Radley Balko: What JD Vance and Donald Trump don't want you to know about Springfield

[Nevilledog]

https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/what-jd-vance-and-donald-trump-dont

JD Vance’s broadside against the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio is one of the uglier mask-off episodes in American politics in recent memory. It isn’t just the racism, it’s the glee with which right-wing personalities and outlets have focused a third of the country’s rage and ridicule on one vulnerable, easily-identifiable group of immigrants in a single city.

All Vance’s claims about the Haitians in Springfield are based on lazy, long-held stereotypes about immigrants, and about Haitians specifically. On some level, even debunking his claims feels like capitulation. Immigrants don’t need to justify their existence or prove their humanity. And the burden certainly isn’t on them to prove they aren’t doing whatever horrible new thing of which some shameless politician has accused them.

Yet Vance’s claims are worth debunking for one important reason — he isn’t just putting Haitian immigrants at risk, he’s now endangered the entire city of Springfield. And the long-term goal of his rhetoric is to snuff out the main thing that’s giving slowly-dying cities like Springfield life and hope — immigration.

As I write this, the MAGA right is reveling in a giddy frenzy of unabashed racism. An army of right-wing chuds and influencers have descended upon Springfield, combing the city in a desperate search for evidence that some immigrant might have once eaten something unseemly. Meanwhile, the New York Post is now publishing articles fender-benders in which no one was harmed in a city 600 miles away — because the drivers happen to be Haitian.

*snip*

[Dave Bowman]

1. Beardo Weirdo is like a kid who doesn't realize the consequences of his actions.

And/or is enjoying the suffering of other people. Stupid psychopath.