A couple of days ago, WashPost columnist Dan Drezner tweeted the following regarding a speech on illegal immigration by Attorney General Jeff Sessions:
“Filth. He described illegal immigrants as “filth.” Whatever your views on immigration that’s f**king embarrassing for a US official to say.”
As Dan explained in this column, he was reacting to a story in the Wall Street Journal1 that included the following text:
“We mean international criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens,” Mr. Sessions said, according to the text of his prepared remarks. “It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.”
According to Dan, “This seemed like a typical Sessions tactic of using absurd language to talk about the entire category of illegal immigrants, a category he really dislikes,” which was what prompted Dan’s tweet. But then he had a change of heart, for two reasons. First, according to Dan, because he read Jeff’s foam-flecked text a bit more closely. What did Jeff’s text say? That “international criminal organizations” yada yada yada, and we’re taking a stand against that “filth”. So, following Sessions’ statement literally, “filth” meant “international criminal organizations”, not illegal immigrants generally. Yeah, but Dan, you knew that going in. Sessions was, in effect, engaging in “a typical Sessions tactic of using absurd language to talk about the entire category of illegal immigrants, a category he really dislikes.”
But the decisive factor in Dan’s mea culpa is that fact that, in the event—again, according to the Journal—Sessions omitted the words “against this filth”. So, not so bad, right?
I’m sorry, but that dog won’t hunt, as we say down South. Let’s parse a little more. First, the official text of his statement, available from the Department of Justice website, is titled “Attorney General Jeff Sessions Delivers Remarks Announcing the Department of Justice’s Renewed Commitment to Criminal Immigration Enforcement.” Sessions was speaking in Nogales, Arizona, which sits almost on the U.S.-Mexico border. He begins by thanking the “the brave men and women of Customs and Border Protection … who put themselves in harm’s way each day to secure our borders and protect us.”
So we’re talking about illegal immigration. But then, two paragraphs later, it’s all about the gangs, and violent crime:
“But it is also here, along this border, that transnational gangs like MS-13 and international cartels flood our country with drugs and leave death and violence in their wake. And it is here that criminal aliens and the coyotes and the document-forgers seek to overthrow our system of lawful immigration.
“Let’s stop here for a minute. When we talk about MS-13 and the cartels, what do we mean? We mean criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders. Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings.”
Excuse me, is your city or suburb a “warzone”? Lots of beheadings in your neighborhood, machete or not? Fortunately, Donald Trump is on the case: “…already we are seeing the results. From January to February of this year, illegal crossings dropped by 40 percent, which was unprecedented. Then, last month, we saw a 72 percent drop compared to the month before the President was inaugurated. That’s the lowest monthly figure for at least 17 years.”
Wait a minute. What happened to the rapes and beheadings? Why is it all about illegal crossings? Is Jeff possibly engaging in “a typical Sessions tactic of using absurd language to talk about the entire category of illegal immigrants, a category he really dislikes.” Maybe! Maybe!
Okay, but that’s not the worst. That’s far from the worst. Let’s go back to Jeff’s one sentence paragraph, that, as he spoke it sans “filth”—rather than as it still appears on the DOJ website—won Dan’s approval:
“It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand.”
First of all, Nogales is not a “sliver of land”, as though we American folks were somehow in danger of being pushed into the ocean (or, even worse, Canada) by an innumerable horde of sweaty, unshaven, machete-swinging muchachos. But second, and far more important, is the phrase “where we first take our stand.”
Has Dan never heard a song that includes the lines “I’ll take my stand, to live and die in Dixieland”? Has he perchance heard of a book called I’ll Take My Stand?
“Dixie” is a song that people sing a lot less than they used to, and for good reason. Whether it was the “national anthem” of the Confederacy or not is moot: it is the song most closely associated with the Rebellion of the Slave States. And I’ll Take My Stand is a collection of noxious essays put together back in 1930 by a collection of revolting old Southern Bourbons who called themselves the “Fugitive Poets”.
I have no idea if Sessions has read, or even heard, of the book. But I have no doubt at all that when he said “where we first take our stand” he believed he was speaking for the red-blooded white folks of America.
Three months in, and Jeff is already far on his way to making John Mitchell look like not the worst attorney general in U.S. history.
- I don’t link the Journal because I hate it. (It’s also subscriber only) ↩︎
