As poignant as the imagery of a giant balloon depicting the president of the United States as a spoiled child is and how concerned U.S. citizens should be; there was another event on July 4th that utterly destroyed my belief that the Trump era is a temporary speed bump in American politics.
A 91-year-old man was attacked by several people, one woman used a brick, simply because the man was Latino. As they beat this poor man to a pulp they kept telling him to go back to México.
Imagine if he was your father. How would you feel about that?
The imagery of the poor Mexican man, legally in the country – as if that mattered – took a toll on me and has me wondering if its worth arguing that America is better than this.
How is it acceptable that an old Mexican man can’t walk down the street without being beaten and told to “go back to Mexico”?
The beating proves that Donald Trump has made it acceptable to believe that Mexicans are not acceptable as human beings with the same dreams and wants that everyone has. The beating was not simply a crime. It was hate, pure and simple.
Before anyone points out that the attacker with the brick was a black woman, or a democrat, remember that none of that matters because at the end of the day, the hatred for Mexicans and immigrants has little to do with skin color or party affiliation and everything to do with a mindset that Mexicans are not people.
That is what annoys me the most about the politics of immigration in the U.S. – immigrants are just fodder for politics. Right now its the Democrats who are blamed for wanting ‘open borders’ – they do not – and tomorrow it will be about Republicans wanting ‘cheap labor,’ – not true either.
The fact is neither party wants to resolve the immigration imbroglio because immigrants are convenient scapegoats for the politicos.
This is why the Democrats are conveniently quiet about the man’s beating because an alleged black attacker does not fit the neat narrative that the Republicans are bad people. Had the attacker being a white supremacists, the Democrats would have been up in arms.
For me, as a Mexican, it doesn’t matter of the attacker is a Democrat, Republican, black or white, or even brown, because the attack was against Mexicans, simply because the man is Mexican.
The hate has always existed, but it was kept hidden from public view because the people that hate knew it was not acceptable. But that stopped as soon as Donald Trump told everyone that Mexicans are ‘rapists’. Trump made it acceptable to beat a 91-year-old man with a brick, simply for being Mexican.
Is this what America has become?
So who is making it acceptable for masked ANTIFA thugs to pepper spray, club and beat conservative students and demonstrators on campuses? For mobs of triggered liberal snowflakes to shout down speakers and demand professors be fired for not toeing the victimology line?
I agree with you that the country is coming off the rails.