There are two news stories today that I think are more than intimately connected. First is a racist rant at a restaurant by some fragile whitey who was triggered by hearing Spanish being spoken. And, by the way, we are seeing entirely too much of this stuff, aren’t we? Can I get an Amen?

These aren’t people, these are animals

— The Ol’ Pussy Grabber on undocumented immigrants

And second, the Ol’ Pussy Grabber invited the media in to watch some cherry picked California elected Repubes bitch and moan about the sanctuary city laws in California and managed to rant about the animals coming into our country. He warn’t talking about no Mexican brown bears coming up to browse Big Bend National Park, neither. He was calling real live people animals in front of god and the press and everybody.

My contention is that these two events are causally linked, but before we get into that, let’s all point and laugh at the cray-cray coming out of whitey as he loses his shit. It turns out that he has been ID’ed, as one, Aaron Schlossberg, a lawyer in private practice near the restaurant. Things don’t look good for that law practice. Maybe he can develop a thriving practice defending white supremacists pro bono since none of them are employable and GoFundMe won’t have them.

The Vile Racist, Aaron Schlossberg

I first learned of this incident like I do most of them when I saw it on Twitter. The activist and journalist, Shaun King, posted the video; it went viral; and the good netizens ID’ed Aaron Schlossberg in a few short hours. Here’s Shaun’s post with the video showing whitey going off on employees at a Manhattan coffee shop because they are speaking Spanish to each other and to their customers.

It’s full of the usual racist tropes: This is my country! They should be speaking English! This is America! It gets worse, though. Maybe whitey thought all the other white people there would be inspired to tar and feather these PoC’s or something. Luckily, they didn’t.  Instead, they begin to taunt the guy: This IS America. You’re fucked up! And other acts of civility. So, whitey white meat blue-eyed devil there ups the ante. My next call is to ICE. My guess is that these folks are all illegals. Now, probably not, but maybe. Sure. And, I know angry logic is usually pitifully illogical, but the guy goes further down the rabbit hole of tired stereotypes: They come here to live off of my money while I pay for their welfare! What? They are working. Now, it could be that they aren’t making enough on their coffee shop job so they might could be getting SNAP benefits or section 8 housing like some common Walmart employee, but they would qualify for it. It’s what its there for.

From the HuffPo story it sounds like the video originated on a Facebook post Edward Suazo.

Like I said, I think we’re seeing way too much of this shit in public. Once was such nakedly aggressive racism would be just too embarrassing for the sane to put on display. It would’ve been such a gross violation of social norms that few but the deranged would attempt it, but, lucky us, the times are a changin’ so we get treated to displays of horrible racist rants every few days.

So sumpthin changed. I wonder what it could be?

The They’re Animals Rant

On Wednesday 16 May, the Ol’ Pussy Grabber thought he’d grab him a whole passel of press pussy by inviting them to a meeting at the White House. He thought he’d prove once and for all that Gov. Jerry Brown and that horde of godless California liberal heathens is destroying America by subjecting all the god-fearing right good conservative folks there to their tranny by forcing them to sanctuary their cities and shelter undocumented immigrants from all the storm booted but otherwise very nice ICE agents.

That wily Ol’ Pussy Grabber thought he’d invite him some real people from California who would talk good about how dangerous it is not to detain every brown person that ICE encounters and then ship them off to Mexico where the good lord will sort the citizens from the undocumented. If they was real American citizens, god would guide them back across the border see! Okay, maybe that is the policy that I derived from watching ICE’s behavior and not listening to their gaslighting words.

Apparently, California has had the gall to assert their state’s rights to govern themselves! But the problem is that they want their state rights in areas that god didn’t want no state to have rights in! Everybody knows that god-given states’ rights allows them to oppress the vote of the brown, young, and liberal voters; beat, maim, arrest, and even murder brown folks and anyone else that scares whitey; and even enslave a few of them brownies along the way, but ain’t no god want to provide any of the huddled oppressed masses sanctuary from oppressive government. That’s just crazy talk.

