Sunday, January 28, 2024

THEY DON'T JUST THINK THEY'RE FIGHTING A RACE WAR -- THEY THINK THEY'RE FIGHTING A WAR WAR

We know that right-wingers hate the people who are attempting to cross our southern border primarily because they're not white. But this isn't just a race war for them. They think it's a war war.

Ten retired FBI officials have written an open letter to the Speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader, and the heads of the House and Senate intelligence and homeland security committees arguing that what's happening at the border is actually a military or terrorist invasion. One prominent senator thinks that makes a lot of sense:


From the letter:
In its modern history the U.S. has never suffered an invasion of the homeland and, yet, one is unfolding now. Military aged men from across the globe, many from countries or regions not friendly to the United States, are landing in waves on our soil by the thousands – not by splashing ashore from a ship or parachuting from a plane but rather by foot across a border that has been accurately advertised around the world as largely unprotected with ready access granted.

It would be difficult to overstate the danger represented by the presence inside our borders of what is comparatively a multi-division army of young single adult males from hostile nations and regions whose background, intent, or allegiance is completely unknown.
It gets worse.
This is particularly alarming in light of the Hamas terror attack on Israel last October 7. Those of us who have fought terrorism know that, historically, successful terror attacks invite mimicry. We know, as well, that terror leaders intentionally cultivate throngs of young men possessing a certain easily-manipulated personality type to carry out atrocities.

It is stark to say so, but having a large number of young males now within our borders who could begin attacking gatherings of unarmed citizens, in imitation of 10/7 and at the behest of a foreign terror group, must be considered a distinct possibility....

For these reasons, elements of this recent surge are likely no accident or coincidence. These men are potential operators in what appears to be an accelerated and strategic penetration, a soft invasion, designed to gain internal access to a country that cannot be invaded militarily in order to inflict catastrophic damage if and when enemies deem it necessary.
Your Fox-watching relatives believe all of this. They believed it even before this letter was released.

We know they believe that the consequence of allowing a few million undocumented immigrants into a nation with more than 300 million native-born citizens is that "we don't have a country." They really think America is so fragile, so insubstantial, that our national character can be obliterated by the presence of a relative handful of outsiders. (No, it doesn't matter that many of them, like me, are descendants of immigrants who were also seen as destroying America's national character -- which survived in what I'd consider an enriched form.)

They also believe -- and they believed this long before Donald Trump descended that escalator in 2015 -- that terrorists are slipping across the border with mass slaughter on their minds. (Right-wingers have been telling us that Islamicist terrorists are crossing the border since 2005 at least, based on specious evidence.)

This belief precedes Trump and will outlive him. He's the leader of the Republican Party not because he persuaded GOP voters to hate and fear immigrants, but because he embodied their already rabid hatred of immigrants more than any other high-level Republican.

This is why -- as I've predicted -- the House's first serious impeachment effort is targeted not at President Biden, but at Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. To the right, this is the most important issue of our time. And they think -- maybe, in some way, they hope -- it could be a real war on our soil soon.

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