What you see is what you get
Luciano Guerra voted for Trump and now he’s surprised and sad that Trump is shoving a border wall right down the middle of the wildlife center where Guerra works.
I work at the National Butterfly Center — which is along the U.S.-Mexico border — documenting wildlife and leading educational tours. Many of our visitors are young students from the Rio Grande Valley. When they first arrive, some of the children are scared of everything, from the snakes to the pill bugs. Here, we can show them animals that roam free and teach them not to be afraid. We talk about how we planted native vines, shrubs and trees to attract some 240 species of butterflies, as well as dragonflies, grasshoppers and other insects. The bugs brought the birds — including some you can’t see anywhere else in America, like Green Jays and Chachalacas — and from there, the bobcats and coyotes. We want to teach kids what it takes to create a home for all kinds of animals.
President Trump’s new border wall — which he has threatened to shut down the government to fund — will teach them what it takes to destroy it.
The first section, funded by Congress in 2018 for construction starting early next year, will cut right through our 100-acre refuge, sealing off 70 acres bordering the banks of the Rio Grande. The plan that we’ve seen calls for 18 feet of concrete and 18 feet of steel bollards, with a 150-foot paved enforcement zone for cameras, sensors, lighting and Border Patrol traffic.
There will be flooding. The animals won’t be able to range the way they did. Lights will be on all night. Bulldozers will bulldoze.
We’re not the only ones standing in the wall’s path. It will also slice through the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, and in Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — which draws birdwatchers from all over the country and has hosted countless picnics and barbecues for local families like mine. The wall will cut through the park’s land that is behind its parking lot and visitor center. There isn’t much public open space in the Rio Grande Valley. What’s there is fragmented and precious to all of us: According to a 2011 estimate, ecotourism brings $463 million a year to our economy and supports more than 6,600 jobs.
I’m a lifelong Republican who voted for Donald Trump for president in 2016.
Thinking what? That he’s a lover of butterflies and wildlife and fragile ecosystems? That he would leave big holes in his Wall for the National Butterfly Center and the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge and the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park? That he would do the right thing?
I have little if any sympathy. Trump is plain about what he is and he is not given to self-reform.
People have asked me, “Didn’t you listen to Trump when he said that he would build a wall?” I didn’t take the idea seriously during the campaign. I knew he couldn’t get Mexico to pay it — that’d be like asking Hurricane Harvey to foot the bill for rebuilding Houston — and thought it was just talk: another candidate making big promises he couldn’t keep. I never thought it would actually happen.
I know, it’s like all those earthquakes and hurricanes and wild fires we see predicted; we never think they will actually happen.
I’m reminded of course of the old joke about the man who saves the life of a snake — and is then fatally bitten.
“You knew what I was when you picked me up.”
Indeed. I saw it via Katha Pollitt citing a related aphorism on Twitter.
I remember when Jimmy Carter pardoned the Vietnam draft dodgers. A lot of people (including my mother) who had voted for him said “I never thought he’d actually do it”. Same about giving Panama Canal back to Panama.
Of course, my mother only voted for Carter to prove that she didn’t always vote the way my father said to. It was the last time she deviated from her “good wife” role and voted against my father’s preferred candidate. When Reagan got the nomination, she went back to voting Republican for the rest of her life (including being a big Bush 43 fan).
“You knew what I was when you picked me up.”
Trump uses that very story against letting “illegals” as he calls them in. You can see videos of him shouting it at rallies.
I have been wondering about this a lot in the last two years, also with an eye on Brexit, where there seemed to have been quite a bit of “I just wanted to send a message to Cameron, but I didn’t think Brexit would win” or “even if Brexit won I didn’t think they would actually do it”. Of course, a lot of the near-global rise in far right wing parties etc is driven by racism and fear of cultural change. But part of it also seems to be protest voters who fundamentally do not understand that when you vote for a horrible or self-destructive proposition, horror or self-harm actually happen, perhaps partly because of all-around cynicism to the effect of all politicians being liars and just doing what they want anyway. Well, maybe that view was always a bit of an exaggeration.
I have even less sympathy. How can someone be a conservationist – and a middle aged to elderly one at that, judging by his picture – and not take note of which nominee is the rapacious developer and which isn’t? And as for that “[I] thought it was just talk” line, dear god, way to miss the point. Yes, the promise was totally impossible, but it revealed his intent all the same. He loathes southern hispanic immigrants. How the fuck did someone called Luciano Guerra not notice this? I am always mystified when someone that is clearly from an hispanic or black background supports Republicans.
It’s good that even lifelong Rs are turning, but jesus christ dude.
The ones that put their neck in the noose and don’t expect to hang; these we call schmucks.
