It was a stunningly beautiful day on the trail. Crisp fresh air, wild flowers lasting longer than usual with unusually cool days. We hiked faster than ever, fully oxygenated. The leader of our hiking posse had these thoughts today about the political right’s position on immigration:
Why wouldn’t Republicans want to extend citizenship to millions of hard-working Mexicans who contribute “illegally” to our economy? Today’s bile-spewing Republican “leaders” seem really eager to tax the poor.
These workers would provide a new source for tax revenue — while keeping the marginal tax rates (on wealthy, country-club Americans) from returning to Clinton-era levels. Oh, right. Boehner and his cronies don’t want to raise taxes… but they are okay with reducing social benefits, effectively denying access to higher education, and realistic health care options for the people who most need assistance. Thank you, Nancy, for making this point.
The Tea Partying, flag-draped, Bible-banging self-anointed Keepers of the Constitution don’t get it. Do they have a plan to “repatriate” millions of people who’ve lived here for decades — their nannies and cooks and gardeners and maintenance workers — back to Mexico? I haven’t seen one.
Can one be truly Christian and also be uncharitable to the extent we hear screaming at us from the faces on Fox News? Do we really want to maintain permanent (and rapidly growing) sub-rosa, terrified underclass in our country?
Shame.
Blonde will shortly regain her composure and return to humor. Or something like that.
Not Quite Blonde 
Hey Blonde-
Lighten up. Demonizing the left or the right is not the answer. The answer is not to be found in polarizing political rhetoric. You are reading too much political hyperbole.
Agree with you on demonizing. It doesn’t lead to productive outcomes. Thank you for your comment.
It sure felt good, though, to write what we (the Other Blonde and I) were discussing during our daily hike.
Perhaps my sinkhole is not that I read political hyperbole, but in getting worked-up about it. It appears to us that the views promulgated by the shrieking, face-flushed Republicans are seldom countered with reasonable responses. The Democrats’ voice (when there is one) comes across like a whisper.
Living in California, we see the pro’s and con’s of immigration reform as a daily, real-life, people-with-faces-and-families drama: in hospitals, schools, on freeways. We also see people bent over in 100+ degree heat, picking our crops, doing heavy labor, willing to do work that in another century would have been done by slaves.