spanish spoken by a gringobut Rosalita at the front desk has no problems. Yet if I ask one of them to cut down a tree for me he not only follows my Castellano but turns out to grasp Ingles pretty well. Does the phrase reverse racism" mean anything to you?
Theres a difference between a legal immigrant who willingly merges into the local culture and an alien whose secret mission is to implant his homelands colony right in your midst. Most of us in the Southwest whether our last name is Harris or Arriago can tell the difference.
People in the South cannot. My wife hails from northern Georgia in the foothills of Appalachia. We lived in her hometown for a while and also in North Carolina and Tennessee for several years. When people there see somebody named Gonzalez they think of a wetback" come to steal a local job. All the Southern statesbut especially the Carolinas in my experiencehave factories and mills operating at low overhead with outdated equipment. My brother-and-law can talk about loading docks whose workers climb the chain-link fences every time they think some official has driven up to inquire into their status. Such places have no element of Latin tradition in their local culture. Theyre still struggling sometimes to admit blacks into white society. (The minister of a church we visited in NC during the only service we ever sat through there memorably added not being black" to the list of things his congregation could thank God for.) If you expect migrant off-the-radar workers from Mexico to weave themselves readily into this social fabric then you know nothing about human communities.
Im not trying to sneer at the South. My ancestors were Virginians and South Carolinians. And it must be stressed in their defense that most Hispanics in mill villages really are there for the work and really do have dubious legal status. Naturally they also clique together very tightly attending their own eglesias and labeling their bakeries paerias. Even their Mexican food" is altogether too authentically campesino to my tastevery basic and bland and its meat content a little suspect. The young men of these exile colonies like to show their machismo by drinking and driving; and sometimes (as with most bottom-rung socio-economic groups) they smack their womenfolk around before sobering up. Even back in old Mexico they were usually the lowest of the low. Many would be styled indios there (i.e. possessing a great deal of Native American DNA). The ill-fated Venustiano Carrasco is still celebrated in Mexican history books for his progressive plans to form a true Spanish America diluted neither by yankophila" or indigenism" (in the coinages of one scholar). To speak plain the native peoples often heavily represented in illegal immigration have traditionally been as loathed by Mexican intellectuals as have gringos.
All of that just leads to this: when a North Carolinian like William Gheen of ALIPAC hears Mexican" he probably thinks of stolen jobs fragmented communities victims of drunk drivers and squalidly violent crime. When he hears that Donald Trump wants to build a wall he thinks Good. No more layoffs no-go zones children run over and gang rapes. No more Mexicans." I can understand that response and I even share it to some degreethough as a Texan I distinguish between the generic Mexican" and drifting adventurist blue-collar refugees created by Mexicos dysfunctional economy. I guess I can even understand how the long-time inhabitants of mill villages wouldnt mind taking a chance on one of our eras most unscrupulous mendacious pompous and sordiloquacious huckstersthe miles gloriosus of the twenty-first century. What are the options? A guy named Cruz and another named Rubio. Why should they secure the border? Just look at their names!
I suggested in my last post that such responses were racist. Maybe so... but whats commonly called racism is usually a complex association of sketchy ideas not a deliberate evolved theory about the superiority of one race to another. (Theres really no scientific basis to the notion of race as the case of the Mexican indio shows: ultimately were all mutts.) Nevertheless to refuse to vote for a man whose record of fulfilling his word is punctilious just because his surname ends in a z" strikes me as stupid in a very costly manner especially when his rival prevaricates on any rare occasion when he answers a question directly; and to rationalize tarring the z" man by elevating to prominence a document signed by his wife sixteen years ago must insult the intelligence of anyone who is not in fact stupid.
Hang for a sheep hang for a ram: Ill add this much more to my charge of racism for anyone who is still reading. (My South Carolinian great-grandfather by the way died in a snowstorm taking Christmas food to black families when his Model T was struck by a train; not all Southerners think in black-and-white and the very suggestion infuriates me.) Donald Trump has won big in the South and has added Mississippis scalp to his lodgepole since my last post because of traditional Democrats. Besides Gheen-style Republicans who are disgusted with Lindsay Graham you alsoand perhaps especiallysee in Trumps winning numbers the approval of high-school dropouts single moms brought up on welfare blue-collar workers displaced by technology and outsourcing... people in short whose ancestors were tenant farmers and petty artisans who were fed from the cradle on distrust of the landlord class dosed with hot hatred of working-class rivals and who have never once dreamed or imagined that they might crawl out of the hole through their own effort rather than the patronage of a powerful protector. We have a lot of those still in the South. They usually vote for the landlord/industrialist who keeps non-whites from replacing them on the farm or the assembly line (read Democrat"); and thats what they did this time too.
