“We made a mistake,”

So says Principal Jeff Lane of Miller Valley Elementary School in Prescott, Arizona. “The school district made a mistake and shame on us if we can’t say shame on us,” says superintendent Kevin Kapp, in reference to the controversy over demanding that muralist R.E. Wall lighten up the darker complexions of some of the characters on it.

Bullshit.

“Get that nigger off the mural” isn’t an “oops” moment. It’s not a mistake when you meant it. This is the same bullshit apology akin to “I’m sorry you took offense.” Racist pricks.

Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law a ban on ethnic studies classes, specifically in response to a class that teaches Mexican-American history, on the grounds that it would “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.”

Apparently irony isn’t one of her strong points. For starters, Arizona was Mexico. For seconds, if there is resentment towards whites in that state, wouldn’t it be from the fact that it’s discriminating against Hispanics? And isn’t this bill clearly more evidence of just that? Unbelievable.

Similarly, Jackson, NY*, a small town near Vermont, has signed a law declaring all official activity be done in English – itself unconstitutional – which is not only unnecessary (what non-English speakers would they find near Vermont? Errant Quebecois?) but ugly in the sort of support it’s getting. To quote one commenter,

This is an extremely positive development to stem the de-Americanization of America.

Because America’s entire history isn’t just one big long list of immigrants. I don’t see you people speaking Tsalagi. To quote another,

Then I thought to myself: if I was in court in say, France, I would not go to foreclosure court and assume that a translator would be made available to me. I would not own property in France and assume that my ignorance of French would be accommodated. Similarly, I would not go to the hospital, or to pay a utility bill, go to school, or out to eat and assume that those establishments would provide someone to assist me in transacting my business in anything else but French.

Which is ironic, since like most Europeans, French citizens have a more robust educational system when it comes to learning foreign languages, are surrounded by people who speak foreign languages and are more likely to be conversant in foreign languages (especially English) than Americans. Not to mention the racism of assuming that because one cannot speak fluently, one must not be allowed to own property, pay bills, go to school or the hospital.

The comments are not terribly dissimilar to those in today’s Times article on racial profiling in NYC:

FACT: Blacks and latinos commit a much greater percentage of crime in relation to their overall population then white people do. Hence, more frisks, arrests, etc.

Apparently said commenter has not heard of the self-serving prophecy. Forgetting about police quotas and the high rate of drug charges, it’s a fairly simple concept: More scrutiny equals more arrests. If cops harassed random suburban white boys with the fervor they did Black hoods, we’d see a far higher rate of incarceration for whites. (Not to mention more sensationalism about the negative effects of crystal meth, but I digress.)

Two steps forward, two steps back. And to think we’re supposedly the most egalitarian nation in the world…

*It never ceases to amaze me just how much upstate New York is total hicksville.

A very, very odd debate on the comments of this article can be summed up as shock over a statement one conservative made that, in essence, because liberals are moral relativists and statists, they are at the polar opposite, ideologically, from the concepts of universal human rights and individual liberty, for they could not fathom something being morally right all the time.

Ergo, said conservative continued, it was the conservatives that have always stood at the forefront of civil rights and pacifism, not the liberals. This sounds a lot like the sort of arguments that have been trotted about the conservative echo machine since Jonah Goldberg wrote his book.

Names like Woodrow Wilson and Leo Strauss are trotted out as proof, supposedly, that the liberal message hasn’t changed since then, which is something like trotting out Charles Darwin’s first book as proof that the theory of evolution is flawed, forgetting of course the body of scientific progress since then (or similarly, that all collectivist thought is bunk, using only Karl Marx’ work as example).

We supposedly live in a world where Lincoln freed the Blacks for purely altruistic reasons (saving Thomas Jefferson’s reputation in the meanwhile) and the Democratic party is still primarily Dixiecrats and educated elit(ist)s who dream up eugenics clauses. LBJ’s abandonment of the South in favor of a more inclusive party and Barry Goldwater’s subsequent entreaties to the same in the name of exclusion means nothing, and nor does FDR’s about-face on Wilson’s racist xenophobia with his statement, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Strom Thurmond, of course, died in 1964.

