Wingnuts' gross war on children: Screaming and spitting at endangered kids (Click here to read more)
Heather Digby Parton.
It has to come as a shock to decent people everywhere to see the vitriol and rage written on the faces of anti-immigrant protesters toward the recent wave of unaccompanied Central American children seeking asylum at the United States' southern border with Mexico. One can perhaps understand on some level the angst of American workers who feel their standard of living is being challenged by low wage labor (although truthfully, low wage migrants are the least of their worries.) And despite the narrow-minded nativism that fuels so much of this anxiety, a tough economy and scarcer resources always tends to reinvigorate ancient tribal conflicts.
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But this is something else.
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These are kids whose desperate parents are sending them away on their own to escape horrifying violence in their home countries. According to the New York Times these countries have been overrun with gang warfare, with kids as young as 6 and 7 being kidnapped and tortured to death.
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And what is the response of the right wing? The protests in Murrieta, California over the past week show scores of Americans screaming and spitting at busloads of kids and mothers with infants calling them diseased and worse. Major right wing groups and media organizations are demagogueing the humanitarian crisis as an invasion of dependent leeches coordinated with the Democratic Party to bolster its voter rolls. (If only the Democrats were that far thinking…) And not to put too fine point on it, they are now calling for the president to rescind his executive order halting deportation of kids who would qualify for the DREAM act. Those are people who've spent their lives in this country and are as American as any of us who hold the passport. Talk about collective punishment.
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Brit Hume has been roundly chastised by fellow conservatives for suggesting that these kids deserve to be treated with decency. Even the fringy Glenn Beck is getting slammed hard, by his own admission, for his plan to take some food and supplies down to the border to help the children:
"Everybody is telling me I'm seeing subscriptions down; I'm seeing Mercury One donations down," Beck said, growing emotional. "I'm getting violent emails from people who say I've 'betrayed the Republic.' Whatever. I've never taken a position more deadly to my career than this - and I have never, ever taken a position that is more right than this.".
This overtly cruel behavior by major right-wingers and their followers has been evident for some time. One could go back to the debates over the War on Terror to see the outlines of it, with the Vice President of the United States declaring that using the centuries old form of torture known as waterboarding was a "no-brainer." (Or the president reportedly wondering who authorized giving pain medication to injured detainees, for that matter.) Granted, war is hell and cruelty is a built-in characteristic, but this country had up until then at least paid lip service to the international prohibitions against torture. The breaking of that taboo was remarkably easy in a time of conservative dominance.
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