Seig Heil! Is it possible to translate that into Spanish for the legal Arizonans of Hispanic descent who speak Spanish as their first language?
Never mind. They wouldn’t want to say it; a despicable aspect of reverence for the fatherland in Nazi Germany, the phrase means Hail Victory. There is no victory in Arizona, and certainly none for those of Hispanic ancestry, whether recent immigrants or long-time residents.
Indeed, there is victory only for the teabagger mentality, if one cares to elevate the syndrome to the level of mentality. But it does amply explain the recent passage in Arizona of the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.”
Under this ridiculous moniker and the law it fails utterly to describe, Dave Zirin, writing on Progressive.org, notes:
THE law makes it a crime to walk the streets without clutching your passport, green card, visa, or state I.D. It not only empowers but absolutely requires cops to demand paperwork if they so much as suspect a person of being undocumented. A citizen can, in fact, sue any police officer they see not (emphasis mine) harassing suspected immigrants. The bill would also make it a class one misdemeanor for anyone to ‘pick up passengers for work’ if their vehicle blocks traffic. And it makes a second violation of any aspect of the law a felony."
There is little doubt that the chances of my visiting Arizona are slim to none; indeed, for any nation to harbor such a state within its national boundaries suggests to me that my choice to become an ex-pat when I did, a year ago and becoming fact six months ago, was a sound decision. There is very little chance I will visit the US, although family and friends are mainly still there.
Several columnists have proposed that the Arizona law was meant simply to force the federal government into enacting workable immigration laws, or, in the case of Arizona, anti-immigration laws. In trolling around the Internet, I came upon the comment that Russell Pearce, a Mormon, was responsible for introducing this law.
Thank goodness I’ve quit examiner.com. When I mentioned in a column for them that the Mormon Church was behind a good deal of the gay-bashing legislation in western states, the number of comments I got―mainly casting aspersions on me―was quite astonishing. I admit that I did mention that Joseph Smith, the founder of the church, was actually a juvenile delinquent looking for a way up and over, and mentioning that, of course, really opened the floodgates. But surprise! I can’t think of any other founders of modern religions who came to their enlightenment (if such one wants to call it in Smith’s case) via criminal activity. Martin Luther was not a criminal; he simply disagreed with many of the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church and had the courage to voice his disagreement publicly.
Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science (no, NOT Scientology), another modern western-states-based religion, was hardly a criminal; he was actually a sort of meek little academic wannabe.
Nor did Luther nor Holmes nor even Henry the VIII, in whose favor the Anglican Church was devolved from Roman Catholicism, claim that their revelations came from golden plates given them by the angel Moroni and later taken back by the same angel and secreted away inside a mountain.
Frankly, Henry VIII’s murderous behavior towards his wives was more sane than that cockamamie tale, if a bit more delinquent.
And now comes, as they say in some courts of law, Russell Pearce, about whom The Economist noted:
RUSSELL PEARCE is the quintessential Arizona Republican. He wears stars-and-stripes shirts and has clips of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan on his website. He loves guns, his family, his Mormon faith, his country and the law, which he enforced for many years as deputy sheriff of Maricopa County. He jokes that being Republican, and thus not having a heart, saved his life when he got shot in the chest once. But his main passion is illegal immigrants, whom he calls ‘invaders’. He loathed them even before his son Sean, also a sheriff’s deputy, got shot by one. But now it is personal."
Once upon a time, long ago and far away, I owned a company that was brought to its knees by a thieving gay man. By Russell Pearce’s lights, then, I should have run for office and introduced legislation against gay men, having been grievously harmed by a gay man.
Once upon a time, long ago and far away, I was employed by a company at which my boss was a rabid conservative who was in favor of the death penalty. Why? Not on any ideological grounds, nor even fiscal ones (the usual rant is that it’s expensive to keep a person in jail, despite it being much more expensive to execute them). No, he was a rabid pro-death penalty ignoramus because his wife’s brother had been killed in a drive-by shooting. I was incredulous that a seemingly educated person could so cavalierly translate personal tragedy into a desire for public policy.
Of course, it is much the same when those whose near and dear have died of a particular disease suddenly become the number one flag-waver and friend-annoyer regarding donating/running/walking/sponsoring for the cure of that disease. It would be so much more elegant if these people chose a disease that really freaked them, if a disease they must choose, and work to defeat that. I have had relatives die of heart attacks, pancreatic cancer, extreme old age (101) and kidney failure. If I had to choose one to make a cause out of, it would be extreme old age. After all, I’d like to wipe that out as a cause of death and live forever.
But in fact, I think the worst disease is ignorance. One can literally either survive everything else, or die knowing one has put up the good fight. And since we are all going to die sometime―since my favorite disease has not been wiped out and I can’t think what to do to help with that except try to live longer than 101―one might as well stop being ignorant and put up the good fight.
I would tell Pearce to stop being ignorant, but I think he’s got a terminal case. I would tell the Mormon Church to stop being ignorant, but that would be so non-PC, lord knows what the outcome would be. And it seems to have two longevity factors going for it: first, it has reached that critical mass after which any bureaucracy will self-perpetuate, and, second, it brainwashes people into doing completely irrational things in its name.
Meanwhile, there’s no chance I will go to Arizona. There’s very little chance I will return to the United States, even for a visit.
But there’s also no chance I’ll stop commenting on it, just so that maybe, someday, the United States will return to being the nation it was meant to be, the nation seemingly permanently hijacked by Ronald Reagan and his progeny in crime.
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