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Embrace the Kryptonite

Steve Russell
5 min readSep 11, 2019

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From a Camera in a Telephone Booth Through Pixabay

Racism Pollutes Immigration Policy Debate

Well-meaning members of the chattering class have been expressing concern that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are driving the Democratic Party far enough to the left to scare the sheepies and win Donald John Trump a second term. The very worstest of the worst, the biggest scares, involve replacing the outmoded Welfare Cadillac meme with the dreaded undocumented hordes who are simultaneously too lazy to work and here to take our jobs.

The waves of fear did not start with Donald Trump. Even though America is a nation of immigrants, demonization of “foreigners” ebbs and floods in our political history and our immigration laws. Chinese were the menace when we wanted them to build the transcontinental railroad and then go back to China. The Irish took a turn in the role of alien menace, as did people from all those little countries in Eastern Europe nobody could keep straight.

It was in September of 2009 when Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) interrupted Barack Obama’s first state of the union address with a shout of,

YOU LIE!

What set Wilson off was Obama’s claim that “illegals” would not be covered under what would be known as Obamacare and there were at least five bills pending when Obama was trying to inform Congress what he would sign. Just before Wilson tried…

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Steve Russell
Steve Russell

Written by Steve Russell

Enrolled Cherokee, 9th grade dropout, retired judge, associate professor emeritus, and (so far) cancer survivor. Memoir: Lighting the Fire (Miniver Press 2020)

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