Weepy Democrats

Something's changed, it's not that I fear but
Maybe it's that I took care of you too many times
And you grew weaker for a kindness
And sometimes kindness from a friend can break a man
--Rickie Lee Jones

Don't feed stray dogs: They'll follow you home.
--Southern proverb

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
--Emma Lazarus

This is racism. Real racism. 

Riding in to work this morning Mad Dog is listening to 3 stories on NPR:
1. An ER doctor talking about treating drug addicts in Boston who sometimes return to his ER 3 times in a single day with overdoses.
2. An activist talking about Trump's new policy to deny entry to immigrant family members if their US citizen relatives who are sponsoring them have been on food stamps or Medicaid--as a way of preventing people entering who will become burdens to the state.
3. A Democratic politician who says Donald Trump is a racist because he says immigrant caravans are filled with MS-13 gang members.

Now Mad Dog is a radical leftist Democrat, he knows this about himself. But something about these stories dived subcutaneously, got into his blood stream and started his blood boiling. 
Mad Dog would like to address the drug problem, the problems of addiction, would like immigration to be fair and orderly and he agrees that there is something suspicious about a man who sees a dark man coming across a border as a rapist gang thug but who smiles and opens arms wide when he sees a blond Norwegian at the gate.

Furthermore, Mad Dog thinks we are doing something wrong in the United States that we have so many mass shootings and so many home shootings compared to other nations, especially English speaking nations.

On the other hand, nothing gets Mad Dog more irritated than hearing the typical Democratic response to all these problems because it sounds so effete, formulaic and wrong headed and the posture is always one of lachrymose --"I'm so sorry for your loss"--and never tough, pragmatic.

The Trump fan will say:
1. That drug addict is a leech on society. He is making his problem our problem. He keeps presenting himself to the ER for care then goes right out and repeats his transgression.
2. That immigrant family is on food stamps and gets free insulin from Mass Health when my insulin costs me $600 and why does the government take better care of these illegals than it does for me, a hard working guy who puts roofs on houses in the hot sun all day?
3. Trump is not racist. Look at his rallies--always a few Black faces in the stands behind him. He says he is doing more for Blacks than Obama by opening up factories and getting them jobs. Would Hitler or George Wallace have shaken hands with Negroes on stage at their rallies? Trump never said he didn't want Black immigrants or brown immigrants. What he doesn't want is criminals and people who will go straight on welfare. Has nothing to do with race. He doesn't like "shithole" countries. His antipathy is not toward Blackness but backwardness. He loves rich Black people.

What Democrat is this loved?

Anti Trumps keep pointing to the Statue of Liberty and the idea of the maternal gathering up of the suffering as the ideal of the United States.
Trump is saying, "NO! Our ship is full!"

Compassion is out, hard edge is in. We take care of our own, not the whole world. Africa, South and Central America, Asia, South Asia are huge buckets and we cannot contain all their misery in our cup.

Do we turn her away?

The fact is, Mad Dog believes, most of his fellow citizens are somewhere in between these two extremes.
1. There should be care for drug addicts, but the addict and his family are not primarily our burden. These folks have to get themselves right. We can help in a limited way but the responsibility of getting you clean is not ours.

2. We want to provide limited welfare--the welfare system was changed during the Clinton years to accommodate people briefly, for a matter of months, but we cannot support every needy family indefinitely. We can tide you over, but not accept the full burden of your family indefinitely. You must learn some skill and work. When Trump says he's open to immigrants with PhD's this is what he's tapping into. Send us your well trained, your high tech stars, but keep your failures.

3. It was for years a liberal trope that 90% of our prison population is Black, which proved, ipso facto, that the justice system is unjust and biased. 
But then someone asked, "What if 90% of the crime is committed by Blacks? 
Suppose the justice system simply incarcerates, color blind?"

The average citizen, reading his newspaper sees the description of the perpetrator and sees "a Black male, in his twenties" often enough it makes an impression. 

4. As for immigration: Yes, we want immigrants, but since the early 20th century our doors have been closed, often to whole classes of people, particularly Asians and Africans but even to southern Europeans. That was done on a straightforward master race/Nordic race racist basis emanating not from the slack jawed, illiterate Southern simpleton, but from the Harvard, Princeton, Yale set of privileged entitled white males.
Trump is simply atavistic; he's nothing new. The whole Emma Lazarus thing was but a flicker.

Desperation

We can work out immigration but we need to decide basic things like are we out to "reunite families" or to import talent or to be sure new immigrants will not be unemployable or diseased? We used to exclude people for TB and trachoma. In recent years we admitted people with HIV and severe heart disease which were sure to cost the public coffers dearly. What do we want to do about allowing the disabled or unemployable to immigrate? 

Is this racist?

What we need is thought, not slogans.
But the left gives us bumper stickers.
Trump gives us rallies.