Cruelty is our watchword now. On our phones, we watch in real time as Palestinians are slaughtered with our money and weapons, enduring Israel’s indiscriminate, Dresden-style bombings of hospitals, schools, mosques, and refugee camps, while all we have to face are Israeli spokespeople torturing logic and getting the feeblest pushback by American TV “journalists.”
Closer to home, our governor, for political gain from the dominant sadist faction of his party, brags that he’s doing everything he can to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants into our country except shoot them, which he intimates he would do if the Biden Administration wouldn’t charge him with murder. He wasn’t joking.
Recently, after a woman and two children drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, some enterprising DA now might have legal grounds to charge the governor. Armed Texas National Guard soldiers sent by Abbott to Shelby Park in Eagle Pass prevented U.S. Border Patrol agents from rescuing the victims. Illegally entering the United States should not be a capital offense. The woman and children could have been saved. But this latest example of cruelty will not stop the Republican Party that backs the traitor Hair Furor to be president. No, the GOP’s cruelty knows no bounds. They wear it proudly.
Our governor has spent more than $100 million of our tax dollars to traffic undocumented immigrants to cities controlled by Democrats, cruelly treating those who struggled mightily to get here as pawns in his own craven political game. As Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote in an open letter printed recently in the Star-Telegram, “You are now sending asylum seekers from Texas to the Upper Midwest in the middle of winter — many without coats, without shoes to protect them from the snow — to a city whose shelters are already overfilled with migrants you sent here. … Your callousness, sending buses and planes full of migrants in this weather, is now life-threatening to every one of the arrivals. Hundreds of children’s and families’ health and survival are at risk due to your actions.”
The purpose of this cruelty is clear. Republicans believe they can ride the crisis on the border to victory in November. Trump, who oozes cruelty like mothers ooze empathy, imitates Hitler, belting out that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” which, of course, is nonsensical because we are a nation of immigrants. And while Fox News and its sheep love to blame Biden alone for the problems at the border, the truth is that there wouldn’t be so many people clamoring to get in if the Biden economy wasn’t booming.
Not that the sheep would recognize that obvious fact, since they’re all being lied to about the economy that has had near full employment for almost two years now. And the fact is most of the work these immigrants do are not jobs most Americans want. Republicans don’t really want to solve our immigration problem because doing so would take away one of their main campaign issues.
Texas Republicans are not only cruel about the border. Every day, they’re spending our tax dollars on policies that are cruel and inhumane. In banning abortions, Texas’ GOP has not only over-burdened Texas women, causing many to have to flee the state for adequate medical care, but have caused some to die. Instead of passing common sense gun safety laws, Republicans have made firearm ownership so easy that gun fatalities are now the leading cause of death for Texas youths. Texas is one of only 10 states to not expand Medicaid, which would offer care to many of our most vulnerable Texans.
Texas Monthly recently found that Medicaid expansion would decrease maternal mortality rates and help hospitals, especially in rural areas where they are struggling. Also, expanding Medicaid would help reduce homelessness, crime, and hunger. But, come on, Republicans don’t care about helping Texans, unless they’re rich. The Texas GOP is too busy suppressing votes, cutting holes in the social safety net, and, you know, being cruel.
Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue is a fifth-generation Texan who loves his state.
This column reflects the opinions and fact-gathering of the author(s) and only the author(s) and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