I assume that the dismal ignorance and inexperience of the South manifested by Coulter Hannity OReilly Ingraham Limbaugh (most recently and disappointingly) and other Yankee pundits explains their shock at the SEC" primaries. Why arent all white Southerners evagelical and wasnt Cruz supposed to sweep up the church-going set? Religion means a lot down South; but it is always a version of religion adapted to local tradition. (Remember the minister who fervently thanked God for not being black?) Rush is perhaps closest to the truthtoo close maybe: so close that he himself has been drawn into Trumps orbit after decades of being belittled for not having a college degree and lacking the prerequisites for admission into elite circles. Every day this past week seemingly he has described with a saber-like ring in his tone the resentment of being sneered at by the ruling class which he ascribes to Trump supporters. Thats a very Southern feeling. Ironically the Ultimate Carpetbagger has succeeded in exploiting it. The Democrat Party mined it from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement. Now a Republican has found the golden vein… if the word Republican" still means anything.
Should Trump ever get to a general election I tell you here and now: he will draw more Democrats from Hillary than he draws conservative Republicans from their stay-at-home protests. And heres one more for the pundits: if Senator Cruz were to run against both Trump and Hillary he would win a plurality of the votes. Cruz has already given his word regreattably that he will not make an independent run and Ted keeps his word. I think an Allen West/Carly Fiorina ticket could also defeat these two demagogic mega-crooks… but that of course is a story for another day.
Donald Trumps triumphant march through the South comes as no surprise to anyone who understands the nature of the Hispanic presence in southern towns and the poor white" tradition of voting for the local strongman.
I was born and raised in Fort Worth Texas. I recall that our district was represented by a woman named Betty Andujar when I was a child… and that believe me was a long time ago! I would have asked a girl named Janet Garza out on a date when I was a timid freshman at TCU if only I could have mustered the courage. No one ever told me that there was any we/they" opposition in these matters.
In states like Texas New Mexico and Arizona a Mexican influence has been spread evenly through our architecture our food our pop-cultural phrases and even our family structure and DNA for several generations. We dont see the name Chavez" or Ayala" and instantly think Invader! One of them! Why dont they go home?" To be honest we may have precisely that reaction now whenever we find that parts of our towns have been taken over by people who wont speak English and eye you suspiciously if you happen to stray into one of their shops or restaurants. When they come into my wifes clinic and demand an interpreter they refuse to understand any Spanish spoken by a gringobut Rosalita at the front desk has no problems. Yet if I ask one of them to cut down a tree for me he not only follows my Castellano but turns out to grasp Ingles pretty well. Does the phrase reverse racism" mean anything to you?
Theres a difference between a legal immigrant who willingly merges into the local culture and an alien whose secret mission is to implant his homelands colony right in your midst. Most of us in the Southwest whether our last name is Harris or Arriago can tell the difference.
People in the South cannot. My wife hails from northern Georgia in the foothills of Appalachia. We lived in her hometown for a while and also in North Carolina and Tennessee for several years. When people there see somebody named Gonzalez they think of a wetback" come to steal a local job. All the Southern statesbut especially the Carolinas in my experiencehave factories and mills operating at low overhead with outdated equipment. My brother-and-law can talk about loading docks whose workers climb the chain-link fences every time they think some official has driven up to inquire into their status. Such places have no element of Latin tradition in their local culture. Theyre still struggling sometimes to admit blacks into white society. (The minister of a church we visited in NC during the only service we ever sat through there memorably added not being black" to the list of things his congregation could thank God for.) If you expect migrant off-the-radar workers from Mexico to weave themselves readily into this social fabric then you know nothing about human communities.
