Border Wars

Folks, it was always going to happen.

It was inevitable.

As a country, we are no longer capable of doing business in any other fashion.

I've got a hundred emails here this morning asking what I think regarding today’s ruling temporarily halting President Obama’s immigration policy.

Last night, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen put a temporary stay on Obama's executive action designed to protect five million illegal immigrants from immediate deportation. The first part of that executive order, which would expand an already existing program that protects children and young adults who were brought into the country illegally but through no fault of their own, is set to begin tomorrow.

What do I think?

I think the same thing I've always thought: Congress should have done its job.

But they didn't.

So the president took action – and conservatives just couldn’t allow that.

So now it'll be decided by the court.

It’ll be decided in the court because the Legislature not only refuses to do its job, they refuse to allow the president to do his.

Republicans say the government is broken, and they’re going to keep on breaking it until they’re proven right.

Immigration reform should have been a done deal years ago. Instead of petulant obstructionism, idiotic shutdowns, conspiracy mongering, endless "investigations" into matters that have been long resolved, chest beating, dick waggling, Jesus hurling, booger eating stupidity promoted as some kind of virtue, superstition, ignorant science denial, prayers and rain dances, and endless endless endless bullshit, the people we pay to make laws and policies should have been doing their goddamned job.

And when they didn't, when they refused to do the job they are paid to do, like any other employee they should have been fired.

We should have thrown the sons of bitches out of office and replaced them with people who would work.

Instead, we rewarded their childish nonsense.

This is the United States of America, our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. And the state of this country, the state of our inoperative government is our own fault and nobody else's.

It's really just that simple. 

We should have a useable and humane immigration policy and we should have had it years ago.

We should have a sane and sustainable energy policy, and we should have had it years ago.

We should have a workable and sustainable budget, and we should have had it all along.

And with a sustainable budget we should have had tax code reform, fair and equitable for all.

We should have a reasonable and flexible education policy, one that prepares the next generation to thrive in a complex and evolving world and ensures that everybody who wants an education gets one.

We should have a national medical policy that ensures affordable medical and dental care for every single American, every single one, like civilized countries do.

We should have banking laws that allow capitalism to flourish but prevent the wealthy from raping the rest of us at will.

We should have sane and reasonable environmental regulations that, again, allow business to flourish and resources to be harvested without laying waste to the earth or poisoning our children. 

And we should damned well have civil rights for all, for every single goddamned person in this country, black, white, yellow, red, green, gay, straight, undecided, left, right, believers and non-believers, old, young, men, women, and whatever, all of us and no more fucking around about it.

That's what we should have already, that and much, much more.

It doesn't require divine intervention, it doesn't require a miracle, or magic, or anything extraordinary. It simply requires grown adults to stop acting like spoiled children, to put aside their personal bullshit, and sit down and do the goddamned job they are paid to do.  No more, no less.

Instead, Congress has utterly refused to do its job.

Not only have they refused to do their job, but they’ve managed to convince half the nose-pickers in this country that gridlock and failure to perform is some kind of feature instead of the system destroying bug it is. 

There are people, Americans, who believe that it is actually congress’s job to obstruct, to delay, to block the president at every turn. These people believe that in a world of eight billion, in a time of exponentially increasing complexity, in a time of rapidly changing challenges and dangers, that the best thing we can do as a country is … nothing.  Don’t go too fast, don’t change, don’t advance, stall, hang back, let’s not be too hasty, wait, wait.  And meanwhile the world flies past, new nations rise, new dangers, new challenges, and we sit squabbling among ourselves instead of facing it like adults.

Congress has proudly refused to do its job.

So the guy we pay to actually run the nation did just that.

We can’t build a wall around the country. We can't arrest every illegal alien. We can’t deport everybody. It is simply not possible. We just don't have the resources, we don’t have the assets. And if Congress continues to refuse to do its job, on the 27th of this month we'll have even less resources to deal with immigration issues.

The president didn't grant anybody "amnesty," he simply did what any executive does and prioritized what assets he does have.

That’s not amnesty, that’s management.  

If we only have enough assets to go after part of the immigration issue in this country, then instead of arresting and deporting children maybe we should be going after violent criminals and drug lords and terrorists. And that is exactly what Obama’s executive order directed the Department of Homeland Security to do. Prioritize.

Sure, it’s easy to arrest and deport children. 

It’s easy to arrest and deport illegal immigrants who are washing dishes and cutting your grass and picking your fruit and sitting in college classes.

Sure, it makes you feel good, makes you think you’re actually doing something when you’re really not accomplishing a damned thing, while the real issues are out of sight and out of mind and out of the election cycle. Sure.

It’s always a whole lot easier to demand the impossible than to face reality.

But if you really want to address the illegal (and legal) immigration issues we face, then congress needs to do its goddamned job.

And they refuse.

And instead of demanding that their own representatives and senators do the job they were sent to Washington for, twenty-seven states sued the federal government to prevent the president from doing his.

And now it will be decided by the court. 

And you really have to admire the hypocritical irony, don’t you?

Think about it. Congress refused to do their job. They refuse to let the president do his. And now? Now the court will decide.

The very court these same people condemn for “legislating from the bench.” 

Think about that next time you hear a congressman complaining about “activist judges.”

If the court rules against the President, congress will pat themselves on the back and smirk in triumph. If Obama’s executive actions are struck down, conservatives will hail it as a great victory for democracy. They’ll cheer and grin smug smiles of glee at their cleverness, because they don’t really care about immigration at all, they only care about “beating” Obama.

Meanwhile, well, meanwhile we are no closer to a workable immigration policy and the real problems go unchecked.

And we, my fellow Americans, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

In a democracy if you have a government made up of assholes, it's your own damned fault.