One immigration-focused community group that I respect greatly from my days in Massachusetts posted this image on its Facebook page with the comment: “I think this is the problem. We've seen nothing but his back for 3 years!”
Obama-bashing has hit record highs among progressives, who no longer simply shake their heads and say “well, I guess he wasn’t the messiah after all.” Now progressives get as red in the face as anyone wearing a tea bag-adorned tri-cornered hat when talking about the president, and among the items enumerated on their damningly unchecked To Do list is immigration reform.I understand the sentiment, but I disagree with the scapegoat.
We made the choice to leave the US in early 2009 (a mere month after the inauguration) and spent the entire next year until we got on a plane explaining it to our scandalized progressive friends and family – all of whom implored us to “give Obama a chance” to do something on immigration.
I refused.
I said then – and I stand by this assessment now – there was no reason to expect real reform to the immigration system within the next several years, and waiting would put us at the mercy of an unfeeling and unpredictable system of detention and removal.
Our choice to leave had nothing to do with our appraisal of Obama. I did have my suspicions about the midterms (which sadly all came true) and the defensive stance that Obama would have to assume against an insatiable GOP for whom Bill Clinton had been nothing more than a salacious little appetizer. (But honestly, there wasn't anything special about those predictions; I just paid attention in my civics courses.)
What made up my mind was less tangible… It was a whiff of whatever is in the air these days – something foul and unfamiliar that that makes you draw the shades as the hair at the back of your neck starts to prickle.
But the scent isn’t coming from the White House.
What stinks is wafting up from Arizona and now Alabama (which apparently couldn’t wait to hit the mats to prove that it remains the most racist place in America). It hangs heavy not just around those clinging to their 15 minutes of You-Might-Be-The-GOP-Nominee fame, like Herman “It Will Kill You” Cain, but also the legislators who are gratuitously crazy, like Kansas State Rep. Virgil Peck Jr., who suggested that immigrants ought to be shot like feral hogs – in a debate not about immigration but about shooting feral hogs. There are those who “empty the clip” figuratively (like Alabama State Senator Scott Beason) and literally (like vigilante Shawna Forde). It all feeds into a nightmarish perpetual motion machine of bureaucracy set on "ludicrous speed" by the Bush Administration.
And in this whole fetid mess, we don’t even wrinkle our noses anymore at terms like “invasion” and "hordes."
It wasn’t quite so pungent in 2009, but – like the milk starting to turn – I could smell that something wasn’t right and was about to get a lot worse.
I’ve always had a good nose.
So, I am disappointed that immigration in the Obama Administration has been "one step forward and two steps back" – disappointed, but not surprised.
And yet progressives have the attitude of “fix it already! Or else!”
Or what?! You’ll stay home? And we’ll get to see if President Cain was joking about an electric fence and “real bullets” (as if Border Patrol doesn’t already shoot “real bullets”).
(I am, however, joking about “President Cain” – but not the very serious repercussions for immigrants with any one of these nutters as President.)
If you want to know what progressive apathy looks like, think back to the Massachusetts special election between Martha Coakley and Scott Brown – oh, I mean Senator Scott Brown. We lost the lion of the Senate and got a Cosmo centerfold; apparently the message that disillusioned progressives wanted to send was “I also enjoy long walks on the beach and carefully positioned forearms.”
So, what is the alternative?
A third party?
I know that politically Americans can’t think constructively about last year – let alone last decade! But does anyone else remember the election in 2000? I suppose eight years of Bush didn’t totally destroy the country, and maybe we could survive another progressive tantrum because what does the country matter as long as you've got your righteous indignation?
Tell me now that there was "no difference."
“Revolution” also seems to be in the air, but revolutions are fickle and imprudent critters. Aside from petitioning Ollivander to finally make a wand for Obama, what are the demands of “the masses?” Sure, the redistribution of wealth and an end to corporate citizenship and all that rabble-rabble, but those aren’t new injustices – just the same old injustices with broader demographics; we (and I’ll include myself here for the sake of honesty) didn’t care all that much when we were still getting just enough of "ours"…
So I can’t decide if we’re Occupying because we miss the safety of our cubicle jungle – if the injustice of student loans is that we aren’t making the big bucks to pay them off – or if there’s a more profound awakening occurring.
I do hope that the Occupation is sign of the latter.
But ultimately I still am not that into revolutions.
I just want people to treat one another well – to feel a sense of responsibility for one another – and I don't want that to be revolutionary; I want that to be mundane.
So, if we leave our pitchforks at home and let the flowers grow in the ground rather than inserting them into the barrel of a gun, how do we get what we want – “from Obama” (for the folks who insist that the deficiency is his) and from the larger system?
There’s a famous story (which may or may not be true, like all of those “famous stories," but it is still incredibly powerful): after being confronted by the demands of disgruntled activists, Franklin Roosevelt is said to have replied, “I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it.”
I’m not directing this little parable at hardcore immigration activists and especially the individuals and families directly affected by immigration reform; they’ve already been working their butts off in a thankless and dirty fight for far too long. I mean average, run of the mill progressives who watch Lost in Detention and think “I can’t believe I voted for that guy! That’s just outrageous. ”
But before they take a big bite out of Obama for “letting this happen,” they ought to ask themselves “this being a democracy, why am I letting this happen?!”
I can tell you that average, run-of-the-mill conservatives readily bellow, huff, and holler about immigration -- and the crazies do it twice as loudly and in costume! I know because I used to take their calls.
So here’s a question for my fellow progressives: when did you last write an email reminding your Congressperson that he or she is responsible to the residents of his or her district – whether or not they have papers? When did you last inform your State Senator that race baiting and violent rhetoric would not be tolerated? When did you last hold your community organizations accountable for serving the whole community?
And if your officials are all upstanding progressives themselves, when did you last thank them for putting their asses on the line for the cause? (I recently wrote a “thank you” letter – yes, on paper, in an envelope, and with a stamp because I’m a classy dame – to Rep. Luis Gutierrez for his ongoing fight for immigration justice.)
Instead, progressives voted and then backed off. It’s as though progressives have tossed Obama into the shark tank and are now standing around the water’s edge, holding the life preserver, complaining “what’s wrong with this guy? Why the fuck doesn’t he just walk on water?!”
If everyone who stood behind Obama in 2008 deliberately maintained the same enthusiasm, the GOP's strategy of "NO!" wouldn't be politically viable. Their strategy depends quite as much on progressive disappointment, apathy, and infighting because no matter how rabid their radical wing gets, they still won't have the votes to take back the White House unless we stay home, stay quiet, and stay disenchanted.
Enthusiasm is contagious, and had we kept the momentum going, I believe that we would have seen the reforms we were looking for. Had we jumped into the shark tank and started throwing punches like Austalian surfers, we might not have made it into a kiddie pool, but at least we’d have safer waters.
Thank goodness that in a feeding frenzy Republicans can’t make heads from tails from Democrats because, if Obama makes it out politically in one piece, it will be no thanks to progressives; we've diminished his political capital quite as much as the GOP has.
So next time Obama veers to the center in a desperate attempt to please someone (Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?), consider that he would probably go left (and gratefully) if he knew that he had enough support among progressives to weather attacks from the right.
But I sure can't blame him for thinking he can't count on us.
