Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God I’m… Wait, what?
I don’t want to write too much about this, because despite the fact that every blog I’ve seen run this story calls the Jan Mickelson “influential” I can’t find much in the way of references to him anywhere on the intertubes prior to this week.*
But I still wanted to point the story out, because it illustrates perfectly a concept Ta-Nehisi Coates notes in Between the World & Me: How pathetically little it really takes for us to return to those evil places to which we have convinced ourselves we would never, ever consider returning. At least by the sound of it, this doesn’t sound like an instance of open-mouth-insert-foot disease. Mickelson really seems to have taken the time to carefully consider his proposal.
* Though I did notice he seems to have been quoted as a member of Team Not-Crazy Conservative by the DesMoines Register in an article about the Donald.
Team Not Crazy?
I’m not sure how we get there:
He’s apparently pledged his allegiance to the confederacy and supported Jim Crow Laws; Media Matters sound clips at the link.
Brainwashing.Report
That’s not from the Register.Report
Which suggests that the Register is part of the totes craze.Report
I’ve always associated him with Team Crazy. (Or more precisely, Team Shock.)Report
He didn’t just take the time to carefully consider whether he himself supports slavery.
He also seems to have carefully calculated that his audience would support it as well.
And the thunderous silence from the conservative movement pundits and spokesmen, and the base itself shows he is probably right.Report
This stuff works in very insidious and oblique ways. Mickelson intends to shock people. His audience understands it’s hyperbole, but they don’t want that to be common knowledge. It’s an in-joke. They love how much it gets their enemies chuffed up. Understanding that it’s hyperbole marks you as a member of the in group, so anyone who doesn’t get it is marked as an outsider and mocked and harassed.
However, it also moves the Overton window, making stuff that seemed crazy and outrageous last week tame by comparison. Guys like this get viewers by being the most outrageous.
Responding to it is tricky. It’s meant to be constructed in such a way that there is no response.
The fact is, his plan is not only illegal and outrageous, it’s also not very practical, because of the resources that would have to be deployed to implement it. I’m pretty sure that people are not going to be slaves willingly.Report
Enslaving random Americans gets about 25% support, so I don’t really see what’s surprising about someone proposing it for an unpopular minority.Report
I think the proposed “crazification factor” in America is 27%. (Which was, IIRC, the number of people who voted for Alan Keyes against Obama when Keyes was (1) Not a resident of the actual state and (2) crazy.Report
Sounds to me like he’s stating what is already readily apparent: The modernized system of peonage we have in place.Report
Yeah that statement is rather awful along with the current conservative manie ina against birthright citizenship. Something that has existed since the passing of the 14th Amendment and was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1898.Report
Can you feel the Hispanic outreach working?
Assuming the same rough demographics of the 2012 electorate, the GOP really sort of needs to expand among minorities. I mean the 2014 electorate is whiter and older — a LOT whiter and older — so it’s not as pressing, but seriously….ratcheting the xenophobic rhetoric up to 11 in a Presidential year strikes me as….unwise, given the likely makeup of the voting pool in 2016.Report
[I fixed what appeared to be some random font weirdness.]Report
Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
I’m guessing that, to the extent there was mental process that went into this designed-for-shock-value statement at all, the reasoning is that a person who has entered the country without appropriate documentation has committed a crime. Read very charitably, such a person, if detected and determined to both be a foreign national and to lack a visa permitting entry to the country, would be an apparent violation of the law and therefore subject to criminal sanction. Thus, the “satisfaction” of local Iowa law enforcement presumably includes conviction of the crime of unlawful entry into the United States, and thereafter, criminal punishment in the form of involuntary servitude is Constitutional.
Which is quite far from the tone and implications of the “policy proposal” but it’s the too-precious interpretation of a flip and casually offensive comment. I didn’t read a thing in the report about a criminal prosecution and conviction being part of the proposal. Although I did read that this shock DJ brazenly suggested that seizing a person who didn’t have proper papers and deeming them the “property of the state” would somehow not be slavery. That’s the best I can come up with to square the circle.
All the more reason for comprehensive immigration reform, IMO.Report
A big issue with kind of logic is that being in the United States illegally is considered a civil offense rather than a criminal one for the most part. Deporting people would be a lot more expensive if the 4th, 5th, and Sixth Amendment applied/Report
*crunch*munch*crunch* (wearing Hillary T-shirt) No no conservatives, please tell me and the voting Latino electorate more. *crunch*munch*crunch*Report
I really hope that the Democratic Party have people taking all of this stuff down. The campaign ads are going to write themselves.Report
I hope some resources and assets are being put to work in Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico et all at the very least. Community outreach, recruiting Hispanic candidates, etc…Report
Re: his influence
http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/05/20/to-win-in-iowa-gop-candidates-must-win-over-thi/203709Report
@kazzy Huh.
Well, that’s disturbing.Report
Otoh, the Iowa caucuses haven’t really mattered for picking the eventual Republican nominee in modern history, except for W.Report
Very true, and a good point.
