Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:07 pm
Jeffrey Lord, contributing editor to The American Spectator and also a contributing writer to the anti-Media Matters, NewsBusters, went to a great deal of effort to explain yesterday to CNN’s Ana Navarro that she is not, in fact, the Latino she believed herself to be.
“There are no Latinos in this country, there are no African-Americans,” he told her. “We are all Americans.”
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Lord is an unabashed Trump supporter, arguing at NewsBusters that Trump “is showing just how wide the gulf between media elites and those who are running the Republican Party really is,” and that his hero’s “inconvenient truths on immigration and crime” are making “liberal media sites squirm.”
I don’t know about that. The only thing making me squirm is Trump’s bald-faced invention of facts and figures to support his racist agenda. Lord is as big a liar as Trump, saying Trump’s claims are “documented fact,” when the facts are completely opposite of what Trump said.
During a discussion yesterday about Donald Trump, and whether or not he is the “wrecking ball” referred to by Lindsey Graham, Lord said Navarro was hedging:
“What exactly am I hedging on?” Navarro shouting back at him. I have said over and over now for weeks that sanctuary cities are a legitimate issue and that Donald Trump is not a legitimate candidate. Which part am I hedging on? Go ahead and do your entire Trump thing but leave me the heck out of it, okay? Do me that favor will you? I am not hedging on Donald Trump. I condemn his comments, I think they are racist, and I think they are bad for the Republican Party. How is that for hedging?”
“I think the Republican Party had a tendency to paternalize Latinos,” Lord told her. “All of these Latinos who came here legally, who did the right thing are being insulted here.”
“Thank you for telling me what should be insulting. But see, I’m one of those Latinos that came here with a visa on a plane, that went through a process. And no, I don’t think the Republican Party is being paternalistic. I don’t find Marco Rubio, I don’t find Jeb Bush paternalistic. So thank you for lecturing me on what I should be feeling about the Republican Party as a Latino. Now would you like to make a point?”
We see this a lot. Fox News often trots out a bevy of white folks to tell blacks how they should feel. They love to mansplain things to women as well, and tell them how they should feel. It comes as no surprise that Latinos also need to be told by white folks how they feel. Heck, Lord even told me, at a liberal news site, how I feel about Trump’s lies about immigrants.
I feel your pain, Ana.
But Lord was embarrassingly clueless, and was about to become more so:
“I don’t think you’re a Latino,” he told her.
“What do you think I am?”
“I think you’re an American just like me.”
“I am an American and America is my home, I am an American who was born in Nicaragua and was naturalized under Ronald Reagan’s amnesty. So now that you’ve lectured me on how I should feel as a Republican, now that you’ve lectured me on what I’m hedging about, and now that you’ve lectured me about what I am, do you have an actual point?”
“Are you not an American?” Lord asked, no doubt thinking ‘checkmate!’
“Did I not just say I’m an American citizen? I am a proud naturalized American.”
At which point Lord delivered his bomb: “There are no Latinos in this country, there are no African-Americans,” he told her. “We are all Americans, and that’s what we’re talking about here.”
The question naturally arises, if we are all Americans, why does the Republican Party insist on treating some Americans better than others?
Why are some allowed to vote, and others not?
Why can some marry, and others not?
Why must some earn only .77 cents on the dollar compared to other Americans?
Why must some have their reproductive processes regulated, and others not?
Why must some be taxed, and others not?
Why can some of us be elected to public office, and others not?
Why must our first black president be labeled as “not one of us”? If, as Lord insists, we are all Americans, then black, Muslim, Kenyan, anti-colonialist or otherwise, Barack Obama is an American.
If we’re all Americans, why does the Religious Right insist Christians have more rights than other religions, and why do Evangelical Christians have more rights than mainline Protestants?
There is a whole lot of segregation going on if we’re all Americans, folks, and all of it is supported by Lord’s Republican Party.
Yet Lord is intent on portraying Trump as an underdog, victimized by the same GOP establishment that attacked his former boss, Reagan.
The real underdogs here, however, are all those Americans who are marginalized by Republican policies in state after state, and even at the national level by Congress.
All those Americans about whom the GOP and its underlings make up lies, whether it’s:
“Gays are pedophiles”; or,
“Women on contraceptives are sluts”; or,
“Blacks are lazy”; or,
“Muslims are terrorists”; or,
Trump’s “Immigrants are rapists.”
We could go on and on, listing their lies, one after the other. But the list is long, and we would still be here tomorrow morning, and Trump would still be blowing kisses at Ann Coulter. This is the reality of Lord’s Republican Party, an ends-justifies-the-means hatred so deep that no lie is too vile or too big to tell.
We’re all of us just folks, dealing with the same daily issues of trying to put a roof over our heads and food on the table; worrying about clothing our kids, holding down a job, dealing with traffic, dealing with the weather, bosses, coworkers, and neighbors.
It’s only Republican policy that these tasks should be easier for some Americans than for others. Yes, we’re all Americans. Just don’t expect the Republican Party to treat you that way if you’re black, a woman, gay, a Muslim, or poor, or just happened to come across our Southern border.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