I can’t remember who originated it, but the formulation I like best is:
“I didn’t think leopards would eat my face,” sobbed woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party
Screechy, that’s it on the nose. Most of these people do think he’ll do what he says, they just think it won’t affect them. He’s doing it to that person over there…that black person down the street…that woman walking around in broad daylight in a short skirt with no husband…that person over there…and so on. They don’t think it will have a negative effect on them, because he hates the same people they hate, so he isn’t going to hurt them, only the ones they hate.
I don’t know what this man’s nationality is, but the Cuban-Americans in Florida, more than half went for Trump. Just like slightly more than half of white women, which some people are astounded over, but makes me think they have only a limited knowledge of white women, managing to avoid those who are not in their immediate circle.
iknklast,
Good point re Cuban Americans. As I recall, even among Latin Americans generally, Trump didn’t do measurably worse than past Republican candidates. I’ve heard various explanations: that there are in-group prejudices (such that Americans of (e.g.) Mexican decent may be ok with Mexican immigrants, but think those Hondurans (e.g.) are the problem), and generational effects (third-generation Latino Americans can be just as anti-immigrant as many white third-generation European Americans, who regard grandpa as heroic for arriving at Ellis Island with just the shirt on his back but think those crossing the Rio Grande are freeloading scum).
And same re white women. Part of what makes The Handmaid’s Tale (both the novel and the television series) so compelling is how the Wives and the Aunts and other women were supporting, sometimes enthusiastically, a corrupt and oppressive system.
@9 and 10, I while back I noted a couple of players in a game I do online make quite racist comments about asian immigrants to Australia. I had in the back of my mind somewhere that these guys were ethnically Vietnamese. I responded with a ‘hey steady on with that language and anyway, aren’t you Vietnamese?’ sort of response. They laughed and said ‘Sure, our parents were boat people but we were born here. We don’t want any more stinking Asians here – we’re Australian’.
I’m left shaking my head. This type of person don’t get that the Pauline Hansons and Trumps of this world just do not give a shit about how you identify. They will label you with an identity and treat you accordingly.
Rob,
In fairness, though, they really have found a common spirit in Donald Trump. Someone whose mantra is “Fuck you; I’ve got mine.”
Part 2 of Trump’s version of the mantra is “And I’m gonna do all I can to take yours, too. Enroll in my “University” to find out how it’s done.”
“Just like slightly more than half of white women, which some people are astounded over”
Count me in. There was an interview here (Germany) with very rich (“we breed and race horses” rich) white women from Texas who were so impressed with Trump. Quote: “He’s a real alpha male.” I do not understand that thinking.
gary, I tend to have the instinct to run the other way when I meet anyone who might be called “a real alpha male”. To many people think that’s what women want (either an alpha male, or what most of them are, the illusion in their own mind of an alpha male). I guess, since I married a librarian, I wouldn’t be counted in those, and it’s just another thing that convinced my family I’m not really a complete woman at all.
Somewhere in Orwell’s journals/essays there’s one where he talks with a pacifist artist in a pub. After the idiot speculates on how a German occupation is going to ‘show them.’ Orwell asks what he intends to DO under occupation: ‘I’ll just go on painting!’ was the reply. The idea that ‘our’ lives exist in a vacuum, and that political issues are like nominal religious devotions, is how we got in this mess.
(I just realized I posted this two years back as well.
iknklast, I think that’s what most sensible people’s instinct is. In my mind ‘alpha male’ translates into ‘macho, misogynist asshole’, which is why I couldn’t really understand why women would think this way.
gary, I was brought up to think this way. For some reason (luckily) it never took with me. My sisters all think this way. My mother thought this way. A lot of women I know think this way because we have been brought up to despise ourselves as weaklings and bubble-heads who need a man to protect us. My husband is unlikely to be truly up to the job of protecting me from intruders or assailants, but at least I don’t need to be protected from him, which is what more women have to deal with than strangers, honestly. And it’s because we’ve been raised to despise women as weak and lesser.
The strange thing to me is how many powerful women in high level roles think this way.
I’ll note that there was a very active effort on the part of Trump’s key supporters during the campaign to spread the idea that the snake was not going to bite, the scorpion would not sting, the leopard would not eat your face. It was consistently phrased as, “Take Trump seriously, not literally.” Of course, because Trump is a stupid, stupid man, on top of everything else, he has no capacity for metaphor, he never says anything that isn’t meant to be taken literally. He might very well be lying outright at any given moment, but the lie is meant to be a literal statement.
iknklast, thanks for your reply. I spent a lot of time thinking about this, wondering why something so obvious in society wasn’t obvious to me. First, I’m a man, so I’m not confronted with this everyday the way women are. Privilege is blind. Second, in my home growing up my mother was the alpha, in a very psychotic way. But she still played this same game: when it was time to beat me, my stepfather wielded the belt, the nominal ‘alpha.’
Also, in the news report I saw, the women were all married to very rich, successful men. They had, outwardly, no reason to doubt their worldview.