Im not trying to sneer at the South. My ancestors were Virginians and South Carolinians. And it must be stressed in their defense that most Hispanics in mill villages really are there for the work and really do have dubious legal status. Naturally they also clique together very tightly attending their own eglesias and labeling their bakeries paerias. Even their Mexican food" is altogether too authentically campesino to my tastevery basic and bland and its meat content a little suspect. The young men of these exile colonies like to show their machismo by drinking and driving; and sometimes (as with most bottom-rung socio-economic groups) they smack their womenfolk around before sobering up. Even back in old Mexico they were usually the lowest of the low. Many would be styled indios there (i.e. possessing a great deal of Native American DNA). The ill-fated Venustiano Carrasco is still celebrated in Mexican history books for his progressive plans to form a true Spanish America diluted neither by yankophila" or indigenism" (in the coinages of one scholar). To speak plain the native peoples often heavily represented in illegal immigration have traditionally been as loathed by Mexican intellectuals as have gringos.
All of that just leads to this: when a North Carolinian like William Gheen of ALIPAC hears Mexican" he probably thinks of stolen jobs fragmented communities victims of drunk drivers and squalidly violent crime. When he hears that Donald Trump wants to build a wall he thinks Good. No more layoffs no-go zones children run over and gang rapes. No more Mexicans." I can understand that response and I even share it to some degreethough as a Texan I distinguish between the generic Mexican" and drifting adventurist blue-collar refugees created by Mexicos dysfunctional economy. I guess I can even understand how the long-time inhabitants of mill villages wouldnt mind taking a chance on one of our eras most unscrupulous mendacious pompous and sordiloquacious huckstersthe miles gloriosus of the twenty-first century. What are the options? A guy named Cruz and another named Rubio. Why should they secure the border? Just look at their names!
I suggested in my last post that such responses were racist. Maybe so... but whats commonly called racism is usually a complex association of sketchy ideas not a deliberate evolved theory about the superiority of one race to another. (Theres really no scientific basis to the notion of race as the case of the Mexican indio shows: ultimately were all mutts.) Nevertheless to refuse to vote for a man whose record of fulfilling his word is punctilious just because his surname ends in a z" strikes me as stupid in a very costly manner especially when his rival prevaricates on any rare occasion when he answers a question directly; and to rationalize tarring the z" man by elevating to prominence a document signed by his wife sixteen years ago must insult the intelligence of anyone who is not in fact stupid.
Hang for a sheep hang for a ram: Ill add this much more to my charge of racism for anyone who is still reading. (My South Carolinian great-grandfather by the way died in a snowstorm taking Christmas food to black families when his Model T was struck by a train; not all Southerners think in black-and-white and the very suggestion infuriates me.) Donald Trump has won big in the South and has added Mississippis scalp to his lodgepole since my last post because of traditional Democrats. Besides Gheen-style Republicans who are disgusted with Lindsay Graham you alsoand perhaps especiallysee in Trumps winning numbers the approval of high-school dropouts single moms brought up on welfare blue-collar workers displaced by technology and outsourcing... people in short whose ancestors were tenant farmers and petty artisans who were fed from the cradle on distrust of the landlord class dosed with hot hatred of working-class rivals and who have never once dreamed or imagined that they might crawl out of the hole through their own effort rather than the patronage of a powerful protector. We have a lot of those still in the South. They usually vote for the landlord/industrialist who keeps non-whites from replacing them on the farm or the assembly line (read Democrat"); and thats what they did this time too.
I assume that the dismal ignorance and inexperience of the South manifested by Coulter Hannity OReilly Ingraham Limbaugh (most recently and disappointingly) and other Yankee pundits explains their shock at the SEC" primaries. Why arent all white Southerners evagelical and wasnt Cruz supposed to sweep up the church-going set? Religion means a lot down South; but it is always a version of religion adapted to local tradition. (Remember the minister who fervently thanked God for not being black?) Rush is perhaps closest to the truthtoo close maybe: so close that he himself has been drawn into Trumps orbit after decades of being belittled for not having a college degree and lacking the prerequisites for admission into elite circles. Every day this past week seemingly he has described with a saber-like ring in his tone the resentment of being sneered at by the ruling class which he ascribes to Trump supporters. Thats a very Southern feeling. Ironically the Ultimate Carpetbagger has succeeded in exploiting it. The Democrat Party mined it from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement. Now a Republican has found the golden vein… if the word Republican" still means anything.
Should Trump ever get to a general election I tell you here and now: he will draw more Democrats from Hillary than he draws conservative Republicans from their stay-at-home protests. And heres one more for the pundits: if Senator Cruz were to run against both Trump and Hillary he would win a plurality of the votes. Cruz has already given his word regreattably that he will not make an independent run and Ted keeps his word. I think an Allen West/Carly Fiorina ticket could also defeat these two demagogic mega-crooks… but that of course is a story for another day.