Not that it matters, because the other half of this argument is that, because liberals have enacted collectivist policies through the state, they must be totalitarian – no matter if the state is representative or not. So Hitler’s destruction of the trade unions and Stalin’s purging of the party mean nothing, nor does theirs’ or Mussolini’s purging of intellectuals, radical dissidents or, y’know, gays, Jews, Blacks, or foreigners (most if not all of whom vote overwhelmingly Democrat here.) Wilson’s “world police” interventionist Internationalism was certainly not the central motive of Nixon’s or Reagan’s or Bush’s militarism, no sirree.

Of course, the argument’s just an anti-Democrat troll meant as the latest in a long line of fear-mongering disinformation poorly hiding the fact that it’s all a massive case of projection. The question, I suppose, is: Is this unbelievable twisted revisionism’s utter incredulity symptomatic of a sick electorate or the death of the party that espouses it? Ayn Rand’s faux-intellectual Objectivist screed has certainly found a certain brand of follower, sure, but rarely is it taken seriously…

Everybody knows the insanity of governor Jan Brewer’s suicidal* new law that basically gives Arizona police not only the right but the responsibility to demand citizenship papers of anyone they suspect may be illegal immigrants (read: All Latinos). Duncan Hunter, republican congressman from California, suggests they go one further and deport children of illegal immigrants born in the United States, despite being legal US citizens themselves.

I suggest a simple, elegant solution to the Wehrmacht surreality of Arizona: Give the state back to Mexico. It solves so many problems:

For starters, it was Mexico’s to begin with. The Latino population has more historical right to be there than their Caucasian counterparts.

Then, it rids America of a large swath of radical assault rifle-toting vigilantes (and ASU graduates), who will soon find that the Mexican Policia Federale are somewhat less forgiving, not to mention an end to the political scene that gave us John McCain and Barry Goldwater.

It’s perfect!

*Alienating Latinos, a third of the state’s voting population, is a brilliant idea for the GOP, especially since they can’t get Black votes either.

Michael Steele, the first African-American chairman for the RNC, said the GOP “has lost its historical link to African Americans.”

What, slavery?

The trial’s begun over a cop knocking a Critical Mass participant off his bike two years ago and it looks like the biker might win this one.

Now, I’m by no means a fan of Critical Mass, but herein lies the dangers of indicting a whole movement in a legal trial that demands the specificity of one single actor: Sure, on the whole they’re counter-productive to their cause and incendiary, but policemen must always be consummate professionals else they look like dicks, and in this case officer Pat Pogan looks like a dick. Mainly because he is one.

While I’m calling people dicks, I’d like to get something else off my chest after n+1 arguments about this, where n is too many: Yes, people protested George W Bush, myself among them. Yes, a number of them did things slightly less than savory, tho specific instances outside of shouting matches with parade police elude me at this moment. (They certainly didn’t brandish loaded firearms in Town Hall meetings.)

But there’s where the similarities end. The anti-war and anti-globalization protests were attacking Bush’s policies. The anti-tax protests today are attacking Obama.

Never mind the hypocrisy of claiming the illegitimacy of Obama’s status as a citizen as he won a mandate majority of the vote, when the previous president actually got fewer votes than his competitor and was handed the election in an unprecedented decision by a state governed by his brother. Never mind the Tea Partiers claiming taxation without representation after they voted (and lost). Never mind the hypocrisy of Medicare recipients protesting against government health care, unemployment and welfare recipients protesting against government spending, and anti-tax zealots protesting tax cuts. Never mind the deficit hawks who voted for two wars right after a massive upper class tax cut.

Because they’re not attacking Obama on his policies. That’s the difference. They’re attacking Obama. When liberal protesters had placards comparing Bush with a monkey, they were criticizing his judgment, not his heritage. Just like Clinton, where a year’s worth of policies were held up not because of any legitimate reason of governance but because of the political ramifications when he tripped and fell into an intern. Except this time Clinton’s not just “Black” but Black. Which apparently makes all the difference in the world with some people. Or to quote Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles:

You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.