REPUBLICANS' OBSESSION WITH IMMIGRATION IS ABOUT HIERARCHY, NOT FEAR

I'm confused. I thought immigration was a profoundly serious national crisis -- that's what Republicans have been telling us for many years. But apparently it's not serious at all. Apparently it's okay to act as if it's a big joke.

Former President Donald Trump suggested in two speeches Saturday that migrants coming to the U.S. should have their own fighting league, remarking that they’re “nasty, mean” and “tough people” who could beat the country’s top fighters.

Speaking first to a crowd of conservative Christians at a Faith & Freedom Coalition gathering in Washington, D.C., Trump said he shared the idea with Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

“I said, ‘Dana I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league fighters,” Trump said, “and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’” The suggestion drew laughter and applause from the crowd, a response that continued as he spoke more about the concept.

“I think the migrant guy might win,” Trump said, adding that White “didn’t like that idea too much.”

“But actually, it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had,” he continued.

Trump later repeated the idea during a rally Saturday evening in Philadelphia.

Trump is just trolling, of course. But why is it acceptable in his world to treat this issue lightly? One right-winger after another has told us that conditions at the border could lead to a calamity worse than 9/11. Can you imagine George W. Bush or some other Republican cracking a similar joke about Al Qaeda terrorists? We're not talking about an inevitably gruesome death -- Trump isn't proposing that we should throw immigrants to the lions. He's proposing fights that the immigrants might actually win. Maybe I'm misremembering the national mood after 9/11, but I don't think anyone would have responded well to a proposed series of fights between Americans and Guantanamo prisoners that might actually be won the detainees.

The likehood that this won't offend any of Trump's fans suggests that their anger about immigration isn't based on fear -- it's based on hierarchy. They're furious at the thought that immigrants might cross the border and simply blend into the population, living American lives and effectively becoming Americans. They need to be put in their place! Forcing them to fight for our entertainment would subordinate them to us.

And just as night inevitably follows day, Trump's latest pronouncement is followed by a ringing Fox News endorsement:

The hosts of Fox & Friends couldn't stop laughing about presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's proposal to force migrants to fight each other....

"Oh my gosh, [Trump] proposed to Dana White that they create a migrant UFC, and then you can set the migrant champion against the regular UFC champion," [Will] Cain said as the other two hosts cackled....

[Rachel] Campos-Duffy said she alarmed her makeup artist by bursting into laughter after reading the text of Trump's speech.

"Can I tell you?" she said. "Well, I was reading that when I was in the makeup chair, and I just started laughing out loud, and then our makeup artist in here, we were like, what's going on?"

"And I'm like, Oh my God, he just said it's not the worst idea I've ever had," she laughed.

They can't stop cracking up at this! That's not how you feel about people you think are the worst threat to America since the 9/11 terrorists.

Campos-Duffy tried to end the segment on a serious note:

"Well, but tucked in it is something really important, which is these guys are violent," she said. "Maybe you need Donald Trump to make sure those guys are out of the country."

"So that's also tucked into that message. It's brilliant."

But the laughter says it all. This isn't about dangerous, evil predators.l This is about establishing who's boss. It's about forcing these people to fight for their overlords' entertainment, because that's the natural order of things.