So, the story is California has done passed a law that limits the how much local law enforcement can tell ICE about the immigration status of those they arrest and otherwise stop and detain. They’ve got some fool notion that if everybody that encounters a cop has to worry about being harassed for the color of their skin and perhaps deported because they can’t provide proof of citizenship quick enough, they just might start avoiding the police and allowing real crime committed by citizens and non-citizens alike to go unreported.

The Ol’ Pussy Grabber ain’t gonna stand for that! They have got to be deported whether they is at the courthouse swearing out a restraining order on an abusive boyfriend or calling in the rape of their neighbor or paying a parking fine. It is just putting two and two together: the brown person is there, the cops is there, so you put them together and presto bingo we have fewer browns messing up our good white country. And, that brothers and sisters is how we make America grate again by using good old fashioned American math!

As his hand-picked ringers bitched and moaned about how ICE couldn’t even go into the jails to ferret out the undocumented browns to deport ’em and that somehow put everyone in greater danger — they is in jail, we are probably pretty safe from them while they is there, don’t ya think? Deporting them ain’t goin to make us no safer.

The Ol’ Pussy Grabber got caught up in his holy moment and he thrust his teeny tiny abnormally small hands in the air and began to sway back and forth and moan loudly. As his excitement built, he shouted, Amen, Brother! Amen! And, then he couldn’t stand it no more! The spirit moved his flabby hairy white ass to jump up and shout: We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — we’re stopping a lot of them…You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people, these are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.

By golly, it was another shithole country moment put on display for the press to record live and in person.

There is so much unraveling here on so many levels it is going to be difficult to remember that I’m here to psysplain how the Ol’ Pussy Grabber’s is making the world safe for racists again while I’m up to my ass in gaslighting.

Changing Social Norms

Yesterday, I psysplained how we are sliding headlong and feet first into a deep vile pit of fascism. Scapegoating a defenseless and clearly discernible social group is one of the propaganda tricks that fascists of every stripe and kind have used. Hitler had the Jews. Mussolini, the Bolsheviks. The Ol’ Pussy Grabber has Muslims, browns, and immigrants (as long as they aren’t working for one of his properties). Boy, he is rich! Rich in groups to oppress, hate, and scapegoat!

He is dehumanizing groups of people. You can watch it creep up like a slowly rising tide or water on a low flame coming to boil. He is worsening conditions bit by bit for the brown undocumented immigrants. He’s gotten it so we don’t care if a few documented immigrants, naturalized citizens, or even natural born citizens are caught up in the rush of deportation. We don’t care if we’re taken small children out of ambulances post surgery or denying detainees equal protection under the law or, now, taking children from their parents wholesale and losing them in the system. We don’t care if immigrants and PoC are afraid to call the police for fear of the harassment they’ll be subject to and so crime is left to committed without being reported or investigated.

This is the New Cruelty. We are slowing becoming inured to it accustomed to it habituated to the callouses growing on our hearts as those around us suffer and are harmed.

We know how the cesspool of life works: the bigger pieces float to the top and sludge settles out at the bottom. Or, the fish rots from the head. The Ol’ Pussy GrabbJer is setting the tone. He is creating the atmosphere. He is signalling what is okay to do and say.

It is prejudiced norm theory in action all around us. By daring to say the things that our social norms forbade just two or three years ago, the people who secretly harbored those socially abhorrent thoughts know the Ol’ Pussy Grabber agrees with them and they are much more likely to be openly racist to someone at their next opportunity. Just like Aaron Schlossberg was in that restaurant. Just like James Legg who drug a poor frail Georgia grandmother from her SUV and arrested her for a minor traffic violation.

We are hardwired to accept the things that get repeated are normal. The more you hear a lie, the more likely you are to believe it is true the next time you hear it. The more often you experience an event or behavior, the more likely you are to accept it as normal, it’s just what people do.

The more ICE violates the human rights of its detainees and the Ol’ Pussy Grabber dehumanizes undocumented immigrants, the more we accept it as normal and are likely to go out and do it ourselves. So, this boys and girls is how the Ol’ Pussy Grabber convinced a Manhattan lawyer to go off on a racist rant in a coffee shop just by hearing Spanish being spoke.

The longer this mishegas goes on, the longer it will take to undo. We are so fucked.