Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities--

 

I recall in the aftermath of 9/11, one of my concerns was for the potential of people seeking vengeance for the tragedy and wreaking havoc on innocent people who had done nothing at all but were just nearby and brown.  Your basic American bigot just wants a reason to start the fuckery. Just like people had conspiracy theories, blamed Muslims, and fucked around post-OKC (even though that was a white supremacist, Christian ID-associated attack), after 9/11, innocent immigrant citizens got profiled, and sometimes experienced tragic racist violence. 

Laura Loomer is an Islamophobe and 9/11 truther and was a guest of Donald Trump at a 9/11 remembrance ceremony. She posted the above racist stupidity targeting VP Kamala Harris as a person of South Asian descent. That was three days ago. The Trump campaign was unaware of this? To her credit--a thing you won't hear me say often--she got called out for her racism by Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

And think what that says about the Trump campaign association with Loomer (IMHO, as dangerous for them as an association with Nicholas Fuentes). Did they not know she said this about people of South Asian descent? When the Trump campaign needs the support of people like Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and Usha Vance?  Isn't attacking Harris on the basis of her heritage so obviously wrong the campaign should step back from her? 

And yet even MTG (entirely down with believing absurdities and committing atrocities when it suits her) doesn't understand that what is racist in this instance is still racist and dangerous regarding the Haitian lie. Claiming immigrants are kidnapping and eating or sacrificing pets is a blood libel with no basis in fact. These are just working-class immigrants who by existing, have aroused the xenophobia of certain kinds of people. 

JD Vance admits the Haitian thing could be all made up, but then again, these people are hooligans and don't speak good and proper and are probably ridden with TB and AIDS.

Once upon a time, my Irish ancestors were forbidden jobs and people claimed they carried fucking typhus (it was the condition poor people lived in). And were drunks and belonged in a paddy wagon and then jail.  My German ancestors didn't speak English. At first. US immigration once argued whether Southern Italians were even considered White. They didn't speak English either, and like the Irish, they were Papists. 

These are his constituents he's defaming. Ohioans. They might not have the same background as he has, but they matter. Believing otherwise, or that they should be judged and demonized for their ethnicity, is the kind of absurdity that has led to atrocities. Even against people who look like his own family. 

The people who do the worst harm in the world believe the stupidest things and generalize horrors until they could easily slit the throats of any number of their fellow man. Or fly planeloads of people into buildings full of other people. But these horrors start with the grossest calumnies, the bearing of false witness, the little political lies. Even ones that sound stupid and horrific at first--beyond belief. Until shitheads normalize the dehumanization that says some populations are less people and more like problems to be solved. To be dissolved. 

Which brings me back around to Tucker Carlson and the holocaust denier a certain someone follows. (Does he just not know that Appalachian poor whites were subject to eugenics in this country? Or what that means about government controlling reproductive freedom at all? For anyone?)

How is it so hard to overcome biases, figure out right from wrong, and let people live? Is it even hard, ruling out the utility of some atrocities for political gain? 

Being well aware of what campaign has make use of both the calumny and the threat of atrocity, I know what party deserves my support. And it is not the party Loomer, Greene, or Vance subscribe to.