It’s still less than ideal, though.Report
Where Iowa gets important is (a) keeping less sturdy people in the race and (b) keeping sturdy candidates sturdy by meeting expectations if not winning. Both of which are important.Report
FWIW, that was one of the (many) links in your original article. I can’t speak to how true it is. I similarly had never heard of him and I at least occassionally listen to some of the right-wing big voices.Report
An incident certainly worth noting, but one observation strikes me as distorting the underlying question and actual political situation:
Those who consider immigration a very significant issue obviously do not consider the provocation a “pathetically little” one. What brings “us” to such “evil places” is, from the point of view of the Trump constituency, and similarly the constituency that defeated the series of bills following McCain-Kennedy from 2005-7 (“Comprehensive Immigration Reform” or sometimes “Shamnesty!”); that rallied to Buchanan, Perot, and others through the 90s; and that has large and influential counterparts in Europe, is a long-developing and passionately held concern that divides popular and elite opinion and tends to undermine the perceived legitimacy of (broadly speaking) liberal governance itself.
This constituency believes, as Ben Domenech put it in a very worthwhile piece on Trump v Republican elites, and as observers on this question have recognized for a very long time, that our political system under the current correlation of political forces simply will not address the problem. Political players on left and right will only refer to and seek to exploit the issue, but will not manage to solve it. Domenech:
Domenech’s articles focuses on “the Trump problem,” and in relation to the hot issue (here and elsewhere) of “identity politics.” He does a nice job of summarizing the issue as it has appeared in many other places, including ones that have maintained much more “liberal” policies on immigration or support for immigrants – even if very few other countries in the world have anything resembling American “birthright citizenship.” (As I’ve pointed out in OT discussions before, American left-liberals and even many on the center-right treat birthright citizenship as some kind of obvious universal moral precept, even though it amounts, for better or for worse, a nearly unique example of “American exceptionalism.”)Report
This is not a fair representation of what D’s and liberals are looking for. We would like comprehensive immigration reform. You know like the Prez and D’s pushed for and was passed in the senate in , what was it 2010, but then was killed in the House. It isn’t about using it to hammer R’s, its about fixing the broken system we have now. It is completely accurate to say D’s and Liberals was the people here to have a path to citizenship and more open immigration generally.Report
The only characterization of the “D’s and liberals” position is that 1) if ever passed and successfully implemented, over whatever number of mostly rightwing dead bodies, it would be very far from anything that a large swath of the electorate, including significant (formerly?) “natural” Democratic constituencies, wants;, 2) it doesn’t get passed despite extensive effort; and 3) it is supported by heavily “identity-political” claims against opponents: i.e., calls em racist all the livelong day.Report
“Political players on left and right will only refer to and seek to exploit the issue, but will not manage to solve it. ”
The D’s and R’s in the senate offered a solution. I recognize the R’s have a huge split on how to deal with it. But D’s and the large Latino groups have been pushing for a solution.Report
I’m not accepting any more, of the “this is just a shock jock” stuff, nor any “this is just entertainment” position.
I think we need to accept that the conservative movement has become a sort of lynch mob, where people are now willing to say or do things that were once unimaginable.
These people are not kidding, or just joking around. And even the ones who by themselves won’t speak this aloud publically, will enthusiastically vote for someone who does.
We need to say it loud ourselves, that the conservative base in America is willing to do these things, or at least openly tolerate those who do.Report
I think we need to accept that the conservative movement has become a sort of lynch mob, where people are now willing to say or do things that were once unimaginable.
Fixed that for you:
I think we need to accept that the conservative movement has become an entertainment industry, where people are now willing to say or do things that were once unimaginable.Report
Here’s what gets me:
When a right-wing talk radio guy says we should ignore the 13th amendment, which has been enshrined in our constitution for a century and a half, and was written to prevent the vile exploitation and abuse of people of color living within the United States, people on the left and right recognize that such a thing is beyond the pale.
When much more prominent politicians say we should ignore the 14th amendment, which has been enshrined in our constitution for a century and a half, and was written to prevent the vile exploitation and abuse of people of color living within the United States, it’s treated as a legitimate policy debate.Report
With regard to the US electorate – or with regard to international norms – getting rid of birthright citizenship is not a particularly radical position. Which is not true of slavery. Thus, different reactions.Report
You left out the Supreme Court overturning the 15th Amendment, to the cheers of both conservatives and libertarians.Report
Try to see it as a living document.Report
Probably because that didn’t happen.Report
Mickelson said his solution is moral, legal and doable. The doable part seems like a stretch. The moral part even more so. But for some reason I think the legal part might be the biggest hurdle of em all. What provision of the constitution grants states (governments!?) the right to enslave people who aren’t US citizens? (I mean, let’s get real here: you’d have to at least be a citizen of the state enslaving you for this to hold up at the federal level. )Report
Depending upon how you define “slavery”, we are all slaves currently, so….Report