This Election is for the People of the Sun

[Emilio Zapata is not impressed with the current Republican frontrunners]

 

Let's be clear: this election cycle is unprecedented.  Sanders was just supposed to be the protest vote, to tug Hillary a little further left. Trump was just supposed to be yet another celebrity side-show.  Yet here we are (in a post-Citizens United world no less!) wherein folks on both extremes of the political spectrum have been rising up against the "establishment" in unprecedented numbers (even if there is nothing new about a billionaire and a career politician respectively pandering to their bases).  It's exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time, and is enough to make one wonder a-times if maybe the "establishment" ain't so bad after all.

I've already prattled on about Hillary and Bernie, so now I'll briefly wonder aloud about the current front-runners on the Right (with a promise that, barring any unseen developments, I'll make no more political posts between now and November), because I am deeply troubled by the rampant and blatant xenophobia, particularly against Mexicans whom I love, on display here.

Yet, though anything can happen, that very xenophobia may be the best reason to be hopeful for this coming November.   Why?  Let us revisit the last time a Republican won a Presidential election, in 2004.

Among other factors, George W. Bush at the time claimed to have won roughly 50% of the Hispanic vote on his way to his 50.7% electoral victory over Kerry.  Whatever else Bush's many and manifold shortcomings, still, as a former governor of Texas, he fully understood the importance of winning over that growing segment of the electorate--but more than mere political expediency, I like to think there also was some genuine decency in his moderate call to make it slightly less insanely difficult for Mexican migrants to gain citizenship.

For the record, it was the sole point on Bush's platform that I gave my unqualified support for; it was also the point that finally drove much of his conservative base to turn on him--not Iraq, not Guantanamo, not torture or the Patriot Act, but for trying to treat Mexican immigrants like human beings for a change.

The Mexican-Americans, of course, were paying attention, and responded in kind in 2008, when McCain won less than 40% of the Hispanic vote...and lost the election overall.

Likewise Romney, in 2012, got less than 30% of the Hispanic vote...and also lost the election overall.

By now you're noticing a pattern.  The GOP leadership sure did, too.  For shortly after 2012, the growing chatter among certain Republican elites was on how, really, when ya thought about it, immigration is an "entrepreneurial act," one demonstrating initiative, grit, and self-determination, which are conservative values after all--and that, combined with Latinos' Christian faith and strong family values, made them a natural fit for Republican voters!  This they said both to placate their base, and to reach out to the Hispanic voters they'd been hemorrhaging.

But now here comes along Trump, and blows that all to hell.  McCain and Romney weren't even anti-immigrant demagogues, they were just punished for the slanders of certain of their base, but Trump blatantly owns the racist rhetoric in a manner that has galvanized Mexican-Americans like never before. Certain of my Conservative friends have half-jokingly wondered if Trump is some sort of Democractic plant, an infiltrator sent in to wreck havoc and ruin the Republican Party's chances of winning come November.  Cause if you need Hispanic votes to win, well then, Trump really is just the protest vote now, isn't he.

For unfortunately, the GOP leadership severely underestimated the xenophobia and viciousness of much of their own base.  Trump and his supporters, like all narcissistic bullies, driven and derided by a profound emptiness that no amount of power or money will ever be able to satisfy, have consequently lashed out against our most vulnerable people, and scapegoated them for all their insecurities, as we have since the dawn of America.

And it's not just Trump--he's a symptom, not a cause.  For awhile now, a distressingly large plurality of the GOP base has been ravenously hungry for someone to validate all the vile lies they've long yearned to believe about Mexican immigrants, ever since they first turned on Bush.  If it hadn't been Trump they rallied around, then it probably would have been Cruz--maybe, in a perverse sort of way, we should be grateful for both Trump and Cruz, for splitting the xenophobe vote between them, rather than allowing it to coalesce around a single awful candidate.

But make no mistake here: all this time they'd been dehumanizing Mexicans--calling them "illegals" and worse--the Mexicans have gone right along actually being human, with eyes to see and ears to hear, and have been following very carefully all the hateful things being said about them by so many.  More Mexican-Americans have registered to vote within the past few months than in the past few years combined, because they simply cannot wait to vote against these clowns.

And not just Mexican-Americans, either--Puerto Ricans, Cuban-Americans, and documented Mexicans who either came here "legally" or have been here ever since the border first crossed them in 1848, have all had their blood boiling over Trump and Cruz and their supporters, because they have (accurately) intuited that these are not merely attacks upon undocumented aliens, but insults heaped upon Latino culture altogether.  And Latinos do not take insults lightly.

Again, anything can happen between now and November; but I am LDS, and a key part of my faith's doctrine is that the indigenous groups of America are long lost members of the House of Israel (including Mexicans), whom the Lord God Almighty hath assured us He will regather in these Last Days, remembering the ancient covenants made to their forefathers, and endowing them with a power to go forth among their oppressors as a lion among the lambs, and there is none to deliver.  Ladies and Gentlemen, Brothers and Sisters, we may be approaching that day of reckoning, which shall come as a thief in the night, in an hour we know not of, faster than we think, for the Lord will suffer their cries no longer.

For we really did steal a third of Mexico away from Mexico; and our ancestors really did dispossess all the indigenous groups of their lands.  We so cavalierly deny their very real rights and historical grievances at our own eternal peril.  What's more, we base our agricultural production on their cheap labor, but then make it impossible for them to immigrate here legally, so that we can exploit them then deport them if they try to organize--meanwhile, their garnished wages add billions to Social Security and Medicaid, millions of them still pay both sales and income taxes, they keep our food cheap, yet still we have the nerve to accuse them of taking advantage of us!  "But they're breaking the law!"  So were slaves escaping to the North after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1851--and we all know what shortly followed that.

To conclude, maybe Rage Against the Machine, that perennial punchline of empty political posturing, was right after all--that "it's coming back around again/this is for the people of the sun."  Perhaps the purpose of that old Mexican-American band was not to rally all those moshing frat bros who completely missed the point, but to prophecy.  For now, a full 20 years later after that single's release, we may in all likelihood be coming upon the election wherein the Mexican-American electorate, maligned and trampled and ignored as though they had no voice, rises up yet again and answers the insults of Trump, Cruz, and all their vicious supporters resoundingly.  It's coming back around again.  This election is for the people of the sun.