Yo Quiero

As is my usual habit of arguing from a position of intuition and imagination when it comes to sociopolitical issues, I'm going to say something about Arizona's SB1070, and then, as is my usual habit, use that to make a broader point which may or may not have anything to do with the first point, depending on how much vodka I get in me by the end of this post. It's Thursday, 10:05 PM, and I'm staring at three olives.

Vodka and peppers - continental and Mexican

SB 1070 is problematic, and its problematic aspects have next to nothing to do with immigration.  SB 1070 is superficially an immigration bill, yes.  It has the word "Immigration" in it, and it talks about deportation and all that business, and yes, having lived in the Southwest for 3 years I can personally attest that it is all...you know...immigration-y down there, and I don't doubt that there are many, many illegals living and working in the region.

In the Southwest, this is how a lot of stuff gets done.  A former employer of mine hired day laborers frequently, and attested himself that a significant number of them were illegal.  They worked well and they worked cheap.  I'm not saying it's right - I'm saying it's the way it is.

Ketchup! 

And yes, let me agree that at face value these illegals are doing work that could be done by some of the thousands of unemployed Americans.  There is a job shortage in this country, nobody is denying that.  We have more people than work, and less money than either.  The situation is up Shits Creek and it sold its paddle to make a payment on its hyper-inflated mortgage.  Americans could do shitty day-labor too, and it might be the only thing that could reasonably keep people afloat through this recession.  

But the bill doesn't have anything to do with this, either.  Jobs and security and state's rights are the short issues, the scrappy tooth-and-nail issues.  The long-term implications are significantly more odious for America as a state and America as a culture.   

Let's start with America as a state.  We are, to quote the song, the land of the free.  Among the rights to worship and write and speak and assemble as we see fit comes the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.  In plain and practical speak, this means that when a cop comes up and asks to see some ID, you may, in so many words, tell him to go fuck himself.  

Puddin' Tame - ask me again and I'll tell you the same

This right is not only in the spirit of the law, but the letter as well, though it's been argued both ways, for and against, successfully.  Still, it's your right as a U.S. citizen to zip your lips.  Anyone reading this ever get arrested?  What's the first thing your lawyer tells you?  That's right - don't say nothin'. 

If a crime's been committed, the burden of proof is on the state from jump street.  That's why you can only be held for 24 hours without being charged, and it's why you don't have to show your papers to any John Q. Law off the street.  You are a free citizen, and if the state thinks you are an illegal, well, they can sting you or issue a warrant or arrest you just like they would for any other crime.  Until you are charged, your very existence is none of the state's fucking business.  

But not in Arizona.  Now, under SB1070, All Arizona agents can ask for your papers with "reasonable suspicion" that you are illegal (e.g., you look illegal). They may do this during any "lawful contact."  While arguably the police would determine probable cause during a traffic stop or some other response to infraction, "lawful contact" is apparently not a real legal term. 

It sounds all legal - it's got "lawful" in it, so that sounds important, but a lot of things are lawful.  Pulling over your car is lawful, but so is watching you walk down the street.  Supporters of the bill have been very quick to say "What part of lawful contact = you already committed a crime don't you UNDERSTAND you fukcing LIE-BERAL COMMUFASCIST?" but I haven't found anything in the Arizona law books that agrees with them.

You...er...you should probably just start running now

I believe that most cops are honest and hardworking, and are truly doing what they can to secure our southern border.  They're good cops with their feet on the ground and a sense of the uneasy and strained truce between the law and the illegals in the southwest.  If they have personal feelings on the matter, they push them down so that they don't interfere with protecting the populace.

In Arizona, the police can ask you for proof of identity.  Who you are, where you were born, and what you're doing now is very much a matter of interest to the state, and now they have the tools to get that data.  

Do remember, please, that all power ultimately comes from, or is upheld by, force.  I'm not saying that the police will shoot you in the face for failing to present papers - but don't doubt for a second that they can.  Not should, not are allowed to, but can.  Your legally-residing born-here Mayflower-sailing ass won't get more than a fine or a night in the cooler, but that's only because you've got enough English-speaking connections to make it sticky if you go missing. 

They hate freedom, ergo, they fucking love this

But fuck all that too, because it's still not the point.  What do expanded police powers mean?  Let's stay off the slippery slope, let's just look at what this one expanded police power indicates or reflects.  Don't even mind the peripheral consequences - don't even mind that you can get tossed in the pokey for not clapping and rolling over when the boys in blue tell you.  Nevermind the introduction of yet another law that ultimately curtails your freedom.  We're talking culture here!

SB1070 ostensibly means that the police can check your papers if they think that you are an illegal, and what that means culturally is that we are inking in the line between "us" and "them" with a thick black marker. 

America is no stranger to otherness - first Indians were "not us," so we slaughtered them nearly to extinction.  Then blacks were "not us," and so they were denied most basic human dignities until the 1960's.  Women?  Also not "us."  

In fact, there's not very damned many of "us."  White, male, property owning, over 21 years of age, and of course our emphatic fans - our wives, our children, our apologists.  They get to wear "our" clothes, and keep in "our" company, even if they get paid less per hour and don't usually get to hold high positions. 

The significance of this victory has nothing to do with policy

But brown is our big other now.  Brown terrorists from the middle east, brown Mexicans from the south.  They're not us - they speak funny languages, they're poor, they have different customs and traditions, some of them are very vocal about not liking us.  So with bombs and fences and guns and requests for identification, the schism widens, the fence is made stronger, and "them" changes from "not us" to "never will be us, ever."  

"We" are diminishing, and we are diminishing because we are ossifying.  We're waking up from the American dream.  The money is drying up, the resources aren't there, nobody is buying what we're selling, the morals and ethics have shifted.  The American identity is beyond the point of crisis - it doesn't exist.  Laws like SB1070 are desperate attempts to make it exist, to reaffirm "our" superiority. 

This is America!  We're the best country on earth! Jeebus loves us!  We win everything!  Except, of course, that we don't, and we're not the best country on earth, we're just another country in a long, long string of them.  It's the same bullshit story of rise and fall that's played out since the beginning of recorded history, but of course since we're in the middle of it we can't be bothered to see that we're just a statistic in a shifting cultural demographic; that in 1,000 years, anthropologists will talk about the caramel-skinned inhabitants of North America and demonstrate how interbreeding between different phenotypes of humans produced a new dominant set of traits, prevalent in Los Estados Unidos de 3010.  

I, for one, am totally fine with this

If you give people something to be afraid of, to really be afraid of, they will roll over and beg you to do whatever you want to keep them safe.  That's what I see happening not so much in Arizona, where the citizens of the state are trying to deal with a perceived problem, but mostly in the culture at large - people who want to discuss this case symbolically and use it as a symbol of American fortitude. In that case, all this hand-wringing over border security and jobs just comes down to the dreadful fear of extinction, biological and cultural, of people who eat more wheat than rice.

This is how it starts, and Godwin's law be damned - start up a little law to protect "us" from "them," and I promise that you'll learn in short order that you're not actually one of "us." In the author's defense - neither am I. That's why this law, and this part of the culture, sickens me.  Give authority an excuse to exert itself and see what happens, but kid, I guarantee you're not going to like it, and I'm going to god damned hate it.

A wall - how symbolic

Recommended viewing - it's busy and confusing and gory and even a little silly, but this video has been in the news and it's done a good job of sticking with me.  There's a lot going on in it, more than most casual critics would have you believe (but honestly, less than most of its fans are seeing), and I encourage you to spend 9 minutes with M.I.A.'s Born Free.